The Corvette (23 page)

‘As fenders!' Harvey had hailed, his eyes dark and sunken in his head with the fatigue of the chase, ‘in case the ice closes on you!' The
jest was made as he went in pursuit of his eighth whale, his cargo almost complete. Now the five ships lay secured along the ice edge on the northern side of the lead, tied up as though moored to a quay, their head and stern lines secured to ice anchors. Each had a pair of whales alongside, between hull and ice, while rafted outboard in tier after tier lay the remainder of the catch. While
Melusine
's company stood watch, the exhausted whalers turned below to sleep before the flensing began. They had taken more than thirty whales between them and the labour of cutting up the blubber and packing it in casks took a further two days of strenuous effort.

Melusine
's midshipmen went out on the ice with Mount and a party of marines and took some more seals, returning to the ship to pick off the brown sharks that clustered round the whale corpses as they sank after flensing. The fine weather held and the whale-captains expressed their good fortune, accepting an invitation to dine with Drinkwater the instant the flensing was completed. Even Sawyers seemed to be un-Quakerishly cheerful, and Drinkwater, anticipating an early departure from the Greenland Sea, ordered Tregembo to get Palgrave's carvers, silver and plate out of storage.

The high good humour that seemed to infect them all after the success of the last few days allayed his worries about the possible closure of the ice. Besides, he twice-daily ascended the mainmast to the crow's nest, spending as much as half an hour aloft with the big watch glass and making note of the bearings of familiar ice hummocks with a pocket compass. The variation in their positions was minimal, the movement of the ice, like the weather, seemed suspended in their favour. His own natural suspicions, those fine tunings of his seaman's senses, were blunted by the triumphant confidence of Harvey, Renaudson, Sawyers and Atkinson of the
Truelove
.

As they gathered in Drinkwater's cabin sipping from tankards of mimbo, a hot rum punch that Cawkwell concocted out of unlikely materials, their elation was clear. So great had been their success that the customary jealousy of one whaler who had done less well than his more fortunate colleague was absent. It was true that Harvey's harpoon gun had proved its value, netting him the largest number of whales, but he endured only mild rebukes from Sawyers who claimed the method un-Godly.

‘Never a season like it, Captain,' Renaudson said, his face red from the heat in the cabin and the effects of the mimbo. ‘Abel bleats about God like your black-coated parson,' he nodded in Singleton's direction, ‘but 'tis luck, really. A man may fish the Greenland Seas for a
lifetime, like, then, ee,' he shook his head slightly, a small grin of disbelief in his good fortune crossing his broad, sweating features, ‘his luck changes like this.' He became suddenly serious. ‘Mind you, Captain, it'll not happen again. No. Not in my lifetime, any road. I've seen the best and quickest catch I'm ever likely to make and I doubt my son'll see owt like it himself, not if he fishes for twenty year'n more. Abel's lucky there, both him and his son together in one great hunt.' He drained the tankard. ‘I see tha's children of thee own, Captain.' He nodded at the portraits on the bulkhead, his accent thickening as he drank.

‘Yes,' said Drinkwater, sipping the mimbo more cautiously. It was not a drink he greatly cared for, but his stocks of good wine were almost exhausted and Cawkwell had suggested that he served a rum punch to warm his guests. Harvey joined them.

‘Ee, Captain, your guns weren't as much good as mine.' He grinned, clearly happy that his beloved harpoon gun had established its reputation for the swift murder of mysticetae. ‘I shall patent the modifications I've made and make my fortune twice over from this voyage.' He nudged Renaudson. ‘Get th'self a Harvey's patent harpoon gun for next season, Thomas, then th'can shoot whales instead of farting at them.' The dialect was thick between them and Drinkwater turned away, nodding to Atkinson, a small, active man with a lick of dark hair over his forehead, who was talking to Mr Gorton. Drinkwater had invited only Hill, Singleton and the lieutenants to the meal, there was insufficient room for midshipmen. Besides, he knew the whalemen would not want the intrusion of young gentlemen at their celebrations.

