The Corvette

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Mr Germaney has expired.’

  ‘Oh.’ There seemed little else to say except, ‘Thank you, Mr Singleton.’

  Frozen to the marrow Singleton made his way to the companionway. As he swung himself down a second dollop of spray caught him and Number Nine gun roared again. Reaching the sanctuary of his cabin he flung himself on his knees.

  Afterwards Drinkwater was uncertain how long they nursed the gig through that desperate night, for night it must have been. Certainly the fog obscured much of the sunlight and prevented even a glimpse of the sun itself so that it became almost dark. After the twists and turns of their passage through the ice, and his preoccupation in avoiding damage to the boat, Drinkwater had to admit to being lost. The pain in his neck and the growing numbness of his extremities seemed to dull his brain so that his mental efforts were reduced to the sole consideration of keeping the boat reasonably dry and as close to the wind as they were able. He dare not run off before it for, although its effect would be less chilling, he feared far more the prospect of being utterly lost, while every effort he made to retain his position increased his chances of being not too far distant from the whalers or the Melusine when the fog lifted.

  The boat’s crew spent a miserable night and at one point he recovered sufficient awareness to realise he had his arm round the shoulders of little Frey who was shuddering uncontrollably and trying desperately to muffle the chattering of his teeth and the sobbing of his breath. Tregembo and Quilhampton huddled together, their familiarity readily breaking down the barriers of rank, while further forward the other men groaned, swore and crouched equally frozen.

  Occasionally Drinkwater rallied, awakened to full consciousness by a sudden, agonising spasm in his shoulder, only to curse the self-indulgence that had led to this folly and probable death. He realised with a shock that he was not much moved by the contemplation of death, and with it came the realisation that his hands and feet felt warmer. For a second sleep threatened to overwhelm him and he knew it was the kiss of approaching death. A picture of Charlotte Amelia and Richard Madoc swam before his eyes, he tried to conjure up Elizabeth but found it impossible. Then he became acutely aware that the boy beside him was his son, not the baby he had left behind, but Richard at ten or eleven years. The boy’s face was glowing, his full lips sweet and his eyes the deep brown of his mother’s.

  ‘Farewell, father,’ the boy was saying, ‘farewell, for we shall never meet again . . .’

  ‘No, stay . . .!’ Drinkwater was fully conscious, his mind filled with the departing vision of his son. A seaman whose name he could not remember looked aft from the bow. Drinkwater came suddenly to himself, aware that the extremities of his limbs were lifeless. He tried to move the midshipman. Mr Frey was asleep.

  ‘Mr Frey! Mr Frey! Wake up! Wake up, all of you! Wake up, God damn it . . . and you, forrard, why ain’t you holloaing like you were ordered . . . Come on holloa! All of you holloa and sing! Sing God damn and blast you, clap your hands! Stamp your feet! Mr Frey give ’em grog and make the bastards sing . . .’

  ‘Sing, sir?’ Frey awoke as though recalled from a distant place.

  ‘Aye, Mr Frey, sing!’

  Realisation awoke slowly in the boat and men groaned with the agony of moving. But Frey passed the keg of grog and they drained it greedily, the raw spirit quickening their hearts and circulation so that they at last broke into a cracked and imperfect chorus of ‘Spanish Ladies’.

  And just as suddenly as Drinkwater had roused them to sing, he commanded them to silence. They sat, even more dejected now that the howl of the wind reasserted itself and the boat bucked up and down and water slopped inboard over them.

  The minute gun sounded again.

  ‘A six-pounder, by God!’

  ‘M’loosine, zur,’ said Tregembo grinning.

  ‘Listen for the next to determine whether the distance increases.’ They sat silent for what seemed an age. The concussion came again.

  ‘ ’Tis nearer, zur.’

  ‘Further away . . .’

  They sat through a further period of tense silence. The gun sounded yet again.

  Three voices answered at once. They were unanimous, ‘Nearer!’

  ‘Let us bear off a little, Mr Q. Remain silent there and listen for the guns, but each man is to chafe his legs . . . Mr Frey perhaps you would oblige me by checking the priming of those muskets. Then you had better rub Mr Q’s calves. His hand may be impervious to the cold but his legs ain’t.’

