The North Water(37)
“You will be expected to testify in the court, no doubt, when McKendrick comes to trial,” Brownlee says. “And the log will be shown as evidence also. McKendrick’s lawyer, if he can afford one, will attempt to blacken your name, I ’spect. That is what such vultures generally do. But you will stand up to him, I’m sure.”
“I don’t like to be accused or talked at in that way,” Drax admits. “That don’t please me any.”
“The word of a lone sodomite will carry no great weight, you can be sure of that. You must stand your ground, that’s all.”
Drax nods.
“I’m an honest man,” he says. “I tell only what I saw.”
“Then you have nothing to fear.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The news of McKendrick’s guilt spreads instantly through the ship. Those few who considered themselves friends of the carpenter find it hard to believe he is a murderer, but their doubts are quickly overpowered by the breadth and weight of the more generally held certainty that he must be one. After his second interview with Brownlee, he is kept chained in the forehold, eats alone, and shits and pisses into a bucket, which is emptied daily by a cabin boy. After a week or so of this, his identity as a criminal and a pervert is so secure in the minds of the crew, it is hard to believe he was ever truly one of them. They remember him as separate and strange, and assume that whatever seemed usual about him was only a clever way of covering up those deeper deviancies. Occasionally, one or two men venture into the hold to taunt him or ask him questions about his crime. When they do so, they find him oddly unrepentant, sour, baffled, belligerent, as if he doesn’t yet (not even now) realize the truth of what it is he has done.
Brownlee wants nothing more than to get back to the appointed business of slaughtering whales, but for the next several days they are beset by foul weather—drenching rain and thick fog—which conceals their prey and makes the fishing impossible. Domed and circled by the clamminess and murk, they grind mutely southwards through a loose patchwork of pancake ice and slurry. When the weather finally opens up they have passed Jones Sound and Cape Horsburgh to the west, and are in sight of the entrance to Pond’s Bay. Brownlee is all eagerness to proceed, but the sea ice is abnormally dense for the season and they are forced to delay awhile longer. The Hastings moors alongside them, and so do the Polynia, the Intrepid, and the Northerner. Since there is no work to be done while they are waiting for the wind to change, the captains move freely amongst the five ships, dining in one another’s cabins and passing time in conversation, argument, and reminiscence. Brownlee tells his old stories often and easily: the coal barge, the Percival, everything before. He is not ashamed of what he has been or done: a man makes his mistakes, he tells them, a man suffers as he must suffer, but the readiness is all.
“So are you ready?” Campbell asks him lightly. They are sitting alone in Brownlee’s cabin. The plates and dishes have been cleared away, and the others have already returned to their ships. Campbell is a shrewd and knowing fellow, friendly to a degree but also secretive and superior at times. There is a hint of mockery in his question, Brownlee thinks, a definite suggestion that his part in Baxter’s machinations is the finer one.
“I hear that if all goes well, you will be next,” Brownlee says. “Baxter told me that himself.”
“Baxter thinks the whaling trade is finished,” Campbell says. “He wants to settle up now, buy himself a modest manufactory.”
“Aye, but he’s wrong about that. These seas are still crammed full of fishes.”
Campbell shrugs. He has an upturned nose, broad cheeks, and long side-whiskers; his narrow lips are poised in a semipermanent pout, giving Brownlee the uncomfortable impression that, even when he appears silent and absorbed in his own thoughts, he is always just about to talk.
“If I was a gambling man, Baxter is one horse I’d like to put a little of my money on. He doesn’t fall at many fences; he jumps ’em pretty clean, I’d say.”
“He’s a shrewd fucker, I’ll give you that.”
“So are you ready?”
“We’ve got time enough to kill a few more whales. No need to rush on, is there?”
“The whales is small change in this game,” Campbell reminds him. “And you may not get too many good chances to sink her nicely and make it look just as it should. It’s the way it looks that matters most, remember. We can’t make it any too obvious or the underwriters will start up with their querying, and that’s what none of us wants. You least of all.”
“There’s a deal of ice about this year. It won’t be so hard to manage.”
“Sooner is better than after. If we leave it too long, I risk getting trapped myself. Then where the fuck would we be?”
“Give me a week in Pond’s Bay,” Brownlee says. “A week more only, and then we can look about for the right spot to get well nipped.”
“A week will do it, and then I say we head back northwards,” Campbell says, “up to Lancaster Sound or thereabouts. No one will follow us up there. You find yourself a snug little lead near some hefty land ice and wait for the wind to blow the floes back in on you. And from what I’ve seen of your crew, those fuckers won’t be doing too much to help.”
“I’m minded to leave that carpenter where he is.”