The Mountain of Gold by J. D. Davies

Author:J. D. Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-01-31T08:00:00+00:00

It did not take long for me to regret my honourable gesture. I was in my truncated half-cabin, attempting to rearrange my possessions around the demi-culverin that now cribbed and confined me even more than it had done before. I contemplated the chamber pot acquired for me by Musk in Dover, and shuddered. Beyond the partition, I could hear every tiny sound as O'Dwyer arranged his own possessions, which seemed to include an unsettling number of knives, swords and other blades of indeterminate size, whistling and singing all the while. To this day, I do not know whether he did so unconsciously or as a deliberate taunt to the Captain of the Seraph; but his musical range seemed as catholic as it was tuneless, embracing a clutch of French airs, some songs of his Irish childhood and a succession of strangely pitched Arab chants. I looked about in horror, seeking some escape from my cell. Beyond the stern window and through the fog lay Holmes' Jersey, but Holmes was ashore, apparently carousing with the Governor of Dover. Jordan, Captain of the Mary, was old, godly, and insufferably dull. I could go ashore, but Deal, that very Gomorrah of Kent, would contain an entire army of mariners, most of them whoring, drinking and brawling from dawn 'til dusk and thus on 'til dawn once more. Cornelia and my friends might as well have been an eternity away. That left only my ship, a Fifth Rate frigate of but three hundred and fifty tons burthen and ninety feet in length, and where aboard her would be free of the foul presence of O'Dwyer? Francis Gale was ashore, visiting an old friend who had a parish a little way beyond Richborough...

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