The Golden Ocean

by Patrick O'Brian

  ‘What is a million, your honour, dear?’

  ‘A thousand thousands, so it is. And you may reckon four shillings and ninepence for a piece of eight—or you may say a crown to be easy in your reckoning.’

  ‘May I so, Peter gradh? Sure, a crown’s a lovely thing,’ said Sean, whistling vacantly.

  ‘Come now, Sean, don’t be stupid, I beg. Think of a thousand crowns, and then all that heap a thousand times repeated.’

  ‘Why, indeed your honour, that is a thought beyond my power, like counting the waves between this land and home.’

  ‘Dunderhead,’ cried Peter warmly, moved by Sean’s indifference. ‘I will bring it down to your brutish incomprehension. It is two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Your share would be a clear five hundred golden guineas.’

  ‘Five hundred pounds for me,’ whispered Sean, turning pale. ‘And did you say for me, your honour, dear? Why, there has never been five hundred whole pounds in Ballynasaggart in the history of the world. It would buy the parish, joy. And do these false thieves of Spaniards be keeping my five hundred pounds in their old ship?’

  ‘Quietly now. Do not bellow, Sean.’

  ‘Where is this ship, Peter, tell me true?’ cried Sean, pinning Peter’s arm.

  ‘She is somewhere between this and the East,’ replied Peter, pleased at having so powerfully attentive an audience.

  ‘So we must rush over that old mountainy New World,’ said Sean, gazing eastwards to Panama. ‘The Dear knows it will be the weary road with all that silver on our backs, but what is a mountain, and what is the load at all—’

  ‘Wisha, it is not that way, Sean, my dear,’ said Peter. ‘The East is in the west here, because the world is a ball, and we the other side of it.’

  ‘For shame, now, your honour,’ said Sean reproachfully, still staring across the sea. ‘To make game of a poor ignorant fellow (though he may be as rich as Squire David, with fifty bright pounds of his own) is no sport at all for your father’s son.’

  ‘But the world is round,’ said Peter.

  ‘It is not,’ said Sean. ‘How can you say such a wicked thing? Fie.’

  ‘But it is,’ cried Peter, ‘and if we go on, we shall come back to where we began.’

  ‘Of course we shall,’ replied Sean, ‘but that is because it is shaped like a cheese. You may go round, as Loegaire did: but you may not go up or down for ever, or you will fall off the ends, as Maire nic Phiarais did and we ourselves almost when we went too far south of the Horn. The whole world knows that. But for all love let us not be gossiping like a pair of old cats in the sun—where is she for sure, this beautiful ship?’

  ‘By now,’ said Peter, considering, ‘she may be somewhere between 150 and 140 degrees of longitude west.’

  ‘Then why do you sit there, man alive?’ cried Sean. ‘Why do we squander the minutes? Why?’ he cried springing to his feet, ‘do we let those false yellow dogs gloat over my five hundred pounds—and your honour’s share, too, which is far greater, as justice demands, for are you not the learned man of the ocean sea? Why do we sit admiring the turtles? Come, we will tell the Commodore how it is the way we must sail on the instant.’

  ‘Time enough, time enough: be easy. If himself’—nodding towards the quarter-deck, where the Commodore stood deep in thought—‘does not know, who does, will you tell me at all? Sure, it has been in his mind since Juan Fernandez.’

  ‘And is there time, so, your honour? asked Sean anxiously. ‘They will not give us the slip, the thieves, in some odd hole of the sea?’

  ‘Time enough, Sean. Listen, while I tell you. They have this ship, have they not? This one ship every year, that must go from Acapulco to Manilla, and from there back again with the wealth of the East.’

  ‘The East in the west.’

  ‘Will you hold your tongue, now?’

  ‘I will not, Peter a gradh, for I am burning with joy.’

  ‘And from Manilla she sails in the month of July to come to Acapulco by January or February as may be, for the way is long, Sean, nigh on ten thousand miles, and the Spaniards will lie-to at night: then in March she turns back again for Manilla, and on that course she has more favouring winds.’

  ‘In January or February she comes?’

  ‘She does. So you understand that we have time enough to make our northing at leisure, the way it is December now, and the tenth day of December, no more, and no distance at all lies between us and the harbour of Acapulco where she must pass—barely a fortnight of sailing, for we shall find the trade wind to carry us up a few days from here. There is time in galore—time enough and to spare.’

