Amid the glare, the roar, and bustle of the mighty world of London, ten days passed away like a painful dream, an unrealisable phantasmagoria, to Ethel, and like a dream, too, appeared the embarkation at the crowded docks (which seemed crammed with all the vessels in the world) one board the _Hermione_, a fine clipper ship of 500 tons register, which, with all her canvas loose, and blue peter flying at the fore, was towed down the crowded river by a puffing, panting, noisy little paddle-tug, which rejoiced in the name of _Garibaldi_. Blackwall, with its docks; noble Greenwich, with its terraces and domes; Woolwich, where, now and then, a drum beat sharply, or a cannon boomed through the air, were speedily passed; vast fleets of merchantmen, crowded river steamers, and lumbering barges, sidling down with the tide were glided between; each bend of Father Thames was traversed, and soon the _Hermione_ was off Gravesend so busy as a watering-place, and ever alive with whistling trains and smoking steamers, in its noise, bustle, and gaiety contrasting with sombre Tilbury, on the flat Essex shore, with its brick-faced bastions, double-ditch, and moat--an old cannon or two lying among the sea slime, and a solitary sentinel pacing to and fro before King Charles's Gate. At Gravesend, where the _Hermione_ lay for a time, with blue peter still flying, and her foretopsail loose, as a double signal "for sea," she was joined by her captain, who came by the down train from town; the tug was paid off and a pilot taken on board, with the last of the sea-going stores. Then sail was made on the ship, and the sunset of a fine May evening saw her past Sheerness, with its vast basin, docks, and storehouses, and the guard-ship at the Nore, which pealed her evening gun across the silent sea. The wind was freshening as the eventful day went down. Ethel and Rose, with old Nance Folgate, were all below now, sick and ill. Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw trod the lee side of the quarter-deck together. Both were silent. Mr. Basset was gazing sadly at the shore along which they were running, and anon at the red hulk of the floating light, which is anchored four miles north-eastward of Sheerness, and the lamps of which were now twinkling amid the haze and obscurity far astern. Hawkshaw was full of thought, too. He felt a secret joy at being scatheless and free from England; though, when reflecting, he thought, in the words of Jane Eyre: "It is not violence that best overcomes hate, nor vengeance that most certainly heals an injury." The _Hermione_, we have said, was a 500-ton ship. She was one of the finest of her class that ever left the slips at Blackwall, and this was only her third voyage; thus, in addition to being new, she was well found and well fitted up in every respect.