The Unknown Shore (6 page)

‘Ar,’ said Ransome, looking through the misty dusk in the general direction of a flight of pigeons.

‘I believe – I do not assert it, but I
believe
that it is a black kite,’ said Tobias.

‘All right, mate,’ said Ransome, with cheerful indifference, ‘I dare say it is. Up or down?’

‘The tail was so much less forked. Up or down? I think, if you will excuse me, that I will stay a little longer.’

‘If you want to see ‘em go to roost,’ said Ransome, ‘you should go round behind: there’s millions of ‘em there. But I must drop down now, or I shall lose my tide.’

‘Good-bye, then,’ said Tobias, ‘and thank you very much indeed for showing me the lions.’

‘You’ll take boat directly?’ called Ransome, turning as he stood in the skiff. ‘You’ll know your way all right?’ Tobias waved.

The boat pushed out into the stream, where it was lost in the crowd and the evening, and Tobias leant musing against the rail. Dozens of people came down the steps to take to the water or mounted them as they were landed, and perpetually the boatmen bawled ‘Up or down?’

A thin, sharp child brushed against him and stole the handkerchief from his coat pocket. ‘Up or down?’ cried a waterman in his ear. ‘Come, make up your mind.’

‘Why, truly,’ said Tobias, ‘I believe that I shall walk.’

‘And the devil go with you,’ cried the waterman passionately.

‘What did he mean by “round behind"?’ asked Tobias in a gentle mutter as he walked away. He looked at St Dunstan’s in the East, the Coal-meters’ Office and the Bakers’ Hall; there were pigeons and starlings, but nothing more, for kites were already growing uncommon in London, and Ransome had quite misunderstood
Tobias’ remark. They were coming in to roost in their thousands, and while the day lasted Tobias searched among them for black kites; but very soon there was not a bird abroad, black or white, and Tobias stopped under a newly-lit street-lantern to consider his bearings. He had a good natural sense of direction, and with an easy mind he set out and walked through the crowded Mark Lane, crossed quite mistakenly into Crutched Friars by way of Hart Street, and tried to correct his error by going north-westward along Shoemaker Row and Bevis Marks to Camomile Street and Bishopsgate. A good natural sense of direction is a charming possession, and it is very useful in the country; but in a London fog, and even more particularly in the crowded, narrow, winding streets and alleys of the City, it is worse than useless; for the countryman, confident of his ability, will go for miles and miles in the wrong direction before he can bring himself to ask a native for guidance. This state of affairs is not without its advantages, however; the countryman, in his winding course, is made intimately aware of the monstrous extent of London; and by the time Tobias had passed the parish churches of Allhallows Barking, Allhallows the Great, Allhallows the Less, Allhallows in Bread Street, Allhallows in Honey Lane, Allhallows in Lombard Street, Allhallows Staining and Allhallows on London Wall, he found his ideas of London much enlarged. He went on patiently by St Andrew Hubbard, St Andrew Undershaft and St Andrew by the Wardrobe, St Bennet Fink, St Bennet Gracechurch and St Bennet Sherehog, St Dionis Backchurch, St Laurence Jewry, St Laurence Pountney and St Clement near Eastcheap, St Margaret Moses, St Margaret Pattens and St Martin Outwich, St Mary Woolchurch, St Mary Somerset, St Mary Mountshaw, St Mary Woolnoth, St Michael-le-Quern, St Michael Royal, St Nicholas Acons and St Helen’s, which brought him back to Bishopsgate again, with at least sixty parish churches as yet unseen, to say nothing of chapels.

Here, by an unhappy fatality, Tobias turned to his right, hoping to find the river, but he found Bedlam instead, and the broad dark open space of Moorfields. He looked with respectful wonder at the vast lunatic asylum, but the new shoes that Jack and he had bought earlier in the day (it seemed more like several months ago) were now causing him a very highly-wrought agony, and he wandered into Moorfields, now deserted by all prudent honest men, to sit on the
grass and take them off. After this he went on much more briskly, and determined to ask his way of the next citizen he should meet: it was some time, however, before he met anyone who would stop, and by then he had walked clean out of Moorfields northwards.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said to one of a group who were crossing the vague field with a lantern, ‘but can you tell me  …’ With a thrill of horror he found that he did not know the name of the street where he lodged, nor Jack’s street either.

‘Tell you what?’ said the lantern, suspiciously.

