English passengers by Matthew Kneale Page A

was a whole throng of them creeping out at us, all shouting out their claim on the little fritlag. There was his ‘‘mother,’’ who looked younger than he did, and his ‘‘brother,’’ who looked older than the mother, as well as uncles and aunts, and some more that weren’t specified. A very close family they seemed, too. Their one wish, as they straggled out, was that we should give their relative back his four, no five guineas that we’d stolen off him. Well, it was clear as glass what this was about.
    ‘‘Let’s get out of here,’’ I called out.
    Most of them were no bigger than the lad himself and for a moment I thought we might escape nice and stately. Slow, we started, and mostly backwards, back out of the court and down the alley, with China holding the line. We were all right till we reached the street, where there was more room for them. All at once the lad sank his teeth into China’s leg, and while the poor gorm was distracted the little old man scelped him one with his stick, and when I tried to help him, two others were ripping at my pockets. At that we just ran, a sort of howl rising up behind to hurry us on as we took the street at a full gallop, dodging past loiterers— especially the ones with outstretched arms—and on. All of a sudden I caught sight of a big plain building that could only be a chapel. The door was open and someone was going inside. ‘‘Over there,’’ I yelled.
    A moment later I was inside, huffing and panting at the back of a sermon. A popular one it was, too, being full to standing with sober people in poor clothes, some giving me dirty looks for being so clattering and out of breath when their preacher was droning. China was just behind, squeezing into the congregation as best he could, but of chief mate Brew there was no sign.
    ‘‘Did you see what happened to him?’’ I whispered, catching myself a ‘‘shhhh.’’
    China shrugged, then rubbed his leg where he had been bit. I suppose we should really have gone back out and had a search, but therewas the worry they might all still be there. Besides, I reckoned he should be able to take care of himself, with all that cleverness of his. ‘‘We ’ll look a bit later,’’ I said, and China looked happy enough with that.
    ‘‘These terrible events in India,’’ expounded the preacher, who was a tidy little fellow in spectacles, ‘‘are nothing other than the first step upon the road to that battle that shall end all battles.’’
    So he was an Armageddon man. Well, I don’t mind a bit of fire and brimstone, though it’s hardly my favourite. Manxmen, I should explain, aren’t always so pure as to their Scriptures, and there’s many will go to two or three different churches all on the same Sunday, especially if there’s not much else to do. It seems a shame, after all, to keep just to one when your Anglicans have the best singing, Romans come top for smoke and smells and for theatre you couldn’t beat a hellfire body like this one. There it came, sure enough, ‘‘Armageddon,’’ and just a few years down the road too, so he promised. The man had a clever trick of bringing things nicely up to the moment. According to him, Gog, ruler of Rosh, Mezhek and Thuval was none other than the Tsar himself, of Russia, Muscovy and Siberia. As to the final battle, which would be followed by pestilences and apocalypses and such, this was to be fought between Russians and Englishmen, like the little squabble they’d just had in that Crimea, but a hundredfold nastier.
    ‘‘Who shall be swept away by this great judgment, this mighty tide of destruction?’’ Ah, we all knew the answer to that one. Sinners. He had a whole list, giving a little pause between each so we’d not miss any by mistake. Fornicators and drunkards. Breakers of the Holy Sabbath. Papists and followers of Dr. Pusey. The Turk and all worshippers of the infidel Mohammed. The black savage who had never acknowledged the glory of Christ.