And the words thrilled Bertha like poetry. They passed innumerable wharves and docks, London Dock, John Cooper’s wharves, and William Gibbs’s wharves (who are John Cooper and William Gibbs?), Limehouse Basin, and West India Dock. Then with a great turn of the river they entered Limehouse Reach; and soon the noble lines of the hospital, the immortal monument of Inigo Jones, came into view, and they landed at Greenwich Pier. Chapter XXXI They stood for a while on a terrace overlooking the river by the side of the hospital. Immediately below, a crowd of boys were bathing, animated and noisy, chasing and ducking one another, running to and fro with many cries, and splashing in the mud. The river was stretched more widely before them. The sun played on its yellow wavelets so that they shone with a glitter of gold. A tug grunted past with a long tail of barges, and a huge East Indiaman glided noiselessly by. In the late afternoon there was over the scene an old-time air of ease and spaciousness. The stately flood carried the mind away, so that the onlooker followed it in thought, and went down, as it broadened, with its crowd of traffic, till presently a sea-smell reached the nostrils, and the river, ever majestic, flowed into the sea. And the ships went east and west and south, bearing their merchandise to the uttermost parts of the earth, to southern, summer lands of palm-trees and dark-skinned peoples, bearing the name and wealth of England. The Thames became an emblem of the power of the mighty empire, and those who watched felt stronger in its strength, and proud of their name and of the undiminished glory of their race. But Gerald looked sadly. “In a very little while it must take me away from you, Bertha.” “But think of the freedom and the vastness. Sometimes in England one seems oppressed by the lack of room; one can hardly breathe.” “It’s the thought of leaving you.” She put her hand on his arm caressingly; and then, to take him from his sadness, suggested that they should walk. Greenwich is half London, half country town; and the unexpected union gives it a peculiar fascination. If the wharves and docks of London still preserve the spirit of Charles Dickens, here it is the happy breeziness of Captain Marryat which fills the imagination. Those tales of a freer life and of the sea-breezes come back amid the gray streets, still peopled with the vivid characters of _Poor Jack_. In the park, by the side of the labourers, navvies from the neighboring docks, asleep on the grass, or watching the boys play a primitive cricket, may be seen fantastic old persons who would have delighted the grotesque pen of the seaman-novelist. Bertha and Gerald sat beneath the trees, looking at the people, till it grew late, and then wandered back to the _Ship_ for dinner. It amused them immensely to sit in the old coffee-room and be waited on by a black waiter, who extolled absurdly the various dishes.