"Hullo! What are you doing?"
"I was just thanking Heaven, which, against my inclinations, makes our journey a slow one."
"You do not wish to reach home in a hurry?"
"On the contrary, I desire it ardently. But having remarked that whenever I travel fast I am either seasick or jolted raw, I feel grateful for every restraint put upon my ardour."
"In that case I almost fear to announce that we shall move faster to-morrow."
"I am willing to be coerced," said Tristram, and dropped off again.
It was but an hour after dawn when his father aroused him. The boat lay moored by a little quay, beyond which his eye travelled to clusters of red roofs glowing in the easterly sunshine, and a dominant spire, the weathercock of which dazzled the eye with its brightness. The town was just waking up, as could be perceived from the blue wreaths of smoke that poured out of the chimneys.
Captain Salt was in an evident hurry. Without giving Tristram time to wash in the fore-cabin, he hustled him on shore and up a narrow street to an inn, over the archway of which hung the sign of a White Lamb with a flag between its forelegs. Here they rang a bell, and were admitted after ten minutes by a sleepy chambermaid, who led them upstairs to a low-browed sitting-room facing the street, as they perceived when she drew back the shutters. At the back of this room lay two bedchambers; and Tristram withdrew into the nearer, while his father ordered breakfast.
It happened that these two bedrooms overlooked a broad court or stable-yard behind the White Lamb. Captain Salt, having given his instructions, retired, whistling cheerfully, to perform his toilet. He was in the best of spirits, and broke now and again into snatches of song, which he trolled out in a tenor voice of great richness and flexibility. Tristram listened in admiration on the other side of the partition. The songs were those of Tom d'Urfey and his imitators, and dealt in a strain of easy sentimentality with hay-rakes, milking-pails and all the apparatus of a country life as etherealised by a cockney fancy; but the Captain sang with such a gusto, such bravura, and such an appealing tremolo in the pathetic passages, that you might have mistaken the splashing of water in his basin, as he broke off to wash his face, for tears of uncontrollable regret that he had not been born a "swain" (as he put it). Suddenly, however, one of his roulades ceased with more abruptness than usual and the enchanted Tristram waited in vain for the ditty to be resumed. The fact was that Captain Salt had glanced out of the window and seen at a stable door across the court a man stooping with his back to the inn and washing down the legs of a dark bay horse.
The Captain contemplated this group for a moment; then hastily donning his coat and turning into the parlour looked out upon the street.