The Golden Ocean

by Patrick O'Brian

  ‘I don’t mind it, even if the cloth is burst,’ said Keppel. ‘I love drowned baby, however old and sodden.’

  FitzGerald was sitting silent and withdrawn, eating very little: once or twice he had seemed on the point of speaking, but each time the mess-attendant had come in and he had sunk back.

  ‘There, sir,’ cried Jennings, in honest triumph, putting down a battered pewter dish in front of Ransome, the senior midshipman. Under a cloud of steam the baby sweltered in its purple sauce, long, pallid, bloated: its lumpish, irregular surface gleamed with a heavy, unctuous light, and every here and there its pallor was broken by an outburst of turgid plums.

  ‘I have seen more spotted babies in my time,’ said Keppel, gazing upon it, ‘but it should do pretty well. Hurry up with the dissection, Ransome, can’t you?’

  There followed a period of silent greed, and avid scraping of plates, and then the torpid revival of conversation. There was a good deal of talk about the forthcoming rearrangement of the watch-lists—for the berth had no gentlemanly inhibitions about talking shop, and little else was ever mentioned there—and a long, desultory and inconclusive wrangle between Preston and Bailey about the merits of Funchal as a port of call, a vapid conversation, since neither of them knew anything about the place whatever.

  ‘Mr Ransome, sir,’ said FitzGerald, cutting straight across it, pushing his untouched plate away and getting to his feet. ‘Mr Ransome, when first I came aboard, something passed between you and me. I wish—’ he paused for a second, leaning on the table, very pale—‘I wish to make you the most public and unreserved apology.’

  Ransome flushed as red as if he had been found picking a pocket. He looked utterly miserable. ‘That’s handsome,’ he said at last, awkwardly getting up. ‘—-’ he said—a string of unprintable oaths—‘that’s very handsome,’ and he took FitzGerald’s hand with appalling force.

  Chapter Six

  H.M.S. Centurion, at sea

  32° 27’ N., 18° 30’ W., off Funchal

  November 2nd 1740 O.S.

  ‘My dear Sir,’ wrote Peter,

  ‘I embrace this Opportunity of sending you my Love and Duty by the Hands of Mr FitzGerald who is my particular Friend and who is leaving the Ship and going Home in an Indiaman. He is a prodigious good Fellow and a very Fine Gentleman, but is not quite suited for a Life at Sea. He is to have a Pair of Colours in the Company’s India service, but vows he will go there by Land, for the Sea-passage would make him pule into a Lethergy.’

  Peter thought that rather a good expression, and underlined ‘Lethergy’ twice.

  ‘This is a very strange Place, with a Hill of a huge Bigness, like Croagh Patrick, and the People are Black when they are not White. I have not been ashore, because Mr Saunders has stopped my Shore Leave in consequence of a Disagreement about the Pennant Halliard. He is a prodigious fine Seaman but rather severe, like Tiberius. But I have seen it through the Perspective Glass and there are Vineyards in which People labour, all up the Hill, in steps. And the People in the Bum-boats come with Grapes and all kind of Gee-Gaws: they do not speak English, but I have bought a Shawl for my Mother and some Sweetmeats for my Sisters and some Madera Lace to shew what the Foreigners imagine is Lace. I have a Flying Fish for William and I wish it may arrive entire. I kept it below until the other Officers complain’d of the Stench, when I gave it to Sean to preserve. He sends his best Duty and begs to be remembered to Pegeen Ban, Bridie Walsh, Fiona Colman, Norah at Ardnacoire, Maire Scanlan, Maggy, the ganger’s three Daughters and some more I forget. He was flogg’d again on Thursday for reasoning with the Butcher. How he Howl’d. But he privately assur’d me when I went below with some Oyl that it was Nothing to what he had every day from his Mother, at Home.

  ‘Mr Walter desires his best Compliments, and begs you will accept of an anker of curious old Madeira. He is very kind to me, and sometimes desires me to read a Page of Horace with him, which he means kindly I am sure and sometimes he explains the Theory of Winds. He is prodigious learned and has a great Heap of Books. He bids me remind you of the Balliol Sausage and Jno. Barton.

