The Corvette (20 page)

‘By the mark seven, sir!'

‘That'll be ice, sir,' Hill remarked, echoing his own thoughts.

‘Aye.'

‘Let fall! Let fall!' Lieutenant Bourne had taken the deck from Rispin and the topgallants hung in folds from their lowered yards.

‘Hoist away!' The yards rose slowly, their parrels creaking up the slushed t'gallant masts as the topmen slid down the backstays.

‘Sheet home!'

‘Belay!'

Amidships the braces were ready manned as the halliards stretched the sails. Watching anxiously Drinkwater thought he saw the upper canvas belly a little.

‘By the mark five, sir!' The nearest visible part of the iceberg was half a musket shot away to starboard. Drinkwater sensed
Melusine
's deck cant slightly beneath his feet. He was so tense that for a moment he thought they had touched a spur of ice but suddenly
Melusine
caught the wind eddying round the southern extremity of the berg. Her upper sails filled, then her topsails; she began to move with gathering swiftness through the water.

‘By the deep nine, sir!'

Drinkwater began to breathe again.
Melusine
came clear of the iceberg and the wind laid her on her beam ends. Just as suddenly as it had come the fog lifted. The wind swung to the north-north-west and blew with greater violence, but the sudden shift reduced the lift of the sea, chopping up a confused tossing of wave crests in which
Melusine
pitched wildly while her shivering topmen lay aloft again to claw in the topgallants they had so recently set.

As the visibility cleared it became apparent that the gale had dispersed the ice floes and they were surrounded by pieces of ice of every conceivable shape and size. Realising that he could not keep the deck forever, Drinkwater despatched first Bourne and then Rispin aloft to the crow's nest from where they shouted down directions to the doubled watches under Drinkwater and Hill, and for three days, while the gale blew itself out from the north they laboured through
this vast and treacherous waste.

The huge bergs were easy to avoid, now that clear weather held, but the smaller bergs and broken floes of hummocked ice frequently required booming offfrom either bow with the spare topgallant yards. Worst of all were the ‘growlers', low, almost melted lumps of ice the greater part of whose bulk lay treacherously below water. Several of these were struck and
Melusine
's spirketting began to assume a hairy appearance, the timber being so persistently scuffed by ice.

Drinkwater perceived the wisdom of a rig that was easily handled by a handful of men as Sawyers had claimed at Shetland. He also wished he had had the old bomb vessel
Virago
beneath his feet, a thought which made him recollect his interview with Earl St Vincent. It seemed so very far distant now and he had given little thought to his responsibilities during the last few days, let alone the possibility of French privateers being in these frozen seas. He wished St Vincent had had a better knowledge of the problems of navigation in high latitudes and given him a more substantial vessel than the corvette. Lovely she might be and fast she might be, but the Greenland Sea was no place for such a thoroughbred.

They buried Germaney the day following Drinkwater's return to
Melusine
. It was a bleak little ceremony that had broken up in confusion at a cry for all hands to wear ship and avoid a growler of rotten ice. Singleton's other major patient, the now insane Macpherson, lay inert under massive doses of laudanum to prevent his ravings from disturbing the watch below.

On the fifth day of the gale they sighted
Truelove
and made signals to her across eight miles of tossing ice and grey sea. She was snugged down under her lower sails and appeared as steady as a rock amid the turmoil about her. A day later they closed
Diana
, then
Narwhal, Provident
and
Earl Percy
hove in sight, both making the signal that all was well. On the morning that the wind died away there seemed less ice about and once again
Faithful
was sighted, about ten miles to the north-west and making the signal that whales were in sight.

Greatly refreshed from an uninterrupted sleep of almost twelve hours
, wrote Drinkwater in his journal,
I woke to the strong impression that my life had been spared by providence
 . . . He paused. The vision of Midshipman Frey as his son had been a vivid one and he was certain that had he not awakened to full consciousness at that time he would not have survived the ordeal in the open boat. The consequences of his folly in leaving the ship struck him very forcibly and he resolved never to act
so rashly again. In his absence Germaney had died and he still felt pangs of conscience over his former first lieutenant. He shook off the ‘blue devils' and his eye fell upon the portraits upon the cabin bulkhead, and particularly that of his little son. He dipped his pen in the ink-well.

