Ian McGuire - The North Water

“This voyage is marked with enough calamity already. Do you really want to add yet more to the total?”

“Let me tell you something about myself,” Cavendish says, leaning in a little and lowering his voice. “Unlike some, perhaps, I don’t come whaling for fresh air or for the fine sea views. I don’t even come for the pleasing company of men like you and Otto here. I come whaling to get my money, and I will get my money any way I can. If your opinions came in gold with the Queen’s head stamped upon ’em I might pay them a little mind, but since they don’t, you won’t be too offended, I hope, if I take no fucking notice of them at all.”

When Brownlee dies two days later, they dress him in his velvet morning coat, stitch him into a stiff canvas shroud, and carry the body on a pine plank to the stern rail. Drizzle is falling, the sea is the color of boot polish, and the sky is wadded with cloud. The crew sing “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer My God to Thee,” and Cavendish leads them all in an off-kilter version of the Lord’s Prayer. The voices of the mourners as they sing and pray are low and reluctant. Although they mistrusted Brownlee by the end, believing him unlucky, the nature of his death is a blow to the general confidence. That Drax, who they thought was reliable, even admirable, is actually a murderer and a sodomite, and McKendrick, who they thought was a murderer and a sodomite, is actually an innocent victim of Drax’s godless machinations, has created amongst the men of the forecastle feelings of perplexity and self-doubt. Such unlikely reversals make them uneasy and fitful. Their world is hard and raw enough, they think, without the added burden of moral convolution.

As the men disperse, Otto appears by Sumner’s side. He touches the surgeon’s elbow and leads him forwards until they are standing by the bowsprit looking out at the dark sea, the low gray cloud, and, in the middle distance, separated from the Volunteer by several loose floes of ice, the Hastings . Otto’s expression is somber and gravid. Sumner senses he has news to impart.

“Cavendish will kill us all,” the harpooner whispers. “I’ve seen it pass.”

“You’re allowing Brownlee’s death to depress your spirits,” Sumner says. “Give Cavendish a little time, and if we see no whales in the sound, we’ll be in Pond’s Bay again before you know it.”

“ You will survive, but you will be the only one. The rest of us will drown or starve or perish of the cold.”

“Nonsense. Why would you say such things? How can you possibly know?”

“A dream,” he says. “Last night.”

Sumner shakes his head.

“Dreams are just a way to clear the mind; they’re a form of purging. What you dream is whatever’s left over and can’t be used. A dream is nothing but a mental shite pile, a rag and bone shop of ideas. There is no truth in them, no prophecy.”

“You will be killed by a bear — when the rest of us are already dead,” Otto says. “Eaten, swallowed up somehow.”

”After what’s happened here, your fears are understandable,” Sumner says. “But don’t confuse them with our destiny. All that’s behind us now. We’re safe.”

“Drax is still alive and breathing.”

“He is down in the hold chained to the mainmast, bound hand and foot. He cannot escape. Set your mind at rest.”

“The corporal body is just one way of moving through the world. It’s the spirit which truly lives.”

“You think a man like Henry Drax has any spirit worthy of the name?”

Otto nods. He looks, as he usually does, serious, eager, and faintly surprised by the nature of the world around him.

“I’ve encountered his spirit,” he says. “Met with it in other realms. Sometimes it takes the form of a dark angel, sometimes a Barbary ape.”

“You are a good fellow, Otto, but what you are saying is folly,” Sumner tells him. “We’re not in danger anymore. Set your mind at ease and forget the fucking dream.”

* * *

During the night they enter Lancaster Sound. There is open water stretching to the south of them, but to the north a granular and monotone landscape of ice boulders and melt pools, sculpted smooth by wind in places but elsewhere cragged, roughened, and heaved upright into sharp-edged moguls by the alternations of the seasons and the dynamisms of temperature and tide. Sumner rises early and, as has become his habit, gathers a bucket of rinds, crusts, and scourings from the galley. He takes a large metal spoon and, crouching by the bear cub’s cask, prods a portion of the cold and grease-bound mass between the grille-work. The bear sniffs, gobbles, then bites down fiercely on the empty spoon. Sumner, after twisting the spoon free, feeds him another portion. When the bear has emptied the bucket, Sumner refills it with fresh water and allows him to drink. He then heaves the cask upright, detaches the metal grille and, with a careful quickness born of practice and several previous near calamities, slips a loop of rope around the bear’s neck and pulls it taut. He lowers the cask and allows the bear to dash forwards and across the deck, its black claws scarifying the wooden planking. Sumner secures the end of the leash to a nearby cleat and swills out the cask with seawater, chasing the accumulated bear shit out through the forechannels with a broom.

The bear, high-rumped and grimy-yellow at its haunches, growls, then settles itself against the lip of a hatchway. It is watched at a distance by the ship’s dog, Katie, a bow-hipped Airedale. Every day for weeks now, dog and bear have rehearsed a similar pantomime of wariness and curiosity, closeness and retreat. The men enjoy this daily spectacle. They egg them on, shout encouragements, jab them forwards with boots and boat hooks. The Airedale is smaller but much lighter on her feet. She dashes forwards, stiffens a moment, then wheels away again, yelping with excitement. Probing and grandly tentative, the bear swaggers after her, its wedge-shaped head, tipped with blackness like a burned match, gauging the air. The dog is all eagerness and fear, all trembling alertness; the bear, stolid, earth-bound, heavy-limbed, feet like frying pans, moves as though the air itself is a barrier that must be slowly pushed through. They close to within a foot of each other, nose to nose, black eyes locked in ancient and wordless convocation. “I’ll have thruppence on the bear,” someone hollers. The cook, leaning on the lintel of the galley door, amused, tosses a chunk of bacon between them. Bear and dog together lunge for it, collide. The Airedale, bunched up and squealing, spins across the deck like a top. The bear gobbles the bacon and looks about for more. Men laugh. Sumner, who has been leaning on the mainmast, straightens, unwraps the leash from its cleat, and prods the bear back towards the freshened cask with the bristle end of the broom. The bear, realizing what is happening, refuses for a moment, bares its teeth, and then accedes. Sumner pulls the cask upright, refastens the grille, and lays it back down on the deck.

All day the wind blows steadily from the south. The sky above is pale blue, but on the far horizon, dark clouds are racked in slender lines above the mountaintops. In the late afternoon, they spy a whale a mile off the port bow and lower two boats. The boats pull quickly away, and the Volunteer follows after them. Cavendish watches proceedings from the quarterdeck. He is wearing Brownlee’s snuff-colored greatcoat and carrying his long brass spyglass. Now and then, he calls out a command. Sumner can see that he is taking a childish pleasure in his new authority. When the boats reach the whale they realize that it is dead already and has begun to bloat. They signal for the ship to come closer and then tow it across. Black is commanding the first boat, and he and Cavendish have a shouted conversation about the state of the carcass. Despite the signs of rot and depredation, they decide that there is still sufficient blubber left to make it worth their while to flense it.