‘And damn the wind too!’
Drinkwater found Quilhampton in the cockpit, a mug of mimbo before him and blankets and midshipmen close about him. He was recovering in good company and although the midshipmen drew deferentially aside Drinkwater offered Quilhampton no more than a nod and the terse observation that he had ‘Done very well’.
‘Bit tight with the compliments, Q, old chap,’ muttered Lord Walmsley as Drinkwater moved forward to where the midshipmen’s chests had been dragged into a makeshift table.
‘How is he?’ The three surgeons turned, grunted and bent over Harvey. The pock-marked face was crusted with burnt flesh, the beard singed and smelling foully. Alongside lay the roll of Singleton’s instruments, the demi-lunes, daviers and curettes gleaming in the light of the two battle lanterns suspended from the low beams. Drinkwater looked at the palms of the hands. They were black and swollen.
Singleton straightened. ‘How is he?’ Drinkwater repeated the question.
‘We have administered laudanum as an anodyne, Captain Drinkwater, and I am of the opinion that the wounds must be debrided without delay.’
‘If you cannot agree, gentlemen,’ said Drinkwater with a sudden edge to his voice addressing the whale-ships’ surgeons, ‘then you may leave the patient to my doctor.’ The surgeon of the Narwhal looked up angrily. He was a man of nearer seventy years than sixty, Drinkwater judged.
‘I’ve been with Cap’n Harvey these last twenty-six years, Cap’n, an’ I’ll not leave him . . .’
‘Then you will hold your tongue, sir, since you have nowhere else to go, you may remain. As for you,’ he turned to the other man, ‘I suggest you return and offer Captain Renaudson what assistance he requires in the matter of examining those of Narwhal’s crew that join Truelove.’ He ignored the sullen glares in the two men’s eyes. ‘Now, Singleton, how is he?’
‘We will debride the wounds, sir, while he is still in a state of shock, those about the face particularly, but . . .’
‘Well . . .’
‘Well what?’
‘I have auscultated the pulmonary region and,’ he paused, shaking his head, ‘the trachea, the bronchia and larynx, indeed it appears the lungs themselves have been seared severely, by the intake of such hot air, sir.’
‘Then there is little hope?’
‘I fear not, sir.’
Drinkwater looked at the Narwhal’s surgeon. ‘Who was the boy?’
‘Cap’n Harvey’s sister’s son.’
Drinkwater sighed. His eye caught the edge of the circle of lamplight. A face, disembodied in the darkness of the cockpit, seemed to leer at him and for a second Drinkwater imagined himself in the presence of the personification of death. But it was only the loblolly ‘boy’, Skeete.
He turned in search of the fresh air of the deck, pausing at the foot of the ladder. ‘You had better lie him in my cot. And you would best do your curettage in the cabin. There is more light.’
Lieutenant Rispin met him at the companion. ‘Ah, sir, I was about to send for you. The wind continues to freshen, sir, and we are ranging a little.’
Drinkwater looked at the ice edge above the rail.
‘Only a little, Mr Rispin, pray keep an eye upon it.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Rispin touched the fore-cock of his hat and Drinkwater fell into a furious pacing of the deck. Forward the bell struck two and the sentries called their ritual ‘All’s well’ at hatch, companionway and entry, on fo’c’s’le and stern. It was two bells in the middle watch, one o’clock in the morning, bright as day and beneath his feet another man was dying.
It was the waste that appalled him most, that and the consideration that the loss of Narwhal, though it in no way affected the Melusine directly, seemed of some significance. He had liked Harvey, a tarpaulin commander of the finest sort, able, kindly and, in the end, heroic. Drinkwater began to see Narwhal’s loss as an epitome, a providential instruction, an illumination of a greater truth as he paced his few yards of scrubbed planking.
The folly of many had destroyed in a twinkling their own endeavours, a few had been victims of the consequence of this folly (for they had later learned that, in addition to the boy, two men were also missing). And one, upon whom all the responsibility had lain, was to be sacrificed; to die to no ultimate purpose, since Narwhal had been lost. Drinkwater could only feel a mounting anger at the irresponsibility of the men who had got among the spirits aboard the whaler. Renaudson had been furious with them, damning them roundly with all the obscene phrases at his disposal and yet Drinkwater began to feel a degree of anger towards himself. Perhaps he should not have had the masters to dinner; had Harvey been aboard Narwhal, his men might not have run wild. In that case Harvey would have been alive.
