A Days Tour | Page 4

There
is hardly a breath stirring, and the great chalk-cliffs gleam out in a
ghostly fashion, like mammoth wave-crests.
As it draws on to ten o'clock, the path to the Admiralty Pier begins to
darken with flitting figures hurrying down past the fortress-like Lord
Warden, now ablaze and getting ready its hospice for the night; the
town 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