The Corvette (37 page)

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.'

They had assembled all the French prisoners ashore prior to burning the
Requin
. Flanked by Mount and Singleton and escorted by a file of marines, Drinkwater inspected the hovels that made up the French settlement. Drawn apart from the privateersmen and regarded with a curious hostility by a crowd of eskimos, an untidy, starveling huddle of men watched their approach cautiously. They wore the remnants of military greatcoats, their feet bound in rags and their shoulders covered in skins. Most hid their faces. They were Bonaparte's Arctic ‘colonists'.

Explanation came slowly, as though the revelation of horror should not be sudden. They were military ghosts, two companies of
Invalides
, a euphemism for the broken remnants of Bonaparte's vaunted Egyptian and Syrian campaigns. A handful of men who had regained France after the desertion of Bonaparte and the assassination of his successor Kleber; men who had returned home from annexed Egypt where their accounts of what had happened and the decay of their bodies were a double embarrassment to the authorities.

Drinkwater remembered the purulent eyes of the men he had fought hand to hand off Kosseir on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. Perhaps some of these poor devils had been in the garrison that had so gallantly resisted the British squadron under Captain Lidgbird Ball. He surveyed the diseased remnants of French ambition who had been trepanned to Greenland in an attempt to form a trading post to acquire furs for the French army. Here they could supply the voracious wants of the First Consul's armies at the expense of degrading the eskimos, exchanging liquor for furs, liquor that came through the agency of British whalers.

Under Drinkwater's scrutiny several of the Frenchmen drew themselves up, still soldiers, such was the power of military influence. The rags fell away from their faces. The ravages of bilharzia, trachoma-induced blindness, skin diseases, frostbite and God alone knew what
other contagions burned in them.

Drinkwater turned aside, sickened. He met the eyes of Singleton. ‘
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
,' said the missionary softly.

‘Where is this man Vrolicq?' Drinkwater muttered through clenched teeth.

Mount had the privateer's commander and officers quartered in a wretched stone and willow-roofed hovel. They stood blinking in the pale sunshine that filtered through a thin overcast and stared at the British officers.

Jean Vrolicq, corsair, republican opportunist and war-profiteer regarded Drinkwater through dark, suspicious eyes. He was a small man whose hardiness and energy seemed somehow refined, as though reduced to its essence in these latitudes, and disdaining a larger body. His face was bearded, seamed and tanned, his eyes chips of coal. Drinkwater recognised the man who had wounded him during their first action with the
Requin
.

‘So, Captain, today you remember you have prisoners, eh?' Vrolicq's English was good, his accent suggesting a familiarity with Cornwall that was doubtless allied to the practice of ‘free trade'.

‘Tell me, M'sieur, was this trade you had with Captain Ellerby profitable to yourself?'

Perhaps Vrolicq thought Drinkwater was corruptible instead of merely curious, angling for a speculative cargo aside from his duty.

‘But yes, Captain, and also for the carrier.' The man grinned rapaciously. ‘You British are expert at making laws from which profits can be made with ease. You are equally good at breaking your own laws, which is perhaps why you make them, yes? Ellerby, he traded furs for cognac, his friends traded gold for cognac. We French now have gold in France and cognac in Greenland. Ellerby has furs which he also trades. To us French. So we have gold, cognac and furs. Ellerby has a little profit. It is clever, yes? And because your King George has a wise Parliament who all like a little French cognac.' The disdain was clear in Vrolicq's voice. But it was equally clear why Ellerby had not wanted Drinkwater's presence in the Greenland Sea, yet needed his protection in soundings off the British coast where an unscrupulous naval officer might board him in search of men and discover he had tiers of furs over his barrels of whale blubber. If Ellerby's plan had not been disrupted he and Waller would have been at the rendezvous off Shetland at the end of September and allowed Drinkwater to escort them safely into the Humber. And how assiduously
Drinkwater had striven to afford Ellerby the very protection he needed for his nefarious trade!

‘It is quite possible,' said Vrolicq, breaking into Drinkwater's thoughts, ‘that you might yourself profit a little . . .'

‘Go to the devil!' snapped Drinkwater, turning away and striding down the beach towards the waiting boat.

Drinkwater stood on the quarterdeck wrapped in the bear-skin given him by the officers. It was piercingly cold, the damp tendrils of a fog reaching down into the bay from the heights surrounding them. The daylight was dreary with mist; the Arctic summer was coming to its end.

‘Boat approaching, sir.' Drinkwater acknowledged Frey's report and watched one of the
Nimrod
's boats, commandeered to replace
Melusine
's losses, as it was pulled out from the curve of dark sand and shingle that marked the beach at Nagtoralik. He waited patiently while Obadiah Singleton clambered over the rail, nodded him a greeting, then ushered him below to the sanctuary of the cabin.

‘Well Obadiah, you received my note. I am about to sail. All the ships are ready and the wind, what there is of it, will take us clear of the bay as soon as this fog lifts. This is the last chance to change your mind.'

