There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow – line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul – revolting tangle.

I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow – line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half – hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.