The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian
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was not the betting. Oh sir, it was not the betting, but a cutpurse, a rapparee, an unlucky black thief of a pickpocket that did be stealing it in the crowd. Will I tell you the way it was, sir?’
‘Do, my poor boy, do: for I fear I have done you an injustice,’ said the chaplain, dusting Peter’s face with his handkerchief. And Peter told him the way it was, in very great detail, right through Connaught and the greater part of Munster, through the chops of the Channel and to the very deck of the Centurion herself, that noble ship, ending with the heartfelt words, ‘but never did I truly miss the purse until this moment, sir.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said the chaplain heavily, sadly. ‘So you were robbed, and I have beaten you for being robbed. You must forgive me, Peter. But what is to be done? What are we to do? I am at a stand. I protest,’ he said again, after a pause, ‘that I am quite at a stand.’
At this moment there was a great rumbling groan, and the port opened upwards and outwards, letting in a blinding light and a blast of fresh sea air.
‘Mind the ink-well!’ cried the chaplain, as he and Peter darted about after the flying papers, ‘and for the love of Heaven cling to my sermon.’
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said a bearded face, upside down in the opening. ‘We’ve just opened the port, like.’
In time everything was picked up, sorted, squared and made fast under heavy books. They sat, gasping and dazzled, gazing at one another through narrowed eyes; and all that Peter could see in Mr Walter’s face was doubt and anxiety. ‘I might,’ said the chaplain at last, ‘I might give you a letter to Mr Shovell. He hopes he may be given the command of a cutter, a hired cutter, for service in the Channel … but I don’t know, I’m sure.’
He went on musing aloud in this way for some time, and Peter’s gaze wandered to the brilliant sea-scape on the far side of the square gunport: he saw boats passing to and fro between the guardships and the squadron, and for a brief moment the whole of the foreground was filled with the bulk of an eight-and-twenty-gun frigate running before the wind, with studding-sails aloft and alow on either side. The brown faces on her quarterdeck were turned towards the Centurion and he could see them laughing as they looked up. She vanished, and his mind returned to Mr Walter’s discourse: he found that the chaplain was explaining the various categories of ‘young gentlemen’, the King’s Letter Boys, the volunteers, and those who appeared on the ship’s books as captain’s, lieutenant’s and even boatswain’s servants, but who in fact walked the quarterdeck like the other midshipmen; yet he was aware that Mr Walter was not really talking to any purpose. And as time went on he also became aware that Mr Walter was staring at him in a very curious way—staring with a fixed, unwavering gaze at his throat, sometimes half closing his eyes and sometimes leaning his head to one side. In the brilliant light that now filled the cabin there could be no possible doubt of his unwavering stare, nor of its direction. The explanation continued, somewhat at haphazard: the gaze grew even more intense. Peter began to feel uneasy, and at length he put his hand to his cravat to see whether it was undone, or whether perhaps it had dipped into the ink.
‘Peter Palafox,’ said the chaplain, ‘pray reach me that buckle.’ And when he had it in his hand he leant back until he was in the sun, holding it to his eye in a very knowing and professional manner. ‘So there you were wandering about Ireland,’ he said, after a long considering pause and countless inspections of the buckle in different lights, ‘wandering about like an Egyptian, I say, with an emerald pinned to your throat. A handsome emerald, though a little flawed, of course, and scratched: but a fine generous colour. At one time,’ he went on, still peering deep into the stone, ‘I taught English to a Dutch jewel-merchant. I loved to see his baubles, and perhaps he taught me more than I taught him. I must not call myself a phoenix—oh, no—but I can tell a true stone when I see one. Look, this is what we call the garden of an emerald—beautiful, is it not? Now if it were not for this unlucky hole bored at the edge—Indian work, for sure—it might fetch two or three hundred guineas. But even so, I am very much out if it is not worth a year of your father’s living at the very least. How did you come by it?’
Peter, his heart’s blood flowing again and a delightful tide of joy surging in his stomach, told him; and the tale was interrupted by the meaningless chuckles of happiness in its purest state.
The chaplain said, ‘Your good old lady was right, I am sure. It must have come from some ship of the Spanish Armada—many were wrecked on your shores, as I understand. What a curious reflection, that it should have come from a galleon to fit you out to serve against that same contumelious nation. If you choose, I will turn this stone into a sea-chest, and a reasonable purse besides; for otherwise the merchants might be tempted to take advantage of your youth and inexperience; and we must never expose others to temptation, in case they should fall. But now I believe we must eat a piece of cake and drink a glass of Madeira, to welcome you aboard, and to repose our minds after their anxiety.’
Back in the midshipmen’s berth, with his mind duly reposed, Peter found it empty except for a very large cat and a very small boy. FitzGerald had gone. The hatch was now open, and the very small boy sat on a locker, looking up it and singing, in a remarkably high-pitched soprano,
‘The secret expedition ho
The secret expedition hee,’
over and over again. Peter stood, contemplating the pink-cheeked singer and wondering first where FitzGerald was and secondly how this child could have got aboard; and presently the song came to an end.
‘Tell me, my boy,’ said Peter kindly, ‘have you seen …’
‘Who the—do you think you are?’ asked the child, with an unflinching stare.
‘You should not use such words,’ said Peter, quite shocked.
‘And you should not use such an infernally impertinent form of address to your seniors,’ piped the very small boy. ‘I suppose you are one of the new horrors that the Admiralty in its wisdom has inflicted upon us. What the—do you mean by addressing me as your boy? Eh? Damn your impertinence,’ and growing pinker with wrath the child went on. ‘Five years seniority, and to be called “my boy” by something that has crept up out of the bilge when the cat was asleep. Rot me, by—, I’ve a month’s mind to have you keel-hauled.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Peter, much taken aback. ‘I was not aware.’
‘In future you will address me as Mr Keppel,’ said the child severely, and returned to his song.
Peter, to preserve his countenance, stroked the cat, a shabby animal, black where it had any hair, and dull blue where it was bald. The cat suffered this for a minute, lashing its tail; then with a low growl it seized his hand and bit it, like a dog.
Peter recoiled and bumped into a large, yellow-haired, florid, thick man, whose ordinarily good-humoured face was clouded with discontent.
‘Nah then, cully,’ said he, in a hoarse whisper, seeing Peter and the cat so closely joined; ‘don’t you tease that cat.’
‘It’s the cat won’t let go, so it won’t,’ cried Peter, waving it in the air.
‘Don’t you go a-teasing no animals here, for I won’t have it. And that’s flat,’ said the newcomer, detaching the cat with a powerful heave. ‘Poor Puss,’ he said, sitting down on a locker to comfort it. ‘Pretty Agamemnon.’
‘I was stroking it,’ said Peter.
‘You don’t want to go around a-teasing of animals,’ was the only reply. ‘Puss. Poor old Ag. Pretty Ag.’
‘Ransome,’ said Keppel, ‘did you have any luck?’
‘No,’ said Ransome. ‘I took the gig’s crew to a wedding at Fareham, thinking to snap up a few as they came out of the church. But the women set on us in the churchyard—knocked us about something cruel—while the men all got out of the vestry. Who’s this been stowing all this stuff on my locker?’ He looked crossly at FitzGerald’s portmanteau, and after a moment he pushed it off with his foot.