The Golden Ocean (4 page)

They slept secure from arrest, but not from the rain: and in the sodden dawn Peter thanked his kind fate for a follower so foreseeing as Sean, who in their hurried departure had had the wit to whip up the wooden bottle that Mrs Palafox had provided for Peter’s morning draught. Now the fiery whiskey bored down his throat and lit up his stomach, preserving him from the noxious damp.

‘That is far better,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But I wish—’ His words were cut short by the sight of Sean, who appeared suddenly on a naked rock above them: the wind was holding his long cloak straight up in the air, increasing his already considerable height to ten feet and more: his black hair also streamed up, and his blue eyes were glaring down in a hard, inimical, piercing way at a stranger far below them; and the reason for this was that the hare which had hitherto been concealed under his cloak was now entirely open to view. The inoffensive, uninquisitive stranger passed on his harmless way, and Sean came down.

‘If you did that on my father’s land,’ said FitzGerald, picking a clean bone of the half-smoked hare (it is hard to light a good fire when even your flint and steel drip wet on being shaken), ‘you would find yourself transported before you could very well bless the Pope. He is a Papist, I suppose?’ he asked Peter, nodding towards Sean in the manner typical of his kind.

‘He is not,’ said Peter, shortly.

‘Well, he is a wonderful poacher for a Protestant,’ said FitzGerald.

‘The mist is lifting,’ said Peter. It was: it tore and parted as they watched, thinner, and at last so sparse and rare that it was no more than a few wisps between their hilltop and the great plain of Ireland with the white road winding away, far below.

‘What shall we do now?’ asked Peter, more to himself than FitzGerald or Sean, after he had gazed at this sight for a while.

‘What we ought to do is go down there to the road and walk steadily towards the south,’ said FitzGerald. ‘It will dry us, perhaps, if the rain does not come back; and at least I am sure it will diminish the distance between us and Cork.’

‘I tell you what, Palafox,’ he said again, when they were down out of the sopping heather and the patches of rust-coloured bog and on the dry road, ‘it is an infernal thing not being able to go back to Derry: I have just thought of a prodigious fine notion, if only we were there. You could go round to all the parsons’ houses and tap them for five guineas apiece.’

‘Listen,’ said Peter, in a pitying voice. ‘Do you really think there is a parsonage in all the West with five guineas in it at one time?’

‘There are two in Derrynacaol,’ said FitzGerald. ‘My cousin is the Bishop of Clonfert, and I know the value of the livings there. There are a couple of charming snug places in Derry: I wish I had gone into the Church. But not hereabouts, ‘tis true,’ he said, looking forward to the thin and deserted country that lay far before them. ‘Here they live somehow on twenty or thirty a year.’

‘Perhaps I should go back and try,’ said Peter, standing in the road.

‘No,’ said FitzGerald, ‘it would not do at all. They would nab you at once and then it would be days and days of finding surety of good behaviour and all that. You would never reach Queenstown in time, to say nothing of being arrested for debt at the inn. I am sorry, upon my honour, for it is all in my quarrel: but a second is as much troubled as a principal in a duel.’

They walked on in silence. Peter thought of Placidus. He thought of Liam. And he thought, with a sudden gasp of realisation, that his whole prayed-for, cherished, unexpectedly lucky chance of a career in the Navy was at stake. If he could not reach Queenstown in time to sail on the transport in which he was ordered to sail, everything would be lost. He knew little about the Navy, but he did know that a midshipman’s appointment was made by a captain to the ship he commanded—to that ship and none other. He knew that it was not a general commission, but a particular and a revocable appointment: if the
Centurion
sailed without him, he would no longer be a midshipman, and he would no longer have any way into the career that he longed for.

There was a sudden, strangely unexpected thrumming of feet behind, and a man passed them, running with a steady, high-paced gait: he was dressed in a yellow-and-scarlet livery, and he carried a long, silver-headed cane.

