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The lad blushed to the roots of his hair, and looked subdued. He was a great powerful man was this third mate, and I seemed to feel with the instincts of a boy that no sort of bullying or mean sneaking tyranny was likely to be attempted so long as he made one of our company.

The tea was very strong, and the bottom of my pannikin was full of black leaves. The liquor had a flavour of old twigs and stale molasses; the beef was so hard that I could scarcely make my teeth meet in it, yet it was fresh, and it was not long before the salt food upon which we had to live made me think yearningly of it as a delicacy—as something for even a bite of which I would have gladly “swapped” a shirt.

All this while the ship was being towed down the river. I was still in the midshipman’s cabin when there was a great noise on deck—voices of men shouting, sounds of feet running hastily—and on looking through one of the portholes I saw the houses of a town just abreast, and noticed that they moved slowly, and yet more slowly, until they came to a dead halt. We had come to a mooring-buoy, for the night, off Gravesend; but one of the midshipmen told me that we should be underway again long before this side of the world was awake; by which he meant that the tug would take us in tow at daybreak.