The Unknown Shore (7 page)

Ransome always carried a knife and a piece of line; he would have felt indecently naked without them. ‘Now, brother,’ he said, showing them to the keeper, ‘you must bear a hand. Because why? Because it’s in the King’s name, that’s why; and I swear I’ll have the quivering liver out of you, else.’ He tapped the keeper pleasantly in the region of his liver, and passed him the turkeys.

‘Do you swear it’s in the King’s name?’ asked the keeper in gasps, when he could fetch his breath.

‘Yus,’ said Ransome, spitting on his hands and eyeing the brass flames that sprang from the upper part of the Monument.

‘I wouldn’t give no countenance otherwise,’ said the keeper. ‘Have you got a wipe?’

Ransome passed him the powerful square of canvas that served him for a handkerchief, and the keeper neatly hooded the turkeys with it; the birds at once become docile and motionless. ‘You don’t know nothing about fowls,’ he said, with surly self-approbation.

‘Now listen, cock,’ said Ransome from amidst the flames, ‘I shall let you down this line, and you must make ‘em fast when I’m atop. And then, do you see, I shall haul ‘em up: and a flaming multitude will turn out: and we shall press a tidy few.’ He spoke slowly, for the top of the Monument is quite unlike the rigging of a ship, and although the two-hundred-foot drop did not worry him, the arrangement of the flames did; for whereas the rigging of a ship is
based upon utility, monumental brass flames are there for architectural effect – a wholly different principle.

‘If you had said you was the press earlier, we could of walked up like Christians,’ said the keeper sulkily. ‘Three hundred and forty-five steps, run up like Barbary apes.’

‘What?’ called Ransome, round the curve, and perilously engaged with some artistic flames.

‘Three hundred and forty-five steps,’ shouted the keeper. ‘Six inches thick.’

‘What?’

‘And ten and a half wide.’

‘All hands aft, Mr Hape,’ said the captain of the press smack.

The vessel was not so large that all hands could not hear this perfectly well, but they would not have considered it manners to move before the order was officially relayed. All hands, having been properly summoned, stood facing the quarter-deck, not in the stiff, wooden rigidity of soldiers, but in the easy,
dégagée
attitude of sailors – looking, it must be admitted, not unlike a band of dutiful gorillas: for these were the press-gang, equally impervious to the blows of the pressed and to the temptations of the shore.

‘Listen to Mr Byron,’ said the captain, whose mind was reeling with the magnitude of the design, and who did not trust himself to do it justice.

Jack explained it, to the infinite delight of the crew, and said, ‘But this is the great point: I am confident that a friend of mine will be there. He was lost, by reason of being freshly come up from the country. Now here’s a guinea,’ he cried out, pulling one out, ‘and here’s a guinea’ – pulling out another – ‘and if I had any more I would put it down – I can’t say fairer than that, damn your eyes. And the first man to clap him to, shall have them both. He is a little cove, ugly, with light green eyes and a pale face: wears an old black coat and sad-coloured breeches. Though he may have had the coat stolen off his back by now. He has an odd fashion of staring about him and jerking his head, and you might think he was simple; but he is a very learned cove indeed, and must be civilly used.’

‘Deck,’ hailed Mr Hape, who had taken a glass to the masthead, and who had been training it on the shining top of the Monument
these ten minutes past, ‘Deck there. I see two birds broke out on the top of the flaming urn.’

Tobias’ dress did not excite much comment: there were too many people in London who had sold their shirts in Rag Fair or who had lost them for one more to make people stare. He was clad in a sack; it had a hole in each corner for his legs, and it looked not altogether unlike the trunk-hose worn in an earlier age: it had been a very good sack, once, but it did impede his progress – having no belt, he was obliged to hold it up all the time, and he reached Fish Street Hill (the Monument is set in Fish Street Hill, not far from Pudding Lane) in a fume of anxiety, much later than the bulk of the spectators. Between twenty and thirty thousand people had already found leisure to come and stare, and already there were some twenty-five thousand opinions on the birds.

‘They are vultures,’ said a thin citizen, ‘a bird well known in the Orient.’

‘They are halieutic eagles,’ said a clergyman.

‘They are common turkeys,’ said Tobias.

This was not at all well received: there were cries of ‘Who are you, to put in your word?’ ‘Ragged muffin!’ ‘Saucy fellow!’ ‘Teach him better manners,’ and he was nudged, pushed and attempted to be cuffed by the thin citizen, who bore such malice that he repeatedly forced his way through the crowd to get in his blow.

