The object of their search was soon after disclosed to view—a great lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had never known the touch of a paint-brush for fifty years. It was lying beside just such another, and the way on board was down a narrow lane of water between the two, about a yard and a half wide at one end, and gradually converging to a point. At the moment of their entry into this narrow passage, a brilliantly painted rival paddled down the river like a trotting steed, creating such a series of waves and splashes that their frail wherry was tossed like a teacup, and the vicar and his wife slanted this way and that, inclining their heads into contact with a Punch-and-Judy air and countenance, the wavelets striking the sides of the two hulls, and flapping back into their laps.
“Dreadful! horrible!” Mr. Swancourt murmured privately; and said aloud, I thought we walked on board. I don’t think really I should have come, if I had known this trouble was attached to it.”
“If they must splash, I wish they would splash us with clean water,” said the old lady, wiping her dress with her handkerchief.
“I hope it is perfectly safe,” continued the vicar.
“O papa! you are not very brave,” cried Elfride merrily.
“Bravery is only obtuseness to the perception of contingencies,” Mr. Swancourt severely answered.
Mrs. Swancourt laughed, and Elfride laughed, and Knight laughed, in the midst of which pleasantness a man shouted to them from some position between their heads and the sky, and they found they were close to the Juliet, into which they quiveringly ascended.
It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to do, allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their vicinity, all of them assuming the form of “Ah-he-hay!”
Half-past ten: not yet off. Mr. Swancourt breathed a breath of weariness, and looked at his fellow-travellers in general. Their faces were certainly not worth looking at. The expression “Waiting” was written upon them so absolutely that nothing more could be discerned there. All animation was suspended till Providence should raise the water and let them go.
“I have been thinking,” said Knight, “that we have come amongst the rarest class of people in the kingdom. Of all human characteristics, a low opinion of the value of his own time by an individual must be among the strangest to find. Here we see numbers of that patient and happy species. Rovers, as distinct from travellers.”