The Golden Ocean (14 page)

‘I hope she swims, I am sure,’ said the gunner, meaning the
Pearl
, ‘but there was a cruel amount of sickness in her. I saw Captain Kidd looking wholly pale when I went aboard her last. Howsoever, she should have rode it out, unless she loosed her guns, which is barely likely, seeing she has a good gunner in Mr Webb. We were shipmates in the year twenty-eight, in the
Vanguard
, ninety—the same as what they call the
Duke
, only nobody minds it. Pass me that tally, will you, Mr Palafox?’

The tally lay between two balls in a partially-filled shot-garland, and as Peter groped for it in the dim light of a bleary lantern, one of the twenty-four pound cannon-balls, impelled by the pitch of the
Centurion
in the enormous swell, rolled with a deep growl against the other, nipping Peter’s finger so that tears of anguish came into his eyes and he sprang about very briskly, waving his hand and roaring.

‘This is what I mean about her loosing her guns,’ said Mr Randall when Peter had quietened down. ‘You perceive the force of a ball rolling free for scantly a foot: now consider the force of a gun that has broke loose, and think what a whole broadside rolling free can do. And you must consider, too, that the roll is much less down here than it is on the gun-deck even, let alone the upper; for she rolls from her keelson, do you see, though she pitches regardless. But I tell you what it is, Mr Palafox,’ he added, after a long pause, filled with the dull, thunderous grumbling of ball, chain and double-headed shot as the tons and tons of iron shifted gently and settled with the varying strains of the bucking sea: ‘I tell you what it is,’ he repeated, notching the tally. ‘I did not altogether like to hear you sing out so loud over a little pinch. We did ought to remember the Spartan boy, Mr Palafox.’

This wretched fellow, this Spartan boy (a half-wit, in Peter’s
private judgment), had haunted the Rectory of Ballynasaggart, and had followed him aboard to appear on eight separate occasions in Mr Walter’s conversation: Peter was perfectly well acquainted with him and his stupid ways; but he wished to be civil to the gunner, so with as much appearance of interest as he could summon with a handful of agony to distract him he said, ‘The Spartan boy, Mr Randall?’

‘He had stolen a fox, which he hid it under his gown, and when his elders were talking, the fox started to gnaw the boy.’ Mr Randall made a lobster’s claw of his right hand and snapped it to indicate the gnawing. ‘But did he sing out, Mr Palafox? Did he cry, “—the—fox. I will rouse it out of my gown”—for they wore gowns in those days, Mr Palafox—“and dowse it overboard”? No. Not he. He sat quiet while his elders were talking and the fox gnawed through his stomach, through his liver, clean through his anatomies until it reached his heart. Which is a clear proof that you should not cry out when pinched—a trifle that happens to a gunner fifty times a day.’

Peter thought that it was a clear proof that the elder Spartans talked far too much: but after a moment’s thought he decided to suppress this reflection as being disrespectful, and instead he asked, ‘Would it not have done to have slipped the fox quietly out, without interrupting or saying anything?’

‘It might have been more expedient,’ admitted the gunner, ‘but, oh goodness me, how very much less moral.’

‘Why did he want the fox in the first place, Mr Randall, sir?’

‘A very fair question, Mr Palafox,’ said the gunner evasively. ‘However, we will not go into that just now, for it scarcely would be fit. They had some very old-fashioned ways in those times, you know. Very old-fashioned, they were: and Papists, I make no doubt. When I was a boy there were some old master-gunners who always made a cross on the ball before they loaded, which was left over from the old days when they aimed their pieces at the Turks and such, and reckoned that a cross on the ball would send any Turk to hell;
which is all part and parcel of the same thing, do you see? Mumbo-jumbo, as you might say.’

The connexion escaped Peter: but he very distinctly remembered that every single ball that Mr Randall had handled in the many days of gunnery practice had had its little cross.

‘You may reckon three degrees as sixty leagues—sixty sea-leagues, mind,’ said Elliot. ‘So it is roughly sixty leagues then, since we crossed the latitude of the river Plate.’

‘So we are a thousand miles from St Catherine’s,’ said Peter, adding up the figures on his slate.

A thousand miles of sea, and some sweet sailing.

‘And with this lovely southern current,’ said Peter, ‘we ought to reach the Horn in about the same time.’

‘The
Tryal
has to be refitted first,’ said Elliot.

‘Yes,’ said Peter, staring over the side towards the sloop, an odd, maimed object with a dwarfish jury-mast, lagging behind the G
loucester
, which fumed at the end of the tow-rope, with every possible sail set to keep up with the squadron. ‘Yes, but even so …’ He did not finish the sentence, and although his eyes were fixed on the squadron—the
Severn
ahead of the
Centurion
, then the fat-sided
Wager
with her oddly patched foretopgallantsail, the little
Anna
pink to leeward, and last the
Gloucester
and her burden: but an empty place where the
Pearl
had sailed—he did not see them, any more than his ears consciously perceived the steadily repeated splash of the lead and the cry of the man in the channels, a cry that had run through all the watches these many days, ever since they had come into soundings again. Mr Walter stood a few feet from them, taking samples of the sandy bottom that the deep-sea line brought up on the tallow put to the lead: he was exceedingly interested in this pursuit and he kept up a continual private conversation with himself upon it. Yet neither Elliot nor Peter heard a word of it; for not only were both accustomed to the only way of finding peace in an overcrowded man-of-war, which is to shut yourself up from the perpetual outside din and jostling, but the minds of both were already
away round the Horn and far upon what Peter thought of as “the other side”—the coast of Chile and Peru.

