The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

Author:Philip Pullman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2015-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

There was one person whose weekend went according to plan – according to the plans of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, no less. This was a certain passenger on board the Drummond Castle, from Hankow. It had been rough in the Bay of Biscay, but the passenger had not suffered. He seemed impervious to most discomforts, and as the ship steamed up the Channel at a steady ten knots, he could be found on the boat deck, in the place he had made his own since Singapore, reading the works of Thomas De Quincey.

The cold wind and the drizzle concerned him not a bit. In fact, as the air became chillier and the sky greyer, the passenger’s spirits seemed to rise. He ate and drank the more heartily as the ship plunged the more sickeningly in the Channel swell, and puffed constantly at a series of pungent black cheroots. On the Sunday evening the vessel rounded the North Foreland, and began the final stretch of her journey into the Thames Estuary. She moved slowly in these congested waters, and as the day faded, the passenger moved to the rail and gazed with close attention at the lights of the Kent coast to the left, steady and soft and warm; at the ghostly creaming foam thrown up by the bows of the ship; and at the myriad winking lights from buoys and lighthouses that guided innocent travellers like himself through the shoals and hazards of the sea.

And as this thought struck him, the passenger suddenly laughed.

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