The anchor was already up, and the yacht drifting with the falling tide. A moment more and she spread a low treble-reefed main-sail behind, a little jib before, and the western breeze filled and swelled and made them alive, and with wind and tide she went swiftly down the smooth stream. Florimel clapped her hands with delight. The shores and all their houses fled up the river. They slid past row-boats, and great heavy barges loaded to the lip, with huge red sails and yellow, glowing and gleaming in the hot sun. For one moment the shadow of Vauxhall Bridge gloomed like a death-cloud, chill and cavernous, over their heads; then out again they shot into the lovely light and heat of the summer world. “It’s well we ain’t got to shoot Putney or Battersea,” said Travers with a grim smile, as he stood shaping her course by inches with his magic-like steering, in the midst of a little covey of pleasure-boats: “with this wind we might ha’ brought either on ’em about our ears like an old barn.” “This _is_ life!” cried Florimel, as the river bore them nearer and nearer to the vortex--deeper and deeper into the tumult of London. How solemn the silent yet never resting highway!--almost majestic in the stillness of its hurrying might as it rolled heedless past houses and wharfs that crowded its brinks. They darted through under Westminster Bridge, and boats and barges more and more numerous covered the stream. Waterloo Bridge, Blackfriars’ Bridge they passed. Sunlight all, and flashing water, and gleaming oars, and gay boats, and endless motion! out of which rose calm, solemn, reposeful, the resting yet hovering dome of St Paul’s, with its satellite spires, glittering in the tremulous hot air that swathed in multitudinous ripples the mighty city. Southwark Bridge--and only London Bridge lay between them and the open river, still widening as it flowed to the aged ocean. Through the centre arch they shot, and lo! a world of masts, waiting to woo with white sails the winds that should bear them across deserts of water to lands of wealth and mystery. Through the labyrinth led the highway of the stream, and downward they still swept--past the Tower, and past the wharf where that morning Malcolm had said good-bye for a time to his four-footed subject and friend. The smack’s place was empty. With her hugest of sails, she was tearing and flashing away, out of their sight, far down the river before them.