ways
does when he is tired. The others were tired too, but their proud
spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Trafalgar
Hotel's boathouse, and there was a man in slippers, and we said could we
have a boat, and he said he would send a boatman, and would we walk in?

We did, and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with
boats and out on to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a
pier. And there were boats there too, far more than you would think any
one could want; and then a boy came. We said we wanted to go across the
river, and he said, "Where to?"

"To where the Chinamen live," said Alice.

"You can go to Millwall if you want to," he said, beginning to put oars
into the boat.

"Are there any Chinese people there?" Alice asked.

And the boy replied, "I dunno." He added that he supposed we could pay
for the boat.

By a fortunate accident--I think Father had rather wanted to make up to
us for our martyr-like enduring when our cousin was with us--we were
fairly flush of chink. Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to produce
handfuls of money; it was mostly copper, but it did not fail of its
effect.

The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped
the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a
sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see
the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not
like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I
can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When
we were about half-way over, Noel pulled Alice's sleeve and said--

"Do I look very green?"

"You do rather, dear," she said kindly.

"I feel much greener than I look," said Noel. And later on he was not at
all well.

The boy laughed, but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you
half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the
swishing, lumpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer
that went by. Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others were very
silent. Dicky says he saw everything that Oswald saw, but I am not sure.
There were wharves and engines, and great rusty cranes swinging giant's
handfuls of iron rails about in the air, and once we passed a ship that
was being broken up. All the wood was gone, and they were taking away
her plates, and the red rust was running from her and colouring the
water all