HIGH STREET, WAPPING.

The autumn was sweeping along irresistibly over land and sea, putting summer to flight with evershortening days and nights of deeper darkness. For some time past the morning mists had been gathering more thickly on the river and in the streets of London, giving due warning of the denser fogs that were about to follow in their wake. The wind had been easterly, with a touch of northerly in it when it veered at all. The Thames was of a more slaty hue than it had been in the sunnier light of summer. But it had been calm still weather for some days; and when the mist rolled away each day towards noon, a light, bright blue sky shone overhead, with soft clouds floating slowly westward before the low east wind.

Down at Wapping, in the High Street, where the houses towards the river have almost all been turned into wharfs and warehouses, there was a good deal of stir and activity. Vessels lay outside to be laden; and the clanking of the cranes lowering the cargoes into the holds might be heard all day. But for sounds like this Wapping would have been the quietest spot in London. No omnibuses were passing; and there were not many trains running to the little station on the bank of the river. Back, in Great Hermitage Street, there was scarcely a sign of life, a few children playing about an empty cart without a horse, were all the population to be seen; and the quiet houses were shut in and sheltered by the high unscaleable walls of the London Docks--walls that rose far above the roofs of the dwelling-houses outside, as though to guard the treasures within even from the view of any unprivileged eyes. A little shop here and there was doing a struggling business in nails, wooden dolls, and red herrings. In some dark windows there was an attempt at a display of tempting literature; and penny books were dangling along a string stretched across the lower panes, such as “The Story of Cinderella,” “Jack the Giant Killer,” and “Mother Goose.” In the public-house windows might be seen some ancient number of “Punch,” much soiled and yellow with age. But for the stir and business about the wharfs and docks, Wapping on an autumn day is not a spot where a man out of work will feel his spirits happiest and brightest.

It was quite plain that Peter Blake did not find his spirits high. He had been gazing vacantly for sometime through the railings of St. John’s churchyard, where the moist yellow leaves were falling slowly from the trees upon the damp graves and stained head-stones below them; but at last he moved listlessly away, and sauntered homewards into High Street. His feet stopped, as if of themselves, before the black board at the police station, and he read the notices on it slowly and carefully, his lips moving with each word. They were all of bodies found drowned. He read through each description; the supposed age, the color of the hair and complexion, the marks by which their friends, if they had any, might identify them; but he hardly paid attention to these details. There was a general vague impression on his mind that six or seven persons had been drowned lately in the Thames; but what was that compared with the loss of life at sea?

That he was a seaman any one could see at a glance. His face, young as it was, was weather-worn, and had fine lines on it which would soon be deep enough to be called wrinkles. His grey eyes were deep-set, and gleamed out from under his eyebrows, as if he knew himself bound to keep a sharp look-out both afloat and ashore. He was thin and slight, but wiry, and could climb a mast as quickly as any sailor of his acquaintance. There was a limber suppleness about him not altogether English. When you came to know that his mother had been a French fisherman’s daughter, from the coast of Normandy, you could account for the spring and elasticity of his frame, as well as for its strength and toughness. A first rate mariner without a doubt; if only he was as good a man in other ways.

“Hullo, Blake!” cried a cheery voice behind him, “you’re the very fellow I’m searching for.”

Peter turned quickly from his study of the dismal list, and faced a man with a frank, pleasant face, weather-worn like his own; but his hair was white, and his skin deeply furrowed with wrinkles, though he was scarcely past middle age. Peter took off his blue cap, but at the same time stretched out his hand, which was cordially shaken by the person who had spoken to him.

“Good-day, captain,” he said; “you’ve been searching for me?”

“High and low, Peter,” he answered. “Come now, I want one more good fellow to make up my crew--one man and a cabin boy. The pay’s good; I’m not bound to stint the pay. There will be fourteen of you. Come. You know the sort of skipper I am; and I know you. You may come upon pretty much your own terms. Choose your own berth, and there’s only the mate’s I can’t give you.”

“I’ve half promised Bessie to give up the sea,” said Peter, with a smile.

“And a fine land-lubber you’d make of yourself!” cried the captain, contemptuously. “What could a fine fellow like you do? Turn counter-jumper, eh? and measure out yards of ribbon and tape? and sell pins and needles? No, no. Stick to the sea, my lad; stick to the sea. There’s more danger for you and me ashore than afloat.”

“You and me, we’ve seen plenty of danger afloat, though, captain,” answered Peter.

“Ay, lad,” he said, “there’s perils by sea and perils by land, as the Bible tells us; but give me the perils by sea. Let me go and talk to Bessie, and old madam, your mother. It’s the French blood in you talks of giving up the sea.”

“No, no,” answered Peter, warmly; “it’s the rowdy crews, and the drinking captains, and the rotten old boats, and the thought of Bessie and the children, and my old mother thrown on cold charity and the wild world, if aught happened to me. There’s times and times I think that a God-fearing man, and a man that loves the poor things hanging on him for life, has no call to go to sea.”

“Well! I’m none of your drinking captains,” said Captain Norcott, heartily, “and the crew is no rowdier than can be helped and the boat’s not rotten. You can go and see for yourself. She’s the ‘Dolphin,’ and they’re loading her at Penrose’s wharf, hard by.”

“I wouldn’t set my foot aboard one of Penrose’s boats; no, not for a thousand pound down,” exclaimed Peter.

“Did I say it was Penrose’s boat?” asked the captain. “They’re only loading her; a miscellaneous cargo. She’s as pretty a sailing vessel as ever you saw, and rides on the water like a bird; sails as white as milk, and as freshly painted as if a royal princess was expected aboard. Blake, do you think I’d go out in her, if I didn’t think she was all right, and my poor old wife left behind, crying and praying for me all the while I’m away?”

“Where is she bound for?” inquired Peter.

“A mere run to Algiers, my lad,” he said, “and there you’ll be no end of use to me, with your French lingo. Come; I’ll not stint your pay. Why! if the wind keeps fair, we shall run down the channel like a steamer, and be home again before the women’s eyes have lost their redness from crying. To Algiers! It’s nothing, just nothing. I’m not asking you to go to the Pacific, or the North Pole. Come on; and let me reason a bit with Bessie and the old mother. You promise them some fine gimcrack or furbelow, and they’ll let you go fast enough.”

“We’re living down here, in Wapping,” said Peter; “it’s close by. Bessie has a sort of cousin, a sailmaker, and he gives her a lodgment in the house rent free, to look after it a bit; but he doesn’t live there himself. I’ll lead the way, captain.”