Читать книгу The Golden Ocean - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF THE EIGHTEENTH DAY OF THE month two foot-sore, thin, weary and travel-stained midshipmen limped hurriedly over the stones of Queenstown to the water where Sean held a boat.

‘Where did you get it, Sean?’ asked Peter, getting in.

‘Sure I borrowed it—now, your honour, make haste, for she sails on the evening tide,’ he said, heaving FitzGerald bodily in. He shoved off, set the sail, and in a moment they were scudding on the stiff breeze, and the noble city of Cork sped from them backwards.

‘Sean,’ said Peter, sitting in the sheets with the tiller under his knee and listening to the bitter roaring of a pair of natives on shore, ‘I wish you may have borrowed it fairly.’

‘The day was not seen on the face of the earth when I would be stealing a boat,’ said Sean. ‘But we being so pressed, the way she is sailing with this very tide, and they being wishful to delay us for their own profit, I said your honour would leave the boat hire with the boat. And the rightful fare is fourteen pence. Behind the island she is lying, the Mary Rose: will you go on to the other tack, so?’

‘No. We’ll lie a little longer on this,’ said Peter, bracing himself against the heel of the boat as the wind laid her down and the water raced gurgling under the side. ‘Now,’ he said, having put her shaving round the stern of the wherry, ‘now over—sit down, FitzGerald,’ he cried.

‘Well, upon my honour,’ said FitzGerald, rubbing his head where the boom had rapped it, ‘what strange things you do.’

Presently he sat up again, settled his hat upon his head, and gazed about. ‘So this is the sea,’ he observed. ‘I say, there is a vast great deal of it.’

‘No it an’t,’ said Peter. ‘This is only the Cove of Cork. The brig lies behind the island there. The main sea is beyond.’

The next tack showed them the far side of the island, and Sean said, ‘There she is, and her topsails are loosed.’ As he spoke a thin white line of sail on the brig spread suddenly into a rectangle, bellying out in the wind and straightening as they sheeted home and hauled away.

‘We shall be lucky if we catch her,’ said Peter, edging the boat a little nearer the wind.

‘Would it not be quicker if you went straight, rather than dodging about in this fashion?’ suggested FitzGerald as they went about again.

‘But the wind is straight from her to us,’ said Peter. ‘Sean, give her a hail as soon as you can.’

They were now coming up towards the brig’s starboard quarter, sailing as near the wind as the boat would bear. ‘We shall do it,’ said Peter.

But as they came under the lee of the island the breeze grew lighter and full of flaws. The brig was gathering way and now the water between them was wider.

‘Oh go on, go on,’ urged FitzGerald, wringing his handkerchief between his hands.

Sean put up his hand, and his deep, sonorous hail boomed over the sea; but as if in answer to it there was a burst of white triangles as the brig’s jibs were set and she moved faster away.

FitzGerald groaned. ‘Never mind,’ said Peter, glancing up at the sky, ‘I’ll follow her to England if need be, by the powers.’

‘She’s backing her topsail,’ cried Sean. ‘Hallelujah.’

The brig’s foretopsail yard came round: the sail shivered and filled again. Her speed slackened, and as the boat cleared the island the wind took her true. In another three minutes they were alongside.

‘There,’ said Peter, as he laid the boat along, just kissing the brig, ‘that’s neat, though I say it myself. Up you go,’ he said to FitzGerald, who was gaping at the chains of the brig. ‘There,’ he said, quickly guiding FitzGerald’s hands and propelling him up the side, while Sean struck the sail and laid fourteen pence on the thwart.

‘You Navy chaps are always cutting it fine,’ said the mate of the brig as they came over the side. ‘Now I suppose some poor unfortunate soul will have to take your shallop in tow. Vast heaving, you lubbock,’ he roared in parentheses, and added, ‘The master is below in the cabin.’

The master of the Mary Rose—she was a victualler, chartered by the Admiralty, from Cork for Portsmouth—was no more pleased to see them than his mate, and he spoke sharply about almost missing the tide while some folks disported themselves on shore; but they were both so utterly triumphant and enchanted with having accomplished their care-ridden journey, at having caught up with the brig when all seemed lost at the very last moment, and with being aboard a vessel that would carry them all the rest of the way without any planning or contriving on their part at all, that they were wonderfully cordial to the master; who afterwards confided to the mate his private opinion that ‘the midshipmen came aboard as boiled as a pair of owls’—in which he betrayed a grievous lack of discernment.

‘This is very fine,’ said FitzGerald, with enthusiastic approval, as they stood on deck watching the green hills recede. The steady north-easter sang in the brig’s taut rigging; the sun came out, low under the clouds, lighting the green of the land with an extraordinary radiance. Somewhere behind the haze that hung over Cork, Placidus would be moving composedly along the road to Mallow, carrying Liam away to the north and the west, all over the green country that they might never see again: the thought came into Peter’s head in spite of his excitement; and the same thought was clearly with Sean, who looked long and gravely towards the shore, as so many of his countrymen have done. But FitzGerald, also like many other Irishmen leaving their country, was in tearing high spirits. ‘I am wonderfully pleased with the sea,’ he cried. ‘It was a capital idea, writing to Cousin Wager. I am sure the Navy is far better than the Army in every way. Why, it will be like a boating picnic on the lough, without the troublesome business of going home in the evening. I say, this is famous, is it not, Palafox?’ he said as the Mary Rose lifted to the send of a wave. The wind was blowing across and somewhat against the tide, and a little way out from the land was a line of rough water, chopped up on the invisible swell from the Atlantic: when they crossed Crosshaven, now a sprinkling of white on the loom of the land, the Mary Rose entered this zone of cross forces, and began to grow lively. In an inquisitive manner she pointed her bowsprit up to the sky, then brought it down to explore the green depths below, and her round bows went thump on the sea.