  ‘Mr Anson is also very kind and has taken Notice of me Four times. He is a prodigious fine Seaman, better than Mr Saunders even, and the Officers and Men have a great Awe of him, though he never Rails or Curses them. No one wou’d presume to murmur when he is on the Quarter-Deck. At Dinner there was a Post-Captain who wanted to marry my Mother and wish’d to be kindly remember’d. His Name was Callis.

  ‘We had but a tedious Passage and the Officers curs’d amazingly. Because of there being so few Upperyard-men, we cou’d never run up the Royals and Stunsails except the Wind was abaft the Beam and very small, and we have to work the Ship watch and watch, with too Few able Seamen to make up Three watches. But the Hands are growing more expert. I can hang by my Heels from the Truck of the Main-Royal, which is very diverting as you see everything Upside down and waving like a Phantasmagorio. Mr Keppel shew’d me this. He has been at Sea since he was Ten years old. And Mr Ransome who is quite Old has been at Sea since he was Eight: he is Mr Keppel’s particular Friend. Nat. Bailey is another Midshipman and he bought three Apes on Shore and gave me one, which is very handsome in him. I hope to be allowed on Shore tomorrow for I have a great Mind to a Parrot. The Spaniards had smok’d our Proceedings before we weigh’d from Spithead, and their Squadron lies off this Island, a Seventy-four, a 66, a 54, a 50 and a 40, with a Patache of 20. The 74 is call’d the Guipuscoa, a Name I cou’d never remember to tell the Commodore. So we may be in Action soon, which pleases the Ship’s Company wonderfully.

  ‘I beg you will tell my Mother that my Shirts are Holding up to Admiration. She was much concern’d for the Collar-bands. And please to take great Care in undoing the Packet, for between the Tobacco and the Box made of Shells there is a Nest of Curious Serpents and a Scorpion in a Jar of Spirits which a Seaman of my Division brought me. They are for Dermot and Hugh to share as they please. The small Sailcloth Bag is for Mother Connell.

  ‘They are calling for me now, as the Indiaman sails on the Tide. So in Haste I send you and my Mother my dear Love and my Duty, and my Love too for all at Home.

  Your affectionate Son …’

  And he scrawled his name as the ship’s boy stood waiting and an urgent cry came from the Indiaman’s boat. He felt a queer, burning tightness in his throat: home had seemed so near while he was writing.

  If wishes could have given him wings he would have been in the Rectory at that moment: and sitting there alone, he felt wretchedly low and unhappy. Behind him the mixed collection of midshipmen’s animals stirred, grunted, scratched or cooed according to their several temperaments.

  In his solitude the midshipmen’s berth, usually so crowded that one had to crawl over and around the inhabitants, seemed almost uncomfortably vast. ‘I never thought I would feel like this aboard a man-of-war,’ said Peter in a melancholy inward voice.

  After some time he raised his head from his arms and turned round. There was a wicker cage with a lonely palmdove in it just behind him, which he had bought that morning from a boat alongside.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ he said, opening the door and holding the warm fragile little creature, whose heart beat fast against his palm, ‘at least you may go where you wish.’ And he carried the bird up to the gangway, where Funchal blazed in the sun. ‘There,’ he said, letting it fly.

  Yet within three-quarters of an hour what a different face of things was seen. Peter, released by the first lieutenant (a goodhearted man, though often sorely tried), was gaping at the wonders of Funchal: his visage shone with warmth and pleasure, and in his hands he carried a small turtle, a basket of peaches, some bits of coral, a very lively representation of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence made of volcanic rock, and a long woollen hat. The ground felt strangely firm beneath his feet after forty days at sea: already he had acquired the rolling gait and the hanging arms of a sailorman; and, with his open admiration of everything around him, he had very much the air of Jack
ashore. Everything here was so very different; even the air, uncooled by the sea all round, was strange, and although its solid heat made his blue coat feel six inches thick he sniffed its unknown and foreign scents with delight. If only he had found Sean, and if only FitzGerald had been there, he would have been completely happy.

  He had searched all the lowest taverns by the water-side for Sean without success: there were a great many men from the Gloucester, Severn, Pearl and Wager—the Tryal was still at sea in her vain search for the Spaniards—as well as all the Centurions who could be trusted ashore. They were exactly where even his short experience of the Navy had led him to suppose, busily seeing the world through the bottom of as many glasses as they could afford or contain, in a variety of very debased pot-houses: but Sean was not among them.

