The Unknown Shore

  ‘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?’

  But Tobias had lived through a very great deal in the course of that day: he had been hunted down by the press-gang and taken, restored to his friends with surprising violence, clothed, examined by Mr Eliot, examined by the surgeons, and provided with a warrant, a ship, a career and the prospect of seeing creatures unknown to natural philosophy in the immediate future; and now, in the moments that had just passed, it had seemed that the process was to be reversed. The speed at which they had had to move – flying to Marlborough Street for money, to Mrs Fuller’s for his indenture and his remaining possessions, quite apart from the racing about with Mr Eliot – had left no time for eating, and now Tobias was quite exhausted with nervous tension, hunger and emotion. He said ‘Sack?’ nodded for a minute, and quietly observed, ‘It was a very good sort of sack, in the first place.’ He then went to sleep, so utterly and completely to sleep that he was obliged to be lashed on to the luggage to keep him on the coach at all, and Jack supported him to stop him from falling sideways as the coach ran through Guildford, Godalming, Mousehill, Seven Thorns, Petersfield, all the way past Purbrook and right up Portsdown Hill, from whose height the whole vast expanse of the harbour could be seen, the dockyard, the fortifications and, far out, under the sheltering Isle of Wight, the squadron riding at St Helen’s, the Centurion, the Gloucester, the Severn, the Pearl, the Tryall sloop and the Wager.

  Chapter Four

  THE SQUADRON did not sail that Saturday. Mr Eliot learnt that it was not to sail the minute he set foot to ground in Portsmouth, from the most authoritative of all sources, his own captain. Captain Kidd was coming out of the Crown, in company with Captain Mitchel of the Pearl, as the coach pulled up, and as soon as he saw the surgeon he called out, ‘You might have come down by the wagon, doctor, if you had pleased, ha, ha,’ with the greatest good humour.

  Mr Eliot had served forty years in the Navy, and he received the news with perfect equanimity, only observing that the Admiralty would find it cheaper to cut their throats out of hand, than to kill them by sending them round the Horn still later in the year. Jack was also quite unmoved by learning that all their frantic hurry had been useless; he remarked that it would be just as well for Toby to have a decent meal and to spend the rest of the night in a bed ashore – it was always more agreeable to report to one’s ship in the morning.

  The morning of Saturday was as sweet and clear and blue as an English summer’s day can be. Tobias had woken to the sound of gulls, and to the realisation of what yesterday had done and what today was to bring – a very vivid, sudden and delightful awakening. He found that Jack was up already, washed, dressed and fully alive, peering at Gosport through a telescope.

  ‘Would you like to have a look?’ he said. ‘You can’t see St Helen’s from here, but if you screw yourself into the corner, you can get a charming view of the hospital.’

  Tobias looked at Haslar, looked at three herring-gulls, several black-headed gulls and a shag. ‘Gulls, eh, Jack?’ he said, with a triumphant munch of his jaws. ‘Sea-birds. I shall go out and look at ‘em more closely.’

  ‘Don’t you think it,’ said Jack.

  ‘Must I not go out?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, very firmly. ‘You are never to go out, Toby, unless I am with you. Not by land, anyhow. So don’t you think it.’

  Tobias could not but acknowledge the justice of this, and Jack, having gained his point, instantly proposed taking a turn while breakfast was preparing.

  If he had wished to display the naval might of England at its greatest advantage, he could not have chosen a better day: the vast fleet against Carthagena and the Spanish main was fitting out, as well as their own squadron, and men-of-war of every rate lay at Spithead, with transports among them, and tenders and ships’ boats perpetually coming and going, their white sails on the sea answering to the scraps of white cloud that were passing easily over the pure blue sky. The royal dockyard, the greatest in the world, reared its astonishing forest of masts in even more profusion than usual, and although the day was a holiday in the civilian part of the town, the yard echoed and re-bellowed with the din of hammers. The clear, sharp air from the sea mingled with the smell of tar, paint and cordage from the dockyard and with a certain spirituous mixture of brandy and rum that emanated from the town in general.

