However, Miss Vi's meditations were presently to be interrupted by a scene not very unfamiliar in the River Thames. The wind was west, and it blew a fresh breeze. The ripples rushing to the whipping carried a little edging of foam. Whatever was under canvas, unless it was a barge, or something running in a mile or two of straight water, leaned in shafts of light. You caught the glance of copper sheathing, the sunshine showered in a rainbow glow upon flashes of brackish foam bursting without the life of brine from shearing bows and gliding sides. The smoke ashore blew away quickly, and the heavens remained a beautiful blue, and the sky over the Plaistow Flats shone like the inside of an oyster-shell with the prismatic hues of a setting of motionless, finely-linked clouds. Just as the _Mowbray_ passed down Bugsby's Reach, opening the long tract of the Woolwich waters beyond, two collier brigs reaching up the river swept into each other with crackling jibbooms. The schooner's road was blocked; her helm was shifted swift as the swallow curves in flight, and then followed a pause which enabled Miss Vanderholt to gain some little insight into the ways of the deep, and the behaviour and speech of those who go down to it for two or three pounds a month. The two brigs came together with a crash that might have been heard at London Bridge. They butted bow to bow, then, swinging to, locked themselves helplessly broadside to broadside, and began to float shorewards, with sails and heavy pieces of timber falling from aloft, and men, two or three of them wearing tall hats, and shawls round their throats, rushing about the decks in agonies of pantomime. It was a saying that there was no better school than the North Country Geordie for seamanship. Certainly there was no school in which a man learnt more quickly to swear. The _Mowbray_ floated close past, and all could be seen. Nothing is more helpless in this world than two ships thus yoked, steering each other ashore, with an occasional drag, or jerk, or butt, that brings a ton of top-hamper crashing about the ears of the profane on deck. 'Let go your tawps'l brace, you blooming old fool! Don't you see it's foul of my mainyard-arm?' 'What in flames are you keeping your jib hoisted for? You're paying her right into me!' 'Jumped if we shan't both go ashore if yer don't starboard yer 'ellum. Why don't you let go yer anchor, you rooting hogs?' 'Yes, and tear my smothered bows out because a crew of dairymen don't know how to steer their ship!' Then, in the midst of this--crash!--off short like a carrot would snap a yard, or down, torn bodily out by its roots, would fall a gaff, amidst yells of: 'You gutter-sots! You're all drunk this holy day! Suffocate yer, you scabs! Let go yer taws'l halliards! Don't you see they're binding the wessels together by my yard that's gone in the slings?'