She pointed to a vessel that was straining at a buoy almost immediately opposite. A tug was lying near her. It was a young April day; the sunshine thin and pale, the blue of the heavens soft and dim, with a number of swelling bodies of clouds, humped and bronzed, sailing with the majesty of line-of-battle ships into the south-west. A brisk wind blew and the river was full of life. The grey water twinkled and was flashed in places into a clearness and beauty of bluish crystal by the brushing of the breeze. The eye was filled and puzzled for some moments by the abounding tints and motion. A large steamer with her line of bulwarks palpitating with heads of emigrants was slowly passing down; another with frosted funnel and drainings of red rust on her side, as though she still bled from the scratches of a recent vicious fight outside, was warily passing up: beside her was a large, full-rigged ship towing to London, and the sluggish passage of the masts, yards, and rigging of the two vessels, the steamer sliding past the other, combined with the sudden turning of a little schooner close by, all her canvas shaking, and with the heeling figure of a brig, her dark breasts of patched canvas swelling for the flat shores opposite, a spout of white water at her forefoot, and a short-lived vein of river-froth at her rudder; _then_, close in, two barges heaped with cargo, blowing along stiff as flag-poles under brown wings of sail; these with vessels at both extremities of the Reach, coming and going, interlacing the perspective of their rigging into a complication of colours and wirelike outlines, for ever shifting: all this wonderful changing life, I say, adding to it the trembling of the stream of river, the pouring of smoke, the pulling and shivering of flags, put a giddiness into the scene, and for some moments I stared idly, with Mrs. Burke beside me pointing to the 'Lady Emma.' My eye then went to the ship, and rested upon as pretty a little fabric as probably ever floated upon the water of the Thames. I may venture upon a description of her and speak critically: indeed I must presuppose some knowledge of the sea in you, otherwise I shall be at a loss; for as you shall presently discover I was long enough upon the ocean, under circumstances of distress scarcely paralleled in the records, to learn by heart the language of the deep, how to speak of ships and tell of sailors' doings, and I cannot but name the things of the sea in the language in which the mariner talks of them.