Punch and Punch
by Robert Garnham

 

 

Captain Dave had explained that it was unorthodox to bring a puppeteer on an Arctic exploration voyage, but it was all very necessary if we were to find the Northwest Passage, and he was a maverick who did not abide by any of the received rules of behaviour.

‘We shall be forced to winter in some lonely bay’, he’d explained, ‘and the crew will need to be entertained’.

I was assigned a cubby hole in which I could pass the voyage and not get in anyone’s way, a time spent heaving and retching into a succession of pales which were emptied unquestionably by Jack the Cabin Boy. He was already a veteran of three expeditions.

‘We had a ventriloquist last time’, he explained. ‘Whose seasickness thankfully abated’.

‘How did the malady cease?’, I asked.

‘He fell overboard and was never seen again’.

Captain Dave would stand at the bow of the HMS Hindrance, a lens to his eye and his neck wrapped against the increasing cold by means of a long, blue woollen scarf knitted by the wife of the onboard baker.

‘Proof, no doubt, of the high regard to which he is held by the families of his crew’, I said to Jack, in between bouts of hewing.

‘He just took it’, Jack replied. ‘Citing that a captain of the fleet cannot have a colder neck than that of his baker’.

‘Fair enough’.

‘Though suits him it does not, for thus enwrapped, he looks like a turkey’.

Yet Captain Dave was also a benevolent soul, and didn’t mind sharing the plaudits of our voyage. In truth, he had run out of names himself by which to christen the various landmarks we passed, that our cartographer had already sketched upon his rudimentary maps Dave Island, Dave Inlet, the Dave Channel, Dave’s Spit and, perhaps worst of all, Dave’s Passage. As we rounded an icy headland he allowed me the privilege of naming the bay which revealed itself to us, the scene a filthy shade of grey snow on water, blue ocean, narwhals and walruses, and I’d felt a twinge of pride that this far flung corner of the world forever be named in my family’s honour.

So we anchored in Shufflebottom Bay, and the next morning the ice set in.

The wooden hull of the HMS Hindrance became stuck fast in a thick pack ice which squeezed its beams and made it sing at night. Some of the more superstitious among the crew feared it to be the plaintive song of mermaids, or the whistle of whales intent on smashing our craft to smithereens. Captain Dave explained that this were nought but nonsense of the highest order, and that the only thing the crew had to be worried about was scurvy, madness, the ship being crushed by the pack ice, frostbite, vicious polar bears, drowning, freezing to death, Eskimo attacks and being impaled by the tusk of a narwhal. So that was all right, then.

At least the rigidity of the vessel entombed in winter’s icy grasp put a stop to my seasickness, and no longer did I have to pass the time wiping drips of vomit both fresh and second-hand from the end of my chin.

‘Well, well, well, who do we have here, then?’, Captain Dave asked, as I emerged from my cubby hole in the bowels of the vessel, presenting myself to the men as they sat around the galley table.

‘All right, lads?’, I asked.

The crew looked at me, blankly, for I had spent so long in my cubby hole that many of them had never even been aware of my existence.

‘Who be this joker?’, someone asked.

‘You may thank me later, my dear fellows’, Captain Dave said, ‘But this is our resident puppeteer’.

‘We have no surgeon nor dentist nor doctor nor carpenter but you’ve seen fit to bring along a puppeteer?’

‘Indeed’, the Captain said. ‘For the sake of morale’.

‘And what kind of puppeteer might he be?’

I drew myself up with a sense of pride.

‘Punch and Judy’, I announced, expectant of a gleeful response.

A gleeful response there was not, merely a general slumping of the shoulder.

‘I will do my best to entertain your spirits and ensure that these weeks are spent in a jovial and propitious manner’, I announced. ‘Now, if you could kindly point me in the direction off the onboard puppets, I will acquaint myself with their workings’.

‘On board puppets?’, Jack the Cabin Boy asked.

‘Is this vessel not equipped with such?’

‘We thought that you were going to bring your own’.

A couple of moments silence passed. Well, wasn’t this a timely and well-aimed kick in the gonads?

‘Oh, bugger’.

 

We had on board an expert in lichen, for whom the voyage was an opportunity to make new discoveries in this field and thereby add to the wealth of human understanding on this complex subject. His first discovery was that there was no lichen upon the icebergs which were similarly entombed in the pack ice, which any fool might well have told him but he had to rule it out in any case. When it was announced that there would be an expedition across the ice to the shores of Shufflebottom Bay, he said that he was eager to go along to see if there might be at least a modicum of lichen for him to prod.

That night it was announced that Professor Berry, for that was his name, would entertain the crew, it having been a Saturday night, with a ballad he had written extolling the virtues of lichen. Jack the Cabin Boy had agreed to accompany him by means of his penny whistle, at which point more of the crew offered to do the same, for they also had penny whistles and felt the need to entertain.

