scent is a confused power of
vision in what is twilight to us. He feels a vague obligation to become
a guide. Does he know that there is a dangerous pass, and that he can
help his master to surmount it? Probably not. Perhaps he does. In any
case, some one knows it for him. As we have already said, it often
happens in life that some mighty help which we have held to have come
from below has, in reality, come from above. Who knows all the
mysterious forms assumed by God?

What was this animal? Providence.

Having reached the river, the wolf led down the narrow tongue of land
which bordered the Thames.

Without noise or bark he pushed forward on his silent way. Homo always
followed his instinct and did his duty, but with the pensive reserve of
an outlaw.

Some fifty paces more, and he stopped. A wooden platform appeared on the
right. At the bottom of this platform, which was a kind of wharf on
piles, a black mass could be made out, which was a tolerably large
vessel. On the deck of the vessel, near the prow, was a glimmer, like
the last flicker of a night-light.

The wolf, having finally assured himself that Gwynplaine was there,
bounded on to the wharf. It was a long platform, floored and tarred,
supported by a network of joists, and under which flowed the river. Homo
and Gwynplaine shortly reached the brink.

The ship moored to the wharf was a Dutch vessel, of the Japanese build,
with two decks, fore and aft, and between them an open hold, reached by
an upright ladder, in which the cargo was laden. There was thus a
forecastle and an afterdeck, as in our old river boats, and a space
between them ballasted by the freight. The paper boats made by children
are of a somewhat similar shape. Under the decks were the cabins, the
doors of which opened into the hold and were lighted by glazed
portholes. In stowing the cargo a passage was left between the packages
of which it consisted. These vessels had a mast on each deck. The
foremast was called Paul, the mainmast Peter--the ship being sailed by
these two masts, as the Church was guided by her two apostles. A gangway
was thrown, like a Chinese bridge, from one deck to the other, over the
centre of the hold. In bad weather, both flaps of the gangway were
lowered, on the right and left, on hinges, thus making a roof over the
hold; so that the ship, in heavy seas, was hermetically closed. These
sloops, being of very massive construction, had a beam for a tiller, the
strengt