The Corvette

Quilhampton.

'Well, I'm damned,' he said shortly, looking briefly at a 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 Meiusine 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. Egede did not mention red snow…'[4]

'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, clouded by the eskimo'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 aquitseq, a nameless place. It is also anoritok, very windy, and there are no fish, especially capelin. Soon, he says, we will see vivak, which is a cape to be skirted and beyond it we will see ikersak, 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 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 greatly 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 Egede 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