Nobody knew the contents of the Commodore’s orders but himself: but although there was a great deal of variety in the squadron’s conjectures this only applied to the details, and the main intention of the expedition was very clearly understood to be the harrying of the Spaniards in the Great Southern Ocean. And that, to the dullest soul aboard, meant gold. Visions of treasure filled the gun-deck, where the men swung in their close-packed hammocks: at St Catherine’s tales had come aboard of Indian tribes who used gold fish-hooks, and gold to weigh down their nets, tribes where the children played at alley-tor with marbles made of gold; and the more these tales were repeated by their original hearers the more their fascinated audiences asked for more. There were tales of the Incas, shining in armour made of gold, and of the Spaniards who took all the gold away and shipped it to Old Spain in galleons every year: hundreds of these tales, many with a strong vein of truth, and all believed. The five ships’ companies were all, from the ward-room to the obscurest holes where the loblolly boys had their being, in a strong and highly advanced state of greed: they all knew that a powerful Spanish force lay between them and the accomplishment of their desires, but with one accord they dismissed that as a trifling nuisance. Their fever to be at the task of loading the hold with bullion made them wonderfully attentive to their duties, and now that even the stupidest impressed ploughboy was something like a seaman, they would fairly fly aloft to make sail and increase the squadron’s pace: and on the other hand, they would look pensive and discontented, if not downright mutinous, when under the impulsion of a growing wind the studdingsails and royals showed signs of carrying away and were obliged to be taken in—there never was such a crew for cracking on; and Mr Walter made himself downright unpopular by his often-expressed wish to have more time to study the ocean’s floor.

‘Yes,’ said Elliot, as if Peter had spoken. ‘I hope you may
be right. After all, it should not take long to set up a mainmast of sorts. One of our spare topmasts would answer very well. I wonder they have not done it themselves, the helpless set of lubbers.’ He looked angrily at the crippled
Tryal
. ‘After all, good Heavens above, she’s only a sloop, and has no right to give herself such airs. Look how the
Gloucester
yaws,’ he said, as the sluggish
Tryal
snatched at the tow in the long swell and made the close-hauled Gloucester spill her wind. ‘I must say I find it hard to wait,’ he continued. ‘I want to fill my pockets with moidores until there is no room for my hands.’ He drummed impatiently on the rail, and a flush mounted in his keen brown face. ‘It is not for myself,’ he added. ‘I don’t care a farthing candle—but there are special reasons, you know.’

Peter nodded, and he was about to speak when Ransome and Keppel came hurriedly aft towards them. Ransome was strangely pale under his tan, obviously the prey of some strong emotion.

‘Has Agamemnon had them?’ cried Peter.

Agamemnon, that turbulent cat, who ordinarily ruled the berth with an implacable tyranny, selecting the warmest midshipman as a bedfellow whenever Ransome was on duty and beating that midshipman whenever he moved as well as biting as hard as a dog at the first suspicion of a snore, had grown weirdly meek since St Catherine’s—meeker and meeker as the signs of her approaching maternity increased. It was known, moreover, that Ransome, who fed the expectant mother with a pap-boat, dreaded the arrival and the consequent destruction of the kittens with a degree of open cowardice that would have disgraced a maiden lady. He had distinguished himself in the battle of Cape Passaro, could face a broadside yard-arm to yard-arm with the utmost composure, and had cleared the quarter-deck of a Spanish brig-of-war with no more than a belaying-pin, single-handed: but he could not drown kittens. There was no question about the drowning: the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth lieutenants, all of whom had been scratched, bitten and generally maltreated and bullied by Agamemnon, were quite as firm as the chaplain, the surgeon and
his mate, the carpenter, the gunner, the bo’sun and all the others in whose cabins Agamemnon had been sick. ‘The animal is a menace to the well-being of the ship, and should be destroyed,’ they said, ‘but in all events we are determined that the breed shall not be perpetuated.’

‘No, it is not that,’ said Keppel. ‘Go on, Ransome. Tell them.’

‘You see that sloop?’ said Ransome, hoarser than usual.

‘Yes,’ said Peter and Elliot, staring.

‘Well, she’s quite small.’

‘All right,’ said Peter. ‘What of it?’

‘But she’s a great trial to the
Gloucester
. She’s a great
Tryal—
oh hor, hor, hor.’ Ransome could not contain himself long enough to explain the joke fully, but between writhes and gasps he did his best. ‘A great trial—hor, hor—
Tryal
—you smoke it? Oh, my stomach. I got it out solemn, didn’t I?’ he wheezed to Keppel, thrusting him half-way through the neatly triced hammocks in the weather-netting. ‘I said, “You see that there sloop?” and they says, “Yes, we see un,” and I says—oh, hor, hor, hor hor.’

