The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      ‘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, СКАЧАТЬ