‘This is famous,’ repeated FitzGerald, staggering to keep his footing. ‘Famous,’ he said again, swallowing hard.

‘Do you see that ship?’ cried Peter. ‘No, not that—that’s a ketch—there, right ahead. I believe she’s a man-of-war.’

FitzGerald stared forward beyond the heaving bowsprit, which had now added a curious corkscrewing motion and a sideways lurch to the rest: he groaned, and covered his eyes with his hand.

‘Palafox,’ he said, ‘I don’t give a curse whether the thing is a man-of-war or not. Isn’t it cold?’ A little later he said, ‘Palafox, I am feeling strangely unwell. We should never have eaten that pork at Blarney. Are you feeling unwell, Palafox?’

‘Never better,’ said Peter, still trying to make out the ship.

‘Then perhaps it is the motion of the vessel,’ said FitzGerald, gripping the rail with both hands and closing his eyes. Peter looked at him quickly, and saw that his face had turned a very light green.

‘Come over to this side,’ he said, taking FitzGerald by the elbow, ‘then you can be sick to the lee.’

‘I will not be sick,’ said FitzGerald, without opening his eyes: he pulled his arm away pettishly and shivered all over. ‘And I beg you will not say such disgusting things. Oh.’

‘You will feel better directly if you are,’ said Peter. ‘Some people swallow a piece of fat pork on a string. Come, make an effort.’

‘No,’ said FitzGerald, feebly striking out sideways.

Peter and Sean looked at him with easy compassion.

They were not transfixed with perishing cold; their brains and eyes were not heaving; their mouths were not unnaturally watering; they did not wish the world would come to an end, nor that they could instantly die: indeed, they were having a most enjoyable time—were healthy and disgustingly cheerful.

‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald. He could say no more: Sean plucked him from the rail, to which he clung as the only solid thing in a dissolving universe, and half carried him, half led him below, where Peter stuffed him into a bunk, too far reduced even to curse them, and covered him with blankets.

The wind began to get up in the night and backed round into the west; it brought rain with it, and the next day Peter and Sean, in borrowed tarpaulins, kept the glistening deck to watch the cruel coast of Cornwall drift by in the late afternoon. From time to time they went down to comfort FitzGerald as he lay, utterly void and longing for the death that he saw approaching, but at all too slow a pace. There was nothing to be done for him, however. He would take nothing; and if ever he could be roused to speak, it was only to say, ‘Palafox, you said fat. You should never have said fat—oh.’ Sometimes he said that he almost hoped he might live to have Peter’s blood for it: at other times he said he forgave him, and wished to be remembered at home.

On Thursday the wind, as if it had been specially ordered, shifted into the south-west and south: they sailed gently up the Channel on a milk-and-water sea that rippled playfully in the sun, the innocent element; on either side there sailed in company with them a great number of vessels, near and far; and as the sweet evening gathered in the western sky, FitzGerald appeared on deck in time to see five ships of the line with two attendant frigates and a sloop of war pass within a cable’s length, close hauled on the wind and in a formation as precise as a regiment of foot-guards on parade. With their towering height of gleaming canvas—their royals were set—and with their long sides exactly chequered with gun-ports, they gave an instant impression of immense strength and majesty, a moving and exhilarating feeling that made Peter wish to cheer. FitzGerald was moved too; a tinge of colour came into his face and some animation to his extinguished eyes.

‘It would almost be worth while going to sea to be aboard one of those things,’ he said.

‘Hullo,’ cried Peter, turning round. ‘How are you?’

‘Thank you, the worst is over.’

‘It took you pretty badly,’ said Peter, with a grin; ‘you should have tried—you should have tried my recipe. But how do you mean, it would almost be worth while?’

‘Palafox,’ said FitzGerald earnestly, ‘you do not seriously suppose, do you, that once I have got my feet on dry ground, any mortal persuasion will ever get them off it? If you do, you are mistaken; for the minute I leave this ship—or ketch or brig or whatever you choose to call the horrible machine—nothing, nothing will induce me to get on to it again, nor any other floating inferno. No: my talents lie in another direction, I find.’

‘I am very sorry for it,’ said Peter. ‘But you know, it is never so bad again. Have you eaten anything yet?’

‘No,’ said FitzGerald, ‘and I do not believe that I ever shall eat again.’

‘That is a pity,’ said Peter, ‘for I passed by the galley just now and I saw the cook making a prodigious broth, with a hen in it. Indeed, there’s the steward now. Will you not come down and watch us eat, at least? The smell alone would revive a dying man.’

FitzGerald hesitated, allowed himself to be persuaded—would just peck at the soup to be companionable—went down, begged the master of the Mary Rose would excuse him, had been much indisposed of late, on account of over-indulgence in pork at Blarney—ate soup, ate more soup, attacked venison pasty—pasty excellent, sea-air capital for giving an appetite—demolished a raised pie—ate solomon gundy, ate lemon posset, ate cheese, ate more cheese—varieties of cheese discussed, all excellent in their kind—ate more cheese. And at the master’s invitation he drank to his future lieutenant’s commission in muddy port; he then voluntarily proposed Peter’s appointment as master and commander, as post-captain, as rear-admiral of the blue, red and white; as vice-admiral and full admiral of the same squadrons; and to himself as first sea-lord; he earnestly promised them his protection and countenance from the moment he reached that high office, and was removed, exceedingly talkative, to his bunk.