He clutched at his hat. ‘God damn it!’ he muttered to himself, suddenly mindful of his duty. Rispin had been right, the wind had an edge to it that promised more. He looked aloft, the pendant was like a bar, stretching towards the south-west as the gale began to rise from the north-east.
Drinkwater strode forward to the main rigging. Swinging himself onto the rail he began the ascent of the mainmast.
He felt the full violence of the gale by the time he reached the main top. It threatened to pluck him from the futtocks as he hung, back downwards. At the topgallant crossing, it tore at his clothes. He cursed as he struggled into the crow’s nest, realising that his preoccupation had lasted too long. Commanders of ships should not indulge in morbid reflections. Even before he had levelled the long glass he knew something was wrong.
To the north-east the lead was not only filling with loose ice floes, blown into it by the gale, but it was narrower; quite noticeably narrower. The great ice raft to which they were moored which had cracked away from the shelf to the north and west of them and which was, perhaps, some fifty or sixty miles square, must have been revolving. Drinkwater tried to imagine the physical reasons for this. Had it just been the onset of the gale? Could a few hours of rising wind turn such a vast island of ice so quickly? The logic of the phenomena defeated him. What was certain was that the lead had closed to windward; he did not need to take bearings to see that. He swung the glass the other way. If the ice island revolved, then surely the strait ought to open in that direction. It did not. Its unwillingness to obey the laws of nature as he conceived them disturbed Drinkwater. He was once again confronted by his ignorance. Kicking open the trapdoor, he dangled his legs for the topgallant ratlines.
Regaining the deck and without the ceremony required by the usages of the navy, he hastened precipitately down the makeshift gangplank onto the ice. Hurrying aboard Faithful he woke Sawyers with the news. The Quaker’s eyes told him what he already felt in his bones.
‘Thou dids’t right, Friend. Happen the Lord was about to punish our pride. We must make sail without delay and take this fair wind to the south-west. We have no need to linger. I pray thee do not delay, thy ship is not fit to withstand a single fastening in the ice. Go, go!’
The watches were swiftly alerted on the other whalers and within a few minutes the hands were being tumbled up on all the ships. Diana, the leewardmost would have to leave first, for the wind pinned them slightly onto the ice, but her sturdy sides withstood a scrape or two before her rudder bit and her head came off. Truelove’s bow nudged the remnants of Narwhal that had rested, half sunk, upon a ledge of ice, and she to stood out into the lead, her hands dropping the forecourse as well as setting the topsails. Melusine followed, her spirketting grinding on Narwhal as her bow was thrust out into open water. As the hands dropped the forecourse in its buntlines it occurred to Drinkwater, as one of those savage ironies truth thrust before him, that had not Narwhal’s burnt timbers lain like a fender ahead of them, the onshore wind might have pinned Melusine’s hull against the ice forever.
He looked astern as Diana, Earl Percy and Provident, bumped off the wreck and out into the safety of open sea. Then the six ships stood south-west, aware that the lead, once so wide and inviting, so apparently pe
rmanent and alive with whales, was already narrowing on either beam.
There was no longer any sign of a single whale.
PART THREE
The Fiord
‘(Men) live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure or caprice.’
Giambattista Vico (1668–1744)
Chapter Thirteen
July 1803
The Fate of the ‘Faithful’
Drinkwater kept the deck for three days. By the end of this time he was reduced to a stupor of fatigue, suffering from a quinsy and incipient toothache. But Melusine and the whalers had broken out of the lead to the south-west and, but for the presence of a thousand ice floes, were in what passed for ‘open’ water. Their escape from being set fast and crushed had been remarkable, as much for the danger to the ship as to the frequency of its occurrence. Perhaps twenty or thirty times, Drinkwater had lost count, they tacked, wore, or threw all aback to make a stern-board clear of impending doom. Many more times than this the hands bore lighter floes off with the spare spars. There were several minor injuries, one rupture and a case of crushed ribs amongst the men. The days of hunting parties were long forgotten, the yachting atmosphere paid for ten times over. Despite their best endeavours Melusine was several times jarred by collision with floes and the increasing number of growlers that bore witness to the high summer of the region.
