The Golden Ocean (19 page)

As the
Centurion
glided into her anchorage and the cable tightened behind her, rising in a straight line from the sea and squirting water as it took up the strain, the
Tryal
stood out of the bay.

‘She’s for Valparaiso,’ said Keppel. ‘There were some other merchantmen bound there with this
Carmelo
. There was an embargo, an embargee, on all shipping until a little while ago: but then they decided that we had all sunk, ha, ha, and took it off. Little did they know that I was aboard, with my advice at the Commodore’s disposal at any time of the night or day.’

The next few days witnessed scenes of unparalleled activity on Juan Fernandez as the squadron made ready for the sea: officers could be heard begging their men not to overdo it, not to strain themselves past repair—a weird sound indeed—as the water-casks, the dried cod, the innumerable stores, flew into the
Centurion
’s eager hold and the
Anna
’s guns darted aboard the
Carmelo
. A party came to Peter in the falling dusk and with
tears in their eyes implored him to intercede with the first lieutenant, that they might go on by lantern-light. Sean sat on the chests of silver, great black rings round his eyes for want of sleep, foaming with rage when anyone approached. The bo’sun and a numerous party of volunteers were detected at midnight creeping about the upper rigging, improving work already passed by the rigorous first lieutenant. Hairy Amos caught his beard in a tackle, but would not have the heaving stopped on any account, preferring to lose enough to stuff a large pillow rather than delay the departure by a minute.

‘Ah, dear Lord,’ exclaimed Peter with a sigh, as the
Centurion
gathered way, ‘how glad I am to have a deck under my feet. I was all at sea when you marooned me on the island.’

‘No, you worn’t,’ said Ransome, frowning. ‘You was ashore.’

‘That was Teague’s joke,’ explained Keppel. ‘They always make jokes like that.’

‘Wheere’s the joke?’ asked Ransome.

‘He said he was at sea when he was on land. They call it a bull: but for my part I am willing to believe that it was unconscious in this case.’

‘He said he was at sea when he was on land. Oh well, hor hor,’ said Ransome heavily. ‘But it worn’t very funny. Not as good as mine about the
Tryal
.’ The disease had eaten into him, and he betrayed the uneasy jealousy of the established wit for an upstart rival: but his native good humour rallied at last and he said, ‘It was quite funny, though. At sea (meaning all astray, like) when on land. Hor, hor.’

‘It was a lovely island, indeed it was,’ said Peter, gazing affectionately at the beach where the Gloucesters, unable to be ready as soon as the
Centurion
and the newly-armed prize, milled frantically, like ants in the distance. ‘And I am very glad to have a piece of it to carry to Ireland.’ He referred to an enormous mass of rock, chipped into the semblance of a map of Juan Fernandez, that encumbered the berth, together with a mouldering turtle (thought to be asleep and destined for William), a net full of shells and a palm-leaf of moderately
vigorous growth. ‘It was a lovely island,’ he went on, ‘but I am prodigious happy to leave it. Even this disgusting berth is agreeable, even its brutish inhabitants: the rude merriment of my untutored shipmates is delightful, and the artless howling of the first lieutenant is music in my ears.’

At this moment Peter felt a pair of very cold grey eyes boring into the nape of his neck. Ransome gave him a shattering nudge by way of a hint, and Keppel burst into a paroxysm of coughing.

‘Young gentlemen,’ said Mr Dennis. ‘We are at sea.’

‘Yes, sir,’ they said.

‘We are at sea,’ repeated the lieutenant, gazing about with profound satisfaction. ‘Not taking our ease like young ladies in an al fresco party.’

‘Oh no, sir,’ they said.

‘And at sea,’ said the lieutenant, with a sudden burst of ferocity, ‘there is work to be done. There is discipline too. You may have heard of it somewhere. And mast-heads exist, Mr Palafox.’

Peter looked up, and unable to suppress his delight, said, ‘An’t it charming to see them, sir? I had almost forgot what a top-gallant looked like, all round the Horn.’

‘Then you may gratify yourself with a closer inspection,’ said Mr Dennis. ‘Oblige me by running up there, as quick as you like.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter aloud. And in a much softer voice he added, ‘All right, Old Jersey Shirt (for Mr Dennis, like Mr Saumarez, came from the Channel Islands, and was to be seen, in cold weather, in the uncouth woollen garment of the natives of Jersey), I was going there anyway. So put that in your pipe and smoke it; and don’t I wish you may like it, ha, ha.’

