The Golden Ocean (17 page)

With death in his heart he hailed the deck. ‘Land ho. High mountains from six points on the starboard bow to six on the larboard. Snow and high land.’

He could feel the cruel disappointment well up from the silent deck, as bitter as his own. The Commodore had been right and the officers wrong: they had missed Juan Fernandez, and this was the mainland, more than two hundred miles to the east. This was the Cordillera that sent back the sun, huge mountains of eternal snow; not the pleasant hills of Juan Fernandez. They had been wrong: they had missed by perhaps no more than an hour of sailing: and now they must beat back into a settled westerly wind, with men dying six and seven a day for want of a handful of greenstuff. How many would pay for the mistake with their lives? The ship and her whole company, in all likelihood.

‘Port your helm.’ He heard the order on deck, and below his sadly dangling feet the yard braced very slowly round as the
Centurion
came up into the wind.

The 30th of May; the 31st, seven men each. The 1st of June, five. The 2nd, only three. June 3rd, five, of whom one was Norman, a bo’sun’s mate, fit up until a few days before. The 4th, five. The 6th, the last man of all the pensioners, and six
other men. The 7th, no less than twelve; and sixteen on the 8th.

‘How many men can you count in your watch, Mr Brett?’ asked the Commodore.

‘Ten, sir. And six can still go aloft.’

There was a howling scream at the mast-head, piercing words rushing one on the other.

‘What does this mean?’ cried the Commodore, with a flash in his eye.

‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said Peter, touching his hat. ‘It is Sean O’Mara, sir. He means he sees land. A green island aswim in the sunrise, he says.’

For the first time he saw Mr Anson moved out of himself. The Commodore flung down his hat, clasped his hands for a moment, and then ran for the shrouds.

‘M
R PALAFOX, WHAT THE DEVIL DO YOU MEAN, SIR? HOW CAN
you presume to answer me with, “I came as fast as I could”? Here have I been waiting six mortal minutes while you stroll about the island taking your ease in the shade. What do you mean by it? I wish you may not be growing sullen, as well as grossly obese and idle.’

‘I did run, sir.’

‘Don’t you presume to answer me, sir,’ cried the lieutenant. ‘I saw you. Do you call that gasping waddle a run? Look at you—a great, blubbery, slab-sided hulk that can’t reach the maintop without stopping to pant five times on the way. Oh, what a horrible greasy sight. More like one of these sea-calves
than a King’s officer. You have been fooling about in the cabbage palms. I know it as well as if I had seen you, so don’t you dare to deny it, for I will not bear it. Get into that boat directly. It is always the same with these midshipmen—let them on shore for five minutes, and they come back disgustingly bloated and wanton.’

‘My dear boy,’ said Mr Walter, ‘I hope you may not be taking to dissolute ways. I heard you and Keppel and Ransome hallooing and singing until three in the morning, and this is not the first time, by a very long way. The Commodore has taken notice of it more than once. He said, “How can anyone get any sleep with this infernal din going on?” Surely, this is very inconsiderate in you, Peter?’

‘I am very sorry, sir. We were hunting a goat.’

‘What, in the middle of the night?’

‘We thought it more sporting, sir, for it was the very old billy we always shoot on Fridays: he is getting very slow in his pins.’

‘Poor creature. No wonder he is getting old and nervous and slow, the way you harry him. It is a shame, I declare; and I think it but right to put you in mind of the fate of the Children of Israel, when they waxed fat and kicked.’

‘Where is that—midshipman? Oh, there you are at last, Mr Palafox. You will find yourself confined to the ship if you go on like this. You are sailing pretty near the wind, I can tell you, my friend: only this morning Mr Saumarez said, “I wonder what has come into that young fellow. He was a quiet, sober, well-conducted midshipman a few months ago, apart from talking too much by half; but if he goes on at this gait he will soon have corrupted half the crew with his example.”’

‘Who put this goat into my bed?’ asked the master, with awful quietness. ‘What depraved wretch—Mr Palafox, come here. Mr Palafox. Mr Palafox—is the boy deaf?’

Mr Palafox lay on his back in the boat, his noble brow shaded by a palm-leaf hat, while Sean fished over the side. There was already a mound of fish between the thwarts, but he fished on with the fanatic intensity of one who cannot possibly pull in enough.

‘There’th a thea-calf,’ said Keppel, nodding lazily over the bows. He had not a tooth left in his head, and this obliged him to lisp.

‘The thea-calf ho

The thea-calf hee

The thea-calf thwimming in the Thouthern Thea,’ he chanted.

‘Garrh,’ cried Sean, furiously shaking his fist at his rival. ‘The confident thief.’ The sea-lion slid backwards under a wave and popped up on the other side, staring with unwearied curiosity.

‘Your soul to the devil,’ growled Sean, jealously switching his line over to the starboard gunwale.

‘There are enough fish in the sea for everybody,’ said Peter, closing his eyes.

