The North Water Read Free Page B

again on their own or else they turn in on themselves and die—that is my experience at least. The potions don’t make a great deal of difference.”
    Sumner raises his eyebrows but appears unconcerned by this casual disparagement of his profession.
    â€œI should examine the medicine chest,” he says, without much enthusiasm. “There may be some items I need to add or replace before we sail.”
    â€œThe chest is stowed in your cabin. There is a chemist’s shop on Clifford Street besides the Freemason’s Hall. Get whatever you need and tell them to send the bill to Mr. Baxter.”
    Both men rise from the table. Sumner extends his hand and Brownlee briefly shakes it. Each man for a moment peers at the other one as if hoping for an answer to some secret question they are too alarmed or wary to ask out loud.
    â€œBaxter won’t like that much, I imagine,” Sumner says at last.
    â€œBugger Baxter,” Brownlee says.
    *   *   *
    Half an hour later, Sumner sits hunched over on his bunk and tongues his pencil stub. His cabin has the dimensions of an infant’s mausoleum, and smells, already, before the voyage has even begun, sour and faintly fecal. He peers skeptically into the medicine chest and begins to make his shopping list: hartshorn , he writes, Glauber’s salt , Spirit of Squills . Every now and then he unstoppers one of the bottles and sniffs the dried-up innards. Half the things in there he has never heard of: Tragacanth? Guaiacum? London Spirit? It’s no wonder Brownlee thinks the “potions” don’t work: most of this stuff is fucking Shakespearean. Was the previous surgeon some kind of Druid? Laudanum , he writes by the eggish light of a blubber lamp, absinthe , opium pills , mercury . Will there be much gonorrhea amongst a whaling crew? he wonders. Possibly not, since whores in the Arctic Circle are likely to be thin on the ground. Judging by the amount of Epsom salts and castor oil already in the chest, however, constipation will be a sizable problem. The lancets, he notices, are uniformly ancient, rusty, and blunt. He will have to have them sharpened before he begins any bleeding. It is probably a good thing he has brought his own scalpels and a newish bone saw.
    After a while, he closes the medicine chest and pushes it back beneath the bunk, where it rests beside the battered tin trunk that he has carried with him all the way from India. Out of habit, automatically, and without looking down, Sumner rattles the trunk’s padlock and pats his waistcoat pocket to check he still has the key. Reassured, he stands, leaves the cabin, and makes his way along the narrow companionway and up onto the ship’s deck. There is a smell of varnish and wood shavings and pipe smoke. Barrels of beef and bundles of staves are being loaded into the forehold on ropes, someone is hammering nails into the galley roof, there are several men up in the rigging swinging pots of tar. A lurcher scuffles by, then stops abruptly to lick itself. Sumner pauses beside the mizzenmast and scans the quayside. There is no one there he recognizes. The world is enormous, he tells himself, and he is a tiny, unmemorable speck within it, easily lost and forgotten. This thought, which would not normally be pleasing to anyone, pleases him now. His plan is to dissolve, to dissipate, and only afterwards, some time later, to re-form. He walks down the gangplank and finds his way to the chemist’s shop on Clifford Street, where he hands over his list. The chemist, who is bald and sallow and missing several teeth, examines the list, then looks up at him.
    â€œThat’s not right,” he says. “Not for a whaling voyage. It’s too much.”
    â€œBaxter’s paying for everything. You can send him the bill directly.”
    â€œHas Baxter seen this list?”
    Inside the shop, it is gloomy and the brownish air is sulfurous and thick with liniment. The