‘Good day, Thomas,’ cried FitzGerald, as he went by, and
‘Good day, Mr FitzGerald, sir,’ called the man, waving his hat but never wavering in his stride. Peter was too desperately worried to take much notice, yet he did say, ‘What’s that?’

‘It is Culmore’s running footman: and I think it means good news.’

‘What is a running footman?’

‘Why, a footman that runs. That stands to reason. But come, let us not break our winds racing along like this. Sit down on this stone.’

‘No, no, no,’ cried Peter. ‘I will not. How can we sit down when every minute counts for so much?’

‘Why, what a fret you are in,’ said FitzGerald coolly, sitting down and resting his feet. ‘But listen to me for a minute. That was Culmore’s running footman: he runs in front of his master’s coach. So that means Culmore will be along in a little while. If I cannot borrow twenty guineas from Culmore, you may call me an ass—after all, I know how well he did at the races. Therefore I can see no point at all in blazing along the road and making it more difficult for our salvation to catch up with us.’

Peter hesitated. He was extremely unwilling to stop for a moment: but FitzGerald seemed so calmly certain that he was almost convinced. He hesitated. Then Sean said, ‘There’s the dust of a coach far behind us, so there is,’ and Peter sat down.

Now he saw the dust himself, white, a slowly-travelling plume. He took off his battered shoes and cooled his feet in the grass. They were all very tired, and they sat quite still.

The coach rolled up. On the box the coachman gathered the reins in one hand while he disentangled a horse-pistol: behind, one of the footmen had a blunderbuss ready. A face with its wig awry peered out of the window.

‘Good day, my lord,’ said FitzGerald, advancing and making a beautiful bow.

‘Why, upon my soul, it’s young FitzGerald,’ said Lord Culmore. ‘What are you doing in this horrible place?’

‘I am airing my friends,’ replied FitzGerald. ‘May I name Mr Palafox, of the Navy—Lord Culmore.’

‘Your servant, my lord,’ said Peter, making a leg.

‘Your most humble, sir,’ said Lord Culmore, bowing to the sill. ‘How is your father?’ he asked FitzGerald, coming out of the coach. ‘I hope you left him well?’

‘Not as well as I could wish, but low in spirits. He was talking of hanging himself on the Boyne apple-tree.’

‘That is the old crooked one, ain’t it, in front of the house?’

‘Yes, that’s the tree.’

‘Then it will not serve his purpose. I would lay seven to one that the branches would break under fifteen stone. Ten to one,’ he added, after consideration.

‘No takers, my lord,’ said FitzGerald, ‘for I am of your opinion.’

‘Where are your horses?’ asked Culmore, looking about. ‘Do you still ride that chestnut?’

‘Oh, we left them—we left them some way behind,’ said FitzGerald, ‘and as for the mare, I let Stafford have her at last. Johnny Stafford.’

‘I know him’ said Culmore, smiling. ‘I won five and twenty guineas from him a month ago. He thought some young fellow among his tenants could run against my Thomas. Ha, flesh. I would back my Thomas against any two of them—any two men in the kingdom. But can I take you with me? Can I be of any service? Command me. There is all the room in the world in the coach.’

‘You are very kind, my lord,’ said FitzGerald in a low voice, ‘and you can put me exceedingly in your debt if you wish …’ They moved a little way along the road, Lord Culmore wearing a perturbed expression. Peter withdrew in the other direction, whispering fiercely to Sean, ‘Don’t stare, for all love, you ill-shaped great cow.’

‘Well,’ said FitzGerald, as the dust rose again behind the vanishing coach, ‘now you may call me an ass if you wish.’

‘Oh?’ said Peter, closing his eyes.

‘Yes. The sordid old screw would not part with better than ten.’

‘Ten guineas? Hoo! Glory above,’ cried Sean.

‘Will you close your mouth now?’ said Peter, with a great smile spreading in spite of all he could do to look sober and grave.

But Sean would not be quiet yet. He continued, ‘Had I known his honour could lay a gold piece, sure I would have begged to run against that Thomas at even odds.’

‘Why, and so you could, too,’ said Peter, reflecting.

