He looked thoughtful for a few moments, as though visited by some tragic memories; then, taking up his pen, he went on writing his letters.
CHAPTER II. DOWN RIVER.
On the morning of November 21, 1837, the schooner Mowbray lay at anchor abreast of Greenwich. In the fresh westerly wind you found the sun-white sparkle of winter. Buildings, ships, wharves, the further bends of the Reach, stood out with the sharpness and delicacy of ivory work. The movements of the drapery of bunting, the swelling and breathing of passing canvas, were beautiful to see under the hard, blue sky, with its frost-work of gleaming cloud high over Plaistow Level.
The schooner looked exceedingly handsome as she floated at her cable, with the ripples of the blown stream twisting in slender lines of light from the cut-water. These lines flashed in her glossy sides as they trembled past, and her coppered hull was beautified by other lustres than the light of day, as she sat motionless, courting the eye to the tall heights of the delicate mastheads, each of them star-crowned with a shining gilt truck.
She was handsomer than a yacht, because she lacked the summer precision and fine-weather finish of that sort of craft. The nautical eye does not love fine feathers. The Mowbray was a sea-going boat. She had beam for stability, a height of side which promised a dry ship, a spring of bow smack-like with its promise of domination. Her copper shone; she was sheathed to the bends; she carried little or no finery about her decks, but the scantling of everything—the companion, the skylights, the sailors' deck-house, nay, even the caboose forward—might have been that of a ten-gun brig.
The hour was about half-past eleven. A number of seamen, apparelled with some regard to uniformity of attire, lounged in the bows, staring Greenwich way, or at the familiar scene of docks the other side of the river. They looked a rough company of the genuine merchant-sailor type—raggedly hairy, defiant in stare, in fold of arm, resolved in their several postures. They wore round hats and jackets, and the bell-ended, blue-cloth trousers of the Jacks of that day.
On the quarter-deck walked Captain Glew and the mate who had signed articles for the run, Mr. Tweed. This was a short, hearty, plump man. His grog-blossomed, jovial face suggested a suppressed boisterousness of spirits; you felt that in him lay the voice for the back-parlour of the Free and Easy. The owner of the vessel and party were expected on board shortly, and Tweed had clothed himself with care, in a short, round jacket, with a corner of red silk handkerchief carelessly straying from one side-pocket. His trousers rippled as he walked, and the rest of him consisted of a check shirt and pumps.
'I think he ought to be pleased,' said Captain Glew, coming to a stand at the binnacle, and throwing a look over the little ship and then up aloft; 'nothing handsomer sails out of the Thames this year.'