The Unknown Shore Read online

  This recollection did not cheer him very much, however, and he looked so anxiously forward for the main road into which this short cut should fall that when it appeared, ghostly in the night, he did not believe it, but took it for a stream. Yet no sooner were they on the highway, with its hard surface underfoot, than the lantern of the Fox appeared – a little, low and rather squalid ale-house, but more welcome at this time than the grandest stage-coach inn on the road.

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, pushing away his empty plate and gasping with repletion, ‘that went down very well: Toby, what do you say to a bowl of punch?’

  Toby was about to say ‘What is punch?’ when he found that his voice was completely gone: he smiled secretly, and Jack called for the landlord.

  ‘There,’ said Jack, wielding the ladle through the fragrant cloud that rose from the punch-bowl, ‘that will do you all the good in the world. Now, as I was saying, the position of the fleet is this …’

  Toby drank up his punch: he hoped that it would help him keep awake and to pay attention, and indeed it did seem to have some such effect, in that it made him gasp and sneeze: he refilled his glass.

  ‘… so there they still are at St Helen’s and I am still at the Nore, which is a very great shame. I protest, Toby, that it is quite disgusting …’

  Toby was very sorry to hear that it was a disgusting shame; but he had ridden sixty-two miles that day, after a sleepless night of the greatest emotional agitation that he had ever known, and now, for the first time in his life, he had nearly a pint of strong punch glowing inside him. He was almost entirely taken up with watching the strange coming and going of Jack’s face the other side of the candle – sometimes it was large and distinct and sometimes it was small, blurred and remote – but by taking laborious care he could make out sentences of Jack’s discourse, now and then.

  ‘… and so, my dear Toby,’ said Jack’s voice through the thickening haze, ‘that is what I meant in the very first place, when I said “Come with me, and I will make your fortune.” If all goes well, and upon my word I don’t see how it can fail, we shall come back amazingly rich.’

  Tobias allowed his eyes to close upon these encouraging words, and at once an exquisitely comfortable darkness engulfed him. He heard no more, except an unknown, distant voice saying, ‘I will take his feet. Why, bless my soul, Mr Byron, sir, your friend has got a pair of list slippers on.’

  These slippers were the first things that met his eye in the morning. Somebody had put them on the window-seat, where they caught the first light of the sun in all their violent glory, and Jack was sitting by them, looking pink and cheerful.

  ‘Lard, Toby, how you do sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly five o’clock.’

  Slowly Tobias looked from the slippers to Jack, and from Jack to the slippers. He had been very deeply asleep, and it was some moments before he could remember where he was and how he came to be there. ‘I have run away: we are half-way to London,’ he observed to himself. ‘And I dreamt that Jack had put me into the way of making my fortune.’

  ‘I dreamt that you said that we should make our fortunes presently,’ he said to Jack, as they rode away from the ale-house.

  Jack looked at him with a very knowing air, and said, ‘I don’t believe you remember much of what I told you last night.’

  ‘No, truly I do not,’ said Tobias. ‘It is much confused in my memory – not unlike a series of dreams.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, laughing with wonderful good humour for so early in the morning, ‘I shall tell you again. You know I am in the guard-ship at the Nore, although I was promised to be posted to the Burford: and the Burford was the flagship at Porto Bello?’

  ‘Yes, I remember you told me that before; and it was a great disappointment to you not to be at the battle.’

  ‘It was indeed: Admiral Vernon had promised it to my uncle, or at least practically promised it; and it was a horribly shabby thing to sail off in that manner, leaving his best friend’s nephew languishing between a guard-ship and a press-smack at the Nore. The Nore is a very disgusting station, Toby.’

  ‘I am much concerned to hear it, Jack.’

  ‘But, however, it is probably all for the best. It is perfectly obvious that the Admiralty owes me some reparation – no reasonable being could deny that for a moment – and this secret expedition gives them a perfect chance of making all square.’

  ‘What secret expedition?’

  ‘The one I was telling you about – but you did not take it in, I find. It is an expedition,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘that is fitting out for the South Sea, to attack the Spaniards there, where they least expect it. Lard, Toby,’ he cried, ‘think of Chile and Peru, and all the treasure there. Think of Acapulco and Panama and the Philippines. Pieces of eight,’ he cried, in a transport of greed and enthusiasm, throwing his arms out to indicate the immensity of the wealth. He was a fairly good horseman, but his fervour for prize money was too much for him, and he fell slowly over the chesnut’s shoulder.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, as Tobias dusted him. ‘It was all in a good cause. The whole point is, that I must be posted to one of these ships. And if I had gone off to the West Indies in the Burford I could not have been here to join this expedition, could I? Everybody who has any interest is trying to get into it, of course, but it is plain enough that I have much more right than most, having been so very ill-used.’

  ‘Did you say it was a secret expedition?’

  Oh yes. You must not speak of it, you know.’

  ‘Then how is it that people are trying to get into it?’

  ‘Well, it is secret in a certain sense; I mean, it is officially secret. That is to say, everybody in the know knows about it, but nobody else.’

