‘So do I, Mr Singleton, so do I. But the moment when a man has to say whether God, as you theologists conceive him, exists or not is a profound one, not to be taken lightly. We cannot conceive of any form of existence that does not entail physical entity, witness your own archangels. Indeed even a devout man may imagine eternal life as some sort of transmigration of our corporeal selves during which all disabilities, uglinesses, warts and ill-disposed temperaments disappear. This is surely understandable, though not much above the primitive, something which our eskimo friend would comprehend.
‘Now I ask you, as rational beings living in an age of scientific discovery and more particularly being seamen observing the varied phenomena of atmosphereology can you convince me of the whereabouts of these masses of corporeal souls? Of course not . . .’
‘You deny the Resurrection, sir!’
Drinkwater shrugged. ‘I have seen too much of death and too little of resurrection to place much faith in it applying it to common seamen like ourselves.’
‘But you are without faith!’ Singleton cried.
‘Not at all, sir!’ Drinkwater refilled his glass. ‘Belief in atheism surrenders everything too much to hazard. I cannot believe that. I see only purpose in all things, a purpose that is made evident by science and manifests itself in the divine working of providence. As for the corporeal self why Quilhampton, Hill and I hold together like a trio of doubled frigates. If the enemy gets a further shot at our carcases there will likely be little left to refurbish for the life hereafter.’
The facetious jest raised a little laughter round the table and revealed that all three midshipmen were asleep.
‘I agree with the Captain,’ said Germaney suddenly. ‘I recollect something Herrick wrote. Er,’ he thought for a moment and then sat up and quoted: ‘ “Putrefaction is the end, of all that nature doth intend.” There is great truth in that remark, great truth . . .’
Drinkwater looked sharply at his first lieutenant. Germaney’s silence had seemed as uncharacteristic as his sobriety and now this sudden quotation seemed to be significant. It appeared that Singleton considered it so, for he seemed disinclined to pursue the discussion and Drinkwater himself fell silent. Mount rose and thanked him for his hospitality and the hint was taken up by the others. As the chairs scraped back the midshipmen awoke and guiltily made their apologies. Drinkwater waved them indulgently aside.
As he watched them leave the cabin he called Singleton back. ‘A moment, Mr Singleton, if you please.’
Drinkwater blew out the candles that had illuminated the table. The cabin was thrown into penumbral gloom from the midnight daylight of the Arctic summer.
‘You must not think that I wish to ridicule your calling. In my convalescence I met a priest of your persuasion possessed of the most enormous spiritual arrogance. I found it most distasteful. It is not that I disbelieve, it is simply that I cannot believe as you do. After the birth of my children I had the curious natural feeling that I had outlived my usefulness. My liberal ideals were in conflict with this, but I could not deny the emotion. It seemed that all thereafter was merely vanity.’
Singleton coughed awkwardly. ‘Sir, I . . .’
‘Do not trouble yourself on my account, Mr Singleton, I beg you. I hear that Leek is a faithful convert and protests not only the existence of God but can vouch for his very appearance.’
‘Leek was very close to death by drowning, sir, perhaps a little of the great mystery was unfolded to him.’ Singleton was deadly serious.
‘But the intervention of science prevented it; your knowledge, Mr Singleton.’
‘Now you do ridicule me.’
Drinkwater laughed. ‘Not at all. Perhaps we are, as you said earlier, too well-informed for our own good, as it says in the Bible, “unless ye be as little children . . .” ’
‘That is perhaps the wisest thing you have said, sir,’ Singleton at last smiled back.
‘Touché. And good night to you.’
‘Good night, sir.’
Drinkwater went on deck. Mr Rispin had the watch and pointed out the closer drift ice and identified the whalers in sight. There was scarcely a breath of wind and Melusine lay upon a sea that only moved slightly from the ground swell. Rispin’s unconfident, fussy manner irritated Drinkwater until he reflected that he had been particularly lugubrious this evening and dominated the conversation. Well, damn it, it was a captain’s privilege to talk nonsense.
Lieutenant Germaney sat in his hutch of a cabin contemplating the bundle of scented paper tied with a blue ribbon. After a while he opened the lantern and removed the candle tray. He began to burn the letters, a little pile of ash mounting up and spilling onto the deck.