‘Knock him down,’ said the lantern’s friend, adding, ‘We’ve got pistols, you rogue.’

‘Tell me where I am?’ asked Tobias, with unusual presence of mind.

‘Where you are?’

‘If you please.’

‘Don’t you know where you are?’

‘No, I do not.’

‘He doesn’t know where he is,’ said the lantern.

‘He will cut your throat in a minute,’ said the lantern’s friend. ‘Why don’t you knock him down?’

‘So you want to know where you are?’

‘Yes, sir, I should like to know very much.’

‘Why, then, you’re in Farthing Piehouse Field,’ said the lantern, and by way of proof waved towards a dirty glimmer a hundred yards away, saying, ‘And there’s the Farthing Piehouse itself, in all its charming lustre.’

‘Sir, I am obliged to you,’ said Tobias.

‘At your service, sir,’ said the lantern, with a bow.

‘You could still knock him down,’ said the friend, wistfully. ‘It’s not too late.’

The door of the Farthing Piehouse opened easily, letting out the odour of farthing pies: it was a crowded room, and when Tobias walked in holding his shoes, they all looked up; but the farthing pie-eaters were thieves to a man, and as it was obvious to them that Tobias had just stolen these shoes – that he too was a thief – they took no more notice of him.

‘When I have eaten a pie, I shall ask the way back to the river,’
thought Tobias, ‘and from there I shall be able to find the house, no doubt. It is most likely, too, that I shall remember the name of the street quite suddenly, if I do not force my mind to it. The mind is saturated with new ideas, but it is starved for material sustenance, and must be fed. House,’ he cried, ‘House, a pie here, if you please.’

‘A pie for the gentleman,’ called the man of the house into the kitchen, adding, in a voice meant only for his spouse, ‘A rum cully what I never set my glimmers on before.’

Tobias, by way of keeping his mind from searching too hard (it was a mind that would remember almost anything if it were not worried and if it were given time, but it was apt to grow stupid if it were overpressed), turned his attention and his anatomical knowledge to his pie. But this was a most discouraging course of study, and he abandoned it in favour of recalling the events of the day: he dwelt with pleasure upon Ransome, not only as a most amiable companion, but also as a living proof that unaided merit could rise, for Ransome had entered the Navy as an ordinary pressed seaman. ‘I wish I had been able to find a moment to ask him about money, however,’ said Tobias, yawning: he had intended to do so, but what with their voyage on the river, the lions and the other beasts in the Tower, there had not been time. Jack had shared his purse with Tobias, and these were the first coins that Tobias had ever owned; but Tobias’ education had been such that although he could have dealt in the market places of Athens or Rome with ease, he did not know a farthing when he saw one, and he was sadly perplexed by the whole system of modern coinage. The English currency, even now, is the most complicated in the world, with its twelve pence to the shilling and its twenty shillings to the pound; but it is child’s play to the time when there were broad pieces, reckoned at twenty-three and twenty-five shillings, half and quarter pieces, ninepenny and fourpence-halfpenny pieces, as well as tin, brass and copper small change, and when the shilling passed for thirteen pence halfpenny and the guinea for anything between a pound and twenty-five shillings.

To distract his mind, which would revert with a touch of panic to the question of his lost address, Tobias turned his fortune on to the table, with the intention of making what sense he could of the inscriptions. At the sound of money all the farthing pie-eaters stopped
talking, eating or drinking; and when Tobias, paying his host with a four-shilling piece, asked for a direction to the river, he spoke in the midst of a profound and attentive silence. The man slowly paid out a mountain of small coins, talking as he dribbled them out, and from his questions the hearers learnt that Tobias was lost, unknown and unarmed, and that this was his first day in London.

The pie-man scratched his head: he had a certain pity for his guest – even a very ill-natured brute will stop a blind man from walking into an open pit – but he also had a duty towards his regular customers. In the end he satisfied his conscience by giving Tobias an exact route for the Thames, by telling him that he ought to take care, great care, and by winking with all the significance in his power.

The door closed behind Tobias: the pie-man said to his wife, ‘He never did ought to of been let out alone,’ and shook his head.

There was a pause of some few listening minutes, then the door opened, and all the regular customers hurried in again.

‘They never left him so much as his shirt,’ said the pieman to his wife, coming back into the kitchen.

