Collector of Lost Things (8 page)

I quickly learnt the sailors’ names for the birds I knew. They called most gulls
mollies
, or
mallemokes
, and there were always five or six following us, at any one time, unless Bletchley was practising with his guns. Little auks were
dovekies
, Brünnich’s guillemots were
looms
. Kittiwakes they had improved, with the name
tat-a-rats
, and ivory gulls were romanticised as
snowbirds
. Richardson’s skuas were called
boatswains
, and glaucous gulls
burgomasters
. In all these names I sensed a relationship to nature that was practical, sometimes humorous, but not particularly affectionate.

I had learnt about birds during my childhood in Suffolk. Their times of flocking would announce the changes of season: mallard, widgeon, pintail, teal and geese in winter, greenshanks, redshanks, sandpipers, terns and stints in summer. I would study their migration and draw their eggs, and knew they were a connection to a world that existed beyond my horizons. Like the clouds, they came from distant lands. Arctic terns arrived from Africa and departed to the northern wastes of Greenland and Iceland. Swifts and swallows, arriving in summer, still had the dust of deserts falling from their wings. Swans, flying in formation from Russia and beyond; their secret calls and mutterings whispered great truths about a world I could only dream of.

The further north we sailed, the thicker the weather became. Fogs descended, as if the top of the world was hidden in clouds and vapours. Through the mist, curtains of stinging rain swept across the sea, drenching the decks in a matter of seconds. Cold steam rose from the wood. After these downpours, the rainwater poured away through the scuppers with a noisy gurgle of streams, returning to the ocean. Then all would be quiet again, the men would come out of the fo’c’sle and continue the jobs they had started, and the sails would drip and shine like faces of wet rock above them. The sea itself changed colour almost as rapidly, from a green-grey to an almost perfect black, and occasionally a vivid cloudy green as we drifted through fields of plankton.

It was in one of these lulls, between the rainstorms, that a ship was sighted, a few miles off, sliding between the veils of mist. I was on deck when it was seen, and was there to see it vanishing too, a dark low bulging shape removed, bit by bit, by the advance of the clouds. A mast remained, improbably, like the cross above a church steeple, before it too became grey, then faded, and was gone.

There was much excitement on the decks of the
Amethyst
. The men went forward, hoping to spot her again. In so many miles of ocean, in such strange weather, the view of the ship had been more ghostly than I could have imagined. A low brooding hulk that belonged to another century; but no one on deck seemed to share this superstitious feeling of mine. After a few minutes, through some motion of the fogs or direction of the vessels, the phantom emerged once more, angled to us but turning in our direction. I could see the churn of foam beneath its bow and, above deck, a solitary sail being furled among a peculiar arrangement of rigging.

It’s the
Jester
!’ Sykes announced, balancing his telescope through a foothold in the rigging. ‘Man, she has seen some weather! Helmsman, bring her abaft, she is slowing towards us.’

Not only was it heavier and built lower than the
Amethyst
, with four longboats tied to her side, but the tops of the masts had gone and part of the foremast had been tied off at a peculiar angle. Only the mainmast appeared to be functioning.

‘Bray has nearly wrecked her!’ Sykes continued, highly amused, to the men standing along the rail. ‘Get the whale-boat ready. I shall be going across.’

The men went to the task, uncovering one of the whale-boats from the fo’c’sle roof and carrying it to the port-side davits, stowing the oars and making it ready to lower. It was a fine long craft, pointed at both ends, with a smooth carvel-built hull, partially covered in zinc to protect it from ice.

‘Mr Saxby,’ the captain called, searching for me on the deck. ‘Ah, yes, there you are, always where I least expect you. Would you like to visit a whaling ship?’

Sykes, Talbot, Bletchley and myself were rowed over in the launch, shoulder to shoulder with each other on the simple benches. Bletchley, wearing bright mustard-coloured breeches, his blue pilot coat and his polished riding boots, looked dressed for a gallop in the country. Both ships towered darkly above us as the mist once more began to move in, drifting like bonfire smoke, obscuring the shapes of the rigging and masts. Surrounded by little more than the sound of dipping oars, we rowed through a mossy cloud of green plankton, and I imagined the depths of ocean that must be beneath us. The sensation of a small boat on a vast ocean made me uneasy. How could I have become used to the Atlantic, I wondered, when it was so terrifyingly deep as this?

Sykes noticed me gazing at the water. ‘Good for whaling,’ he said, pointing at the plankton. ‘Makes the whales blinded, so the hunter has the advantage.’

