CHAPTER SEVEN.
HOW MARK HAD A SURPRISE.
Blackwall and Woolwich, Gravesend, and the vessel moored for the night.
There a few preliminaries were adjusted, and the next morning, with the deck not quite in such a state of confusion, the vessel began to drop down with the tide.
And now Mark woke to the fact that the captain was once more only a secondary personage on board, the pilot taking command, under whose guidance sails dropped down and the great ship gradually made her way in and out of the dangerous shoals and sand-banks, till, well out to sea on a fine calm day, the pilot-boat came alongside, and Captain Strong, as the pilot wished him a lucky voyage, again took command.
There had been so much going on in lashing spars in their places, getting down the last of the cargo, and securing the ship's boats, along with a hundred other matters connected with clearing the decks and making things ship-shape, that Mark saw little of his father and the officers, except at mealtimes; and hence he was thrown almost entirely in the company of his mother.

There were the passengers, but they, for the most part, were somewhat distant and strange at first; but now, as the great ship began to go steadily down channel, before a pleasant south-easterly breeze, the decks were clear, ropes coiled down, hatches battened over, and there was a disposition among the strangers on board to become friendly.
They were not a very striking party whom Captain Strong had gathered round his table, but, as he told Mrs Strong, he had to make the best of them.

There was a curiously dry-looking Scotch merchant on his way back to Hong-Kong.

An Irish major, with his wife and daughter, bound for the same place.

A quiet stout gentleman, supposed to be a doctor, and three young German agricultural students on their way to Singapore, from which place, after a short stay, they were going to Northern Queensland to introduce some new way of growing sugar.
But just as the passengers were growing social, and the panorama of Southern England was growing more and more beautiful, the weather began to change.
Its first vagary was in the shape of a fog while they were off the Dorsetshire coast, and with the fog there was its companion, a calm.
"One of a sailor's greatest troubles," Mr Morgan said to Mark as they were leaning over the taffrail watching the gulls, which seemed to come in and out of the mist.
"But capital for a passenger who only wants to make his trip as long as he can," said Mark laughingly.
"Ah! I forgot that you leave us at Plymouth," said the second-mate.
"Penzance," cried Mark.
"That depends on the weather, young man.