Again, I was often my father’s companion in the trips he made in his own coasters down the river. Those excursions were the golden hours of my childhood. We’d row on board a little brig weighing from the Pool, and stay in the ship till we were off Gravesend, where we’d land. Mother never joined us. When the wind caused the vessel to lay over she said it made her sick. I dare say it did. Father’s little fleet was mainly composed of coasters, as I have said, grimy of deck for the most part, with a strong smell of the bilge in the atmosphere of their darksome cabins, wagons in shape and staggerers in their gait, with a lean and coaly look aloft as they heeled, black and gaunt, from bank to bank of the river over the smooth stream of ebb or flood. But those trips made choice hours to me, and are sweeter than the memories of sport in the summer grass and of hunts in the rank growths of ditches and the country hedge. I remember that during one of these trips we nearly ran down a large boat when we were not very far from Woolwich, lying over with the wind ahead and the water spitting briskly at our forefoot. I went to the side to look; she was a big boat with soldiers in her, and full of strange-looking men in gray clothes and a sort of Scotch cap. I saw the irons upon those men as the boat swept close past and heard the clank of the chains as the wretches shrank or started in terror at the sight of the mass of our bare, black hull, rolling like a storm-cloud almost right over them. Father was below. I asked Mr. Smears, the master of the brig, who stood close alongside of me in a tall, rusty hat and a stout coat that descended to within a foot of his heels, what boat that was. ‘A convict boat, missy,’ he answered. ‘What are those people in her?’ ‘Rogues all, missy--rogues all.’ ‘Where are they going to?’ said I. He pointed to a great wooden hulk that lay off Woolwich, the hull of a man-of-war, made hideous by a variety of deck erections, and by rows of linen fluttering betwixt the poles which rose out of her decks. ‘That’s where they’re going to,’ said Mr. Smears. ‘And shall I tell ’ee who’s the skipper of that craft? ’Taint no Government bloke--let ne’er a man believe it! The skipper’s name begins with a D and ends with a h-L. I’m not going to say more, missy. Father’ll supply ye with the missing letters. Yond skipper’s name begins with a D and ends with a h-L, and them livelies in gray,’ said he, nodding toward the boat we had nearly run down, ‘are his young ’uns, and they do credit to their parient, if looks ain’t lies.’ Then, starting up, he cried: ‘Ready about, lads!’ and a moment later the helm was put down and our canvas was wildly shaking, and then the brig heeled over and with steady sails ripped through the yellow lustrous surface of the river’s breast on her slanting course down Woolwich Reach.