The Unknown Shore (5 page)

The great hand of Thacker’s clock – a wonderfully accurate clock – crept to the appointed minute, and Keppel walked in, accompanied by his particular friend Mr Midshipman Ransome. Keppel was small, neat and compact; he had been to a wedding and he was dressed with surprising magnificence in a gold-laced hat, an embroidered
waistcoat with jewelled buttons and a crimson coat encrusted with gold plait wherever it could be conveniently sewn, and cascades of Mechlin lace at his throat and wrists: Ransome was a big, leonine fellow with a bright blue eye, not unlike Jack, but heavier and older; his kind-looking face was much marked by disagreements with the King’s enemies and his own, as well as the small-pox; and he wore a plain blue coat.

They stood for a moment in the doorway, looking over the big room with its many boxes: they saw Mr Saunders, the first lieutenant of their own ship, the
Centurion,
pulled off their hats and bowed very humbly; they saw a lieutenant of the
Gloucester,
a Marine captain belonging to the
Severn
and a group of black coats which included Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the
Wager
and the chaplain of the
Pearl;
to all of these they bowed with suitable degrees of humility, and then advanced to Jack and Tobias.

It took some little time to make Tobias understand that he was being introduced: and as he had the unfortunate habit of closing one eye and screwing his pursed mouth violently to one side whenever he was roused from a train of reflection, he did not make quite as favourable an impression as he might have done otherwise. Ransome moved perceptibly backwards, and Keppel said, ‘Your servant, sir,’ in a reserved and distant tone.

Keppel, in any case, was far from easy. ‘I am very sorry to bring you the news,’ he said. ‘Upon my word, I regret it extremely. But the fact is – the fact is, my dear Byron, the vacancies have gone to a couple of – Irishmen. ‘

‘Wery nasty undeserving swabs, I dare say,’ said Ransome, with the intention of bringing comfort, ‘if not Papists, too.’ He spoke in a hoarse whisper, having no other voice left, other than a penetrating bellow, for use only at sea.

‘Oh,’ said Jack, horribly disappointed, but smiling with what appearance of nonchalance he could summon. ‘Well, it was prodigious kind to try; and I am much obliged to you.’

‘But that ain’t all,’ said Keppel, with still greater embarrassment, after a long and awkward pause. ‘My father, d’ye see, being only a soldier, and not thoroughly understanding these things, although I have told him these many times the difference between one class of ship and another – and really you would think it plain enough to
the meanest understanding; I mean, even a landsman can see that a pink is not a first-rate.’

Far from it,’ said Ransome.

‘Nor even a second,’ said Keppel.

Jack turned pale, and gazed from one to the other.

‘Not that some pinks ain’t pretty little vessels,’ said Ransome reflectively, after a prolonged silence.

‘But the fact is,’ said Keppel, who appeared to derive some comfort from this expression, ‘the fact is, my dear Byron, that my father, having once got into the matter, thought he could not come off handsomely without doing something: so when he found that he could not do what I asked, instead of waiting for my advice, he went blundering about like a horse in a hen-coop and had you – I beg you’ll not take it amiss – nominated to the
Wager.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack again; and then with a slowly spreading grin he said, ‘While you were talking I had imagined something much worse. After all, Keppel, it does get me to St Helen’s; and I am sure we can manage some kind of a transfer. I must wait upon Lord Albemarle and thank him.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Keppel, ‘for he went off in a passion - ’

‘And a coach and six,’ said Ransome.

‘What?’

‘He went off in a passion
and
a coach and six. Hor, hor.’

‘– to Aunt Grooby, and he won’t be back until the end of the month: and’ – Keppel lowered his voice – ‘we sail on Saturday sennight.’

‘Saturday week?’ cried Jack, whistling.

‘Hush,’ said Keppel, looking round.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Jack, ‘but it leaves so precious little time.’

They fell into a low-voiced, highly confidential discussion of the means at their disposal for coping with the situation. This lasted for some considerable time, and they were roused from it only by the repeated cries and nudges of Ransome and Tobias: these gentlemen had, after an unpromising start, taken to one another wonderfully, and Ransome, having learnt that Tobias’ sight-seeing had not yet included the lions at the Tower, now proposed taking him to see them. Nothing could have been calculated to cause Tobias more pleasure, and his eyes shone with anticipation; but for the moment
he was pinned and immobilised, for they were on the inside of the box, and Jack and Keppel, lost in the depths of their planning, blocked the way to these simple joys.