‘Well, my dear,’ said she, placidly wiping her hands upon her apron and looking through the door to where the regular customers were making their division, ‘I hope they have not cut his throat, that’s all. Or if they have, that they done it at a decent distance from the house, poor wandering soul.’

J
ACK
B
YRON
sat in Thacker’s coffee-house, staring vacantly before him: he was almost alone in the place, apart from the waiters, and he sat there as steadily and silently as if he had been part of the furniture. The clock in front of him said half-past seven, and the big calendar beside it bore the ominous name Friday, newly changed that morning.

The door opened, and an elderly man in a black coat and a periwig walked in: he nodded to Jack, who bowed, although for the moment he did not recognise him. It was Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the
Wager,
to whom Keppel had presented Jack some days before. ‘So you have not gone down to Portsmouth yet?’ he said, with some surprise.

‘No, sir,’ said Jack.

‘Are you not cutting it uncommon fine?’ asked the surgeon.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack, who was all too vividly aware of the racing hours and the horrifying speed with which Saturday, his last day in England, was rushing towards him.

The surgeon, in spite of Jack’s short answers and unhappy face, sat down by him, and said, ‘I am up myself only because of my infernal mate, and I shall take the mail-coach down this evening.’ He explained that he was very particular in his choice of assistants, that he could not bear the confident, half-licked cubs that were usually wished upon him by the Navy Office – had even paid one to go away out of the
Wager
and transfer himself elsewhere – and that he was now waiting for a young man who had been strongly recommended to him as a person of a truly scientific cast of mind. ‘Such a rare creature, these days,’ said Mr Eliot. ‘It was quite different when I was young.’ Here a group of officers came in, brown-faced men whose voices reverberated in the big room, filling it with sound; another naval surgeon came just behind them, Mr Woodfall of the
Centurion,
and he stopped by Mr Eliot to wish him good day and to tell him that Mr Anson had been to the Admiralty already.

Mr Anson, the captain of the
Centurion
and the commodore of the squadron, appeared as if by magic as the surgeon spoke his name, stood there for a moment, looking for someone, and then walked away: in spite of his preoccupation and state of dismal worry, Jack looked with the closest attention at his commanding officer, a tall man, upright, with the head of a Roman emperor, though tanned and weather-beaten – a plainly dressed man: blue coat, buff waistcoat, hat with the King’s cockade and nothing more, a plain steel-hilted sword.

‘Let us have a pot of chocolate together,’ said Mr Eliot to Mr Woodfall. ‘Hey there. Ho. Ahoy. A pot of chocolate here.’ The older waiters at Thacker’s were used to being called as if they were three miles off in an impenetrable fog, but the new ones were rendered nervous by it, and were sometimes obliged to give up their places. ‘As I was telling our young friend here,’ continued Mr Eliot, ‘a decent surgeon’s mate is scarcely to be found in these degenerate days.’ He went on to speak of the desirable qualities of the young man who was to come: learned, even to the point of knowing some Greek, skilled, and above all interested in his profession, in its widest aspects, in its philosophical implications – qualities all too rare in the common run of modern surgeon’s mates. ‘Where,’ he cried, ‘will you find a young fellow nowadays who will purchase a dead baboon at the cost of his suppers for six months, and preserve its vitals in spirits of wine for the pure love of anatomy? Best rectified spirits of wine at eighteenpence the Winchester quart.’

‘Ah,’ said his colleague mournfully, ‘where indeed? But have you not left it very late, my dear sir?’

‘For such a paragon it is worth it,’ said Mr Eliot. ‘And so you would say if you had seen the fellow the Navy Office sent me last month – a very mere rake indeed. Besides,’ he added confidentially, ‘I though it prudent to wait until my brother-in-law and our friend Bartholomew were both on the board of examiners – it is their turn now, you know – in case of any little difficulty with this young man’s qualifications. His indentures are regular, but he has not quite served out his time. I prefer to take him to the Hall myself, see him examined and certificated, take him to the Navy Office, see to his warrant
directly, and so carry him down to Portsmouth, all in one.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Woodfall, getting up, ‘I wish you joy of him. I am sure a good mate is a wonderful comfort to a man, particularly on a voyage …’ He walked away, puffing and holding his arms wide apart to indicate the extraordinary length of the intended voyage.

‘Come, Mr Byron, another cup of chocolate?’ said Mr Eliot; and looking at him more keenly he asked, ‘Are you feeling quite well?’

