A Days Tour | Page 4

shows itself an amphitheatre of dotted lights--while down below white vapours issue walrus-like from the sonorous 'scrannel-pipes' of the steamer. Gradually the bustle increases, and more shadowy figures come hurrying down, walking behind their baggage trundled before them. Now a faint scream, from afar off inland, behind the cliffs, gives token that the trains, which have been tearing headlong down from town since eight o'clock, are nearing us; while the railway-gates fast closed, and porters on the watch with green lamps, show that the expresses are due. It is a rather impressive sight to wait at the closed gates of the pier and watch these two outward-bound expresses arrive. After a shriek, prolonged and sustained, the great trains from Victoria and Ludgate, which met on the way and became one, come thundering on, the enormous and powerful engine glaring fiercely, flashing its lamps, and making the pier tremble. Compartment after compartment of first-class carriages flit by, each lit up so refulgently as to show the crowded passengers, with their rugs and bundles dispersed about them. It is a curious change to see the solitary pier, jutting out into the waves, all of a sudden thus populated with grand company, flashing lights, and saloon-like splendour--ambassadors, it may be, generals for the seat of war, great merchants like the Rothschilds, great singers or actors, princes, dukes, millionnaires, orators, writers, 'beauties,' brides and bridegrooms, all ranged side by side in those cells, or _vis-à-vis_. That face under the old-fashioned travelling-cap may be that of a prime minister, and that other gentlemanly person a swindling bank-director flying from justice.
During the more crowded time of the travelling season it is not undramatic, and certainly entertaining, to stand on the deck of the little boat, looking up at the vast pier and platform some twenty or thirty feet above one's head, and see the flood of passengers descending in ceaseless procession; and more wonderful still, the baggage being hurled down the 'shoots.' On nights of pressure this may take nearly an hour, and yet not a second appears to be lost. One gazes in wonder at the vast brass-bound chests swooping down and caught so deftly by the nimble mariners; the great black-domed ladies' dress-baskets and boxes; American and French trunks, each with its national mark on it. Every instant the pile is growing. It seems like building a mansion with vast blocks of stone piled up on each other. Hat-boxes and light leather cases are sent bounding down like footballs, gradually and by slow degrees forming the mountain.
What secrets in these chests! what tales associated with them! Bridal trousseaux, jewels, letters, relics of those loved and gone; here the stately paraphernalia of a family assumed to be rich and prosperous, who in truth are in flight, hurrying away with their goods. Here, again, the newly bought 'box' of the bride, with her initials gaudily emblazoned; and the showy, glittering chests of the Americans.
There is a physiognomy in luggage, distinct as in clothes; and a strange variety, not uninteresting. How significant, for instance, of the owner is the weather-beaten, battered old portmanteau of the travelling bachelor, embrowned with age, out of shape, yet still strong and serviceable!--a business-like receptacle, which, like him, has travelled thousands of miles, been rudely knocked about, weighed, carried hither and thither, encrusted with the badges of hotels as an old vessel is with barnacles, grim and reserved like its master, and never lost or gone astray.
Now the engines and their trains glide away home. The shadowy figures stand round in crowds. To the reflecting mind there is something bewildering and even mournful in the survey of this huge agglomeration and of its owners, the muffled, shadowy figures, some three hundred in number, grouped together, and who will be dispersed again in a few hours.
A yacht-voyage could not be more tranquilly delightful than this pleasant moonlight transit. We are scarcely clear of the twinkling lights of the Dover amphitheatre, grown more and more distant, when those of the opposite coast appear to draw near and yet nearer. Often as one has crossed, the sense of a new and strange impression is never wanting. The sense of calm and silence, the great waste of sea, the monotonous 'plash' of the paddle-wheels, the sort of solitude in the midst of such a crowd, the gradually lengthening distance behind, with the lessening, as gradual, in front, and the always novel feeling of approach to a new country--these elements impart a sort of dreamy, poetical feeling to the scene. Even the calm resignation of the wrapped-up shadows seated in a sort of retreat, and devoted to their own thoughts or slumbers, add to this effect. With which comes the thought of the brave little vessels, which through day and night, year after year, dance over these