f my own
trunks, feeling anything but comfortable, as I came to the conclusion
that I had made an enemy who would pay me handsomely during the voyage.

"This is a happy sort of place," I muttered, as I sat listening to the
banging of cabin doors and shouting of people for stewards and others,
and angry complaints about being kept waiting; and all the time there
was a stamping, tramping, and rattling going on overhead that was
maddening.

And there I sat, gazing dreamily at the little round pane of glass which
lit the cabin, till I grew so hot and weary of the stuffy little
cupboard of a place, that I got up and went on deck again, to find that
the great vessel had been cast loose, and that hawsers and capstans were
being used to work us out of the dock.

We were already some little distance from the dock wall, which was
crowded with the friends of the soldiers and sailors on board, those of
the passengers for the most part remaining to go down the river, while
the men thronged the bulwarks, and climbed to every point of vantage, to
respond, with shouts and cheers, to waving of hands and, bonnets and the
shrill good-byes.

"Everybody seems to have some one to say good-bye to him but me," I
thought again; and half pitying, half contemptuously, I leaned over the
side watching the little crowd of excited women and old men who hurried
along the dock quay so as to keep abreast of the vessel.

"A sad thing, too--saying good-bye," I thought. "Perhaps they'll never
come back and meet again, and--"

My heart seemed to stand still, and I clutched the edge of the bulwark
spasmodically, for all at once as I watched the women pressing along the
edge of the stone quay, their faces turned toward us as they cried out
to the men on board, I saw one young-looking thing wave her handkerchief
and then press it to her eyes, and in imagination I heard her sobbing as
she hurried on with the rest. But next instant I saw that she had
caught her foot in one of the ropes strained from the great ship to the
edge of the quay, and plunged forward headlong to strike the water
twenty feet below, and disappear.

A wild shriek from the quay was mingled with the excited shouts of the
men on board. Then orders were rapidly given, men ran here and there,
and amidst a great deal of shouting, preparations were made for lowering
down the nearest boat.

But all the time the huge East Indiaman, now steadily in motion, was
gliding slowly toward the d