The North Water(11)

“May I ask you a question, Sumner?” Black says.

Sumner, peering back at him through a thickening haze of intoxication, nods. Black is young and eager but he is also, Sumner believes, more than a little arrogant. He is never openly rude or disdainful, but one senses sometimes a self-belief which is out of scale with his position.

“Yes,” he says, “you certainly may.”

“What are you doing here?”

“In Lerwick?”

“On the Volunteer. What’s a man like you doing aboard a Greenland whaling ship?”

“I explained my situation in the wardroom the other evening, I think—my uncle’s will, the dairy farm.”

“But then why not find work in a city hospital? Or join another practice for a time? You must know people who could help you. The job of surgeon on a whaling vessel is uncomfortable, dreary, and badly paid. It is usually taken by medical students in need of funds, not a man of your age and experience.”

Sumner blows twin tubes of cigar smoke out of his nostrils and blinks.

“Perhaps I am an incurable eccentric,” he says, “or just a fucking fool. Did you ever think of that?”

Black smiles.

“I doubt either is true,” he says. “I have seen you reading your Homer.”

Sumner shrugs. He is determined to stay quiet, to say nothing that might suggest the truth of his estate.

“Baxter made me an offer, and I accepted it. Perhaps that was rash of me, but now we have begun I’m looking forward to the experience. I intend to keep a diary, make sketches, read.”

“The voyage may not be as relaxed as you think. You know Brownlee has a great deal to prove—you heard about the Percival, I’m sure. He was lucky to get another ship after. If he fails this time, that will be the end of him. You are the ship’s surgeon, of course, but I have seen surgeons made to hunt before. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I’m not afraid to work, if that’s what you mean. I’ll do my share.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.”

“And what about you? Why the Volunteer?”

“I’m young, I have no family still living, no important friends; I must take risks if I’m to get on. Brownlee is known for being reckless, but if he succeeds he may earn me a good deal of money, and if he fails no blame will attach to me and I’ll still have time on my side.”

“You’re shrewd enough, for a young man.”

“I don’t intend to end up like those others—Drax, Cavendish, Jones. They’ve all stopped thinking. They no longer know what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it. But I have a plan. Five years from now, or sooner if I get my share of luck, I’ll have my own command.”

“You have a plan?” Sumner says. “And you think that will help you?”

“Oh yes,” he says, with a grin which hovers between the deferential and the supercilious. “I expect it will.”

*

Drax comes back down first. He lowers himself into a chair beside Black and lets out a long and noisome fart. The other two men look at him. He winks, then waves to the barmaid for another drink.

“For a shilling I’ve had worse,” he says.

Two fiddlers start up in the corner and some of the girls begin to dance. A party of deckhands from the Zembla arrives and Black walks over to talk to them. Cavendish appears, still buttoning up his britches, but there is no sign of Jones-the-whale.

“Our Mr. Black over there is a smug-looking little prick, int he?” Cavendish says.

“He tells me he has a plan.”

“Fuck his fucking plan,” Drax says.

“He wants his own ship,” Cavendish says, “but he won’t get it. He has no fucking idea what’s going on here.”

“And what is going on here?” Sumner asks.

“Nothing much,” Cavendish says. “The usual.”

The men from the Zembla are dancing with the whores; they are all whooping and stamping their feet on the floorboards. The air is filling with sawdust and peat smoke. There is a warm, fetid odor of tobacco and ashes and stale beer. Drax looks disdainfully across at the dancers and then asks Sumner to buy him another whiskey. “I’ll give you my note of hand,” he offers. Sumner waves him away and orders another round.

“You know, I heard all about Delhi,” Cavendish says to him, leaning in.

“And what did you hear?”

“I heard there was money to be made. Loot aplenty. You get anything?”

Sumner shakes his head.

“The Pandys cleaned the city out before we got inside. They took it with them. All that was left when we arrived was stray dogs and broken furniture; the place was ransacked.”

“No gold then?” Drax says. “No jewels?”

“Would I really be sitting here with you two bastards if I was rich?”

Drax gazes at him for several seconds, as if the question is too complex for an immediate reply.

“There’s rich and rich,” he says eventually.

“I’m neither one.”

“You saw some famous butchery though, I’d bet,” Cavendish says. “Some heinous fucking violence.”

“I’m a surgeon,” Sumner says. “So I’m not impressed by bloodshed.”