We smelt the other ship before we reached it: a deep tarry smell of oil and smoke and butchery. The sides of the hull were as dark as bog oak, and streaked with long stains of what appeared to be blood. Gouges and lacerations covered the planks above the waterline, giving the cladding a splintered look that meant it couldn’t have been watertight. Talbot grabbed the pilot ladder with a gaff hook, and Sykes hailed the other captain, repeating his joke that Bray had damned nearly wrecked his ship.

‘Tried my best I did, Sykes,’ came a call from above the black-strake, ‘froze her and burnt her ’n’ just about holed her through the stern but she just won’t go down!’

We climbed the ladder, helped by some of the
Jester
’s crew, and were confronted by a scene of great disorder. In the centre of the deck, the fire-blackened blocks of a rendering house lay partly dismantled. The roof had gone, and two of the walls were blown, with bricks lying about in a ruined heap. Leading out from them, the deck planks were pitted and scarred with ruts of charred wood, the signs of a considerable blaze that must have stretched the entire width of the ship.

‘Blast it, Bray, you’re not fit for the sea!’ Sykes stated, looking at the chaos with a mixture of disapproval and glee. ‘What the devil has occurred here?’

‘As I said,’ came the reply. ‘Just about all the gods have to throw, and some more than that, too.’ Captain Timothy Bray was a short man, with a bald head and a straggly beard. Although small in stature, he was dressed in a long coat, more like a dressing gown, lined with animal fur. ‘Careful of your dandy trousers, sir,’ the captain said to Bletchley, ‘you will pick up oil in no time.’

Bletchley nodded in agreement, keeping clear of snags. Bray raised his eyebrows at Sykes. ‘Ferrying peacocks this time?’ he said, for everyone to hear.

But it wasn’t the condition of the ship that fascinated me. It was the state of the crew. To a man they were dirtied and ageless, with stained hands and faces and strong full beards the hue of tobacco. Their caps were the colour of grease, and their clothes were ragged and mended and appeared to have been woven from a material soaked in oil and smoke. Some of them wore hats of brown fur, the animal hide turned outwards, with rough stitching as if surgeon’s scars were running across their heads.

‘Mind the ropes,’ Sykes advised, as he crossed the deck with his sprightly gait, heading for the other captain. ‘So, the story?’

Bray was delighted to brag. ‘The wind took her foremast tops off—whipped ’em like a dog pulling a stick.
Cer-rack
!’ he cried. ‘Then, of all curses, I must be a cursed man, the lightning nearly did for us with a fire.’

The deck felt greasy underfoot. It smelt horribly, of an animal flesh, partially decomposed, alongside the smells of fire and charred wood and a dark smell of mouldy ballast coming from the hatches. Flensing hooks hung from blocks the size of bull’s heads, swinging freely above the deck and still coated with the remnants of meat or blubber that had dried onto the iron in strips. Ropes snaked carelessly across the decking, mixing with chains and gearing and more blocks and tackle, and at the opposite side, below the rail, several large grey bones each as long as a horse had been tied to the gunwale.

‘Look,’ I said to Bletchley, ‘see the whale bones?’

Surprisingly, Bletchley had lost his usual enthusiasm. He glanced at the bones and then proceeded to put on a pair of calfskin gloves. ‘Most unpleasant,’ he said, with uncharacteristic disdain.

I noticed, in the fore-rigging, several other jawbones. They hung there dark and wet, and resembled the spars and yards that remained around them, but their presence made the ship seem half animal. I decided not to point them out to Bletchley. He was in a peculiar mood.

Sykes had had the foresight to bring our lunch over with us, suspecting the provisions on the
Jester
would be in a poor state. Bray was overjoyed, personally going through the hamper and finding the jugged rabbit, the Wiltshire ham, fresh eggs and suet pudding as if each parcel was a Christmas present. He ordered his own steward to lay the food out, and invited us to join him at his table. Below deck, the
Jester
had a similar layout to the
Amethyst
, but it was only when I saw the spartan nature of the walls, the lack of ornamentation or cushioning, the absence of settees, that I realised our own ship was rather more geared towards passengers than this one.

Sykes took a sip from his glass and theatrically spat it out onto the floor. ‘Your water is foul, man!’ he said, grimacing like a dying man.

Bray was greatly amused. ‘Pond ice, sir. You’ve been harboured too long, Sykes.’

They continued in this vein, trading insults like schoolchildren, neither of them making any concession to myself or Bletchley. Formal talk was thin and discarded easily out here. Bray talked enthusiastically, his eyes red-rimmed but sparkling with life, and he repeatedly glanced with a beady look at each of his guests, maintaining us as his audience. He had stories to tell, and had had no one new to listen for a long time.

