Not much remains to add. The next day I scrambled down the rope ladder, and bade farewell to the _Bonadventure_, that "dirty ship," not unbeloved; and Mead came next. The boat below carried us to the quay, under the red hulls of ships gleaming with the light from the dancing ripples; then came paying off, a most unpunctual and irritating performance, and good-byes to the old friends, from Hosea to Kelly, of the last few months; and most of all, perhaps, to that gay spirit Mead. My good-bye to these might be, I hoped, no such final one; but my round trip was accomplished and I felt that for me "there would be no more sea," so that the actual signing off of the purser seemed to me a point in my life's course. Then presently, after a hearty last word with Mead--kind be the dog-watch stars to him, wherever his ship carry him--I departed; the last train for Slowe having, naturally, gone out, I made for the nearest town to Slowe, and finishing my journey part on foot, part on a borrowed bicycle, was enabled to awaken Mary while the rest of the parish of Staizley slept the sleep of the just.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bonadventure, by Edmund Blunden