It had been the object of careful
study for some days past. The fact that I could take a conveyance at the
station never occurred to my mind, no, not even when I got out into the
street, and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak,
of twenty thousand hansoms. A strange absence of mind or unconscious
conviction that one cannot approach an important moment of one's life by
means of a hired carriage? Yes, it would have been a preposterous
proceeding. And indeed I was to make an Australian voyage and encircle
the globe before ever entering a London hansom.
Another document, a cutting from a newspaper, containing the address of
an obscure shipping agent, was in my pocket. And I needed not to take it
out. That address was as if graven deep in my brain. I muttered its
words to myself as I walked on, navigating the sea of London by the chart
concealed in the palm of my hand; for I had vowed to myself not to
inquire my way from anyone. Youth is the time of rash pledges. Had I
taken a wrong turning I would have been lost; and if faithful to my
pledge I might have remained lost for days, for weeks, have left perhaps
my bones to be discovered bleaching in some blind alley of the
Whitechapel district, as it had happened to lonely travellers lost in the
bush.
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