  A single magpie crossed the road, and Jack paused to see if another would follow: but the bird was alone. ‘I wish that damned bird had chosen another moment to go over,’ he said. ‘But as I was saying, I have a perfect right to the appointment; and what is much more important, I have got just about twice as much interest as I need to get aboard. So, do you see, I shall be able to get in with half, and use the rest to draw you in after me. Lard, Toby, I don’t know how a fellow with your simple tastes will spend all the money.’

  ‘How very kind you are, Jack: I am very much obliged to your goodness. As for a great deal of money, I don’t know that I want it; but when you consider, Jack, that not one single sentient being has even remotely glimpsed the birds of the Pacific Ocean and its shores -’

  ‘But, my poor Toby, people have been sailing round the Horn and into the South Sea these hundred years and more.’

  ‘Only mariners, Jack: and, with respect, your mariner is but a shallow creature. I have read Narborough and Dampier and the few other voyages into those regions, and the unhappy men might as well have been blind. They saw nothing, nothing.’

  ‘They saw noddies and boobies. I particularly remember that Woods Rogers said, “Boobies and noddies.”’

  ‘They saw birds that they called noddies and boobies; but do we know that they were noddies and boobies? May they not merely have resembled noddies and boobies? It is no good coming to me and saying, “Ha, ha, I have seen noddies and boobies in the Great South Sea,” unless you can support your statement with the measurements and weights, and preferably the skins, of your noddies and boobies.’

  This seemed a frivolous objection to Jack, and he only replied, ‘Still, you would find it prodigiously agreeable to have a fortune, you know. You could lay it out in sending fellows off to Kamschatka, or Crim Tartary, to gaze at the boobies there, and measure ‘em, too.’

  They wrangled about the disposition of the money for some miles, and then Jack said, ‘Well, you shall do whatever you please with it, Toby, if only you will sit the right way round.’

  ‘I beg pardon,’ said Tobias, loosening his grip on the grey cob’s tail and swarming back into the saddle: the cob was not the steadiest mount in the world, and a tenth part of this behaviour in anyone else would h
ave sent it into a foaming fit; but it trotted placidly along the road to Bedford, and Jack resumed his account of the secret expedition.

  ‘There are to be five ships. The Gloucester and the Severn are both fifties, and the Centurion – she’s the flagship – is a sixty; then there is the old Pearl, a forty-gun ship, a very pretty sailer and quick in her stays.’

  ‘Five ships, you said.’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s the Wager – she’s the fifth. Centurion, Gloucester, Severn, Pearl and Wager, that makes five. But the Wager don’t count. She’s only an old Indiaman, bought into the service as a storeship, because there is some ridiculous plan of trading with the Indians, and they need a ship for their bolts of cloth and beads and so on. In my opinion it is a vile job – a mere trick to get a vast deal of money into the pocket of a pack of merchants and politicians. Politics are monstrous dirty, you know, and everything is done by backstairs influence. Anyhow, it is quite absurd to call the Wager a man-of-war; and she only mounts twenty guns. Then there is a sloop, the Tryall, and that is all the King’s ships; though there will probably be a victualler or two to carry things some of the way – some little merchantman or other,’ he said with kindly patronage. ‘Now the Severn and the Gloucester have their full complement of officers, because they were already in commission, you see; but the Centurion has not, and that is what we must aim for. I know some of her people -excellent creatures – and my friend Keppel is very anxious that I should join him there. I told you about him, did I not? We were shipmates in the Royal Sovereign.’

  ‘The one who set fire to you, and thrust you into the North Sea?’

  ‘Yes. Augustus Keppel: he is only quite a young fellow, but he can be amazingly good company.’

  The white gate of a turnpike appeared as they turned a corner and Jack observed, ‘This is the Clapham pike already.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘We are doing very well.’

  ‘Jack,’ said Tobias, when the gate was far behind them, ‘when you paid the man at the turnpike before this, he gave you some money. He said, “Here’s your change, your honour.” This one not.’

  ‘Why, no,’ replied Jack. ‘I hadn’t any change at the first one, so I gave him half a crown; but then of course for this one I already had a pocketful of change.’

  Tobias was pondering upon this, when very suddenly he whipped his leg over the saddle, passed the cob’s reins into Jack’s hand and slipped to the ground. He tripped from the speed, but recovered himself and vanished into the tall reeds that stood about a marsh on the low side of the road. The horses saw fit to indulge in a good deal of capering, and Jack dropped his hat and his whip before he brought them to a sense of their duty.

  He was waiting with them by the side of the road when Tobias reappeared, and he exclaimed, with something less than his usual good humour, ‘Why, damn your blood, Toby, what do you mean by plunging off in that wild manner? How can you be so strange? You have been in the water,’ he added, seeing that Tobias’ lower half was soaked and his stockings and slippers were masked with greenish mud. ‘You look as pleased as if you had found a guinea.’

  Tobias rarely showed any emotion, but now his face displayed a private gleam; and when he was mounted he showed Jack a brown, speckled feather, saying, ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘A phoenix?’

  ‘No,’ said Tobias, with inward triumph. ‘A bittern. I never saw a bittern before.’ He munched silently and nodded, remembering the bittern in vivid detail: but recollecting himself he cried, ‘I beg your pardon, Jack! I do indeed. You were telling me …’ He hesitated.

