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shilling passed for thirteen pence halfpenny and the guinea for anything between a pound and twenty-five shillings.
    To distract his mind, which would revert with a touch of panic to the question of his lost address, Tobias turned his fortune on to the table, with the intention of making what sense he could of the inscriptions. At the sound of money all the farthing pie-eaters stoppedtalking, eating or drinking; and when Tobias, paying his host with a four-shilling piece, asked for a direction to the river, he spoke in the midst of a profound and attentive silence. The man slowly paid out a mountain of small coins, talking as he dribbled them out, and from his questions the hearers learnt that Tobias was lost, unknown and unarmed, and that this was his first day in London.
    The pie-man scratched his head: he had a certain pity for his guest – even a very ill-natured brute will stop a blind man from walking into an open pit – but he also had a duty towards his regular customers. In the end he satisfied his conscience by giving Tobias an exact route for the Thames, by telling him that he ought to take care, great care, and by winking with all the significance in his power.
    The door closed behind Tobias: the pie-man said to his wife, ‘He never did ought to of been let out alone,’ and shook his head.
    There was a pause of some few listening minutes, then the door opened, and all the regular customers hurried in again.
    ‘They never left him so much as his shirt,’ said the pieman to his wife, coming back into the kitchen.
    ‘Well, my dear,’ said she, placidly wiping her hands upon her apron and looking through the door to where the regular customers were making their division, ‘I hope they have not cut his throat, that’s all. Or if they have, that they done it at a decent distance from the house, poor wandering soul.’

Chapter Three
    J ACK B YRON sat in Thacker’s coffee-house, staring vacantly before him: he was almost alone in the place, apart from the waiters, and he sat there as steadily and silently as if he had been part of the furniture. The clock in front of him said half-past seven, and the big calendar beside it bore the ominous name Friday, newly changed that morning.
    The door opened, and an elderly man in a black coat and a periwig walked in: he nodded to Jack, who bowed, although for the moment he did not recognise him. It was Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the
Wager,
to whom Keppel had presented Jack some days before. ‘So you have not gone down to Portsmouth yet?’ he said, with some surprise.
    ‘No, sir,’ said Jack.
    ‘Are you not cutting it uncommon fine?’ asked the surgeon.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack, who was all too vividly aware of the racing hours and the horrifying speed with which Saturday, his last day in England, was rushing towards him.
    The surgeon, in spite of Jack’s short answers and unhappy face, sat down by him, and said, ‘I am up myself only because of my infernal mate, and I shall take the mail-coach down this evening.’ He explained that he was very particular in his choice of assistants, that he could not bear the confident, half-licked cubs that were usually wished upon him by the Navy Office – had even paid one to go away out of the
Wager
and transfer himself elsewhere – and that he was now waiting for a young man who had been strongly recommended to him as a person of a truly scientific cast of mind. ‘Such a rare creature, these days,’ said Mr Eliot. ‘It was quite different when I was young.’ Here a group of officers came in, brown-faced men whose voices reverberated in the big room, filling it with sound; another naval surgeon came just behind them, Mr Woodfall of the
Centurion,
and he stopped by Mr Eliot to wish him good day and to tell him that Mr Anson had been to the Admiralty already.
    Mr Anson, the captain of the
Centurion
and the commodore of the squadron, appeared as if by magic as the surgeon spoke his name, stood there for a moment, looking