He found himself confronted by Singleton's blue jaw. His sobriety was disquieting amongst all the merriment. ‘Good evening, Mr Singleton.'

‘Good evening, sir. A word if you please?'

‘Of course.'

‘I deduce this gathering to mark the successful conclusion of the fishery.'

‘So it would appear. Is that not so, Captain Sawyers?' He turned to the Quaker who had, as a mark of the relaxation of the occasion, removed his hat.

‘Indeed it is, although a few of us have an empty cask or two left. The Lord has provided of his bounty . . .'

‘Amen,' broke in Singleton, who seemed to have some purpose in his abruptness. ‘Then may I ask, sir, when you intend landing me?'

‘Landing thee . . .?' Sawyers seemed astonished and Drinkwater again explained for Sawyers's benefit.

‘It seems the Almighty smiles upon all our endeavours then, Friend,' he said addressing Singleton, ‘and perhaps thine own more than ours.' He smiled. ‘This lead towards the south-west will bring you close to the coast of East Greenland, somewhere about latitude seventy. I have heard the coast is ice-free thereabouts, although I have never seen it close-to myself. You may see the mountain peaks in clear weather for a good distance.
Nunataks
, the eskimos call them . . .'

‘Then we had better land you,' Drinkwater said to Singleton, ‘but I am still uncertain of the wisdom of following this lead into the ice shelf. Do you not think it might prove a cul-de-sac?'

Sawyers shook his head. ‘No, the fish would not have entered it if some instinct had not told them that the krill upon which they feed were rich here, and that open water did not exist ahead of them . . .'

‘But surely,' Singleton put in, his scientific mind engaged now, ‘the whales may dive beneath the ice. My observations while you have been hunting them show they can go prodigious deep.'

‘No, Friend,' Sawyers smiled, ‘their need of air and their instinct will not pursuade them to dive beneath such an ice shelf as we have about us now. Surely,' he said with a touch of irony, the dissenter gently teasing the man of established religion, ‘surely thou sawest how, even in their terror, they made no attempt to swim under the ice?'

Singleton flushed at the mocking of his intelligence. Sawyers mollified him. ‘But perhaps in the confusion of the gun smoke thine eyes were misled. No, mysticetus will dive only under floes in the open sea and beneath bay ice through which he breaks to inhale . . .'

‘Bay ice?' queried Drinkwater.

‘A first freezing of the sea, Captain, through which he may appear with a sudden and majestic entrance . . .'

They sat to dinner, cod, and whale meat steaks with dried peas and a little sour-krout for those who wanted it, all washed down with the last bottles of half-decent claret that Tregembo had warmed slightly in the galley. As was usual in the gloom of the cabin despite the low sunshine outside, Drinkwater had had the candles lit and the spectacle of such a meal etched itself indelibly upon his mind. Alternating round the table the whale-ship masters and the naval officers made an incongruous group. In eccentric varieties of their official uniform the lieutenant and the master agreed only in their coats. Beneath these they wore mufflers, guernseys and an assortment of odd shirts.
Gorton, presumably slightly over-awed to be included in the company, wore shirt and stock in the prescribed manner, but this was clearly over some woollen garment of indeterminate shape and he presented the appearance of a pouter pigeon. The whale-captains were more fantastic, their garb a mixture of formality, practicality and individual choice.

Sawyers, with the rigidity of his sect, appeared the most formal, clearly possessing a thick set of undergarments. His waistcoat and coat were of the heaviest broadcloth and he wore a woollen muffler. Renaudson, on the other hand, marked the perigee of Arctic elegance, in seal-skin breeches over yellow stockings, a stained mustard waistcoat and a greasy jacket, cut short at the waist and made of some nondescript fur that might once have been a seal or a walrus. Atkinson was similarly equipped, although his clothes seemed a little cleaner and he had put on fresh neck-linen for the occasion, while Harvey, his neckerchief filthy, sported a brass-buttoned pilot jacket. Drinkwater himself wore two shirts over woollen underwear, his undress uniform coat almost as salt-stained as Harvey's pilot jacket. But he was pleased with the evening. The conviviality was infectious, the wine warming and the steaks without equal to an appetite sharpened by cold.

