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

that you have a good many questions to ask?’
    ‘If you please, sir,’ said Peter, ‘first may I ask how they fire that gun, and then what a sea-chest is, and why do they keep asking me where mine is?’
    ‘Why, in action,’ said the chaplain, indicating the walls of the little room, ‘they knock down these bulkheads. The cabins disappear and the whole deck is one long open space, so that they can come at the guns and run them out of the ports. That is called clearing for action. As for your sea-chest, that is the chest that contains your belongings, your slops, your tarpaulin jackets, your nautical instruments, your uniforms—in short everything but your personal stores, which you can entrust to the attendant on the midshipmen’s berth, a very good honest fellow named Jennings.’
    ‘Uniforms, sir?’ cried Peter with extreme dismay. ‘But we thought the Navy called for no uniform. The King’s cockade in your hat, sure, but no uniform at all: and at home we all said how fortunate it was I was going into the sea-service, for my father could never have set me up in the Army, regimentals costing the teeth from your head—being so very dear, sir.’
    ‘Why, to be sure that was the case until these last years,’ said Mr Walter. ‘But now most officers wear the same clothes as the gentleman who received you—you took notice of him, no doubt, in his blue laced coat and his white breeches. All the officers in our squadron wear the same, and many commanders insist upon their young gentlemen being so dressed. Mr Anson is most particular. But it is the other things in your sea-chest that are even more important: your navigating instruments, quadrant, parallel rulers, scales and all the rest; your linen; your bedding … Our first lieutenant is rigorous in these matters, and only the other day, only on Thursday I say, he turned away a wretched boy who had the effrontery to appear without so much as his Necessary Tables, to say nothing of a proper supply of other things. Mr Saumarez said, very rightly, that on a long voyage a youngster’s welfare depended essentially upon his equipment—he must be provided with clothes for the tropics and for the high latitudes, quite apart from his weapons and in course stores and money for his mess and for the schoolmaster. That is what we mean by the term sea-chest: the sum total of a young gentleman’s equipment, as well as the brass-bound wooden envelope that contains it.’
    ‘Sir,’ said Peter in a low voice, ‘I have no sea-chest.’
    ‘No sea-chest?’ cried the chaplain.
    ‘No sea-chest, sir; nor anything in it at all.’
    ‘Dear me, dear me,’ said the chaplain in a shocked undertone,gazing at him in the dim light. ‘No sea-chest whatsoever?’
    ‘None whatsoever, sir, upon my honour. Only a little small kilageen, as we say, made of leather. From Seamus Joyce’s old cow, that died.’
    ‘And pray what is in it?’
    ‘Six shirts and some stockings, sir. And a spare coat, with my handkerchiefs laid in the one pocket and my Bible in the other.’
    ‘A quadrant, perhaps?’
    ‘Never the ghost of a quadrant, sir. We were sure—indeed my mother was positive—that the service provided these things …’
    ‘My poor boy, my poor boy,’ said the chaplain, shaking his head sadly. ‘What a great way off you do live, to be sure. Six shirts for a voyage that may last two or three years? Oh dear me, dear me. Do you know where we are bound?’
    ‘Yes, sir. We are bound for the Great South Sea, there to cruise upon the Spaniards, and confound ’em unawares.’
    ‘You know that? Good heavens above! It is supposed to be a secret. Who told you?’
    ‘Oh,’ said Peter vaguely, for his mind was too much taken up with the dreadful news to be much concerned with the question, ‘oh, everybody said so, at home. Michael Noonan the excise man, Patrick Lynch the sow-gelder—everyone.’
    ‘Even in that remote waste,’ said the chaplain to himself. ‘That is how State