Under the pointed arches of old London Bridge, with its hooded shelters
for the weary, to where the massive Tower had frowned for ages upon the
foolish river. 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. Hides from
frozen Russia were piled high beside barrels of sugar and rum from the
moist island cane-fields of the Indies, and pipes of wine from the
sunny hillsides of France, and big boxes of tea bearing the hall-mark of
the mysterious East. Dolly gazed in wonder. And I was commanded to show
her a schooner like the Black Moll, and a brigantine like the John.

"And Captain Paul told me you climbed the masts, Richard, and worked like
a common seaman. Tell me," says she, pointing at the royal yard of a
tall East Indiaman, "did you go as high as that when it was rough?"

And, hugely to the boatman's delight, the minx must needs put her fingers
on the hard welts on my hands, and vow she would be a sailor and she were
a man. But at length we came to a trim-built bark lying off Redriff
Stairs, with the words "Betsy, of London," painted across her stern. In
no time at all, Captain Paul was down the gangway ladder and at the
water-side, too hand Dorothy out.

"This honour overwhelms me, Miss Manners," he said; "but I know whom to
thank for it." And he glanced slyly at me.

Dorothy stepped aboard with the air of Queen Elizabeth come to inspect
Lord Howard's flagship.