The Corvette

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 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 too 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 fore-course 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 permanent 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 of caprice.'

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)

Chapter Thirteen The Fate of the 'Faithful'

July 1803 

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 as 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