Through it we dodged and drove
eager for the high seas.
I remember how I laughed aloud at the glimpse of the name of a London
County Council steamboat that ran across me. Caxton it was called, and
another was Pepys, and another was Shakespeare. They seemed so wildly
out of place, splashing about in that confusion. One wanted to take them
out and wipe them and put them back in some English gentleman's library.
Everything was alive about them, flash ing, splashing, and passing,
ships moving, tugs panting, hawsers taut, barges going down with men
toiling at the sweeps, the water all a-swirl with the wash of shipping,
scaling into millions of little wavelets, curling and frothing under the
whip of the unceasing wind. Past it all we drove. And at Greenwich to
the south, you know, there stands a fine stone frontage where all the
victories are recorded in a Painted Hall, and beside it is the "Ship"
where once upon a time those gentlemen of Westminster used to have
an annual dinner--before the port of London got too much for them
altogether.
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