For why? He was
still too far down south.
Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen--a gallant
ocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke trailing behind; and he
wondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see.
A school of dolphins were running races round and round her, going
three feet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall:
but they did not know. Then he tried to find out how she moved,
and at last he saw her screw, and was so delighted with it that he
played under her quarter all day, till he nearly had his nose
knocked off by the fans, and thought it time to move. Then he
watched the sailors upon deck, and the ladies, with their bonnets
and parasols: but none of them could see him, because their eyes
were not opened,--as, indeed, most people's eyes are not.
At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady,
in deep black widow's weeds, and in her arms a baby. She leaned
over the quarter-gallery, and looked back and back toward England
far away; and as she looked she sang:
I.
"Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding,
Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea;
Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining
Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me.
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