When Peter next came on deck darkness had fallen. His head was proof against the master’s port, for he had been weaned on poteen that would burst into blue flame a yard from the fire—it was usual in Ballynasaggart to employ whiskey as the universal medicine, and indeed it was almost the only thing that kept the inhabitants alive under the perpetual drizzle of rain.

It was a profound darkness that filled the warm night—no moon, no stars but the riding-lights of other vessels near at hand. He stood against the rail, and the brig worked silently in on the tide past St Helen’s; scarcely a ripple moved her, but the black water gleaming along the side in the reflection of the great stern-lantern showed that she was under way. There were lights on shore, scattered like a necklace broken, and lights at sea, moving steadily to their unseen destinations: voices in the dark, mysterious in their invisibility, and once a ghostly form, pale whiteness reaching into the sky, swept by them, a man-of-war bound for the Jamaica station. He heard the order ‘Hands to the braces’ and a pattering of feet: then the ship was gone.

‘Joe!’ hailed the mate of the Mary Rose, shattering the enchantment.

‘Ho!’ answered a very loud voice from out of the night.

‘Where’s Centurion lying?’

‘How come you’re so soon?’ countered the unseen Joe. ‘We did not look for to see you this tide.’

‘Is she at St Helen’s yet?’

‘Nor this week neither,’ said Joe, apparently right under their stern.

‘Joe!’ hailed the master.

‘Ho!’ replied the voice, which had secretly moved quite round the brig.

‘Spit-ed,’ said Joe, sulkily; and was heard no more.

‘She’s lying at Spithead,’ interpreted the master, ‘and that being so, young gentlemen, you had best lie aboard tonight and take a pair of oars over in the morning, after a good breakfast—which you won’t see many more of them.’

‘That is very kind of you, sir,’ said Peter.

‘Which it is agreeable to my sentiments, sir,’ said the master of the Mary Rose, with a profound inclination, ‘to be of service to the gentlemen of the Navy.’

He left the rail, and Peter heard him recommend the man at the wheel to keep to the middle of the channel if he wished to retain his blazing head on his flaming shoulders. ‘I had better prepare everything tonight,’ thought Peter, and he went below. There he found Sean before him, brushing clothes as well as he could by the light of a small swinging lamp. A considerable heap of dried Irish mud showed the pitch of his zeal.

‘Listen, Peter a gradh,’ he whispered, with anxiety filling his voice. ‘Your honour will never forget my petition? Sure you will keep it in mind?’

Peter’s reply was lost in a sudden rumbling din that vibrated solemnly through the brig as they let go the anchor, but he nodded, and when it was over he said, ‘I’ll do all I can, Sean my dear, indeed I will: but I wish you had brought a paper of recommendation.’

The Centurion. His Majesty’s ship Centurion: she lay with her yards across, trim, shining with cleanliness even under the grey sky of the morning, her decks a scene of intense activity; parties of seamen in canvas trousers hurried with buckets and mops; a half-company of red-coated Marines performed their exercise with a rhythmic stamping and crash to the beat of a drum.

‘I say, Palafox,’ said FitzGerald, who was first up the side, ‘do you see that—’

‘You, sir,’ cried an angry voice behind them; ‘you there! Who the devil are you?’ It was the officer of the watch, who knew very well who they were, but who nevertheless stared down upon them with a fierce and disciplinary eye. ‘What is your business? What do you mean by wandering about his Majesty’s ship like a pack of geese on a common?’ These last words were addressed to Peter, who had unhappily made three paces in the wrong direction.

‘I was looking for Mr Walter,’ he replied in a faltering voice.

‘Roaming up and down the ship like a parcel of apes,’ continued the officer of the watch. ‘Get off this ship directly, and come back and report yourself to me in a proper manner. And salute the quarter-deck when you come aboard, do you hear?’

FitzGerald was scarlet with anger: he took a hasty step forward as the officer turned, but Peter seized him by the arm and pulled him away. ‘Don’t be an ass,’ he hissed, dragging him to the side. ‘You can cut his throat later.’

They vanished and then reappeared. Peter took off his hat as he set foot on the deck and advanced towards the officer of the watch, who returned his salute.

‘My name is Palafox, sir,’ he said.

‘Reporting for duty,’ prompted the officer.

‘Reporting for duty,’ said Peter.

‘Mr Palafox,’ said the officer, holding out his hand, ‘I am happy to welcome you aboard.’

FitzGerald in his turn was made welcome to the Centurion, and the officer said, ‘Have you your dunnage with you? Your sea-chests,’ he added, seeing their blank expressions. ‘Those are your things, are they?’ he asked, looking beyond them to where Sean stood with FitzGerald’s portmanteau on his shoulder and a little leather parcel that belonged to Peter. ‘Those are your things, eh? You have left your sea-chests ashore? Unwise. Never part with your chest—ordered to sea in five minutes—never see it again. Jennings, take the dunnage and show the gentlemen their quarters. Master-at-arms, seize that man. Pin him. Collar him before he’s over the side. He has not got a certificate, has he?’ he asked Peter, who stood there appalled at the sight of poor Sean immovably wedged in the grasp of two powerful sailors and a Marine.

