Chapter XIII: The Journey

At last he got his leave of absence and was off for London. Food remained before him almost untasted or forgotten. He ate eventually, but very sparingly, like one who knows it should be partaken of only for strength to achieve some task that was to come.

'We no longer travel,' wrote Thackeray, with reference to some of the improvements of the age; 'we are carried from place to place,' and Goring was sensible of what another writer calls 'the tedious hurry of locomotion,' as he was swept on his way to Harwich by the 7 p.m. train from the great bustling and brilliantly lighted station at Liverpool Street.

There are few among us who have not undergone at some period of our lives that intolerable fever of spirit, when setting out on some journey or errand, the eventuality of which may be the life or death of some one loved well and dearly. The heart and soul annihilating space, traverse the journey in an instant; the helpless longing body, no matter at how swift a rate it may be progressing, seems to stand stock-still, and the imposed inaction becomes a physical torture that is to a certain extent merciful, since for the time it partially paralyses the action of the brain.

All this, or something like it, was endured by Bevil Goring, while the swift express tidal train sped on its way through the darkness of the night by Witham with its long and almost solitary street; through Colchester, getting but a glimpse of the winding valley overlooked by its old castle; by Manningtree, Bradfield, and welcome to his ears was the cry of 'Harwich,' and he became sensible of the cold sea-breeze as the train went clanking into the station, on the tongue of land between the mouths of the Stour and the Orwell; and a minute more saw him with his railway-rugs in a strap hurrying after the porter who shouldered his portmanteau.

'What steamer, sir?' he asked.

'Rotterdam.'

'All right, sir--here you are.'

A vision of a red funnel amid the uncertain glow of many coloured lights and lanterns, a bustle and the jarring of ropes and chains, with the clank of donkey-engines and goods swung in mid-air from derricks, ascending and descending, much shouting and swearing and hurrying to and fro over slippery decks and piles of luggage covered by wet tarpaulins, a bearded man on the gangway, lantern in hand, viewing the tickets and passing the travellers on board; and then with a sigh of relief--almost satisfaction--Goring found himself in the cabin of the steamer.

'State room or locker, sir?' asked the steward, touching his cap.

'A locker--there, that will do,' said Goring, as he threw his rugs on one and looked round him. He saw 'Rotterdam' on everything, from the front of the steward's cap to the glasses in the trays that swung between the beams, and after a brandy and seltzer he lit a cigar and went on deck as the screw began to revolve, the shore-warps fell plashing from the timber heads into the water, and way was made upon the vessel.

There were but few passengers on board, and these few, as yet, seemed disposed to be surly, suspicious, and to keep apart from each other in true John Bull fashion.

A bright and beautiful moon shed its silvery light upon the smooth but rippling water, and by half-past nine the clang of the Bell Buoy began to grow fainter and fainter as the steamer headed seaward, and the many red and green lights on the flat shore began to fade out and melt into the uncertain haze.

Long did Bevil Goring remain on deck alone, sunk in deep and sad thoughts.

Was she indeed beneath those moonlit waves over which he was so swiftly gliding. He shivered as he looked at them, and turned his eyes to the star-studded sky; at last he wearied of the incessant repetitions from the watch to the man at the wheel, 'starboard,' 'port,' 'hard-a-port, 'steady,' every ten minutes or so when a vessel came near, and the tiresome iteration of their orders only ceased when the fog-horns began to sound, when the anchor was let go near a long line of lights that twinkled dimly through mist upon the shore to the eastward, and Bevil Goring knew that he was now close in on the Continent.

Midnight was long since past, and he went below; the weary steward was still yawning in his pantry, when Bevil thought another brandy and seltzer would do him no harm.

'How long may we be here?' he asked, impatiently.

'Till the fog lifts, sir, or day breaks, certainly.'

'Then we may not get to Rotterdam till midday?'

'Rotterdam, did you say, sir?' asked the steward, with a stare of surprise.

'Yes.'

'Why, sir, this is the Antwerp boat, and these lights on shore are Flushing--we're in the Scheldt.'

Goring was exasperated on hearing this--a cause of delay and trouble quite unexpected.

'I was told distinctly that this was the Rotterdam boat.'

'So it is, sir, in a way--it is _the_ Rotterdam, bound for Antwerp. Where _was_ you going to?'

Goring explained, on which the steward mixed himself a glass of grog, laughed, and said it was a jolly mistake. Goring, however, failed to see the jollity of it, and began to consult a railway guide to trace out his route from Antwerp the moment he landed there, by Breda, to the city on the Maese.

While thus employed, he asked the steward if he had heard of a collision some time ago near the mouth of that river, in which an English yacht had suffered.

'Yes, sir,' replied the steward, 'but it wasn't quite off the mouth of the Maese.'