‘They
are
turkeys,’ cried Tobias. But he was saved from the consequences by the panic-stricken shout of ‘The press! The press is coming!’ All the men who did not wish to serve their country in the Royal Navy (and their name was legion) instantly began to run as fast as they were able: in an instant Tobias was knocked flat in the mud and overrun by an anxious herd. ‘What press?’ he asked, getting up; but the only reply was, ‘Run, run. Run, or you will be taken.’

A week before Tobias would not have run at the recommendation of a terrified grocer; he would have stayed to watch, preferably on a slight eminence; but so many disastrous things had befallen him in London that he was ready to believe that still worse might be to come, and he began to run as industriously as his sack would allow him.

‘Deck, there,’ came a huge voice out of the sky. ‘Ho, deck, there,’ bawled Ransome from the top of the Monument; and at the sound Tobias ran the faster. ‘There he is, mate. A-making for the river.’

Tobias glanced over his shoulder, and saw two long-armed hairy men coming after him with naked cutlasses, running as fast as nightmares and crying ‘Hoo, hooroo, hoo’ as they came. He turned the corner of Fish Street Hill, scarcely touching the ground, raced along Thames Street and up Pudding Lane: the thudding feet were dying away behind him when from an alley to his left burst more hairy men with swords, like armed gorillas. By a superhuman effort he drew ahead of them, and turning into Eastcheap he saw the crowded street before him: as a hunted deer seeks refuge among horned cattle, so Tobias saw safety in the herd of citizens. His breath was coming short, the cries behind him louder, and he was labouring with dreadful effort: he could scarcely hear now for the panting of his own breath, and his sight was darkening; but he could make out the crowd not a hundred yards before him now, and he knew that if he could keep running for just those intervening yards he would be lost to view and safe.

‘Heave to,’ cried the gorillas, seeing their gold fly from them. ‘’Vast running, damn your eyes. Ho.’

Twenty yards to go, and he would be lost: ten yards, no more; and his sack fell from his nerveless hands, tangled about his feet and brought him thumping down under the exulting cries of his hideously armed pursuers.

‘I never thought it could have been done,’ said Mr Eliot, pushing Tobias up the steps of the Portsmouth coach.

‘There you are,’ cried Jack, pulling him up on to the roof. ‘I had been staring in the wrong direction. How did it go?’

‘Now then, old gentleman,’ cried the guard, ‘If you’re a-coming, get in.’

The door slammed, the whip cracked and the mail-coach pulled out of the yard: Mr Eliot crept past the knees of his fellow inside travellers, sat down in his place, took off his hat and his wig, put on a nightcap and repeated, ‘I never thought it could have been done,’ gasping as he did so.

Outside, Tobias was slowly scrambling across the lurching roof,
pulled by Jack and propelled by the guard, while London whirled by at a shocking pace.

‘How did it go?’ asked Jack again, very anxiously, when he had wedged Tobias into a sitting position, with his feet against the low iron rail and his back against the mound of luggage in the middle of the roof.

‘Very well, Jack, I thank you,’ said Tobias, and sat panting for a while. ‘They asked me what I should do in a case of ascites, and I satisfied ‘em out of Galen, Avicenna and Rhazes. And there was a civil gentleman who desired me to show him the insertions of the
pronator radii teres
on a little corpse they had at hand, which I did; the
pronator radii teres
is a very childish dissection, Jack.’ He yawned, stretched and as nearly as possible plunged over the edge as the coach turned left-handed into the Portsmouth road.

‘Yes,’ said Jack, grasping Tobias and hauling him back, ‘yes, I knew that would be all right’ – he had unlimited confidence in Tobias’ ability to satisfy any board of examiners whatever – ‘but did they give you a decent letter, and what about the Navy Office?’

‘The Navy Office was far less interesting than Surgeons’ Hall, Jack,’ said Tobias, and Jack turned pale. ‘At the Hall, while my letter was writing, the examiners took notice of my anatomical drawings of moles – they were on the back of my indenture, which lay on the table – and one of them made some very happy and enlightening remarks about the exiguity of the descending colon in the mole. But the Navy Office was very kind, nevertheless.’

‘Come, that’s better,’ said Jack, brightening. ‘You could scarcely expect them to harangue you about the guts of a mole, but if they were kind, why, that is the great point. What happened?’