When he had completed his task he turned to his cot and lifted the lid of the walnut case that lay upon it. Taking out one of the pair of pistols it contained, he checked its priming. Turning again to the candle he carefully replaced the tray inside the lantern and closed it, returning the thing to its hook in the deck-head.
Reseating himself he lifted the pistol, placed its muzzle in his mouth. For a moment he sat quite still then, with the cold steel barrel knocking his teeth he said, ‘Putrefaction!’
And pulled the trigger.
Chapter Eight
June 1803
Balaena Mysticetus
‘Why in God’s name was I not told of this?’
‘The confidentiality which exists between a patient and his physician . . .’
‘God’s bones, Singleton, I will not bandy words with you. The man should have been on the sick book, along with the others that have lues and clap.’ Drinkwater swore again in self reproach and added, ‘I remarked some morbid humour in him.’
‘I am not the ship’s surgeon, Captain Drinkwater, a fact which you seem to have lost sight of . . .’
‘Have a care, sir, have a care!’ Both men glared angrily at each other across the cabin table. At last Singleton said, ‘It seems we have adopted irreconcilable positions which, by your own account are a waste of time trying to harmonise.’ The ghost of a smile crossed Singleton’s dark features. Drinkwater sighed as the tension ebbed. He gestured to a chair and both men sat, thinking of the broken body of Lieutenant Francis Germaney lying in its cot. Melusine lay becalmed, rolling easily in a growing swell among the loose drift ice. On deck the watch fended off the larger floes while the sun shone brilliantly, dancing in coruscating glory from several fantastically shaped bergs to the north. Within the cabin the gloom of death hung like a stink.
‘How long will he live?’
‘Not very long. The condylar process of the left mandible is shattered, the squamous part of the temporal bone is severely damaged and there is extensive haemorrhaging from the ascending pharyngeal artery. How the internal carotid and the associated veins were not ruptured I do not know but a portion of the left lower lobe of the cortex is penetrated by pieces of bone.’
Drinkwater sighed. ‘I marked some preoccupation in him from our first acquaintance, but I never guessed its origin,’ he said at last. ‘Might you have achieved a cure?’
Singleton shrugged. ‘I believed that I might have achieved a clinical cure, he was receiving intra-urethral injections of caustic alkali and a solution of ammoniated mercury with opium. His progress was encouraging but I fear that his humour was morbid and the balance of his mind affected. He confided in me that he was affianced; I think it was this that drove him to such an extremity as to attempt his own life.’
Drinkwater shuddered, feeling a sudden guilt for his unsympathetic attitude to Germaney. ‘Poor devil,’ he said, adding ‘you have him under sedation?’
Singleton nodded, ‘Laudanum, sir.’
‘Very well. And what of our other lost cause, Macpherson?’
‘He will not last the week either.’
After Singleton had left the cabin Drinkwater sat for some minutes recollecting the numbers of men he had seen die. Of those to whom he had been close he remembered Madoc Griffiths, Master and Commander of the
brig Hellebore who had died on the quarterdeck of a French frigate in the Red Sea; Blackmore, the elderly sailing master of the frigate Cyclops worn out by the cares and ill usage of the service. Major Brown of the Lifeguards had been executed as a spy and hung on a gibbet above the battery at Kijkduin as a warning to the British cutters blockading the Texel. More recently he thought of Mason, master’s mate of the bomb vessel Virago who had died after the surgeon had failed to extract a splinter, of Easton, Virago’s sailing master, who had fallen at Copenhagen during a supposed ‘truce’. And Matchett who had died in his arms. Now Germaney, a colleague who might, in time, have been a friend.
A sudden world-weariness overcame him and he was filled with a poignant longing to return home. To lie with Elizabeth would be bliss, to angle for minnows in the Tilbrook with his children charming beyond all reason.
But it was impossible. All about him Melusine, with her manifold responsibilities, creaked and groaned as the swell rolled her easily and the rudder bumped gently. He suddenly needed the refreshment of occupation and stood up. Flinging on his greygoe he went on deck.
A light breeze had sprung up from the westward and he received Bourne’s report with sudden interest. Most of the whalers were flensing their catches, rolling the great carcases over as the masthead tackles lifted strips of pale blubber from the dead whales whose corpses were further despoiled by scores of Greenland sharks. Flocks of screaming and hungry gulls filled the air alongside each of the whalers and only one had her boats out in search of further prey.