‘I am sure my father would have given him one,’ said Peter, ‘and I assure you, sir, he bears the best character of anyone in our parish.’

‘Your servant, is he? Well, I’m sorry for it,’ said Mr Saumarez, with his eyes gleaming with greed; ‘but it’s all one, you know.’

‘Oh sir,’ cried Peter, ‘I can vouch for him, upon my word I can. I was going to beg your interest with Mr Anson to have him admitted to the ship. He is a first-rate seaman, and he is very eager to serve in the fleet. If a certificate is necessary, I will write home at once.’

For a moment Mr Saumarez appeared to suspect that Peter might be presuming to make game of him, and bent a very ominous look upon him; but his brow cleared, and he said, ‘Very well, Mr Palafox. I believe I can assure you that your request will be granted. Master-at-arms, take the man below. Mr Dennis will read him in.’

‘Thank you, sir; I am extremely obliged,’ said Peter, fervently shaking the officer’s hand; and Sean, blessing his honour’s magnanimous heart, hurried the wondering master-at-arms below while the sailors stood around gazing with wild surmise.

‘What the devil,’ cried Mr Saumarez, slowly recovering; ‘is there no work to do in this ship? Mr Bowes, why are those hands standing about like a parcel of in-calf heifers? Mr Walsh, your party is at a standstill. Good heavens, this is not fiddlers’ green. Has nobody ever seen an honest man ask to serve his country, as a privilege, in his Majesty’s fleet?’

‘No sir,’ said an unfortunate gunner’s mate, who conceived that these words were addressed to him. ‘Only the officers, sir.’

‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ cried Mr Saumarez; ‘and get on with your work, or by the living …’

‘I wonder when the fellow is going to show us our quarters,’ said FitzGerald, as he crouched under a beam in the half-darkness.

‘I believe these are our quarters,’ said Peter, uncertainly, feeling with his hand for something to sit on.

‘Nonsense,’ said FitzGerald. ‘You could not decently mew up a cat in this horrible booth.’

‘Beg parding, sir,’ said Jennings, appearing again, ‘but I can’t find your sea-chests nowhere.’

‘Never mind,’ said FitzGerald, fishing out their last half-crown. ‘There’s for your trouble. Now just show us our quarters, will you?’

‘Thankee, sir,’ said Jennings, spitting on the coin, ‘but I have shown you your quarters; no codding, I have. This here is the midshipmen’s berth.’

‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald.

‘Do you know if Mr Walter is aboard?’ asked Peter. ‘I should like to wait upon him, if he is.’

‘Chapling, sir? Oh yes, sir, he’s in his cabing. Shall I show you the way?’

‘If you please.’

‘Not been to sea before, sir?’ asked Jennings, hurrying along.

‘No,’ said Peter.

‘Which I thought not,’ said Jennings, with a grin that reached to his ears, ‘from the way you talked about your man’s certificate.’

‘Did I say something wrong?’ asked Peter, stopping under a grating that let through the light of day.

‘Well, you mistook of the lieutenant’s meaning, if I may say so,’ said Jennings. ‘He meant a certificate, a paper of writing, to say as how your man was exempt from the service. And you meant a character to get him into the service. Hor, hor,’ laughed Jennings, leaning against a standard in honest mirth. ‘Lord bless your innocence, there’s the hottest press out in twenty year—not a officer aboard but Mr Saumarez and the fifth and the chapling—all the rest is out with gangs as far as Lyme and Seaford—and you begging and pleading to have him took aboard. Oh, hor hor hor hor!’

‘Oh,’ said Peter, not very pleased at being thought innocent, ‘I see.’

‘All what we’ve got from the bridewells and gaols is shut up in the orlop in case they escapes—tinkers and mumpers and half-wits, not a seaman to be had for love or money, and the ship wanting of two hundred, and them all running to the inland counties for fear of the press, and hiding in barns. Oh, hor hor hor!’

‘Well, that will do,’ said Peter, quite sharply, and without more than a muffled heave Jennings brought him to the chaplain’s cabin.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Peter into the gloom. ‘I am Peter Palafox, and I have brought you a letter from my father.’

‘I am very happy to see you,’ said Mr Walter, and Peter had a vague impression of a tall figure rising among the shadows: he heard a thud as Mr Walter struck his head, not on the ceiling, for ships do not possess them, or at least not where you can hit your head on them getting up, but on the place which a mere landsman would call by that name. He also heard something that sounded wonderfully like a stifled oath, and then Mr Walter said, ‘I always hit my head on that—on that disagreeable spot. But come, Mr Palafox, or Peter, as I think I may venture to call you, for I knew you before you were born, let us find somewhere where you can sit down and make yourself comfortable. How is my excellent old friend, and your mother? No, you cannot move that. That is a gun. Here, shift the papers from my sea-chest, and sit on that. It is rather dark in here,’ he added.

‘So you have arrived from Ireland,’ he said as they settled down.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Peter, handing him his father’s letter.

‘Thank you. You will forgive me if I open it at once: it is not every day that I have the pleasure—you see, one can read quite well by holding the paper so, where the light comes in through the crack. When the port is open you can see the whole extent of my domain, of course—remarkably spacious. One might almost think oneself in a hundred-gun ship: though naturally my stores take up a good deal of space. But, however, they are doing something to the port, and it has to remain closed. Ha, ha. Your father remembers our days at the university. He reminds me of our avidity for sausages—for maids of honour. Ha, ha. Sad dogs we were. Roaring blades. But we were not in orders then.’

