“Oh no, no. It is all right,” said Mr. Knight, who was as placid as dewy eve by the side of Elfride.
“But what I argue from,” said the vicar, with a greater emphasis of uneasiness, “are plain appearances. This can’t be the highway from London to Plymouth by water, because it is no way at all to any place. We shall miss our steamer and our train too—that’s what I think.”
“Depend upon it we are right. In fact, here we are.”
“Trimmer’s Wharf,” said the cabman, opening the door.
No sooner had they alighted than they perceived a tussle going on between the hindmost cabman and a crowd of light porters who had charged him in column, to obtain possession of the bags and boxes, Mrs. Snewson’s hands being seen stretched towards heaven in the midst of the melee. Knight advanced gallantly, and after a hard struggle reduced the crowd to two, upon whose shoulders and trucks the goods vanished away in the direction of the water’s edge with startling rapidity.
Then more of the same tribe, who had run on ahead, were heard shouting to boatmen, three of whom pulled alongside, and two being vanquished, the luggage went tumbling into the remaining one.
“Never saw such a dreadful scene in my life—never!” said Mr. Swancourt, floundering into the boat. “Worse than Famine and Sword upon one. I thought such customs were confined to continental ports. Aren’t you astonished, Elfride?”
“Oh no,” said Elfride, appearing amid the dingy scene like a rainbow in a murky sky. “It is a pleasant novelty, I think.”
“Where in the wide ocean is our steamer?” the vicar inquired. “I can see nothing but old hulks, for the life of me.”
“Just behind that one,” said Knight; “we shall soon be round under her.”
The object of their search was soon after disclosed to view—a great lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had never known the touch of a paintbrush for fifty years. It was lying beside just such another, and the way on board was down a narrow lane of water between the two, about a yard and a half wide at one end, and gradually converging to a point. At the moment of their entry into this narrow passage, a brilliantly painted rival paddled down the river like a trotting steed, creating such a series of waves and splashes that their frail wherry was tossed like a teacup, and the vicar and his wife slanted this way and that, inclining their heads into contact with a Punch-and-Judy air and countenance, the wavelets striking the sides of the two hulls, and flapping back into their laps.
“Dreadful! horrible!” Mr. Swancourt murmured privately; and said aloud, “I thought we walked on board. I don’t think really I should have come, if I had known this trouble was attached to it.”
“If they must splash, I wish they would splash us with clean water,” said the old lady, wiping her dress with her handkerchief.
“I hope it is perfectly safe,” continued the vicar.
“O papa! you are not very brave,” cried Elfride merrily.
“Bravery is only obtuseness to the perception of contingencies,” Mr. Swancourt severely answered.
Mrs. Swancourt laughed, and Elfride laughed, and Knight laughed, in the midst of which pleasantness a man shouted to them from some position between their heads and the sky, and they found they were close to the Juliet, into which they quiveringly ascended.
It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to do, allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their vicinity, all of them assuming the form of “Ah-he-hay!”
Half-past ten: not yet off. Mr. Swancourt breathed a breath of weariness, and looked at his fellow-travellers in general. Their faces were certainly not worth looking at. The expression “Waiting” was written upon them so absolutely that nothing more could be discerned there. All animation was suspended till Providence should raise the water and let them go.
“I have been thinking,” said Knight, “that we have come amongst the rarest class of people in the kingdom. Of all human characteristics, a low opinion of the value of his own time by an individual must be among the strangest to find. Here we see numbers of that patient and happy species. Rovers, as distinct from travellers.”
“But they are pleasure-seekers, to whom time is of no importance.”
“Oh no. The pleasure-seekers we meet on the grand routes are more anxious than commercial travellers to rush on. And added to the loss of time in getting to their journey’s end, these exceptional people take their chance of seasickness by coming this way.”
“Can it be?” inquired the vicar with apprehension. “Surely not, Mr. Knight, just here in our English Channel—close at our doors, as I may say.”
“Entrance passages are very draughty places, and the Channel is like the rest. It ruins the temper of sailors. It has been calculated by philosophers that more damns go up to heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together.”
They really start now, and the dead looks of all the throng come to life immediately. The man who has been frantically hauling in a rope that bade fair