A lovely island, thought Peter: and all the ship’s company said the same. But when it remained clearly, obstinately, in sight all day, and the next and the next, there were not a few to be found who were so darkly ungrateful that they shook their fists at it while they whistled with all the force of their lungs for a wind to carry them away.

The drum-roll and the crash of the bulkheads going down as a ship clears for action is perhaps the most exciting sound in the world. The drum thundered in the
Centurion
, the officers’ cabins vanished, casks lashed between the guns splashed overboard leaving white rings that ran to mingle with the wake as the
Centurion
tore through the sea towards a ship that was approaching on the opposite tack.

‘A seventy-four,’ said Preston, ducking under the vast spread of the starboard lower studdingsail.

‘Can’t see a thing,’ said Bailey, hopping.

Up in his station by the larboard fo’c’sle guns Peter said, ‘
I
can’t make her out.’

‘She’s a stout ship,’ said the gunner, standing near him. ‘Five minutes now.’

‘She must be a man-of-war, the way she comes down,’ whispered Preston. ‘She means business.’

‘Unless she’s a merchant who takes us for another.’

‘Don’t be an ass. Of course she’s a man-of-war—a two-decker. A sixty-gun ship or a seventy-four.’

‘Can’t see a thing, head-on like this.’

‘Four minutes. Three, and she is in range,’ murmured the gunner to himself, narrowing his eyes against the glare.

For the long moments before the ships converged the
Centurion
was filled with a solemn hush, broken only by the song of the wind and the sea ripping by. At the guns of the upper-deck the crews crouched ready: from the gun-deck wafted the smell of the slow-match, poised glowing in the linstocks. In a second the broadside could shatter the silence: Keppel and Ransome stood with their whistles, watching Mr Brett for the signal.

‘Mr Blew,’ came the Commodore’s voice, ‘I beg you will hail her in Spanish.’

The master came racing forward to the starboard cathead. ‘Qué nave?’ he hailed. ‘Que entregue en seguida—somos Ingleses.’

‘
Tryal
’s prize,’ came the answer, and as the ships swept past Peter saw Mr Hughes, first of the
Tryal
, standing on the
fo’c’sle and peering somewhat nervously into the
Centurion
’s gun-ports one after the other: and as they came abreast he saw the red and gold of Spain flying below the English colours. But not a gun went off, and the
Centurion
came up into the wind, while the big Spaniard ran under her stern to lie-to in her lee.

‘Well, there’s still the other,’ said Peter hopefully, looking away to the smaller vessel on the horizon.

‘Pah,’ said the gunner disgustedly. ‘That’s only the
Tryal
with half her masts blown off. Maniacs.’ He stumped off, and a universal discontent filled the
Centurion
.

‘They must have cracked on like a lot of bay-boons,’ said Mr Blew angrily, ‘for to carry away like that just after refitting.’

‘What nasty lines she has,’ said Peter, sneering at the Spanish ship. ‘Just like Spillane’s wagon overturned in the bog.’

‘Have you seen her name?’ asked Bailey. ‘
Arranzazu
. What despicable nonsense.’

Presently the rumour spread that the prize had carried only five thousand pounds’ worth of silver, and the crew’s indignation knew no bounds. The wretched
Tryal
had chased her for thirty-six hours through appalling weather (the
Centurion
had split her main-topsail in the same storm, but preferred to forget it) and had followed her throughout the length of the night guided by no more than a chink that showed through an ill-fitting cover: but the Centurions felt cheated, vexed and cantankerous, and they regarded the crew of the
Tryal
with righteous disdain—a disdain founded on different and contradictory reasons: first, the prize should never have been a prize at all, but a fighting Spaniard; secondly, if she had to be a prize at all, she ought to have been the
Centurion
’s prize; and thirdly, if the
Tryal
had taken a prize, she ought to have taken a rich one.

‘And I lost a valuable basket, stowed by the hances, when the decks were cleared,’ said Peter.

‘They had a full ten days at sea ahead of us,’ said Preston. ‘That is what I call taking a mean advantage—I mean, to go
careering about the sea at such a pace, and crowding on so that they carry away their main-topmast and spring all the rest, in chase of a paltry five-thousand-pounder.’

‘Five thousand pounds is a sum I scorn,’ said Bailey. ‘They ought to think more of the service and less of prize-money,’ he added.

‘And do you know what?’ cried Keppel, darting furiously into the berth. ‘The Commodore is going to commission her as a frigate, R.N., and Sawney is to be made post into her. They are shifting
Tryal
’s guns into her at this very minute, and the sloop is to be scuttled. That’s what they get for having run his Majesty’s ship into a crimson wreck. Rewarded with a fine new frigate—she was a man-of-war in the Spanish service off and on—and begged to make themselves comfortable aboard—a wonderful sailer on a wind—promoted—petted. Oh, it’s famous, ain’t it? So now we don’t even get our share of the hulk. It’s pretty well, eh?’ With a howl of frustrated avarice he vanished on deck.