‘Can he run?’ asked FitzGerald.

‘Can he run?’ said Peter, dusting his hands. ‘Can he run? He could run that poor stick-carrying creature into the earth and back again without drawing breath.’

‘Is it true?’ cried FitzGerald.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Peter, with staggering positiveness. ‘And have I not seen him take up a hare in his hand, and the hare running on a hill the way hares go their fastest?’

‘To think I have let such a match slip through my hands,’ said FitzGerald, beating his forehead. ‘Culmore would have laid a hundred—two hundred. And we might have gone to Cork in our own coaches. Oh, it is very hard to bear.’

‘Still,’ he said, after a silence, ‘there is our next dinner for sure. Which is something.’ And he laid the ten pieces in a row on the milestone.

They considered the disposal of the sum, reckoning up their expenses with anxious addition. But it became apparent that once their bills at the inn were paid there would not be enough left to unpawn both horses—FitzGerald had sold his outright.

‘Then it must be Placidus,’ said Peter, charmed with the certainty of redeeming the creature.

‘But come,’ said FitzGerald, ‘did you not say that Liam’s nag was a stout beast that could carry two?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this other one can’t?’

‘He could up to ten years ago, but truly he does not care for a pillion now.’

‘Ten years ago? Good heavens, how old is he at all?’

‘Oh, he was long past mark of mouth when I was a little boy,’ said Peter. ‘I suppose he must be rising twenty-five or so.’

‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald, and he muttered something in which the words ‘knacker’s yard’ and ‘museum’ could just be distinguished.

‘He is a remarkably fine horse for his age,’ said Peter eagerly, ‘and if you know how to ride him, and if he likes you, he can trot very well. You only have to take care not to bear on his withers, and to talk to him all the time, encouragingly, you know, and he will go on amazingly.’

‘You have to talk to him all the time?’

‘Yes. In Latin, of course. My father has always recited Virgil aloud as he rides about the parish, and Placidus is used to it. Then when my father goes to sleep, which he does sometimes, Placidus stops so that he will not fall off. So you have to keep talking, or he thinks it his duty to stop. Oh, and I had almost forgot: when it is your turn to ride you must never menace him, or he bites you and then lies down. But apart from that and his bowl of bread and milk in the morning—’

‘Bread and milk?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter earnestly. ‘Just sufficiently warm; not hot, you understand, but just loo-warm. He cannot digest oats or hay in the morning. Nor beans.’

‘I see,’ said FitzGerald. ‘No beans in the morning.’

‘Just so,’ said Peter, with an approving nod.

‘You’re not codding?’

‘No,’ said Peter. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

‘Do you seriously propose that we ride and tie—for if he cannot carry two there’s no help for it—that we ride and tie through the length of Ireland, alternately walking and then riding on this remarkable animal, perched up on its rump and haranguing the countryside in Latin?’

‘You do not have to harangue—just quietly reciting will do.’

‘Do you know how long my Latin would last?’

‘Oh, as for that, I have found the declensions will serve to fill in the gaps. I believe that he does not really distinguish the odds.’

‘But seriously,’ said FitzGerald, ‘to go along perched up on an antediluvian screw—oh come, let us get a guinea for his hoofs and hide and buy something a little less antique.’

‘Sell Placidus!’ cried Peter, ‘Now it’s you that are codding.’

‘I take it,’ said FitzGerald, after a thoughtful pause, ‘that he is, as I may say, a kind of pet horse?’

‘That’s the way of it,’ said Peter firmly.

‘Well, in that case,’ said FitzGerald, ‘I suppose there is nothing to be said. Only I pray to Heaven that no one I know ever sees me.’

‘Upon my word, I do not see why,’ said Peter warmly. ‘He was by Bucephalus out of a country mare, and Bucephalus’ sire was the Godolphin Barb.’

‘That entirely alters the whole affair,’ said FitzGerald, ‘and I should be proud to walk by his side. With the Barb’s own grandson as our mount, we shall cross the country like a couple of kings, if rather more slowly.’

I
N 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.’