there was a great deal to be seen out of the window, tiny as it was.

It looked on to the dock, where men were running about in the old
bewildering fashion. To-day it was not so bewildering to me, because I
could see that the men were working with some purpose that affected our
vessel, though the directions in which they ran, dragging ropes as thick
as my leg, to the grinding of equally monstrous chains, were as
mysterious as the figures of some dance one does not know. As to the
noises they made, men and boys anywhere are given to help on their work
with sounds of some sort, but I could not have believed in anything
approaching to these, out of a lunatic asylum, unless I had heard them.

I could hear quite well, I could hear what was said, and a great deal of
it, I am sorry to say, would have been better unsaid. But the orders
which rang out interested me, for I tried to fit them on to what
followed, though without much result. At last the dock seemed to be
moving away from me--I saw men, but not the same men--and every man's
eye was fixed on us. Then the thick brown rope just below my window
quivered like a bow-string, and tightened (all the water starting from
it in a sparkling shower) till it looked as firm as a bar of iron, and I
held on tight, for we were swinging round. Suddenly the voice of command
sang out--(I fancied with a touch of triumph in the tone)--"Let go the
warp!" The thick rope sprang into the air, and wriggled like a long
snake, and it was all I could do to help joining in the shouts that rang
from the deck above and from the dock below. Then the very heart of the
ship began to beat with a new sound, and the Scotch lad leaped like a
deerhound to the window, and put his arm round my shoulder, and
whispered, "That's the screw, man! _we're off_!"