He began by recounting how the
Jester
had overwintered in Cumberland Sound, a practice almost entirely unheard of, tied to an American whaler. ‘A couple of the New Bedford lot tried it two years ago—no, I lie—three years back—and were almost destroyed with scurvy and madness and the blasted longing for their wives—not a thing I personally subscribe to. I believe you are the same Kelvin? Aha—a raised eyebrow I spotted there. Did you see it, gentlemen? Where was I—yes—we had such a poor season last year it wasn’t worth our returning to port, so we sailed for Cumberland Sound before the weather changed. It’s a good spot, well found by the Yankees,’ he raised his hands dramatically: ‘mountains this high, all sides, protect it from the wind, which means the bay ice forms with regularity and without much current. Oh, and yes, there is also a very friendly Esquimaux settlement there, which was most useful. We had one Esquimaux fellow, paddled out in his skin kayak—fifteen feet long it was, adorned with knobs of ivory. His coat was lashed tight to repel the water, so there was no way of pulling him out from his craft—cork in a bottle, he was. So you know what we did? We lifted the whole boat on the flensing pulleys, with him in it, and set it down on the deck. He thought that was capital, you should have seen his smile. Great white teeth like piano keys.’

Captain Bray drained an entire glass of wine before continuing. ‘We anchored October, no, late September—it was the first week of October, it was, and spent many weeks trading and preparing for the winter and the like. I shot caribou, Sykes—you must try it, for they fall like oak trees—got the beast right in the ear—and the meat was hot-smoked and is excellent for avoiding the scurvy. We fetched this pond water and what provisions the locals could muster, although their diet is usually quite terrible. Most of their food remains in the gaps in their teeth. I arranged for the topmasts to be removed, and we tented the decks to protect against the ice.’ Bray looked at me directly: ‘You know that an icicle falling from the yards can kill a man? I heard of it happening, speared him right through from neck to heart. I think it was on Jan Mayen, but I might be wrong. We tied ourselves to the Yankee whaler, the
Mystic
, that had decided to overwinter with us. No, on Jan Mayen it was the frostbite, that’s right. Where the man lost his nose. By late October there was no choice but to stick it out, you see. The bay ice had come in, uncommonly like porridge it was, with higher blocks coming in off the streams and fixing the sea rapidly. You could hear it growling and your instinct is to sail, sail, sail—you understand that, Sykes, don’t you? We’ve all dreamt of ice.’

‘I dream it before each voyage, without fail. In fact, if I didn’t dream it, I might decide to stay on shore.’

‘When the ice was as thick as this fist of mine, we weighed the anchors through these fine-cut holes we’d made. It was the ice that held us, nothing more. You would think it sets like a sheet of steel, gentlemen, but over the months we travelled several hundred yards across the bay. A snail’s pace.’

Bletchley braved a question: ‘So what did you do for all that time?’

Bray looked back at him, expansive. ‘Oh, much fun, on the whole. And plenty of hours for your fancy needlework, Sykes. Many evenings mallymarking with the Yankee boys and some with the Esquimaux. They cannot take their drink, no, not at all. Unlike the Americans, who can’t take being sober. We had a Christmas dance and game of football on the ice.’

‘Against the Americans?’ Bletchley asked.

‘Absolutely. The Esquimaux refuse to use their feet. They keep picking up the ball and running away with it.’

‘What was the score?’

Bray slapped the table. ‘A victory, gentlemen, of eight to five! With our goal only this much smaller than theirs!’

Bray was enjoying the sound of his own voice, and the taste of our food, often speaking through a mouth half filled with cold cut ham. He told us about the aurora lights that filled the night with eerie ribbons of colour, how the deck and ice and even the smoke from the men’s pipes would be lit with these strange glows. ‘Sometimes, you imagine a sound that accompanies the lights,’ he said, oddly, then continued to tell us that he had found a new respect for the ice and the world it creates. ‘When the sun returned it came first as a glow sitting on the horizon, as if a bonfire was set there, beneath the curve of the world. We stood on the ice to welcome it back—the entire crew. A curious thing, Sykes, I tell you, the sun broke through the horizon, yet our shadows all pointed towards it, for the moonlight was stronger.’ He stopped, abruptly. ‘Of course, here’s me talking about this and yet with us is Mr Talbot, who knows more about surviving on the ice than the rest of us put together. When your ship was crushed, how long did you spend on the floe?’