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Almost in the same breath, too, he sang out to the wives and friends of the sailors who had come out from Portsmouth to wish them good-bye, `Now, all you women and people there! go aboard the tug with my darter, and when Her Majesty has passed you may come back again. Of course, they all cleared out at once, the master-at-arms and his corporals assisting them over the side; but when they were all comfortably landed on board the tug, she steamed off right away for the harbour, with a long string of wherries and shore boats pulling like blue niggers after her, the men in them swearing like anything at being cheated of their fares.
And then the forest of ships, and the officious throng of little wherries and lighters that pressed around them, seeming to say, "You clumsy giants, how helpless would you be without us!" Soon our own wherry was dodging among them, ships brought hither by the four winds of the seas; many discharging in the stream, some in the docks then beginning to be built, and hugging the huge warehouses.
Pleasure wherries darted about impelled by the young scholars of Oxford, as in these modern days. Fishermen plied their trade or sport. The river was the great highway; no, there was no solitude there. So into the forest which lay between Oxford and Abingdon, now only surviving in Bagley Wood, plunged our novice.
The people on shore always find out when a ship is to be paid, and very early in the morning we were surrounded with wherries, laden with Jews and other people, some requesting admittance to sell their goods, others to get paid for what they had allowed the sailors to take up upon credit.
While he was standing there, with his hands in his old pea-coat pocket, gazing out on the harbour, and thinking of bygone days and many an event of his youth connected with that place, a man-of-war's boat ran in among the wherries, and a youngster sprang out of her, a small portmanteau being afterwards handed to him.
He has two wherries with apprentices, and from them gains a good livelihood, without working himself. He says that the boys are not as honest as I was, and cheat him not a little; but he consoles himself by asserting that it is nothing but human natur'. Old Tom is also strong and hearty, and says that he don't intend to follow his legs for some time yet.
Nothing could have been more picturesque at this time than the north bank of the Thames with its broad gardens, lofty trees and embattled turrets and pinnacles of the palaces, each of which had its landing-place and private retinue of barges and wherries. "This is the Tower," said the nobleman as they drew near that grim fortress.
From, mid-day, therefore, till late in the afternoon, there were nearly as many gay barges and wherries as lighters lying off the Vintry Wharf; and sometimes, when accommodation was wanting, the little craft were moored along the shore all the way from Queenhithe to the Steelyard; at which latter place the Catherine Wheel was almost as much noted for racy Rhenish and high-dried neat's tongues, as our tavern was for fine Bordeaux and well-seasoned pâtés.
Below, by day, heavy wherries swung moored to the ooze-clad spiles or, when the tide was out, sprawled upon stinking mud-flats with a gesture of pathetic helplessness peculiar to stranded watercraft. Seldom was one observed in use: to all seeming they existed for purposes of atmosphere alone.
Indeed, I was now what is termed a regular Mud-larker, picking up halfpence by running into the water, offering my ragged arm to people getting out of the wherries, always saluting them with, "You haven't got never a half penny for poor Jack, your honour?" and sometimes I did get a halfpenny, sometimes a shove, according to the temper of those whom I addressed.
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