‘That is out of the question, Nathaniel.' Singleton smiled his rare smile. All pretence at rank had long since vanished between the two men. Singleton's determination to stay and minister to the human flotsam on the shores of the bay ran contrary to all of Drinkwater's instincts. He could not quite believe that Singleton would remain. ‘Oh, I know what you intend to say. “Remember whom you are to cope withal; a sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways, a scum of Bretagnes, and base lackey peasants whom their o'er cloyéd country vomits forth to desperate ventures, and assured destruction . . .” King Richard the Third, Nathaniel. That last clause is most appropriate. Scarcely any will survive the coming winter. There is evidence of typhus . . .'

‘Typhus!'

‘Yes, what you call the ship or gaol fever . . .'

‘I know damned well what typhus is . . .'

‘Well then you know that as a divine I should urge you to take mercy upon them, to have compassion even at the risk of infecting your ship's company. As a physician I warn you against further contact with them. There is not only typhus, there is . . .'

‘I know, I know. I do not wish to reflect upon the whole catalogue of ills that infests this morbid place. So you advise me to take no action. To leave them here to rot.'

‘This is the first time, Nathaniel, that I have seen you indecisive.' Singleton smiled again.

‘There is no need to enjoy the experience, damn it!'

‘Forgive me. Perhaps one thing I have learned during our acquaintance is that true decisions are seldom made upon philosophical lines. Sometimes the burdens of your position are too great for one man to bear. It is God's will that I surrogate for your conscience.'

‘And what will happen to you, Obadiah? Eh?'

‘I do not know. Let us leave that to God. You were bidden to land me upon the coast of Greenland. You have done your duty.'

‘And Vrolicq?'

‘Vrolicq is an agent of the devil. Leave him to me and to God.'

‘I have already offered you whatever you wish for out of the ships. Surely you will take my pistols . . .'

‘Thank you, no. I have taken such necessaries as I thought desirable put of the
Requin
before you fired her yesterday. I have everything I need.' He paused. ‘I am at peace, Nathaniel. Do not worry on my account. It is you who work for implacable masters. It was Christ's essential gospel that we should love our enemies.'

‘I do not understand you, damned if I do.'

‘John, fifteen, verse thirteen,' he held out his hand. ‘Farewell, Nathaniel.'

‘Have you any questions, gentlemen?'

The assembled officers shook their heads. Sawyers of
Faithful
had loaned his speksioneer, Elijah Pucill, to assist Mr Quilhampton in bringing home
Nimrod
. Gorton was sufficiently recovered to command
Conqueror
, seconded by Lord Walmsley. Sawyers's son was assisting Glencross in the
Aurore
. The crews of the two whalers had been tempered by prize crews from
Melusine
while those elements whose loyalty might still be in doubt were quartered aboard the sloop herself. Drinkwater dismissed them, each with a copy of his orders. They filed out of the cabin. Captain Sawyers hung back.

‘You wished to speak to me, Captain Sawyers?'

‘Aye, Friend. We have both been busy men during the past five days. I wished for a proper opportunity to express to thee my gratitude. I have thanked God, for the force of thine arm was like unto David's when he slew Goliath, yet I know that to be an instrument of
God's will can torture a man severely.'

Drinkwater managed a wry smile at Sawyer's odd reasoning. ‘I am considering it less hazardous to be surrounded by ice than by theologians. But thank you.'

‘I have left thy servant, the Cornishman, a quantity of furs. Perhaps thou might find some use for them better than draped over the horses of the un-Godly.'

Drinkwater grinned. Some explanation of Sawyers's activities in the last few days suggested itself to Drinkwater. It occurred to him that Sawyers knew all along of Ellerby's treachery but his religious abhorrence of war enabled him to overlook it. Besides, now the shrewd Quaker had most of
Nimrod
's cargo of furs safely stowed aboard the
Faithful
.

‘What have you entered in your log book concerning your capture?'

‘That I was taken by a French privateer, conducted to an anchorage and liberated by thyself. I have no part in thy war beyond suffering its aggravations.'

‘Good. It was not my intention to advertise this treachery. Much distress will be caused thereby to the families of weak and defenceless men.'

Sawyers raised an eyebrow. ‘Canst thou afford such magnanimity? Seamen gossip, Friend.'

‘Captain Sawyers, if you were to come upon two unmanned whalers anchored inside the Spurn Head, would you ensure they came safely home to their owners?'

A gleam of comprehension kindled in Sawyers's eyes. ‘You mean to press the crews when you have anchored the ships?'

‘There are a few of your men already on board to claim salvage. I am not asking you to falsify your log, merely amend it.'

Sawyers chuckled. ‘A man who cannot write a log book to his own advantage is not fit to command a ship, Captain Drinkwater.' He paused. ‘But what advantage is there to thee?'

Drinkwater shrugged. ‘I have a crew again.'

‘Patriotism is an unprofitable business and thy acumen recommends thee for other ventures. But have you considered the matter of their press exemptions?'

‘I had them collected from the two ships. They burned with
Requin
.'