‘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.’
‘Mr Hope intends to discover the great southern continent,’ said the master grimly. ‘Now, sir,’ he said, taking Peter’s slate. He studied it for a while, then observed, ‘And Mr Palafox would have us sailing through the northern suburbs of the city of London.’ Mr Pascoe Thomas, the schoolmaster of the Centurion, was a patient man, but even his patience had limits, and now he burst out, ‘Simpletons, loobies, dullards, jolterheads, witlings. Never have I had such a miserable set of midshipmen. Every year it gets worse. I thought the Pembroke’s midshipmen were humanity’s lowest dregs, but I was wrong: this class beats them into a cocked hat for wilful, malignant stupidity. It is enough to make a man throw up the service. The ingenious Mr Hope calculates our position by a system of his own, unknown to the rest of mankind; and this depraved numbskull’—indicating Peter with his thumb—‘makes his by adding the date to the dead-reckoning and hoping for the best. Mr Palafox, let us have your definition of a rhumb-line, if you please.’
‘A rhumb-line, sir, is—’ quavered Peter, but before he could commit himself eight bells struck, and the watch was over. The master skimmed Peter’s slate at his head and hurried below to refresh his spirits in the wardroom, where he had been invited to the feast the first lieutenant was giving to celebrate their true departure. They had sailed from St Helen’s nearly a fortnight before, but they had had to convoy the merchantmen, and it was only now that the Turkey fleet had left them, a great mass of vessels, a hundred sail and more straggling down to Gibraltar: now the squadron was alone, free of the responsibility of guarding the slow, vague, wandering merchantmen; they stood away for the south-west with a fair wind, and the squadron was in high spirits. They made a brave show on the grey sea, five men-of-war in line ahead: the Pearl, of forty guns, the Gloucester fifty, the Severn fifty, the Wager of only twenty-eight, but looking more like a ship of the line, being an East-Indiaman bought by the Admiralty to carry stores and land artillery, and the Centurion of sixty, wearing the Commodore’s broad pennant. In the middle of the line, but away to windward, sailed the Tryal, eight, a sloop of war; and to the lee the victuallers, the Anna and the Industry, two little chartered pinks that were intended to accompany the squadron part of the way, carrying stores until the men-of-war should have room for them. It was a brave show, and it was a formidable armament as well: some two thousand men were in the ships, more than two hundred guns, and deep down, far below in the carefully laden magazines, each ship carried ton upon ton of black, gritty sharp-smelling and immensely potent gunpowder, every ounce of which was meant to be used, as the Fighting Instructions said, to take, burn, sink or destroy the King’s enemies—in this case the ships and the cities of the power of Spain.
A great deal lay behind them: for the senior officers, the almost interminable delays with the dock-yard and the Admiralty’s changing plans, the insuperable difficulties of finding hands to man their ships, and the impotent exasperation of knowing that every single delay would make their voyage still more hazardous for the whole crew, the false starts that had begun early in August—contrary winds that forced them back again and again, six weeks of it—and then the tedious tiding down the Channel. But now it was all over at last: the sailors, after so much dockyard and harbour work, were in their element again; the landsmen had had time to grow used to the sea, and even to enjoy it—at least they were no longer very sick every time a wave went up or down. It is true that the squadron’s black shame was still there, a piece of administrative bungling so grossly cruel that even the most hardened pressed men from the gaols had been revolted: the shocking rumour about the Chelsea pensioners had proved to be true. Five hundred of the poor old men had been ordered to Portsmouth, and although all those who were capable of shifting for themselves had immediately crept off towards home—not without the tacit consent of some of the officers—still two hundred and more had been brought forcibly aboard. Some of them were now sunning themselves in the waist of the ship, resting the old bones that had been battered as long ago as King William’s wars: and it must be admitted that on this fine day at least the ancients were remarkably cheerful.
