Authors: Patrick O'Brian
‘Well, sir—’ he began, reassembling his scattered locks, but a hail from the
Centurion
cut him short. The Commodore
wished to know the reason for the delay.
‘Directly, sir,’ cried the distracted lieutenant.
‘The fact is, sir,’ said Peter in a rapid undertone, ‘one of the women is—ahem—in a very interesting condition, sir. So I thought it would be barbarous to insist. A matter for the Commodore, perhaps, sir? Would you wish me to explain?’
‘Make it so, Mr Palafox,’ said Mr Dennis with profound relief. ‘My respects, and the women being in a delicate state of health cannot be moved. Request further instructions, and venture to suggest they be indulged in the use of their quarters, for the time being.’
A splash of oars, a pause, and Peter came limping up the side again, followed by two Marines and the Spanish pilot. ‘Suggestion approved, sir, if you please,’ he said. ‘The pilot to be allowed to keep up the women’s spirits—is married to one. Sentries to stand guard together. And I am to say, sir, that the Commodore expressly orders that the women are to receive no inquietude or molestation.’
‘Molestation, Mr Palafox?’
‘That’s it, sir. No molestation whatsoever.’
‘Ha, ha, Mr Palafox?’
‘Ha, ha, it is, sir.’
‘Very good, Mr Palafox. And I tell you what,’ added the lieutenant privately, clapping him warmly on the shoulder, ‘I won’t forget this, my dear fellow.’
‘Oh, if you please,’ cried Peter, writhing with anguish.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘That is where she got home with the poker. Oh, sir,’ he exclaimed, ‘is it reasonable or just to carry a poker aboard in ten degrees south?’
‘Where is that—cutter?’ asked the Centurion.
‘Brown paper, vinegar and Venice treacle, Mr Palafox,’ called the lieutenant over the side, ‘to be applied twice every hour.’
Dawn, sunset, dawn and another prize, a small one. The excitement subsiding, and the word passing for Peter throughout the ship.
‘Ah, there you are, Mr Palafox,’ said the Commodore, as Peter hurried into the great sunlit stateroom. ‘Good Heavens, what have you been doing to your face?’
‘I fell down, sir,’ said Peter.
‘Humph,’ said the Commodore. ‘Well, be that as it may, I have sent for you to see whether you can help us with a prisoner from this new prize. Mr Blew cannot make out his Spanish, but thinks he may be an Irishman. You understand the Irish language, I believe.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then I beg you will address him in that tongue. Sit down here, by me. Sergeant, bring the man forward.’
‘He is from the County Kerry, sir,’ said Peter, after a rapid interchange in Irish. ‘Won’t give his name nor his parish. He is afraid of being taken up for a rebel, sir, and that his people at home will be troubled.’
‘Ask him how he comes to be here.’
‘He says he was brought by a great ugly—by a Marine, sir, too big for him to fight.’
‘No, do not be foolish, Mr Palafox. What is the reason for his presence in these seas, the chain of events? If he was taken by the Spaniards against his will, and if he can give information about their dispositions, he will certainly not be treated as a rebel, but rewarded and carried to his own country. Will you make that clear to him?’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
‘This is taking a long time, Mr Palafox,’ said the Commodore.
‘I beg pardon, sir. He had to be convinced of the right of King George to the Irish crown. But I think it was worth it, sir.’
‘Is he convinced of it now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So much the better. Now what can he tell us?’
‘Sir, he says there are four merchant ships in the harbour of Paita and two galleys belonging to the King of Spain. He knows the town very well, having been there as a pedlar these many years: he says they are all the great thieves of the world,
and they living in glory and as heavy with gold as Nebuchadnezzar.’
‘Never mind that, Mr Palafox. Ascertain the force of the defence, the disposition of the guns, and try to get an intelligible account of the town: draw a plan while he tells you.’
‘Five streets down, and five streets across: and this is the fort, and here is the landing-place. And this is the church, so?’
‘That is just the way of it, your honour,’ said the pedlar. ‘What an elegant picture it is, to be sure, as like to Saint Lawrence’s grid as ever could be. And when will his lordship give me the Sassenach guineas, the pulse of my heart?’
‘There are eight guns in the fort?’
‘Eight, your honour, there are; besides those that lie on their sides.’
‘And where is the treasure?’ asked Peter suddenly, on his own.
