The Rendezvous and Other Stories

by Patrick O'Brian

  ‘Now, Peleg,’ said the angel. ‘God and Mary to you.’

  ‘God and Mary to you and Patrick, sir,’ replied Peleg, with good manners all over his ugly face.

  ‘I have two messages for you, Peleg,’ said the angel, and he stuck a moment in his speech, and Peleg could see that the messages had flown out of his memory and it was a question whether he could get them back or no.

  ‘I have two messages for you, Peleg,’ he repeated, slowly and leaning upon the importance of his words.

  ‘I am much obliged for your kindness, your reverence,’ said Peleg. ‘It must have been the weary road, the day being close and thunder coming.’ It was a little at random that he was talking, to save the angel from embarrassment.

  ‘Now I will tell you what it is, Peleg,’ said the angel, getting up off the heap of stones. ‘Should you like to try a couple of falls with me? You was always the one for wrestling, I think.’

  ‘If it would not be too forward in me, sir, I should welcome it of all things,’ said Peleg. ‘To try a couple of falls with your honour would give me all the pleasure in life.’

  The angel stretched his arms and stamped his feet; he was a cheerful angel, the sort St Paul warned women about, and Peleg thought he had taken drink upon the way.

  ‘I shall dust your jacket, mind,’ said the angel, and he was right, for in five minutes he had put Peleg down on the flat of his back three times with a bang that made the dust fly up.

  ‘Now sit down upon the stone, joy,’ said the angel, ‘for you are pale in the face, I see, and I will tell you the two messages. The first is, “Heaven helps those as help themselves,” and the second is, “There are those who seem more than they appear to others or themselves notwithstanding the appearance of some as they would appear in the first place; or the contrary.”’

  Peleg thanked the angel many times over, and asked might he hear the blessed words again.

  ‘Why, no, Peleg,’ replied the angel slowly, getting himself ready to go. ‘I doubt it would be exactly right for me to repeat them, being the way it is. But they will certainly echo again, and bear the most elegant fruit.’

  So Peleg walked with the angel to the edge of the field, where the path came in, and said, ‘If your reverence chooses to take the road, the path that crosses the bog by those willows is the best, and the second house on the way is Seamus’s, where is the best refreshment and easy bedding, with butcher’s meat every day of the week almost.’

  ‘I know it,’ said the angel. ‘I was there on my way.’ And he said as he went, ‘Health and glory and salvation to you, Peleg,’ and Peleg replied, ‘A hundred thousand thanks to you, your reverence, and glory and health and happiness for ever to you.’

  The messages did indeed re-echo in Peleg’s mind, they churned about until the inside of his head was full of night, and there was no sense in it. He went wandering over the bog in a daze until it was dark, and then he went vacantly into his cell where Kevin was asleep, and lay down on the hard floor.

  He could not remember going to sleep, but he woke up very suddenly in the dead hour of the night, his mind a blaze of illumination: there was a little sickly moon but enough to see by and he looked closely at Kevin who was in the very depth of stupor and his mouth open. Peleg eased up his chin gently to improve his appearance, and gently, like a woman, gathered him up in his clothing as he lay there and carried him out of the cell. As he had often done, he struck the lintel with his bowed shoulders and bore off a handsbreadth of skin, but the pain did not discommode him nor the prodigious vast weight of his cousin and his bulk overflowing.

  The dew was thick on the grass and his footsteps showed clear, running straight to the strand. There were boats there, and three millstones of different sizes, but millstones were for the beneficed clergy, abbots, bishops and deans, and Peleg put Kevin into a little neat curach. The sleeping Kevin groaned and settled himself and Peleg sat on a thwart while the tide swept them out and away on the far, broad ocean.

  For hours and hours Peleg sat there in a holy calm, contemplating the beauty of the calm sea, for it was like a small pond in its calmness and there was the long path of the moon behind them. The air was warm and sweet like hay to smell and the curach slipped through the quiet water, creaking a little and the water making a little slipping noise under it.

