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include:
starving
,
sweating
,
spewing
,
shitting
,
fleas
,
rats
,
cockroaches
,
shackled
,
flooded
,
underfed
,
airless
,
freezing
,
boiling
,
rotting
,
punching
,
kicking
,
unwanted
,
sexual
and
advances
. Stick some of them together in the same sentence and you get a fair idea of the transportation experience. But where is the use in dwelling upon such an ordeal when my return journey at the age of nineteen was so much more agreeable? I sailed aboard a magnificent vessel called the
Son and Heir
what was transporting wool back from the colonies, and myself and a man named Warrigal stayed in a large cabin what rivalled the captain’s for comfort. This luxury had been paid for by my new benefactor, a Lord Franklin Evershed, and his generosity did not end there. Warrigal and myself would parade around thetop deck, as our ship sailed across the equator, dressed in our fine tailorings and bearing other signifiers of wealth, and these did much to make up for my rough accent and unvarnished ways. Although I had spent my youth picking the pockets of people of their class, the other travellers did not seem to suspect me of criminality and I was pleased that they was ready to believe that I could have made my fortune at such a young age. Warrigal, they all agreed, was an unusual choice of valet, but he seemed an attentive servant and they was sure he would be happy in London society. Perhaps, suggested Captain McGowan as we shared a pipe one evening as we watched the Canary Islands fade into the distance, I should consider giving him a nice English name when we arrived home so that he should fit in better. I gave this idea some thought and, when the ship docked in to Dover on a miserable November day, I had almost started to believe our story myself and was sorry to have to wave goodbye to the crew.
    Warrigal and myself walked down the unsteady gangplank of the
Son and Heir
, harassed by the wind and rain, with carpet bags over our shoulders and each carrying an end of my trunk. We made straight for the local booking office to see what could be done about a coach to London and when we got into the mouldy little room we found other wet people making the same enquiry. The clerk behind the counter was an oily-skinned, belligerent lad what I took to be about my own age and he was telling everyone that he was sorry but the last coach to London for the day had just been taken and there was an end to it. He didn’t look very sorry and, as I pushed my way through the dispersing crowd to the front of the counter, he took a long lazy look at me, then at Warrigal, and then turned his eyes back down to a newspaper he was pretending to read. I impressed upon him the importance of me and my valet securing a passage to the capital forthwith andI hinted that there could be something in it for him if he could arrange events to my satisfaction, wink wink. But either the lumpen youth misunderstood my subtle insinuations or he lacked the spirit and capability that you would have found in a boy from the rookeries. He thumbed to a posting bill pasted on to the wall behind him that told how the next carriage out wouldn’t leave until six o’clock the next morning.
    â€˜You won’t find another coachman what’ll take you to town in this weather,’ he yawned, his eyes still not leaving the paper, ‘so you can either book yourself into an ’otel or you and your black are welcome to bed down in the stables with the ’orses. Either way, you ain’t getting out of Dover tonight less you plan to foot it.’ I was somehow getting the impression that this waste of blood and bones doubted my credentials as a gentleman. I held a silver-tipped cane in my hands which I raised to my lips and made a
hmm
ing noise as if pondering upon these suggestions and, as he turned the page of the paper, I hit him over the head with it. He cried out in pain. ‘What’s that for?’
    â€˜Apologies,’ I said, all concerned.