The Corvette

And pulled the trigger.

Chapter Eight Balaena Mysticetus

 June 1803

'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 on 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.