THE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH

The town of Wisbeach is very like the town of Boston.  It stands upon a river which is very narrow and which curves, and in which there rises and falls a most considerable tide, and which is bounded by slimy wooden sides.  Here, as at Boston, the boats cannot turn round; if they come in frontways they have to go out backwards, like Mevagissey bees:  an awkward harbour.

As I sat there in the White Hart, waiting for steak and onions, I read in a book descriptive of the place that a whale had come to Wisbeach once, and I considered that a whale coming up to Wisbeach on a tide would certainly stay there; not indeed for the delights of the town (of which I say nothing), but because there would be no room to turn round; and a whale cannot swim backwards.  The only fish that can swim backwards is an eel.  This I have proved by observation, and I challenge any fisherman to deny it.

So much for Wisbeach, which stands upon the River Nene or Nen, which is the last of the towns defended by the old sea-wall—­which is the third of the Fen ports—­the other two being Boston and Lynn, which is served by two lines of railway and which has two stations.

Very early next morning, and by one of these stations, another man and I took train to a bridge called Sutton Bridge, where one can cross the River Nen, and where (according to the map) one can see both the sea-walls, the old and the new.  It was my plan to walk along the shore of the Wash right across the flats to Lynn, and so at last perhaps comprehend the nature of this curious land.

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When I got to Sutton Bridge I discovered it to be a monstrous thing of iron standing poised upon a huge pivot in mid-stream.  It bore the railway and the road together.  It was that kind of triumphant engineering which once you saw only in England, but which now you will see all over the world.  It was designed to swing open on its central pivot to let boats go up the River Nen, and then to come back exactly to its place with a clang; but when we got to it we found it neither one thing nor the other.  It was twisted just so much that the two parts of the roads (the road on the bridge and the road on land) did not join.

Was a boat about to pass?  No.  Why was it open thus?  A man was cleaning it.  The bridge is not as big as the Tower Bridge, but it is very big, and the man was cleaning it with a little rag.  He was cleaning the under part, the mechanisms and contraptions that can only be got at when the bridge is thus ajar.  He cleaned without haste and without exertion, and as I watched him I considered the mightiness of the works of Man contrasted with His Puny Frame.  I also asked him when I should pass, but he answered nothing.

As we thus waited men gathered upon either side—­men of all characters and kinds, men holding bicycles, men in carts, afoot, on horseback, vigorous men and feeble, old men, women also and little children, and youths witless of life, and innocent young girls; they gathered and increased, they became as numerous as leaves, they stretched out their hands in a desire for the further shore:  but the river ran between.