MUD-LARKING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 162, 14 August 1914, Page 5

MUD-LARKING.

NEW SUMMER AMUSEMENT. I do not know who gave the name of mud-larking to the glorious sport of sailing, small boat sailing, up and down the tidal rivers and in and out of the harbours of Hampshire and Sussex, writes George A, Birmingham from Beaulieu, Hants, in the "Daily Mail." Mud-larking is certainly appropriate beyond any other possible, word. I have sailed in several seas, but I have never met anything like this South of England mud. Nor do I know any other place in which sailing is such a "lark." The amateur sailor goes exploring wherever he finds himself j but generally his exploring is attended with a certain amount of risk. Tou may call it '' sport'' to take chances among jagged reefs ji but you cannot call it '' larking." It is '' larking'' when a nice, soft, oozy slime, black and clinging, receives in a fast embrace the keel of the boat which hangs a little overlong in stays. '

I tried this game for the first time a few days ago. We set sail in a nice, well-found, roomy ketch, and began by getting mixed up with a kind of large houseboat moored in the Beaulieu River. The Board of Agriculture, I believe, expects to breed lobsters in this houseboat. If lobsters like mud, the experiment is likely to be a success. Several things combined against us. The wind was dead ahead. The river was exceedingly narrow, and the houseboat was in the middle of it. The tide, like the Insurance Act, was not doing what it was supposed to do. It ought to have swept us down as we hung in the wind. It perversely swept us up,*and we.went on the mud. I took my first lesson in the art of getting off again. Hitherto, in my experience, going ashore has been a serious business. Here it is an incident. We did strangely coriiplex things with warps and kedges. We strained the muscles of our backs at a capstan. The men in the hpuseboajt, whose cheery 'optimism I shall never forget, tugged* at fopes. In the end we got off. That was the beginning of our troubles, the very mild beginning. I got no more than an inkling—if inkling is derived from ink it is the right word to use—of the nature of mud. **. * # * There followed an hour of very cautious navigation, and we emerged safely into the waters of the Solent. We had a fine westerly breeze, just as much as our boat would stand comfortably without reefing, and the Solent tide was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. It was running strongly against the wind. The "sea was of that short, lumpy, irregular kind which is never met with except where a strong tide and a stiff breeze get into conflict with each other. We thrashed our way joyously towards Hurst Castle. This was sailing, a thing I am more or less accustomed to, and I enjoyed it. But of such sailing there comes in the end an inevitable consequence —hunger. It became very desirable that we should eat. It is possible to eat and even to drink in the sort qf sea that a westerly breeze and an ebbing tide make in the Solent; possible, but hot comfortable. We determined to get into Lymington Eiver where the water would be calm. There followed —since none of us felt sure about the way—some study of a chart spread on deck, with a round lifebuoy on top of it to keep it from blowing away. The business seemed simple enough, and we tried it. We were entirely successful, so successful that in our "pride we ventured a little further ud Lymington River than was quite prudent. We anchored and ate with shameless eagerness. We were so mufih pleased with ourselves, with the boat, with the wind, with the sea, with everything, that we talked gaily of circumnavigating the Isle of that the tide, which at "that hour would be flowing, might prevent our getting across from Cowes to Lepe in time to get up the Beavilieu River again before nightfall. But that was a remote risk, and we were in good heart.

"We dragged our anchor and, the wind heading us as usual, went straightway ashore..This time I got more than an inkling of the nature of mud. We ran out an anchor. '' Ran out'' is the correct phrase; but it is a ridiculously inappropriate description of what is done. With immense toil we got a heavy anchor and many fathoms of chain into a dinghy, which after the manner of its kind strove desperately to escape the burden, and rowed them out to the middle of the river. Them we laboured at the capstan until'"l came to hate all capstans with a bitter and furious rage.' But we got off panting, and washed some mud from the various parts of ourselves and our ship. We washed too soon. Long before we were out of the river we were ashore again. I; affirm, and should do so on oath before a court of enquiry if necessary, that this was pure misfortune —nobody's fault. It will remain, I think, one of the great glories of our lives that not a. single one of us swore. This time we tried a warp, made. fast to somebody else's moorings. We worked the capstan again, and nearly broke my back. Then like wise men we gave it up. We sat in the cabin and studied charts of strange harbours—places where other people go ashore—until the tide came and softened the heart of the mud so that it no longer refused to let us go. I enjoyed myself from start to finish, and I enjoyed the mud-larking part most. We all did. Yet we were civilised people, accustomed to common comforts, and all of us averse in ordinary life to filthy slime. Is there any explanation of the fact that people like us, two men, two women, and a child, should enjoy mud-larking, should regard wallowing in slime as a pleasure? Perhaps it is natural that the child should huve liked it, though in this ease the child got less than her fair share. But what of the rest of us? Perhaps we renew our youth when we go out in boats, become*children again, and like i mud. I can think of no other explanaj tion. » Certain I am that not one of us would Avillingly spend the day on land dragging heavy chains out of glutinous slime. But lam also sure that we should all of us joyfully go forth to Lvmington again to-morrow if we i could.