‘Oh, well,’ said Peter, philosophically, ‘there is still a prodigious lot of sea, and I make no doubt that it is swarming with prizes. I will bet we make a round dozen before we reach Paita.’

I
F ANYONE HAD TAKEN PETER’S BET, PETER WOULD HAVE LOST
his money: nobody did, of course, for it might have brought bad luck to the ship; but still, he would certainly have lost his money. The squadron swept the sea off Valparaiso, swept the coast of Chile, the coast and headlands of Peru; they recrossed
Capricorn with flowing sheets and a southerly gale, strung out in a wide line abreast, the
Centurion
and then the
Carmelo
, courses down to the larboard, under the command of Mr Saumarez, and beyond her, out of sight of the
Centurion
but within signalling distance of the
Carmelo
, the
Tryal
’s
Prize
with a motley crew of black, yellow and dun, kept in apple-pie order and a miserable state of cleanliness by the men of the
Tryal
. The three ships covered an immense area of sea, a strip perhaps fifty miles wide in which nothing could pass unseen; and as they cruised in the lanes of mercantile traffic they watched with unremitting attention. But never a sail did they find.

‘November 1st. 14° 2’ S. 76° 39’ W. Island Gallan bearing NNE½E 7 leagues, Morro Viejo S½E 5 miles. Wind at SSE backing S,’ wrote Peter. ‘No news. We took in some men from
Carmelo
, in case of a Spanish force out of Callao. Many flying fish. Sean caught a bonito from the larboard bumkin.

‘November 4th. My birthday. We have been 412 days at sea now and I have more than a year’s seniority. I did not like to mention it in the berth, but Mr Walter very kindly brought me a cake that he had saved from those taken in
Tryal’s Prize
which Mr Saunders complimented him with. It was especially kind in him, as he cannot be trusted with sweet things—avows it himself—not even loaf sugar: has been seen hiding it under his cassock in the wardroom and Jennings swears that the Commodore’s steward has to keep the Commodore’s own preserves under lock and key, with the key round his neck. So seeing the cake, the berth smoked the reason, and Ransome arranged the cake in a shot-garland, with a candle—there was only room for one on the cake, a rat having trimmed it about. It was an uncommon elegant notion, but unfortunately the tallow ran in the sun, rather, and it was impossible to be relished very much, quite apart from the weevils. And they treated me to a famous rum-punch, which we drank, roaring and laughing like anything until Mr Brett sent to ask were we attempting to raise the Devil, and if so he was to be told the minute he appeared, in order to read him in at once, the ship
being so short-handed. Sean gave me a comforter, 2 fathoms long, which he had knitted up out of black and purple wool found in
Tryal’s Prize
. Query, how did he come by it? It will be very useful when we are out of the Tropics. Most kind and obliging in Sean.

‘November 5th. 10° 36’ S. 77° 41’ N. Cape Barranca bearing WNW½W. Variation at noon 7° 1’ S. Light variable airs at S and SW. No news. We are more than 50 days out of Juan Fernandez now, and Mr Blew says they can send an express from Valparaiso to Lima in 30 days, so by now they may know all along the coast that we are here, and may already have laid an embargo on the shipping in Peru as well as Chile. The men are still in very high spirits however, and work the ship so briskly it is a pleasure to see. Mem. to ask the sailmaker to add 2 pieces to my canvas trousers: they only come to my shins, and are painfully tight. Mem. to give Rogers a handsome present for the
Centurion
in a bottle he made me.’

It was Peter’s watch below, the afternoon watch of a very warm day, not too hot, but sleepy weather. He yawned, closed his journal, and opened his Horace. The Ode about Maevius was to be prepared for Mr Walter, and he and Keppel had made a version with which they were rather pleased.

‘“Mala soluta navis exit alite

Ferens olentem Maevium”—The ship with the malodorous Mr Saumarez aboard squares her yards with an unfortunate omen.

“Ut horridus utrumque verberes latus,

Auster, momento fluctibus”—Remember, O South Wind, to bang her about starboard and larboard.

“Niger rudentes Eurus, inverso mari,

Fractosque remos differat”—Let the black East, the sea having been turned upside-down, carry away her booms.’

He skipped a little to the piece the berth had particularly relished.

‘“O quantos instat sudor tuis,

Tibique pallor luteus”—Oh what a sweat bedews your crew, and oh what a tallowy colour you are yourself.

