om hand to hand to the stern of the boat: every hand
patting me or grasping me in some way or other, in the moment of my going
by.

"Hold up, my brave fellow," says Captain Carton, clapping me on the
shoulder like a friend, and giving me a flask. "Put your lips to that,
and they'll be red again. Now, boys, give way!"

The banks flew by us as if the mightiest stream that ever ran was with
us; and so it was, I am sure, meaning the stream to those men's ardour
and spirit. The banks flew by us, and we came in sight of the rafts--the
banks flew by us, and we came alongside of the rafts--the banks stopped;
and there was a tumult of laughing and crying, and kissing and shaking of
hands, and catching up of children and setting of them down again, and a
wild hurry of thankfulness and joy that melted every one and softened all
hearts.

I had taken notice, in Captain Carton's boat, that there was a curious
and quite new sort of fitting on board. It was a kind of a little bower
made of flowers, and it was set up behind the captain, and betwixt him
and the rudder. Not only was this arbour, so to call it, neatly made of
flowers, but it was ornamented in a singular way. Some of the men had
taken the ribbons and buckles off their hats, and hung them among the
flowers; others had made festoons and streamers of their handkerchiefs,
and hung them there; others had intermixed such trifles as bits of glass
and shining fragments of lockets and tobacco-boxes with the flowers; so
that altogether it was a very bright and lively object in the sunshine.
But why there, or what for, I did not understand.

Now, as soon as the first bewilderment was over, Captain Carton gave the
order to land for the present. But this boat of his, with two hands left
in her, immediately put off again when the men were out of her, and kept
off, some yards from the shore. As she floated there, with the two hands
gently backing water to keep her from going down the stream, this pretty
little arbour attracted many eyes. None of the boat's crew, however, had
anything to say about it, except that it was the captain's fancy.

The captain--with the women and children clustering round him, and the
men of all ranks grouped outside them, and all listening--stood telling
how the Expedition, deceived by its bad intelligence, had chased the
light Pirate boats all that fatal night, and had still followed in their
wake next day, and had never suspected until many hours