That rather took my breath
away.

Then we dived into a tunnel, and emerged a few seconds later,
screeching hoarsely, right in London. It hit me below the belt. I
experienced what they call a 'sinking' feeling in the pit of my
stomach. I thought what a fool I was, how puny and insignificant; and,
again, what a fool I must be, to come blundering along here into the
maw of this vast beast, this London--I and my miserable five-and-twenty
pounds! For one wild moment the panic-born thought of hurrying
back to my purser and begging re-engagement for the outward trip to
Australia scuttled across my mind. And then the train jolted to a
standstill, and, with a faint kind of nausea in my throat, I stepped
out into London.

I have to admit that it was not at all a glorious or inspiriting
home-coming. It was as different from the home-coming of my dreams (when
a minor capitalist) as anything well could be. But yet this was
indubitably London, my destination; the objective of all my efforts
for a long time past. A uniformed boot-black gave me a sudden thought
of St. Peter's Orphanage--the connection, if any existed, must have
been rather subtle--and that somehow stiffened my spine a little. Here
I was, after all, the utterly friendless Orphanage lad who, a dozen
thousand miles away, had willed that he should go out into the world,
do certain kinds of things, meet certain kinds of people, and journey
all across the world to his native England. Well, without much
assistance, I had accomplished these things, and was actually there,
in London. There was tingling romance in the thought of it, after all.
No drizzling rain could alter that. Having successfully adventured so
far, surely I was not to be daunted by dingy faces, bricks, and
mortar, and houses said to accommodate a thousand families!

And so, with tolerably authoritative words to a porter about luggage,
I squared my shoulders in response to life's undeniable appeal to the
adventurous.

II

When I had been a dozen years or more in London, a man I knew bewailed
to me one night the fact that he had to leave Fenchurch Street Station
in the small hours of the next morning, and did not know how on earth
he would manage it.

'Why not sleep there to-night?' I suggested carelessly.

'Sleep there!' he repeated with a stare. 'But there are no hotels in
that part of the world.'

'Oh, bless you, yes!' said I. 'You try the Blue Boar. You will find it
almost as handy as sleepin