The Corvette

by Richard Woodman

  ‘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 plenitude 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 pursuaded 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 other 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.’

  ‘And left him to the polar bears, eh?’

  ‘Exactly so, sir.’

  Singleton had reached under the man’s jerkin and was palpating the stomach. Curiously the eskimo did not seem to mind but began to point to his mouth.

  ‘He’s had little to eat, sir, for some time,’ Singleton stood back, ‘and I doubt whether soap has ever touched him.’ Several noses wrinkled in disgust.

  ‘Very well. Take him below and get that arm dressed. Give the poor devil some laudanum, Mr Singleton. As for the rest of you, you may give me a full account of your adventure at dinner.’ He turned aft and nearly bumped into little Frey. ‘Ah, Mr Frey . . .’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do you think you could execute a small sketch of our friend?’

  ‘Of course sir.’

  ‘Very good, I thank you.’

  The meal itself proved a great success. The trestle table borrowed from the wardroom groaned under the weight of fresh meat, an unusual circumstance in a man-of-war. In an ill-disguised attempt to placate his commander Lord Walmsley had offered Drinkwater two bottles of brandy which the latter did not refuse. The conversation was naturally about the afternoon’s adventure and Drinkwater learnt of little Frey’s sudden, frightening discovery of the sleeping polar bear which the boy re-told, his eyes alight with wine and the excitement of recollected fear. He heard again how Quilhampton, his musket resting in his wooden hand, had struck the animal in the shoulder and how Mount had established his military superiority by lodging a ball in the bear’s skull.

  ‘By comparison Bourne’s triumph’s over the seals was of no account, sir, ain’t that so, Bourne?’ Mount said teasing his young colleague.

  ‘That is an impertinence, Mount, if I had not had to secure the boat while you all raced in pursuit of quarry I should have downed the beast with a single shot.’

  ‘Pah!
’ said Mount grinning, ‘you should have left the boat to Walmsley or Glencross. I conceive it that you were hanging back from the ferocity of those somnolent seals.’

  ‘Come, sir,’ said Bourne with mock affront, ‘d’you insinuate that I was frightened of an old bear who ran away at the approach of Mr Frey . . .’

  Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy coloured scarlet, uncertain how to take this banter from his seniors. Was Bourne implying the bear was scared by his own size or his own courage? Or that polar bears really were timid and his moment of triumph was thereby diminished?

  Drinkwater felt for the boy, particularly as Walmsley and Glencross joined the raillery. ‘Oh, Mr Bourne, the bear was absolutely terrified of Frey, why I saw him positively roll his eyes in terror at the way Frey hefted his musket. Did you not see that, Glencross?’ asked Lord Walmsley mischievously.

  ‘Indeed I did, why I thought he was loading with his mouth and firing with his knees . . .’ There was a roar of laughter from the members of the hunting party who had witnessed the excited midshipman ascend an ice hummock with a Tower musket bigger than himself. He had stumbled over the butt, tripped and fallen headlong over the hummock, discharging the gun almost in the ear of the recumbent bear.

  Poor Frey was in no doubt now, as to the purpose of his senior’s intentions. Drinkwater divined something of the boy’s wretchedness.

  ‘Come, gentlemen, there is no need to make Mr Frey the butt of your jest . . .’

  There was further laughter, some strangled murmurs of ‘Butt . . . butt . . . oh, very good, sir . . . very apt’ and eventual restoration of some kind of order.

  ‘Well, Mr Singleton,’ said Drinkwater to change the subject and addressing the sober cleric, ‘what d’you make of our eskimo friend?’

  ‘He is named Meetuck, sir and is clearly frightened of white men, although he seems to have reconciled himself to us after he was offered meat . . .’

  ‘Which he ate raw, sir,’ put in Frey eagerly.

  ‘ ’Pon my soul, Mr Frey, raw, eh? Pray continue, Mr Singleton.’

  ‘He claims to come from a place called Nagtoralik, meaning a place with eagles, though this may mean nothing as a location as we understand it, for these people are nomadic and follow their food sources. He says . . .’

  ‘Pardon my interruption, Mr Singleton but do I understand that you converse with him?’

  Singleton smiled his rare, dark smile. ‘Well not converse, sir, but there are words that I comprehend which, mixed with gesture, mime and some of Mr Frey’s quick drawings, enabled us to learn that he had found a putulik, a place with a hole in the ice through which he was presumably catching fish when he was attacked by a bear. He made his escape but in doing so fell and injured himself, breaking his arm. I think that scuppers the arguments of Mr Frey’s persecutors, sir, that even an experienced hunter may fall in such terrain and also that the polar bear is capable of great ferocity.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Singleton, I believe it does,’ replied Drinkwater drily. Cawkwell drew the cloth in his silent ghost-like way and the decanters began to circulate.

  ‘Tell us, Mr Singleton how you came to learn eskimo,’ asked Mount, suddenly serious in the silence following the loyal toast.

  Singleton leaned forward with something of the proselytiser, and the midshipmen groaned inaudibly, but sat quiet, gulping their brandy avidly.

  ‘The Scandinavians were the first Europeans to make contact with the coast of Greenland sometime in the tenth century. Their settlements lasted for many years before being destroyed by the eskimos in the middle of the fourteenth century. When the Englishman John Davis rediscovered the coast in 1585 he found only eskimos. Davis,’ Singleton turned his gaze on the midshipmen with a pedagogic air, ‘gave his name to the strait between Greenland and North America . . . The Danish Lutheran Hans Egedé was able to study the innuit tongue before embarking with his family and some forty other souls to establish a permanent colony on the West Coast of Greenland. When he returned to Copenhagen on the death of his wife he wrote a book about his work with the eskimos among whom he preached and taught for some fifteen years. His son Povel remained in Greenland and completed a translation of Our Lord’s Testament, a catechism and a prayer book in eskimo. Povel Egedé died in Copenhagen in ’89 and I studied there under one of his assistants.’ Singleton paused again and this time it was Drinkwater upon whose face his gaze fixed.