‘Why, where would it be at all but in the Customs House here on the quay?’ asked the pedlar. ‘The whole world knows that. It is the merchants’ treasure I am speaking about, of course, for the King’s treasure is in the fort, where Don Diego does be sitting counting it in the heat of the day and filing the edges off the gold pieces for his private advantage, the thief, and he the Governor of the town.’
‘Here in the fort, the King’s treasure?’
‘In the strong fort itself.’
‘So there we shall find it.’
‘You will not,’ said the pedlar, ‘for am I not telling your honour the way the Spaniards had news of your coming this blessed Wednesday itself, and were they not hurrying the treasure inland a twelve leagues out of your way when I left Paita?’
‘Oh,’ said Peter. ‘And the merchants’ treasure also, is it gone with it?’
‘It is not,’ said the pedlar. ‘Would the merchants trust Don Diego with a single morsel of coin? They would not. They are thieves, but not fools.’
‘Is it there, so? Does it lie yet in the great house on the quay?’
‘You may say that it does, your honour; and you may say it does not. For sure it is like a bird on the spring to fly in the air, and the merchants have the swift-sailing ship ready to float it away. On Saturday they charge it into her belly, and at this minute they do be laying on tallow and grease, the way she will swim the faster: for were they not beginning as I left Paita, and that not twenty hours since? And she is the great ship of the sea, to take so much within her—for it is a huge treasure, your honour, not like the King’s at all which would be too small to wrap in a handkerchief without being lost now the Governor has had his way with it—and she is the bird of the sea for outrunning the wind so she is. Your honour will never ill-wish the poor pedlar, for saying your glorious ship will never reach the town in twenty-four hours, when the treasure takes wing.’
‘I see,’ said the Commodore, when Peter had relayed the news. ‘Pass the word for Mr Brett. There is no time like the present, Mr Palafox,’ he said, getting up. ‘Take this man for’ard. Take my notes with you. Run through the whole account with him twice. If there is any material discrepancy report to me at once. Twenty-four hours, he said?’
In a matter of minutes later the
Centurion
was under full sail. The little crabs that lived in the long trailing mass of tropical weed on her bottom swam no more; they clung on to the barnacles and to the holes where the teredos burrowed like augers into the heart of oak and her sheathing.
Twenty-four hours, in which they prayed for the usual Spanish delay and trimmed the sails with fanatical care. The ship was alive with rumours, for the Irish pedlar was at large, having passed the most rigorous examination, and through Sean and the other Irishmen he made known the glories of the poetic imagination. He had confined himself to the truth with Peter—he was terribly frightened then—but now he was no longer under that unnatural constraint.
Twenty-four hours, in which the slightest variation in the wind was noted with anxious attention: for there was no man aboard who supposed that a foul ship, well over a year at sea,
could catch one with a newly tallowed bottom, however great the zeal of the sailors.
In spite of the sharks there was an eager press of volunteers to be lowered over the side with weights on their feet and an axe to cut away some of the growth. This meant being half-keel-hauled, and keel-hauling, next to death or being flogged through the fleet (which was much the same thing) was the most dreaded of punishments: yet they flocked up for it, and during a horrible hour of dead calm they actually managed to hack a certain amount of the worst and longest away. But the Commodore stopped it when Dog-faced Joe and Boscawen were both brought up unconscious, with blood in their ears—stopped it much against the will of the crew, who were quite happy to sacrifice Dog-faced Joe, and even against the faint protests of the reviving Joe himself.
It was a period of such sustained excitement that yesterday’s prize,
Nuestra Señora
del
Carmen
—carried by the armed boats under Mr Brett in a flat calm—was quite forgotten, and it was with some difficulty that the look-outs could keep their minds to the task of searching the horizon for the G
loucester
’s topsails; for they were coming now to the rendezvous.
‘You will take sixty men, including the Spanish guides, Mr Brett. They are to be reliable men, who will neither get drunk nor run out of hand—if indeed the ship’s company can possibly provide such a number,’ said the Commodore, not sounding very hopeful about this. ‘And you will land here—’ pointing at the map.
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
‘Now let us go into the question of the men. There is Williams, who is a Nonconformist deacon at home, and …’
‘You can’t go in that rig,’ whispered Peter to Keppel. He whispered in the dark—the whole ship whispered, although they lay fifteen miles from the shore.
