As we approached the entrance to the English Channel ships grew numerous, and every hour yielded us a fresh canvas of ocean panorama. At daybreak one morning we spied a large ship right ahead, and by four o’clock in the afternoon had approached her close enough to read the name upon her stern; and great was our triumph when we discovered that she was the fine clipper ship _Owen Glendower_, that had left Sydney eight days before us. We passed her in the night, and the watch on deck let fly an ironical cheer at her, taking their chance of being heard, and at sunrise next morning nothing but her royal and topgallant sails were visible on the shining line of the horizon.
[Illustration: “A FINE CUTTER CAME THRASHING THROUGH IT.”]
It was rather thick weather in the Channel, and we saw no land till we made the South Foreland. A fine cutter came thrashing through it to alongside of us when off Dungeness, and a pilot climbed out of her over our side. With what profound interest, and joy, and admiration did my young eyes explore his purple visage, and survey his stout coat and the warm shawl round his neck! He had not been on board ten minutes when the sun shone forth, and the green and frothing waters of the Channel showed clear to the horizon. Then it was that the coast of our dear old home lay fair and beautiful upon our port beam and bow—white cliffs slopes of green sward, delicate as satin, groups of Liliputian houses, with windows sparkling, the chocolate-coloured canvas of smacks, the white wings of pleasure-yachts, the grimy cloths of round-bowed, black-hulled colliers, enriching the surface of the laughing seas betwixt us and the line of shingle upon which the surf was surging.
Off the South Foreland a tug chased and cleverly hooked us by making a short cut to the North Foreland, where she intercepted us as we swept round in a large, majestic arch, with the red-hulled lightship stationed abreast of Ramsgate resting like a spot of colour against the yellow shelf of the Goodwin Sands, on our port quarter, and a busy scene of shipping opening under our bows as we headed for the River Thames. But the shift of helm brought the wind ahead, and by this time our captain and the skipper of the tug, having agreed upon the question of terms for towage, the order was given to clew up and furl; a line from the tug was hove to us, the end of a huge hawser attached to it and paid out over the bow, and presently the _Lady Violet_, in tow of the panting little steamer, was quietly gliding along for her home in the East India Docks, with her crew aloft sending down sails and unreeving gear.