Cormac James The Surfacing (retail) (epub) i

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.On the 27th, finally, a coastline was cried out.The men all came up and stared at it as a wonder.Greenland, it was called.It looked like burned bog.There was not a single tree, or a single bush.There was no grass.Frayed and shabby at the edges, there was still snow on those hills that faced north.At Disko there was no other ship.Well above the high water line stood a lone warped wooden house, with a line of huts behind, set directly into the hillside.The huts were roofed with sods level with the land, and from the ship, through the glass, the dirty bundles seemed to crawl out of a hole in the ground.The whaleboat moved towards the shore with Myer standing at the bow.It was a pose he had admired privately.Already, crowds of women and children were waiting on the rocks.It was an open-air abattoir.Bones, waste, and offal everywhere.And everywhere strips of meat three and four and five feet long laid like frost-charred ferns on the bare ground, to cure.The air was almost sweet.To no one in particular, Myer announced: What a welcome.A carnival of the unclean.Under the boat, giant grey tentacles, that looked more animal than vegetable, tried a lazy flourish.Lieutenant Morgan, the ship’s second, stared down at them from the stern.The previous summer, he had swum in the liquid jade of Aegean.That seemed another world to him now, another man.The governor’s house was suspiciously clean, and suspiciously neat, as though something untoward had happened there, of which they hoped to eliminate every trace.It was a blatant rebuttal to everything seen on the shore.The floors were green, and looked freshly painted.The low ceilings were pale blue.The lady of the house was the governor’s sister, Miss Rink.She was pale as an invalid, yet glowed with health.Her skin too seemed strangely clean.They sat and stared at a grumbling stove and let Rink talk.He was struggling to pull the cork from a bottle.Near the fire stood an empty brass birdcage.The cork came away with a sound, knowing sigh.You and your officers are all my guests, Rink said.As long as you are here.We couldn’t think of soiling your sheets for just one night, Myer said.What does that matter? Rink said.Let her wash some sheets.She complains she is being bored most of the time.We’re really not so badly off where we are, Morgan said.Quite tightly packed, it’s true, but comfortable nonetheless.She asked outright how many they were, and Myer told her.They were six officers, ten men, one boy and one Greenlander, to manage the dogs and to translate, if need be.We couldn’t possibly ask you to entertain us all, Myer said.It’s not often I have the pleasure of proper conversation, she said.You see, Rink told them.You must regularly have visits from the whalers, Morgan told her.The whalers are a very particular, I almost said peculiar, class of man.I admire them greatly, but there are limits, I find, to their charms.Her hair was blonde, pulled back very tight.There would be a great relief, it looked to Morgan, if all of a sudden the thing were undone.Myer said they really could not linger, however much the hospitality of Mr Rink and his charming sister might appeal.Already they were behind schedule, he said.They had a rendezvous with other Admiralty ships at Beechey Island, in Lancaster Sound, from where they would disperse to various points in the archipelago, to begin the search, before the winter set in again.I do not think so, Rink said.The winter is slow going this year, she said.We’re hoping to get a good run through The Pack, said Myer.You will be doing it well, Rink said, if even you get there at all.That month alone, she said, three whalers had been crushed in Melville Bay.Out of Peterhead.Two more, crippled, had only just gone home.Myer said he had not seen them, coming up the coast.Did Myer really think there was still hope of finding them? Rink asked.Franklin and the two missing ships, he meant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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