That meal was a gruesome orgie. Try to cut a new loaf with a pocket-knife, and you will find it much better to tear your bread straight away without further ado, a discovery we presently made; but don’t try to open a tin with such a knife, as you value your cutlery. This from experience, which we gained at the expense of a broken blade. Eventually we burst the tin open by stamping on it, and then the Wreck scooped out some of the contents with a piece of stick, as clean as might be, but still scarcely the ideal substitute for a knife. With this we spread the lumps of bread, and ate precariously. It should be said that the plates had already come to grief, and their fragments were now reposing in the river bed. For dessert we dipped the bread into the jam-pot, and thus circumvented the necessity for spoons. [Illustration: ABOVE HURLEY.] This was at Hurley, after we had passed beautiful Marlow and Bisham, where the ghost of Lady Hoby walks in the abbey, and before we had come to Medmenham. Here the notorious Medmenham Abbey stands by the waterside, where the river winds and rushes grow thick, and a lovely view it makes, close-hemmed with tall trees, the hills rising in the background and the level meads spreading out, emerald green, in front. [Illustration: MEDMENHAM ABBEY.] They tell us--those unkind topographers--that the picturesque ruins of the Abbey are a sham; that possibly one single pillar may be a genuine relic of the old religious house that once stood here, but that the arcading, the Tudor windows and the ivy-covered tower, are “_ruins_” deliberately built. Perhaps they are, but, even so, they are excellent, and those purists are not to be thanked for setting us right, where we might gladly have erred. They would, too, assuage by exact inquiry the romantic legends of the Hell Fire Club, those “Monks of St. Francis,” as Wilkes and his jolly companions who rioted here were pleased to call themselves. Their horrid rites, their orgies and debauchery, the license of the place, typified by their motto, still extant, “_Fay ce que voudras_,” are, perhaps, better “taken as read.” We crept up stream against a swift current, and between heavy rain showers that soaked us and diluted the remains of our picnic to a revolting mess: bread and water, tinned meat and raspberry jam, both sufficiently saturated, are not appetising items. It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say there was more jam on the seats and our clothes than in its native pot, but this was at least an open question. At Hambledon, the lock-keeper let us through in a pelting shower, which ceased directly we were freed from the unsheltered imprisonment of the lock. Have you ever noticed how _wet_ the river looks after rain? how much more _watery_ the water appears? Thus looked Henley Reach as we rowed up it this evening, past that singular eyot called Regatta Island. VI.