‘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.
‘I think it should be named for the First Lord, Mr Q, except that he took his title off a Portuguese cape . . .’ Drinkwater was abstracted, watching the dancing catspaws of increasing wind sweep down from the mountainous coast two miles to the southwards.
‘How about Cape Jervis, sir,’ suggested Quilhampton who, if the captain did not decide quickly would name the promontory Cape Catriona.
‘A capital idea, Mr Q,’ then to the quartermaster, ‘Meet her, there, meet her.’
The katabatic squall hit the Melusine with sudden, screaming violence and the tiller party shuffled and tugged at the clumsy arrangement. It had succeeded in steering through an ice strewn lead that was now opening into what Meetuck called Sermiligaq: the fiord with many glaciers. Melusine, under g
reatly reduced canvas, leaned only slightly to the increased pressure of the wind and began to race westward with the cold wind coming down from the massive heights to larboard.
‘No-o botto-o-m . . .’
Curiosity had filled the quarterdeck. Those officers not engaged in the sailing of the ship or the rough surveying of the coast, formed in a knot around Singleton. The missionary’s eyes were alight with a proprietary fire as he pointed to the dark rock that rose in strata after horizontal strata, delineated by a rind of snow as erosion reduced successive layers, giving the appearance of a gigantic series of steps.
‘ . . . It is more impressive, gentlemen,’ Singleton was saying, ‘than either Crantz or Egedé had led me to believe, more remarkable, perhaps, than those bizarre stratifications found in the Hebrides because of the enormous extent of this coastline . . . Is it not possible to imagine such a land as inflaming the imagination of the old Norse harpers when they composed their sagas? A land wherein giants dwelt, eh?’
Drinkwater strode up and down, catching snatches of Singleton’s lyrical enthusiasm, watching the progress of the ship and casting an eye over the hurried mapping of the coastline. Hill had just completed a neat piece of triangulation from which he had established the elevation of the mountains closest to the extremity of Cape Jervis as 2,800 feet. From this he deduced a summit ten miles inland to the westward to be about 3,000 feet from its greater height. His proposal to name it after Melusine’s commander was gently rebuffed.
‘I think not, Mr Hill, flattering though it might be. Shall we call it after the ship, eh?’
So Mount Melusine it became, a name of which nature seemed to approve because even as they made the decision there came a crack like gunfire. For an instant all the faces on the deck looked round apprehensively, until Singleton laughingly drew their attention to the calving glacier, one of many frozen rivers that ran down to the sea in the valleys between those mighty summits.
They watched with awe the massive lump of ice as it broke clear of the glacier and rolled with an apparent gentle slowness into the sea, finding its own floating equilibrium to become just one more iceberg in the Arctic Ocean.
‘Nature salutes our eponymous ship, sir,’ said Singleton turning to Drinkwater.
‘Let us hope it is a salutation and not an omen, Mr Singleton. By the by, where is Meetuck?’
Singleton pointed forward. ‘Upon what I believe you term “the knightheads”, keeping a lookout for his kin, the Ikermiut.’
‘Their village lies hereabouts, on this inhospitable shore?’ Drinkwater indicated the mountains to the southward.
‘No sir, to the north, where the land is lower. That is what I believe Meetuck means when he says we will find an anchorage at Nagtoralik.
A lower coastline presented itself to them the following afternoon, but the lead failed to find the bottom and Meetuck was insistent that this was not the place. Nevertheless they stood close inshore and half a dozen glasses were trained upon the patches of surprising green undergrowth that sprouted between the dark outcrops of rock. There were flocks of eider ducks and geese paddling upon the black sandy beaches and Mr Frey spotted a whirring brace of willow grouse that rose into the air.
Melusine tacked offshore and Drinkwater luxuriated in the amazing warmth of the sun. It struck his shoulders, seeping into aching muscles and easing some of the tension he felt in his anxiety both for the ultimate safety of Melusine and also that of Sawyers and the Faithful. Forward, Meetuck still kept his self-appointed vigil, staring ahead and Drinkwater felt an odd reassurance in the sight, a growing confidence that the eskimo was right.
The sun was delicious and it was clear that its heat melted the snows, and the moraine deposits brought from higher ground by the action of the ice had deposited enough of a soil to root the chickweed and ground willow that covered the low shore. It argued an area that might support life, if only there was an anchorage . . .
They went about again and rounded a headland of frowning black rocks. It was a salient of the mountains that rose peak above peak to the distant, glistening nunataks. Standing close in, the dark, deeply fissured rocks showed a variety of colours in the sunshine where lodes of quartz and growths of multi-hued lichens relieved the drabness. They were also made uncomfortably aware of the existence of mosquitos, a surprising discovery and one that made even the philosophical Singleton short tempered.
Squatting on a carronade slide little Frey recorded the drab appearance of the rocks as a shrewdly observed mixture of greys, deep red and dark green. His brush and pencil had been busy since they had first sighted land and the active encouragement of the captain had silenced the jeers of Walmsley and Glencross, at least in public.