  Dawn came up with the glory of heaven and still Kevin slept. Peleg longed to wake him so that they could be speaking of the voyage; sometimes he moved with more noise than he needed, and sometimes he coughed, but it was not until just before tierce that Kevin moved. The fat man gaped stupidly at Peleg, with his mouth dragged open, and when Peleg bade him rejoice because they were on the sea moving fast with the push of unseen hands towards the heathen shore he made no reply. He stared wildly round the pale bowl of the sky, green and grey where it met the sea all round and no land, no land at all; unending waters stretching away and away to the edge of the world and the sun glittering on them. He moaned aloud as he sat there crouched, and Peleg told him of his angel and about the glory of their approaching mission. Kevin made no answer, but when Peleg said he thought they might sing a loud prayer, he leapt up and stood balancing in the curach as it rocked and screamed curses at Peleg with the worst words in the world so that Peleg wondered how he had ever come to know them: and Peleg grew weary of hearing Kevin staining his soul and he rocked the boat the way Kevin was not expecting it so he fell in over the edge and swam in the sea among the fishes of the deep, and monsters came into his mind as well as the fear of drowning. So Kevin was in a great taking and nearly dead from his various fears and the furious amount of salt water he had taken in while shouting under the sea and breathing there too, and he spoke civilly to his cousin Peleg to have him into the curach again, which Peleg did, though with difficulty.

  Now Kevin lay in the bottom of the curach weeping with cold and so frightened that he had not the look of a white pudding, far less a man, and Peleg sat on the tail end of the boat thinking, while he trailed his hand in the water.

  A little spirit came back into Kevin as the sun dried him and he asked had Peleg brought any food, but Peleg had not brought any food; then he said they ought to go back because he had no licence from his superior to be converting heathens and because there was a book in his cell of great power and efficacity and he did not know how he could turn them from their heathenish ways without its help, and if Peleg would turn back now he would get the book and the licence from his superior as well as some relics and they would start again in a more respectable vessel than a common curach stinking of old fish the way it did, and dangerous with its thin, leaky sides.

  ‘There is no sail, reverend Kevin, nor oars, nor a rudder to turn with: furthermore, we are impelled by unseen hands.’

  So Kevin lay down again in the bottom of the boat and groaned until the sun went down into the sea behind them and night spread over the waters and still the curach slipped on with the push of unseen hands.

  In the morning the sun was in front of them again and at their side was a grey island rising high out of the sea: Peleg awoke from a kind sleep and there by the side of the curach was a seal watching for him to wake. He blessed the good seal, which was his custom, and the seal brought him a fish to his hand.

  The island was full of sea-birds, white, black and pied, as full as a hive of bees, and their screaming awoke Kevin, who said they were fiends and cursed them. He wished to go on to the island to escape the sea and would have swum, for they passed very near, but he saw the seals as thick as a fair and he was afraid. ‘They are fiends,’ he said. ‘The sea is full of fiends.’

  The island sank into the sea behind them, but before it was quite down they saw land ahead stretching far to the either hand. Presently Peleg could discern the mouth of a broad river, and the curach went up into it, over the bar with no more than three inches of water covering it at this state of the tide, but that so godly quiet that they slipped over with no danger, and now Peleg saw on his left hand a sandy waste and on his
right hand a rich, fruitful country, green and red where the soil showed.

  Kevin’s heart and courage had grown since they had crossed the bar, and he was talking when the curach grounded gently in the sand of the right-hand shore. The jar threw him flat on his face, so Peleg picked him out of the boat and put him on the dry sand, where he sank down in a heap, gasping. Peleg looked and he saw the neat curach turned about already and running easily through the water, which had waves now, though small. He watched it going on the broad waters and he felt a small quell in his heart, but only for a moment, he being maintained by the zeal of his mission.

  They went up the shore, Kevin blaming Peleg very bitterly for letting the curach go, and into a green wood, where Peleg lit a fire, having returned thanks, and he cooked the fish, which was a mullet; and the heathen of those parts surrounded them in the bushes.