For Peter, too, a great deal lay behind. He was no longer lost anywhere in the ship; he could distinguish a crowfoot from a catshead without a moment’s hesitation, and his long-splicing had won the bo’sun’s praise. He now had a real place in the ship, whereas before he had been little more than a nuisance to people already busy to the point of distraction (the temper of the quarter-deck had grown comparatively mild since they had cleared the chops of the Channel, against what it had been at Spithead and St Helen’s), and now he was assigned to a watch, a division—the foretop—and a station, where he was useful, if not of any great importance.
If it had not been for the navigation lessons, given both by Mr Thomas, the schoolmaster, and by the august Mr Blew, the Centurion’s master or chief navigating officer, which were a sore trial to Peter, and the uncomfortableness of the midshipmen’s berth, he would have been ideally happy. It was not the physical discomfort that Peter minded, for he had been brought up hard, and of the two, his present circumstances were a little less Spartan than those at home, even in the article of food, for Mrs Palafox, though good and kind and an excellent hand at embroidery, had but the remotest notions of cooking, in which she closely resembled the succession of vague women who wandered in and out of the Rectory kitchen. So Peter did not mind the hard tack, the burgoo, the burnt offerings, the biscuits in which the weevils were already making their interesting little burrows, or the junk: but he did mind the feeling of unfriendliness, the knowledge that he was not accepted as one of the group. This was not a bullying, hazing mess, the kind that can make a new midshipman’s life an unspeakable misery: it was not that kind of berth at all; for one thing, there were no very young fellows in it—and for another, the general tone was quite against that kind of thing. But he and FitzGerald had started off on the wrong foot, and Peter felt the results of it keenly.
FitzGerald himself was still unfit for duty. His wound was clean and the bone untouched, but the combination of three days of continual sea-sickness, the wound and the fever produced by the wound, had kept him below until they sank Rame Head behind them on the north-eastern horizon. Since then he had been assigned to the larboard watch—Peter belonged to the starboard—but he had been excused watch-keeping duty. At first, on getting up, he had appeared quite restored, his old self again. He had confided to Peter his intention of calling Ransome out when they next touched land. ‘It is the only way of clearing the matter up,’ he said. ‘I obviously cannot batter him about like a footman in a pothouse brawl; but with a small-sword it is a different thing entirely.’
Peter knew that that was true. He was no mean hand with a sword himself (the Rectory of Ballynasaggart was the bloodiest abode of peace in the West, with Peter and his brothers lunging by day and night), but he had found himself an untaught bumpkin when he tried passes with FitzGerald.
‘Still and all,’ he said, ‘it is the strange way of making an apology to a man, to be running a blade through his vitals.’
‘I have no intention of apologising. I may have had once, but then I was wrong. Do you expect me to stomach a beating?’
Peter had shrugged, saying no more. He knew the trait only too well, the black inveteracy of his countrymen in a quarrel, right or wrong: it was the origin of so many of the feuds at home, s
ome of which had lasted so long that the first cause was lost to all recollection.
But then had come FitzGerald’s interview with the Commodore. This had had more effect on him than his duel, and he came away pale and silent. He never told Peter what had happened, but for days and days he stayed below, saying very little, sometimes poring over the manual of seamanship in a hopeless, bewildered fashion, and sometimes writing letters that he afterwards tore up.
‘We may part company at Madeira, Peter,’ he said once—they had grown very familiar during his illness, when Peter had spent all his watches below at his side. ‘I don’t know: but I am afraid we shall.’
However, that was days ago, and the sombre impression of it had left Peter’s mind, which tended to be volatile and to enjoy things as they came. At this moment he was enjoying his escape from the master’s inquisition, and he went forward to the fo’c’sle, where Sean awaited his appearance.
‘I have been plotting the ship’s position, Sean,’ said Peter, importantly.
‘Have you, your honour, dear? Sure and it’s grand to be learned.’
‘Yes,’ said Peter.
‘And I have been reasoning with the steward and the butcher,’ said Sean.