‘What is it?’ said Jack impatiently.

‘The lions at the Tower,’ said Tobias, ‘ha, ha, the lions, eh, Jack?’

‘Which your friend ain’t seen ‘em,’ said Ransome. ‘Won’t you come?’

‘Bah,’ said Jack and Keppel, who scorned the lions in the Tower.

‘That fellow, Keppel,’ said Jack, looking after their departing backs, ‘that friend of mine, Tobias Barrow, causes me more anxiety than – worries me more than I can give you any conception of.’ He outlined the situation, and went on, ‘… so I left him with Cousin Brocas, and somehow they came to be talking about the government, and parliament, and the House of Lords and all that. Heaven knows why. And I think Cousin B. must have dropped some graceful hints of what an important, high-born, clever cove he was, and what an unimportant fellow Toby was: something of the “beggars can’t be choosers” nature – you know Cousin B’s little ways. Not that he means any harm; but it vexes people, sometimes. Anyhow, Tobias turned upon him. “Never been so roughly handled in all my life,” says Cousin B. “This dreadful creature of yours, Jack,” says he, “said things to me in Latin and Greek, and attacked the constitution in the most hellish way: a most hellish Whig – nay, a republican, God help us. A democratical visionary.” It seems that they fell out over the hereditary principle. “Would you employ an hereditary surgeon?” says Tobias, “A fellow who is to cut off your leg, not because he is an eminent anatomist, not because he is profoundly learned and highly skilled, but because he is merely the eldest son of a surgeon, or the eldest son of a man whose great-great-grandfather was a surgeon? And do you think the laws of the land less important than your infernal leg,” says he, “that they are to be made and unmade by a parcel of men whose only qualification is that their fathers were lords?” ’

‘What did he say to that?’ asked Keppel, with a kind of awful glee.

‘Why, truly,’ said Jack, ‘I think they gave up argument at that point, and took to calling names. They were hard at it when I came in, and Tobias had a long round ruler in his hand, and Cousin B.
was backed up into a corner behind the celestial globe. By the time I had got Tobias away and down the stairs, Cousin B. had recovered his wits to some degree, for he Rings up the library window and bawls out
“Miserane
 …” but he can’t remember the rest, and claps the window to. Tobias as near as dammit breaks the tow in order to dart back and make a reply, but I get him round the corner into Sackville Street: and there, strike me down, is Cousin Brocas again, at the billiard–room window.
“Mis …Mis
 …” he holloes, but it escapes him again, which must have been very vexing, you know, Keppel, for I make no doubt that it was a stunning quotation – and he has to content himself with shaking his fist. Which he does, very hearty, purple in the face. Well, when they had gnashed their teeth at one another for a while – through the glass, you understand – I managed to get him under way again, and brought him fairly into Piccadilly, where he calmed down, sitting on a white doorstep, while I told the people that it was quite all right – only a passing fit. But I do assure you that some of the things he said made my blood run cold. “The House of Lords is an infamous place,” he cries, “and exists to reward toad-eaters and to depress ingenuous merit. I will rise,” he says, very shrill and high, “upon my own worth or not at all.” Now, that is all very well, and Roman and virtuous, but I appeal to you, Keppel, is it sensible language to address to a patron?’

‘No,’ said Keppel, with total conviction, ‘it is not.’

‘And to think,’ said Jack, ‘that I had proposed taking him to the House to present him to your father.’

‘I wish you had,’ said Keppel, writhing in his seat. ‘Oh strike me down, I wish you had. But tell me,’ he added, ‘did you not expect him to blow up all republican?’

‘No,’ cried Jack. ‘I was amazed. Lard, Keppel, I have known him all my life, and have always considered him the meekest creature breathing. I have known him take the most savage treatment from his guardian without ever complaining. Besides, when we were riding to Town I explained the nature of the world to him, and he never jibbed then – said he had always understood that it was tolerably corrupt. Though it is true,’ he said, after a pause for reflection, ‘that he never had much in the way of what you might call natural awe – was always amazingly self-possessed.’

