“‘And must Trelawny bleed? And must Trelawny die?
Then twenty thousand Cornishmen will know the reason why.’
Now who was Trelawny, and why must he die? No, I’m not going to tell you; you can hunt it up in some of my books. Then in a few hours we will be passing a little town called Lyme Regis—a town that never amounted to much, but some years ago the whole world was anxious about what was happening there. Who was the prince who landed there with an army, and tried to make himself King of England? You can hardly name a spot along this whole coast, but has some important events connected with it.”
Within the next twenty-four hours Kit saw a great many places that before had existed for him only on paper. His father had often brought home some of Clark Russell’s sea-stories, and Kit had read them without stopping to think that the places mentioned in them were real places. But here was “The Lizard,” a high point surmounted by a light-house that looked like an old castle; and Bolt Head, and Portland Bill, then St. Alban’s Head, and St. Catherine’s Point. He had read of all of those. Then by the next morning they were well up the Channel; and although the French coast was near enough to be seen indistinctly, they were so close to the British shore that they had a good view of Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, and Dungeness, all of which Kit had heard of. Then they ran into the narrow straits of Dover, past Folkestone, South Foreland, Deal, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, North Foreland, and Margate, and headed straight for the mouth of the Thames.
“Now, then, Silburn,” Captain Griffith said, when they were fairly in the river, “your work will soon begin. I don’t know where this cargo is to be landed, and it’s your place to find out. I shall run up as far as Gravesend and wait there for orders from the agents. They ought to have a tug there to meet us; but if they don’t, you will have to go on to London and find out where we are to discharge. They may order us up to the docks, or keep us below here.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered, as if “running up to London” were an everyday affair with him.
“They have a saying over here,” the Captain went on, “that it’s not worth while to do your own barking when you keep a dog; so as you are the supercargo, you’d better do the barking, which, in this case, is to find out where we are to unload. I’ll lower the gig and set you ashore at Tilbury, just across the river from Gravesend, and you can get a train from there up to London, and go to the agents’ office; that is, of course, if they do not send some one to Gravesend to meet us.”
Kit went down to his room to make his papers ready, feeling anything but comfortable over this prospect. How was he to go to London alone, knowing nothing of the city, and make his way through strange streets to the office of a strange agent? Going to make the acquaintance of strangers was hard work for him at first, but he had grown used to that now; but to make his way about London was another matter. However, he did not let this worry him long.
“If I am going to be a child, afraid to go into a new city,” he said to himself, “I’d better be a cabin boy again. When a fellow undertakes to do man’s work, he must go at it like a man. Other youngsters have gone to London, I suppose, without being eaten.”
Notwithstanding his brave ideas, he looked with some anxiety for the agent when the North Cape came to a stop in the Thames opposite Gravesend and near the Tilbury shore. But no tug appeared, and it was plain that he was destined to make the trip to London.