The Corvette (31 page)

‘We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead) . . .'

Obadiah Singleton, the stole of ordained minister of the Church of England about his muffled neck, read the solemn words as
Melusine
's entire company stood silently in the waist. Drinkwater nodded and the planks lifted. From beneath the bright bunting of the ensigns the hammocks slid over the standing part of the fore-sheet, to plunge into the grey-green sea.

There were fifteen to bury, with the likelihood of a further seven or eight joining them within a day or two. They did not go unmourned. Among
Melusine
's company, friends grieved the loss of shipmates. For Drinkwater there was always the sense of failure he felt after sustaining heavy losses and among those rigid bundles lay Cawkwell, his servant. He wondered whether he had been wise to have held
Melusine
's fire for so long, and yet he knew he had inflicted heavy casualties upon the
Requin
, that her reluctance to renew the action could only in part have been due to the physical damage they had done to her fabric. From what he had seen of her commander the purely commercial nature of privateering would not prevent him from seeking a chance of glory. Drinkwater knew that the ablest of French seamen were not in the Republic's battle-fleet, rotting in her harbours, penned in by the Royal Navy's weary but endless blockade. France's finest seamen were corsairs, aboard letters-of-marque like the
Requin
, as intrepid and daring as any young frigate captain in the Royal Navy. They were pursuing that mode of warfare at which they excelled: the war against trade, wounding the British merchants in their purses and thus bringing opposition to the war openly into Parliamentary debate. It was not without reason that First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte described the British as ‘a nation of shopkeepers'. Singleton closed
the prayerbook as the Melusines mumbled their final ‘Amens'.

‘On hats!'

Drinkwater turned away for the companionway and his cabin. Already Bourne was piping the hands to stations for getting under way.

Drinkwater looked up at the stump of the mizen mast. They would set no more than the spanker on that, but the wind, although it had swung round to the south, remained light. It had brought with it a slight lessening of the visibility and they had not seen the
Requin
for three hours.

However, although Drinkwater's anxiety was eased he was still worried about the rudder and had ordered Bourne to hoist only spanker, main topsail and foretopmast staysail to begin with. It was one thing to devise extempore measures and quite another to get them working. But while Bourne brought the ship onto a course for the Greenland coast there was something else Drinkwater had to attend to, an inevitable consequence of death.

‘Pass word for Mr Quilhampton,' he said to the marine sentry who came to attention as Drinkwater opened the cabin door. Drinkwater took off his full-dress coat and changed it for the stained undress he wore over the blue guernsey that had become an inseparable, if irregular, part of his uniform clothing. The air had warmed slightly with the onset of the southerly breeze, but it had also become damp again and Drinkwater felt the damp more acutely in his bones and shoulder than the very cold, drier polar airstream of the northerly.

Drinkwater heard the knock at the door. ‘Enter!'

‘You sent for me, sir?'

‘Ah, yes, sit down a moment. Pray do you pour out two glasses there.' He nodded at the decanter nestling between the fiddles on the locker top. Quilhampton did as he was bid while Drinkwater opened a drawer in his desk and removed a paper.

‘Far be it from me to rejoice in the death of a colleague, James, but what may be poison to one man, oft proves meat to another.' He handed the sheet to Quilhampton who took it frowning. The young man's brow cleared with understanding.

‘Oh . . . er, thank you, sir.'

‘It is only an acting commission, Mr Q, and may not be ratified by their Lordships, and although you have passed your Master's Mate's examination you have not yet sat before a Captains' board to pass for lieutenant . . . you understand?'

Quilhampton nodded. ‘Yes sir, I understand.'

‘Very well. You will take Mr Rispin's watch . . . and good luck to you.' Drinkwater raised his glass and they sipped for a moment in companionable silence. Quilhampton gazed abstractedly through the stern windows, the view was obscured by the spars and lashings of the jury rudder but he was unaware of them. He was thinking of how he could now swagger into Mrs McEwan's withdrawing-room, to make a leg before the lovely Catriona, and send that damned lubber of a Scottish yeoman to the devil!