At this moment Tobias’ self-possession was as shrunk and
puckered as his shabby old rained-upon black coat, for the boat in which he and Ransome had embarked for the Tower was in the very act of shooting London Bridge. The tide was on the ebb – it was at half-ebb, to be precise – and when Tobias moved his fascinated gaze from the houses which packed the bridge and leant out over the edge in a vertiginous, not to say horrifying manner, he found that the boat was engaged in a current that raced curling towards a narrow arch, and there, to his horror, he saw the silent black water slide with appalling nightmare rapidity downhill into the darkness, while the rower and Ransome sat poised and motionless. He had time to utter no more than the cry “Ark", or “Gark", expressive of unprepared alarm, before they shot out of the fading light of day. A few damp, reverberating seconds passed, and they were restored to it. The rower pulled hard; in a moment they were out of the thundering fall below the bridge; and all around them were vessels of one kind or another, rowing, sculling, paddling and sailing down and across the Thames, or waiting very placidly for the tide in order to go up. All these people seemed perfectly at their ease – in the innumerable masts that lined the river or lay out in the Pool no single man stood on high to warn the populace of the danger, and even as Tobias gazed back in horror he saw another boat shoot the central arch, and another, full of soldiers who shouted and waved their hats, while a woman, leaning out of her kitchen window on the bridge, strewed apple peelings impartially upon the soldiers and the raging flood: apparently this passage was quite usual. But Tobias was unable to repress his emotion entirely, and he said, ‘That is a surprising current, sir. That is a very surprising piece of water, indeed.’

‘I thought you was surprised,’ said Ransome, with a grin; and the waterman closed one eye.

‘I was never so frightened before,’ said Tobias, ‘and I find that my heart is still beating violently.’

‘Why, it’s a question of use,’ said Ransome, wishing that his companion would be a little less candid in public. ‘I dare say you never was in a rip-tide or an overfall?’

‘I have never been in a boat in my life.’

‘Nor ever seen the sea?’

‘Nor yet the Thames, until today.’

‘The gentleman has never set foot in a boat before,’ said Ransome to the waterman, ‘nor ever shot the bridge: so he was surprised.’

‘Never set foot in a boat before?’ exclaimed the waterman, resting on his oars.

‘Not once: not so much as a farden skiff,’ said Ransome, who was a waterman’s son himself, from Frying-pan Stairs in Wapping, and who had been nourished and bred on the water, fresh or salt, since first he drew breath. They stared at Tobias, and eventually the waterman said, ‘Then how do they get about, where he comes from?’

‘They walk,’ said Tobias. ‘It is all dry land.’

‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said the waterman, dipping his oars and edging his boat across to the Tower stairs. He would take no further notice of Tobias: considered him a dangerous precedent, and was seen, as they went away, to dust Tobias’ seat over the running water, with particular vehemence.

It was a still evening as they walked into the Tower, and although the day had been tolerably warm, the mist was already forming over the water; two or three hundred thousand coal-fires were alight or lighting, and the smoke, mingling with the mist, promised, as Ransome said, ‘to grow as slab as burgoo’ before long.

They walked briskly in past the spur-guard, past a faded representation of a lion and up to a door with another lion painted above it: a tiny black-haired man with a white face, the under-keeper, was renewing the ghastliness of this lion’s maw with vermilion paint. ‘There is horror, look you,’ he said, putting his head on one side and surveying his work through narrowed eyes. ‘There is gore and alarm, isn’t it?’ He was unwilling to leave his brush; but the prospect of immediate gain will always seduce an artist, and pocketing Ransome’s shilling the under-keeper opened the door.

‘I am infinitely obliged to you, sir,’ said Tobias, when they were outside again and walking down to the river.

‘Haw,’ said Ransome, with a lurch of his head to acknowledge this civility. ‘That’s all right, mate: but I wish you had not a-done it. It makes me feel right poorly, only to think on it,’ he said, leaning against the rail of the Tower stairs and reflecting upon the sight of Tobias in the lions’ den, peering down the throat of an enormous beast that was stated to be ‘a very saucy lion, the same that is eating
the young gentlewoman’s arm last Bartholomew Fair.’

‘Up or down, gents?’ cried the waterman. ‘Oars, sir? Pair of oars?’

‘Up or down, mate?’ asked Ransome, recovering from his reverie and thumping Tobias on the back.

‘Do you see that bird?’ asked Tobias, pointing to the Customs House, where a number of kites were coming in to roost upon the cornucopias and reclining goddesses (or perhaps nymphs) that decorated the pediment.