  The first they knew of the heathen was a terrible howling and an ululating that would have daunted the heart of an emperor, it was so near and the men unseen. Then there was a shower of arrows and stones that tore the green leaves and the heathen rushed in upon them. They were painted orange and they carried long, bare knives and it was the way they had to flay all strangers on their coast. Peleg and Kevin without drawing breath for one peaceable word sprang, leapt and sped through the trees and beyond inland with all the agility in the world, running so fast they passed the startled deer, and the heathen ran after them to have their hides, but their heathenish cries and howling delayed them, whereas Peleg and Kevin ran without a word, seeing they needed their breath and could not be sparing it in hallooing and bawling aloud.

  It was a wonder to see the fat man run with his face and belly quivering and shaking like the bag of a cow, but soon he faltered and cried out to Peleg, who took him by the hand and they raced over the strange country with flying strides and the heathen drawn out behind them, howling angrily in the distance, angrier as the distance grew.

  For hours and hours they ran until they came to heathery land, high and rolling, with standing meres and bogs and they could see clear miles behind them with nobody following. It was a harsh and desolate country, and its brooks ran dark between black, steep banks. White mist curled in the lower parts and already with the coming of the night the mist was rising to cover the whole country.

  On the top of a craggy piece they lay in a cave, a great deep cave that went back and back, and Peleg’s mind troubled him because he had avoided his martyrdom and because he had uttered no peaceable or godly word to the heathen. Kevin wept from exhaustion and lasting terror and the pain of his feet as well as for the memory of the grey mullet uneaten by the woodland fire: he uttered a few watery prayers and slept in his moaning. But Peleg remained waking, working in his mind, and when the devils of the waste-land came they found him awake.

  The sight of so many fiends at once appalled Peleg beyond the power of speech, and Kevin turned the colour of lead, with never a word in his mouth, though it opened and closed. The devils sat about the cave, quite easy, and lit it up with the effulgence of their persons.

  The captain of the devils, a grand spotted one, spoke in a loud commanding voice to Peleg and said: ‘Now, Peleg, we don’t want but two words with you, just renounce the Trinity at once, if you please, and we’ll cry quits.’

  But Peleg said never a word, and he made no answer again when the captain of the devils said, ‘It is only a form, you know; there is nothing to it, at all.’ So the devil grew angry and sent for a rack and a portable furnace and when they had put down the rack, together with a variety of instruments like iron flails and saws which the messengers brought of their own motion, with a ringing clash on the floor and had set up the furnace the way the cave stank of brimstone the captain nodded to Peleg and said, ‘We’ll sort you directly, my man.’ Then he turned sharp on Kevin and gave him the same order and he said, ‘Kevin, stand up at once and renounce the Trinity out of hand,’ and he stamped fire.

  Kevin stood up at once, but Peleg cried to him to have courage. The devil nodded to a great hairy thing of uncertain shape that had been standing behind Peleg’s neck all this time, breathing on him, and it struck him down and gagged him. He lay and heard Kevin renounce the Trinity and everything else he could lay his mind to, and indeed Kevin blasphemed until even the devils stretched their eyes and looked behind them.

  ‘It’s all very well,’ said the oldest hob-devil to the Captain secretly behind his hand like a man at a fair, ‘but we shan’t have his soul for certain like this: he must be damned of his own will, you know.’

  The Captain said, ‘Sure, you’re right, my dear, but if he’s got a soul at all there would be hardly any taste in it, or flavour, as you might say. We’ll not spend anything on getting it, so. However, try an ordinary temptation or two by all means, if you’re so inclined.’

  Then they turned to Peleg and threatened him like black-guards, but Peleg said, ‘You old blackguards, the back of my hand to you all.’