He read on in silence, bent sideways to catch the single shaft of light; and Peter, his eyes growing used to the dimness, made out the shape of a table, two chairs and a hanging canvas cot piled with books; these and the chaplain would have filled the cabin too full for comfort, but in addition there was an immense gun, like a couchant elephant, right in the middle, and the sea-chest, as big as a coffin, upon which he was sitting, embowered in more papers and books. It already called for uncommon agility to move from one side of the cabin to the other, and Peter tried to imagine what it would be like in a hollow sea. ‘And how,’ he wondered, ‘do they ever come at the gun to fire it?’

‘Well, well, well,’ said the chaplain, folding the letter and putting it aside with an affectionate pat. ‘It seems no more than yesterday that we two walked the High, discussing the Church and State. Dear me.’

‘Sir,’ said Peter, nervously beginning the speech that he had prepared, ‘I have to thank you most heartily for your great goodness in obtaining—’

‘Not a word,’ cried the chaplain, removing his wig and waving it with a courtly air, ‘not a word, I beg. Your father has already expressed himself in the most handsome way. I only hope that you and the service will suit. The Navy is not always what might be called a bed of roses. There is hard lying, short rations sometimes, and always the perils of the sea.

Illi robur et aes triplex

circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci commisit pelago ratem primus—

I am sure that your father’s son is familiar with Horace?’

Peter cautiously said that he was pretty well acquainted with the gentleman, but he did not commit himself any further.

‘Now,’ said Mr Walter, ‘I dare say that you have a good many questions to ask?’

‘If you please, sir,’ said Peter, ‘first may I ask how they fire that gun, and then what a sea-chest is, and why do they keep asking me where mine is?’

‘Why, in action,’ said the chaplain, indicating the walls of the little room, ‘they knock down these bulkheads. The cabins disappear and the whole deck is one long open space, so that they can come at the guns and run them out of the ports. That is called clearing for action. As for your sea-chest, that is the chest that contains your belongings, your slops, your tarpaulin jackets, your nautical instruments, your uniforms—in short everything but your personal stores, which you can entrust to the attendant on the midshipmen’s berth, a very good honest fellow named Jennings.’

‘Uniforms, sir?’ cried Peter with extreme dismay. ‘But we thought the Navy called for no uniform. The King’s cockade in your hat, sure, but no uniform at all: and at home we all said how fortunate it was I was going into the sea-service, for my father could never have set me up in the Army, regimentals costing the teeth from your head—being so very dear, sir.’

‘Why, to be sure that was the case until these last years,’ said Mr Walter. ‘But now most officers wear the same clothes as the gentleman who received you—you took notice of him, no doubt, in his blue laced coat and his white breeches. All the officers in our squadron wear the same, and many commanders insist upon their young gentlemen being so dressed. Mr Anson is most particular. But it is the other things in your sea-chest that are even more important: your navigating instruments, quadrant, parallel rulers, scales and all the rest; your linen; your bedding … Our first lieutenant is rigorous in these matters, and only the other day, only on Thursday I say, he turned away a wretched boy who had the effrontery to appear without so much as his Necessary Tables, to say nothing of a proper supply of other things. Mr Saumarez said, very rightly, that on a long voyage a youngster’s welfare depended essentially upon his equipment—he must be provided with clothes for the tropics and for the high latitudes, quite apart from his weapons and in course stores and money for his mess and for the schoolmaster. That is what we mean by the term sea-chest: the sum total of a young gentleman’s equipment, as well as the brass-bound wooden envelope that contains it.’

‘Sir,’ said Peter in a low voice, ‘I have no sea-chest.’

‘No sea-chest?’ cried the chaplain.

‘No sea-chest, sir; nor anything in it at all.’

‘Dear me, dear me,’ said the chaplain in a shocked undertone, gazing at him in the dim light. ‘No sea-chest whatsoever?’

‘None whatsoever, sir, upon my honour. Only a little small kilageen, as we say, made of leather. From Seamus Joyce’s old cow, that died.’

‘And pray what is in it?’

‘Six shirts and some stockings, sir. And a spare coat, with my handkerchiefs laid in the one pocket and my Bible in the other.’

‘A quadrant, perhaps?’

‘Never the ghost of a quadrant, sir. We were sure—indeed my mother was positive—that the service provided these things …’

‘My poor boy, my poor boy,’ said the chaplain, shaking his head sadly. ‘What a great way off you do live, to be sure. Six shirts for a voyage that may last two or three years? Oh dear me, dear me. Do you know where we are bound?’

‘Yes, sir. We are bound for the Great South Sea, there to cruise upon the Spaniards, and confound ’em unawares.’

‘You know that? Good heavens above! It is supposed to be a secret. Who told you?’

‘Oh,’ said Peter vaguely, for his mind was too much taken up with the dreadful news to be much concerned with the question, ‘oh, everybody said so, at home. Michael Noonan the excise man, Patrick Lynch the sow-gelder—everyone.’

‘Even in that remote waste,’ said the chaplain to himself. ‘That is how State secrets are kept in this degenerate age. I must tell the Commodore. How long have the Spaniards been aware of the plan, I wonder?’ He paused. ‘However, we must get back to the matter in hand. So you have no sea-chest, Peter, I collect?’

