Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

“What do you mean?” queried George.

“Why it’s so curious,” murmured Harris, “but precisely that very same thing happened to my father once at a country inn.  I’ve often heard him tell the tale.  I thought it might have been the same inn.”

We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleep well, being tired; but I didn’t.  As a rule, I undress and put my head on the pillow, and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past eight: but, to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restless and disturbed.

I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the boat which seemed to have grown up in the night—for it certainly was not there when we started, and it had disappeared by the morning—kept digging into my spine.  I slept through it for a while, dreaming that I had swallowed a sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with a gimlet, so as to try and get it out.  I thought it very unkind of them, and I told them I would owe them the money, and they should have it at the end of the month.  But they would not hear of that, and said it would be much better if they had it then, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so.  I got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what I thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such an excruciating wrench that I woke up.

The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought I would step out into the cool night-air.  I slipped on what clothes I could find about—some of my own, and some of George’s and Harris’s—and crept under the canvas on to the bank.

It was a glorious night.  The moon had sunk, and left the quiet earth alone with the stars.  It seemed as if, in the silence and the hush, while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their sister—conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish human ears to catch the sound.