The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ he said, after a silence, ‘there is our next dinner for sure. Which is something.’ And he laid the ten pieces in a row on the milestone.

      They considered the disposal of the sum, reckoning up their expenses with anxious addition. But it became apparent that once their bills at the inn were paid there would not be enough left to unpawn both horses—FitzGerald had sold his outright.

      ‘Then it must be Placidus,’ said Peter, charmed with the certainty of redeeming the creature.

      ‘But come,’ said FitzGerald, ‘did you not say that Liam’s nag was a stout beast that could carry two?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And this other one can’t?’

      ‘He could up to ten years ago, but truly he does not care for a pillion now.’

      ‘Ten years ago? Good heavens, how old is he at all?’

      ‘Oh, he was long past mark of mouth when I was a little boy,’ said Peter. ‘I suppose he must be rising twenty-five or so.’

      ‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald, and he muttered something in which the words ‘knacker’s yard’ and ‘museum’ could just be distinguished.

      ‘He is a remarkably fine horse for his age,’ said Peter eagerly, ‘and if you know how to ride him, and if he likes you, he can trot very well. You only have to take care not to bear on his withers, and to talk to him all the time, encouragingly, you know, and he will go on amazingly.’

      ‘You have to talk to him all the time?’

      ‘Yes. In Latin, of course. My father has always recited Virgil aloud as he rides about the parish, and Placidus is used to it. Then when my father goes to sleep, which he does sometimes, Placidus stops so that he will not fall off. So you have to keep talking, or he thinks it his duty to stop. Oh, and I had almost forgot: when it is your turn to ride you must never menace him, or he bites you and then lies down. But apart from that and his bowl of bread and milk in the morning—’

      ‘Bread and milk?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Peter earnestly. ‘Just sufficiently warm; not hot, you understand, but just loo-warm. He cannot digest oats or hay in the morning. Nor beans.’

      ‘I see,’ said FitzGerald. ‘No beans in the morning.’

      ‘Just so,’ said Peter, with an approving nod.

      ‘You’re not codding?’

      ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

      ‘Do you seriously propose that we ride and tie—for if he cannot carry two there’s no help for it—that we ride and tie through the length of Ireland, alternately walking and then riding on this remarkable animal, perched up on its rump and haranguing the countryside in Latin?’

      ‘You do not have to harangue—just quietly reciting will do.’

      ‘Do you know how long my Latin would last?’

      ‘Oh, as for that, I have found the declensions will serve to fill in the gaps. I believe that he does not really distinguish the odds.’

      ‘But seriously,’ said FitzGerald, ‘to go along perched up on an antediluvian screw—oh come, let us get a guinea for his hoofs and hide and buy something a little less antique.’

      ‘Sell Placidus!’ cried Peter, ‘Now it’s you that are codding.’

      ‘I take it,’ said FitzGerald, after a thoughtful pause, ‘that he is, as I may say, a kind of pet horse?’

      ‘That’s the way of it,’ said Peter firmly.

      ‘Well, in that case,’ said FitzGerald, ‘I suppose there is nothing to be said. Only I pray to Heaven that no one I know ever sees me.’

      ‘Upon my word, I do not see why,’ said Peter warmly. ‘He was by Bucephalus out of a country mare, and Bucephalus’ sire was the Godolphin Barb.’

      ‘That entirely alters the whole affair,’ said FitzGerald, ‘and I should be proud to walk by his side. With the Barb’s own grandson as our mount, we shall cross the country like a couple of kings, if rather more slowly.’

       Chapter Three

      IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF THE EIGHTEENTH DAY OF THE month two foot-sore, thin, weary and travel-stained midshipmen limped hurriedly over the stones of Queenstown to the water where Sean held a boat.

      ‘Where did you get it, Sean?’ asked Peter, getting in.

      ‘Sure I borrowed it—now, your honour, make haste, for she sails on the evening tide,’ he said, heaving FitzGerald bodily in. He shoved off, set the sail, and in a moment they were scudding on the stiff breeze, and the noble city of Cork sped from them backwards.

      ‘Sean,’ said Peter, sitting in the sheets with the tiller under his knee and listening to the bitter roaring of a pair of natives on shore, ‘I wish you may have borrowed it fairly.’

      ‘The day was not seen on the face of the earth when I would be stealing a boat,’ said Sean. ‘But we being so pressed, the way she is sailing with this very tide, and they being wishful to delay us for their own profit, I said your honour would leave the boat hire with the boat. And the rightful fare is fourteen pence. Behind the island she is lying, the Mary Rose: will you go on to the other tack, so?’

      ‘No. We’ll lie a little longer on this,’ said Peter, bracing himself against the heel of the boat as the wind laid her down and the water raced gurgling under the side. ‘Now,’ he said, having put her shaving round the stern of the wherry, ‘now over—sit down, FitzGerald,’ he cried.

      ‘Well, upon my honour,’ said FitzGerald, rubbing his head where the boom had rapped it, ‘what strange things you do.’

      Presently he sat up again, settled his hat upon his head, and gazed about. ‘So this is the sea,’ he observed. ‘I say, there is a vast great deal of it.’

      ‘No it an’t,’ said Peter. ‘This is only the Cove of Cork. The brig lies behind the island there. The main sea is beyond.’

      The next tack showed them the far side of the island, and Sean said, ‘There she is, and her topsails are loosed.’ As he spoke a thin white line of sail on the brig spread suddenly into a rectangle, bellying out in the wind and straightening as they sheeted home and hauled away.

      ‘We shall be lucky if we catch her,’ said Peter, edging the boat a little nearer the wind.

      ‘Would it not be quicker if you went straight, rather than dodging about in this fashion?’ suggested FitzGerald as they went about again.

      ‘But the wind is straight from her to us,’ said Peter. ‘Sean, give her a hail as soon as you can.’

      They were now coming up towards the brig’s starboard quarter, sailing as near the СКАЧАТЬ