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But full compensation came to the disappointed ones when, awakened on the following morning about six o'clock by the voice of the mate issuing certain sharp orders from the poop, followed by the flinging down of ropes upon the deck and the cheery "yo ho's" of the sailors, as they threw their weight upon various portions of the ship's running gear, the said disappointed ones leaped from their bunks and hastened out on deck clad only in pyjamas and overcoats; for they found the ship hove-to on the starboard tack with her head to the eastward, while stretching away astern of them, from the starboard to the port quarter, was the dominating eminence of the Bluff, bush-clad from base to crest, crowned with its lighthouse and signal staff from the latter of which was fluttering the answering pennant, acknowledging the deciphering of the Concordia's number with the long breakwater jutting out into the sea from its foot, while, nearer at hand, there stretched across the scene the low outline of the Point, also bush-crowned, with the roofs of a few houses and a flagstaff or two showing above the verdure, the sandy beach, with the eternal surf thundering upon it in long lines of rainbow spray, reaching for mile after mile athwart the ship's stern, and for background the far-stretching ridge of the bush-clad, villa-studded range of the Berea, the windows of its houses already ablaze with the ardent beams of the newly risen sun.
Past Vauxhall, once famed for its revelry conspicuous, now, only for its picturesque expanse of candle-factory roofs and the dead boarding that is displayed skirting the railway: Clapham, villa-studded and with gardens laid out in bird's-eye perspective: Surbiton, dainty in its pretty little road-side station, all garnished with roses and shell- walks: Farnborough, where a large proportion of our passengers, of military proclivities, alight en route for Aldershot, and celebrated of yore for the "grand international" contest with fisticuffs between a British Sayers and a Transatlantic Heenan: Basingstoke, the great ugly "junction" of many twisted rails and curiously-intricate stacks of chimneys; until, at length, Southampton was reached a town smelling of docks and coal-tar, and dismal in the evening gloom.
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