‘I see,' said Drinkwater turning, ‘that you are watching the effects of the ship getting under way upon the rudder.'

‘Eh? Oh, oh, yes sir . . .' Quilhampton focussed his eyes as Drinkwater drained his glass, rose and picked up his hat.

‘Well, Mr Q, let us go and see how it answers our purpose . . .'

It answered their purpose surprisingly well. Kept under easy sail after a little experimenting with balancing the rig, and running tiller lines to the mizen royal yard in a manner which best suited steering the ship,
Melusine
made west-north-west. There was a thinning of the floes and although the wind remained from the south, it began to get colder. Fog patches closed in and from these circumstances Drinkwater deduced that the coast of Greenland could not be very far distant. There were other indications that this was so; an increase in the number of birds, particularly eider ducks, and a curious attentive attitude on the part of Meetuck who, having hidden during the action with the
Requin
to the amusement of the Melusines, now hung about the knightheads sniffing the air like a dog.

Then, shortly before eight bells in the morning watch the next day he was observed pointing ahead with excitement. He repeated the same word over and over again.

‘Nunataks! Nunataks!'

The hands, with their customary good-natured but contemptuous ignorance, laughed at him, tapping their foreheads and deriving a good deal of fun at the eskimo's expense. Quilhampton had the watch and was unable to see anything unusual. Nevertheless he went forward and had Singleton turned out of his cot to translate.

‘What the devil does he mean, Obadiah? Noon attacks, eh?'

Singleton stared ahead, nodding as Meetuck pulled at his arm, his eyes shining with excitement.

‘You need to elevate your glass, Mr Quilhampton. Meetuck refers to the light on the peaks of Greenland.' There was an uncharacteristic
note of awe in Singleton's voice, but it went unnoticed by the practical Quilhampton.

‘Well, I'm damned,' he said shortly, looking briefly at a faint jagged and gleaming outline in the lower clouds to the west. It was the sun shining on the permanent ice-cap of the mountains of Greenland.

‘Mr Frey! Be so good as to call the captain . . .'

Drinkwater raised his glass for the hundredth time and regarded the distant mountains. They were distinguishable from icebergs by the precipitous slopes of dark rock on which the snow failed to lie. He judged their distance to be about twenty miles, yet he could close the coast no further because of the permanent coastal accretion of old ice, its hummocks smoothed, its ancient raftings eroded by the repeated wind-driven bombardment of millions upon millions of ice spicules. So far there was no break in that barrier of ice and mountains that indicated the existence of an anchorage. Drinkwater swore to himself. He was a fool to think a primitive savage of an eskimo could have any idea of the haven that he sought. And, he reflected bitterly, he was a bigger fool for actually looking. But he peered through his glass yet again in the fast-shrivelling hope that Meetuck might be right.

‘It's a remarkable sight, isn't it?' Beside him Obadiah Singleton levelled the battered watch-glass he had borrowed from Hill.

Drinkwater could see little remarkable in the distant coast. It was as cold and forbidding as that of Arabia had been hot and hostile and his irritation was increased by the knowledge that Singleton had ceased to think like the
ad hoc
surgeon of
Melusine
and had reverted to being an Anglican divine sent on a mission to convert the heathen by a London Missionary society. When he had persuaded Singleton to assume the duties of surgeon Drinkwater had imagined it would prove regrettably impossible to find the time or opportunity to close the coast and land the missionary. Now it would be impossible to refuse, even if it meant landing Singleton on the ice.

‘Don't you think it remarkable, sir?' asked Singleton again.

‘I would think it so if I found an ice-free anchorage with a fine sandy bottom in five fathoms at low water, Mr Singleton. I should consider that highly remarkable.'

‘But the colour, the colour, to what do you suppose it is due?'

‘Eh?' Drinkwater took his glass from his eye and looked where Singleton was pointing. He had been scanning the coast ahead and failed to notice the strange coloration of the snow on the slopes of a mountain which plunged into the ice on the south side of what they
took to be an ice-covered bay. This slope, just opening on their larboard beam was a dark, yet brilliant red.

