The Unknown Shore Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 plainenough that I have much more right than most, having been so very ill-used.’
    ‘Did you say it was a secret