‘Oh, I’m well enough, thankee, sir,’ said Jack wearily; then suddenly, unburdening himself, he said, ‘The truth of the matter is that I have lost my friend, and your talking about a philosophical cove dissecting things brought him so clearly to my mind, I could cry like a girl. Upon my honour I could. Toby would dissect you anything you like, a baboon, or a horse, or a mole. Anything. I sit here all day long in case he should find his way – I’ve left instructions at the house, of course. He had only been one day in London. Blast and crush me down,’ cried Jack, wiping his eye, ‘you talk about your fellow knowing some Greek: why, Toby Barrow was speaking it as quick as I speak English when he was only ten; and Latin too, like a bench of infernal bishops, rot them all.’

‘Quietly now, Mr Byron; do not curse the bishops so. Perhaps I could help you, if you would tell me clearly what has happened.’

His listened attentively, and he was advising Jack to apply to the magistrate at Bow Street and to the Mansion House when a thin young man with knock knees and a cheese-coloured face was brought up to him by the waiter: this person carried a bridal posy in one hand and a letter in the other. ‘Be not severe,’ he said, putting the letter into Mr Eliot’s hand. ‘Severity were out of place,’ he said, with an arch simper, and left them gazing after him.

The youth, Mr Eliot’s supposed assistant, had escaped from his family’s control and had married; and this was the bride’s brother to bring the news that the paragon did not choose to go round the world any more.

Mr Eliot took no notice of this other than by checking an oath and saying, ‘Perhaps we are as well shot of him: his father told me that he was attached to some odious wench. But as I was saying, the magistrate at Bow Street has proper officers for this kind of enquiry: I will step in at his office, if you wish, and find whether they have any news.’

‘It is exceedingly good in you, sir,’ said Jack, ‘particularly when you have been so disappointed –’ nodding towards the letter.

‘As for that, I say nothing: it is no use running your head against a brick wall. I cannot unmarry the fellow; and by not giving vent to my vexation I shall certainly feel less of it. Did you say that your friend was properly indentured?’

‘Yes, sir; his paper is still at the house. It has a chart of a mole’s innards on the back of it, though.’

Mr Eliot stood for a moment in thought. ‘I shall have to see what they have at the Navy Office,’ he said. ‘I shall have to see what they have to offer me. Though if they have nothing better than the common run of ‘prentice sawbones, I shall sail without one. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again,’ he said, nodding very firmly and moving off. ‘But,’ he said, coming back, ‘if your friend should be found before we sail, I may be able to serve him.’

Jack sat down again and leant back against the partition of his box; he was feeling tired and stupid, for he had scarcely been to bed these three nights past; and as well as searching the vast expanse of London he had been obliged to go down to the Nore and back. But he felt comforted by Mr Eliot’s kindness, and he closed his eyes for a catnap. ‘I shall take a quarter of an hour’s sleep,’ he said to himself. ‘And I wish those infernal swabs would make less of a din.’

The infernal swabs were a party of midshipmen in the box behind him: they had been roving about all night, in a greater or less degree of intoxication, and they were still inclined to be troublesome and obnoxious. They were arguing now, interminably and without the least hope of reaching a conclusion, about the identity of certain monstrous birds that had been seen upon the Monument the day before. Storks, pelicans and frigate-birds were suggested, rocs, phoenixes and tabernacles: here they drifted off on to a profitless discussion of tabernacles, whether birds or no, and Jack began to sink down into his nap. He had heard of these birds several times already: they had perched up there on the gilt ball of the Monument for an hour or more, during the time he was coming up from the Nore in the press smack; they had attracted an immense crowd and a great deal of speculation. They were universally held to be portents; but what they portended was less certain.

‘In my opinion,’ said a milk-faced midshipman (whose mother
would have wept to see him, unwashed, slobbered with brandy that he could scarcely drink and smelling of tobacco that he could scarcely smoke) ‘in my opinion those fowl mean a frightful prodigious ghastly disaster, which would probably be a very bad thing.’

Jack leapt to his feet as if he had been stung and ran with astonishing speed to the door, where he cannoned from a rear-admiral into a post-captain and fell heavily over Ransome’s feet. They asked him what he thought he was doing, and where he thought he was going, and the admiral struck him repeatedly with a gold-headed cane from the Malacca Straits; ordinarily Jack would have resented this, admiral or no, but now he scrambled to his feet, seized Ransome by the hand and ran furiously down the street, crying out, ‘Come on,’ in a very vehement tone.

