“Better to meet the thing squarely—but let be. You can navigate?”
“I was once lieutenant de vaisseau in his most Christian Majesty’s navy.”
This was almost the only time in their long companionship that Frontin ever referred to his mysterious past.
So the Irondelle drove east through long hours of grey day and black night, while ever the bitter gale swept down out of the northwest, and Vanderberg matched the shrieking winds with his deep-chested roar. A rare seaman was the Dutchman, knowing his ship as a book and holding her under a press of sail that sent her scudding like a race-horse.
Bitter cold it was aboard the ketch. The men, inured to privations, made no murmur; since the ballast was all in rum from French Hispaniola, the black cook was kept busy through the long hours dealing out hot grog without cessation, and if the men went about their work half-drunk, they had need to be so. The pumps had to be manned continually, their monotonous clacking never coming to an end. Now and again the rotten rigging would give way, and up must go the men to reeve new lines through frozen sheaves; twice the rotten canvas blew out and had to be taken in, mended and patched under the driving snow, sent up again; and the little main topsail blew away altogether and vanished up the sky. At this, Vanderberg bellowed gusty laughter.
“It’s a sign we’re not bound for hell this cruise, lads! Spell the pumps, lest they freeze, and the rest of you fall to work with axes.”
This, indeed, was the sternest job of all, one that had no ending and was dangerous into the bargain. Gripping the frozen life-lines, the men spread out and chopped away the gathered snow and the ice, forming thicker every moment. In the night this had to be done with lanterns bobbing, black seas rising up out of the darkness and sweeping the decks, new ice forming as fast as the old was cut away, the blunt bows of the ketch smashing over the roaring seas and a hissing rush of water rising and sweeping away as each sea passed on.
Despite all this, despite their maudlin profanity and half-mad frenzy of exertion, the men were cheerful enough, for this was a new sort of privation to them. Hunger and thirst and burning sun they were all too accustomed to meet. Now they had taken aboard no lack of wine, good caribou meat both frozen and smoked, corn and meal and other viands, furs and warm clothing galore, with no little booty in beaver and small loot.
The gale held through the second day, though the snow had ceased and the bitter cold had lessened, so that it seemed to the men they were indeed heading south.
“So long as they do not suspect, gain no sight of sun or stars, and do not try to use their heads in the matter, all well and good,” said Frontin. The three officers were gathered in the stern cabin at noon, leaving the deck to Bose. “They bear Crawford good will for the way he halted Saint-Castin’s redskins and let us get off without harm.”