“Oh, I’ll do that,” Kit readily promised, “if I am at home. So this is London Bridge, is it? I’ve often heard of it, and the great crowds continually crossing it.”
“Have you any bridges as large as that in America?” Watkins asked.
Kit was on the point of replying that there were a great many very much larger; but he caught himself in time, remembering that it is not well to boast of one’s own country in a foreign land.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “we have some as large as that; and some of our rivers are quite as large as the Thames, I think.”
“Really!” Mr. Watkins exclaimed; “I should hardly have thought it. But here comes the boat.” And they stepped aboard a steamer that Kit thought a very small one, compared with the American boats; and his companion soon began to point out places of interest.
“There is the Tower of London,” he said. “I will take you in there some day, if you like. And there is St. Catherine’s dock, and next are the London docks, and then the East India docks—you must have heard of them. Here on the other side is the great Greenwich observatory. That ought to interest you, for more than half the ships afloat take their time from the big Greenwich clock. You see the river is very crooked. These straight places between the bends we call ‘reaches.’ We have come through Greenwich Reach and Woolwich Reach, and now we get to Barking Reach, Halfway Reach, and Long Reach.”
By the time they got to Gravesend Kit felt that he had seen a great deal of London for a first visit of two or three hours. And he had made one acquaintance at least, and had done his supercargo’s business with the agents as far as it could be done on the first day. There was hardly any spot he had seen that he had not heard of before; for his father had made many voyages to the great European city, and had often told them stories about London.
When they landed, Mr. Watkins went in search of the warehousemen, and Kit found that he had not far to go, for on receipt of the telegram the North Cape had moved up to one of the Gravesend wharves. He went into the cabin and exchanged a few words with the Captain, and soon afterward he met Tom Haines on deck.
“Say, Silburn,” Tom asked, “what did you say was the name of the schooner your father was on when he was wrecked?”
“The Flower City,” Kit answered, much surprised at the question.