‘We had to run there – Mr Eliot runs most surprisingly for a man of his age – because the conversation about moles had taken so much time, and the Navy Office was closing, to say nothing of the departure of the coach; and as we ran we passed the doorway where I used to sleep. But, however, we did not stop; I merely pointed it out to Mr Eliot as we ran, and said –’

‘Now, Toby, do not be so infernally long-winded. What happened?’

‘The secretary read me the letter that the surgeons had given me – it was sealed, you understand – and it said that they had examined
me, and that they judged me sufficient for a third rate.’

‘A third rate,’ exclaimed Jack, whistling.

‘Yes,’ said Tobias, with a frown. ‘It was a reflection that piqued me, I must admit.’

‘Damn your eyes, Toby; how can you be so unredeemed? Don’t you know what a third rate is?’

‘No,’ said Tobias, ‘but it don’t sound very eligible. Third rate – pah.’

‘A third rate,’ said Jack impressively, ‘is a seventy-four. Think of that, Toby.’ He looked at his friend with new respect: he had always considered Toby a creature of shining parts, but he had never connected him with the grandeur of a seventy-four. ‘Think of that, Toby,’ he repeated, in a solemn tone.

Toby thought of that; or at least he appeared to be thinking, for he gazed into the air and munched his jaws, as he did whenever he was thoughtful. His eyes slowly closed, and he rolled in his seat. ‘Go on,’ cried Jack. ‘What when he had read you the letter?’

‘Eh?’

‘What when the secretary had read you the letter? Come, Toby, don’t be stupid,’ said Jack, nudging him strongly by way of admonition.

‘Oh, then he said that he was sorry that he had no third rate to propose to me.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, in a low voice of cruel disappointment.

‘ “But,” says he,’ continued Tobias, ‘with a wink at Mr Eliot – I saw something pass between them, which I suspect of being a customary present, and must remember to pay it back – “But,” says he, winking in the manner that I have described, “I can offer you the
Wager,
if you will please to accept of it.” And with this he shook me by the hand and gave directions for my warrant to be made out at once; and as soon as it was signed Mr Eliot fee’d the clerk and the porter, wished me joy and ran me at a still greater speed to the coach.’

‘So you have it?’ cried Jack, his face shining all over with joy, ‘you have your warrant, Toby? I wish you joy, indeed I do. How glad I am, Toby,’ he cried, beating his friend upon the back, knocking him off his balance, rescuing him as he fell, shaking him fervently by the hand and adding, ‘Three times huzzay. You are in the Navy
now, old cock, and glory is just round the corner, strike me down. Let me have sight of it? The warrant?’

‘Yes,’ said Tobias, and he felt in his pocket. A concerned, preoccupied look came over him, and he began feeling all over his coat, waistcoat and breeches. He was no longer dressed in his sack: clearly, it would never have done to present himself at the Navy Office in a partially decayed sack, and they had kept him aboard the press smack while the bosun’s mate (a linen-draper’s apprentice in the days of William and Mary, and still considered a judge of cloth) new-rigged him at the nearest slop-shop. The bosun’s mate was stronger in goodwill than judgment; his time was limited to ten minutes and his purse to Jack’s remaining twelve shillings; and the result fitted Tobias rather less well than his sack. But that was of no importance at this juncture: now the point was that the pockets were all unfamiliar, and they had to be found and searched one by one, with conscientious effort. Toby’s face grew more and more preoccupied, and he began the search again, rummaging from top to bottom.

‘In your hat?’ asked Jack, tapping the villainous round felt dome that the slop-dealer had thrown in for fourpence and taking it off with due care that nothing should fly from it.

‘Do you think they would stop the coach?’ asked Tobias: but before Jack could reply, he cried, ‘Mr Eliot has it. He told me that it would be better if he had it: I am almost certain that I gave it to him.’

‘Toby, Toby,’ said Jack, with quiet despair, ‘if you go on like this I doubt you will ever arrive to any great age. Hold on to my legs, will you?’ He let himself over the edge of the roof, and appeared, purpling rapidly, upside-down at the window. ‘Do you have his paper?’ he roared.

Mr Eliot put his hand to his ear to show that he could not hear: on being asked again he nodded violently and tapped the bosom of his coat, with that curiously exaggerated silent pantomime that is usual whenever people communicate through a pane of glass.

Jack regained his place, an elegant mulberry, but with all his calm restored. ‘Now, Toby,’ he said, settling himself as comfortably as the incipient drizzle would allow, ‘will you tell me how you came to be in that sack?’