The Golden Ocean (11 page)

After a few more shots, some of which fell very near the target, there was a long pause.

‘Give way,’ said Mr Stapleton, who knew what was coming. He took the cutter a good distance from the target, and his friends on the
Centurion
’s quarter-deck, smiled. ‘He is not going to linger,’ said Mr Norris, the fourth lieutenant.

‘I would go farther off still,’ said the master, ‘with the gun crews in their present—’ But his remaining words were utterly engulfed in the tremendous thunder of the broadside: the ship heeled from the blast, and the target vanished in the shattered sea. And not only the target; for a wide area all
round it the water was lashed into a violent second’s life, bearing out Mr Stapleton’s judgment of the raw crew’s aim. In the moment of stunned silence that followed, Peter looked at the
Centurion
, and saw nothing but her topgallant-sails and royals rocking above the rising smoke.

The cutter’s crew were lying on their oars close by the ship; the cloud of smoke had drifted half a mile down the light air. Two pensioners were leaning over the side, staring down and talking of the cannonade that had preceded the battle of Blenheim: the cutter was waiting for orders, and Peter was vaguely listening to the old men’s talk when he saw FitzGerald appear in the main-shrouds, immediately above the boat, and he heard an authoritative voice saying, ‘Up you go. Up and ride the main-royal. And you will find yourself at the mast-head every single day of your life until you learn that in the Navy you obey an order at the double and with no argument whatever.’

‘He has caught a Tartar this time,’ thought Peter, not without a certain satisfaction, ‘and has been mast-headed.’

FitzGerald cast a haggard look downwards: but it was obvious that he did not see him, and with a sudden pang of anxiety Peter remembered his unaccountable behaviour in the foretop a little while ago.

‘He has never been mast-headed before,’ he reflected. ‘And I do not think I have ever seen him aloft.’ He remembered the early days in the Channel, when some wretched landsman had been flogged for refusing duty aloft, and how some of them had been driven almost mad with the terror of the height.

FitzGerald was climbing slowly, with a strange, almost wooden motion. Peter watched him approach the futtock-shrouds, pause a long time, and then grip them for the outward climb to the top.

‘Oh, he’s all right, then,’ he thought. ‘Sure I was mistaken.’

But looking down again his glance happened to fall on Sean, who was still looking fixedly upwards. Sean was in FitzGerald’s watch, and although his duty usually lay below, it
suddenly occurred to Peter that Sean would know more about FitzGerald in this respect than he did himself.

FitzGerald waited a long time in the maintop, and when he came into sight again in the topmast shrouds Peter noticed that he had kicked off his shoes, presumably to get a better hold.

‘But it is so absurd,’ said Peter to himself, trying to allay his anxiety; ‘the sea is as calm as a pond, and the ratlines are like a flight of stairs.’

FitzGerald was going up and up, but more slowly now, and often he looked down. After every downward look there was a long pause before he recommenced his painfully clumsy and laboured ascent.

When he reached the topmast futtocks he missed his footing and hung by his hands alone. Peter saw his white face, very small in the distance, looking down between his drawn-up shoulders: he sprang up in the boat.

‘Sit down at once,’ snapped the lieutenant, and, ‘Aye-aye, sir,’ he shouted in reply to an order from the quarter-deck. The cutter shot away from the side.

‘Mr Palafox,’ he said in a low tone, with real irritation, ‘you must learn how to behave yourself in a boat, or there will be serious trouble.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter. ‘I beg pardon.’ But he managed, by screwing himself round, to keep his eyes on the
Centurion
. FitzGerald had clawed his way up to the crosstrees, and he appeared to be crouching there in a queer, hunched attitude. Now he was moving again, climbing the topgallant shrouds; but even from the cutter his movements seemed all wrong, like the movements of a wounded animal. Once or twice he stopped for so long that Peter thought that he would go no higher: but he did; slowly and uncertainly he went up and up towards the topgallant mast-head. He seemed to be staring upwards now: it was too far away to see his face at all, but his head appeared to be thrown back:

‘He has still got to get on to the royal-yard,’ thought Peter, as FitzGerald reached the topgallant crosstrees. ‘Will he ever
manage the royal? God be with him: will he manage the royal?’

‘Keep your eyes in the boat,’ cried Mr Stapleton, and Peter straightened himself with a jerk: but the order was addressed to Sean, whose stare at the main-royal was more obvious than Peter’s.

Peter cautiously looked again, and to his surprise he saw that FitzGerald had gone on directly, and that he was well on his way to the yard, which the
Centurion
(like most men-of-war) carried on the pole of her topgallant mast, not far below the tuck. Peter saw him make the last few feet and settle himself, then, with a significant look and an imperceptible nod to Sean, he turned away.

‘Then I was wrong,’ he thought. ‘He was just going up slowly to put a mock on the first lieutenant.’ But he wished he felt a little more certain of the truth of the statement.

‘In oars,’ said Mr Stapleton. ‘Bowes, step the mast.’

Peter had not noticed the breeze getting up, but it had, and there away to the east was the dark patch of ruffled sea that showed the shape of the little wind: behind it, and stretching away to the clouds on the horizon, there was more wind by far.

The cutter ran straight down to do her errand aboard the
Tryal
; and that was very pleasant—the crew sat demurely and watched the sea go by, faster and faster as the breeze freshened. But the return was another thing again, a long, tiring pull into the wind. Half-way over Peter remembered, with a thrill of disagreeable anticipation, that his watch would have been called an hour ago, that he had not in fact obtained leave to absent himself, and that Mr Saunders had already a bone to pick with him in the evening. This occupied his mind enough to keep him silent during the rest of the pull; but it did not occupy him exclusively, and when the cutter hooked on he vanished up the side with such rapidity that the lieutenant, already busy, had only time to say, ‘Where’s that midshipman?’ before he was gone.