  ‘Will you not touch on wood when you say such a thing, Peter dear? No, that is not wood, but the bone of a sea-lion. Touch wood, will you not? Five hundred pounds is a great solemn thing.’

  ‘What are you doing with the sea-lion’s tush? And why is it brown?’

  ‘I am making a line of teeth for Mr Keppel, and I have browned it the way I can see how I must work. But I wish you had touched to wood the first time, so I do.’

  ‘Well, I am touching wood now, an’t I. And yet there is less need, for she cannot know a word of our being here: which is quite as well, for she is a galleon the size of a first-rate, and she mounts a wonderful number of guns, as well as a thousand men clear to fight them, and we with no more than three hundred and thirty, counting the Gloucester and Tryal’s Prize.’

  ‘I spit on their men,’ cried Sean. ‘I spit on their thousand men for a mock; and I spit in the Golden Ocean to bring us good luck.’

  ‘Who has spat on the deck?’ inquired a thunderous voice below them (for they were in the maintop). ‘Where is that man who has presumed to spit on the deck? Where is the ship’s corporal? Bring me the name of that renegade swab.’

  Time and to spare. A million pieces of eight. Time and enough. The words ran to and fro in the ship, and never a group of men could be found talking without the word Acapulco in the mouth of each one. There was not one head in the ship that did not carry the muster complete—the roll of the ship’s company with each man’s rating set down. But here arose an infinity of argument, strong, heated words, dissension, and even oaths, alas; for upon each man’s rating depended his share of the prize; and in the squadron, with its terrible list of mortality, there was scarcely a hand who was not filling another man’s place. It was so from top to bottom: the original first lieutenant was now captain of the Tryal’s Prize; his replacement, Mr Saumarez, commanded the Carmelo: and at the other end, one of the original butchers, a man of some education and a fearless hand with a knife, was now an acting, unpaid surgeon’s mate; while Prout, entered as an ordinary trumpeter, had performed the duties of yeoman of the powder-room a twelve-month since, which put him, in his opinion, in the much smaller class of those who, like the midshipmen, shared one eighth of the whole, instead of the quarter share that had to be split among the whole mass of the generality—seamen, able and ordinary, the quarter-gunners, the carpenter’s crew, the stewards, the swabbers and the rest.

  They argued and wrangled by day and by night, and the Commodore’s clerk, an anxious, harried, conscientious recorder, received garrulous and circumstantial deputations from every category in the ship until he found his papers were increasing upon him until there was no more room for himself to turn in the miserable hole where he lived: whereupon he shut up his door with a double lock and gave himself up to silent despair.

  They wrangled at work and they wrangled at rest: but as December drew on, torrid, wet, full of squalls, the watches below grew somewhat quieter—they were too tired to keep awake in their hammocks, for the squadron was meeting with bad weather, storms from the north, dead, sweltering calms when the boats towed the ships and they creeping over the glassy sea only to have the cruelly hard-won miles snatched away when the next wind blew them back: contrary winds, maddening and frustrating contrary winds.

  Time enough and to spare. The tenth parallel passed unwillingly under the keel at Christmas, and Cape
Corrientes, that vital spot, still lay seven hundred miles to the north.

  ‘Christmas Day,’ wrote Peter, ‘10° 1’ N. 103° W. We are all in a great taking. She has been known to arrive by January 10th. All day in the boats again—quite fagged out now. Hardly hold pen.’

  ‘She’ of course meant the Acapulco galleon: that golden ship needed no name.

  ‘Sir,’ said Bailey, in the open doorway of Mr Walter’s cabin with Preston behind him, ‘may we come in, if you please, when you are at leisure, to be explained to about the theory of winds?’

  ‘You may command me at this very moment,’ said the chaplain, closing his book. ‘Sit down, Mr Bailey, I beg. Mr Preston will find room on that trunk. Now as to winds—and I suppose that you have the trade winds in mind, like the rest of us—we read in the Learned Job Ludolphus, book three, chapter one …’

  ‘The Commodore’s compliments to Mr Ransome, Mr Keppel and Mr Palafox, and he would be honoured by their company at dinner,’ said the Commodore’s steward.

  ‘Eh?’ said Keppel, still deaf from his bang at Paita.

  ‘Commodore—dinner,’ bawled Ransome, whom Keppel could always understand.

