Page 43 of Valour

Wherever you may roam.

Raise a cheer to her heroic deeds,

And let her name sound free,

The captain who braved the giant whale,

And bested the Weddell Sea!

The music died and Hester covered her mouth with both hands and blinked back tears. It was the finest song she had ever heard. Dying was absolutely worth it.

The crew looked at her earnestly.

“Do you like it?” Charlotte whispered, her cheeks blazing. “I haven’t written a song in so long. It’s probably awful.”

“Like it?” Hester whispered, muffled behind her hands. “Like it?”

“I think she liked it,” Fliss said, grinning. “The cold water clearly had some effect on our captain, look. I don’t recall ever seeing her cry before.”

“I’m not crying—you’re crying!” Hester wailed, tucking her knees to her chest and hiding her face behind them, her shoulders shaking. “Now—who is steering this ship?!”

They all looked at each other, and then bolted out of the cabin.

Hester slumped back onto her bed, Snowball nuzzling into her side. The weight of it all came crashing down. The orca. The fact it had spoken to her. Had sensed her magic. She had died.

She flipped over, pressing her face into her pillow, threading her fingers through Snowball’s long fur. She took a shuddering breath.

And vowed not to use her magic again.

15

IN WHICH THE ICE TIGHTENS ITS GRIP AND NO RULES WERE STIPULATED

15th January 1915, Weddell Sea

There seemed to be no end to the pack ice.

“It feels as though we’re hardly moving. I’m sure that’s the position you showed me last week.” Charlotte sat on the edge of the settee in the chart room, hands clasped in her lap.

Hester grimaced as Peggy stabbed the callipers at the chart spread on the table before them. “We’re close to land, but still so far.” She tapped her bottom lip with a pencil.

Hester sighed. “Winston’s technique was working well—weaken the ice at half speed and then ram at full speed. But I think the ice is worsening. We haven’t moved forwards in two days.”

Peggy slumped onto the table. “We’ve been ramming into it for more than a month now. For seven hundred miles! But Valerie’s recordings show the ice worsening. And the gyre will drag us clockwise to the west from here.”

Charlotte picked at her fingernails.

“It’s fine,” Hester said, placing a hand on top of Charlotte’s. “We’ll just keep battling forwards or wait for the weather to improve. The Intrepid are no further along than we are.”

At least there was that. “Alright. If you’re certain,” Charlotte said. The ice creaked against the sides of the ship, the sound hateful in Charlotte’s ears, like every groan and shudder heralded their doom. “She’s strong enough?” She had asked it often enough but found it incredible that the ship could put up with the tonnes of ice that surrounded them.

“Oh, yes. She’s cross-braced for strength, built for being within the ice. Her sides are over two feet thick,” Hester said with a reassuring smile. “Fear not, friend.”

Charlotte smiled grimly. She would take Hester’s word for it.

The clock caught her eye. “Time to feed the dogs. See you at dinner.” It was a relief not to talk of such things any longer. She bade farewell to Hester and Peggy and walked out of the chart room and up the companionway onto the frozen deck. The air clouded in front of her face, and she wrapped her coat closer against the bite of the gentle breeze that blew, the sails flapping lazily above.

Arnold waited with a bucket of seal meat, dressed in the white overalls and the tinted snow goggles that they wore for hunting on the ice.