in April) made the sight glorious. There must have been a hundred
ships there, all marshalled in ranks, at double-moorings, head to
flood. Boats full of merchandise were pulling to the wharves by
the Custom House. Men were working aloft on the yards, bending or
unbending sails. In some ships the sails hung loose, drying in
the sun. In others, the men were singing out as they walked round
the capstan, hoisting goods from the hold. One of the ships close
to me was a beautiful little Spanish schooner, with her name La
Reina in big gold letters on her transom. She was evidently one
of those very fast fruit boats, from the Canary Islands, of which
I had heard the seamen at Oulton speak. She was discharging
oranges into a lighter, when I first saw her. The sweet, heavy
smell of the bruised peels scented the river for many yards.

I was looking at this schooner, wishing that I could pass an hour
in her hold, among those delicious boxes, when a bearded man came
on deck from her cabin. He looked at the shore, straight at
myself as I thought, raising his hand swiftly as though to beckon
me to him. A boat pushed out instantly, in answer to the hand,
from the garden next to the one in which I stood. The waterman,
pulling to the schooner, talked with the man for a moment,
evidently settling the amount of his fare. After the haggling, my
gentleman climbed into the boat by a little rope-ladder at the
stern. Then the boatman pulled away upstream, going on the last
of the flood, within twenty yards of where I stood.

I had watched them idly, attracted, in the beginning, by that
sudden raising of the hand. But as they passed me, there came a
sudden puff of wind, strong enough to flurry the water into
wrinkles. It lifted the gentleman's hat, so that he saved it only