George Eliot says truly that "daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else, for the night presses on our imagination—the forms it takes are false, fitful, exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of measurable reality."
The day that dawned was scarcely one calculated to rouse the ardour or spirits even of a lad, as it was one of the Cimmerian darkness, a London fog, when the omnibuses ceased to ply, and not even the boldest cabby would undertake to convey Derval to the West India Docks, a state of things which greatly perplexed him, as the yellow opaqueness that now surrounded him was so different from the thin white mists that came at times from the Bristol Channel.
It was one of those horrible fogs peculiar to London and to London only, when there is a doubly blinding nature in it, which puts the thrust-down smoke into a state of atmospheric solution, obscuring all things, and causes the oppressed eyes to tingle, smart, and fill with irrepressible tears, and blinds them to the dim objects that might perchance otherwise be visible; that compels at midday, and often all day long, a vast consumption of candles and lamp oil, gas and torches, and nearly all locomotion is brought to a standstill; when the trees and railings become white as if snowed upon, carriages are relinquished and links and lanterns resorted to at the West End, and the street perils of the East are fearfully increased, and many a vehicle is found half-wrecked by the kerb-stone; and when the terrible poisonous smoke-fog in its descent from the very sky, as it were, penetrates houses, and makes dark and obscure, damp and comfortless, even the cosiest and brightest of rooms.
The mind is usually affected by external circumstances. Thus, never more than now in this dark and apparently awful day, did Derval, cowering in the corner of a coffee-room, sigh in heart for the touch of the loving hand and the sound of the caressing voice that the grave had closed over for ever.
At last, as evening drew near, the tiresome fog lifted a little, and a cab was brought for him. To Derval's timidly expressed "hope that he knew the way," the bloated visage of the Jehu of the "four-wheeler" responded by a smile of half amusement, half contempt; and to the inquiry if the fog was often like this, he was told that it was "ever so, from year's end to year's end."
After traversing a mighty labyrinth of streets, narrow, dirty, and of most repellent aspect, the cabman drew up, descended, and opened the door; though aware that he had to deal with "a precious green 'un," he was actually content with thrice his legal fare, and depositing Derval at a gate of the Dock—a wilderness of kegs, masts, and ships, and all manner of strange things to him—left him with his portmanteau to find out the Amethyst—his future home—as best he could.
By the assistance of a good-natured porter, after great delay and trouble, he found her, and by a gangway proceeded on board in the mist and damp, unnoticed and bewildered to whom to address himself.
A prodigious noise and bustle prevailed everywhere, but to Derval's excited imagination they seemed to culminate on board the Amethyst. Several black gaping hatches were open, and a mighty multitude of casks, boxes, bales, and filled sacks, were descending into them, by ropes and chain run through the blocks shipped on derricks (in spars supported by stays, and used for slinging up or lowering down goods), with a terrible creaking and rattling, amid much expenditure of breath in the way of "yo-heave-oing" by gangs of peculiarly dirty-looking fellows, with jersey-sleeves rolled up, and who looked like gipsies or vagrants, but were simply unwashed and unkempt dock-labourers and porters.
The deck and the entire ship seemed, to lad's unprofessional eyes, a mass of irremediable confusion. The former was encumbered with casks and cases, and the mud brought from the shore by the feet of dock-people and visitors had not added to its comfort or cleanness. Everybody seemed bustling about, with some distinct object in view; but Derval stood aside with his little portmanteau and a travelling-bag, pushed to and fro by every passer, lost, bewildered, and not unfrequently sworn at.
At last he took courage to address a young man, tall, surly, and saucy in aspect, who was smoking a short pipe, but who wore a naval cap, and though he had his shirt-sleeves rolled up as if he had been at work, seemed in some authority, for Derval heard him spoken of as the third mate, and he was greatly shocked to find such an official attired thus, while superintending cargo going into the open hold.