Sons of Fortune Read Online Free Page A

us? Why not the Germans, eh? Or the French? Why not the Dutch? Why not the cowardly Russians even? Why us, the English? And by English I mean Irish and Scotch and Welshmen, too. Why?” He lowered his voice and leaned toward them. “Because we’re free. The Europeans stumble from revolution to tyranny and back. The Russian serf dares not call his soul his own; he must slay and be slain without even asking the cause. There’s no strength in that. One free man will face down a dozen of them. Free men like us. Free Englishmen, volunteers every man, at full liberty to go or stay as we please. And just at this minute it pleases us mightily to go and fight the barbarian.” They cheered at that.
    “So! We who changed the face of England now have it within our power to change the course of history. When we’ve done our task it will be possible for a Russian to die at nightfall, his heart pierced by a bullet that less than twelve hours earlier lay in the hold of a vessel on the Black Sea. We did it with cotton; now we’ll do it with bullets and guns. It’s never been done before. In the long tide of human conflict no army has had such service behind it as we shall now provide. Think of it, my friends—just five hundred of us, and we are going to make history. Look around you and feel the pride of it. And now let the Russians tremble, for they’ve cause enough!”
    His ending was as abrupt as his beginning had been; it, too, took them unawares. Silently their minds repeated his closing words and then the thought gripped them and they shivered the rafters with their cheers. He stood above them, arms folded, smiling back to give them a focus. Then, while their cheers rang on he jumped lightly down and joined Walter Thornton and the ship’s officers.
    “Capital speech,” Walter said.
    Caspar and Boy basked in the glory of belonging to such a father. “Those sailing from Tilbury had better march down to the ferry now,” the senior officer said.
    “They’ll regroup outside,” Walter told him. “It’s all in hand.” His shortness suggested to John that he’d already crossed swords with this officer. Both Walter and John felt extremely protective of their men and wanted it clear from the outset that this was no military expedition and their men were under no kind of military discipline.
    No one who saw them strolling and larking through the streets on their way to the jetties could possibly mistake them for any sort of a military crowd, however. They carried Boy and Caspar shoulder high, passing them from man to man, cheering and whooping every near-fall.
    “I was rather hoping you’d say something about the need for good order and discipline on the voyage out, Mr. Stevenson,” the officer said. “Idle hands, you know. Trying time. On an emigrant ship you can starve them and keep their spirit low. Hardly do that here. Wish you’d said something.”
    John smiled. “I think you’ll find I did.”
    The officer raised his eyebrows and looked at the motley gangs of men streaming down the road. “You know them, of course,” he conceded.
    “None better,” Walter said. “A hint from John Stevenson is an iron law to any man who works for him. They’ll give no trouble.”
    The two boys went on with the party for Tilbury, across the river, where John and Walter would join them later after seeing the Gravesend party, this side of the river, safely embarked.
    The dock whores were being turned off the boats as the navvies went on board. Their departure raised boos and cries of mock agony from the navvies. Impossible offers and wild promises were shouted between the two groups, the departing women and the arriving men. Then one of the navvies, nicknamed Harvest Hog, a strapping young fellow with fair, curly hair poking out all around the rim of his moleskin hat, shouted: “Give us one last look at old mossyface!”
    His half-taunt, half-plea was directed at the youngest and least ugly of the women.
    “Ye gods, she will,