'Where, then?'

'More to the south'ard--somewhere off the coast of Walchern.'

'It was Lord Cadbury's yacht.'

'Yes, sir, so I heard.'

'What happened?' asked Goring, making an effort to control himself and conceal his agitation, which was totally unperceived by the steward, who was collecting from the table all the glasses and decanters left by the passengers, who were now rolled up in rugs, and stowed away in their berths or on lockers.

'One of the craft was sunk.'

'Which?'

'Don't know, sir, precisely.'

'Were any drowned?'

'Some o' course, sir--a young woman, for one.'

'A young lady?' gasped Bevil.

'Can't say, sir--coming, sir!' he added, in reply to a voice that hailed from near the rudder-case; 'whisky grogs for two--flash o' lightning and gin cock-tail for the two American gents,' he added to his assistant; while Goring betook himself to the little cuddy on deck, and sat there with a very benumbed and stunned feeling about him; while once more the vibration of the vessel and the everlasting 'Hard-a-port--Starboard--steady' announced that the steamer was again under way; that the fog had lifted; and that she was gliding up the waters of the Scheldt, on each side of which not a vestige of the flat shore was visible as yet.

All inclination to sleep had departed from Bevil Goring; yet he was very weary, and a year seemed to have elapsed since he threw off his uniform and donned mufti at Aldershot, and had seen the green and red lights of Harwich Pier fade into the sea.

Trees that seemed to grow amid the water, fringes of low willow-clad banks, distant spires and windmills began to peep up on either hand in the grey light of the morning, and the earlier part of noon was creeping on, when, long before they were near the city of Antwerp, the spire of its glorious cathedral, one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in Europe, the carving of which is like Mechlin lace, and which Charles V. said was so delicate in its workmanship that it would require a case to preserve it, seemed to start sheer from the surface of the water--a curious effect produced by the immensity of its height, which, as it towers skywards, dwarfs to toys the really lofty houses that cluster round it.

On past the green sloping glacis and grassy embrasures of the citadel--one of the strongest in Europe--glided the steamer. As she did so, Goring could little foresee a remarkable morning, an episode in his own life, he was to spend on the ramparts of that Belgian fortress. Nearer she drew to the shore, with its quaint houses of the Middle Ages, all crow-stepped gables and curious windows; nearer to the wharves, where lay piles of goods coming from or going to every part of the world; and now, dockmen, porters, hotel-touts, and wharfingers began to rush hurriedly, to and fro, while gendarmes in blue, with rifle and sword, smoked their cigarettes, looking placidly on; and Bevil Goring did so as one in a dream.

A few minutes more, while the steam blew off with a roar, and the _Rotterdam_ was moored alongside the great Quai Van Dyck. On one side lay the city, with all its vast wet docks; on the other the green, receding Tête de Flandres; between them a river, in size far exceeding the Thames at London; and far in the west the shadowy isles, with which the eye, from the spire, may see that the mouth of the Scheldt is crowded.

Barring all passage shoreward, at the end of the gangway, about which the passengers were crowding impatiently with their travelling-bags and portmanteaus, stood a _douanier_, or custom-house officer, in blue uniform, with the inevitable kepi (worn by every official in Antwerp, from the general commanding the garrison to the milk and butterman), bearded, grim, impassive, and, like all Belgian under-functionaries, disposed to insolence, dilatoriness, and to annoy the traveller, thereby contrasting singularly with the punctuality and politeness of similar officials in France and Austria.

Bevil Goring's baggage, a simple portmanteau, had been opened, examined, passed, and marked with the usual cabalistic figures in white chalk, and the steward, in expectation of a small fee, was re-strapping it, when he suddenly drew Bevil's attention to a remarkably beautiful little vessel, cutter-rigged aft and brig forward, with a breach in her bulwarks, on which a gang of riggers were setting up a new foretopmast and foretopgallant mast, with their hamper, cross-yards, and so forth. She lay alongside the quay, and just astern of the steamer.

Impatient only to get ashore and drive to the railway for Rotterdam, Bevil was about to hurry up the gangway, when the steward said,

'_That's_ the yacht as you were asking about, sir.'

'Lord Cadbury's--the _Firefly_!'

'Yes.'

'Then she was not sunk?'

'Sunk; no, she couldn't have been, for there she lies, as the Flushing pilot has just told me. _She_ sunk the lugger off the mouth of the Scheldt, and was towed up here to re-fit. And a regular beauty she is.'

Bevil Goring felt his heart leap, and, giddy with many emotions, forced his way rather unceremoniously up the gangway, and, with his portmanteau in one hand and his roll of railway-rugs in the other, leaped from the quay on the deck of the yacht.