Above them the cliff reared, precipitous to man, but composed of a million ledges where the stains of bird-lime indicated the nesting sites of kittiwakes and auks. A number still perched on these remote spots, together with the sea-parrots whose brilliant coloured beaks glowed like tiny jewels in the blazing sunshine.
Alongside, an old bull seal rose, his nostrils pinching and opening, while two pale cubs, the year’s progeny, dived as the shadow of the ship fell upon them. As they cleared the cape open water appeared to the westward, bounded to the northern shore by another distant headland. From forward came a howl of delight from Meetuck. He pointed west, down the channel where distant mountains rose blue against the sky.
Singleton crossed the deck, his ear cocked to catch Meetuck’s words.
‘It seems, sir, that the anchorage of Nagtoralik lies at the head of this fiord.’
Drinkwater nodded. ‘Let us hope that it is the providential refuge that we so desperately need, Mr Singleton.’
‘And where you can land me,’ answered Singleton in a low voice, staring ahead.
Daylight diminished to a luminous twilight for the six hours that the sun now dipped beneath the horizon. The brief arctic summer was fast fading and with its warmth gone the wind dropped and a dripping fog settled over the ship. Lines hung slack and the sails slatted impotently. After the warmth of the day the chill, grey midnight struck cold throughout the ship, though in fact the mercury in the thermometer had fallen far lower among the ice-bergs of the Greenland Sea.
Shivering in his cabin Drinkwater wrote up his journal, expressing his anxiety over the state of Melusine’s steering gear and his inability to find and rescue Sawyers.
Assuming that we are able to effect repairs to the rudder by hauling down I am not optimistic of locating the Faithful. The lack of belligerence in Captain Sawyers made of him and his ship a gift to the marauding French and it is unlikely that we shall be of further use to him.
He paused, unwilling to admit to himself the extent of his sense of failure in carrying out Earl St Vincent’s orders. At the moment the very real anxieties of a safe haven, the possibility of carrying out effective repairs and of returning to join the whalers for the homeward convoy were more immediately demanding. With a sigh he turned to a more domestic matter.
My desire to anchor will, of necessity, rob me of the services of Mr Singleton who is determined to pursue his mission among the eskimo tribes. I am torn between admiration and . . . He paused. He had been about to write ‘contempt’, but that would not be accurate, despite the fact that he considered Singleton a fool to think he could either convert the eskimos or survive himself. He did not doubt that men imbued with Singleton’s religious zeal could endure incredible hardships, but his own years of seafaring had taught him never to gamble with fate, always to weigh the chances carefully before deciding upon a course of action. He had never seen himself as a dashing sea-officer of the damn-the-consequences type. Drinkwater sighed again. He admired Singleton for his fortitude and he was in awe of his faith. He scratched out his last sentence and wrote:
I admire Singleton’s courage at undertaking his mission, but I do not understand the power of his faith. His presence on board as a surgeon will be sorely missed, but I fear my remonstrances fall upon deaf ears and he is determine
d to remain upon this coast.
Soon afterwards Drinkwater’s head fell forward upon his chest and he dozed.
‘Captain, sir! Captain, sir!’
‘Eh? What is it?’ Drinkwater woke with a start, cold and held in a rigor of stiff muscles.
‘Mr Quilhampton’s compliments, sir, and there’s a light easterly breeze, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mr Frey, I’ll be up.’
The boy disappeared and Drinkwater dragged himself painfully to his feet. On deck he found the fog as dense as ever, but above his head the squared yards spread canvas before the light wind. Quilhampton touched his hat.
‘Mornin’ sir.’
‘Mornin’ Mr Q.’
‘Wind’s increasing sir. Course west by north. Beggin’ your pardon sir, but d’you wish us to heave to, sir, or, if we stand on to sound minute guns?’
‘D’you sound minute guns, Mr Q, and post a midshipman forrard to sing out the instant he hears an echo. We will put the ship on the wind and the moment that occurs on a course of east-nor’-east.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Drinkwater fell to pacing the quarterdeck. Before the fog closed down they had seen the fiord open to the westward. They could stand down it with a reasonable degree of safety, provided of course that they heard no echoes close ahead from the towering cliffs in answer to their minute guns. Eight bells rang, the end of the middle watch, four o’clock in the morning and already the sun had risen. He longed for its warmth to penetrate the nacreous vapour, consume the fog and ease the pain in his shoulder.
It was six hours later before the fog began to disperse. The wind had fallen light again and their progress had been slow, measured only by the anxious barking of the minute gun and the hushed silence that followed it. They saw distant mountain peaks at first and it became clear that they were reaching the head of the fiord for they lay ahead, on either bow and either beam. Snow gleamed as the sun seemed suddenly fierce and the fog changed from a pervasive cloud to dense wraiths and then drew back to reveal a little, misty circle of sea about them while the cliffs seemed to reach downwards from the sky.
The Corvette Page 23