Free The Unknown Shore by Patrick O’Brian

out of place,’ he said, with an arch simper, and left them gazing after him.
    The youth, Mr Eliot’s supposed assistant, had escaped from his family’s control and had married; and this was the bride’s brother to bring the news that the paragon did not choose to go round the world any more.
    Mr Eliot took no notice of this other than by checking an oath and saying, ‘Perhaps we are as well shot of him: his father told me that he was attached to some odious wench. But as I was saying, the magistrate at Bow Street has proper officers for this kind of enquiry: I will step in at his office, if you wish, and find whether they have any news.’
    ‘It is exceedingly good in you, sir,’ said Jack, ‘particularly when you have been so disappointed –’ nodding towards the letter.
    ‘As for that, I say nothing: it is no use running your head against a brick wall. I cannot unmarry the fellow; and by not giving vent to my vexation I shall certainly feel less of it. Did you say that your friend was properly indentured?’
    ‘Yes, sir; his paper is still at the house. It has a chart of a mole’s innards on the back of it, though.’
    Mr Eliot stood for a moment in thought. ‘I shall have to see what they have at the Navy Office,’ he said. ‘I shall have to see what they have to offer me. Though if they have nothing better than the common run of ‘prentice sawbones, I shall sail without one. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again,’ he said, nodding very firmly and moving off. ‘But,’ he said, coming back, ‘if your friend should be found before we sail, I may be able to serve him.’
    Jack sat down again and leant back against the partition of his box; he was feeling tired and stupid, for he had scarcely been to bed these three nights past; and as well as searching the vast expanse of London he had been obliged to go down to the Nore and back. But he felt comforted by Mr Eliot’s kindness, and he closed his eyes for a catnap. ‘I shall take a quarter of an hour’s sleep,’ he said to himself. ‘And I wish those infernal swabs would make less of a din.’
    The infernal swabs were a party of midshipmen in the box behind him: they had been roving about all night, in a greater or less degree of intoxication, and they were still inclined to be troublesome and obnoxious. They were arguing now, interminably and without the least hope of reaching a conclusion, about the identity of certain monstrous birds that had been seen upon the Monument the day before. Storks, pelicans and frigate-birds were suggested, rocs, phoenixes and tabernacles: here they drifted off on to a profitless discussion of tabernacles, whether birds or no, and Jack began to sink down into his nap. He had heard of these birds several times already: they had perched up there on the gilt ball of the Monument for an hour or more, during the time he was coming up from the Nore in the press smack; they had attracted an immense crowd and a great deal of speculation. They were universally held to be portents; but what they portended was less certain.
    ‘In my opinion,’ said a milk-faced midshipman (whose motherwould have wept to see him, unwashed, slobbered with brandy that he could scarcely drink and smelling of tobacco that he could scarcely smoke) ‘in my opinion those fowl mean a frightful prodigious ghastly disaster, which would probably be a very bad thing.’
    Jack leapt to his feet as if he had been stung and ran with astonishing speed to the door, where he cannoned from a rear-admiral into a post-captain and fell heavily over Ransome’s feet. They asked him what he thought he was doing, and where he thought he was going, and the admiral struck him repeatedly with a gold-headed cane from the Malacca Straits; ordinarily Jack would have resented this, admiral or no, but now he scrambled to his feet, seized Ransome by the hand and ran furiously down the street, crying out, ‘Come on,’ in a very vehement tone.
    Coming to the river