Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

There was an unaccountable strangeness about Harris.  It was something more than mere ordinary tiredness.  He pulled the boat against a part of the bank from which it was quite impossible for us to get into it, and immediately went to sleep.  It took us an immense amount of screaming and roaring to wake him up again and put some sense into him; but we succeeded at last, and got safely on board.

Harris had a sad expression on him, so we noticed, when we got into the boat.  He gave you the idea of a man who had been through trouble.  We asked him if anything had happened, and he said—

“Swans!”

It seemed we had moored close to a swan’s nest, and, soon after George and I had gone, the female swan came back, and kicked up a row about it.  Harris had chivied her off, and she had gone away, and fetched up her old man.  Harris said he had had quite a fight with these two swans; but courage and skill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them.

Half-an-hour afterwards they returned with eighteen other swans!  It must have been a fearful battle, so far as we could understand Harris’s account of it.  The swans had tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat and drown them; and he had defended himself like a hero for four hours, and had killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die.

“How many swans did you say there were?” asked George.

“Thirty-two,” replied Harris, sleepily.

“You said eighteen just now,” said George.

“No, I didn’t,” grunted Harris; “I said twelve.  Think I can’t count?”

What were the real facts about these swans we never found out.  We questioned Harris on the subject in the morning, and he said, “What swans?” and seemed to think that George and I had been dreaming.

Oh, how delightful it was to be safe in the boat, after our trials and fears!  We ate a hearty supper, George and I, and we should have had some toddy after it, if we could have found the whisky, but we could not.  We examined Harris as to what he had done with it; but he did not seem to know what we meant by “whisky,” or what we were talking about at all.  Montmorency looked as if he knew something, but said nothing.