EMERGENCIES AND POLICEMEN—FENCHURCH STREET STATION—THIRD CLASS TO
CUSTOM HOUSE—A SHIP FOREST.
Policemen are very useful people. I do not know how we should have got
from the London Bridge Pier to the Fenchurch Street Station if it had
not been that Fred told me he knew one could ask policemen the way to
places. There is nothing to pay, which I was very glad of, as the
canvas bag was getting empty.
Once or twice they helped us through emergencies. We had to go from
one footpath to another, straight across the street, and the street
was so full of carts and cabs and drays and omnibuses, that one could
see that it was quite an impossibility. We did it, however, for the
policeman made us. I said, "Hadn't we better wait till the crowd has
gone?" But the policeman laughed, and said then we had better take
lodgings close by and wait at the window. So we did it. Fred said the
captain once ran in a little cutter between two big ships that were
firing into him, but I do not think that can have been much worse than
running between a backing dray, full of rolling barrels, and a hansom
cab pulled up and ramping like a rocking-horse at the lowest point of
the rockers.
When we were safely on the other pavement we thanked the policeman
very much, and then went on, asking our way till we got to Fenchurch
Street.
If anything could smell nastier than John's berth in Nine Elms it is
Fenchurch Street Station. And I think it is worse in this way; John's
berth smelt horrible, but it was warm and weather-tight. You never
swallow a drop of pure air in Fenchurch Street Station, and yet you
cannot find a corner in which you can get out of the draughts.
With one gale blowing on my right from an open door, and another gale
blowing on my left down some steps, and nasty smells blowing from
every point of the compass, I stood at a dirty little hole in a dirty
wooden wall and took our tickets. I had to stand on tiptoe to make the
young man see me.
"What is the cheapest kind of tickets you have, if you please?" I
inquired, with the canvas bag in my hand.
"Third class," said the young man, staring very hard at me, which I
thought rather rude. "Except working men's tickets, and they're not
for this train."
"Two third-class tickets for Victoria Dock, then, if you please," said
I.
"Single or return?" said he.
"I beg your pardon?" I said, for I was puzzled.
"Are you coming back to-day?" he inquired.
"Oh dear, no!" said I, for some of the captain's voyages had lasted
for years; but the question made me anxious, as I knew nothing of
railway rules, and I added, "Does it matter?"
"Not by no means," replied the young man smartly, and he began to
whistle, but stopped himself to ask, "Custom House or Tidal Basin?"
I had no alternative but to repeat "I _beg_ your pardon?"
He put his face right through the hole and looked at me. "Will you
take your ticket for Custom House or Tidal Basin?" he repeated;
"either will do for Victoria Docks."
"Then whichever you please," said I, as politely as I could.
The young man took out two tickets and snapped them impatiently in
something; and as a fat woman was squeezing me from behind, I was glad
to take what I could get and go back to Fred.
He was taking care of our two bundles and the empty pie-dish.
That pie-dish was a good deal in our way. Fred wanted to get rid of
it, and said he was sure his mother would not want us to be bothered
with it; but Fred had promised in his letter to bring it back, and he
could not break his word. I told him so, but I said as he did not like
to be seen with it I would carry it. So I did.
With a strong breeze aft, we were driven up-stairs in the teeth of a
gale, and ran before a high wind down a platform where, after annoying
one of the railway men very much by not being able to guess which was
the train, and having to ask him, we got in among a lot of
rough-looking people, who were very civil and kind. A man with a black
face and a white jacket said he would tell us when we got to Custom
House, and he gave me his seat by the window, that I might look out.
What struck me as rather odd was that everybody in the third-class
carriage seemed to have bundles like ours, and yet they couldn't all
be running away. One thin woman with a very troublesome baby had
three. Perhaps it is because portmanteaus and things of that sort are
rather expensive.
Fred was opposite to me. It was a bright sunny morning, a fresh breeze
blew, and in the sunlight the backs of endless rows of shabby houses
looked more cheerful than usual, though very few of the gardens had
anything in them but dirt and cats, and very many of the windows had
the week's wash hanging out on strings and poles. The villages we had
passed on the canal banks all looked pretty and interesting, but I
think that most of the places we saw out of the window of the train
would look very ugly on a dull day.
I fancy there were poplar-trees at a place called Poplar, and that I
thought it must be called after them; but Fred says No, and we have
never been there since, so I cannot be sure about it. If not, I must
have dreamt it.
I did fall asleep in the corner, I know, I was so very much tired, and
we had had no breakfast, and I sat on the side where the wind blows
in, which I think helped to make me sleepy. I was wakened partly by
the pie-dish slipping off my lap, and partly by Fred saying in an
eager tone,
"Oh, Charlie! LOOK! _Are they all ships_?"
We stuffed our heads through the window, and my hat was nearly blown
away, so the man with the black face and the white jacket gave it to
the woman with the troublesome baby to take care of for me, and he
held us by our legs for fear we should fall out.
On we flew! There was wind enough in our faces to have filled the
barge-sail three times over, and Fred licked his lips and said, "I do
believe there's salt in it!"
But what he woke me up to show me drove me nearly wild. When I had
seen a couple of big barges lying together with their two bare masts
leaning towards each other I used to think how dignified and beautiful
they looked. But here were hundreds of masts, standing as thick as
tree-trunks in a fir-wood, and they were not bare poles, but lofty and
slender, and crossed by innumerable yards, and covered with ropes in
orderly profusion, which showed in the sunshine as cobwebs shine out
in a field in summer. Gay flags and pennons fluttered in the wind;
brown sails, grey sails, and gleaming white sails went up and down;
and behind it all the water sparkled and dazzled our eyes like the
glittering reflections from a mirror moving in the sun.
As we ran nearer the ropes looked thicker, and we could see the
devices on the flags. And suddenly, straining his eyes at the yards of
a vessel in the thick of the ship-forest, on which was something
black, like a spider with only four legs, Fred cried, "It's a sailor!"
I saw him quite well. And seeing him higher up than on any tree one
could ever climb, with the sunny sky above him and the shining water
below him, I could only mutter out with envious longing—"How happy he
must be!"