‘How come so many of you are equipped with penny whistles?’, Captain Dave asked.

‘Because they cost but a penny’.

The Captain was cheered by the notion of some entertainment, and he announced that this would become a weekly event, and that I should likewise prepare to undertake my Punch and Judy routine. And as a very special treat, the Captain himself pledged that on Christmas night itself, he should undertake to lead the entertainments by telling his joke.

‘‘Tis but one joke’, he explained, ‘But it is filled with mirth the likes of which are prone to laughter so riotous as to induce asphyxiation’.

That night we gathered under the northern lights, which danced green and nymph-like, as Professor Berry took to the front of the ship accompanied by a veritable orchestra of penny whistles.

 

You can hear it in the night

Rumbling away.

The lichen.

You can hear it in the woods.

It keeps me awake.

Lichen.

I’ve never been compared to lichen.

I’ve never been likened to lichen.

Am I not lichen-worthy?

I live in a bungalow.

 

I want to be ensconced in lichenny splendour.

I want to be complimented on my lichen.

I want to be like lichen so much

That people call me Abraham Lichen.

 

I shouted at the ocean,

Lichen!

The ocean shouted back,

Plankton!

Lichen!

Plankton!

Lichen!

Plankton!

We weren’t getting anywhere

So I put my pants back on.

 

I went to the bank,

Said to the cashier,

I’d like to deposit some lichen,

She asked what it was.

I wrote on a piece of paper,

Lichen.

L I C H E N

In case she wanted to look it up

Later on.

 

In bed last night

With my one true love

Just as things were getting quirky

I introduced some lichen.

I have not heard from her since.

 

Going about my business.

Oh no, it’s the lichen police!

Excuse me sir,

Have you any firearms, explosives or lichen?

It’s a fair cop, guv,

Slam on the cuffs.

 

I went to the magic show.

The magician pulled out of his top hat

Some lichen.

I said,

That wasn’t much of a trick,

The hat is bigger than the lichen,

Anyone can pull lichen out of a hat

When it’s that size

And he said

Why don’t you just naff off?

And he threw some lichen at me.

 

Roses are red, violets are blue,

I don’t know what colour lichen is.

My sister had a garland at her wedding

Made of lichen.

My chiropractor and I are getting on much better.

Something’s clicked.

Shall I compare thee to some summer lichen?

To be or not to be, that is the lichen.

I wandered lonely as some lichen.

Take my hand, Debs, and let us

Dance amid the lichen.

Doctor, doctor, I feel like some lichen.

Well, quoth he, you are very clingy.

 

The penny whistles subsided with a final flourish and the Professor was greeted with an applause which echoed and ricocheted across the pack ice, the aurora themselves dancing as if in appreciation, and all was right with the world.

The next morning, an expedition left the vessel and hiked across the frozen sea to the shores of Shufflebottom Bay. Jack, the Captain and I watched from the safety of our vessel as the party, by now nought but shadows silhouetted against towering banks of snow, mooched around and kicked at rocks and shrugged and went about their tasks. We saw the Professor himself, eagerly gazing upon the rocky shore, and we saw the polar bear before he did. We saw the Professor running across the shoreline pursued by the polar bear, left to right, right to left, then left to right again, yet soon he ran out of energy, leaned against a bank of snow to regain his breath, was knocked over by the beast and thence consumed. The expedition returned a short while afterwards and confirmed that it had been a very sad occurrence. It hadn’t even been a big polar bear.

 

The next morning I set about fashioning some puppets that I might utilise for the purposes of a show. It was the resident priest who warned me that any sight of a female, even in puppet form, might make the crew Unduly Randy and fill their heads with thoughts other than those pertaining to the furtherance of our mission, and thus it was that I began to rewrite my performance piece as Punch and Punch.

Finding the proper material was a chore to which I was not inspired. The heads of the puppets were easy enough to manufacture, as the ship was made from the finest oak and the builders had seen fit to add certain cosmetic embellishments which could be easily sawn without anyone noticing, though my request to cut holes in the canvas sails to create clothing for the puppets was refused due to certain logistical difficulties. When Captain Dave mooched about complaining that someone had sawn the knobs off me bleeding steering wheel I pledged a vow of silence on the matter, knowing that he would absolve me of any hard feeling once I’d entertained them with my Punch and Punch act.

Our resident priest, the Reverend Reginald, was justly shocked at the demise of Professor Berry, and it was announced that he would perform that next Saturday night with his squeezebox, a lament of sorts that we might all come together and remember our fallen brethren. Captain Dave then suggested that as it had been a tough week for all, what with the Professor’s demise and the mutilation of his steering wheel, the Reverend might want to commit to something a little jollier with which to lift the spirits of the crew.

