A second night upon these untrusted waters found the travellers a little less nervous and timid, but the hearts of all lightened when the early sunshine showed them the green flat river-banks on either side of their cabin windows. Menie, hurrying on deck, was the first to see over the flat margin and glimmering reach the towers of Greenwich rising against its verdant hill. The sun was dancing on the busy Thames; wherries, which Menie’s eyes followed with wonder--so slight and frail they looked--shot across the river like so many flying arrows; great hay barges, heavy with their fragrant freight, and gay with brilliant colour, blundered up the stream midway, like peasants on a holiday; and high and dark, with their lines of little prison-windows, these great dismasted wooden castles frowned upon the sunny water, dreary cages of punishment and convict crime. Then came the houses, straggling to the river’s edge--then a passing glimpse of the great strong-ribbed bony skeletons which by-and-by should breast the sea-waves proudly, men-o’-war--then the grand placid breadth of the river palace, with the light lying quiet in its green quadrangle, and glimpses of blue sky relieving its cloistered fair arcade. Further on and further, and Jenny rubs her wide awake but very weary eyes, and shakes her clenched hand at the clumsy colliers and enterprising sloops which begin to shoot across “our boat’s” encumbered way; and now we strike into the very heart of a maze of ships, built in rank and file against the river’s side, and straying about here and there, even in the mid course of the stream: almost impossible, Menie, to catch anything but an uncertain glimpse of these quaint little wharfs, and strange small old-world gables, which grow like so many fungi at the water’s edge; but yonder glows the golden ball and cross--yonder rises the world-famed dome, guardian of the world’s chiefest city--and there it fumes and frets before us, stretching upward far away--far beyond the baffled horizon line, which fades into the distance, all chafed and broken with crowded spires and roofs--London--Babylon--great battle-ground of vexed humanity--the crisis scene of Menie Laurie’s fate.