‘No sea-chest, sir,’ said Peter again, looking so wan that even in this dim light the chaplain could make out his distress. They remained silent for some moments, Peter’s heart dying within him—so near to his goal, the ship actually stirring under his feet at this minute, and then to be turned back—and Mr Walter’s mind busily turning over the meagre resources of a lean, lean purse and an overloaded credit.

‘Peter,’ he said, ‘you must know that unhappily I am not a rich man, and that my own provision for this great voyage has quite exhausted what wealth I had. I cannot tell what to do, upon my word. To equip you very modestly might cost as much as twenty pound …’

‘Oh sir,’ said Peter faintly. In Ballynasaggart twenty pounds kept the whole family for twelve months of the year.

‘Twenty pound … Tell me, did your friends not give you somewhat to bear your charges—something for contingencies unforeseen in Ballynasaggart?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter. ‘My father gave me a purse of gold. Six broad pieces, sir, no less.’

‘Why then,’ cried Mr Walter, flinging out his hands in relief and knocking down a pile of books, ‘why then, there you are! O what a relief to my mind this is! It is not enough, to be sure, but with some pinching and contriving and with the advice of my good friend the purser—a most experienced sea-provider—we may rig you out creditably enough to pass muster. So your good father gave you a fine round plump purse, bless him.’

‘He did, sir,’ said Peter, and he hesitated for a moment before adding, ‘But it was all lost at the races.’

‘Lost at the races?’ said Mr Walter, in a wondering, dubious voice.

‘Yes, sir. I grieve to say that at the races it was lost.’

‘Lost at the races!’ cried the chaplain, now flushed with anger. ‘Do you presume to tell me that it was lost at the races? Profligate boy!’ he cried, striking the table an ominous blow.

‘Oh sir, by your leave …’ began Peter.

‘No, sir, not a word: no, no,’ cried the angry chaplain. ‘The brisk intemperance of youth may excuse much; but not this. You know the value of a gold piece to a clergyman with a living like your father’s as well as I do: you know, or you should know, the self-denial and privation needed to put by a single half-guinea. To squander his substance in this manner is an example of heartlessness such as I have rarely encountered. I am disappointed in you, sir; I am profoundly displeased with your conduct; and I wish you good day.’ Mr Walter was a man of high principle, opposed to violence, and he had meant the interview to end with these words. But his unprincipled right hand (much given to generous indignation) rose of its own volition, and swinging forward in a pure arc it struck Peter’s left ear, knocking his head against the gun so briskly that the metal rang again; and Peter fell off his stool, quite amazed.

It took him some moments to collect his wits. In the meantime the chaplain picked him up, straightened his sprawling limbs and put him back on his stool; and Peter heard the words, ‘Dear me, dear me … never should have done it … poor boy … temptation, no doubt … there, now … why, he looks but palely …’

‘By your leave, sir,’ cried Peter suddenly, ‘it was not the betting. Oh sir, it was not the betting, but a cutpurse, a rapparee, an unlucky black thief of a pickpocket that did be stealing it in the crowd. Will I tell you the way it was, sir?’

‘Do, my poor boy, do: for I fear I have done you an injustice,’ said the chaplain, dusting Peter’s face with his handkerchief. And Peter told him the way it was, in very great detail, right through Connaught and the greater part of Munster, through the chops of the Channel and to the very deck of the Centurion herself, that noble ship, ending with the heartfelt words, ‘but never did I truly miss the purse until this moment, sir.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said the chaplain heavily, sadly. ‘So you were robbed, and I have beaten you for being robbed. You must forgive me, Peter. But what is to be done? What are we to do? I am at a stand. I protest,’ he said again, after a pause, ‘that I am quite at a stand.’

At this moment there was a great rumbling groan, and the port opened upwards and outwards, letting in a blinding light and a blast of fresh sea air.

‘Mind the ink-well!’ cried the chaplain, as he and Peter darted about after the flying papers, ‘and for the love of Heaven cling to my sermon.’

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said a bearded face, upside down in the opening. ‘We’ve just opened the port, like.’

In time everything was picked up, sorted, squared and made fast under heavy books. They sat, gasping and dazzled, gazing at one another through narrowed eyes; and all that Peter could see in Mr Walter’s face was doubt and anxiety. ‘I might,’ said the chaplain at last, ‘I might give you a letter to Mr Shovell. He hopes he may be given the command of a cutter, a hired cutter, for service in the Channel … but I don’t know, I’m sure.’

He went on musing aloud in this way for some time, and Peter’s gaze wandered to the brilliant sea-scape on the far side of the square gunport: he saw boats passing to and fro between the guardships and the squadron, and for a brief moment the whole of the foreground was filled with the bulk of an eight-and-twenty-gun frigate running before the wind, with studding-sails aloft and alow on either side. The brown faces on her quarterdeck were turned towards the Centurion and he could see them laughing as they looked up. She vanished, and his mind returned to Mr Walter’s discourse: he found that the chaplain was explaining the various categories of ‘young gentlemen’, the King’s Letter Boys, the volunteers, and those who appeared on the ship’s books as captain’s, lieutenant’s and even boatswain’s servants, but who in fact walked the quarterdeck like the other midshipmen; yet he was aware that Mr Walter was not really talking to any purpose. And as time went on he also became aware that Mr Walter was staring at him in a very curious way—staring with a fixed, unwavering gaze at his throat, sometimes half closing his eyes and sometimes leaning his head to one side. In the brilliant light that now filled the cabin there could be no possible doubt of his unwavering stare, nor of its direction. The explanation continued, somewhat at haphazard: the gaze grew even more intense. Peter began to feel uneasy, and at length he put his hand to his cravat to see whether it was undone, or whether perhaps it had dipped into the ink.

