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Updated: June 2, 2025
He would let out as little as possible of their plans that night, and then let Syme go, and chance it. He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already distributing itself along the benches. "I think it is time we began," he said; "the steam-tug is waiting on the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the chair."
"I was not aware that you were taking an active part in this affair till Major Pierson told me that you had taken possession of his steam-tug, and that it was you who had fired the shot which disabled the Belle," continued Colonel Passford, evidently very much troubled and annoyed. "I was made a prisoner by the major, and I have done what I could to get out of his hands," replied Christy.
If only we were back in the days when there were no steamers and the Nile must have been like a perpetual dream! But never mind. At least we refused Baroudi's steam-tug. So we shall just go up with the wind, or be poled up when there is none, if we aren't tied up under the bank. That's the only way to travel on the Nile, but of course Baroudi uses it, as one uses the railway, to go to business."
And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come.
The wind for a few days was moderate, and, with unusual luck of fine weather, the Spray made Melbourne Heads on the 22d of December, and, taken in tow by the steam-tug Racer, was brought into port. Christmas day was spent at a berth in the river Yarrow, but I lost little time in shifting to St. Kilda, where I spent nearly a month.
All this was marked by a bodily agility somewhat more than natural in a man of his age. Owing to the wind astern, he was enabled to run into Portsmouth before the steam-tug came up with him: and he did run into port, not because he feared pursuit, but because he was desperately hungry; and he had no suicidal tendencies whatever.
But I knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows whither.
Then we were warped out of the dock into the river, a steam-tug made fast to the tow-rope ahead, and another hooked herself on to the port side of the great ship to steady her, as she began to glide slowly with the tide, now just beginning to ebb, along through the hundreds of craft on either side.
Lockyard at the club, she told herself with sudden petulance that life in town had lost all charm for her. Entering the dainty sitting-room that looked on to the river, she dropped into a chair by the window and stared out with her chin in her hands. The river was a blaze of gold. A line of long black barges was drifting down-stream in the wake of a noisy steam-tug.
Formerly the population on the banks of the Saone and Rhone was largely made up of watermen, thoroughly fitted for the conduct of canal-boats or row-boats. Now that the steam-tug is to be found almost everywhere, most of the boatmen, finding it impossible to get a living at their trade, either pass three-fourths of their life in idleness, or else become stokers.
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