



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 rolled, and
ran terrible risk of sweeping little children out of the upper windows
of the houses.  In unfavourable contrast with these, donkeys, of the
most meagre and starved aspect, staggered along with cartloads of fusty
vegetables and dirty-looking fish, while the vendors thereof howled the
nature and value of their wares with deliberate ferocity.  Low
pawnbrokers (chiefly in the "slop" line) obtruded their seedy wares from
doors and windows halfway across the pavement, as if to tempt the naked;
and equally low pastry-cooks spread forth their stale viands in unglazed
windows, as if to seduce the hungry.

Here the population was mixed and varied.  Busy men of business and of
wealth, porters and wagoners, clerks and warehousemen, rubbed shoulders
with poor squalid creatures, men and women, whose business or calling no
one knew and few cared to know except the policeman on the beat, who,
with stern suspicious glances, looked upon them as objects of special
regard, and as enemies; except, also, the earnest-faced man in seedy
black garments, with a large Bible (_evidently_) in his pocket, who
likewise looked on them as objects of special regard, and as friends.
The rats were much more circumspect in this locality.  They were what
the Yankees would call uncommonly "cute," and much too deeply intent on
business to indulge in play.

In the lanes, courts, and alleys that ran still farther back into the
great hive, there was an amount of squalor, destitution, violence, sin,
and misery, the depth of which was known only to the people who dwelt
there, and to those earnest-faced men with Bibles who made it their work
to cultivate green spots in the midst of such unpromising wastes, and to
foster the growth of those tender and beautiful flowers which sometimes
spring and flourish where, to judge from appearances, one might be
tempted to imagine nothing good could thrive.  Here also there were
rats, and cats too, besides dogs of many kinds; but they all of them led
hard lives of it, and few appeared to think much of enjoying themselves.
Existence seemed to be the height of their ambition.  Even the kittens
were depressed, and sometimes stopped in the midst of a faint attempt at
play to look round with a scared aspect, as if the memory of kicks and
blows was strong upon them.

The whole neighbourhood, in fact, teemed with sad yet interesting sights
and scenes, and with strange violent contrasts.  It was not a spot which
one would naturally select for a ramble on a summer evening after
dinner; nevertheless it was a locality where time might have been
profitably spent, where a good lesson or two might have been learned by
those who have a tendency to "consider the poor."

But although the neighbourhood was dirty and noisy,