“Et illa non virilis ejulatio,

Preces et adversum ad Joven”—and that effeminate wailing, those prayers to unregarding Jove … extended upon the winding shore, you shall delight the cormorants, who like that kind of thing; and a libidinous he-goat together with a ewe-lamb shall be a thank-offering to the tempests.’

‘Unkind to the libidinous goat, however,’ said Peter, closing the book. It was unkind to the first lieutenant, too; for he had worn himself wrinkled and thin in a not unsuccessful attempt to guide the midshipmen in the way they should go—an uncommonly thankless task. Peter yawned again, curled up on the locker, and in two minutes was fast asleep, wheezing gently—whee-soo, whee-soo, in time with the long pitch and roll of the ship. He had, deeply engrained by now, the sailor’s ability to sleep at any moment of the day or night: he also had the naval habit of becoming instantly and wholly awake at the least unusual sound. The thunder of Bailey’s enormous feet coming below would never have stirred him, nor the crash of the evening gun: but a wrong note in the rigging, the sound of the way going off the ship, would pierce through all the disregarded clamour and rouse him at once.

The sound that brought him to his feet now, however, was one that would have roused a sailor nine parts dead, if he were cruising upon the Spaniards in the Pacific. ‘Sail ho,’ came down from the mast-head, and as Peter reached the quarterdeck Keppel had already flung the signal-yeoman the flags that raced up to bid the squadron chase.

There was no need to ask where away: telescopes at the mast-heads all converged upon some white fleck to the leeward, invisible from the deck, and the few free eyes aboard were all trained round and fixed. Few free eyes, for the
Centurion
was crowding on sail to the height of the crew’s desire, and one cannot shake out a reef and stare at a prize for long, however clever one may be.

‘We are gaining,’ said Preston. ‘She’s hull up already. Look at
Tryal’s
Prize
; miles behind.’

‘She has carried away her starboard main-tops’l stuns’l boom,’ said Peter, swinging his glass back to the fleeing Spaniard. ‘If we do the same,’ he added, squinting along the yard to where the long, tapering boom bent with the thrust of the studding-sail, ‘this mast will go by the board, and we shall lose her: it is only fished in the woulding.’

‘I know,’ said Preston. ‘But that need not worry us, I mean about losing her, because if the mast goes, we shall certainly be killed, ha, ha.’

‘Lord,’ cried Peter, ‘how she runs. We are making eight knots—’

‘Nine,’ said Preston.

—‘Eight,’ said Peter. ‘And she must be making seven at the least.’

‘That can’t be three bells?’ cried Preston aghast.

‘It is, though,’ said Peter, looking back at the sun. ‘One more hour of light, and no moon at all.’

Three bells in the last dog watch. Four bells as Peter came down. The sun, with its maddening tropical habit of dipping at six, was nearly touching the sea: from the deck the Spaniard’s hull could just be seen now, but unless she carried a mast away she would still be miles ahead by the dark, and then she would certainly tack.

The sun went down: it went suddenly down, and the night in the eastern sky swept in a huge arc towards the zenith. It was dark night on the starboard beam; a violet, momentary twilight high overboard; and on the larboard hung an orange remnant of the day. Then—you could see it move—the arc of night passed over the masts, down the bowl of the sky, to close in the uttermost west; and it was dark. Already the stars were huge and lambent: behind the
Centurion
’s stern the Southern Cross sprawled across blackness; and the dingy, patched, weather-worn sails had all turned ghostly white—the courses and part of the topsails: the others could no longer be seen except as spectral hints against the stars.

The watch below was a watch below in name only: not a man moved from the deck. At the common table and in the separate gun-deck messes the rats walked slowly about, choosing
the least unpleasant biscuits: in the midshipmen’s berth the burgoo steamed and grew lukewarm—it could not grow cold, for the temperature was 98° down there.

‘We will have the royals off her, if you please, Mr Brett, and the stuns’ls,’ said the Commodore.

The upper-yardsmen vanished in the shrouds, vague forms in the velvet night, all muttering ‘Why?’ and ‘Eh?’ within themselves.

‘Sail,’ cried the mast-head. ‘Sail ho …’

‘Sail hee,’ whispered Keppel.

‘… right ahead.’ The look-out’s voice was uncertain. This was the third hail for an imaginary ship since sundown.

‘Mr Stapleton,’ cried the Commodore, ‘what do you find?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ came down after a long pause. ‘I see nothing from here.’

‘Quartermaster,’ snapped the Commodore. The
Centurion
had yawed, a barely perceptible yaw as the helmsman tried to keep one eye on the binnacle while the other ranged over the bowsprit.

