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.
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,