There was little conviviality in gunroom or cockpit. On the berth deck the men rolled in or out of their hammocks as the watches changed, dog-tired, cold and miserable. Amid this atmosphere Macpherson ceased his ravings and quietly gave up the ghost, while Harvey now awash with opiates, continued to breathe with increasing difficulty. The internal routines of the ship went on, hammocks were piped up, the decks scrubbed, spirits served and the hands piped to their dinners. The mess kids were scoured and the hammocks piped down. The cook and his mates swore and blasphemed at the coppers, the bosun’s mates cursed at the hatchways, the loblolly boys in the cockpit as they cleared night soil from the sick.
On the quarterdeck Hill and Bourne bore the brunt of the activity, for Drinkwater had doubled the watches, and Rispin and Gorton were stationed in the waist, or forward, supervising the staving off of the ice.
And through it all Drinkwater kept the deck, his mind numbed with weariness, yet continually aware of every influence upon the movement of his ship. At moments of greatest peril he was the first to be aware of a sudden set towards a berg, the swirl of undertow suggesting the submerged presence of a growler or the catspaw of a squall from the turbulent lee of a large ice hummock. And it was Drinkwater who first suspected there might be something wrong with the rudder. It was nothing serious, a suspicious creaking when he listened from the privacy of the quarter-gallery latrine, a certain sluggishness as Melusine came to starboard. In fact it was at first only a suspicion, a figment, he thought, of an over-anxious mind. In the face of more pressing problems he tended to dismiss it. When he came below at the end of his three-day vigil as they drifted into the ‘open’ water and the wind, perversely, fell to a dead calm, he flung himself across his cot in grateful oblivion.
But when he woke, with Melusine rolling gently on a long, low swell, he heard again the creak from the rudder stock below.
Wearily he came on deck to find Hill on watch.
‘What time is it, Mr Hill?’
‘Six bells in the afternoon watch, sir.’
‘I have slept the clock round . . . tell me, do the quartermasters complain of the steering?’
‘No, sir.’ Drinkwater looked at the two men at the wheel.
‘How does she steer?’
‘She seems to drag a little, sir, a-coming to ’midships.’
‘When you’ve had helm which way?’
‘Larboard, I think, sir.’
‘Why didn’t you report it?’
The man shrugged. ‘Only noticed it today, sir, while we’ve bin tryin’ to catch this fluky wind, sir.’
‘Very well.’ He turned to Hill. ‘I’m mystified, Mr Hill, but we’ll keep an eye on it. Damned if I don’t think there’s something amiss, but what, I’m at a loss to know.’
‘Aye, aye, sir, I’ll take a look in the steerage if you wish.’ Drinkwater nodded and Hill slipped below to return a few minutes later shaking his head.
‘Nothing wrong, sir. Not that I can see.’
‘Very well.’
‘That whale hit the rudder, sir, and we’ve had a fair number of these damned ice floes . . .’
‘Deck there!’ They both looked aloft. ‘Deck there! Think I can see gun-fire three points to starboard!’
The two officers looked at each other, then Drinkwater shouted, ‘Silence there!’ They stood listening. A faint boom came rolling over the limpid water. ‘That’s gun-fire, by God!’ Drinkwater ran forward and swung himself up into the main rigging. As he climbed he stared about him, trying to locate the whalers, aware that they had become widely dispersed in their struggle through the ice. He could see Diana, about five miles away to the eastward and ahead of them eight, perhaps ten miles distant was Truelove. Yes, her barque rig could be plainly seen beneath the curved foot of the main topgallant. Earl Percy and Provident were also to the east. He struggled up into the crow’s nest as Leek slid agilely down.
‘Where away?’ gasped Drinkwater with the effort of his climb.
‘Four points now, sir. I think it’s where I last saw Faithful, sir, lost her behind a berg.’
‘Very well.’ He picked up the glass and stared to the south-west. He could see nothing. ‘Leek!’
‘Sir?’
‘Away to Mr Hill, ask him to rig out the booms and set stun’s’ls aloft and alow.’
‘Stun’s’ls aloft ’n’ alow, aye, sir.’ He watched Leek reach out like a monkey, over one hundred feet above the deck, and casually grab a backstay. The man diminished in size as he descended and Drinkwater levelled his glass once more. He felt the mast tremble as the topmen mounted the shrouds, he heard the mates and midshipmen as they supervised the rigging of the booms and the leading of outhauls and downhauls, heel-ropes and sheets. And then, as his patience was running out, he felt Melusine heel as she increased her speed. Five minutes later he located the Faithful.
