“Is that young chap a companion of yours, my dear?”

“Oh, dear no,” said I, “only he showed us the way here.”

“Don’t have nothing to do with him,” she whispered “he’s a bad un.”

In spite of this warning, however, as there was no policeman to be seen, and the boy would keep up with us, I asked him the way to Victoria Dock.

It was not so easy to get to the ships as I had expected.  There were gates to pass through, and they were kept by a porter.  He let some people in and turned others back.

“Have you got an order to see the docks?” asked the boy.

I confessed that we had not, but added that we wanted very much to get in.

“My eyes!” said the bad boy, doubling himself in a fit of amusement, “I believe you’re both going for stowaways.”

“What do you mean by stowaways?” I asked.

“Stowaways is chaps that hides aboard vessels going out of port, to get their passage free gratis for nothing.”

“Do a good many manage it?” I asked with an anxious mind.

“There ain’t a vessel leaves the docks without one and sometimes more aboard.  The captain never looks that way, not by no accident whatsoever.  He don’t lift no tarpaulins while the ship’s in dock.  But when she gets to sea the captain gets his eyesight back, and he takes it out of the stowaways for their wittles then.  Oh, yes, rather so!” said the bad boy.

There was a crowd at the gates.

“Hold your bundles down on your right side,” said the boy, “and go in quickly after any respectable-looking cove you see.”

Fred had got his own bundle now, and we followed our guide’s directions, and went through the gates after an elderly, well-dressed man.  The boy seemed to try to follow us, squeezing very close up to me, but the gatekeeper stopped him.  When we were on the other side I saw him bend down and wink backwards at the gatekeeper through his straddled legs.  Then he stood derisively on his head.  After which he went away as a catherine-wheel, and I saw him no more.

We were among the ships at last!  Vessels very different from Mr. Rowe’s barge, or even the three-penny steamboat, Lofty and vast, with shining decks of marvellous cleanliness, and giant figure-heads like dismembered Jins out of some Arabian tale.  Streamers of many colours high up in the forest of masts, and seamen of many nations on the decks and wharves below, moved idly in the breeze, which was redolent of many kinds of cargo.  Indeed, if the choice of our ship had not been our chief care, the docks and warehouses would have fascinated us little less than the shipping.  Here were huge bales of cotton packed as thickly as bricks in a brick-field.  There were wine-casks innumerable, and in another place the air was aromatic with so large a cargo of coffee that it seemed as if no more could be required in this country for some generations.