Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

“What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it?  You’ve made a nice mess you have; why couldn’t you wind it up properly, you silly dummy?” he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly with it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round it, trying to find the end.

On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.

“It was all right when you took it!” he exclaims indignantly.  “Why don’t you think what you are doing?  You go about things in such a slap-dash style.  You’d get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!”

And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang each other with the thing.  Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, and dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it.  Of course, this only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever.  Then the second man climbs out of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other’s way, and hinder one another.  They both get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught.  In the end, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has drifted off, and is making straight for the weir.

This really happened once to my own knowledge.  It was up by Boveney, one rather windy morning.  We were pulling down stream, and, as we came round the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank.  They were looking at each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression as I have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they held a long tow-line between them.  It was clear that something had happened, so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.

“Why, our boat’s gone off!” they replied in an indignant tone.  “We just got out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked round, it was gone!”

And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean and ungrateful act on the part of the boat.