  Jack was never one to take umbrage; he laughed, and said, ‘I was telling you about Keppel, before we passed the toll-house.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Keppel; your excellent good friend Mr Keppel,’ said Tobias, with the most concentrated attention, but secretly fondling his bittern’s feather.

  ‘Well, Keppel, you know, has a prodigious great deal of interest, and seeing that there are two vacancies in the Centurion – two midshipmen unprovided – he has already started stirring up his relatives on my behalf. That is one of the reasons why I am in such a hurry to be in London, because I have appointed to meet him tomorrow.’ They were coming into Bedford at this time, under a threatening sky, and when they had baited their horses and set off again, the first drops were falling.

  ‘There is another short cut of Charles’s between Cotton End and Deadman’s Green,’ said Jack doubtfully. ‘But seeing that we are in a hurry, perhaps we had better keep to the high road. It looks quite dirty,’ he said, looking up at the towering light-grey clouds. Behind the clouds the sky showed black, and as he spoke a flash of lightning ripped across: the thunder followed close behind, and so loud as to drown his words. He grinned as he calmed the nervous chestnut, and told Tobias, in a nautical bellow, that it looked as though it might come on something prodigious. He dearly loved a storm; rain alone satisfied him, provided there was enough of it, but if it were accompanied by a very great deal of wind, then it raised his spirits to a very high pitch.

  ‘Have you brought your greatcoat?’ he asked Tobias. Tobias shook his head. ‘What’s in that valise?’ asked Jack, shouting over the double peal.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tobias, and as far as he knew this was true – he had put nothing in the valise: it had been there, strapped behind the saddle, as much part of the harness as the big horse-pistols in front, when he had mounted, and he had paid no attention to it. But in point of fact it was filled with necessaries. ‘The poor boy cannot go out into the world without so much as a clean shirt,’ had been Mrs Chaworth’s instant reply on hearing that Tobias was on the wing. She might disapprove of Tobias in some ways, but she had a real affection for him, and she anxiously rummaged the house for things of a suitable size – Jack’s were all far too big – and Georgiana, guided by who knows what unhappy chance, crowned the whole valise-full with another pair of strong list slippers, all bedewed with tears. But Tobias was unaware of this, and the excellent greatcoat behind him remained untouched: Jack therefore left his alone, and very soon both of them were so exceedingly wet that the water ran down inside their clothes, filled their shoes, and poured from them in a stream that contended with the water and mud flung up from the road. The extreme fury of the storm was soon over: the thunder and the lightning moved away to terrify Huntingdon, Rutland and Nottingham, but the rain had set in for the day and it fell without the least respite from that moment onwards. However, Tobias was wonderfully indifferent to foul weather, and Jack, though he preferred a dry back, could put up with a wet one as well as anybody, so they rode steadily through the downpour, conversing as soon as the thunder would let them.

  ‘You have often mentioned interest,’ said Tobias. ‘What is this interest, I beg?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, considering, ‘it is interest, you know. That is to say, influence, if you understand me – very much the same thing as influence. Everything goes by interest, more or less. It is really a matter of doing favours: I mean, suppose you are in Parliament, and there is a fellow, a minister or a private member, who wants a bill to be passed – if he comes to you and says, “You would oblige me extremely by voting for my bill,” and you do vote for his bill, why then the fellow is bound to do as much for you, if he is a man of honour. And if you do not happen to want to do anything in the parliamentary line, but prefer to get a place under Government for one of your friends, then the fellow with the bill must do what he can to gratify you. Besides, if he don’t, he will never have your vote again, ha, ha. That is, he must do what he can within reason: if you want a thundering good place, like being the Warden of the Stannaries with a thousand a year and all the work done by the deputy-warden, you must do a great deal more for it than just vote once or twice; but if it is just a matter of having someone let into a place where he will have to work very hard every day and get precious little pay for it, which is the case in the Navy, why then there is no great difficulty.’

  ‘I do not understand how a private member can
help you to a place.’

  ‘Why, don’t you see? You have two votes for the time being, your own and this other man’s: so when you go and ask your favour of the minister – the First Lord of the Admiralty, if it is the Navy – he knows that you are twice as important as if you were alone, so he is twice as willing to oblige you. And of course if you have a good many friends and relatives in the House, you are more important still, because if you were all to vote against the administration together you might bring them down and turn the ministers out. And then it is even better to be in the House of Lords, if you can manage it, because, do you see, a minister might decide that it was worth while offending a member of the Commons’ house, for at the next election he may not come in again, but a peer, once he is in, is in for the rest of his life, and he could do you an ill turn for years and years. But it is all pretty complicated, and not at all as simple as that.’

  ‘How do the people without interest get along?’

  ‘They have to rely on merit.’

  ‘Does that answer?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack slowly, ‘valour and virtue are very good things, I am sure: but I should be sorry to have to rely upon them alone, for my part.’

  Tobias made no reply, and they rode for a long way in silence through the rain. Jack looked at him from time to time, and regretted that he had been quite so talkative about the squalid side of political life.