Quilhampton nodded. 'Yes sir, I understand.'
'Very well. You will take Mr Rispin's watch… and good luck to you.' Drinkwater raised his glass and they sipped for a moment in companionable silence. Quilhampton gazed abstractedly through the stern windows, the view was obscured by the spars and lashings of the jury rudder but he was unaware of them. He was thinking of how he could now swagger into Mrs MacEwan's withdrawing-room, to make a leg before the lovely Catriona, and send that damned lubber of a Scottish yeoman to the devil!
'I see,' said Drinkwater turning, 'that you are watching the effects of the ship getting under way upon the rudder.'
'Eh? Oh, oh, yes sir…' Quilhampton focussed his eyes as Drinkwater drained his glass, rose and picked up his hat.
'Well, Mr Q, let us go and see how it answers our purpose…'
It answered their purpose surprisingly well. Kept under easy sail after a little experimenting with balancing the rig, and running tiller lines to the mizen royal yard in a manner which best suited steering the ship, Melusine made west-north-west. There was a thinning of the floes and although the wind remained from the south, it began to get colder. Fog patches closed in and from these circumstances Drinkwater deduced that the coast of Greenland could not be very far distant. There were other indications that this was so; an increase in the number of birds, particularly eider ducks, and a curious attentive attitude on the part of Meetuck who, having hidden during the action with the Requin to the amusement of the Melusines, now hung about the knightheads sniffing the air like a dog.
Then, shortly before eight bells in the morning watch the next day he was observed pointing ahead with excitement. He repeated the same word over and over again.
'Nunataks! Nunataks!'
The hands, with their customary good-natured but contemptuous ignorance, laughed at him, tapping their foreheads and deriving a good deal of fun at the eskimo's expense. Quilhampton had the watch and was unable to see anything unusual. Nevertheless he went forward and had Singleton turned out of his cot to translate.
'What the devil does he mean, Obadiah? Noon attacks, eh?'
Singleton stared ahead, nodding as Meetuck pulled at his arm, his eyes shining with excitement.
'You need to elevate your glass, Mr Quilhampton. Meetuck refers to the light on the peaks of Greenland.' There was an uncharacteristic note of awe in Singleton's voice, but it went unnoticed by the practical Quilhampton.
'Well, I'm damned,' he said shortly, looking briefly at a jagged and gleaming outline in the lower clouds to the west. It was the sun shining on the permanent ice-cap of the mountains of Greenland.
'Mr Frey! Be so good as to call the captain…'
Drinkwater raised his glass for the hundredth time and regarded the distant mountains. They were distinguishable from icebergs by the precipitous slopes of dark rock on which the snow failed to lie. He judged their distance to be about twenty miles, yet he could close the coast no further because of the permanent coastal accretion of old ice, its hummocks smoothed, its ancient raftings eroded by the repeated wind-driven bombardment of millions upon millions of ice spicules. So far there was no break in that barrier of ice and mountains that indicated the existence of an anchorage. Drinkwater swore to himself. He was a fool to think a primitive savage of an eskimo could have any idea of the haven that he sought. And, he reflected bitterly, he was a bigger fool for actually looking. But he peered through his glass yet again in the fast-shrivelling hope that Meetuck might be right.
'It's a remarkable sight, isn't it?' Beside him Obadiah Singleton levelled the battered watch-glass he had borrowed from Hill.
Drinkwater could see little remarkable in the distant coast. It was as cold and forbidding as that of Arabia had been hot and hostile and his irritation was increased by the knowledge that Singleton had ceased to think like the ad hoc surgeon of Meiusine and had reverted to being an Anglican divine sent on a mission to convert the heathen by a London Missionary society. When he had persuaded Singleton to assume the duties of surgeon Drinkwater had imagined it would prove regrettably impossible to find the time or opportunity to close the coast and land the missionary. Now it would be impossible to refuse, even if it meant landing Singleton on the ice.
'Don't you think it remarkable, sir?' asked Singleton again.
'I would think it so if I found an ice-free anchorage with a fine sandy bottom in five fathoms at low water, Mr Singleton. I should consider that highly remarkable.'
'But the colour, the colour, to what do you suppose it is due?'
'Eh?' Drinkwater took his glass from his eye and looked where Singleton was pointing. He had been scanning the coast ahead and failed to notice the strange coloration of the snow on the slopes of a mountain which plunged into the ice on the south side of what they took to be an ice-covered bay. This slope, just opening on their larboard beam was a dark, yet brilliant red.
'An outcrop of red-hued rock, perhaps…' he said with only a mild curiosity. 'The rocks and cliffs of Milford Haven are a not dissimilar colour…'
'No, that is too smooth and even for rock. It's snow… red snow. Egede did not mention red snow…'[4]
'To the devil with red snow, Mr Singleton. Get that damned eskimo aft here and quiz him again. Is he sure, absolutely sure of this anchorage for big kayaks? Have you explained that we must anchor our ship, Singleton, not run it up the beach like a bloody dugout?'
Singleton sighed. 'I have asked him that several times, sir…'
'Well get him aft and ask him again.' Drinkwater raised his glass and trained it forward to where a cape jutted out. There was the faint shadow of further land. Could that be the expected opening in the coast that Meetuck assured them existed? And if it was, how the hell were they to break through this fast-ice with a leaky old hull and a jury rudder, a stump mizen and a truncated mainmast?
They had drawn maps for Meetuck, but he did not seem to comprehend the concept of a bird's eye view and Drinkwater was increasingly sceptical of Singleton's assurances of his use of other faculties.
The olfactory organs did not rate very highly as navigational aids, clouded by the eskimo's own inimitable musk. Drinkwater had scoffed at Singleton's adamant assertions, privately considering that whatever inner faith makes a man a priest, also betrays he lacks common sense.
Drinkwater smelled Meetuck's presence and lowered the telescope. Since their dawn encounter Meetuck had appeared uneasy in Drinkwater's presence. He stuck close to Singleton and nodded as he fired the same questions yet again.
Meetuck answered, his flat speech with its monotonous modulation and clicking, minimal mouth movements seemed truly incomprehensible, but after some minutes Drinkwater thought he detected an unusual enthusiasm in Meetuck's answers.
Singleton turned to Drinkwater. 'He says, yes, he's sure that Nagtoralik is to the north, only a little way now.' Singleton gestured on the beam. 'This is aquitseq, a nameless place. It is also anoritok, very windy, and there are no fish, especially capelin. Soon, he says, we will see vivak, which is a cape to be skirted and beyond it we will see ikersak, the strait upon the northern shores of which his people live.' At each innuit word Singleton turned to Meetuck, as if for confirmation, and on each occasion the eskimo repeated the word and grunted agreement.
'He says it is upernavsuak, a good location to dwell in the spring, by which I assume he means that by this time of year it is ice free, but again he repeats that there are bad white men near Nagtoralik, white men like you, sir. He seems to have conceived some idea that you are connected with them after the action with the Requin. I cannot make it out, sir…'