call-boy has disappeared altogether. Has he
mutinied? Is he traitor? Can he have
sold himself for Russian gold? The captain
seems puzzled. He sweeps the horizon with
his eagle glance, but the glance comes back
as if it were not at all satisfied with the
exursion. He looks down at the engineer's
wrathful trunk, and into the coaly engine-
room as if this last were the crater of Mount
Vesuvius, and he didn't know what to make
of him. A gentlemen on board (he turned a
little pale at the bump, and assured his lady
companion rather tremulously, that there was
no danger), wishing to be facetious under
difficulties, asks the captain "what his little
game is?" to which the commander answers,
like the oracle of Delphæ, "to get to Woolwich
as fast as he can;" but, oracle-like, does
not explain how he intends to accomplish the
feat. A great many people have gathered
amidships, and are examining the engines
with that fixed, absorbed vacuity of curiosity
with which people look at the moon, or a
fallen cabhorse, or an omnibus with the
wheel off, or a gentleman having his boots
cleaned by one of the brigade. Several
people say " it's a shame," and the juvenile
portion of the passengers generally vote the
accident "a lark;" one gloomy man (there
is always one person at least in every public
conveyance, whose name is Misanthropos,
and who hates mankind) prophesies fatal
consequences, and audibly expresses his
conviction that the directors of the company are
liable to be indicted for manslaughter, and
that the stoker is drunk; one individual
in a light brown paletot, publicly gives out
his determination to write to the Times, and
probably retiring within himself to concoct
that epistle, mentally, is thenceforth dumb.
Meanwhile, the steamer continues motionless.
After a great deal of hammering and
rumbling, and a colloquy between the captain
and the engineer, which is rather more
personal than pleasant, the paddle-wheels make
a feeble revolution or two, and then stop
again. Worse than this, the anchor won't
hold the ground, and we drift miserably into
the middle of the stream, like a log as we
are, passed by crowded steamboats that
laugh at our disaster, and heavy sluggish
lighters and hay-barges, whose fantailed-
hatted commanders openly deride us. I am
not going to stand this any longer. A wherry
approaches. I jump in it; and if the officers
t the company want to collect the sky-blue
ticket which is available for this day only,
and from the pier from which it is issued,
they must come and fetch it. Thus, I leave
Waterman Number One Hundred to her fate.
I should have liked to take the man who does
black work with me, but he sticks to the
ship probably with an eye to business. Off
goes the wherry, and whether the Waterman
steamer went to Woolwich, or Wales, or
the World's end that day, I don't know.

Of all havens on the shores of the earth I
am landed at Rotherhithe. I do not object
to paying the somewhat exorbitant fare
which my conductor demands of me, because
he grounds his extortion upon the very logical
position that "steamers don't breakdown
every day." Happily, they don't. But, I
think when I have advanced a few
hundred paces inland, that I might just as
well have been set ashore on Juan
Fernandez, or on the inhospitable shores of
Patagonia, as at Rotherhithe. It is
dreadfully barbarous. I know the Commercial
Docks must be close by, for I wander over
bridges and among locks, and am beset by
yards of ships at every step. But I can
find no houses, no edifices save ropeyard H
and sailyard X; I can see nothing in the
distance but windmills, tall chimneys, and
more masts of ships. I know that Deptford
and Greenwich must be some two or three
miles further on. but I can find no one to put
me in the direct road thereto. I meet four
men in fur caps and red flannel shirts. I ask
them; but the spokesman (if he indeed could
be called a spokesman who spoke not),
answers with a guttural grunt, like a
benighted Dutchman as he is, and walks away.
I ask an educational man, in black, with a
white neckcloth, but he, pulling a dial from
his poke (like the philosopher in As You
Like It, that Jaques met), tells me very
wisely that it is half-past six o'clock, and that
Shiloh Chapel is close by. I come at last to
a dreary canal, a most melancholy artificial
estuary like a river that has seen the vanity
of the world's ways, and has determined to
live by line and rule in future. Here, I meet
a little boy in corduroy who looks intelligent.
I ask him the nearest way to Greenwich. He
stares at me; scratches his head, and calls
"Tom!"

Tom, a little bigger and in fustian, comes
up, and saying, feebly, " Rotherhithe,"—runs
away as hard as ever his legs can carry him.
So, at last, finding nobody to tell me the way
to Greenwich, I am fain to find it out myself.
Knowing that it must be down the river,
somewhere, I keep close to the river, and
keep on walking stoutly:—not making much
way, but hopeful of getting to my journey's
end, eventually.

If I am nearly an hour walking to Deptford,
and an hour more walking to Greenwich,
my journey is amply repaid by the
discoveries I make. I fall upon a whole river-
side, full of tea-gardens. Perhaps, with more
propriety they might be called bottled
beer-gardens; cold rum and water gardens,
tobacco-pipe gardens; but tea, bread and
butter, and shrimps, prevail to a great extent,
notwithstanding. Oozy meadows run down
to the river's bank; sedgy little summer-
houses hang over the brink; and in some
instances the house itself overlooks the water:
and its balconies, perched high and dry above
the tide, its windows, its very roof, are
crowded with Sunday faces. Here you may