‘Ah now, Sean, I hope you have not hurt them,’ cried Peter anxiously.
‘I have not, Peter a gradh, though I may do so in time. Listen, your honour, while I tell you. I joined his Majesty’s noble fleet to fight; I joined it for glory, did I not?’
‘It’s as true as the sky is above us,’ said Peter, ‘and the sea is below.’
‘I did not join it to work,’ said Sean, his eyes growing dark. ‘Why would I join it to work? I have never liked work at all; nor does my father; nor did his Da, may he rest.’
‘God have his soul,’ said Peter.
‘Nor did his father, nor his, who was the Mac Dermot’s own harper and lived at Coolavin.’
‘It is a family disliking: it runs in the blood.’
‘It is very well for the women, I think,’ said Sean. ‘It keeps them busy and makes them attentive: but is it right for men? It is not.’ He paused. ‘I came for glory,’ he said again.
He stood thinking for a while, and then he said, ‘They put me to work. Well, so they may too, for a while, until we find out the enemy. But I will not mind the pigs. I will not mind any pig on the earth or below it, nor if it were the great pig of Mac Datho king of Leinster, the heathen, which three hundred cows fed for seven long years.’
‘And do they want you to mind the pigs, Sean?’
‘They do. “Mind the pigs, Sean, honey,” they say. And the steward comes and he lays a great compliment on his speech how it is the way the pigs will love me and prosper; and the butcher says, “Sean, mind the pigs, for your dear country’s honour.” But I reply, “You verminous steward and butcher, I will not mind the pigs. Did I embark in this gorgeous imperial fleet to be minding of pigs, when I could have stayed in my own country to do the same thing, with the pigs running free on every hand and at large? Your souls to the devil, you butcher and steward.”’
‘But you will mind our little sow? Sure, you will never desert our own pig now, Sean?’ cried Peter, referring to the animal they had bought at Portsmouth together with two likely young sheep, and which now led its thoughtful existence in the bowels of the Centurion with the rest of the officers’ livestock and all the hens that did not live in coops on deck.
‘I will not,’ said Sean passionately. ‘I will not tend a pig by way of labour or work. As for the little sow, I will mind her for love; but only in my watches below, when I may do what I please. I will cherish her, for diversion and joy, by way of delight; but never by way of labour nor work—still less in compliment to the steward or butcher.’
‘Mr Palafox. Pass the word for Mr Palafox: to the cabin.’ The cry came forward. Peter could hear it around him and under his feet as it passed in the ’tween-decks.
‘You’ll tell the Commodore, your honour?’ cried Sean after him. ‘You’ll tell him that Sean will not mind the pigs?’
‘Oh, Mr Palafox,’ said the Commodore, ‘I had meant to have a word with you the other day—do not fidget, if you please—but there was no suitable opportunity. Mr Walter tells me that before you left home you had already heard of the expedition.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you hear? Try to remember exactly what was said, without adding anything that you may have learnt subsequently.’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’ Peter thought for a minute. ‘The common people thought that an English fleet was going to attack the Spanish main,’ he said, ‘but the clever ones, like the gauger, said there was an expedition fitting out to pass into the South Sea by Cape Horn and attack Manilla; but it was all a great secret.’
‘A very great secret,’ said the Commodore bitterly. ‘Tell me, what did the clever ones say about the ships of the squadron?’
‘Sir, they told them as they are. But one of the preventive men said the Argyle instead of the Gloucester.’
‘There’s close counsel for you,’ cried the Commodore, hitting the table with his fist. ‘Is there any more that you can tell me, Mr Palafox?’
‘Yes, sir. They named Mr Anson as the commander, and it was thought that the squadron would round the Horn at mid-summer.’
‘I see. I see. Was there any more, Mr Palafox?’
‘Well, sir, it was only a rumour,’ said Peter, hesitantly.
‘Go on. If this rumour is as near the mark as the others, it will not be far out.’
