Francis Drake’s Final Anchorage Is The Wrong Kind Of White Cliffs

*Log of the Pelican, thereafter Golden Hind, Captain Francis Drake presiding, though by this point wishing he wasn’t.*_ _An unknown bay, lattitude scarily bloody south. 17th day of October, 1579._ Wind, a wall of it from the west. All hands at the pumps, or what’s left of ‘em. The ship’s surgeon, a man named Thomas, attempted to thaw his last dram of ink by holding it under his tongue. His tongue is now a black icicle and his logbook remains as empty as our prospects. The ship herself, the darling *Golden Hind*, is a splintered wreck, beached on a shore of black rock and ice thick enough to moor the world. Her treasure holds, stuffed to the gunwales with 26 tons of plundered Spanish silver, are now a very effective and very permanent anchor. She is not moving until the thaw, and by my bearings, the thaw is scheduled for never. A great many large, flightless birds stand and stare at us. They are not impressed. The first mate, a good Devon man, calls them ‘arse-backward puffins’, which is the first accurate navigational fix we’ve had in weeks. The cold is a physical beast that has chewed off three men’s toes and the cook’s sense of humour. Provisions stand at two casks of biscuit (frozen), four barrels of salt beef (a solid block of misery), and a worrying amount of rum, which freezes at a lower point than a man’s will to live. It has become our primary scientific instrument. The men have taken to calling this place ‘New Albion’, but with a tone that suggests they’d rather be in Old Albion, or indeed Old Hell, where at least a fellow might get warm. Yesterday, Drake himself, a man whose vanity could float a galleon, ordered the ship’s remaining sailcloth be turned into fashionable winter cloaks. The result is 78 men dressed like gaudy, shivering ghosts, arguing over who gets the bit with the Tudor Rose. Morale is a flat calm. It is becoming clear that we are not marooned. We are interred. I hear the carpenter sharpening his saw. Not for wood. The second mate is looking at me the way a starving man looks at a biscuit. A very, very meaty biscuit. Drake holds meetings in his cabin, poring over his maps with the useless intensity of a priest praying for wind in a dead calm. He keeps muttering about a Northwest Passage. I have not the heart to tell him he has found the South-South-As-Far-As-A-Man-Can-Go Passage, and that its only destination is a bastard-cold grave. The penguins continue to watch. They know how this ends. I’m beginning to suspect they’re placing wagers. A fat one seems to have money on me lasting the week. I will not disappoint him.