Coming to the river stairs, he bawled for a pair of oars. ‘Give way,’ he said, thrusting Ransome into the boat, and he exhorted the rowers to pull with all the force and eloquence that ever he had learnt at sea, directing them to pass straight down the river to the press tender in the Pool. At the sound of the words ‘press tender’ the watermen paused, and Jack cried, ‘Give way, can’t you? You have got your infernal certificates, han’t you?’ The watermen certainly had, and they could not be taken by the press-gang nor kept aboard the press tender; but, as the bow oar explained, ‘It makes the blood go thin as gin in my arteries.’

‘Veins,’ said stroke.

‘Arteries,’ said bow.

‘Ransome,’ said Jack, ‘you have heard about these birds on the Monument? Well, don’t you see that they would bring Toby out of his grave, if they were to appear again? You must go ashore at Old Swan stairs, buy a couple of turkeys – turkeys, mind you, Ransome; none of your common geese – and hoist them at the top of the Monument. And I will go down to the tender – Dick Penn is in command – and bring up a thundering great party to stop every alley, once the crowd has gathered. Do you understand? Have you any money?’

Ransome struck the side of his nose with his finger to indicate comprehension, jingled his pocket to show his wealth, and remarking that Jack was a credit to his Ma, stepped on to a lighter that was moving in to the shore, and thence, in order to lose no valuable
seconds, to a wherry, adjuring it ‘to shove in, cully, and do the handsome thing for once in its – life,’ words which the wherry recognised as its native tongue, and which it complied with, wafting the intruder ashore with all the elegance that a wherry is capable of.

Some hours earlier than this the first lieutenant of the guard-ship had told Mr Richard Penn, the fifth lieutenant (and until recently a midshipman and a colleague of Jack’s) that what he, the first lieutenant, wanted was a little zeal, initiative and mother-wit on the part of Mr Penn. The first lieutenant freely acknowledged that it would be vain to look for seamanship, intelligence or beauty in Mr Penn; but at least the first lieutenant had a right, he hoped he had a right, to expect Mr Penn, when in command of the press smack, to bring back something better than crippled half-wits with certificates of exemption. Were there no idle apprentices left in the City of London, no stout, able-bodied young men? Did the entire uncertificated population resemble Mr Penn?

These harsh words were still rankling in the bosom of the press-tender’s captain when Jack appeared on the river, and crying, ‘Hoy, Dick,’ darted up the side.

‘Good morning, Mr Byron,’ said Dick coldly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Jack, saluting and growing quite red. ‘May I have a word with you?’

‘I am going below, Mr Hape,’ said the captain to a dwarfish midshipman, and led the way into a kind of moist cupboard.

‘Now, Jack?’ he said, sitting down and waving to an empty locker.

‘I am very sorry I forgot myself just now,’ said Jack earnestly, ‘but I am in a great taking, Dick, and I rely upon you absolutely. Do you know about those birds at the Monument?’

At the Monument itself Ransome was having difficulties that he had not allowed for: he had bought his turkeys easily enough, and although the poultryman had foisted the oldest, stringiest birds in the market upon him – birds that had proved unnaturally strong, cunning, malignant and resourceful – he had them under control by now, and he had reached the door of the Monument, only to be told that he might not bring them in.

‘No turkeys. No fowls whatsoever,’ said the keeper of the Monument,
who, seeing that Ransome was a sailor, supposed that he was drunk. ‘And no tarpaulins, either,’ he added, with offensive sobriety.

‘In the King’s name,’ cried Ransome, in a hoarse wheeze.

The keeper hesitated for a moment; but the turkeys, who were peering at him inquisitively with their little beady eyes, were too preposterous to have been brought on his Majesty’s service, and the keeper turned his back. How unwise was this, how imprudent a move, and how sincerely the keeper regretted his temerity when he felt an iron hand upon his neck and found himself dashed with appalling force into the Monument.

The Monument, as the world in general knows, is a hollow column, with a spiral staircase inside it: for a brief interval this tube was filled with a whirling mass of keeper, turkey and enraged sailorman, a confused mass that ascended to emerge crimson and breathless on the square parapet under the brass knob that tops the edifice.