  Half an hour later they were quite sure the Melusine’s guns were louder, but the sea was rising and water entering the boat in increasing amounts. The hands were employed baling and Drinkwater decided it was time they discharged the muskets. They waited for the sound of the guns. The boom seemed slightly fainter.

  The muskets cracked and they waited for some response. Nothing came. The next time the minute gun fired it was quite definitely further away.

  The fog lifted a little towards dawn. Those on Melusine’s quarterdeck could see a circle of tossing and streaked water some five cables in radius about them.

  ‘With this increase in visibility, Mr Bourne, I think we can afford to take a chance. I suggest we put the ship about and stand back to the northward for a couple of hours.’

  Bourne considered the proposition. ‘Very well, Mr Hill, see to it.’

  Melusine jibbed at coming into the wind under such reduced canvas as she was carrying and Hill wore her round. She steadied on the larboard tack, head once more to the north and Hill transferred the duty gun-crew to a larboard gun. It was pointless firing to windward. After a pause the cannon, Number Ten, roared out. Melusine groaned as she rose and fell, occasionally shuddering as a sea broke against her side and sent the spray across her rail.

  ‘Sir! Sir!’ Midshipman Gorton was coming aft from the foremast where he had been supervising the coiling of the braces.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m certain I heard something ahead, sir . . .’

  ‘In this wind . . .?’

  ‘A moment, Mr Rispin, what did you hear?’

  ‘Well sir, it sounded like muskets, sir . . .’

  The quarterdeck officers strained their eyes forward.

  ‘Fo’c’s’le there!’ roared Hill. ‘Keep your eyes open, there!’

  ‘There sir! There!’ Midshipman Gorton was crouching, his arm and index finger extended over the starboard bow.

  ‘Mark it, Mr Gorton, mark it. Leggo lee mizen braces, there! Mizen yards aback!’

  ‘Thank God,’ breathed Mr Rispin.

  ‘Thank Hill and Gorton, Mr Rispin,’ said Lieutenant Bourne.

  Mr Frey saw the ship a full minute before Mr Gorton heard the muskets.

  ‘Drop the sail, Mr Q! Man the oars my lads, your lives depend upon it!’

  They were clumsy getting the oars out, their tired and aching muscles refusing to obey, but Tregembo cursed them from the after thwart and set the stroke.

  Drinkwater took them across Melusine’s bow to pull up from leeward. He could see the sloop was hove-to and making little headway but he felt easier when he saw the mizen topsail backed.

  As they approached it was clear that even on her leeward side it was going to be impossible to recover the boat. He watched as several ropes’ ends were flung over the side and men climbed into the chains to assist. The painter was caught at the third and increasingly feeble throw and the gig was dashed against Melusine’s spirketting and then her chains. The tie-rods extending below the heavy timbers of the channels smashed the gunwhale of the boat, but as the gig dropped into the hollow of the sea Drinkwater saw one pair of legs left dangling over the ledge of the chains where willing hands reached down. It was not a time for prerogative and Drinkwater refused to leave the boat until all the others were safe. He had little fear for the seamen, for all were fit, agile and used to scrambling about. But Frey was very cold and his limbs were cramped. Drinkwater called for a line and a rope snaked down into the boat. He passed a bowline round Fr
ey’s waist as the men scrambled out of the boat. As the gig rose and the rope was hauled tight, Drinkwater tried to support the boy. Suddenly the boat fell, half rolling over as the inboard gunwhale caught again and threatened to overset it. Frey dangled ten feet overhead, the line rigged from the cro’jack yardarm had plucked him from the boat. One of his shoes fell past Drinkwater as he grabbed a handhold. He looked down to find the gig half full of water. The mizen whip was already being pulled inboard and Drinkwater shouted.

  ‘Mr Q! Up you go!’ Quilhampton waited his moment. As the boat rose he leapt, holding his wooden left hand clear and extending his right. He missed his footing but someone grabbed his extended arm and his abdomen caught on the edge of the channel. Hands grabbed the seat of his trousers and he was dragged inboard winded and gagging.

