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He looked back at the shore, where even the horned cattle stopped grazing mid-chew to stare atAlacrityin awe. “It would take a fool to turn away what we offer.”
“There are many fools,” she cautioned.
She squeezed his arm one more time with affection before leaving him to oversee the navigation of his fully dressed ship through the crowded waters.
As they progressed up the river, she was impressed, even if Elijah stubbornly refused to be. They sailed by structures of stone built before the first Englishmen crossed the Atlantic—domes, towers, cottages, and churches that had stood on these banks and witnessed a changing world.
Helen gloried in the greenery and trees and being near the safety of land. Within a short time, she saw more people than in weeks, and it was a delight to glimpse women again. The mirror had been the only place she’d found one since leaving Boston.
Wedged into the bucolic setting of marshes and small waterfront towns were increasing signs of industry. The further inland they navigated, the greater the number of factories, mills, piers, and soot-spewing columns.
Alacrityhad entered the Thames from the south, while huge colliers entered from the north, loaded with coal. Shortly, the river was jammed with hundreds of vessels of every size and kind, from row to sail to steam, fishing, cargo, passenger, and tug.
Helen gripped the railing as she observed this traffic, fearing collision again and again. As they traveled, more piers jutted into the Thames. She watched with particular horror as paddle-wheeled steamboats charged from pier to pier, one after another, seemingly every minute. They ferried passengers, who embarked and disembarked frantically before the vessels steamed away at full speed, belching smoke from their funnels.
The crowds on the piers thickened as they neared London, and they cheered or jeered—Helen couldn’t decipher which—atAlacrity.
After viewing the same sixty faces for weeks, she could scarcely believe the hundreds then thousands of people her eyes took in, on land and aboard the other vessels. It seemed they all turned and watchedAlacrity, and she stared back.
An hour passed as she watched from different parts of the deck. The density of buildings along the Thames increased, and with it, the odor of sewage. Helen’s knees buckled under her skirts and her throat seized asAlacrityentered foul waters that bubbled with raw waste.
Even with a sleeve over her nose and mouth, she couldn’t tolerate the stench. Unlike the poor crew, who had no choice, she left the upper decks, retreating to her cabin. Those seasoned lads had seen it all, yet they gagged now as they worked.
Only when she reached the relative quiet below decks did she realize how exhausting the deluge of sensations had been.
“Just for a moment,” she whispered to herself, sinking onto her bunk.
She awoke when a burst of knocks rattled her door. The ship’s boy yelled excitedly that they had arrived.
She needn’t have worried about finding Mr. Hughes, for it was he who found them following their spectacular arrival at the West India Docks.
