The Corvette

'Furs?'

'Aye, sir,' an impatient voice said and a small man shoved forward. 'Furs, sir, furs for the Frog army what Ellerby could sell at a profit…'

Drinkwater digested the news and a thought occurred to him.

'Do you know anything about two Hull whale ships that went missing last winter?' He looked round the half- circle of faces. Love's hand rubbed anxiously across his mouth and he shook his head, avoiding Drinkwater's eyes.

'We don't want no traitorous doin's, sir. We was coerced, like…' He fell silent. The word had been rehearsed, fed him by some sea-lawyer and he was lying, although Drinkwater knew there was not a shred of evidence to prove it. They would have profited under Ellerby, war or peace, so long as no supercilious naval officer stuck his interfering nose into their business.

Love seemed to have mustered his defences, prodded on by some murmuring behind him.

'When we realised what Ellerby was doing, sir, we wasn't 'aving none of it. We didn't obey 'im sir…' Drinkwater remembered Nimrod's failure to take full advantage of her position during the action.

'And Conqueror's people. How are they circumstanced?'

'We were coerced too, sir. Cap'n Waller threatened to withhold our proper pay unless we co- operated…'

Drinkwater stared at them. He felt a mixture of contempt and pity. He could imagine them under the malign influence of Ellerby and he remembered the ice-cold fanaticism in his eyes. The men began to shuffle awkwardly under his silent scrutiny. They were victims of their own weakness and yet they had caused the death of his men by their treachery.

'Would you wish to prove your loyalty to King and Country, then?' he asked, rising to his feet, the picture of a patriotic naval officer. Their eagerness to please, to fall in with his suggestion, verged on the disgusting.

'Very well. You will find work enough refitting the ships under the direction of my officers. You may go now. Return to your ships; but I warn you, the first man that fails to show absolute loyalty will swing.'

Their delight was manifest. It was the kind of thing they had hardly dared hope for. They nodded their thanks and shambled out.

'You may discharge the guard, sergeant,' Drinkwater addressed Mr Frey. 'Do you go to the two whale ships, Mr Frey, and ransack the cabins of Captain Ellerby and Captain Waller. I want the press-exemptions of every man- jack of those whale-men.'

Drinkwater regarded Waller with distaste. Without Ellerby he was pathetic and Drinkwater was conscious that, as a King's officer, he represented the noose to Waller. Somehow hanging was too just an end for the man. He had tried a brief, unconvincing and abject attempt at blustered justification which Drinkwater had speedily ended.

'It is useless to prevaricate, Captain Waller. Ellerby fired into a British man-o'-war wearing British colours and I am well aware, from information laid before me by men from Nimrod and Conqueror, that you and he were in traitorous intercourse with the enemy for the purposes of profit. That fact alone put you in breach of your oath not to engage in any other practice other than the pursuance of whale-fishing. What I wish to know, is to what precise purpose did you trade here and with whom?'

Waller's face had drained. Drinkwater slammed his fist on the cabin table. 'And I want to know now!'

Waller's jaw hung slackly. He seemed incapable of speech. Drinkwater sighed and rose. 'You may,' he said casually, 'consider the wisdom of turning King's Evidence. I do have enough testimony against you to see you swing, Waller…'

Drinkwater's certainty was overwhelmingly persuasive. Waller swallowed.

'If I turn King's Evidence…'

'Tell me the bloody truth, Waller, or by God I'll see you at the main yardarm before another hour is out!'

'It was Ellerby… he said it couldn't fail. We did well out of it during the peace. There seemed no reason not to go on. When the war started again, I tried to stop it. Aye, I said it weren't worth the risk like. But Ellerby said it were worth it. Happen I should have known'd better. Anyroad I went along wi'it…'

The dialect was thick now. Waller in the confessional was a man turned in upon himself, contemplating his weaknesses. Again Drinkwater felt that surge of pity for a fool caught up in the ambitions of a strong personality.

'Went along with what?' he asked quietly.

'Furs. French have this settlement. Just before Peace of Amiens Ellerby had run into a French privateersman, Jean Vrolicq. This Vrolicq offered us a handsome profit if we carried furs to England, like, and smuggled them across t'Channel. Easier, nay, safer than Vrolicq trying to run blockade. Furs for the French army taken to France in English smuggling boats…'

'Furs?' It was the second time Drinkwater queried the word, only this time he was more curious about the precise nature of the traffic and less preoccupied by the fate of the man before him.

'Aye, Cap'n. Furs for French army. They have bearskins on every cavalry horse, fur on them hussars…'

Drinkwater recollected the cartoons of the French army, the barefoot scarecrows motivated by Republican zeal… and yet he did not doubt Waller now. .

'We ran cargoes of fox, ermine, bear and hares… four hundred pounds clear profit on top o' what the fish brought in…'

'Very well, Captain Waller. You may put this in writing. I shall supply you with the necessaries.'

Drinkwater called the sentry and Waller was taken out.

It was a strange tale, yet, thinking back to his interviews with Earl St Vincent and Lord Dungarth he perceived the first strands of the mystery had been evident even then. That he had stumbled on the core of it was a mixture of good and bad luck that was compounded, for those who liked to think of such matters in a philosophical light, as the fortune of war.

He poured a glass of wine and listened to the noise around him. Melusine's jury rudder was being lifted and the blacksmith from Faithful was fashioning a yoke iron so that tiller lines might be fitted to its damaged head and so rigged for the passage home. Spars were being plundered from the Requin to refit the sloop and the Aurore was being put in condition to sail to Britain.

Mindful of the political strictures St Vincent had mentioned in respect of the whale fishery, Drinkwater was anxious that both Nimrod and Conqueror returned to the Humber. But his own desperate shortage of men prevented him from taking Requin home as a prize. He intended burning her before they left Nagtoralik Bay.

A knock at the cabin door preceded the entry of Obadiah Singleton. His blue jaw seemed more prominent as his face was haggard with exhaustion.

'Ah, Mr Singleton. What may I do to serve you?'

'I consider that I have completed my obligations to the sick, Captain Drinkwater. I shall leave them in the hands of Skeete…'

'God help them…'

'Amen to that. But there is work enough for me ashore…'

'You cannot be landed here, Mr Singleton, there is a French settlement…'

'Your orders were to land me, Captain Drinkwater. There are eskimos here. As for the French, I cannot think that you would invite them on board your ship…'

'My orders, Mr Singleton,' Drinkwater replied sharply, 'are to extirpate any French presence I find in Arctic waters. To that end I must root out and take prisoner any military presence ashore.'

'I think your concern for your own ship will not permit that,' Singleton said with a final certainty.

'What the devil d'you mean by that?'

'I mean that Mr Frey, whom you sent ashore for water, has returned with information that leads me to suppose the poor devils ashore here are afflicted with all the plagues of Egypt, Captain Drinkwater.'