The Golden Ocean Read online

  ‘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.’

  Chapter Three

  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.