‘Mr Anson, sir,’ said Colonel Cracherode, to Peter’s infinite relief, ‘will you indulge a landsman’s curiosity and allow me to ask what—to enquire whether—’

‘Whether the chase has tacked, sir? It is very likely, indeed. As I conceive it, the Spaniard will have borne his helm a-weather just after sunset; and just about now he will tack again to steer for the land under a strong press of sail. That is why we are holding our course, in the hope of intercepting him on the second reach. I may very well be mistaken: but if I were the Spanish captain, that is what I should do. Mr Brett, we may take a reef in the topsails, I believe. And perhaps it would be best if you were to carry a night-glass aloft yourself.’

Mr Brett had barely reached the maintop before his voice came down, strong with excitement—surprisingly loud, ‘Sail four points on the larboard bow.’

‘Hands to the braces,’ cried the Commodore. ‘Port your helm. Clap on to that bowline there. Mr Ransome, the main tack: bear a hand.’

The
Centurion
turned smoothly to the wind: far aloft Peter
and his party waited for the order, and the second it came they let fall the fore topgallantsail and raced in off the yard; it was instantly sheeted home, and under the additional thrust the
Centurion
plunged her head into her bow-wave: but this interesting sight was lost on Peter, he being wholly taken up with staring at the faint loom ahead, a hint of white in the starlight.

Twenty minutes later she was no faint hint of a half-guessed whiteness, but a ship within long gun-shot, clear and distinct.

‘One,’ said Mr Randall; and for the first time in his life Peter saw a gun fired in earnest. A brilliant orange tongue shot towards the chase, and for a split fragment of time the scattering of the wad could be seen in it: in the instantly succeeding darkness the yellow stab still played in his eyes, to be replaced within the second by two more blinding jets as the gunner intoned, ‘Three. And five.’ The
Centurion
yawed again: the starboard fo’c’sle guns beginning to bear, and they fired as they bore.

‘She is forereaching us,’ observed the Commodore. ‘Three of canister above her tops, Mr Randall. That will discourage her upper-yardmen, I fancy. Keep it high, Mr Randall. Do not hull her upon any account.’

Now the guns in the waist spoke out, one, two, then three together.

‘She has struck, sir,’ reported the third lieutenant to Mr Brett, touching his hat.

‘Sir, she has struck, if you please,’ said Mr Brett, turning to the Commodore.

‘Very good, Mr Brett. Mr Dennis will take possession and send the prisoners aboard with the utmost dispatch,’ said the Commodore, turning and going below.

‘Aye-aye, sir. Cutter’s crew. Mr Palafox, the cutter away. Mr Bowles, serve out pistols and cutlasses. Step lively.’

Peter had never a word of Spanish, so he understood little of the submission of the Spanish captain, nor of Mr Dennis’s orders to the Spanish crew in the waist of the ship: but he knew what he was there for, and as the prisoners got under
way he shepherded them into the cutter, delivered them aboard the
Centurion
, and returned for more. The second time he came back with his load he had gathered enough information to whisper to Bailey in the chains, ‘Only a—merchantman with coconuts and leather—no sort of a prize.’

But the third time he came alongside the Spaniard he heard a dismal wailing and screeching aboard, an oath, and a man falling down.

‘Rogers, keep the boat. T’others come along of me,’ he cried and raced up with a cocked pistol tucked under his arm and a cutlass in his right hand—a tricky feat on a steep ship’s side. The din came from the great cabin, and as Peter reached the deck he saw the lieutenant stagger backwards from the cabin with a scared and anxious look on his face. Three lines of blood were trickling down his cheek.

‘What’s the matter, sir?’ cried Peter.

‘It’s a horrible pack of women,’ said Mr Dennis, ‘and they won’t come out. They were hidden under beds and things, and then all swarmed out. One bit me,’ he added vaguely, sucking his finger. ‘Go on, Williams,’ he commanded, ‘rouse them out into the cutter.’

‘Beg parding, sir,’ said Williams, coming reluctantly into the light. ‘I tried once, sir.’

‘A fine sight,’ cried the lieutenant, glaring round the half-circle of timid faces.

‘After you, sir,’ said an unseen hand in the shadow of the main-mast.

‘The Commodore said “with the utmost dispatch”,’ muttered the lieutenant in a desperate whisper, with a wistful look at the door.

‘May I have a go?’ asked Peter.

‘Yes,
do
,’ said Mr Dennis.

Peter opened the door with a masterful swing. Three seconds later he shot out again, his ideas about women quite changed.