  Then they had him to the rack, but it was too small by half for one of his length, and even when they had it wound right up it hardly stretched him above an inch. So they started on him with their flails, but they had small confidence in them, seeing that Peleg’s father had always beaten his sons whenever they did wrong with a holy rage far beyond the emulation of devils, and Peleg had often done wrong in his young days – nearly every day, indeed. When they were tired and had spoilt three of their flails they stopped and took Peleg into an inner cave. There they made him sleep and let him rest while they considered of what they should do. He woke up to find the three daughters of Turlough in the cave, they who had been so kind and loving to him before he went to Deara after holiness, and a voice said in his ear that he could have whichever he chose as a reward for his fortitude. But the devil himself could not have told the confusion in Peleg’s heart at the sight of the three together, by reason of the passages he had had with each separately, and Peleg blushed fiery red and hid his face. The she-devils who personated the daughters of Turlough thought themselves scorned and they stepped out of the cave with bitter anger and said they had no business with geldings, nor with unnatural men, they said.

  This put the devils out of countenance, for they saw they were improving Peleg’s chance of salvation hour by hour, and this was poison and death to their minds. When they had tempted him with meat and drink and fire and water as well as with gold and silver and the promise of land with no success, they said he must be more holy than he looked, and the great scholar of the world, no doubt.

  ‘There is only one way with these scholars,’ said the Captain and he called for a pen. For seventy-three days they kept Peleg by while the Captain worked fourteen and fifteen hours a day and his claws grew long and curved for want of the wear of exercise and fiends ran hither and yon with sheets of paper at every hour on the heather of the waste-land. At the end the Captain had two books written, the one of elegant poems so lewd that they would have been a danger to St Anthony, and the other, in fine elm boards with silver clasps, a book of homilies so eloquent that they would have struck Chrysostom dumb, and they poisoned through and through with the creeping poison of a heresy so persuasive that no ecclesiastic much under the degree of a saint could have withstood it.

  They put them by Peleg while he slept and they penned him up with them and a good, clear light and a reading desk and no other kind of diversion at all until his beard grew to the middle of his chest and they judged he had had time to damn himself. But Peleg had only opened the books once apiece to see were there capitals painted on gold with every variety of colour and beasts interlacing, but there were not, the Captain having no turn that way, and he had closed them without taking more thought, for his strength was not in reading and indeed he could not exactly recall above half a dozen of the letters themselves at this distance from Deara. He had spent his time in mortification and prayer and learning the meekness that he lacked, and particularly in praying for his cousin Kevin, which had done his own soul so much good that it was now
practically white and in better shape than it had been since he was first capable of sin.

  It was on a Friday that the Captain sent two devils to the inner cave to fetch Peleg, and when they opened the door they understood how it was with him and they turned grey and stood there abashed. Now Peleg had had plenty of time to collect himself and to consider what he would do and he was accustomed to the sight of fiends, however plain. He came at them briskly and struck their heads together for the glory of God so hard that they gave out a sound like a mallet on wood and no other but lay there like sacks. And he stepped over them and came to the outer cave where the Captain of the devils was waiting and the Captain saw how it was with him and stood up, grey in his colour and shrinking. Peleg struck him down for the glory of the Trinity and bent him back so that his horns, which were his pride and joy, locked in the long curl of his hoofs, and Peleg bowled him in a hoop out of the cave and down the slope to a bottomless mere, where he lies still, mopping and mowing for ever in a powerful rage and heating the waters of the mere so that neither fish nor frog can live there, far less breed, whereas before it was the great place for the snigging of eels.

  Then he took his cousin Kevin from the corner of the cave and asked had any of the other devils a word in their mouths, but they standing mumchance and looking meaner than any book can say he gave them all a great devastating curse and walked out into the light of the day.

  He walked with his head in the air for seven miles, glorying in the verdant world and the blue of the sky and longing for some honest meat, and Kevin followed him with the meanness of hell showing in his face. Then Peleg remembered his humility and made Kevin go in front, and they came to the edge of a chasm. This chasm was a furlong across and far deeper and it barred their way, and as Peleg stood there on the edge considering it and marvelling at its black depth and the wafting fog in it Kevin thought of the thirty bags of gold and the life-long idleness and safety for ever that the oldest hob-devil had promised him by the holiest oath if he would do Peleg a mischief, and he considered too how that he was already damned for sure, and, trembling all over, he crept behind Peleg and with a desperate moan he hurled his weight on Peleg’s back and Peleg fell with his two hands outstretched grasping the air.