‘Peter Palafox,’ said the chaplain, ‘pray reach me that buckle.’ And when he had it in his hand he leant back until he was in the sun, holding it to his eye in a very knowing and professional manner. ‘So there you were wandering about Ireland,’ he said, after a long considering pause and countless inspections of the buckle in different lights, ‘wandering about like an Egyptian, I say, with an emerald pinned to your throat. A handsome emerald, though a little flawed, of course, and scratched: but a fine generous colour. At one time,’ he went on, still peering deep into the stone, ‘I taught English to a Dutch jewel-merchant. I loved to see his baubles, and perhaps he taught me more than I taught him. I must not call myself a phoenix—oh, no—but I can tell a true stone when I see one. Look, this is what we call the garden of an emerald—beautiful, is it not? Now if it were not for this unlucky hole bored at the edge—Indian work, for sure—it might fetch two or three hundred guineas. But even so, I am very much out if it is not worth a year of your father’s living at the very least. How did you come by it?’

Peter, his heart’s blood flowing again and a delightful tide of joy surging in his stomach, told him; and the tale was interrupted by the meaningless chuckles of happiness in its purest state.

The chaplain said, ‘Your good old lady was right, I am sure. It must have come from some ship of the Spanish Armada—many were wrecked on your shores, as I understand. What a curious reflection, that it should have come from a galleon to fit you out to serve against that same contumelious nation. If you choose, I will turn this stone into a sea-chest, and a reasonable purse besides; for otherwise the merchants might be tempted to take advantage of your youth and inexperience; and we must never expose others to temptation, in case they should fall. But now I believe we must eat a piece of cake and drink a glass of Madeira, to welcome you aboard, and to repose our minds after their anxiety.’

Back in the midshipmen’s berth, with his mind duly reposed, Peter found it empty except for a very large cat and a very small boy. FitzGerald had gone. The hatch was now open, and the very small boy sat on a locker, looking up it and singing, in a remarkably high-pitched soprano,

‘The secret expedition ho

The secret expedition hee,’

over and over again. Peter stood, contemplating the pink-cheeked singer and wondering first where FitzGerald was and secondly how this child could have got aboard; and presently the song came to an end.

‘Tell me, my boy,’ said Peter kindly, ‘have you seen …’

‘Who the—do you think you are?’ asked the child, with an unflinching stare.

‘You should not use such words,’ said Peter, quite shocked.

‘And you should not use such an infernally impertinent form of address to your seniors,’ piped the very small boy. ‘I suppose you are one of the new horrors that the Admiralty in its wisdom has inflicted upon us. What the—do you mean by addressing me as your boy? Eh? Damn your impertinence,’ and growing pinker with wrath the child went on. ‘Five years seniority, and to be called “my boy” by something that has crept up out of the bilge when the cat was asleep. Rot me, by—, I’ve a month’s mind to have you keel-hauled.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Peter, much taken aback. ‘I was not aware.’

‘In future you will address me as Mr Keppel,’ said the child severely, and returned to his song.

Peter, to preserve his countenance, stroked the cat, a shabby animal, black where it had any hair, and dull blue where it was bald. The cat suffered this for a minute, lashing its tail; then with a low growl it seized his hand and bit it, like a dog.

Peter recoiled and bumped into a large, yellow-haired, florid, thick man, whose ordinarily good-humoured face was clouded with discontent.

‘Nah then, cully,’ said he, in a hoarse whisper, seeing Peter and the cat so closely joined; ‘don’t you tease that cat.’

‘It’s the cat won’t let go, so it won’t,’ cried Peter, waving it in the air.

‘Don’t you go a-teasing no animals here, for I won’t have it. And that’s flat,’ said the newcomer, detaching the cat with a powerful heave. ‘Poor Puss,’ he said, sitting down on a locker to comfort it. ‘Pretty Agamemnon.’

‘I was stroking it,’ said Peter.

‘You don’t want to go around a-teasing of animals,’ was the only reply. ‘Puss. Poor old Ag. Pretty Ag.’

‘Ransome,’ said Keppel, ‘did you have any luck?’

‘No,’ said Ransome. ‘I took the gig’s crew to a wedding at Fareham, thinking to snap up a few as they came out of the church. But the women set on us in the churchyard—knocked us about something cruel—while the men all got out of the vestry. Who’s this been stowing all this stuff on my locker?’ He looked crossly at FitzGerald’s portmanteau, and after a moment he pushed it off with his foot.

‘That is my portmanteau, sir,’ said FitzGerald, who unfortunately appeared just as it fell, ‘and I will thank you to pick it up.’

‘Nah then, cully,’ said Ransome, still in the same hoarse whisper, ‘keep your hair on.’

‘Another Teague, so help me,’ said Keppel; ‘the wretched island must have sunk at last.’

‘You are an offensive boy,’ said FitzGerald, ‘but I imagine you do not know it. If that fellow is your servant, tell him to pick up my portmanteau.’

‘How can you be such a blackguard?’ cried Keppel, with real indignation.

‘If you mean to check me with coming in through the hawsehole,’ said Ransome, growing suddenly very red, ‘I’ll learn you good manners.’

‘I do not understand your jargon,’ said FitzGerald, ‘but if you want a threshing, sure I’ll help you to one.’

