Free The Golden Ocean by Patrick O’Brian Page A

unfortunately appeared just as it fell, ‘and I will thank you to pick it up.’
    ‘Nah then, cully,’ said Ransome, still in the same hoarse whisper, ‘keep your hair on.’
    ‘Another Teague, so help me,’ said Keppel; ‘the wretched island must have sunk at last.’
    ‘You are an offensive boy,’ said FitzGerald, ‘but I imagine you do not know it. If that fellow is your servant, tell him to pick up my portmanteau.’
    ‘How can you be such a blackguard?’ cried Keppel, with real indignation.
    ‘If you mean to check me with coming in through the hawsehole,’ said Ransome, growing suddenly very red, ‘I’ll learn you good manners.’
    ‘I do not understand your jargon,’ said FitzGerald, ‘but if you want a threshing, sure I’ll help you to one.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Ransome, peeling off his coat.
    They had equal courage: it was weight and skill that decidedthe matter. FitzGerald weighed ten stone to Ransome’s fourteen; Ransome had great skill in boxing; FitzGerald had none, and in ten seconds he was flat on his back with the blood running fast from his nose. He gasped, took a deep breath and sprang to his feet. He kept upright for much longer this time, and hit Ransome one or two good blows before he went down. Peter propped him up against his knee and wiped his face. ‘You can’t go on,’ he whispered; ‘the fellow is twice your size.’
    ‘Can’t I?’ said FitzGerald. ‘Let me go.’
    He got up, and with a ferocious rush he shot under Ransome’s guard, smashing in one right-handed hook that jarred Ransome’s head on his shoulders. Then he was down again; but with scarcely a pause he leapt up, hitting madly: for a second the blows followed fast, hard bare-fist blows like the sound of a mallet on wood. One of FitzGerald’s got home, and Ransome with an instinctive reaction hit him really hard. The uppercut did not travel six inches, but it lifted FitzGerald a foot, with his chin in the air, and he fell as if he had been dropped from a steeple. He fell oddly crumpled, and he did not move.
    ‘What is this appalling din?’ snapped a voice behind Peter. ‘Fighting like a lot of snivelling schoolboys? Who is this?’
    ‘Mr FitzGerald, sir.’
    ‘New midshipman? The Irish one?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘I might have known it. Well, pour some water over him.’
    ‘Aye-aye, sir.’
    ‘We was playing,’ said Ransome, with heavy invention.
    ‘Playing? Then you—what is that infernal racket? Yes, Settle, what is it?’
    ‘Beg pardon, sir, but some of the pressed men in the orlop has gone mad, talking foreign and carrying on horrible.’
    ‘Did you put the Irishmen in separate bays, as I told you?’
    ‘Yes, sir. But they got out,’ shouted the quarter-master to make himself heard above the mounting volume of furious sound that welled through the grating.
    ‘Mr Saumarez’ compliments, sir,’ said a ship’s boy from the quarter-deck, ‘and he would be glad of a little less noise.’
    ‘My compliments to the first lieutenant, and it will be attended to directly.’
    ‘The Commodore’s compliments, sir,’ said a second messenger, bumping into the first. ‘The port-admiral’s barge is coming alongside, and he would like to hear himself speak.’
    ‘My duty to the Commodore,’ said the harassed lieutenant, ‘and I will see to it myself.’
    ‘If you please, sir,’ said Peter, ‘I believe it is my servant. May I go down?’
    ‘You’ll hear from me, Settle,’ said Mr Dennis, shaking his first distractedly. Then to Peter, ‘Come on, if you can do anything.’
    As they reached the orlop they entered an almost tangible hullaballoo; howls and curses in Irish shattered the heavy air, and in the gloom they could see a small band beleaguered in the aftermost bay.
    ‘Connacht! Connacht!’ came Sean’s voice high above all, as he and four tall Connaughtmen fought off the attacks of a pack of men from Munster and Leinster, while a party from Ulster assaulted both sides