five
in the morning
This is the first time I have been on a sea-going ship since I crossed from America with my mother , neither of us dreaming that she would settle down and give me an Englishman for a stepfather . As for Phil , she has no memories outside her native land -- except early ones of Paris -- and , though she has a natural instinct for the preservation of her young life , I do n't doubt that every motion of the big boat in the night made her realize how infinitely more decorous it would be to drown on the `` Batavier 4 '' than in a newfangled motor thing on an obscure foreign canal . The Thames we have seen before , in all its bigness and richness and black ugliness ; for on hot summer days we have embarked on certain trips which would condemn us forever in the eyes of duchesses , countesses , and other ladies of title I have known serially , in instalments . But we -LRB- or rather , I -RRB- chose to reach Holland by water , as it seems a more appropriate preface to our adventure ; and I got Phyllis up before five in the morning , not to miss by any chance the first sight of the Low Lands . We were only just in time , for we had n't had our coffee and been dressed many minutes before my eyes caught at a line of land as a drowning person is supposed to catch at a straw . `` Holland ! '' said I ; which was not particularly intelligent in me , as it could n't have been anything else .