The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ knocked us on the head one by one as we came ashore.’

      ‘What do you say to that, young man?’ asked Peter’s neighbour.

      ‘Why, sir,’ said Peter, ‘they are only wild men from Kerry. We call them firbolgs, sir.’

      ‘Do you? I would tell you what we called them,’ said Captain Kidd, ‘if it were not for the respect I owe to the Commodore.’

      ‘Are your fellows any better?’ asked Peter’s neighbour, with a wink.

      ‘Yes, sir, they are,’ said Peter. ‘Only last autumn there was a brig on the reef by Maan Point, and we drove the boats out through the surf although it was breaking up the way it washed the cows off the top of the cliff.’

      ‘How did you manage that?’

      ‘Why, sir, we carried the curraghs about two miles to the cove that is sheltered a little, and so we launched them and brought off every man alive, although Michael Tomelty and Seamus Colman were drowned.’

      ‘How many oars do they pull?’

      ‘Eleven sir, counting the one at the back,’ said Peter, who knew very well, having held it on that occasion.

      ‘And you say they carried a ten-oared boat for more than a mile?’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, with the uncomfortable feeling that he was not believed.

      ‘They must be strangely built boats in your part of the world,’ observed Mr Saunders.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, looking down. It would not be right, he knew, to launch into a long explanation, particularly as the whole table was listening now: but it was hard to be set down as a wild teller of tales—and an unconvincing one at that. He ate a little more, but without much appetite, and presently the cloth was drawn.

      The port went round; they drank the King, and after that Peter relapsed into a meditation; he sat upright, not touching the back of his chair, as trim, neat and silent as a midshipman should be in such august company, but his spirit was far away in the warm drifting rain of his own country, where the land falls sheer to the western sea.

      ‘Wake up,’ said his neighbour, and with a jerk Peter realised that he was being addressed.

      ‘I was saying,’ said the Commodore, smiling at him, ‘that Mr Palafox will decide the question.’ The thought of deciding any question at all froze Peter to the spine. ‘Colonel Cracherode says that your boats are not made of wood: I maintain that they are.’

      ‘Sir,’ said Peter, ‘we do have wooden ones, but they are made of skins entirely.’ ‘What’s the merriment?’ he thought angrily, as the table burst into a general laugh.

      ‘You had better tell the Commodore how they are built,’ said Mr Saunders.

      ‘There is a frame, sir,’ said Peter, ‘of wood that will bend, and that we tie together: then we sew bull skins to that for the very best boats, and dress them with the oil from the sharks that we catch.’

      ‘And you put to sea in those?’ asked Captain Kidd.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, wonderingly; for to him it was an everyday occurrence.

      ‘In those seas,’ said the Commodore, ‘it must be a very fine apprenticeship for those that survive.’

      ‘But sir,’ said Peter, made uncommonly bold by the Commodore’s affability, ‘there is the disadvantage that we call the things by Irish names; and although a man may be able to work one of our boats through the sea and it standing straight up to the sky, he sounds but a sad looby in a man-of-war when he calls the mast the tree, as we do at home.’

      ‘Never mind,’ said the Commodore. ‘When I first went to sea I could not make out why the half-deck was so small compared with the quarter-deck. It will all come in time, if you have a seaman’s right resolution. By Heaven,’ he said, breaking off, ‘I wish we had a few score of your villagers here. Kidd, have you heard of the shabby trick the guardship played on poor Legge, after he had been promised ten able seamen?’

      The conversation drifted away to the manifold difficulties of manning the fleet, and Peter spoke no more; but he was very much happier than he had been, and when dinner was over he went on deck with a much lighter heart.

      ‘Mr Palafox,’ said the first lieutenant, looking upon him with an unwontedly favourable eye, ‘you may go with Mr Keppel in the cutter: he is taking a party up the coast to see if he can press a few men. Look lively now, and tell them not to hang too much cloth on the tree,’ he added, with a curiously human smile.

      The cutter was alongside, still hooked on in the chains, and Peter dropped down as the boat reached the top of a wave.

      ‘Mr Saunders said I was to come,’ he said.

      ‘I see,’ said Keppel, with chilling indifference. ‘Give way,’ he ordered, and the boat pulled away into the eye of the wind.

      Half-way to the shore they passed the liberty boat, and in the sheets Peter saw FitzGerald huddled in his boat-cloak. He looked ghastly pale; and he made no sign as they passed.

      ‘Do you know what the other Teague has done?’ said Hope to Keppel, meeting him on the Hard.

      ‘No?’

      ‘He has fought with an ensign of the 43rd and has a ball through his leg.’

       Chapter Five

      ‘FORTY-FIVE DEGREES, OUGHT MINUTES NORTH, AND FIFTEEN degrees thirty-one minutes of West longitude,’ said Keppel, making a decorative flourish under his answer.

      ‘Mr Palafox?’ asked the schoolmaster.

      ‘I have not quite worked it out yet, sir,’ said Peter, breathing heavily over his slate.

      ‘Mr Hope?’

      ‘It does not seem right, sir,’ said Hope, looking doubtfully at his reckoning. ‘I have 20° 1’ South and 143° 50’ East.’

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