‘Very well, Mr Bourne, be so kind as to rig out the gig immediately. I shall require a day’s provisions and, tell Mr Pater, two kegs of rum, a breaker of water well wrapped in canvas. One of the young gentlemen may accompany me and Mr Quilhampton is to command the boat. They may bring muskets. You will command in my absence.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Drinkwater watched Bourne react to this news by swallowing hard.
He turned away to pace the quarterdeck while the boat was being prepared. A day out of the ship would do him good. He had a notion to cruise towards the Faithful or the Narwhal and renew his acquaintance with Sawyers or Harvey. The expedition promised well and already he felt less oppressed.
It was so very easy to forget Germaney dying in his cot. The wind steadied at a light and invigorating breeze which set the green sea dancing in the sunlight. The ice shone with quite remarkable colours which little Frey identified as varying tints of violet, cerulean blue and viridian. The larger bergs towered over the gig in wonderful minarets, towers and spires, appearing like the fantastic palaces of fairy folk and even the edges of the ice floes were eroded in their melting by the warmer sea into picturesque overhangs and strange shapes that changed in their suggestion of something else as the boat swept past.
Somehow Drinkwater had imagined the Arctic as a vast area of icy desert and the proliferation and variety of the fauna astonished him. Quilhampton suggested taking potshots at every seal they saw but Drinkwater forbade it, preferring to encourage Mr Frey’s talents with his pencil. It seemed there was scarcely a floe that did not possess at least one seal. They saw several walruses while the air was filled with gulls, ivory gulls, burgomaster gulls, the sabre winged fulmar petrels and the pretty little kittiwakes with their chevron-winged young. The rapid wing beats of the auks as they lifted hurriedly from the boat’s bow seemed ludicrous until they spotted a pair swimming beneath the water. The razorbills raced after their invisible prey with the agility of tiny dolphins.
Under her lugsail the gig raced across the water, Quilhampton’s ingenious wooden hand on the tiller impervious to the cold.
‘She goes well, Mr Q.’
‘Aye, sir, but not as fast as the Edinburgh Mail.’ Mr Q gazed dreamily to windward his thoughts far from the natural wonders surrounding him and filled only with the remembered image of Catriona MacEwan.
Shooting between two ice floes they came upon the Faithful in the very act of lowering after a whale. Captain Sawyers hailed them and Drinkwater stood up in the boat to show himself.
‘I give you God’s love, Captain, follow us by all means but I beseech thee to lower thy sail or the fish will see it and sound,’ the Quaker called from his quarterdeck through a trumpet. ‘Thou seest now the wonders of God, Captain . . .’ Drinkwater recollected their valedictory remarks in Bressay Sound and waved acknowledgement.
‘Douse the sail, Mr Q, let us warm the hands at the oars and, Tregembo, do you show these whale-men how they are not the only seamen who can pull a boat.’
‘Aye, zur.’
Melusine’s gig took station astern of Faithful’s Number One boat with the redoubtable Elijah Pucill at her bow oar. The gig’s crew did their best, but their boat was heavier and it was not long before they were overtaken by young Sawyers and then left astern as a third boat from the whaler, her crew grinning at the out-paced naval officers as they sat glumly regarding the sterns of the racing whale-boats.
There were two spare oars in the boat and Drinkwater touched Quilhampton’s arm and nodded at them. Quilhampton took the hint.
‘Mr Frey, do you ship an oar and lay your back into it, eh? Better than looking so damned chilly,’ he added with rasping kindness. The men lost stroke as Frey shipped an oar forward, but the boat was soon under way again and began to close upon the whalers.
‘Come lads, pull there! We gain on them!’ There were grins in the boat but Drinkwater, who had been studying events ahead cooled them.
‘I fear, Mr Q, that you are not gaining. The others have stopped. I suspect the whale has sounded . . . there, see that flock of birds, the gulls that hover above the boats . . .’
‘Oars!’ ordered Quilhampton and the blades came up horizontally. The men panted over their looms, their breath cloudy and their faces flushed with effort. The boat lost way and they lay about half a cable from the whale-boats.
Carefully Drinkwater stood as Quilhampton ordered the oars across the boat.
