eved in anything
approaching to these, out of a lunatic asylum, unless I had heard them.

I could hear quite well, I could hear what was said, and a great deal of
it, I am sorry to say, would have been better unsaid. But the orders
which rang out interested me, for I tried to fit them on to what
followed, though without much result. At last the dock seemed to be
moving away from me--I saw men, but not the same men--and every man's
eye was fixed on us. Then the thick brown rope just below my window
quivered like a bow-string, and tightened (all the water starting from
it in a sparkling shower) till it looked as firm as a bar of iron, and I
held on tight, for we were swinging round. Suddenly the voice of command
sang out--(I fancied with a touch of triumph in the tone)--"Let go the
warp!" The thick rope sprang into the air, and wriggled like a long
snake, and it was all I could do to help joining in the shouts that rang
from the deck above and from the dock below. Then the very heart of the
ship began to beat with a new sound, and the Scotch lad leaped like a
deerhound to the window, and put his arm round my shoulder, and
whispered, "That's the screw, man! _we're off_!"

CHAPTER IV.

"He that tholes o'ercomes."
"Tak' your venture, as mony a gude ship has done."
_Scotch Proverbs_.

I am disposed to think that a ship is a place where one has occasional
moments of excitement and enthusiasm that are rare elsewhere, but that
it is not to be beaten (if approached) for the deadliness of the
despondency to be experienced therein.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour after our start I felt much excited,
and so, I think, did my companion. Shoulder to shoulder we were glued to
the little round window, pinching each other when the hurrying steps
hither and thither threatened to come down our way. We did not talk
much, we were too busy looking out, and listening to the rushing water,
and the throbbing of the screw. The land seemed to slip quickly by,
countless ships, boats, and steamers barely gave us time to have a look
at them, though Alister (who seemed to have learned a good deal during
his four days in the docks) whispered little bits of information about
one and another. Then the whole shore seemed to be covered by enormous
sheds, and later on it got farther off, and then the land lay distant,
and it was very low and marshy and most dreary-looking, a