  Only Drinkwater was left. He felt impossibly weak. Above him the whole ship’s company watched. He was aware of Tregembo, wet to the skin and frozen after his ordeal, leaning outboard from the main chains. One hand was extended.

  ‘Come on, zur!’ he shouted, a trace of his truculent, Cornish independence clear in his eyes.

  Drinkwater felt the boat rise sluggishly beneath him. She would not swim for many more minutes. He leaped upwards, aware that his outstretched arm was only inches from Tregembo’s hand, but the boat fell away and he with it, suddenly up to his waist in water as the gig sank under him.

  ‘Here, zur, here!’

  He felt the rope across his shoulders and with a mighty effort passed a bight about his waist, holding the rope with his left hand and the loose end with his right. He felt himself jar against the barnacled spirketting and the weight on his left arm told where he hung suspended by its feeble grip, then that too began to slide while he tried to remember how to make a one-handed bowline with his right hand. Then Melusine gave a lee roll and a sea reached up under his shoulders. He was suddenly level with the rail, could see the faces lining the hammock nettings. In an instant the sea would drop away again as the sloop rolled to windward. He felt the support of the water begin to fall yet he was quite unable to remember how to make that first loop.

  Then hands reached out for him. He was grabbed unceremoniously. The sea dropped away and he was pulled over the nettings and laid with gentle respect upon the deck. He looked up to see the face of Singleton.

  ‘The mercy of God, Captain Drinkwater,’ he said, ‘has been extended to us all this day . . .’

  And the fervent chorus of ‘Amens’ surprised even the semi-conscious Drinkwater.

  Chapter Ten

  July 1803

  The Seventy-second Parallel

  ‘Sir! Sir!’

  Drinkwater swam upwards from a great depth and was aware that Midshipman Wickham was shaking him. ‘Eh? What is it?’

  ‘Mr Rispin’s compliments, sir, but would you come on deck.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly eight bells in the morning watch, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’ He longed to fling himself back into his cot for he had been asleep no more than three or four hours and every muscle in his body ached. He idled for a moment and heard a sudden wail of pipes at the companionways and the cry for all hands as Melusine’s helm went down and she came up into the wind. Two minutes later, in a coat and greygoe that were still wet under his tarpaulin, he was on deck.

  ‘The smell made me suspicious, sir,’ cried Rispin, his voice high with anxiety, ‘then the wind fell away and then we saw it . . .’ He pointed.

  Drinkwater’s tired eyes focussed. Half a mile away, rearing into the sky and looming over their mastheads the iceberg seemed insubstantial in the grey light. But the smell, like the stink he had noticed in the ice lead, was strongly algaic and the loss of wind was evidence of its reality. Melusine seemed to wallow helplessly and, although Rispin had succeeded in driving her round onto the larboard tack, there seemed scarcely enough wind now to move her as the mass of ice loomed closer.

  Drinkwater stood stupefied for a moment or two, trying to remember what he had learned from fragments of conversation with the whale-ship captains. It was little enough, and he felt the gaps in his knowledge like physical wounds at such a moment.

  He had read of the submerged properties of icebergs, that far more of them existed below the level of the sea than above. Part of the monster that threatened them might already be beneath them.

  ‘A cast of the lead, Mr Rispin, and look lively about it!’

  Above his head Melusine’s canvas slatted idly. ‘T’gallant halliards there, topman aloft and let fall the t’gallants! Fo’c’s’le head there! Set both jibs!’ The waist burst into life as every man sought occupation. Drinkwater was left to reflect on Newton’s observations upon the attraction of masses. Ship and iceberg seemed to be drawn inexorably together.

  ‘By the mark seven, sir!’

  ‘That’ll be ice, sir,’ Hill remarked, echoing his own thoughts.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Let fall! Let fall!’ Lieutenant Bourne had taken the deck from Rispin and the topgallants hung in folds from their lowered yards.

  ‘Hoist away!’ The yards rose slowly, their parrels creaking up the slushed t’gallant masts as the topmen slid down the backstays.

  ‘Sheet home!’

  ‘Belay!’

  Amidships the braces were ready manned as the halliards stretched the sails. Watching anxiously Drinkwater thought he saw the upper canvas belly a little.

