Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/24

14 dress, joined in a last prayer, and then turned to take a last embrace. Mothers did not venture there. In the privacy of home they had wept their parting tears and given the parting kiss; but dear friends, fathers and brothers pressed for the last time to their hearts the objects of their love, then left us, and took their station upon the wharf to witness our departure. Hawsers were cleared away, sails set, the single plank that united us to our native land thrown off, and with a favouring wind, we were under weigh. Cheers from the wharf were answered from the ship, the crowd of gazers dispersed, and only some few warm-hearted ones remained in the cold October wind to watch the receding and lessening form of the ship, until, like a white-winged bird, it was lost in the distant horizon.

But we had still a connecting link with America. It was the pilot, who guided our ship down the harbour of Boston through rocks and islets to the open bay. Hurrying below, amid the confusion of boxes, trunks, baskets, bags, and luggage in all its forms, we found places on which to lay our paper, that we might once more write our farewells to dear friends whom we left,—left not because we loved them not,