The Unknown Shore by Patrick O’Brian Page B

down?’
    ‘The tail was so much less forked. Up or down? I think, if you will excuse me, that I will stay a little longer.’
    ‘If you want to see ‘em go to roost,’ said Ransome, ‘you should go round behind: there’s millions of ‘em there. But I must drop down now, or I shall lose my tide.’
    ‘Good-bye, then,’ said Tobias, ‘and thank you very much indeed for showing me the lions.’
    ‘You’ll take boat directly?’ called Ransome, turning as he stood in the skiff. ‘You’ll know your way all right?’ Tobias waved.
    The boat pushed out into the stream, where it was lost in the crowd and the evening, and Tobias leant musing against the rail. Dozens of people came down the steps to take to the water or mounted them as they were landed, and perpetually the boatmen bawled ‘Up or down?’
    A thin, sharp child brushed against him and stole the handkerchief from his coat pocket. ‘Up or down?’ cried a waterman in his ear. ‘Come, make up your mind.’
    ‘Why, truly,’ said Tobias, ‘I believe that I shall walk.’
    ‘And the devil go with you,’ cried the waterman passionately.
    ‘What did he mean by “round behind"?’ asked Tobias in a gentle mutter as he walked away. He looked at St Dunstan’s in the East, the Coal-meters’ Office and the Bakers’ Hall; there were pigeons and starlings, but nothing more, for kites were already growing uncommon in London, and Ransome had quite misunderstoodTobias’ remark. They were coming in to roost in their thousands, and while the day lasted Tobias searched among them for black kites; but very soon there was not a bird abroad, black or white, and Tobias stopped under a newly-lit street-lantern to consider his bearings. He had a good natural sense of direction, and with an easy mind he set out and walked through the crowded Mark Lane, crossed quite mistakenly into Crutched Friars by way of Hart Street, and tried to correct his error by going north-westward along Shoemaker Row and Bevis Marks to Camomile Street and Bishopsgate. A good natural sense of direction is a charming possession, and it is very useful in the country; but in a London fog, and even more particularly in the crowded, narrow, winding streets and alleys of the City, it is worse than useless; for the countryman, confident of his ability, will go for miles and miles in the wrong direction before he can bring himself to ask a native for guidance. This state of affairs is not without its advantages, however; the countryman, in his winding course, is made intimately aware of the monstrous extent of London; and by the time Tobias had passed the parish churches of Allhallows Barking, Allhallows the Great, Allhallows the Less, Allhallows in Bread Street, Allhallows in Honey Lane, Allhallows in Lombard Street, Allhallows Staining and Allhallows on London Wall, he found his ideas of London much enlarged. He went on patiently by St Andrew Hubbard, St Andrew Undershaft and St Andrew by the Wardrobe, St Bennet Fink, St Bennet Gracechurch and St Bennet Sherehog, St Dionis Backchurch, St Laurence Jewry, St Laurence Pountney and St Clement near Eastcheap, St Margaret Moses, St Margaret Pattens and St Martin Outwich, St Mary Woolchurch, St Mary Somerset, St Mary Mountshaw, St Mary Woolnoth, St Michael-le-Quern, St Michael Royal, St Nicholas Acons and St Helen’s, which brought him back to Bishopsgate again, with at least sixty parish churches as yet unseen, to say nothing of chapels.
    Here, by an unhappy fatality, Tobias turned to his right, hoping to find the river, but he found Bedlam instead, and the broad dark open space of Moorfields. He looked with respectful wonder at the vast lunatic asylum, but the new shoes that Jack and he had bought earlier in the day (it seemed more like several months ago) were now causing him a very highly-wrought agony, and he wandered into Moorfields, now deserted by all prudent honest men, to sit on thegrass and take them off. After this he went on much more briskly,