‘That’s the second I made,’ he said faintly, as they supported him below. ‘The first was before. It was very good, but not as good as this. Oh I hope I live to tell them all in Wapping. Oh, my stomach. Oh.’

The great bay of St Julian and the empty pampas rolling to the sea: the illimitable plain and the cold wind over it—a world almost devoid of life and bare of men except for this one brief week of intensely crowded busyness in a corner of the bay, when a tiny stretch of the enormous shore was black with men from all seven ships of the squadron, and the bowl of the sea re-echoed with the sound of hammers as the
Tryal
was put to rights. Seven ships, for the
Pearl
had rejoined. They had seen her on the same day that St Julian’s had heaved up on the starboard bow, and she had fled from the approaching ships with all sail set to the royals; for only a week before she had fallen in with five Spanish men-of-war, one wearing a pennant
so closely modelled on the Commodore’s that she had been deceived, and discovering her mistake almost too late, had escaped only by running under full sail over shoaling waters—a horrible risk that the Spaniards refused to take. The second time, therefore, the
Pearl
’s first lieutenant (her captain lay at the bottom of the sea fourteen days out of St Catherine’s) decided not to endanger his command, and would have vanished over the rim of the sea had not the
Severn
and the
Gloucester
been better sailors. As it was it took them hours and hours of furious cracking on before they ran her down and found her cleared for action, with all her teeth showing.

The excitement over the
Pearl
was very great; the certainty of the Spaniards’ presence was more exciting still; but the necessity of working without a moment’s respite in order not to be caught on shore, and in order to meet the Horn and the enemy in a well-found state, overlaid it all; and Peter, for one, came away with few distinct memories standing out from a confused impression of an immense amount of work accomplished in a very short period of time; and if he had been asked what Patagonia was like, he would have replied that it was a dry, brown, treeless, inhuman land with nothing attractive in it except the penguins on the shore—and even they were too inquisitive, always hurrying in to stand in rows among the work—a country, moreover, where the men were perpetually trying to creep away and dig for gold in the dusty grass.

But when they were at sea Peter had time for his journal again. This was not the official journal that every midshipman was required to keep, with his navigational records like a subsidiary ship’s log-book, but a private account which Elliot had urged him to start, and which he had kept since latitude 28° S.

‘March 5th lat 52° 32’ S. When we got under way G
loucester
fouled her anchor and after 7 guns to order her to her station, cut her cable. Her people in a horrible mother. How we laughed. But before that there was a council of war, with land-officers and all captains: we are to attack Baldavia. And
Capt. Murray of
Wager
is to have
Pearl
, Mr Cheap from
Tryal
to be capt. of
Wager
, and Mr Saunders to command
Tryal
, but he is too sick to move so Mr Saumarez holds his place, which makes Mr Brett first of
Centurion
pro. tem. He will be charmingly mild. We have had poor little winds, but we raised Cape Virgin Mary yesterday. It grows precious cold. Am very glad of FitzGerald’s warm things. Fitted Sean into his largest pea-jacket, with canvas to make out. I left my spoon in the sand at St Julian’s. Elliot says no two officers have the same longitude for St Julian’s—some make it under 70° W. and some as high as 74° 30’. He explained about lunar observations and the chronometrical machine, which I wish they would find out, for it is impossible to be sure of your longitude without you know the time it is on the meridian of Greenwich. Though you can find your position by transits….’ There followed a long and creditably intelligent piece about sidereal time, lunar tables and astral navigation. Then Peter wrote, ‘Mem. to tell Sean to put more lemon in the young whiskey, and to ask the sailmaker to let out my reefer. Ransome made a joke on the 2nd and is working on another now. He says he Did for Agamemnon’s little cats, but we believe he has hidden them abaft the well. Preston’s ape died yesterday, which is the last of them all: he grieved very much, though it was a wicked ape and never would love him. Mr Woodfall begged to dissect it, but Preston would not indulge him, saying that the ape was the better Christian by ½. All the captains came aboard of Cape Virgin Mary, in a sweet calm. Thought Mr Cheap (made post into
Wager
from
Tryal
) and Mr Saumarez looked very conscious and solemn. Hope said he pitied the poor midshipmen in
Tryal
and would not be in their place for 101. and not for 201. when Mr Saunders gets better. The squadron is to sail very close as we have great hopes of falling in with the Dons, and any officer of the watch who allows his ship to be more than 2 miles from
Centurion
is to be reported to the Commodore. While the captains were aboard somebody blew himself up aboard the
Gloucester
and all the captains screeched out Fire and rushed off like hares. How we laughed. But it only
turned out to be a little blaze of powder: and then it came on to blow and we lay to until the end of my watch. Cape Virgin Mary is the entrance of Magellan’s Strait, but we are to go through the Straits Le Maire, because—’