Darting over to the windward shrouds in the hope that he might escape the notice of the officer of the watch, Peter raced
up to the maintop, up again, up and up to the main-royal yard.

‘You are all right, an’t you?’ he asked.

‘Peter,’ whispered FitzGerald, ‘for God’s sake tie me on. I cannot hold much longer.’ His face was rigid and ghastly: it shocked Peter to the heart: and his voice was barely human. The ship was rolling now, and Peter had to move with care as he cut the pennant halliard in two places, made the loose ends fast, and passed three turns under FitzGerald’s arms.

‘Mr Palafox,’ came from the deck nearly two hundred feet below, for the second time. ‘Mast-head, there.’ It was impossible to ignore it now.

‘I’ll come back and get you down,’ said Peter hastily; ‘you’re quite all right now—firm as a rock.’

‘Don’t let them know,’ whispered FitzGerald; and Peter, with a reassuring nod, shot down towards the deck. As he went he noticed that the shrouds where FitzGerald had passed were red with blood.

‘Now, sir,’ said the incensed Mr Stapleton: and he treated Peter to a pretty long statement of his views. ‘Junior officers in first, out last. Do you understand that?’ he concluded.

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter, starting away.

‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Dennis, the officer of the watch, ‘what is the meaning of this?’

Mr Dennis had finished at last, and Peter really thought it was over: he had almost reached the shrouds when a ship’s boy came running and said, ‘Mr Palafox, sir, Mr Saunders’ compliments and would like to see you directly.’

Peter was running aft when he saw Ransome. ‘Ransome,’ he said, gripping him tight by the elbow and pouring the words into him at close range, ‘I’ve got to go to number one. FitzGerald’s riding the royal. In a horrible state. Can’t get down. And listen; I’ve cut the pennant-halliard, to lash him on.’

There was no change of expression on Ransome’s big, heavy face, nothing except amazement that anybody could possibly cut the pennant-halliard. He was still staring as Peter left him, and Peter could not tell whether he had understood, or, having understood, would do anything about it.

Mr Saunders, first of the
Centurion
, was a disciplinarian; and there was no man of his seniority in the Navy List who could be more unpleasant when he chose. He did choose, on this occasion: but Peter, with the image of his friend hanging up there, barely noticed anything but the pauses where he was to say ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ and ‘Aye-aye, sir’.

FitzGerald was up there, gripped by some awful horror that Peter could see but could not entirely understand: he was physically helpless—there was no need for him to have held on with any force at all: he would have been perfectly safe without, but he had torn out his living nails—helpless and exhausted, yet his courage was not destroyed, nor his pride. Peter strained his ears in an absurd attempt to distinguish some noise that might mean that Ransome was going aloft. The first lieutenant spoke very grimly about the Articles of War, and Peter stood mute and submissive while his mind hovered in the rigging above.

‘Discipline, young man …’ said Mr Saunders, and at the same moment, high above their heads, Ransome said, ‘Nah then, cully. Handsomely does it. Just catch a hold rahnd my neck. And don’t ever you look down.’

‘Ransome,’ said FitzGerald, a little later, ‘please let me try the last stretch by myself. I’d give the world not to be disgraced.’

‘Try it, cully,’ said Ransome, doubtfully, ‘but I’m afeard it’s no go. You’re all shook to pieces, like. It ain’t no disgrace, cock; anyone can have a spell of the topman’s horrors.’

‘… and if you reflect upon what I say,’ said the first lieutenant more kindly, feeling that he had been a little too hard, that his severity had cowed the poor boy’s spirit, ‘you may make a seaman yet. I believe you have the makings of one already. That will do, Mr Palafox.’

‘Aye-aye, sir. Thank you, sir.’

Peter regained the deck in time to see Ransome carrying FitzGerald like a child. ‘It was just that Mr FitzGerald was took with a cramp in his wounded leg,’ he was explaining to the officer of the watch, ‘so I give him a hand down the last bit, like.’

‘Very well. Help him below,’ said Mr Dennis. ‘Damned awkward place to have a cramp. Here, Mr Palafox, you can make yourself useful: his Majesty does not pay you for your beauty alone—take Winslow and Cheetham and see to the frappings of the number two quarter gun.’

It was dinner-time on Sunday. The muster and the reading of the Articles of War, the high ceremony of the naval week, had passed off with creditable regularity; and indeed, the men were beginning to look something like a man-of-war’s crew, rather than the heterogeneous sweepings of the press-gang. Even the invalids, as the pensioners were rightly called, made a fairly alert and respectable appearance. Mr Walter had preached on being contented with one’s lot, and they had listened with becoming attention: at least they had not openly resented his remarks.

The midshipmen’s berth was in a state of strong and pleasureable anticipation: Sunday always brought some change in their diet, and from early in the morning it had been rumoured that there was to be drowned baby after the junk.

‘How is that baby coming along, Jennings?’ asked Keppel, attacking his meat.

‘She’s nicely swole, sir,’ replied Jennings, ‘or at least she was a little while ago.’

‘If she bursts her cloth,’ said Hope, with his passion somewhat muffled by an intervening turnip, ‘I will haul the sailmaker before the Commodore myself.’

‘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.

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 G
uipuscoa
, 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 parallel rulers and a Gunter’s scale.