He went to the office one day, as Philip Selby discovered, and asked for the amount of salary due to him, and purchased a few more necessary articles of clothing; and he wrote to the persons to whom he owed money, telling them that he was about to leave Liverpool, but would send them their money without fail within a certain period. He did not know how this was to be done, but he was resolute to do it, and he had no more doubt on the matter than he had that he should perfectly succeed in his plunge into the unknown. But after he had done this he remained for some days longer by the river-side with a self-contradictory impulse, watching the ships go by, and putting off the execution of his project. Where was he to go? To resolve to give up his own identity, to separate himself for ever from his family, and all his belongings, and all his antecedents, was easy; but to make up his mind which boat he was to go by, and whither he was to betake himself, was much more difficult. America was so hackneyed, he said to himself, with that fastidious impatience and disgust which is one of the characteristics of a sick soul: everybody goes to America; it would be the first idea that would occur to everyone; and this made him throw away that first suggestion angrily, as if it had been an offence; but if not to America, then where? He tossed about various names in his mind, satisfied with none, and when at last he made his decision, it was made in a moment, with the same kind of sick disgust and impatience as had made him reject the other ideas as they presented themselves. He was crossing the river to Liverpool, leaning over the side of the ferry steamboat lest anybody should see and recognize him, and in his own mind passing in review the advantages and disadvantages of all the ships he passed. The Mersey was very full and very bright, the sun shining, a brisk breeze blowing, the sky blue, the great estuary throwing up white edges of spray and leaping here and there against the bows of an out-going boat, in a manner which boded little comfort to unaccustomed sailors outside the shelter of its banks. The opposite shore was still clothed with trees beginning to grow green in the earliest tints of spring, and not unpleasantly mingled with the beginnings of docks and traces of mercantile invasion. Nature, as yet, had not given up her harmonizing power; the touches of colour on the masts, a national flag flying here and there, even the sailors’ washing fluttering among the yards, was an addition to the brilliancy of the spring lights. The ferry-boat was full of people, though it was not the hour for business men to be moving about. The freight was a more varied one than that mass of black-coated figures which weighed it down to the water’s edge in the morning. But Harry turned his back upon them all, and looked over the side, watching in a dream the long trail of water which slid under the bows and was caught and churned by the paddle-wheel. The motion, as he watched it thus, soothed him, and took the place of thinking in his mind, carrying him vaguely, he knew not whither, just as he would fain have been carried beyond the ken of men. He was waiting the guidance of chance, not caring what became of him. Something caught his ear suddenly as the ferry-boat rustled along by the side of a long low steamer with raking masts and short funnels, which lay not far from the bank.