‘There are not,’ said Sean. ‘There are never enough fish in the sea. Those outrageous beasts eat more than is right. I have him,’ he cried, jerking the line. ‘Oh, if it is not the codfish of the world.’

‘Then put it back. We don’t want any of your common old cod. Wait for a chimney-sweeper—that’s worth eating. Or else try for a crayfish. I could fancy a crayfish, I think.’ Peter had grown delicate in his eating: he had a proud stomach now, very unlike the stomach that had shrieked for a weevily biscuit or the leg of a toasted rat. But it had taken some time to become so difficult: for weeks on end he had eaten everything and anything that was put before him, and had then gone out hungrily looking for more in the woods.

He had changed. Changed very much, imperceptibly day by day: but if one had looked through his journal, flicked over the pages, one would have seen the difference. The first entries dated at Juan Fernandez were concise, dry statements of
position, wind and weather, anchorage, memoranda of work to be done. ‘Wind at WSW½S. Warp to be carried out tomorrow. Remember foul ground extends at least 1 cable, the Spout bearing WNW by long-boat compass, West Bay and Sugarloaf points in a line. Variation 9° 53’ E by my reading, 10° 1’ by the master’s. Keppel took 3 bowls of soup. Number 3, 7, 9, 10 and 11 to be trained round and looked to.’ This referred to guns: they had found fresh traces of men on shore—broken pots, Spanish filth, fish yet undecayed—and although they had then but thirty men to fight a 60-gun ship, they had to make what preparations they could.

This kind of entry continually recurred, with the names of the men they buried—for the effects of the scurvy still killed the sickest men for three weeks after they landed. There was a happier note very early, however, when the little
Tryal
came in on June 12, sailed somehow by Captain Saunders, his second lieutenant and three men, who were all who could stand on their feet, apart from the reinforcement of Centurions who were sent as soon as the
Tryal
made her signal. But then there was the long agony of the G
loucester
, who plied for a month and two days off the island, sometimes clearly in sight, sometimes gone for a week of unceasingly contrary winds, unable to beat up, she was so short of hands—and that in spite of the men sent from shore with fresh victuals. At length the crew of the longboat did bring her in: and in August Peter made the sombre calculation—‘
Centurion
506: 292 dead, 214 alive.
Gloucester
374: 292 dead, 82 alive.
Tryal
81: 42 dead, 39 alive. 961 men sailed from St Helen’s in these three. 626 of them are dead. Is there any hope for
Wager
,
Severn
, and
Pearl
now? We could not have lasted another week at sea.’ And, writing that, he remembered how they crept in towards the land; how they had let go their anchor in order not to run to the lee, and how they had not had the strength to bring it home when the wind came fair, but were held there in sight of salvation, unable to move, until the Commodore, risking all, sailed the anchor out of its bed.

Yet as the lovely, gentle weeks dropped by the entries began
to be peppered with such notes as—‘Bailey and I shot two sea-lions, which makes five.’ ‘Eight crayfish today. Preston dared me to send the biggest to the Commodore, with the compliments of the berth: which I did, by Sean.’ ‘A chimney-sweeper off Monkey’s Key, 53 lb. and it took Ransome and me half an hour to land him. Drowned baby, in honour of Keppel’s getting to the top of Admiralty Hill for the first time.’ ‘Ransome made a joke before dinner: Preston said we could have catched the turtle if it had been attempted to be turned—Ransome said it could not turn turtle, because it was a turtle already. Unable to eat, although he tried. Sent to the surgeon. Pumped. Mr Woodfall let me hold the tube. Better now, though weak.’ ‘The
Anna
came in. We had given her up long ago. Frightfully battered, but the crew in good shape. They sheltered up a creek they found on the main and were fed by savages. Her master makes low jokes about King’s officers not to be allowed out without a master-mariner to guide their motions. He is a coarse fellow, though a capital seaman.’ ‘Sean commended by Mr Saumarez for his long splice on the best bower’s cable, but in the evening he was rebuked for dragging one of
Gloucester
’s carpenter’s mates up and down the Sugar-loaf by his pigtail—a man called O’Toole. The O’Tooles ran in King Murtagh’s battle with the Danes, and are all thieves.’ ‘
Anna
’s stores found to be much damaged, but the tobacco is safe: the men are wonderfully gratified. Sean gave me a quid to try: but I am sensibly better now.’ ‘
Anna
surveyed. I went through her with the carpenters: very shocking indeed—14 knees broke, breast hooks gone, she is iron-sick, and I wish I may never see anything like her spirketting again. She cannot possibly go home, and is to be bought by the Commodore, broke up, and her timbers used. Her men go into
Gloucester
. Mr Gerard, her master, thought to argue with
Gloucester
’s Number One, but caught a Tartar. Lord, how we laughed.’

