was sending me southward in search of
warmth and sunshine and the strong salt breeze once more.

For it was in pursuit of renewed health and strength that I was about to
undertake the voyage; a spell of over two years of hard, uninterrupted
service upon the Coast--during which a more than average allowance of
wounds and fever had fallen to my share--had compelled me to invalid
home; and now, with my wounds healed, the fever banished from my system,
and in possession of a snug little, recently-acquired competence that
rendered it unnecessary for me to follow the sea as a profession, I--
Charles Conyers, R.N., aged twenty-seven--was, by the fiat of my medical
adviser, about to seek, on the broad ocean, that life-giving tonic which
is unobtainable elsewhere, and which was all that I now needed to
entirely reinvigorate my constitution and complete my restoration to
perfect health.

Upon my arrival at Gravesend I was glad to find that the rain had
ceased, for the moment, although the sky still looked full of it. I
therefore lost no time in making my way down to the river, where I
forthwith engaged a waterman to convey me, and the few light articles I
had brought with me, off to the ship.

The _City of Cawnpore_ was a brand-new iron ship, of some twelve hundred
tons register, modelled like a frigate, full-rigged, and as handsome a
craft in every respect as I had ever seen. I had seen her before, of
course, in the Docks, when I had gone down to inspect her and choose my
cabin; but she was then less than half loaded; her decks were dirty and
lumbered up with bales and cases of cargo; her jib-booms were rigged in,
and her topgallant-masts down on deck; and altogether she was looking
her worst; while now, lying well out toward the middle of the stream as
she was, she looked a perfect picture, as she lay with her bows pointing
down-stream, straining lightly at her cable upon the last of the
flood-tide, loaded down just sufficiently, as it seemed, to put her into
perfect sailing trim, her black hull with its painted ports showing up
in strong contrast to the peasoup-coloured flood upon which she rode,
her lofty masts stayed to a hair, and all accurately parallel, gleaming
like ruddy gold against the dingy murk of the wild-looking sky. Her
yards were all squared with the nicest precision, and the new
cream-white canvas snugly furled upon them and the booms; the red ensign
streamed from the gaff-end; and the burgee, or house fl