'Sir Mortimer, I'm sorry to say the tug'll be laying hold of us now almost immediately.'
My father started, looked at me with something frantic in the expression of his face, then crying 'Well, if the time has come——' and took me in his arms. Then with tears standing in his eyes, and gazing upwards, he asked God to bless and to protect me, and to restore me, his only child, in safety and in health to him; and now speechless with grief, mutely looking a farewell to Mrs. Burke, who herself was weeping, he went on deck, followed by Mr. Moore, whose leave-taking here had been no more than a single kiss pressed upon my forehead as I stood beside the table after my father had released me.
When they were gone I sank into a chair; Mrs. Burke looked with wet eyes through a cabin window. She was right to let my grief have its way. After a little I heard the voices of men chorusing on deck; overhead people regularly tramped to and fro. Mr. Owen came into the cabin and said:
'Pray, Miss Otway, let me conduct you above. The air will refresh you, and the picture of the river is striking and full of life.'
'Come, dear Miss Marie, with me,' said Mrs. Burke, and I put my arm through hers and went on deck.
I stood still on discovering that our voyage was begun. Our ship had been moored to a buoy; there had been no anchor to weigh, no wild music of seamen nor hoarse quarter-deck commands to give the news of departure to those under deck; the little tug had quietly manœuvred for our tow-rope, and now the ship's bows were pointing down the river, her keen stem shearing through the froth of the paddle-wheels ahead, with some sailors heave-hoing as they dragged upon the ropes which hoisted certain staysails and jibs; the old town of Gravesend was sliding away upon the quarter. I strained my eyes in vain for a sight of the boat in which my father and Mr. Moore might have been making for the shore. Well perhaps that I could not distinguish her. I think it would have broken my heart then to have seen them, thus, for the last time, making their way ashore for that home I was leaving for months, and perhaps for ever!
'We have started, nurse!' I exclaimed.
'Yes, dear,' she answered. 'Do not make haste to cease crying. Let nature work by degrees in her own fashion. I shall soon see my dear girl looking proudly with health, and oh, the joy of your meeting with your father and Mr. Moore, and my happiness when I see them staring at you, scarce knowing you for your beauty and brightness!'
The water blazed with sunshine, the merry twinkling of it by the fresh April wind made the whole Reach a path of dazzling light. Twenty vessels of all sorts were about us: some leaned with rounded canvas soft as sifted snow, with yellow streaks of metal glancing wet to the light out of the brackish foam, that wanted the shrillness and spit of the froth of the brine; some lifted bare skeleton scaffolds of spars and yards as they towed past; some were no bigger than a Yarmouth smack, and some were great steamers and deep and lofty ships from or for the Antipodes. But whatever you looked at was beautiful with the hues of the afternoon, the backing of the green land, the inspiration of the sea, the spirit of ocean liberty wide as the horizon that is boundless, and high as the air through which the clouds blew.