‘They said the Spaniards were sending away a squadron too.’
‘Any particulars?’
‘Yes, sir. But, sir,’ said Peter, racking his memory, ‘I cannot remember the Spanish names.’
‘Do you remember anything of their number and force?’
‘Six ships, sir, some said. But some said eight. They all said two ships of the line and the rest smaller. There was the name of the admiral too: something like Bissado.’
‘Pizarro. Yes. A most capable, seamanlike officer. I am very glad to know it, if it is true. What is your estimate of the truth of this information, Mr Palafox? What is its probable source?’
‘It comes from the owlers mostly, sir—the smugglers. There is always a Spanish lugger or a Portugee somewhere up or down the coast. And then, sir, there are many people with relatives in Spain, in the Spanish service, or studying to be priests at Salamanca, like Padeen Mc—like several I know: and news comes home.’
‘Two ships of the line and four others at least: perhaps six,’ said the Commodore, thoughtfully. ‘Is there anything more you can tell me?’
Peter reflected, staring down at his feet. ‘No, sir, I don’t think there is,’ he said.
‘It is a great pity that you did not retain the names of the Spanish ships. However, perhaps they may come into your mind: if they do, write them down at once and bring them to me. That will do for the moment, Mr Palafox.’
‘Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter, retiring.
‘Did you tell him, your honour?’ asked Sean, in the gangway.
‘Sure I told him every last thing that I knew,’ said Peter absently; and vaguely he wondered why Sean should dart below with such speed, armed with such an unholy weapon to crush the butcher and steward.
Peter thought and thought through the forenoon watch, trying to relive the time when Patrick Leary, the best smuggler of Mallagh, had told him about the Spanish ships: but it all seemed so long ago now. He tried to remember the letters he had read for some of the villagers—letters from sailors and soldiers in the service of Spain (illegally, like the men of the Irish regiments in the French army; but taken very much as a matter of course at home) and from the seminarists far away. But the exact details would not come.
He thought hard during his watch below with no better result; and in the dog watch he tried to combine reflection with the exercise of his duties, which, the wind coming round contrary and fitful, required all his concentration. This earned him a very well-merit
ed rebuke from Mr Brett, and five minutes later he was ordered to the mast-head to expiate the crime of sluggishness and incomprehension.
Mast-heading on a fine day, however, was little punishment to Peter: the tremendous cliffs—they fell fifteen hundred feet in one appalling drop, and he had been accustomed to walking about them, like a fly, from childhood—the cliffs at home made his present height seem trivial, and from his perch he phlegmatically gazed at the unbroken horizon.
‘Goposco? Goposco? Poposco?’ he murmured. High in the pure air, but still below him, the main-topgallant staysail made a huge triangle that swelled in a lovely curve under the thrust of the wind, blindingly white in the sun and almost black by contrast where the curved shadow of the fore-topsail fell upon it: peering down between the main-topgallant staysail and the main topsail he could see a good deal of the waist of the ship, far, far below, holystoned and gleaming, with small figures moving about down there.
‘Giposco?’ he said; but it did not sound right. ‘That bowline is slack,’ he observed, watching the windward leech of the foretopgallantsail beginning to shiver. A furious roar from the deck showed that Peter was not the only one to have seen it, and before the roar had died away the bowline tightened guiltily and the bridles plucked the trembling sail like so many fingers, taughtening the leech to take the wind.
The Centurion was sailing close-hauled with the larboard tacks aboard upon a breeze something south of east: she could have carried far more sail, but tacking as she was obliged to, and with no more than sixty really able seamen in a watch, the Commodore dared not set more, although every league lost meant a later and more stormy passage round the Horn.
Looking forward now, Peter saw the Gloucester, the next in line ahead, pay off half a point: the signal to tack must have run up the Centurion’s mizzen, and looking windward to the Tryal, Peter saw the repeated signal flying; it was too far for him to make it out without a glass, but it could be nothing else.