'Perhaps your preaching has turned him into a proper Christian, Mr Singleton. Meetuck seems terrified by the use of force,' said Drinkwater drily. 'He certainly absented himself from the deck during the action. Ask him if that,' Drinkwater pointed to the distant cape, 'is the promontory to be skirted, eh?'
Meetuck screwed his eyes up and stared on the larboard bow. Then something odd happened. His weathered skin smoothed out as he realised this was indeed the cape they sought. He turned to speak to Singleton as if to confirm this and his face was so expressive that Drinkwater knew that, whatever the cape hid, and however it answered their purpose, Meetuck had brought them to the place he intended. But his eyes rested on Drinkwater and his expression changed, he muttered something which ended in a gesture towards the nearest gun and the noise 'bang!' was uttered before he ran off, disappearing below.
'Upon my soul, Mr Singleton, now what the devil's the meanin' of that?'
Singleton frowned. 'I don't know, sir, but he has an aversion to you and cannon-fire. And if I'm not mistaken it has something to do with the bad white men of Nagtoralik.'
'No bottom…' The leadsman's chant with its attenuated syllables had become a mere routine formality, a precaution for it was obvious that the water in the strait was extraordinarily deep.
'D'you have a name for the cape, sir?' asked Quilhampton who, with Hill and Gorton was busy striking hurried cross bearings off on a large sheet of cartridge paper pinned to a board.
'I think it should be named for the First Lord, Mr Q, except that he took his title off a Portuguese cape…' Drinkwater was abstracted, watching the dancing catspaws of increasing wind sweep down from the mountainous coast two miles to the southwards.
'How about Cape Jervis, sir,' suggested Quilhampton who, if the captain did not decide quickly would name the promontory Cape Catriona.
'A capital idea, Mr Q,' then to the quartermaster, 'Meet her, there, meet her.'
The katabatic squall hit the Melusine with sudden, screaming violence and the tiller party shuffled and tugged at the clumsy arrangement. It had succeeded in steering through an ice strewn lead that was now opening into what Meetuck called Sermiligaq: the fiord with many glaciers. Melusine, under greatly reduced canvas, leaned only slightly to the increased pressure of the wind and began to race westward with the cold wind coming down from the massive heights to larboard.
'No-o botto-o-m…'
Curiosity had filled the quarterdeck. Those officers not engaged in the sailing of the ship or the rough surveying of the coast, formed in a knot around Singleton. The missionary's eyes were alight with a proprietary fire as he pointed to the dark rock that rose in strata after horizontal strata, delineated by a rind of snow as erosion reduced successive layers, giving the appearance of a gigantic series of steps.
'It is more impressive, gentlemen,' Singleton was saying, 'than either Crantz or Egede had led me to believe, more remarkable, perhaps, than those bizarre stratifications found in the Hebrides because of the enormous extent of this coastline… Is it not possible to imagine such a land as inflaming the imagination of the old Norse harpers when they composed their sagas? A land wherein giants dwelt, eh?'
Drinkwater strode up and down, catching snatches of Singleton's lyrical enthusiasm, watching the progress of the ship and casting an eye over the hurried mapping of the coastline. Hill had just completed a neat piece of triangulation from which he had established the elevation of the mountains closest to the extremity of Cape Jervis as 2,800 feet. From this he deduced a summit ten miles inland to the westward to be about 3,000 feet from its greater height. His proposal to name it after Melusine's commander was gently rebuffed.
'I think not, Mr Hill, flattering though it might be. Shall we call it after the ship, eh?'
So Mount Melusine it became, a name of which nature seemed to approve because even as they made the decision there came a crack like gunfire. For an instant all the faces on the deck looked round apprehensively, until Singleton laughingly drew their attention to the calving glacier, one of many frozen rivers that ran down to the sea in the valleys between those mighty summits.
They watched with awe the massive lump of ice as it broke clear of the glacier and rolled with an apparent gentle slowness into the sea, finding its own floating equilibrium to become just one more iceberg in the Arctic Ocean.
'Nature salutes our eponymous ship, sir,' said Singleton turning to Drinkwater.
'Let us hope it is a salutation and not an omen, Mr Singleton. By the by, where is Meetuck?'
Singleton pointed forward. 'Upon what I believe you term "the knightheads", keeping a lookout for his kin, the Ikermiut.'
'Their village lies hereabouts, on this inhospitable shore?' Drinkwater indicated the mountains to the southward.
'No sir, to the north, where the land is lower. That is what I believe Meetuck means when he says we will find an anchorage at Nagtoralik.'
A lower coastline presented itself to them the following afternoon, but the lead failed to find the bottom and Meetuck was insistent that this was not the place. Nevertheless they stood close inshore and half a dozen glasses were trained upon the patches of surpris-ing green undergrowth that sprouted between the dark outcrops of rock. There were flocks of eider ducks and geese paddling upon the black sandy beaches and Mr Frey spotted a whirring brace of willow grouse that rose into the air.
Melusine tacked offshore and Drinkwater luxuriated in the amazing warmth of the sun. It struck his shoulders, seeping into aching muscles and easing some of the tension he felt in his anxiety both for the ultimate safety of Melusine and also that of Sawyers and the Faithful. Forward, Meetuck still kept his self-appointed vigil, staring ahead and Drinkwater felt an odd reassurance in the sight, a growing confidence that the eskimo was right.
The sun was delicious and it was clear that its heat melted the snows, and the moraine deposits brought from higher ground by the action of the ice had deposited enough of a soil to root the chickweed and ground willow that covered the low shore. It argued an area that might support life, if only there was an anchorage…
They went about again and rounded a headland of frowning black rocks. It was a salient of the mountains that rose peak above peak to the distant, glistening nunataks. Standing close in, the dark, deeply fissured rocks showed a variety of colours in the sunshine where lodes of quartz and growths of multi-hued lichens relieved the drabness. They were also made uncomfortably aware of the existence of mosquitos, a surprising discovery and one that made even the philosophical Singleton short tempered.
Squatting on a carronade slide little Frey recorded the drab appearance of the rocks as a shrewdly observed mixture of greys, deep red and dark green. His brush and pencil had been busy since they had first sighted land and the active encouragement of the captain had silenced the jeers of Walmsley and Glencross, at least in public.
Above them the cliff reared, precipitous to man, but composed of a million ledges where the stains of bird-lime indicated the nesting sites of kittiwakes and auks. A number still perched on these remote spots, together with the sea-parrots whose brilliant coloured beaks glowed like tiny jewels in the blazing sunshine.
Alongside, an old bull seal rose, his nostrils pinching and opening, while two pale cubs, the year's progeny, dived as the shadow of the ship fell upon them. As they cleared the cape open water appeared to the westward, bounded to the northern shore by another distant headland. From forward came a howl of delight from Meetuck. He pointed west, down the channel where distant mountains rose blue against the sky.