MAILS.
THE liner, forging ahead carefully at quarter-speed, acknowledged with a gruff, taciturn "Woof 1" of her horn—merely a smother of steam without any decided note— the distant whistle of the red-funnelled tender creeping out from the docks. Dawn had languidly taken possession of the sky as she neared the port : underneath the interlacing spars and sombre hulls in the east the sea was wan, almost steely, in the pale, suffused light; but towards the west many fragments of unravelling mist still lingered round the superb shapes of battleships and other war craft; so that eastward the scene was as clear as a line-drawing, delicate, if somewhat austere, with the beauty of sharp and plentiful detail, while westward it was dim, intangible, inscrutable, as though viewed in the clouded crystal of a dream. Behind the liner the white crests of the Channel were racing up the seaward slope of the breakwater to fall in a long, murmurous cascade into the sheltered inner calm. . . She backed her screws, and came to rest in a wide green circle of seething eddies.
In spite of her leisurely entrance—for ten thousand tons need to be handled carefully in shoaling water—she was in a hurry, having crossed half the world with a reputation for punctuality which her captain kept, as far as in him lay, unsullied. At Bombay, at Suez, at Gibraltar, she slowed and stopped and started as though running into stations by the clock. Being thus particular, minutes mattered, and her captain spoke again seriously to the figure on the little bridge of the approaching tender by means of a stentorian, prolonged organ-note that reverberated solemnly round the dreaming hills, made the steward's glass-racks tinkle and shiver, tickled the ears of sleeping passengers, and roused the spirit of the saloon piano to give forth a. complementary, harmonic chord. The tender replied about three octaves higher with a promptness that betrayed irritation at the rebuke, detoured to avoid a fishing-lugger that was trying laboriously to tack in a hypothetical breeze, and brought up presently with a flurry of beaten water close alongside the leviathan. There was a heavy mail to disembark, and no sooner was the diminutive steamer secured—her funnel just poked above the other's deck, although she was the pride of the harbour boats—than the capacious mail-shoots were placed in position, and the process was begun. Eleven hundred bags had to be transferred, and they thudded regularly down, to be taken charge of by the alert postal officials, checked, arranged, and piled on the promenade deck. Glimpses of strange names, names that brought faint suggestions of sandalwood and perfumed groves, of slanting, furtive eyes, of pagodas and wonderful sunlit bays, could be seen on the sealed labels of some of the groups.
The noises necessary to this business disturbed the peace of dawn no more than the. twitter of an awakened bird affronts the sleeping forest. Here was the boat, on the broad waters of the earth, and here was the earth, swinging steadily eastward into the sunlight of another day,—what should molest that elemental progress P Already the pallor of the sky was tinged with rose, as though the day, bending over the mirror of the waters, blushed to find herself so fair. The grey vapours in the west, retreating, dis- closed a phalanx of grim, malicious-looking torpedo-boats. A small gunboat of the 'Scout' class came from the ambush of
the mist, signalling ; the lean striplings of war obediently fell into line, one at a time, keeping distance with splendid pre- cision, and followed their rakish-looking leader with deceptive sedateness out to sea. Twenty minutes elapsed; still the bulky mail-bags were descending the shoots. Passengers stood in clusters, having Calmed their first excited greetings with friends brought out by the tender, or strolled the decks chatting quickly, watching the proceedings. From the great ship's enormous funnels two dusky plumes of smoke poured and mounted lazily upward, forming level, tawny layers that poised themselves or drifted irresolutely over the windless sea. A fireman came on deck and swung round some of the huge ventilators with a harsh, scrooping noise, to catch and imprison a possible morning zephyr ; far below there echoed a metallic clank of busy shovels. The tranquil harbour, that until now had shone coldly as a sheet of burnished silver, began to be tarnished with dainty hues of amber and purest crimson, upon which the track left by an advancing tramp- 'steamer lay like a black, lengthening poniard ; through the sky the glow was projected as from invisible con- flagrations, caught and carried by innumerable little wisps of pennate cloud upward to the mantling zenith. Tentative and capricious; the breeze came at last, cool as though blown from some green cavern of the Bea, ruffling the surface with timorous, wandering cats'-paws, lifting and dropping listlessly the liner's flag and the tiny blue pennon at the tender's masthead, twisting the brown strata of smoke into quaint, irregular spirals and shapeless flakes, finding its way down to the hot engine-rooms and stokeholds, whispering to the smeared forms bending at their work that it was indeed the morning hour. The tramp, paint hanging in scraps from her shabby funnel, blustered past the liner, her engines loudly lamenting their many infirmities at every crazy stroke. As she approached, the man at her wheel jerked a jaunty "Toot I" from her dripping whistle, much as a ragged urchin might shout a pert " Hello !" to a titled lady in the street. Two or three youthful strollers waved their handkerchiefs to him smilingly, but the liner cut him dead, vouchsafing of course no reply, ignoring his very existence, and, kicking flounces of foam from her propeller, the unembarrassed tramp swaggered cheerfully on her way. Slowly the broken reflections of the stately vessel regathered themselves; her sides began to bronze in the warm light.
, Time was nearly up. The last mail-bag slid down, and the wide shoots were withdrawn. A bell rang. Those who were going ashore passed along the gangways to the deck of the smaller steamer. Ropes were cast off and hauled in. On the high-set bridge of the liner stood the pilot and the chief officers. The final words were spoken, and the tender swerved away from the towering, •shadowy flanks, heading for the docks. There, in less than half-an-hour, the bags were carried on the backs of a small army of badged porters to the special train in waiting.
For two or three minutes after her attendant had left the liner remained inert, pausing while the harbour slowly flooded to its remotest creeks and coves with the splendour of the ruddy, risen sun. Several trawlers were gliding into the open before the freshening wind, and their brown sails brightened to a deep orange tint, becoming almost luminous in the added richness of the level rays ; the water broke the sheen of their moving reflections into a thousand whimsical traceries of limpid light and shade under the gentle insistent pressure of the breeze. Then there was a motion of the captain's hand on the glittering brasses of the engine-room telegraph; a muffled uproar ascended- from the sea as the immense screws answered the urgent thrust of pistons and rods, and the float- ing monster moved—indolently, then steadily, then eagerly. After the first resistance of the mass had been overcome there was no sound save the faint rustle of water spent swiftly astern. She rounded the breakwater's foaming edge, passed outside the emerald bay, and ten minutes later was imperturb- ably shouldering aside the brisk little waves of the Channel that smacked her deftly and shook their white manes at her, rose-tipped and glinting in the glow of sunrise.
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