In the little boat there was a beautiful silence, warm, contemplative and easy: a soft breeze came off the land, green-scented, and above them a frigate-bird lay on the wind. There
was the distant sound of the smiths and carpenters working on the G
loucester
, but not furiously hard—a steady, even rhythm of normal work. The
Centurion
and the
Tryal
lay almost ready for the sea, with their yards across, tall, trim, gleaming with cleanliness, their ’tween-decks wholesome and fresh at last. Here and there, dotting the bright grass of Juan Fernandez and showing in the clearings, were the rude huts and bothies that the crews had been allowed to build and inhabit; and from many of them rose blue fingers of smoke that mounted straight before the breeze from over the high land drifted them out to sea.

‘This is a wonderful place,’ murmured Peter, with his eyes closed. ‘I wish we could stay here for ever. Sean, this is the Tir na ’nOg, no doubt,’

‘It is that, your honour, honey,’ said Sean. ‘And a large piece of it I shall take home for Pegeen Ban, if the island does not get there before us.’

‘How will you know which gets there first? How will you know at all?’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Keppel, ‘with your Tir Mc Thing?’

‘Why, it is an island, you know,’ said Peter, ‘that comes floating off the coast of our country every few years or so, and if you can reach it you stay young for ever: but it is always a great way off, and difficult to be reached. We call it the Tir na ’nOg in our language.’

sang Keppel, quietly, with an endless repetition of three notes, as he stared down through the clear water to the sun-dappled weed below.

‘Proinsias Burke went there,’ said Peter.

‘And Conn Riordan the cithogue.’

‘Ah, but he was a seal-woman’s son, and therefore is not to be counted.’

‘And so was Proinsias, only the other way about; for was not the seal of the stack Proinsias’ own da, with a grey muzzle on him and one ear, no more?’

‘It is the truth you say, Sean, and Proinsias came back after three hundred years and found his wicked old shrew of a wife lying quiet, which made him laugh, and his wolf-hound hanged by the Queen, which made him weep, and his heart broke so it did and he grew old in a day.’

‘Sure I knew him myself, the old, old, the very old man, and gave him a penny as he sat in the rain with no dog for a comfort to sustain him.’

Then the silence dropped on them again, until quite suddenly Sean said, ‘And how will I call the King when I see him? Will I say my lord, or your honour? For I will speak in English, for glory.’

‘Sure I cannot tell,’ said Peter. ‘Perhaps you say Majesty. Do you know, Keppel?’

‘I always call him “sir”,’ said Keppel, carefully dropping a crumb of bait to a vermilion fish to eat. ‘Some people use the third person, but it’s liable to get their tiller-lines crossed.’

‘Do you often talk to him?’

‘Yes,’ said Keppel indifferently. ‘He’s my godfather,’ he added.

‘Oh,’ said Peter: and after a pause, ‘I suppose you are pretty important—important, I mean, by land?’

‘No. Not a bit,’ said Keppel cheerfully. ‘Not unless someone knocks my brother on the head. Then it would be enter Mr Midshipman Keppel, the Queen of the May, in an ermine tippet and crimson breeches, attended at a respectful distance, by Admiral Palafox and Captain O’Mara. But why are you going to visit him?’

‘And does he not owe me a gold pound for my fingers, and three for my toes?’ asked Sean, who, like most of the sailors, had been cruelly bitten by the ice of the Horn. ‘And will he not wish to see before ever he pays—for it is a sum to set a man up in cows for his life. The Dear knows I wish I had twice the number, like the monster at the fair, to have them froze off at the price.’

‘But—’ began Keppel. The flat boom of the warning gun cut off the word. ‘Buoy your line. Quick. Give way,’ he cried, and before the echo came back from the hill the boat was moving fast for Cumberland Bay.

There was a scene of intense, ordered activity at the anchorage, the squadron’s boats hurrying from ship to shore as the men swarmed on to the beach. Already sails were being bent aboard the
Centurion
; what was wanting in her rigging and cordage was being prepared at full speed, and men were running with the capstan bars.

The look-out on the top of the island had seen a sail: she had come hull-up and then had tacked away: she was surely a Spaniard, and had perhaps seen the tents on the shore. This was the information that Peter snatched up in fragments: though some still maintained that she was the
Severn
or the
Pearl
, and some that she was the fore-runner of a squadron of force.

‘Very well, Mr Saumarez,’ said the Commodore, eyeing the boats that were to tow the
Centurion
out into the wind, and speaking above the scream of the fiddle on the capstan and the roar of the shanty as the anchor came home. ‘It is very well indeed.’

But Peter, standing on the shore and watching the masts come into line and the white cloud break out from the yards, felt that it was all very ill. He had known that he was deep in the first lieutenant’s disfavour, that sundry misdemeanours had yet to be purged; he had known that somebody had to be left with the boiling-party, but the news, coldly and sharply delivered in the midst of his glee, the news that this somebody was to be Mr Palafox and none other, had been like the sky falling in.

‘Rot Mr Saumarez,’ he thought, passionately stamping the sand. ‘—Mr Saumarez, the—lieutenant. How I hate this loathsome island.’

‘Never take on, sir,’ said Hairy Amos, to soothe him. ‘They’ll never find nothing, but sweat there and back like—’