Ian McGuire - The North Water

“They want to go back home,” Sumner says. They are standing outside the tent; the sky is bright and clear, but the air around is bitter cold. Sumner feels its desiccating bluntness press against his face and eyes.

“They can’t go back,” Cavendish says. He points down at the ground again and waves the rifle at them.

The elder one shows him the rifle they already have, then points again to the west.

“Utterpok,” he says. “No trade.”

Cavendish shakes his head and softly curses.

“We have enough meat and blubber now to last a month,” Sumner says. “So long as they come back before the supply runs out, we can survive.”

“If that old bastard goes the other one must stay here with us,” Cavendish says. “If they go off together, we can’t be sure they’re ever coming back.”

“Don’t threaten them,” Sumner warns. “If you press too hard, they’ll be gone for sure.”

“They may have that one rifle but they hant got no balls or powder for it yet,” Cavendish says. “So I reckon I can threaten the bastards all I like if I have a mind to do it.”

He points at the younger man and then at the snow house.

“ He stays here,” he says. “ You ”—pointing at the older man, then gesturing west—“can fuck off if you want to.”

The Yaks shake their heads and smile ruefully, as if they understand the suggestion but find it both foolish and faintly embarrassing.

“No trade,” the older one repeats lightly. “ Utterpok .”

Unafraid, amused even, they look at Cavendish for a while longer, then turn away and start walking back towards the sledge. The tethered dogs uncurl from their snow holes and start to yip and howl as they approach. Cavendish reaches into his pocket for a cartridge.

“You think killing them will change their minds?” Sumner says. “Is that your best idea?”

“I int killing anyone yet, I’m just aiming to get a little more attention, that’s all.”

“Just wait,” he says. “Put down the gun.”

The Yaks are already busy reloading their sledge, rolling up their bedding, and lashing it to the wooden frame with strips of walrus hide. When Sumner walks across to them, they don’t trouble to look up.

“I have something for you,” he says. “See here.”

He holds out his gloved hand and shows them the looted gold ring that he has been carrying, buttoned in his waistcoat pocket, since the day of Drax’s capture.

The elder one looks up, pauses what he is doing, and touches the younger on the shoulder.

“What use do such as they have for gold and jewels?” Cavendish asks. “If ye can’t eat it or burn it or fuck it, it int much use out here, seems to me.”

“They can trade it with other whalers,” Sumner says. “They’re not so stupid.”

The two men come closer. The elder one picks the ring from Sumner’s dark woolen mitten and examines it carefully. Sumner watches him.

“If you stay here,” he says to the younger man, pointing, “that ring is yours to keep.”

The two men talk between themselves. The younger one takes the ring, sniffs it, then licks it twice. Cavendish laughs.

“Daft bastard thinks it’s made of marzipan,” he says.

The elder presses his palm onto the chest of his anorak and then points off to the west. Sumner nods.

“You can go,” he says, “but this one stays with us.”

They look at the ring for a while longer, turning it over several times and scraping at the bright jewels with their blackened fingernails. In the flat arctic light, blanched and unvariegated, amidst the swathing landscape of snow and ice, it seems like something unearthly, an object imagined or dreamed of rather than hewn and fashioned by human hand.

“If they’ve been on board a whaler to trade, they’ve seen coins and watches before, mebbe,” Cavendish says, “but never such a pretty thing as that.”

“It’s worth five rifles or more,” Sumner tells them, holding up his fingers and pointing.

“Ten or more,” Cavendish says.

The elder one looks at them and nods. He gives the ring to the younger one, who smiles and tucks it down into the hairy complication of his britches. They turn away and begin unpacking the sledge. As he walks back towards the tent, Sumner feels a disorienting lightness, a sudden unaccounted space inside him, like a cavity or abscess, where the ring used to be but isn’t.

* * *

Later, when the darkness has settled around the camp, and after they have eaten their usual supper of half-scorched seal meat and ship’s biscuit smeared with grease, Drax waves to Cavendish to get his attention, then beckons him over. He is sitting apart from the other men, in a dark and frigid angle of the tent far from the fire. He is wrapped in a coarse blanket and is passing the time by scrimshawing a crude image of Britannia triumphant into a fragment of walrus ivory. Since he is not allowed the use of a knife, he employs a sharpened iron nail instead.

Cavendish sighs and lowers himself onto the rug-covered floor.

“What now?” he asks.

Drax continues scraping for a while, then turns to look at him.

“Remember that time we talked about afore,” he says. “That time we both thought might never ever happen. Remember that one?”

Cavendish nods reluctantly.

“I remember it well enough,” he says.

“Then I ’spect you can moreless guess what I’m about to tell you.”

“That time hant come,” he says. “It can’t have. Not out here in the icy fucking wastes of nowhere.”

“It has though, Michael.”

“Bollocks to that.”

“When the Esquimaux leaves in the morrow, he’ll take me with him on the sledge. It’s all agreed between us. All I need from you is a file to cut these chains off, and a quick glance the other way.”

Cavendish snorts.

“You’d rather live as a Yak than hang as an honest Englishman, is that it now?”

“I’ll winter over with ’em if they let me, and come spring I’ll look out for a ship.”

“A ship bound for where?”

“New Bedford, Sebastopol. You won’t ever see sign of me again. I’ll swear to that at least.”

“We’re all of us trapped here now. Why should I help you alone escape?”

“You’re only keeping me alive and breathing so they can hang me later on. Where’s the sense or reason in that? Let me take my chances with the Yaks. The savage bastards may stick a lance in me, but if they do, there’s no man here’ll mourn my passing much.”

“I’m a whaleman, not a fucking jailer,” Cavendish says. “That’s true enough.”

Drax nods.

“Think on it,” he says. “It’s one less mouth to feed, and fuck knows there’s no abundance of food around here at present. When you get back to England there’ll be no blame attached, and you and Baxter can go about your business without no trouble from me.”

Cavendish looks at him.

“You’re an evil, filthy, conniving bastard, Henry,” he says, “and I ’spect you always were one.”

Drax shrugs.

“Mebbe,” he says. “But if I am what you call me, why would you want such a fiend living so close amongst you, when you have the God-given chance to cut him free?”

Cavendish stands up abruptly and walks away. Drax goes back to his carving. It is dark outside and the glow from the blubber lamp is frail and intermittent. He can barely see what he is doing, but as he works he feels the shallow lines of engravure with his fingers, as a blind man might, and imagines the glorious and patriotic pictures they will form when he is done. Cavendish comes back shortly and crouches beside him as if wishing to inspect his work.

“You can’t use it inside the tent,” he says, showing him the file, then pushing it underneath the folds of Drax’s blanket. “The others will hear for sure.”