She was fifteen or twenty miles away, perhaps more, for it was hard to judge. Her shape was vertically attenuated by refraction. She seemed to float slightly above the surface of the sea amid a city of the most fantastic minarets, a fairy-tale picture reminiscent of the Arabian Nights displaced to a polar latitude. But Drinkwater’s interest was diverted from the extraordinary appearance of refracted icebergs by the unusual shape alongside the Faithful. At first he took it for a mirror image of the whaler. But then he saw the little points of yellow light between the ships. Sawyers was a Quaker and carried no guns. The second image was a hostile ship; an enemy engaging Faithful. Drinkwater swore; he was seven leagues away in light airs at the very moment Earl St Vincent had foreseen his presence would be required to protect the whalers.
‘An enemy sir?’
‘Yes, Mr Bourne, at a guess twenty miles distant and already with a prize crew on board the Faithful, damn it . . . Mr Hill, bear up, bear up! D’you not see the growler on the starboard bow . . .’ Drinkwater broke off to cough painfully. His throat was rasped raw by the persistent demands made on him to shout orders, but he felt an overwhelming desire to press after the ship that had taken one of his charges from under his very nose.
‘I have a midshipman at the masthead and want a pair of young eyes kept on the enemy and prize until they’re both under our lee. The midshipman that loses sight of them will marry the gunner’s daughter!’ He coughed again. ‘Now double the watches, Mr Bourne, this may prove a long chase.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Bourne hesitated, unwilling to provoke a captain whom he knew to be short-tempered if his orders were not attended to without delay. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but what about the other ships?’
&nb
sp; ‘I have made them a signal to the effect that I am chasing an enemy to the south-west. My orders to them oblige them to close together. Let us hope they do what they are told, Mr Bourne.’
Bourne took the hint, touched the fore-cock of his hat and hurried off. Drinkwater swallowed with difficulty, swore, and set himself to pace the quarterdeck, leaving the business of working the ship through the ice to Hill until he was relieved by Bourne himself at eight bells. He was beyond shouting orders, feeling a mild fever coming on and worrying over the loss of the Faithful and the ominous creaking that came from the rudder. But Melusine handled well enough and after another hour Tregembo appeared to announce Drinkwater’s dinner, served late, as had become his custom in high latitudes to try and differentiate between day and night in the perpetual light.
It was while he was eating that Mr Frey came below to report they had lost the wind and the enemy.
‘What . . .?’ His voice whispered and he tried to clear his throat, ‘Upon what point of sailing was the enemy and prize when last seen, Mr Frey?’
‘Both ships were close hauled on the starboard tack, sir. They had a fair breeze before the fog closed in.’
‘And their heading?’
‘South-west, sir.’
‘Very well. Tell Mr Bourne to strike the stun’s’ls, and reduce to all plain sail. Double the forward lookouts and make good a course towards the south-west. A man to go to the mainmast head every hour to see if the enemy masts are above the fog. Kindly call me in two hours time.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Frey hesitated in the doorway.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘If you please, sir, Mr Bourne said I was to ask you if you wanted Mr Singleton to attend you?’
‘Damn Mr Bourne’s impertinence, Mr Frey, you’ve your orders to attend to . . .’ The boy fled and, rolling himself in his cloak, Drinkwater flung himself across his cot shivering.
Two hours later Mr Frey called him. Staggering to his feet, his head spinning, Drinkwater ascended to the quarterdeck. Although the thermometer registered some 36° Fahrenheit it seemed colder. Every rope and spar dripped with moisture and the decks were dark with it. Mr Bourne touched his hat and vacated his side of the quarterdeck. It could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as the ‘windward side’ for Melusine lay wallowing in a calm. Almost alongside her a ridge of ice, hummocked and cracked with apparent age gleamed wetly in the greyness. It was not daylight, neither was it night. The ship might have been the only living thing in an eternity of primordial mist, an atmosphere at once eerie and oppressive through which each creak of the ship’s fabric, each slat of idle canvas or groan of parrel as she rolled in the low swell, seemed invested with a more than ordinary significance. The grinding creak from the rudder stock seemed deafening now. Drinkwater was too sick to attribute this heightened perception to his fever, and too unsteady on his legs to begin to pace the deck. Instead he jammed himself against the rail close to the mizen rigging and beckoned Bourne over.
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