‘Why?’ asked a voice.
‘I have to dine with the Commodore,’ said Peter, forgetting their dislike in his hurry. He emerged, buttoning his coat.
‘It was five bells. You will be late,’ said Elliot coldly.
‘Still, he can’t go like that,’ said Hope. ‘You’ve forgotten your dirk and you’ve trailed your coat in the dust. Here, stand while I get it off you.’
Keppel fetched his dirk and Peter buckled it on while Hope brushed his back. It was kindly done, and although he had barely time to gasp out a thank you before he raced away aft, Peter felt a strong pleasure from it.
‘They could have been wicked,’ he thought: but this reflection was instantly effaced by the sight of the first lieutenant at the half-deck. Mr Saunders looked over him quickly. ‘That will do,’ he said, nodding. ‘Come along.’
It was a defect in Peter’s upbringing that he had rarely, almost never, been used to paying formal visits or to dining out; but it was an unavoidable defect, for not only were his parents too poor to entertain, but in the neighbourhood for fifteen miles around there was nobody to entertain. Lord Magher, who owned a vast tract of land that included Ballynasaggart and seven villages beside, had never even seen his Irish estate; his agent, a Scotch Presbyterian, had alienated the Reverend Mr Palafox by his rigid treatment of the tenants; the squireen of Connveagh was a disreputable creature, permanently drunk and of more than doubtful loyalty; and of the two livings that bounded the parish, one was held by a rich pluralist in Dublin and the other by a clergyman even poorer than Mr Palafox and with a family that outnumbered his by four. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that at first Peter saw little of the noble stateroom, its gleaming cloth and silver, and the decanters glowing in the sun that came pouring through the great stern-gallery. He had a vague impression of being greeted by an expanse of buff waistcoat and a blue coat afire with gold, of being introduced to various people, and then he was sitting down before his plate and scalding his mouth cruelly with boiling soup.
But he neither dropped his spoon nor hurled his plate into his lap, and in time he began to take more notice of his surroundings. At the head of the table sat Mr Anson: he was a broad, strongly-built man with a fine head, a Roman face accustomed to command: at the moment he was listening to an anecdote of Marlborough’s wars with an expression of polite interest, but his face was tired, and a man who knew him well could have told that his mind was far away. The speaker, on the Commodore’s right hand, was Colonel Cracherode, commanding the land forces: Peter had seen him before. There was another red coat farther down the table—a young officer of the Marines, who was as rigid with awe as Peter, but who, to keep himself in countenance, fiddled incessantly with the stem of his wine-glass and drank such a very large quantity that by the first remove his face was as red as his coat. Next to him was the captain of the Wager, one of the ships of the squadron, and opposite Peter one of the Wager’s midshipmen, Mr Byron. Mr Saunders, first lieutenant of the Centurion, sat at the farther end.
The Commodore had a French cook on board: the food was excellent—quite unlike the usual fare of midshipmen—and Peter was beginning to enjoy himself in a quiet way when his peace of mind was shattered by his captain’s voice.
‘Mr Palafox,’ said the Commodore, ‘a glass of wine with you.’
Peter bowed and drank to him: he neither choked nor spilt his wine, but now he felt that his security was gone—he might be spoken to and called upon to reply at any moment. His forebodings were right. His neighbour, a post-captain, turned to him and said, ‘Palafox? I know that name. Yes. It was in the year ’21 that Miss Dillon married a gentleman called Palafox, in spite of all that I could say. I was first of the Falkland then and thought no small beer of myself; but the parson carried away the prize.’
‘That was my mother, sir,’ cried Peter.
‘Indeed? Indeed?’ said the captain, looking at him with lively interest. ‘Then when next you see her, pray mention my name with—what would be proper?—with my kindest regards, and tell your father that I still bear him an undying grudge. I trust they are both very well?’
‘Thank you, sir, very well indeed.’
‘And where do you live now? I seem to remember that your father had a living somewhere on the west coast. Bally—’
‘Ballynasaggart.’
‘That was the place. So he is still there. I know just where it is, although I could not precisely recall the name. Terrible great seas, and the current sets inshore round the headland. An ugly place to be caught on a lee-shore with a westerly gale and the tide making.’
‘Is that by the Blaskets?’ asked Captain Kidd of the Wager, across the table. ‘I was wrecked there once.’
‘No, far to the north,’ said Peter’s neighbour. ‘Far to the north, with no Dingle Bay to run for. A much worse coast.’
‘The Baskets are bad enough for me,’ said Captain Kidd. ‘The natives knocked us on the head one by one as we came ashore.’
‘What do you say to that, young man?’ asked Peter’s neighbour.
‘Why, sir,’ said Peter, ‘they are only wild men from Kerry. We call them firbolgs, sir.’
‘Do you? I would tell you what we called them,’ said Captain Kidd, ‘if it were not for the respect I owe to the Commodore.’
‘Are your fellows any better?’ asked Peter’s neighbour, with a wink.
‘Yes, sir, they are,’ said Peter. ‘Only last autumn there was a brig on the reef by Maan Point, and we drove the boats out through the surf although it was breaking up the way it washed the cows off the top of the cliff.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘Why, sir, we carried the curraghs about two miles to the cove that is sheltered a little, and so we launched them and brought off every man alive, although Michael Tomelty and Seamus Colman were drowned.’
‘How many oars do they pull?’
‘Eleven sir, counting the one at the back,’ said Peter, who knew very well, having held it on that occasion.
‘And you say they carried a ten-oared boat for more than a mile?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, with the uncomfortable feeling that he was not believed.
‘They must be strangely built boats in your part of the world,’ observed Mr Saunders.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, looking down. It would not be right, he knew, to launch into a long explanation, particularly as the whole table was listening now: but it was hard to be set down as a wild teller of tales—and an unconvincing one at that. He ate a little more, but without much appetite, and presently the cloth was drawn.
The port went round; they drank the King, and after that Peter relapsed into a meditation; he sat upright, not touching the back of his chair, as trim, neat and silent as a midshipman should be in such august company, but his spirit was far away in the warm drifting rain of his own country, where the land falls sheer to the western sea.
‘Wake up,’ said his neighbour, and with a jerk Peter realised that he was being addressed.
‘I was saying,’ said the Commodore, smiling at him, ‘that Mr Palafox will decide the question.’ The thought of deciding any question at all froze Peter to the spine. ‘Colonel Cracherode says that your boats are not made of wood: I maintain that they are.’
‘Sir,’ said Peter, ‘we do have wooden ones, but they are made of skins entirely.’ ‘What’s the merriment?’ he thought angrily, as the table burst into