The Corvette

and wriggled up inside.

'Nothink unusual, yer honour,' the lookout had reported as they passed in the rigging. Settling himself on the closed trap Drinkwater swept the horizon. He could see open water to the south and a whaler which he recognised as one of the Whitby ships. The drift ice closed to open pack within a mile of them and he counted the whalers still inside the ice within sight of the ship. Reckoning on visibility of some forty miles, he was pleased to identify all his charges and to note that most had boats out among the floes. One ship's boats were engaged in towing a whale, tail first, back to their ship while two vessels were engaged in flensing.

A number of tall, pinnacled bergs could be seen three or four miles away, while one huge castellated monster lay some ten miles off to the north-north-eastward.

Satisfied he lifted the trap with his toe by the rope grommet provided and eased himself down. Nodding to the waiting seaman at the cross trees. 'Very well, Appleyard, up you go again.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' The man scrambled up to the relative warmth of the nest and Drinkwater noted the scantiness of his clothing. He descended to the deck where Bourne, the officer of the watch, saluted him. Drinkwater was warmed by the climb and in a good humour. 'Mr Bourne, I'd be obliged if you and your midshipmen would join me for dinner.'

He went below and sent for the purser. When Mr Pater arrived Drinkwater ordered an issue of additional warm clothing at his own expense to be made to topmen. Then he sent for Mr Mount.

'Sir?' Mount stood rigidly to attention, promptly attentive to Drinkwater's summons.

'Ah, Mr Mount, I wish you to take advantage of every opportunity of taking seal and any bears to fabricate some additional warm clothing. Mr Pater informs me our stocks are barely adequate and I rely upon your talents with a musket to rectify the situation. See Mr Germaney and take a boat this afternoon. The signal for recall will be three guns.'

'Yes, sir, with pleasure.'

'I perceived a few seals basking about two miles to the east.'

'Thank you, sir. I'll take a party and see what we can accomplish.'

Drinkwater watched the hunting party leave. Fitting out the cutter for the expedition as if for a picnic Mount, Bourne, Quilhampton and Frey had been joined at the last minute by Lord Walmsley and Alexander Glencross. Mr Germaney had relieved Bourne of the deck and Mount had ensured the seamen at the oars each took a cutlass as a skillet for butchering the meat. Drinkwater toyed with the idea of watching their progress from the crow's nest but rejected it as a pointless waste of time and advised Germaney to keep a sharp watch for the onset of a fog and fire the recall the moment he thought it possible.

In the still air he heard an occasional pop through the open window of his stern lights as he recorded the air temperature and dipped a thermometer into the sea. Closing the sash frame he sat, blew on his hands and wrote:

Sawyers sends to me that he is confident this will be a good season. The sea is of a rich, greenish hue which he says indicates a plentitude of plankton and krill, tiny forms of life upon which Mysticetus feeds. He states that his men took a Razorback, an inferior species offish which contains little oil and sinks on dying. There is a strange remote beauty about these regions and they seem far from the realities of war. I begin to think my Lord St Vincent too sanguine in his expectations.

Drinkwater snapped the inkwell shut and leaned back in his chair. Five minutes later he was asleep. He was woken by a confused bedlam of shouts that persuaded him they were attacked. He had slept for several hours and was stiff and uncomfortable. The sudden awakening alarmed him to the extent of reaching the door before he heard the halloos and the laughter. Muttering about the confounded hunting party he slumped back into his chair, rubbing his shoulder.

'Pass word for my coxswain!' he bawled at the sentry, listening to the order reverberate forward. Tregembo knocked and entered with the familiarity of a favoured servant. 'Coffee, zur?'

'Aye, and a bath.'

'A bath, zur?'

'Yes, God damn it! A bath, a cold bath of sea-water! You've seen three boats of whale-fishers upset in it and it'll not kill me.'

'Aye, aye, zur.' Tregembo's tone was disapproving.

'And find out what happened to Mr Mount's huntin' party.'

Despite his desire for invigoration the bath was unbelievably cold. But in the flush of blood as he towelled himself and put on the clean under-drawers laid out by Tregembo, he felt a renewal of spirits. What he had not written in his journal but which had taken root in his mind and filled it upon waking in such discomfort, was the growing conviction that Melusine's services in the Arctic were going to be purely formal. The strange beauty of the ice and sea did not blind him to the dangers that a fog or storm could summon up, but the necessity of endangering his ship for such a needless cause, for working his crew hard to maintain their martial valour to no purpose, set a problematical task for their captain.

He drew the clean shirt over his head as his steward brought in the coffee.

'Thank you, Cawkwell, on the table if you please, and pass word to Mr Mount to come and see me.'

'Sir,' whispered Cawkwell, a shadow of a man who seemed in constant awe of everybody. Drinkwater suspected Tregembo of specially selecting Cawkwell as his servant so that his own ascendant position was not undermined.

'I told Mr Mount to wait until you'd had your bath, zur,' he waited until Cawkwell had left the cabin, 'when you was less megrimish.'

Drinkwater looked up. 'Damn you for your insolence, Tregembo,' Tregembo grinned, 'you should try a bath, yourself.' Tregembo sniffed with disapproval and the knock of Mr Mount put an end to the familiarities.

'Enter!'

Mount, wrapped in his great-coat, stepped into the cabin. 'Ah, Mr Mount, what success did you have, eh?'

'A magnificent haul, sir, eleven seals and,' Mount's eyes were gleaming with triumph, 'a polar bear, sir!'

'A polar bear?'

'Yes, sir. Mr Frey discovered him asleep alongside a seal that he had partly eaten. He got the scent of us and made off into the water but, I suppose conceiving himself safe after putting a distance between us, clambered up onto another floe. Quilhampton and I both hit him and he made off, but we called up the boat and I got a second ball into his brain at about sixty paces.'

Drinkwater raised his eyebrows. 'A triumph indeed, Mr Mount, my congratulations.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Now we will butcher the seals but have a party skin them and scrape the inside of the skins. I asked Mr Germaney to determine whether any of the people were conversant with tanning.'

'Yes, sir. Er, there's one thing, sir.'

'Yes? What is it?'

'We brought back an eskimo, sir.'

'You did what?'

'Brought back an eskimo.'

'God bless my soul!'

After this revelation Drinkwater could no longer resist inspecting the trophies. The eskimo proved to be a young male, who appeared to have broken his arm. He was dressed in skins and had a wind-tanned face. His dark almond eyes were clouded with fear and pain and he held his left arm with his right hand. Mr Singleton was examining him with professional interest.

'A fine specimen of an innuit, Captain, about twenty years of age but with a compound fracture of the left ulna and considerable bruising. I understand he resisted the help of Mount and his party.'

'I see. What do you propose to do with him Mr Singleton? We can hardly turn him loose with his arm in such a state, yet to detain him seems equally unjust. Perhaps his family or huntin' party are not far away.' Drinkwater turned to Mount. 'Did you see any evidence of other eskimos?'

'No, sir. Mr Frey ascended an eminence and searched the horizon but nothing could be seen. He is very lucky, sir, we were some way from the ship and returning when we happened to see him. If he had not moved we would have passed him by'