  He met with him at last in a little square, sitting on the steps of a church with a scarlet rose behind his ear and a young woman by his side—a young woman as beautiful as an angel, though perhaps inferior in virtue.

  ‘There you are, Sean,’ said Peter, ‘gallivanting as usual, I find.’

  ‘Oh, I was not, your honour,’ said Sean, removing the young woman’s entwining arm. ‘I was just entertaining this elegant female with reasons.’

  ‘And is this the faith you pledged to Pegeen Ban, to say nothing of Bridie Walsh, Fiona Colman, Norah the daughter of Turlough and Helen Concannon?’

  ‘Musha, it was all such a long time ago,’ said Sean, ‘and with such a world of empty sea between.’

  ‘Pretty sailor,’ said the young woman.

  ‘And as for you, young trollop,’ said Peter briskly—he had no terror of women, having so many sisters—‘you go home and mind your needle. Sean, fie and for shame. Come along with me, and improve your mind by the sight of the world abroad.’

  Sean came, carrying the turtle and Saint Lawrence, though with many a reluctant backward look, and presently they fell in with a party of midshipmen—Hope and Preston among them—who were persuading a mule to carry their purchases down to the shore.

  ‘We have given him a bucket of wine,’ said Hope, ‘but still he won’t go.’

  ‘We have beaten him until we are quite tired,’ said Preston, ‘and he stands there like an image.’

  ‘Image, is it, your honour?’ said Sean. ‘If I had the Portuguese penny to buy the herb I saw just now, you would see him run after me like a cricket.’

  ‘Do you understand mules, O’Mara?’ asked Preston.

  ‘How would I not understand them, your honour, for all love? Let you give me the Portuguese penny and see.’

  ‘Hurry, then,’ said Preston, producing a coin.

  ‘Sure ’tis just round the corner,’ said Sean.

  ‘I wish your fellow would hurry, Palafox,’ said Preston, after some time.

  ‘Eh?’ said Peter, still lashing his shopping on to the mountainous load.

  ‘O’Mara,’ said Preston. ‘He’s gone to fetch a herb or something. He understands mules.’

  ‘Did you give him money?’

  ‘Yes. A rial, I think it was. Why, can’t you trust him with money?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter, scenting black treachery. ‘Oh no, you cannot trust him with money. Nor women, of course.’

  ‘Can you trust him with drink?’

  ‘Well, you might leave him with a bottle; but only if you did not mind never seeing it again.’

  ‘What can you trust him with, then?’

  ‘You can trust him to be out of the way whenever you want him,’ said Peter, ‘and to tell a dozen great lies every time he says a single word.’

  ‘Why do you keep such a desperate fellow?’

  ‘Faith, I cannot tell. I shall turn him off, one of these days.’

  ‘I wish he would hurry up.’

  ‘You’ll never see him again, nor your money either, the ill-looking thief.’

  And indeed Sean had vanished: he was seen no more until the Centurion was preparing to weigh, when he was detected in the act of insinuating himself aboard through the ward-room lights, dressed in no more than a kind of depraved calico shawl. It appeared that he had been seized by the Inquisition and had been racked for maintaining the glory of the British Crown: they had also, he said, taken his clothes from him, the Portuguese penny and a sizeable quid of tobacco, scarcely chewed on at all; and they had designed to throw him to the Papal bull on the first Monday after the dark of the moon. But having deluded the Inquisition (whom he described as a sophistical, blue-nosed rogue having one ear larger than the other and a pompous black beaver hat with the brim turned up at the side) he had launched a frail, limping child of a boat single-handed through the surf to regain the ship—a devotion to duty which would be rewarded, said Mr Saunders, with a flogging clean round the squadron the next time it occurred. And the Protestant martyr’s pay was stopped until the slops should be paid for: a period which, according to Peter’s calculation, should see them in latitude 117° West.

  And that was a long space of distance and time, by any reckoning. Much kinder winds met them south of Madeira: not quite all that might have been hoped for, though often true enough for day after day of sailing with the royals and studding-sails set and scarcely a brace to be touched, while the leagues of southing ran sweetly along the side, two and even three in the measured hour: but almost the entire circumference of the world was yet to run, and still no more than one sleeve of Sean’s jacket was yet paid for.