  ‘By the mark five, sir!’ The nearest visible part of the iceberg was half a musket shot away to starboard. Drinkwater sensed Melusine’s deck cant slightly beneath his feet. He was so tense that for a moment he thought they had touched a spur of ice but suddenly Melusine caught the wind eddying round the southern extremity of the berg. Her upper sails filled, then her topsails; she began to move with gathering swiftness through the water.

  ‘By the deep nine, sir!’

  Drinkwater began to breathe again. Melusine came clear of the iceberg and the wind laid her on her beam ends. Just as suddenly as it had come the fog lifted. The wind swung to the north-north-west and blew with greater violence, but the sudden shift reduced the lift of the sea, chopping up a confused tossing of wave crests in which Melusine pitched wildly while her shivering topmen lay aloft again to claw in the topgallants they had so recently set.

  As the visibility cleared it became apparent that the gale had dispersed the ice floes and they were surrounded by pieces of ice of every conceivable shape and size. Realising that he could not keep the deck forever, Drinkwater despatched first Bourne and then Rispin aloft to the crow’s nest from where they shouted down directions to the doubled watches under Drinkwater and Hill, and for three days, while the gale blew itself out from the north they laboured through this vast and treacherous waste.

  The huge bergs were easy to avoid, now that clear weather held, but the smaller bergs and broken floes of hummocked ice frequently required booming offfrom either bow with the spare topgallant yards. Worst of all were the ‘growlers’, low, almost melted lumps of ice the greater part of whose bulk lay treacherously below water. Several of these were struck and Melusine’s spirketting began to assume a hairy appearance, the timber being so persistently scuffed by ice.

  Drinkwater perceived the wisdom of a rig that was easily handled by a handful of men as Sawyers had claimed at Shetland. He also wished he had had the old bomb vessel Virago beneath his feet, a thought which made him recollect his interview with Earl St Vincent. It seemed so very far distant now and he had given little thought to his responsibilities during the last few days, let alone the possibility of French privateers being in these frozen seas. He wished St Vincent had had a better knowledge of the problems of navigation in high latitudes and given him a more substantial vessel than the corvette. Lovely she might be and fast she might be, but the Greenland Sea was no place for such a thoroughbred.

  They buried Germaney the day following Drinkwater’s return to Melusine. It was a bleak little ceremony that had broken up in confusion a
t a cry for all hands to wear ship and avoid a growler of rotten ice. Singleton’s other major patient, the now insane Macpherson, lay inert under massive doses of laudanum to prevent his ravings from disturbing the watch below.

  On the fifth day of the gale they sighted Truelove and made signals to her across eight miles of tossing ice and grey sea. She was snugged down under her lower sails and appeared as steady as a rock amid the turmoil about her. A day later they closed Diana, then Narwhal, Provident and Earl Percy hove in sight, both making the signal that all was well. On the morning that the wind died away there seemed less ice about and once again Faithful was sighted, about ten miles to the north-west and making the signal that whales were in sight.

  Greatly refreshed from an uninterrupted sleep of almost twelve hours, wrote Drinkwater in his journal, I woke to the strong impression that my life had been spared by providence . . . He paused. The vision of Midshipman Frey as his son had been a vivid one and he was certain that had he not awakened to full consciousness at that time he would not have survived the ordeal in the open boat. The consequences of his folly in leaving the ship struck him very forcibly and he resolved never to act so rashly again. In his absence Germaney had died and he still felt pangs of conscience over his former first lieutenant. He shook off the ‘blue devils’ and his eye fell upon the portraits upon the cabin bulkhead, and particularly that of his little son. He dipped his pen in the ink-well.

  The conviction that I was awoken in the boat by the spirit of my son is almost impossible to shake off, so fast has it battened upon my imagination. I am persuaded that we were past saving at that moment and would have perished had I not been revived by the apparition. He paused again and scratched out the word apparition, substituting visitation. He continued writing and ended: the sighting of Faithful reassured me that my charges had made lighter of the gale than ourselves, for though nothing carried away aloft Melusine is making more water than formerly. Faithful made the signal for whales almost immediately upon our coming up and the whale ships stood north where, inexplicably, there seems to be less ice. The cold seems more intense.