Coasts of Romance (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Coasts of Romance The liner that was to take us south lay moored off Tilbury. We stood, our luggage at our feet, packed like herrings on the tender's upper deck. Suddenly the siren gave an ear-splitting shriek. The fat man in front of me started, tripped backwards over his suit-case and sat down heavily upon it, cannoning into me. I passed it on to Hamish, who in turn cannoned into Blackie. Down we went like a row of ninepins - one - two - three - four, and wallowed on our luggage trying to look as if we were there intentionally. "What did he do that for?" I demanded. "Who - the captain?" said Hamish. "Oh, it's a way all ferry and cross-channel skippers have, I notice - a tradition of the service. Can't start on a voyage from Dover to Calais, or Tilbury to Greenwich without shrieking the place down. This chap wants all England to know that he's going to take his life in his hands and push right out into midstream, and may not be back for goodness knows how long - perhaps half an hour." "You're quite mistaken," said Blackie; "he's one of these humorists - that's all. Think how jolly it must be to stand on that bridge and by merely twitching a string cause about two hundred firstclass passengers to sit down as one! Observe the honest fellow peering over the rail. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.