  Jack pointed out their own squadron over at St Helen’s, too far to be distinguished without a glass; he pointed out the Royal George, a three-decker with a hundred guns, and all the other rates, from the first right down to the Salamander, a bomb-ketch of eight guns (and those of the smallest kind); he defined a ship of the line and a frigate, a ship, a barque and a brig, and he would have defined a great deal more had he not been interrupted by the sound of cheering. It was the Lively, a sloop of war, coming out of the harbour: she glided down to within a few yards of them; her gaff-topsail took the breeze, her close-hauled mainsail filled with a huge smooth curve, and she heeled away, running faster and faster, as though she herself made the wind; it was as pretty a sight as could be imagined – new paint, new canvas, gleaming decks and shining brass; her new commander’s pride and joy – and the long wake straight as she sailed so tightly for the green island over the water.

  ‘How did you like that, Toby?’ asked Jack, when the cheering had died away. Tobias did not reply, but he slowly gnashed his teeth, and his white face showed a flush of delight.

  On the way back to the Crown Jack pointed out a vice-admiral of the blue and two post-captains, and he thought it was well to profit by Tobias’ present nautical enthusiasm to impress upon him the necessity for a due respect for rank.

  ‘You cannot conceive,’ he said, earnestly spreading butter upon his toast in the coffee-room of the Crown, ‘my dear Toby, you cannot conceive the gulf between a captain and a mere person.’ He went on in this strain, while Tobias ate four boiled eggs out of a napkin; but he doubted whether he was doing much good, and for some pensive moments he envisaged the consequences of Tobias’ turning upon the commodore with reasons in favour of a democratic management of the squadron. However, his mind, saturated with buttered toast and coffee, did not dwell for long upon this, and with a sudden grin he said, ‘It is infernal good luck, by the way, that we don’t sail directly: you would have had to put up with purser’s slops and whatever we could have bought at Madeira, or wherever it is we water. But now we can fill you a sea-chest in a decent sort of way.’ Jack, like all his relatives on his father’s side, was impatient of ready money; solvency, with gold jingling in his pocket, seemed to him a thoroughly unnatural condition; and few things gave him a more lively pleasure than
spending. The thought of spending a considerable amount, very quickly, and upon Tobias, filled him with such an agreeable sense of anticipation that he whistled aloud. Jack had a true and melodious whistle, but it was rather loud indoors, and a yellow-faced lieutenant at the next table put his hand to his forehead and glared at them with pure hatred. ‘But,’ said Jack, glancing at the clock, ‘we had better report first; besides, that will enable you to find out what you will need in the way of saws and knives and so on.’

  They walked down to the water and called for a boat. ‘Wager,’ said Jack, stepping neatly in. ‘Easy,’ he said, picking Tobias out of the bottom and setting him upright. Tobias had stepped in while the boat was rising, and (as it has happened to so many landsmen) he had ignominiously doubled up at the knees. ‘It was the wave,’ Jack explained.

  ‘Was it indeed?’ said Tobias. ‘The billow? I shall grow accustomed to them in time, no doubt.’

  It was a long pull, but the morning was so splendid, the fleet and its activities so absorbing, that for more than half of the way they sat silent: when the Wager was well in sight, Jack bade the waterman bear away for the head of the squadron, and so come down to her, she lying in the last berth but one.

  ‘But you said go straight for the store-ship first,’ said the waterman.

  Jack had been thinking of the Wager by the same plain shameful name, but it stung him exceedingly to hear anyone else say it, and he desired the waterman very passionately to stow his gab and to attend to his duty. The waterman, who had been cursed by admirals before Jack was born, took this with provoking calm, only observing that ‘it would be an extra fourpence, and twopence for the oaths.’

  ‘Store-ship,’ muttered Jack. ‘Damn your eyes.’ But as they came abreast of St Helen’s church, where the commodore lay, and turned to pass down the line, his spirits revived: it was a beautiful line of ships, and he explained them to Tobias as they passed. ‘The Centurion,’ he said, ‘she’s a sixty-gun ship, do you see? A fourth rate. Damn it, Toby, that’s where we should be, alongside of Keppel and Ransome. Look, going along by the hances, there’s the commodore – do you see him, Toby? He is pointing down into the waist.’