What can they be up to? a gazer might say,
    As he watched their eccentric career from the banks. 
  Three ’ARRIES at large on a Bank Holiday
    Could hardly indulge in more blundering pranks. 
  Stroke “catches a crab” in the clumsiest style,
    (And they called him a fine finished oarsman, this chap!)
  At his “Catherine-wheeler” a Cockney might smile,
    As he tumbles so helplessly back in Bow’s lap. 
  And Bow!—­well, he’s snapped off the blade of his scull,
  And poor Cox’s steering-gear’s all “in a mull.”

  It’s all that Stroke’s fault—­so the whisper goes round. 
    He would try new dodges, uncalled-for, unproved,
  They were “going great guns,” when he suddenly found
    That, to make himself Champion (and get himself loved
  By the river-side “Bungs” and their large clientele),
    He must—­set a new stroke in the midst of a spin—­
  A policy plainly predestined to fail,
    And one, we must own, scarce deserving to win. 
  And so he has smashed up a shining success,
  And got himself into a deuce of a mess.

  So various voices!  And this was the oar
    They triumphantly won from a great rival crew;
  The cool-headed, steady-nerved Stroke, bound to score;
    The fellow who funking or failure ne’er knew.
  He hurry, or falter, catch crabs, miss, or muff? 
    No, no; lesser men might—­say, GL-DST-NE or SM-TH—­
  But he was not made of such common-place stuff,
    His nerve was all steel, and his muscle all pith. 
  And now he’s adrift amidst snags, stumps, and rooks,
  And the Coxswain has just lost his rudder—­poor Cox.!

  And danger’s ahead, and the full of the weir
    Sounds close, as that Stroke tumbles “head over tip.” 
  No wonder poor Bow, his oar bladeless, looks queer. 
    No wonder the Steersman his yoke-lines lets slip. 
  The Three are “In Trouble,” of that there’s no doubt;
    Stroke mutters, “Obstruction!” Bow talks of “a foul.” 
  But when you have muffed it, and foes are about,
    It isn’t much use at bad fortune to growl. 
  No; Stroke, Bow, and Coxswain must “go it like bricks,”
  If they mean to get out of this troublesome fix.

* * * * *

ERRATUM.—­Mr. Punch last week paid the Notts’ Cricketer, GUNN, a well-deserved compliment on his great innings of 228 against the Australians.  He intended to represent him as piling-up that huge score “against the best bowling.”  The obviously accidental substitution of the word “batting” for “bowling” here, caused “the Nottingham Giant” to be credited with a novel cricketing performance, to which even he would hardly be equal.  The proverbial Irish gun that could “shoot round a corner,” would not be “in it” with a GUNN who could “bat against batting!” As a Correspondent (in slightly different words) suggests:—­