The Golden Ocean Read Online Free PDF

are in. And there was I imagining a Croesus—I was ill with expecting you. But tell me, you could not send home?’
    ‘I could not,’ replied Peter, ‘for I know very well there is not a gold piece left in the house. We are quite poor, you know,’ he added, simply.
    ‘I beg your pardon,’ said FitzGerald, flushing. ‘I did not intend to be impertinent. For myself I cannot send home either, and for much the same reason.’ He carefully shared out the last of the wine. ‘I cannot accept such ingenuous candour,’ he said, ‘without offering my explanations in turn.’ And Peter learned that he was the son of Edward FitzGerald of Ardnacruish, a gentleman who had almost ruined himself by pursuing three law-suits at once about a right of way through his demesne. ‘It was not so bad until the first affair came to the House of Lords,’ said FitzGerald. ‘But when that failed the poor old gentleman (who was in the wrong from the start, by the by) came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Terence, my boy (my name is Peregrine, but he was thinking of my brother), Terence, my boy, I am vexed to the soul, but I cannot buy you the pair of colours I promised. Not even in a marching regiment,” says he, shedding tears. “So I suppose you will have to be a crossing-sweeper, if we can find someone to sell you a broom on credit.” “Stuff,” says my Aunt Tabitha. “Why will you not write to Cousin Wager, as I have said these five years gone?” “Sure, Tab,” says he, “it would be kinder to the boy to drown him in a stable bucket than to have him cooped up in a ship. There never was a FitzGerald who could do anything if he was not on a horse; and sweeping his crossing he will at least be within nodding distance of the creatures.” “Stuff,” says my aunt—and so it went on; but in the end the letter was written to Cousin Wager, who is something grand in the Admiralty, and the answer came back and my father borrowed twenty guineas from the tailor to carry me over. It is true that he had to order clothes to the tune of nigh on a hundred to do it, but they will always come in. And if only that slug of a horse had run faster this afternoon I might have been able to pay for them all out of hand: still, I have my appointment, and once I am aboard the Centurion —’
    ‘The
Centurion
?’ cried Peter.
    ‘Yes. You’ll not say it is your ship as well?’
    ‘It is, though,’ said Peter. ‘My father’s old friend Mr Walteris chaplain, and he begged me the place.’
    ‘Well, that is capital,’ said FitzGerald, shaking his hand again. ‘So we are to be shipmates in fact. But tell me,’ he said, pausing thoughtfully, ‘you are a great sailor, I dare say?’
    ‘No,’ 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