The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian
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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 they were down out of the sopping heather and the patches of rust-coloured bog and on the dry road, ‘it is an infernal thing not being able to go back to Derry: I have just thought of a prodigious fine notion, if only we were there. You could go round to all the parsons’ houses and tap them for five guineas apiece.’
‘Listen,’ said Peter, in a pitying voice. ‘Do you really think there is a parsonage in all the West with five guineas in it at one time?’
‘There are two in Derrynacaol,’ said FitzGerald. ‘My cousin is the Bishop of Clonfert, and I know the value of the livings there. There are a couple of charming snug places in Derry: I wish I had gone into the Church. But not hereabouts, ‘tis true,’ he said, looking forward to the thin and deserted country that lay far before them. ‘Here they live somehow on twenty or thirty a year.’
‘Perhaps I should go back and try,’ said Peter, standing in the road.
‘No,’ said FitzGerald, ‘it would not do at all. They would nab you at once and then it would be days and days of finding surety of good behaviour and all that. You would never reach Queenstown in time, to say nothing of being arrested for debt at the inn. I am sorry, upon my honour, for it is all in my quarrel: but a second is as much troubled as a principal in a duel.’
They walked on in silence. Peter thought of Placidus. He thought of Liam. And he thought, with a sudden gasp of realisation, that his whole prayed-for, cherished, unexpectedly lucky chance of a career in the Navy was at stake. If he could not reach Queenstown in time to sail on the transport in which he was ordered to sail, everything would be lost. He knew little about the Navy, but he did know that a midshipman’s appointment was made by a captain to the ship he commanded—to that ship and none other. He knew that it was not a general commission, but a particular and a revocable appointment: if the Centurion sailed without him, he would no longer be a midshipman, and he would no longer have any way into the career that he longed for.
There was a sudden, strangely unexpected thrumming of feet behind, and a man passed them, running with a steady, high-paced gait: he was dressed in a yellow-and-scarlet livery, and he carried a long, silver-headed cane.
‘Good day, Thomas,’ cried FitzGerald, as he went by, and ‘Good day, Mr FitzGerald, sir,’ called the man, waving his hat but never wavering in his stride. Peter was too desperately worried to take much notice, yet he did say, ‘What’s that?’
‘It is Culmore’s running footman: and I think it means good news.’
‘What is a running footman?’
‘Why, a footman that runs. That stands to reason. But come, let us not break our winds racing along like this. Sit down on this stone.’
‘No, no, no,’ cried Peter. ‘I will not. How can we sit down when every minute counts for so much?’
‘Why, what a fret you are in,’ said FitzGerald coolly, sitting down and resting his feet. ‘But listen to me for a minute. That was Culmore’s running footman: he runs in front of his master’s coach. So that means Culmore will be along in a little while. If I cannot borrow twenty guineas from Culmore, you may call me an ass—after all, I know how well he did at the races. Therefore I can see no point at all in blazing along the road and making it more difficult for our salvation to catch up with us.’
Peter hesitated. He was extremely unwilling to stop for a moment: but FitzGerald seemed so calmly certain that he was almost convinced. He hesitated. Then Sean said, ‘There’s the dust of a coach far behind us, so there is,’ and Peter sat down.
Now he saw the dust himself, white, a slowly-travelling plume. He took off his battered shoes and cooled his feet in the grass. They were all very tired, and they sat quite still.
The coach rolled up. On the box the coachman gathered the reins in one hand while he disentangled a horse-pistol: behind, one of the footmen had a blunderbuss ready. A face with its wig awry peered out of the window.
‘Good day, my lord,’ said FitzGerald, advancing and making a beautiful bow.
‘Why, upon my soul, it’s young FitzGerald,’ said Lord Culmore. ‘What are you doing in this horrible place?’
‘I am airing my friends,’ replied FitzGerald. ‘May I name Mr Palafox, of the Navy—Lord Culmore.’
‘Your servant, my lord,’ said