The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ we reach England.’

      He gaped at FitzGerald, hardly believing his ears, and FitzGerald hurried on, ‘You see, I made a foolish mistake at the races today, and I have left myself quite high and dry. It would be—’

      ‘But I was just going to ask you,’ broke in Peter. ‘I was going to say the very same words.’

      ‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald; and there was a short silence.

      ‘I am very sorry, indeed,’ said Peter, hesitantly.

      FitzGerald smiled. ‘It is of no consequence,’ he said. ‘But I confess I had hoped you would be rich, being so well attended.’

      ‘It is only Liam and Sean,’ said Peter; then, feeling the necessity of an explanation, he went on, ‘Liam farms my father’s glebe at Ballynasaggart: he is not what you would call a servant at all, but he does all kinds of things, like selling the pig, and he was going with me as far as Cork and he would take back the horses. And Sean came of his own notion, to see the world: he is Liam’s nephew and the son of my nurse. It was Liam who had the purse, you see, being cautious and used to the world: but it went at the races, and the horses are pawned.’

      ‘My poor shipmate,’ said FitzGerald, shaking him by the hand very cheerfully. ‘What a sad way you are in. And there was I imagining a Croesus—I was ill with expecting you. But tell me, you could not send home?’

      ‘I could not,’ replied Peter, ‘for I know very well there is not a gold piece left in the house. We are quite poor, you know,’ he added, simply.

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ said FitzGerald, flushing. ‘I did not intend to be impertinent. For myself I cannot send home either, and for much the same reason.’ He carefully shared out the last of the wine. ‘I cannot accept such ingenuous candour,’ he said, ‘without offering my explanations in turn.’ And Peter learned that he was the son of Edward FitzGerald of Ardnacruish, a gentleman who had almost ruined himself by pursuing three law-suits at once about a right of way through his demesne. ‘It was not so bad until the first affair came to the House of Lords,’ said FitzGerald. ‘But when that failed the poor old gentleman (who was in the wrong from the start, by the by) came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Terence, my boy (my name is Peregrine, but he was thinking of my brother), Terence, my boy, I am vexed to the soul, but I cannot buy you the pair of colours I promised. Not even in a marching regiment,” says he, shedding tears. “So I suppose you will have to be a crossing-sweeper, if we can find someone to sell you a broom on credit.” “Stuff,” says my Aunt Tabitha. “Why will you not write to Cousin Wager, as I have said these five years gone?” “Sure, Tab,” says he, “it would be kinder to the boy to drown him in a stable bucket than to have him cooped up in a ship. There never was a FitzGerald who could do anything if he was not on a horse; and sweeping his crossing he will at least be within nodding distance of the creatures.” “Stuff,” says my aunt—and so it went on; but in the end the letter was written to Cousin Wager, who is something grand in the Admiralty, and the answer came back and my father borrowed twenty guineas from the tailor to carry me over. It is true that he had to order clothes to the tune of nigh on a hundred to do it, but they will always come in. And if only that slug of a horse had run faster this afternoon I might have been able to pay for them all out of hand: still, I have my appointment, and once I am aboard the Centurion—’

      ‘The Centurion?’ cried Peter.

      ‘Yes. You’ll not say it is your ship as well?’

      ‘It is, though,’ said Peter. ‘My father’s old friend Mr Walter is chaplain, and he begged me the place.’

      ‘Well, that is capital,’ said FitzGerald, shaking his hand again. ‘So we are to be shipmates in fact. But tell me,’ he said, pausing thoughtfully, ‘you are a great sailor, I dare say?’

      ‘No,’ said Peter, shaking his head. ‘Not at all. I have played about in our boat, and in the fishermen’s curraghs, but I have never set foot in a ship—a brig was the biggest I ever sailed in.’

      ‘Is a brig not a ship?’ said FitzGerald, with a smile. ‘But still, I see that you are sailor enough to answer a question that has been puzzling me ever since Cousin Wager wrote back and I began to read voyages. What is this larboard and starboard they are always talking about?’

      ‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘the starboard is the right as you look towards the front of the ship and the larboard is the other side. Some people say port. Yes, Sean?’ he said, breaking off.

      ‘If his honour is Mr FitzGerald,’ whispered Sean, bending low over the table, ‘he had best fly like a bird. And you too, a gradh. Will you slip out by the back now, before it’s too late?’

      ‘Why, what is the matter?’ cried Peter, amazed.

      ‘Sure, there’s information against you. Someone has sworn the peace against Mr FitzGerald, and the constable is coming to take you both up before the justice, Sir Phelim O’Neil, bad luck to his house.’

      That night they lay out on the mountain, on the crest of the line of hills that divides the County Galway from Roscommon, and they slept secure, for, as Sean said, ‘Wisha, your honour, the magistrate’s word goes no further than the edge of the county, and although the dear knows you cannot go back, you may go forward as far as ever you please.’

      They slept secure from arrest, but not from the rain: and in the sodden dawn Peter thanked his kind fate for a follower so foreseeing as Sean, who in their hurried departure had had the wit to whip up the wooden bottle that Mrs Palafox had provided for Peter’s morning draught. Now the fiery whiskey bored down his throat and lit up his stomach, preserving him from the noxious damp.

      ‘That is far better,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But I wish—’ His words were cut short by the sight of Sean, who appeared suddenly on a naked rock above them: the wind was holding his long cloak straight up in the air, increasing his already considerable height to ten feet and more: his black hair also streamed up, and his blue eyes were glaring down in a hard, inimical, piercing way at a stranger far below them; and the reason for this was that the hare which had hitherto been concealed under his cloak was now entirely open to view. The inoffensive, uninquisitive stranger passed on his harmless way, and Sean came down.

      ‘If you did that on my father’s land,’ said FitzGerald, picking a clean bone of the half-smoked hare (it is hard to light a good fire when even your flint and steel drip wet on being shaken), ‘you would find yourself transported before you could very well bless the Pope. He is a Papist, I suppose?’ he asked Peter, nodding towards Sean in the manner typical of his kind.

      ‘He is not,’ said Peter, shortly.

      ‘Well, he is a wonderful poacher for a Protestant,’ said FitzGerald.

      ‘The mist is lifting,’ said Peter. It was: it tore and parted as they watched, thinner, and at last so sparse and rare that it was no more than a few wisps between their hilltop and the great plain of Ireland with the white road winding away, far below.

      ‘What shall we do now?’ asked Peter, more to himself than FitzGerald or Sean, after he had gazed at this sight for a while.

      ‘What we ought to do is go down there to the road and walk steadily towards the south,’ said FitzGerald. ‘It will dry us, perhaps, if the rain does not come back; and at least I am sure it will diminish the distance between us and Cork.’

      ‘I tell you what, Palafox,’ he said again, when СКАЧАТЬ