“Now listen sharp to what I tell you,” Captain Griffith said, “and you will come through all right. We will set you ashore at Tilbury, and the railway station is right at the wharf. Buy a second-class ticket, and the train will carry you about twenty-five miles and set you down in Fenchurch Street station, in London. The agents, as you know, are Topping, Forwood & Hauts, at 32 Fenchurch Street, and that is only three or four blocks from the station. But that part of the city is greatly crowded, and rather than waste time by your losing yourself, I want you to go up in a hansom. You will find scores of them in front of the station, and the fare will be one shilling. Here is a pound in English silver change, which I will charge to you. And before doing your own business with the agents, have them send me a telegram saying where we are to discharge cargo. Is that all plain?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered; “I think I can carry that through without making any slips.”
The gig landed him at Tilbury wharf, and he immediately found himself in a different world. His ticket he bought at the “booking-office,” and when he went through to the train its antiquated appearance made him smile. The cars were like little square boxes, not much bigger than a street car, but divided into compartments holding eight persons each, with the doors on the sides; and the engine looked like the small locomotives of the elevated railroads in New York.
The hour’s ride took him first through open fields that looked strangely green for the time of year, then past a settlement of immense gas tanks, through several small towns, and then among such a maze of houses that he knew he must be in London. When the train stopped in Fenchurch Street station, he had no need to inquire his way to the street, for he had only to follow the crowd. Down the long steps he went through the lower part of the station, and found himself for the first time in a crowded London street.
The Captain was right about the hansoms; there stood a row of them reaching almost out of sight, and he went up to one of the nearest and asked the driver:—
“Can you take me to No. 32 Fenchurch Street?”
“‘CAN YOU TAKE ME TO NO. 32 FENCHURCH STREET?’”
The driver looked at him a moment, and shook his head doubtfully.
“I s’pose it kin be done, sir,” he answered, “but it’s a-goin’ to be consid’able of a job, h’account of this ’ere crowd. It’s all a-owin’ to the funeral. You see the Prince o’ Wiles’s mother-in-law she’s gone an’ died, sir, an’ they’re a-buryin’ of ’er hin the Temple this harternoon, an’ the streets is blocked. But Hi kin tike you ’round cirkewetous-like, sir.”