  ‘Oh. Compliments—respectful compliments, Wright—most happy. I say, Wright, what will be for pudding?’

  ‘What a carnal object you are, Keppel,’ said Peter.

  ‘I did not,’ cried Keppel; ‘I only asked what was for pudding.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ roared Peter.

  ‘No. That would be Wednesday,’ replied Keppel. ‘Come on, Wright, what’s for pudding?’

  ‘Sir, it is a sort of French muffin in rum.’

  ‘French muffin,’ said Ransome, relaying the words. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Muffin. French. In rum.’

  ‘Oh. Good. I tell you what, Wright, you must tell Froggy that there will be really important guests today—connoisseurs, you know—and that he had better exert all his powers. Tell him, Wright, not to be near with the pudding, whatever he does.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ransome?’ asked Peter, when the steward had gone.

  ‘Sooner face a broadside any day of the week,’ said Ransome, more hoarsely than usual, ‘or grapple a fire-ship. You can’t drop your fork when you’re alongside of a fire-ship. He means it very kind, I am sure: but I wish he would not.’

  ‘Never mind it, Ransome,’ said Peter; ‘there won’t be anyone else, I dare say; and if there is, we will back you up. You will enjoy it when you get there.’

  ‘Last time I upset a chair,’ said Ransome nervously, ‘and one of the land-officers was stern-fast to it, with a little china cup in his hand.’

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Mr Anson, sipping his port, ‘I admire your good breeding. I have had the pleasure of your company all through dinner, and I have not once heard the name of Acapulco.’

  It was a tradition at these entertainments (which the Commodore tried to make less awful, but which nevertheless were very serious delights for the junior officers, and for poor Ransome an unmitigated torment)—it was a tradition that none of the ship’s affairs should be discussed: the theory was that they were a group meeting voluntarily in a social manner—by land, as it were, or as passengers—and although the theory of equality remained wholly theoretical for the midshipmen face to face with their Jovian commander, still they never talked shop, but either remained perfectly mute, or cudgelled out some neutral kind of remark. So these direct words from the Commodore sent a galvanic thrill through his guests: even Keppel heard plainly.

  They stared at the Commodore, regardless of manners, and the Commodore smiled back at them, three intent faces, alert and waiting. He looked at them. They were brown, thin and scarred, and in spite of their civilised surroundings and their decorum they had a fierce, almost buccaneering air that was not wholly counteracted by their sober uniforms. Peter, for one, though dressed in his best—the purple and fine linen reserved for high days—had grown so that his powerful, horny hands stood five inches from their cuffs, and his tightly imprisoned arms and shoulders imposed a dangerous strain on the seams sewn in distant Gosport; his one remaining good shirt had lost a button just after the turtle was removed, and now he could breathe; while below the table the extreme tension of his breeches prevented him from ever bending his legs, and he had grave doubts about rising again. Ransome was better off, having done growing; but even his coat had been soaked in his chest round the Horn, dried in the blazing sun of Chile, soaked again on the equator and covered with mildew; so it showed forth but a faint likeness of its once glorious form. And Keppel, though the best equipped of them all, presented a spectacle that would have made his mother turn grey, had she not been bald, and therefore obliged to wear an auburn wig of which she complained in the summer as being disagreeably warm: for he had shrunk with the scurvy and his little wizened face looked preternaturally old; like his mama, he had no hair at all, having moulted in his recovery; but he wore no wig. However, Sean’s kindness had replaced his teeth, which now shone in a fixed and criminal grin that had nothing to do with the rest of his face. He had put them in for the first time today, in honour of the occasion, and the sight had turned the Commodore pale. He had said nothing, of course, but it was observed that he sent the first dish away untouched, and when he subsequently addressed Keppel—‘Mr Keppel, may I help you to a little calipash? Or do you prefer the calipee?—Mr Keppel, you would oblige me by putting the pudding out of its misery: it would be a sad shame to send it away unfinished’—he looked not directly at that unlovely midshipman, but slightly to one side of him.

  ‘Acapulco,’ repeated the Commodore. ‘I will give you the toast of Acapulco. For, gentlemen, I will not disguise the fact that this is at the very heart of our expedition. This is where we can hit the Spaniard the hardest: so let us drink to Acapulco and a happy encounter.’

