fanciful to
be the shells and skeletons of strange monsters washed up there by the
tide. To whom do these things belong? Who has an interest in them?
Of what use are they? It appeared to Tom sometimes as if the original
owners and their heirs must have all died away, and left these grim
relics behind them to any one who might have the charity to remove them.

From this coign of vantage a long reach of the river was visible, and
Tom sitting there would watch the fleets of passing vessels, and let his
imagination wander away to the broad oceans which they had traversed,
and the fair lands under bluer skies and warmer suns from which they had
sailed. Here is a tiny steam-tug panting and toiling in front of a
majestic three-master with her great black hulk towering out of the
water and her masts shooting up until the topmast rigging looks like the
delicate web of some Titanic spider. She is from Canton, with tea, and
coffee, and spices, and all good things from the land of small feet and
almond eyes. Here, too, is a Messagerie boat, the French ensign
drooping daintily over her stern, and her steam whistle screeching a
warning to some obstinate lighters, crawling with their burden of coal
to a grimy collier whose steam-winch is whizzing away like a corncrake
of the deep. That floating palace is an Orient boat from Australia.
See how, as the darkness falls, a long row of yellow eyes glimmer out
from her sides as the light streams through her countless portholes.
And there is the Rotterdam packet-boat coming slowly up, very glad to
get back into safe waters again, for she has had a wildish time in the
North Sea. A coasting brig has evidently had a wilder time still, for
her main-topmast is cracked across, and her rigging is full of the
little human mites who crawl about, and reef, and splice, and mend.

An old acquaintance of ours was out in that same gale, and is even now
making his way into the shelter of the Albert docks. This was none
other than the redoubtable Captain Hamilton Miggs, whose ship will
persistently keep afloat, to the astonishment of the gallant captain
himself, and of every one else who knows anything of her sea-going
qualities. Again and again she had been on the point of foundering; and
again and again some change in the weather or the steady pumping of the
crew had prevented her from fulfilling her destiny. So surprised was
the skipper at these repeated interpositions of Providence that he ha