Anon Gravesend opened, and then the pilot volleyed some quick orders along the ship. Down rattled staysails, and jibs, and yards with their spacious breadths of canvas; and the stately vessel, denuded of her towering costume, swam lazily into position off the town. Then rose a cry, “Stand clear of the chain-cable!” and the second mate, on the port side of the topgallant forecastle, brandished his arms as a warning to the people on the main-deck to crowd out of the road. “Let go the anchor!” Clank! clank! went the carpenter’s hammer. And then, with a deafening roar, down plunged the mighty weight of iron, and tore the huge cable with shrieks through the hawse-pipe. The ship swung slowly around and became stationary, with many hands aloft furling the sails, and the quarter-deck throbbing with the movements and struggles of excited passengers. And now a dozen boats, some large some small, came tearing through the water to the ship. How the watermen pulled! Their faces all veins, and their arms all knots, and their hats anywhere! The canoes of cannibals, sneaking from the secret creeks and hidden points of an unexplored island, advance not more swiftly, nor, maybe, with feller or more rapacious designs, upon the intruder in their waters, than did our Gravesend wherries upon this ship fresh from Australia. Many of the watermen were soon upon the quarterdeck, demanding monstrous sums to row three-quarters of a mile. You saw boxes and bundles seized and disappear, and excited ’tween-deck passengers elbowing a lane to the gangway, fired with a resolution to disembark or perish, while children screamed, and women implored, and men gesticulated, and even menaced one another. One by one the wherries put off, loaded to the gunwale with people and baggage. These wherries returned and returned again, until the ship was cleared of the majority of her passengers. “Good-bye, captain,” said Holdsworth. A sunburnt man in a blue cloth coat with gilt-buttons took Holdsworth’s hand, and grasped it cordially. “Good-bye, Mr. Hampden, good-bye to you, sir. Any time these three months, if you have a mind to let me see your face, you will be able to find me out by calling at the Jerusalem Coffee House. I shall be glad, sir, as we all of us shall be, to hear that London has stirred up your recollection and restored your memory.” Then the chief mate and second officers and some midshipmen pressed forward and shook his hand, and Holdsworth, pointing out his luggage to a waterman, descended the gangway ladder, and was rowed to Gravesend. * * * * * And now, whilst our hero, having been put ashore and eaten a hurried dinner, climbs on top of the coach that is to land him at Southwark, let us beguile an uninteresting interval by casting a brief glance backwards.