The Golden Ocean by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online Page A

Mary Rose entered this zone of cross forces, and began to grow lively. In an inquisitive manner she pointed her bowsprit up to the sky, then brought it down to explore the green depths below, and her round bows went thump on the sea.
    ‘This is famous,’ repeated FitzGerald, staggering to keep his footing. ‘Famous,’ he said again, swallowing hard.
    ‘Do you see that ship?’ cried Peter. ‘No, not that—that’s aketch—there, right ahead. I believe she’s a man-of-war.’
    FitzGerald stared forward beyond the heaving bowsprit, which had now added a curious corkscrewing motion and a sideways lurch to the rest: he groaned, and covered his eyes with his hand.
    ‘Palafox,’ he said, ‘I don’t give a curse whether the thing is a man-of-war or not. Isn’t it cold?’ A little later he said, ‘Palafox, I am feeling strangely unwell. We should never have eaten that pork at Blarney. Are you feeling unwell, Palafox?’
    ‘Never better,’ said Peter, still trying to make out the ship.
    ‘Then perhaps it is the motion of the vessel,’ said FitzGerald, gripping the rail with both hands and closing his eyes. Peter looked at him quickly, and saw that his face had turned a very light green.
    ‘Come over to this side,’ he said, taking FitzGerald by the elbow, ‘then you can be sick to the lee.’
    ‘I will not be sick,’ said FitzGerald, without opening his eyes: he pulled his arm away pettishly and shivered all over. ‘And I beg you will not say such disgusting things. Oh.’
    ‘You will feel better directly if you are,’ said Peter. ‘Some people swallow a piece of fat pork on a string. Come, make an effort.’
    ‘No,’ said FitzGerald, feebly striking out sideways.
    Peter and Sean looked at him with easy compassion.
    They
were not transfixed with perishing cold; their brains and eyes were not heaving; their mouths were not unnaturally watering;
they
did not wish the world would come to an end, nor that they could instantly die: indeed, they were having a most enjoyable time—were healthy and disgustingly cheerful.
    ‘Oh,’ said FitzGerald. He could say no more: Sean plucked him from the rail, to which he clung as the only solid thing in a dissolving universe, and half carried him, half led him below, where Peter stuffed him into a bunk, too far reduced even to curse them, and covered him with blankets.
    The wind began to get up in the night and backed round into the west; it brought rain with it, and the next day Peter and Sean, in borrowed tarpaulins, kept the glistening deck towatch the cruel coast of Cornwall drift by in the late afternoon. From time to time they went down to comfort FitzGerald as he lay, utterly void and longing for the death that he saw approaching, but at all too slow a pace. There was nothing to be done for him, however. He would take nothing; and if ever he could be roused to speak, it was only to say, ‘Palafox, you said fat. You should never have said fat—oh.’ Sometimes he said that he almost hoped he might live to have Peter’s blood for it: at other times he said he forgave him, and wished to be remembered at home.
    On Thursday the wind, as if it had been specially ordered, shifted into the south-west and south: they sailed gently up the Channel on a milk-and-water sea that rippled playfully in the sun, the innocent element; on either side there sailed in company with them a great number of vessels, near and far; and as the sweet evening gathered in the western sky, FitzGerald appeared on deck in time to see five ships of the line with two attendant frigates and a sloop of war pass within a cable’s length, close hauled on the wind and in a formation as precise as a regiment of foot-guards on parade. With their towering height of gleaming canvas—their royals were set—and with their long sides exactly chequered with gun-ports, they gave an instant impression of immense strength and majesty, a moving and exhilarating feeling that made Peter wish to cheer. FitzGerald