



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




THE LIFEBOAT, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE BEGINNING--IN WHICH SEVERAL IMPORTANT PERSONAGES ARE INTRODUCED.

There existed, not many years ago, a certain street near the banks of
old Father Thames which may be described as being one of the most modest
and retiring little streets in London.

The neighbourhood around that street was emphatically dirty and noisy.
There were powerful smells of tallow and tar in the atmosphere,
suggestive of shipping and commerce.  Narrow lanes opened off the main
street affording access to wharves and warehouses, and presenting at
their termini segmentary views of ships' hulls, bowsprits, and booms,
with a background of muddy water and smoke.  There were courts with
unglazed windows resembling doors, and massive cranes clinging to the
walls.  There were yards full of cases and barrels, and great anchors
and chains, which invaded the mud of the river as far as was consistent
with safety; and adventurous little warehouses, which stood on piles, up
to the knees, as it were, in water, totally regardless of appearances,
and utterly indifferent as to catching cold.  As regards the population
of this locality, rats were, perhaps, in excess of human beings; and it
might have been observed that the former were particularly frolicsome
and fearless.

Farther back, on the landward side of our unobtrusive street, commercial
and nautical elements were more mingled with things appertaining to
domestic life.  Elephantine horses, addicted to good living, drew
through the narrow streets wagons and vans so ponderous and gigantic
that they seemed to crush the very stones over which they