Tower and the Traitors' Gate, past the shipping, where brown,
foreign-looking faces stared at them above sea-battered bulwarks.

The sun was bright and the wind was keen; the air sparkled, and all the
world was full of life. Hammers beat in the builders' yards; wild
bargees sang hoarsely as they drifted down to the Isle of Dogs; and in
slow ships that crept away to catch the wind in the open stream below,
with tawny sails drooping and rimmed with frost, they heard the hail of
salty mariners.

The tide ran strong, and the steady oars carried them swiftly down.
London passed; then solitary hamlets here and there; then dun fields
running to the river's edge like thirsty deer.

In Deptford Reach some lords who were coming down by water passed them,
racing with a little Dutch boat from Deptford to the turn. Their boats
had holly-bushes at their prows and holiday garlands along their sides.
They were all shouting gaily, and the stream was bright with their
scarlet cloaks, Lincoln-green jerkins, and gold embroidery. But they
were very badly beaten, at which they laughed, and threw the Dutchmen a
handful of silver pennies. Thereupon the Dutchmen stood up in their boat
and bowed like jointed ninepins; and the lords, not to be outdone, stood
up likewise in their boats and bowed very low in return, with their
hands upon their breasts. Then everybody on the river laughed, and the
boys gave three cheers for the merry lords and three more for the sturdy
Dutchmen. The Dutchmen shouted back, "Goot Yule!" and bowed and bowed
until their boat turned round and went stern foremost down the stream,
so that they were bowing to the opposite bank, where no one was at all.
At this the rest all laughed again till their sides ached, and cheered
them twice as much as they had before.

And while they were cheering and waving their caps, the boatmen rested
upon their oars and let the boats swing with the tide, which thereabout
set strong against the shore, and a trumpeter in the Earl of Arundel's
barge stood up and blew upon a long horn bound with a banner of blue
and gold.

Instantly he had blown, another trumpet answered from the south, and
when Nick turned, the shore was gay with men in brilliant livery. Beyond
was a wood of chestnut-trees as blue and leafless as a grove of spears;
and in the plain between the river and the wood stood a great palace of
gray stone, with turrets, pinnacles, and battlemented walls, over the
topmost tower of whi