  They might drink; but drinking, however zealously, could not command a wind. Nor could the ancient practice of whistling, nor yet the scrupulous avoidance of any unlucky act or word. There were some Indians aboard, and Negroes; and from odd recesses of the ship, arose the thin, acrid fumes of Aztec and Mayan magic fires, to mingle with the weird, half-heard beating of a Voodoo drum somewhere in the forepeak: Sean was discovered burning a candle before a portable saint, the property of one of the Catholic Irishmen—Peter, quite outraged, sent the apostate away with a flea in his ear; and remained to offer a candle himself. Mr Walter preached with uncommon vehemence upon the text ‘I praise the Lord who directs my hands to the spoil’ to a wonderfully attentive congregation on the last Sunday in December.

  Yet the precious days flew by. December had gone. Twelfth Night found the Centurion and her consorts wallowing in the trough of an eastern swell, with not a breath of air to fill the sails as they flapped drearily overhead; and the current was drifting them away to the south.

  But even foul winds have an end, and calms; and on January 10th Peter could write. ‘It is the trade wind at last. It has been steady now since the middle watch. The north-easter carried us up just far enough, as Mr Blew said it would.’

  And still a week later, ‘12° 50’ N. 32’ W. The blessed wind holds true. We have barely trimmed a sail all day, and this makes four in a row.’

  Then, ‘January 26th. 18° 4’ N. 118° W. Wind steady at WSW. We are north of Acapulco and in her track. Just before I came below the course was altered to SE½E, which the men hearing they cheered until they were checked, for they understood that we were standing in for Acapulco now. We may yet be in time, if only we make a good landfall and the Spanish pilots are to be relied upon. It is said they are not to be trusted, but sure they will not dare to deceive the Commodore. There is time enough: but I wish I had never said so aloud. Mr W. complains to the Commodore about sorcerers and Papists.’

  ‘There is time enough, for sure,’ said Mr Brett to Mr Dennis.

  ‘Of course there is,’ replied Mr Dennis.

  ‘I have heard tell,’ said the bo’sun to his mates, ‘that she often does not g
et into port until well on in February.’

  ‘In such a very long voyage,’ observed the surgeon, ‘it is inevitable that there should be delays; and when we consider that the vessel is conducted by Spaniards—well, all I can say is, that I shall be very much surprised to see her before the month of March.’

  ‘I have it from Mr Blew, who had come directly from talking with the older Spanish captain,’ said Mr Stapleton, ‘that they hardly ever set their to’garns’ls for months on end—forbidden by the regulations, apparently, whenever the wind is more than the lightest air.’

  ‘What do you mean with your “wish it was only Christmas now”?’ asked the temporary, acting, unpaid armourer, advancing upon the Able Seaman Wills with strong displeasure. ‘What do you mean by it? What does it matter if Christmas is passed? You ugly great swab. It’s Jonahs like you that bring bad luck. There’s plenty of time. Take that!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said his approving mates; ‘you scrag him, Nobby, the dismal crow.’

  ‘There is time, time enough still: time and to spare.’ The ship’s company told one another this with emphatic conviction as January wore away and February grew. They kept up their spirits, in spite of the utterly maddening coast, where every high land, every cape, every island was hailed by the Spanish and Indian captives as the sure sign of Acapulco—endless promises of the harbour tomorrow. They kept up their spirits; but after three disappointments the prisoners had to be kept under a double guard, or the men would have destroyed them. It was impossible to say whether the captive pilots were malignantly cunning or merely inefficient to the point of lunacy; but in either case the men wanted their blood.

  The squadron was spread abroad in a wide-searching net, and not a signal passed between them without raising a wild flurry of hope aboard every ship. Throughout every minute of the day and night the keenest eyes in the world scanned the huge round of the sea: but still the days went by, and still the blue emptiness deferred their hopes.

  ‘February 12th. 12° 30’ N. 112° 14’ W. Light airs at W veering N. The barge is sent away again to run down the coast, with orders to discover the harbour and not to be seen—Mr Dennis and Ransome. They should be back tomorrow or the next day, if the Spanish captain is to be believed, for we raised a headland bearing ESE 12 leagues that he swore was the true landfall. I took him to the masthead to view it, by Mr Brett’s orders: had a month’s mind to tumble him off. If we find that the galleon has got in, I shall: and Keppel will cut his throat. We find it hard to wait till tomorrow.’