‘Issue a tot of grog, Mr Q,’ said Drinkwater without taking his eyes from the patch of swirling water that lay between the whale-boats. In each of them the harpooners were up in their bows, weapons at the ready, while at the stern each boat-steerer seemed coiled over his steering oar. Drinkwater was aware of a fierce expectancy about the scene and while in his own boat a mood of mild levity accompanied the circulation of the beaker, the whale-boat crews were tense with the expectation of a sudden order.
Just ahead of them the Faithful’s third boat lay, with Pucill’s slightly broader on the starboard bow and Sawyer’s to larboard.
Suddenly it seemed to Drinkwater that the circling gulls ceased their aimless fluttering. He noted some arm movements in the boat ahead, then it began to backwater fast. The gulls were suddenly overhead, screaming and mewing.
‘Give way, helm hard a-starboard!’
Even as he shouted the instruction it seemed the sea not ten yards away disappeared and was replaced by the surfacing leviathan. The great jaw with its livid lower lip covered by strange growths seemed to tower over them. Then the blue-black expanse of the creature’s back rolled into view as it spouted, covering them with a warm, foetid-smelling mist. The oar looms bent as the men pulled the boat clear and Quilhampton held the tiller over to bring the gig round onto a course parallel with that of the whale.
As the sea subsided round the breaching monster they caught a glimpse of its huge tail just breaking the surface. From somewhere Pucill’s boat appeared and they saw the other two beyond the cetacean. The whale did not seem to have taken alarm and, pulling steadily, they managed to keep pace as Pucill raced past them. Drinkwater saw the specksioneer raise his harpoon as his boat drew level with the whale’s hump and it spouted again.
The weapon struck the whale and for a second the monster seemed not to have felt it. Then it increased speed. Drinkwater could see the harpoon line snaking round the loggerhead and the faint wisp of smoke from the burning wood as Pucill paid it out. But the whale began to tow Pucill’s boat. Already it
was leaving Melusine’s gig behind and its flag was up to signal to the Faithful and the other boats on the far side of the whale that he was fast to a fish.
Then mysticetus lifted his mighty tail and sounded again. Pucill paid out line and Drinkwater judged the whale’s dive to be almost vertical, as though the great animal sought safety in depth. Pucill’s boat ceased its forward rush and the others, including the gig closed on him. Drinkwater saw frantic signals being made and Sawyers’s boat ran alongside Pucill’s to pass him more line. The speksioneer’s boat began to move forward again, indicating the whale had levelled off and was swimming horizontally. Both the speksioneer’s and the mate’s boats were now in tandem, Sawyers’s astern of Pucill’s and Drinkwater bade Quilhampton follow as the third of Faithful’s boats was also doing.
Although they had no real part in the chase it seemed to every man in the gig that it was now a matter not only of honour but of intense interest to keep up with the frightened and wounded whale. But it was back-breaking work and soon clearly a vain effort, for the towed boats swung north and headed inexorably for the ice edge where a large floe blocked their passage.
They could hear faint shouts. ‘Cut! Cut!’ and ‘Give her the boat, Elijah! Give her the boat!’ There was a scrambling of bodies from the speksioneer’s boat into that of the young mate then the latter was cut free and swung aside. Pucill’s boat was smashed against the edge of the floe under which the whale had passed yet the two remaining boats seemed to disregard this unhappy circumstance. Their courses diverging, they each headed for opposite extremities of the floe.
‘I think, Mr Q, that it is time we set our sail again, I believe the wind to have strengthened.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Taking the nearer gap in the ice Quilhampton gave chase the instant the sail was sheeted home. Both the remaining whale-boats had hoisted flags and from occasional glimpses of these over the lower floes they were able to keep in touch. However it was soon apparent that the freshening of the wind was now to their advantage and they made gains on the nearer whale-boat as they wove between the ice. It was an exhilarating experience, for in the narrow leads the water was smooth yet the wind was strong as it blew over the flatter floes or funnelled violently between those with steeper sides. It seemed the whale was working to leeward. Unaware of the dangers of unseen underwater ledges of ice they were fortunate to escape with only a slight scraping of the boat as they rounded a small promontory of rotten ice from which half a dozen surprised seals plopped hurriedly into the sea, surfacing alongside to peer curiously at the passing gig.
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