Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy coloured scarlet, uncertain how to take this banter from his seniors. Was Bourne implying the bear was scared by his own size or his own courage? Or that polar bears really were timid and his moment of triumph was thereby diminished?
Drinkwater felt for the boy, particularly as Walmsley and Glencross joined the raillery. 'Oh, Mr Bourne, the bear was absolutely terrified of Frey, why I saw him positively roll his eyes in terror at the way Frey hefted his musket. Did you not see that, Glencross?' asked Lord Walmsley mischievously.
'Indeed I did, why I thought he was loading with his mouth and firing with his knees…' There was a roar of laughter from the members of the hunting party who had witnessed the excited midshipman ascend an ice hummock with a Tower musket bigger than himself. He had stumbled over the butt, tripped and fallen headlong over the hummock, discharging the gun almost in the ear of the recumbent bear.
Poor Frey was in no doubt now, as to the purpose of his seniors' intentions. Drinkwater divined something of the boy's wretchedness.
'Come, gentlemen, there is no need to make Mr Frey the butt of your jest…'
There was further laughter, some strangled murmurs of 'Butt… butt… oh, very good, sir… very apt' and eventual restoration of some kind of order.
'Well, Mr Singleton,' said Drinkwater to change the subject and addressing the sober cleric, 'what d'you make of our eskimo friend?'
'He is named Meetuck, sir and is clearly frightened of white men, although he seems to have reconciled himself to us after he was offered meat…'
'Which he ate raw, sir,' put in Frey eagerly.
''Pon my soul, Mr Frey, raw, eh? Pray continue, Mr Singleton.'
'He claims to come from a place called Nagtoralik, meaning a place with eagles, though this may mean nothing as a location as we understand it, for these people are nomadic and follow their food sources. He says…'
'Pardon my interruption, Mr Singleton but do I understand that you converse with him?'
Singleton smiled his rare, dark smile. 'Well not converse, sir, but there are words that I comprehend which, mixed with gesture, mime and some of Mr Frey's quick drawings, enabled us to learn that he had found a putulik, a place with a hole in the ice through which he was presumably catching fish when he was attacked by a bear. He made his escape but in doing so fell and injured himself, breaking his arm. I think that scuppers the arguments of Mr Frey's persecutors, sir, that even an experienced hunter may fall in such terrain and also that the polar bear is capable of great ferocity.'
'Indeed, Mr Singleton, I believe it does,' replied Drinkwater drily. Cawkwell drew the cloth in his silent ghost-like way and the decanters began to circulate.
'Tell us, Mr Singleton how you came to learn eskimo,' asked Mount, suddenly serious in the silence following the loyal toast.
Singleton leaned forward with something of the proselytiser, and the midshipmen groaned inaudibly, but sat quiet, gulping their brandy avidly.
'The Scandinavians were the first Europeans to make contact with the coast of Greenland sometime in the tenth century. Their settlements lasted for many years before being destroyed by the eskimos in the middle of the fourteenth century. When the Englishman John Davis rediscovered the coast in 1585 he found only eskimos. Davis,' Singleton turned his gaze on the midshipmen with a pedagogic air, 'gave his name to the strait between Greenland and North America… The Danish Lutheran Hans Egede was able to study the innuit tongue before embarking with his family and some forty other souls to establish a permanent colony on the West Coast of Greenland. When he returned to Copenhagen on the death of his wife he wrote a book about his work with the eskimos among whom he preached and taught for some fifteen years. His son Povel remained in Greenland and completed a translation of Our Lord's Testament, a catechism and a prayer book in eskimo. Povel Egede died in Copenhagen in '89 and I studied there under one of his assistants.' Singleton paused again and this time it was Drinkwater upon whose face his gaze fixed.
'I refused to leave during the late hostilities and was in the city when Lord Nelson bombarded it.'
'That,' replied Drinkwater meeting Singleton's eyes, 'must have been an interesting experience.'
'Indeed, Captain Drinkwater, it persuaded me that no useful purpose can be served by armed force.'
A sense of affront stiffened the relaxing diners. To a man their eyes watched Drinkwater to see what reply their commander would make to this insult to their profession. From little Frey, ablaze with brandy and bravado; the arrogant insensitivity of Walmsley and Glencross and the puzzlement of Mr Quilhampton, to the testy irritation of a silent Mr Hill and the colouring anger of Mr Mount, the table seethed with a sudden unanimous indignation. Drinkwater smiled inwardly and looked at his first lieutenant. Mr Germaney had said not a word throughout the entire meal, declined the brandy and merely toyed with his food.
'That, Mr Singleton, is an interesting and contentious point. For my own part, and were the world as perfect as perhaps its maker intended, I should like nothing better than to agree with you. But since the French do not seem to be of your opinion the matter seems likely to remain one for academic debate, eh? Well, Mr Germaney, what do you think of Mr Singleton's proposition?'
The first lieutenant seemed at first not to have heard Drinkwater. Hill's nudge was far from surreptitious and Germaney surfaced unsure of what was required of him.
'I… er, I have no great opinion on the matter, sir,' he said hurriedly, hoping the reply sufficient. Remarking the enormity of Germaney's abstraction with some interest Drinkwater turned to the bristling marine officer.
'Mr Mount?'
'Singleton's proposition is preposterous, sir. The Bible is full of allusions to the use of violence, Christ's own eviction of the moneylenders from the Temple notwithstanding. Had he argued the wisdom of bombarding a civilian population I might have had some sympathy with his argument for it is precisely to preserve our homes that we serve here, but the application of force is far from useless…'
'But might it not become an end, rather than a means, Mr Mount?' asked Singleton, 'and therefore to be discouraged lest its use be undertaken for the wrong motives.'
'Well a man does not stop taking a little wine in case he becomes roaring drunk and commits some felonious act, does he?'
'Perhaps he should, Mr Mount,' said Singleton icily, raising a glass of water to his lips.
'I don't understand you, Mr Singleton,' said Hill at last. 'I can see you may argue that if Cain had never slain Abel the world might have been a better place but given that it is not paradise, do you advocate that we simply lie down and invite our enemies to trample over us?'
'To turn the other cheek and beat our swords into ploughshares?' added Mount incredulously.
'Why not?' asked Singleton with impressive simplicity. There was a stunned silence while they assimilated the preposterous nature of this suggestion. Then the table erupted as the officers leaned forward with their own reasons for the impossibility of such a course of action. The candle flames guttered under the discharge of air from several mouths. In the ensuing babel Drinkwater heard such expressions as 'march unchecked on London… dishonour our women… destroy our institutions… rape… loot… national honour…'
He allowed the reaction to continue for some seconds before banging sharply on the table.
'Gentlemen, please!' They subsided into silence. 'Gentlemen, you must have some regard for Mr Singleton's cloth. Preposterous as his ideas sound to you, your own conversations have disturbed him these past weeks. He doubtless finds equally odd your own assertions that you will "thrash Johnny Crapaud", "cut the throats of every damned frog" you encounter not to mention "flog any man that transgresses the Articles of War or the common usages of the service". Yet you appear devout enough when Divine Service is read, an act which Mr Singleton may regard as something close to hypocrisy… eh?' He looked round at them, his eyes twinkling as he encountered mystification or downright astonishment.