To-day it was not so bewildering to me, because I could see that the men were working with some purpose that affected our vessel, though the directions in which they ran, dragging ropes as thick as my leg, to the grinding of equally monstrous chains, were as mysterious as the figures of some dance one does not know.

As to the noises they made, men and boys anywhere are given to help on their work with sounds of some sort, but I could not have believed in anything approaching to these, out of a lunatic asylum, unless I had heard them.
I could hear quite well, I could hear what was said, and a great deal of it, I am sorry to say, would have been better unsaid.

But the orders which rang out interested me, for I tried to fit them on to what followed, though without much result.

At last the dock seemed to be moving away from me--I saw men, but not the same men--and every man's eye was fixed on us.

Then the thick brown rope just below my window quivered like a bow-string, and tightened (all the water starting from it in a sparkling shower) till it looked as firm as a bar of iron, and I held on tight, for we were swinging round.