  The midshipmen of the Centurion were not an unduly sensitive crew—a man-of-war does not provide an atmosphere in which delicate plants can survive, far less flourish—but they had perception enough to see that Peter was lonely without FitzGerald and kindness enough to wish it remedied. Ransome showed him the intricacies of the double-emperor knot, an appallingly difficult piece of work of no practical utility whatever, but which he alone in the berth could tie—perhaps in the whole ship’s company, for he had learnt it as a little boy from a very old man who had sailed with Blake, in the days when the knot was still sometimes used by way of ornament. He would also come and sit with Peter from time to time, saying little, but being there in a large and companionable way. Bailey and Preston initiated him into their private and most exclusive rat-hunt, which held its illicit meets in the hold; and Hope taught him the noble game of chess. Another who went far out of his way to be friendly was Elliot. Elliot was a quiet, reserved fellow, somewhat older than Peter; he had been at sea since the beginning of the war, and before that he had been at a nautical school, where his natural bent for mathematics had so developed that it was said that he could be heard murmuring the table of natural cosines in his sleep. Like Peter he was a clergyman’s son; but the Reverend Mr Elliot was even poorer than the Rector at Ballynasaggart, being no more than a curate: worse, he had translated Sallust, with notes, and had printed him.

  Sallust is an excellent author; Mr Elliot’s translation was excellent too, and his notes were copious, judicious and learned; but the public’s utter indifference to Sallust, with notes or without, had plunged the translator into a variety of miseries too complicated to relate. The result was that his creditors had clapped him into the Fleet, the prison for debtors; and there he would stay, incapable of earning a penny, until he paid his debts. It was as if they believed the poor old gentleman was malignantly hiding a secret hoard. He was not: he had paid everything he possessed; but there he would stay until death released him, as far as they were concerned, for they were as mean-spirited, ungenerous a pack of creditors as one could readily find.

  So Elliot had come aboard very meagrely equipped by the grudging charity of a surly cousin, and he had been unable to buy many real necessities, because his pay, what little there was of it, went to maintain his father in the Fleet—for in the Fleet the prisoners, unlike those in common gaols, had the privilege of buying their victuals or of starving genteelly to death if they could not afford to. But, being an uncommonly ingenious creature, like so many sailors, Elliot had made himself a tolerably accurate quadrant, a pair of para
llel rulers and a Gunter’s scale.

  ‘You must disregard the lower lines,’ he said to Peter. ‘I did not get them right at first. Take the upper reading—there’s your co-tangent. Do you see?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter, having stared at the rule and his paper for some little time.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Elliot. ‘Let us begin again at the beginning. Now you have your noon-reading, have you not? So, noting down the height of the sun, you turn to your tables—here. Now comes the rule—here. Do you see?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter, at last. ‘I am very sorry, Elliot, but I don’t.’

  ‘I wonder how I can make it clearer,’ said Elliot thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps the trouble lies farther back. What is a sine?’

  ‘It is the thing you look up in the table when you have found your angle,’ said Peter.

  ‘Yes. But I mean, what is it itself? What does the word mean?’

  ‘Sure, I don’t know at all,’ said Peter. ‘Do you have to?’

  ‘Yes, you do. I will try to explain the whole basis; that’s where you have gone astray, and rule-of-thumb navigation will not answer for your lieutenant’s examination. I will try my father’s way: he took me into the garden and showed me the steeple—we lived in a cottage then, just by the church—and asked me to find its height. Now you think of your steeple at home.’

  ‘We haven’t a steeple,’ said Peter, anxiously. ‘Only a little small thing for the bell.’

  ‘Well, think of a very tall tree.’

  ‘All right,’ said Peter, frowning with concentration; ‘I have that in my mind.’

  ‘Now you are to measure the height of that tree. You cannot climb to the top. But you see the tree’s shadow there on the lawn.’

  ‘On the lawn. Very good,’ said Peter.

  ‘Then you take a stick of any length that comes to hand. We will say five feet, for example. You thrust it into the ground, quite straight upright, and push it in for a foot.’

  ‘A foot,’ said Peter, unconsciously making the gesture of one who thrusts in a stick for a foot.