Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm,
and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down
lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and
went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders' yards, shipwrights'
yards, ship-breakers' yards, caulkers' yards, riggers' lofts,
smiths' forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came
out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham
said,

'Yon's our house, Mas'r Davy!'

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the
wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no
house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other
kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the
ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and
smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation
that was visible to me.

'That's not it?' said I. 'That ship-looking thing?'

'That's it, Mas'r Davy,' returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I
could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living
in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was
roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful
charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been
upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended
to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me.