The conversation was of whales, of whale-ships and captains, of harpooners and speksioneers and the profits of owners. There were brief, good-natured arguments as one challenged the claims of another. For the most part the whalers dominated the conversation, the young naval officers, under the eye of their commander and overwhelmed by the ebullience of their guests, playing a passive part. But Drinkwater did hear Singleton exchanging stories of the eskimos with Atkinson who seemed to have met them whilst sealing, and they were debating the reasons why they took their meat raw, when methods of cooking it had been shown to them on many occasions. Thus preoccupied he was suddenly recalled by Sawyers on his right. Above the din Sawyers had been shouting at him to catch his attention.

‘I beg your pardon, Captain, I was distracted. What was it you were saying?'

‘That thy guns were of little use, Friend.'

‘In the matter of stopping the whales? Oh, no . . . very little, but it allowed my people to share the excitement a little, although,' he recollected with the boyish grin that countered the serious cast to his cock-headed features, ‘I think that my order to secure the starboard
guns without them being fired, near sparked a mutiny.'

‘That was not quite what I meant, Friend. I had said that we had no
need
of thy guns, that thy presence here has proved unnecessary. Oh, I mean no offence, but whatever hobgoblins the enemy were supposed to have in the Arctic seas have proved imaginary.'

Drinkwater smiled over the rim of his glass as he drained it, leaning back so that Cawkwell could refill it. ‘So it would seem . . .'

‘Sir! Sir!' Midshipman Frey's face appeared at the opposite end of the table and the conversation died away.

‘Narwhal
, sir!
Narwhal
's taken fire . . .!'

From
Melusine
's deck they saw
Narwhal
already blazing like a torch. Great gouts of flame bellied from her hold and tongues of fire leapt into the rigging. She was moored beyond
Truelove
, ahead of the sloop, and her crew could be seen rushing down upon the ice. For a second the diners stood as though stunned, then they made for the gangplank onto the ice, led by Harvey.

Pausing only to call for all hands and the preparation of the ship's fire-engine, Drinkwater followed, impelled by some irrational force that caused him to do anything but stand in idleness. Men were pouring down
Truelove's
gangplank unrolling a canvas hose that was obviously too short to reach much beyond the barque's bowsprit. As he came abreast of
Narwhal
's stern and among the milling of her crew, Drinkwater realised they were mostly drunk. Harvey was roaring abuse at them, his face demonic in his rage, lit by a blaze that spewed huge gobbets of flame into the sky as casks of whale kreng exploded. Harvey struck two men in his agony before he turned to his ship. He staggered forward into the orange circle of heat where the ice gleamed as it melted, holding his arms up before his face. He was still shouting, something more persistent than abuse, and Drinkwater was about to start after him when Bourne and Quilhampton arrived with a party of marines and seamen lugging the fire-engine.

‘Just coming, sir!'

‘Suction into the sea, Mr Q! And get two jets playing on the gangplank . . .'

To save the ship was clearly impossible, but there seemed some doubt among the men assembled on the ice as to the whereabouts of two or three of
Narwhal
's company.

Harvey had already reached the gangplank and edged cautiously forward. Above his head the mainyard was ablaze, the furled canvas of the sail burning furiously. Ahead of him the main hatchway vented
flame like a perpetually firing mortar and the deck planks could be seen lifting and curling back. The bulwarks had yet to catch and Harvey reached their shelter, hanging outboard of them and peering over the rail. Drinkwater stepped forward and the heat hit him, searing his eyes so that he stopped in his tracks. It was intense and the roaring of the fire deafening.