‘An outcrop of red-hued rock, perhaps . . .' he said with only a mild curiosity. ‘The rocks and cliffs of Milford Haven are a not dissimilar colour . . .'

‘No, that is too smooth and even for rock. It's snow . . . red snow. Egedé did not mention red snow . . .'
*

‘To the devil with red snow, Mr Singleton. Get that damned eskimo aft here and quiz him again. Is he sure, absolutely sure of this anchorage for big kayaks? Have you explained that we must anchor our ship, Singleton, not run it up the beach like a bloody dugout?'

Singleton sighed. ‘I have asked him that several times, sir . . .'

‘Well get him aft and ask him again.' Drinkwater raised his glass and trained it forward to where a cape jutted out. There was the faint shadow of further land. Could that be the expected opening in the coast that Meetuck assured them existed? And if it was, how the hell were they to break through this fast-ice with a leaky old hull and a jury rudder, a stump mizen and a truncated mainmast?

They had drawn maps for Meetuck, but he did not seem to comprehend the concept of a bird's eye view and Drinkwater was increasingly sceptical of Singleton's assurances of his use of other faculties.

The olfactory organs did not rate very highly as navigational aids, in Drinkwater's opinion, especially as they seemed to be permanently clouded by the eskimos's own inimitable musk. Drinkwater had scoffed at Singleton's adamant assertions, privately considering that whatever inner faith makes a man a priest, also betrays he lacks common sense.

Drinkwater smelled Meetuck's presence and lowered the telescope. Since their dawn encounter Meetuck had appeared uneasy in Drinkwater's presence. He stuck close to Singleton and nodded as he fired the same questions yet again.

Meetuck answered, his flat speech with its monotonous modulation and clicking, minimal mouth movements seemed truly incomprehensible, but after some minutes Drinkwater thought he detected an unusual enthusiasm in Meetuck's answers.

Singleton turned to Drinkwater. ‘He says, yes, he's sure that Nagtoralik is to the north, only a little way now.' Singleton gestured on the beam. ‘This is
aqitseq
, a nameless place. It is also
anoritok
, very windy, and there are no fish, especially capelin. Soon, he says, we will
see
uivak
, which is a cape to be skirted and beyond it we will see
ikerasak
, the strait upon the northern shores of which his people live.' At each innuit word Singleton turned to Meetuck, as if for confirmation, and on each occasion the eskimo repeated the word and grunted agreement.

‘He says it is
upernavsuak
, a good location to dwell in the spring, by which I assume he means that by this time of the year it is ice free, but again he repeats that there are bad white men near Nagtoralik, white men like you, sir. He seems to have conceived some idea that you are connected with them after the action with the
Requin
. I cannot make it out, sir . . .'

‘Perhaps your preaching has turned him into a proper Christian, Mr Singleton. Meetuck seems terrified by the use of force,' said Drinkwater drily. ‘He certainly absented himself from the deck during the action. Ask him if that,' Drinkwater pointed to the distant cape, ‘is the promontory to be skirted, eh?'

Meetuck screwed his eyes up and stared on the larboard bow. Then something odd happened. His weathered skin smoothed out as he realised this was indeed the cape they sought. He turned to speak to Singleton as if to confirm this and his face was so expressive that Drinkwater knew that, whatever the cape hid, and however it answered their purpose, Meetuck had brought them to the place he intended. But his eyes rested on Drinkwater and his expression changed, he muttered something which ended in a gesture towards the nearest gun and the noise ‘bang!' was uttered before he ran off, disappearing below.

‘Upon my soul, Mr Singleton, now what the devil's the meanin' of that?'

Singleton frowned. ‘I don't know, sir, but he has an aversion to you and cannon-fire. And if I'm not mistaken it has something to do with the bad white men of Nagtoralik.'

‘No bottom . . .' The leadsman's chant with its attenuated syllables had become a mere routine formality, a precaution for it was obvious that the water in the strait was extraordinarily deep.

‘D'you have a name for the cape, sir?' asked Quilhampton who, with Hill and Gorton was busy striking hurried cross bearings off on a large sheet of cartridge paper pinned to a board.