y overhead,
and a mild breeze blowing.

'Sunrise,' I said.

Temple answered, 'Yes,' most uncertainly.

We looked round. A steam-tug was towing our ship out toward banks of
red-reflecting cloud, and a smell of sea air.

'Why, that's the East there!' cried Temple. We faced about to the sun,
and behold, he was actually sinking!

'Nonsense!' we exclaimed in a breath. From seaward to this stupefying
sunset we stood staring. The river stretched to broad lengths; gulls were
on the grey water, knots of seaweed, and the sea-foam curled in advance
of us.

'By jingo!' Temple spoke out, musing, 'here's a whole day struck out of
our existence.'

'It can't be!' said I, for that any sensible being could be tricked of a
piece of his life in that manner I thought a preposterous notion.

But the sight of a lessening windmill in the West, shadows eastward, the
wide water, and the air now full salt, convinced me we two had slept
through an entire day, and were passing rapidly out of hail of our native
land.

'We must get these fellows to put us on shore at once,' said Temple: 'we
won't stop to eat. There's a town; a boat will row us there in
half-an-hour. Then we can wash, too. I've got an idea nothing's clean
here. And confound these fellows for not having the civility to tell us
they were going to start!'

We were rather angry, a little amused, not in the least alarmed at our
position. A sailor, to whom we applied for an introduction to the
captain, said he was busy. Another gave us a similar reply, with a
monstrous grimace which was beyond our comprehension. The sailor Joe was
nowhere to be seen. None of the sailors appeared willing to listen to us,
though they stopped as they were running by to lend half an ear to what
we had to say. Some particular movement was going on in the ship. Temple
was the first to observe that the steamtug was casting us loose, and
cried he, 'She'll take us on board and back to London Bridge. Let's hail
her.' He sang out, 'Whoop! ahoy!' I meanwhile had caught sight of Joe.

'Well, young gentleman!' he accosted me, and he hoped I had slept well.
My courteous request to him to bid the tug stand by to take us on board,
only caused him to wear a look of awful gravity. 'You're such a deuce of
a sleeper,' he said. 'You see, we had to be off early to make up for
forty hours lost by that there fog. I tried to wake you both; no good;
so I let you snore away. We took up our captain mid-way down the river,