XXXII.--THE RETURN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

CHAPTER I

THE "FORWARD"

"To-morrow, at low tide, the brig _Forward_, Captain K. Z----, Richard
Shandon mate, will start from New Prince's Docks for an unknown
destination."

The foregoing might have been read in the _Liverpool Herald_ of April
5th, 1860. The departure of a brig is an event of little importance
for the most commercial port in England. Who would notice it in the
midst of vessels of all sorts of tonnage and nationality that six
miles of docks can hardly contain? However, from daybreak on the 6th
of April a considerable crowd covered the wharfs of New Prince's
Docks--the innumerable companies of sailors of the town seemed to
have met there. Workmen from the neighbouring wharfs had left their
work, merchants their dark counting-houses, tradesmen their shops.
The different-coloured omnibuses that ran along the exterior wall
of the docks brought cargoes of spectators at every moment; the town
seemed to have but one pre-occupation, and that was to see the
_Forward_ go out.

The _Forward_ was a vessel of a hundred and seventy tons, charged
with a screw and steam-engine of a hundred and twenty horse-power.
It might easily have been confounded with the other brigs in the port.
But though it offered nothing curious to the eyes of the public,
connoisseurs remarked certain peculiarities in it that a sailor
cannot mistake. On board the _Nautilus_, anchored at a little distance,
a group of sailors were hazarding a thousand conjectures about the
destination of the _Forward_.

"I don't know what to think about its masting," said one; "it isn't
usual for steamboats to have so much sail."

"That ship," said a quartermaster with a big red face--"that ship
will have to depend more on her masts than her engine, and the topsails
are the biggest because the others will be often useless. I haven't
got the slightest doubt that the _Forward_ is destined for the Arctic
or Antarctic seas, where the icebergs stop the wind more than is good
for a brave and solid ship."

"You must be right, Mr. Cornhill," said a third sailor. "Have you
noticed her stern, how straight it falls into the sea?"

"Yes," said the quartermaster, "and it is furnished with a steel
cutter as sharp as a razor and capable of cutting a three-decker in
two if the _Forward_ were thrown across her at top speed."

"That's certain," said a Mersey pilot; "for that 'ere vessel runs
her fourteen k