  ‘I refused to leave during the late hostilities and was in the city when Lord Nelson bombarded it.’

  ‘That,’ replied Drinkwater meeting Singleton’s eyes, ‘must have been an interesting experience.’

  ‘Indeed, Captain Drinkwater, it persuaded me that no useful purpose can be served by armed force.’

  A sense of affront stiffened the relaxing diners. To a man their eyes watched Drinkwater to see what reply their commander would make to this insult to their profession. From little Frey, ablaze with brandy and bravado; the arrogant insensitivity of Walmsley and Glencross and the puzzlement of Mr Quilhampton, to the testy irritation of a silent Mr Hill and the colouring anger of Mr Mount, the table seethed with a sudden unanimous indignation. Drinkwater smiled inwardly and looked at his first lieutenant. Mr Germaney had said not a word throughout the entire meal, declined the brandy and merely toyed with his food.

  ‘That, Mr Singleton, is an interesting and contentious point. For my own part, and were the world as perfect as perhaps its maker intended, I should like nothing better than to agree with you. But since the French do not seem to be of your opinion the matter seems likely to remain one for academic debate, eh? Well, Mr Germaney, what do you think of Mr Singleton’s proposition?’

  The first lieutenant seemed at first not to have heard Drinkwater. Hill’s nudge was far from surreptitious and Germaney surfaced unsure of what was required of him.

  ‘I . . . er, I have no great opinion on the matter, sir,’ he said hurriedly, hoping the reply sufficient. Remarking the enormity of Germaney’s abstraction with some interest Drinkwater turned to the bristling marine officer.

  ‘Mr Mount?’

  ‘Singleton’s proposition is preposterous, sir. The Bible is full of allusions to the use of violence, Christ’s own eviction of the money-lenders from the Temple notwithstanding. Had he argued the wisdom of bombarding a civilian population I might have had some sympathy with his argument for it is precisely to preserve our homes that we serve here, but the application of force is far from useless . . .’

  ‘But might it not become an end, rather than a means, Mr Mount?’ asked Singleton, ‘and therefore to be discouraged lest its use be undertaken for the wrong motives.’

  ‘Well a man does not stop taking a little wine in case he becomes roaring drunk and commits some felonious act, does he?’

  ‘Perhaps he should, Mr Mount,’ said Singleton icily, raising a glass of water to his lips.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Mr Singleton,’ said Hill at last. ‘I can see you may argue that if Cain had never slain Abel the world might have been a better place but given that it is not paradise, do you advocate that we simply lie down and invite our enemies to trample over us?’

  ‘To turn the other cheek and beat our swords into ploughshares?’ added Mount incredulously.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Singleton with impressive simplicity. There was a stunned silence while they assimilated the preposterous nature of this suggestion. Then the table erupted as the officers leaned forward with their own reasons for the impossibility of such a course of action. The candle flames guttered under the discharge of air from several mouths. In the ensuing babel Drinkwater heard such expressions as ‘march unchecked on London . . . dishonour our women . . . destroy our institutions . . . rape . . . loot . . . national honour . . .’

  He allowed the reaction to continue for some seconds before banging sharply on the table.

  ‘Gentlemen, please!’ They subsided into silence. ‘Gentlemen, you must have some regard for Mr Singleton’s cloth. Preposterous as his idea sounds to you, yo
ur own conversations have disturbed him these past weeks. He doubtless finds equally odd your own assertions that you will “thrash Johnny Crapaud”, “cut the throats of every damned frog” you encounter not to mention “flog any man that transgresses the Articles of War or the common usages of the service”. Yet you appear devout enough when Divine Service is read, an act which Mr Singleton may regard as something close to hypocrisy . . . eh?’ He looked round at them, his eyes twinkling as he encountered mystification or downright astonishment.

  ‘Now, if you ignore abstract considerations and deal with the pragmatic you will see that we have all chosen professions which require zeal. In Mr Singleton’s case religious zeal and in your case, gentlemen, the professional zeal of strict adherence to duty. Zeal is not something that admits of much prevarication or equivocation and since argument and debate might be said to be synonyms for quibbling, your two positions are quite irreconcilable. And if two opposing propositions are irreconcilable I would suggest the arguing of them a fatuous waste of time.’

  Drinkwater finished his speech with his eyes on Singleton. The man appeared disappointed, as though expecting unreserved support from Drinkwater. He felt slightly guilty towards Singleton, as though owing him some explanation.

  ‘I believe in providence, Mr Singleton, which you might interpret as God’s will. To me it incorporates all the forces that you theologists claim as evoked by “God” whilst satisfactorily explaining those you do not. It is a creed much favoured by sea-officers.’

  ‘Then you do not believe in God, Captain Drinkwater,’ pronounced Singleton dolefully, ‘and the power of your intellect prevents you from spiritual conversion.’

  Drinkwater inclined his head. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Then I find that a matter of the profoundest sadness, sir,’ Singleton replied quietly. The silence in the cabin was touching; even Walmsley and Glencross had ceased to wriggle, though their condition was more attributable to the brandy they had consumed than interest in polemics.