King of the Sea

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Lawrence, who did it all on purpose, of course, merely smiled as he signed his last flourish. Then, gathering up the manifests, papers, and money in his battered old black bag, he ran up on deck, crying over his shoulder, "My mother always said there'd be days like this!"

A loud huzzah went up from the crew, who were just starting to timber the hatches. "This way, if you please, Mister Troy, sir!" The bosun swept off his cap and gave an ironic bow, ushering Lawrence to the side, where the rope ladder still dangled precariously.

With all the agility of a reckless youth of eighteen (or, as he would say, "nineteen, jolly nearly!"), he bit on the handle of the bag, letting it swing between the ladder and his chest, and went down two ratlines at a time to the waterman's rickety little boat, which was trailing by a single rope. A moment later they were both rowing like demons to get out of the Horsa's wash. It was a well-practised routine by now.

So, too, was that wonderful moment when he rested oar and watched the mighty hull (as it seemed from down there on the river) draw out into the tiderace and start buffeting her way down to the sea. Old Harry Wicks, the waterman, gave his young companion the sort of pitying look that sober men give to drunkards. "Be thankful you'll sleep ashore tonight, sir," he said grimly. "There's a great storm a coming or I've never tasted salt."

But Lawrence did not take his eyes off the boat. At that moment he could imagine nothing more splendid than to be aboard her, steaming into the teeth of a storm. He thought of Neil, his older brother, who was due to sail that evening from Hull to Rotterdam in the Swallow. Neil would probably give half his wage to jump into a waterman's boat and return to shore like this. Last time he'd been home, they'd hatched an absurd plot whereby Neil would pay himself off the Swallow and he, Lawrence, would give in his notice at Furnival's and then they'd be free to assume each other's names and occupations. It would work, too, except for one little fly in the ointment: Too many men on the Baltic knew "good old Cap'n Troy" word of their subterfuge would be bound to get out.

On the train from Tilbury back to London another strategy occurred to him. In a month or two he'd have worked long enough at Furnival's to ask for a salary, at the moment he was working "for experience only - and, by his reckoning, earning between twenty and thirty quid a week for the firm, by the charters he wrote and all the other little dogsbody jobs he did, like the one today in Tilbury. Being the skinflints they were, they'd probably refuse. Then he'd have every reason to move on somewhere else Runciman, perhaps, or Craven - anyone who had branch offices in Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol ... a million miles from Highbury. He'd offer to start in one of the provincial offices which, with his London knowledge and experience, would seem very attractive to them. Then, when it was all arranged, Neil would take the position, calling himself Lawrence, while he, Lawrence, could sign on with a new tramp steamer under the name of Neil.

He was so delighted at his own ingenuity that, having dropped the papers and money at the office, he set off home, almost forgetting the last errand of his day - or the last official one, anyway. He had gone some way beyond the offices of John Pirie & Co before he remembered it. In fact, Albert Crane, the bookie's runner, who covered his tracks by selling evening papers as a sideline, had spotted Lawrence and was just getting ready to pass him his winnings when the young man punched himself on the forehead with alarming vigour and, turning on his heel, retreated the way he had come.

Pirie & Co's office was up on the first floor. Mr Knight, the clerk, looked to see who it was - though the beefy stamp of the young man's hobnail boots should have been signal enough by now - and said, "Go in." That was all he ever said, either "Go in," or "He's out." Never a smile, never another word. Lawrence sniffed and went directly into the sanctum.

Mr Heriot's desk, as usual, contained nothing but a copy of that day's Times - and, to be sure, Mr Heriot's elbows, which supported his hands, which supported his head in the seemingly onerous task of perusing the commercial columns. Mr Heriot did not look up.

"Please, sir, are you open for Singapore?" Lawrence asked diffidently. Mr Heriot had a skull like eggshell; Lawrence

supposed it might break very easily with one blow of

a good fist. "Hah!" Mr Heriot barked and went on reading without looking up.

"Sir," Lawrence persisted, "I have a steamer that wants Singapore.".

"Hmph!" Heriot's ears twitched.

"Five thousand tons. Ready Swansea twenty-fifth of March." "Mmmm." It was the petulant sort of noise a dog

makes when the weather cheats it of a walk.

Lawrence had a pleasant reverie in which his fist went crashing through the eggshell bone and made a satisfying pulp of the stubborn matter beneath it.

"Or two thousand tons, ready Cardiff on the twenty eighth."

Heriot made no response at all to this. Lawrence waited a moment or two and then, with a silent bow, left the room.

In that brief scene everything he loathed about this trade the trade his father had bound him to - had come welling to the surface: the hostility of those who should be cooperating in such simple matters of commerce, the rudeness, the contempt of men-of little-power for those with even less. By God, he'd rather work the dirtiest tramp with the drunkenest, most foul-mouthed master to Archangel and back in January than put up with all this for another week!

Back in the street he almost bowled over a gentleman who was passing by; there was something familiar about him but in the confusion Lawrence could not place the man.

"Well well," exclaimed his near-victim with a jovial smile. "Just run across old Heriot, have we? But see here, there's no need to take it out on the populace, you know."

Lawrence recognized him then: Mr William Wright of Wright Bros & Co. He began to stammer his apologies, but the man cut him short with a breezy, "No harm done!" Then he gave a quizzical smile and, raising a finger toward the window of Heriot's office, asked lightly, "Much joy?"

"Not a sniff, sir. Are you, by any chance open for

Singapore?" "What have you got?"

Lawrence gave him the same two vessels, which they fixed on the spot at a rate pleasing to both. Wright said he was open for Azoff and the Danube, too (for it was really his brother who handled the Oriental trade) and Lawrence racked his photographic memory for Furnival's ships that wanted those destinations. In all, he fixed five vessels, there and then on the foot pavement outside Heriot's office. Then, while Wright continued on his way to the Baltic, in the old South Sea Bubble building, Lawrence returned to Furnival's to record his coup with William Wright.

Old Furnival was only half pleased; a few more like that and he couldn't possibly go on withholding his offer of a salary.

The trouble with me, Lawrence told himself as he went to collect his winnings off Albert Crane, the best impersonator of a newsvendor in Bishopsgate, is that I'm just too b****y good at this trade.

"You done it again, squire," Bert said as Lawrence drew near. "That's your second treble this month. Honest Jim's crying mercy says you'll put him in Carey Street if you go on like this." The crisp, white fiver was neatly folded into The Pink Un. A peeler could be standing two feet away and not see it.

"May I live to see the day, Bert," Lawrence replied. "The gypsy said I'll see a hundred, anyway."

"With your luck and all!" Bert's eyes never stopped roving, this way and that, up and down the street - looking for the boys in blue, the boys with the bets, and a few, like Lawrence, returning for their winnings. "There's seven bob on top of this, isn't there?"

Lawrence added. "Keep it for tomorrow's stake." "Oh, yeah." Bert grinned as if he'd hoped to get away with it.