The conviction that I was awoken in the boat by the spirit of my son is almost impossible to shake off, so fast has it battened upon my imagination. I am persuaded that we were past saving at that moment and would have perished had I not been revived by the apparition
. He paused again and scratched out the word
apparition
, substituting
visitation
. He continued writing and ended:
the sighting of
Faithful
reassured me that my charges had made lighter of the gale than ourselves, for though nothing carried away aloft
Melusine
is making more water than formerly
. Faithful
made the signal for whales almost immediately upon our coming up and the whale ships stood north where, inexplicably, there seems to be less ice. The cold seems more intense
.

He laid his pen down, closed his journal and slipped it into the table drawer.

‘Pass word for Mr Hill!'

He heard the marine sentry's response passed along and rose, pulling out the decanter and two glasses from the locker where Cawkwell had secured them.

‘Come in,' he called as Hill knocked and entered the cabin. ‘Ah, take a seat, Mr Hill, I am sure you will not refuse a glass on such a raw morning.'

‘Indeed not, sir . . . thank you.'

Drinkwater sipped the blackstrap and re-seated himself.

‘Mr Hill, we have known each other a long time and now that Germaney is dead I have a vacancy for a lieutenant . . . no, hear me out. I can think of no more deserving officer on this ship. I will give you an acting commission and believe I possess sufficient influence to have it ratified on our return. Now, what d'you say, eh?'

‘That's considerate of you, sir, but no, I . . .'

‘Damn it, Bourne's told me that without you he'd have been hard pushed to work the ship through the fog, he's a good fellow and does you the credit you deserve. With a master's warrant you'll never get command and the advancement you should have. Recollect old James Bowen, Earl Howe's Master of the Fleet, when asked what he would most desire for his services at the First of June, asked for a commission.'

‘Aye, sir, that's true, but Bowen was made prize agent for the fleet, he'd no need to worry about the loss of pay. I've no private income
and have a family to support. Besides, Bowen still had the earl's patronage whilst I, with all due respect to yourself, sir, would likely remain a junior lieutenant for the rest of my service. At least now I receive ninety-one pounds per annum, which even less five guineas for the income tax, is more than a junior lieutenant's pay. In addition, sir, with my warrant I'm a standing officer and even if the ship is laid up I still receive pay. Thank you all the same, sir.'

Drinkwater refilled Hill's glass. It was no less than he expected Hill to say and he reflected upon the stupidity of a system which denied men of Hill's ability proper recognition.

‘Very well then. Whom do you think I should promote? Gorton has his six years almost in and is the senior, Quilhampton is but a few months his junior but holds a certificate from the Trinity House as master's mate. I am faced with a dilemma in that my natural inclination is to favour Quilhampton because he is known to me. I would welcome your advice.'

Hill sighed and crossed his legs. ‘I have seen neither of them in action, sir, but I would rate both equally.'

‘The decision is invidious, but you incline to neither . . .?'

‘Sir, if I may be frank . . .?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then I should favour Mr Gorton, sir. Mr Quilhampton is both junior and a mite younger, I believe. Your favouring him would seem like patronage and I think that his hand might prove a handicap.'

Drinkwater nodded. ‘Very well, Mr Hill. I do not approve of your pun but your reasoning is sound enough. Be so kind as to have a quiet word with Mr Q, that his disappointment is tempered by the reflection that he has not lost my confidence.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Hill rose.

‘One other thing . . .'

‘Sir?'

‘Do not mention the matter of the hand as deciding one way or another. I do not really think it a great disadvantage. It is quite impervious to cold, d'you know.'

Singleton looked with distaste at what had once been the person of Mr Macpherson the surgeon. He lay stupefied under ten grains of laudanum, his face grey, the cheeks cadaverous and pallid with a sheen of sweat that gleamed like condensation on a lead pipe under the lantern light.