‘That’s right,’ said Ransome, peeling off his coat.

They had equal courage: it was weight and skill that decided the matter. FitzGerald weighed ten stone to Ransome’s fourteen; Ransome had great skill in boxing; FitzGerald had none, and in ten seconds he was flat on his back with the blood running fast from his nose. He gasped, took a deep breath and sprang to his feet. He kept upright for much longer this time, and hit Ransome one or two good blows before he went down. Peter propped him up against his knee and wiped his face. ‘You can’t go on,’ he whispered; ‘the fellow is twice your size.’

‘Can’t I?’ said FitzGerald. ‘Let me go.’

He got up, and with a ferocious rush he shot under Ransome’s guard, smashing in one right-handed hook that jarred Ransome’s head on his shoulders. Then he was down again; but with scarcely a pause he leapt up, hitting madly: for a second the blows followed fast, hard bare-fist blows like the sound of a mallet on wood. One of FitzGerald’s got home, and Ransome with an instinctive reaction hit him really hard. The uppercut did not travel six inches, but it lifted FitzGerald a foot, with his chin in the air, and he fell as if he had been dropped from a steeple. He fell oddly crumpled, and he did not move.

‘What is this appalling din?’ snapped a voice behind Peter. ‘Fighting like a lot of snivelling schoolboys? Who is this?’

‘Mr FitzGerald, sir.’

‘New midshipman? The Irish one?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I might have known it. Well, pour some water over him.’

‘Aye-aye, sir.’

‘We was playing,’ said Ransome, with heavy invention.

‘Playing? Then you—what is that infernal racket? Yes, Settle, what is it?’

‘Beg pardon, sir, but some of the pressed men in the orlop has gone mad, talking foreign and carrying on horrible.’

‘Did you put the Irishmen in separate bays, as I told you?’

‘Yes, sir. But they got out,’ shouted the quarter-master to make himself heard above the mounting volume of furious sound that welled through the grating.

‘Mr Saumarez’ compliments, sir,’ said a ship’s boy from the quarter-deck, ‘and he would be glad of a little less noise.’

‘My compliments to the first lieutenant, and it will be attended to directly.’

‘The Commodore’s compliments, sir,’ said a second messenger, bumping into the first. ‘The port-admiral’s barge is coming alongside, and he would like to hear himself speak.’

‘My duty to the Commodore,’ said the harassed lieutenant, ‘and I will see to it myself.’

‘If you please, sir,’ said Peter, ‘I believe it is my servant. May I go down?’

‘You’ll hear from me, Settle,’ said Mr Dennis, shaking his first distractedly. Then to Peter, ‘Come on, if you can do anything.’

As they reached the orlop they entered an almost tangible hullaballoo; howls and curses in Irish shattered the heavy air, and in the gloom they could see a small band beleaguered in the aftermost bay.

‘Connacht! Connacht!’ came Sean’s voice high above all, as he and four tall Connaughtmen fought off the attacks of a pack of men from Munster and Leinster, while a party from Ulster assaulted both sides indiscriminately.

‘Sean, Sean, for the glory of God,’ cried Peter in Irish, ‘will you stop your murderous noise, and the Commodore asking are there savages in the heart of the ship and the Admiral no less himself advancing in splendour like a king to make us a compliment?’

At the sound of his voice and the tongue that he spoke they all turned to see, and he continued passionately, ‘It is the fine figure we make now to the Saxons, we the most polished and elegant, most ancient of people. Where should the world look for an example if not to us? And the moon-calf Sean shaming us all in the face of the people, his soul to the devil.’

‘Now listen,’ said Sean, scratching the back of his leg and blushing under the blood that flowed from his forehead; but his explanation was lost in Irish cries of ‘Shame,’ and ‘Ignorant peasant,’ and ‘Violent fellow that does be putting a mock on the nation’; and in the righteous peace that ensued Peter called him aside. ‘What was the trouble?’ he asked.

‘It was some question about the birth of Saint Patrick,’ said Sean. ‘The Munstermen said—faith, I never heard what they said; but they were certainly wrong.’

‘Let them say, let them say: and I tell you this, Sean—and listen, now—if once again you ever do this, I will cast you off and wipe out your name.’ Pushing Sean crossly away, Peter said to Mr Dennis, ‘Sir, I think the trouble is finished. It was a religious disagreement.’

‘Good,’ said the lieutenant, wiping his forehead. ‘You speak the lingo, so tell them from me that the first man to mention a church, or any moral subject whatever, will be hanged and lose a month’s pay. Where are those flaming Marines? Oh, here you are at last, Gordon. Now you go back to the cockpit,’ he said, patting Peter’s shoulder, ‘and sit perfectly still. For if there is the least sound from there while the Admiral’s aboard you will every one of you be disrated and finish the commission cleaning the heads.’

Peter made his way back and entered the berth as the Admiral was piped up the side. There were several other midshipmen now, and they were obviously discussing FitzGerald, for they stopped as Peter came in.

‘This is the other Teague,’ said Keppel.

‘My name is not Teague,’ cried Peter. He had had a trying day, and he was in no mood to be joked at.

‘Be calm, Teague,’ said another midshipman, and fell to whistling Lillibullero.

‘Take it easy, Teague,’ said another.

But Peter would not take it easy: he hesitated, trying to quell the wild indignation; but he failed; it possessed him, and with a furious shriek he hurled himself upon his country’s oppressors.