Opening up upon their larboard beam was a great channel in the ice shelf. Quilhampton realised the extent of his preoccupation in not noticing it before. Apart from loose floes he estimated the opening was several miles wide, partly hidden by a low raft of hummocked ice. In the channel the water appeared greener, forming an eutrophid strait between great continents of ice. Here was the reason for the whales' mysterious migration, a krill and plankton-rich sea which they had sensed from a distance.
Already Narwhal had two boats in the water. Provident, Earl Percy and Faithful were heaving to. Diana had still to come up and Truelove, fallen off to the eastward, had seen Narwhal's signal and altered to the west.
Quilhampton swung himself through the trapdoor and hurried down the mainmast rigging.
Drinkwater realised the significance of the great ice-free lead as soon as he reached the crow's nest. He was perceptive enough to know that the strange channel that seemed to exist as far as the eye could see to the westward was unusual. Entering the channel the right whales had slowed. He could see twenty or thirty at any one time on the surface, their spouts so numerous as to form a cloud above them as they vented through their spiracles. From time to time a great, blunt head would appear, the baleen gleaming in a rigid grin while seawater poured from the corners of the gaping mouth as the fibrous whale-bone strained the tiny organisms from the sea.
He sensed, too, a change of tempo from the pursuing whalers. As he swung his glass on the two nearer ships he counted the boats already in the water. Narwhal and the nearer ships had all their boats out, Diana, a little to the east was lowering, while Truelove had hoisted her topgallants in her haste to join the great hunt.
Surprisingly he saw a boat from Narwhal turn away from the whales towards the sloop and through the glass he could see Harvey himself standing in the bow. He swung his glass once more to the west. The open lead, with hardly a floe loose on its extraordinary surface, beckoned them to the westwards. It seemed to Drinkwater that the ice shelf had suddenly split, moved by some elemental force, and pulled apart. Momentarily he wondered whether that force might be reversed, that if they entered the channel they might be trapped and crushed. Shaking off his apprehension he made his way below, arriving on the quarterdeck as Harvey's boat came up under the quarter and Lieutenant Rispin, at a nod from Drinkwater, invited Harvey on board.
Harvey's eyes were shining with excitement, illuminating his snubnosed face and eradicating the disfigurements of the smallpox. Drinkwater immediately warmed to him. 'Good morning, Captain Harvey, I am surprised you are not in hot pursuit of the fish.'
Harvey grinned and dispensed briefly with the formalities. 'There will be enough pickings here, captain, if we can hold the whales, to fill all our empty casks and send us safe back to Hull, but we want your assistance.'
'How so?'
'Well, the whales will likely follow th'krill and all into yonder lead. Once we get amongst them they'll swim to west, like. If you'd put this ship ahead of the fish and drop cannon fire ahead of them it'll slow them like, stop them escaping… will you do it?'
A quick kill, a short voyage, the success of a task that had seemed once so very difficult and French privateers a figment of the First Lord's overworked imagination. He had only one reservation, and his inexperience in ice nagged him.
'How far into the lead will they go, Captain Harvey? That looks like dense shelf ice to me, if it closes you may survive but this ship will be crushed like an egg-shell.'
Harvey shook his head. 'I've heard of this happening once before, Captain Drinkwater, in my father's day, sixty-eight or nine, I think. Happen if the whales take themselves into the lead then it'll not close.'
Drinkwater could see Harvey's argument, but it was imperfect. The whales might turn and swim back faster than a ship could beat to windward, the wind might shift and blow the ice to the south-west of them to the north again. He said as much to Harvey and watched the disappointment in the Yorkshireman's eyes.
'The ice'll not close, not for a week at least, and we'll have our casks full by then…' The lust of the hunter was strong in him. Drinkwater could sense his sudden impatience to be gone, to be pointing the harpoon gun that gleamed dully in the bow of his whale-boat.
A short voyage. Home and an end to the ache in his shoulder. Elizabeth…
'Very well, three days, damn you.' He grinned and Harvey grinned and smacked him painfully upon his shoulder. The lése-majesté caused the waiting officers to hide their grins and the instant Harvey had regained his boat Drinkwater called for all hands. He would make them pay for their impertinence, damn it!
'Set the t'gallants, Mr Rispin!'
'Set t'gallants, sir.' He watched Rispin pick up the speaking trumpet as the watch below tumbled up the hatchways. The lieutenant launched into his customary stream of largely superfluous orders.
'After guard to hoist the main t'garns'ls. Bosun's mate, send the after guard to man the main t'garns'l halliards, there! Corporal of marines, send the marines aft to man the mizen t'garns'ls halliards. Master at arms! Send below and turn up the idlers, stewards and servants, messmen, cooks-mates, sweepers and loblolly boys!'
This volley of orders was answered by the petty officers who thumped the fife-rails for good effect with their starters, cursing and shouting at the men.
'Topmen aloft, aloft…' Rispin's strange, hysterical system seemed to galvanise the hands, as though they were all suddenly aware that the hunt for whales had taken on a new, more primitive flavour. And yet, watching from the larboard hance, one foot upon the slide of Palgrave's fancy brass carronade, Drinkwater once again received the strong impression that they were engaged upon a yachting excursion. Perhaps it was just the excitement, perhaps the extravagance of Rispin's fancy orders that had about it that ritual quality he had observed aboard such craft as the Trinity House Yacht back in eighty-eight, or perhaps it was the fantastic cake-icing seascape that surrounded him that induced the Arctic calenture.
'Let fall! Sheet home!' The yards rose as the canvas fell.
He shook off the ridiculous feeling. 'Mr Quilhampton!'
'Sir?'
'Aloft with you, we shall run into the ice lead and work ahead of the whales.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' Drinkwater looked at the compass.
'Steer west by north.'
'West by north, sir… west by north it is, sir.'
'Sheet home there! Belay!' Rispin at last pronounced topgallants hoisted.
'Square the yards, Mr Rispin, course west by north.'
Rispin acknowledged the order and his voice rose again as he bawled through the trumpet.
'After guard and marines to the weather mainbrace! Forebrace there! Bosun's mate start those men aft here! Haul in the main brace, pull together damn you and mind the weather roll! That's very well with the main yard! Belay there! Belay! Belay the fore-yard, don't come up any…!'
It went on for some minutes before Mr Rispin, fussing under his captain's eye, was satisfied with the trim of the yards and Melusine had already gathered way. From her leeward position she was up among the whalers and their boats now. Two boat-flags were already up, with Narwhal's colours on them, Drinkwater noticed. He raised his hat to Harvey's mate who conned the whaler while his commander was out after the fish. He saluted Abel Sawyers as Melusine swept past the Quaker in his boat, his men pulling furiously to catch a great bull whale a musket shot on the sloop's starboard bow. Then they were in among the whales, the air misty with their breathing, a foetid taint to it. The humps of the shining backs, the flick of a great tail and once a reappearance of that great ugly-noble head as it sluiced the water through the baleen in an ecstasy of surfeit.