‘Yes, I can,’ said Keppel, pulling a villainous little jockey-cap further down on his skull—his bald skull, for he had lost
all his hair at Juan Fernandez—‘I promised my Ma. It’s lined with steel, and she made the velvet bows herself.’
‘Silence there. Mr Ransome, have you mustered your men?’
‘Yes, sir. All present and correct.’
‘Lower away. Handsomely, now.’ A volley of sibilant, half-whispered oaths crushed a wretched hand who had tripped and rattled a grating.
‘Shove off. Give way.’
Peter sat back in the stern-sheets: he was trembling with excitement and tension, and he realised that it would be stupid not to try to relax during the long pull for the shore. He sat back and breathed easy: and in another minute he found that he was trembling again so that his larboard pistol made a little chattering sound against the hilt of his dirk.
Behind them the
Centurion
had already vanished: not a light showed on board. And between them and the ship came the two pinnaces, one from the
Tryal
’s
Prize
, pulling very quietly after the barge.
‘Take it easy. Stroke, pull long and easy,’ said Mr Brett. ‘We have plenty of time. This is not a race.’
It was a long pull in the dark. At one time Peter actually found that he had dozed, lulled by the steady and perfectly regular dip and heave of the oars.
‘Oh, sir,’ he said, waking up.
‘Quiet. I have seen them,’ said Mr Brett, not unkindly. Before them, low and twinkling over the water lay a necklace of light, the lights of Paita.
‘Steady, now. Steady,’ whispered the lieutenant. ‘Lie on your oars. Mr Andrews,’ he hailed quietly.
‘Sir?’ came the answer from the
Tryal
’s pinnace.
‘Mr Ransome?’
‘Here, sir.’ Ransome’s hoarse whisper carried over the water from the darkness a boat’s length away.
‘You both have your bearings? The fort is one point on the larboard bow now, and the church is five. And you follow my wake in any event.’
‘Aye-aye, sir,’ from the pinnaces, low and intense.
‘Give way.’
The lights were spread widely now: growing nearer, they twinkled no more. Nearer. And nearer. On the larboard, the shadowy form of a tall ship: was it the ship designed to carry away the treasure? There was no telling from the pedlar’s ‘the vast swimming castle, with a vast number of trees’. There was no telling: and they were seven hours late. Another ship and this one lit up.
A hail startled the night: it caught Peter’s breath in his throat. The hail repeated, more loudly still; and voices aboard. Lights flashing on the deck of the Spaniard, shouts and splashing of oars. ‘Los Ingleses, los Ingleses, los perros Ingleses,’ bawled at the top of his voice by the captain, and the noise of boats making fast for the shore.
‘Pull now, pull, you sons of bitches,’ roared the lieutenant, standing half-upright in the sheets. ‘Pull. In. Out. In. Out. Pull.’ Behind them came Andrews’ shouting and Ransome’s, lurid and hearty. The long strange shape of a moored galley shot by to starboard. Lights in the fort, lights running along the rampart. ‘Pull,’ cried Mr Brett. A flash, a bang and a deep rumbling whiffle just overhead: another double flash that lit up the fort and showed soldiers, momentarily fixed in movement. Then the crash on the shingle sent Peter nose downwards on the thwarts. Several people walked over him: but he was up and ashore. Already the men were formed, and he darted into his place. Something hit a stone bollard beside him and howled off into the darkness, and again the sky lit up with a crimson flash as the fortress guns went off.
‘Follow the lantern,’ shouted Mr Brett. ‘Double up, now.’
They ploughed over fifty yards of beach, and a salvo from the fort hurled itself into the sand they had just left.
Now they were in a street, sheltered from the cross-fire, and Mr Brett was ranging his forces. ‘Mr Andrews, carry on according to plan. Mr Ransome, form the same line as us,’ he said, shoving Hairy Amos and Sean back into the rank. ‘Any man who breaks the line will be flogged. Sing out as much as
you like, but keep your stations. Light the torches—bear a hand, now. Williams and Tyson, bang on those drums. Carry on. Three cheers for the King.’
The earth-shaking cheer that followed this and the tremendous tattoo on the drums, the flaring torches, the uninterrupted bellowing of the sailors gave the impression of a multitude of enemies surging straight out of Hell. A straggling volley met them in the square, but the appalling yell of the Centurions, their instant and accurate return, cleared the Governor’s house from in front while the shrieking Tryals hurled themselves into it from the back.