He could almost
feel
Skeete grinning in the shadows next to him.
Singleton thought a very un-Christian thought, and was mortified by the ferocity of it. Why, why did Macpherson not die? Rum had long since destroyed his brain and now deprivation of it had turned him into a thrashing maniac. Yet his punished organs refused to capitulate to the inevitable, and he came out of his stupor to roll and rave in his own stink until Skeete cleaned him up and Singleton sedated him once more.

Singleton forbore to hate what Drinkwater had trapped him into accepting. He saw it as a God-given challenge that he must overcome his revolted instincts. This was a testing for the future and the squalor of life among the eskimos. He tried to thank God for the opportunity to harden himself for his coming ordeal. Attending Macpherson was as logical a piece of divine intervention as was the discovery of Meetuck, and Singleton knew he had been right, that men's cleverness did indeed obscure the obvious. Was it not crystal clear that God himself had intervened in thus providing him with means of preparing himself for the future?

There was also the matter of Drinkwater's survival in the gig. It appalled Singleton that the matter was taken so lightly on board. It struck Singleton as a kind of blasphemy. He was not used to the thousand tricks that fate may play a seaman in the course of a few days. He could not lie down and forget how close he had been to death a few hours ago, and worse, he could not forget how the ship had missed the steadying presence of her commander. There had been no doubt as to Hill's competence, indeed it was enhanced by the lower deck opinions he had heard about the other officers, but Hill had been alone and his isolation emphasised the loss of Drinkwater.

From the rough, untutored tarpaulin of first impression, Singleton had come to like the sea-officer with the cock-headed figure and the lined face. The mane of brown hair pulled impatiently behind his head in a black-ribboned queue told of a still youthful man, a man in his prime, a man of implicit reliability. Singleton began to lose his unfortunate prejudice against the profession of arms, though his own principles remained admirably steadfast. They might appear impractical to the world of sophistry, the world in which Drinkwater was enmeshed, but Singleton was bound upon a mission inspired by the Son of God. Among the primitive peoples of the earth he would prove a theory practical, a theory more shattering in its simplicity than the prolix vapourings of the Revolutionary pedagogues that had apostrophised the French Revolution. He would prove practical the Gospel of Christ.

But although he was motivated by the spirit, Singleton was unable to ignore reality, and he had become aware that without Drinkwater he would be unlikely to find the kind of co-operation he required to land upon the coast of Greenland. He began to be obsessed with the preservation of Drinkwater's health, particularly since the ordeal in the open boat, after which the captain had become thin and drawn. Looking down on the inert body of the
ci-devant
surgeon he decided there were more pressing things for him to attend to.

‘Try and get some portable soup into him,' he said dismissively to Skeete, and turned in search of the companionway and the freezing freshness of the upper deck.

And there Singleton found further evidence of the beneficence of the Almighty in the person of Meetuck engaged, with two seamen as his assistants to supplement his broken arm, in completing the preparations of the bear and seal skins. Meetuck's conversation had enabled Singleton to turn the theoretical knowledge he had acquired at Copenhagen into a practical instrument and already Meetuck had submitted himself to baptism.

But in his eagerness to converse colloquially, to perfect his knowledge of the eskimo tongue and to test his ability to spread the gospel of Christ, Singleton had paid little attention to those things he might have learned from the eskimo. Beyond the knowledge that Meetuck had lost touch with his companions in a fog, fallen and injured himself, losing his kayak in the process, Singleton learned only that he came from a place called Nagtoralik, and called his people the Ikermiut, the people of the Strait. Some prompting from a more curious, though preoccupied Drinkwater, elicited the information that this ‘strait' was far to the westward, and thus, by deduction, on the coast of Greenland. In his heart Singleton believed that it was where he would establish his mission on behalf of the Church Missionary Society. Eager to convert Meetuck it never occurred to Singleton that a male of Meetuck's maturity ought to have survived better on the ice, and the eskimo's lack of intelligence never prompted him to volunteer information he was not specifically asked for. All Meetuck knew was that Singleton was a
gavdlunaq
, a white man, and that he seemed to be a good one. In his simple mind Meetuck strove to please the men that had rescued him and fed him so well.