Saturday came, and with it a starry sky which matched anything else created in the celestial magnificence of stars which twinkled and rotated eerily above. The Reverend took out his squeezebox and a sharp jab of noise emanated as if a walrus had banged his knee upon a coffee table. And then other notes, equally sharp and somehow clearer in the fresh empty Arctic air. The Reverend began his ode.

 

At night I dance as if no-one's looking

And I jibber and quiver in a feral rampant beat

While wearing pyjama bottoms and a stetson.

 

I always set my alarm

For two in the morning

To wind up the owls.

They're not clockwork owls

They're just

Easily wound up.

 

After breakfast I play the Dutch National anthem

On the five porcelain vases on the windowsill

Each one of which contains

Just the right amount of water to get the perfect note

While shaking my clenched buttocks.

 

Most afternoons

I laugh and mock the otters.

 

As the galleon of dinner pulls into the

Unloading dock of early evening,

I can often be found

Balanced on a sturdy stuffed badger

Screaming

'My Aunt is the Duke of Cumberland!'

 

Most evenings

I put on my jacket

And go to the market

And I lick all the turnips.

For no other reason than

A deep and abiding fascination

With root vegetables.

And if anyone should try and stop me

I say,

Why can't they grow them as cubes?

Then they'd be square roots.

 

That's how I spend most days.

I'm currently unmarried.

I wonder why.

 

His performance subsided with a gentle squeeze and an elongated note which pulsed out across the silent ice, and we laughed, and our gloved hands clapped, and he bowed before us, grateful for the chance to add some colour to our week.

 

An expedition to the mainland and the shores of Shufflebottom Bay had been pencilled in for the following morning and, being a Sunday, the Reverend explained that it would somewhat fitting to accompany them, and perhaps pay some kind of plaintive tribute to the fallen Professor by means of his religious knowledge and his squeezebox. A prayer or two would be uttered, he said, and a hymn proffered. Perhaps ‘All creatures great and small’ would be the most appropriate, according to one or two of the crew.

The expedition duly departed, the Reverend in tow, and once again I was joined by Jack the Cabin Boy and Captain Dave on the deck of the HMS Hindrance to watch these ant-like figures wind their way across the ice. We watched as they got to the shore, and then began their fruitless poking in the pursuit of science, and we watched as the Reverend bowed his head in prayer, and then pulled out his squeezebox. The notes came to us a few seconds after they’d been played, but we could see him swaying back and forth as if lost in reverie. We then saw the polar bear.

‘Interesting’, Captain Dave observed.

He put his gloved hand into his overcoat pocket and it emerged with a handful of nuts, which he began eating in much the same manner as a theatre patron. He leaned on the railing of the vessel. We watched the Reverend running from one end of the stage - or rather, the bay - pursued by the lumbering beast, and then when it caught up with him, we heard the discordant honking and screeching of his squeezebox as the bear went about its grisly business. Captain Dave chomped down on his handful of nuts.

‘That really is’, he said, through a mouthful, ‘an awful shame’.

The expedition returned a short while afterwards, pondering on the possibility that polar bears might be averse to certain high pitched sounds, that they might imitate the mating call of the narwhal or some such creature.

 

The untimely demise of two members of our crew put a dampener on my preparations for the Christmas show. When the following Saturday, Ollie the cartographer entertained us with a comedy monologue about the problems he faced making sketches and drawing maps in the cramped confines of HMS Hindrance, mimicking the actions of drawing on parchment and paper and impersonating Captain Dave’s mannerisms to a tee, it went some way to restore a bit of humour to the crew. And he was rightly acclaimed for having an uplifting effect on morale. The enthusiasm of his monologue was matched only by the enthusiasm of the polar bear which attacked and ate him the following morning. I could see a pattern forming. And I began to realise that my puppet show would probably herald my own sad demise.

And still I had to worry about making the peppers to begin with.

The nodules I removed from the ship’s steering wheel were just the right shape for the heads of Punch and Punch. I ransacked the belongings of our late cartographer, whose red knitted shawl was sacrificed to make the costume for Punch Number One. Requiring a different colour for the second Punch, in a monochrome landscape devoid of such, I could see only one thing which would suffice. Captain Dave’s scarf.

‘I will pay you handsomely in shillings if you were to remove three inches from the end of that blessed thing’, I told Jack the Cabin Boy.

‘But what would I spend it on? For we have not passed a single shop since we got here’.

Like the compass needle, he had a point.

‘The Captain will have to be distracted’.

‘He is as if married to that scarf’, Jack explained. ‘Rumour is that he sleeps in it. He sayeth that the blue matches his eyes’.

‘His eyes are brown’.

‘He has not a mirror’.

At night the ice squeezed us tight. Crew would sleep in their clothes, afraid that the rivets, bolts and planks of the HMS Hindrance would pop at any moment, the green water of the ocean spill through, and one would be forced to make a hasty exit. The Captain would likewise slumber, similarly dressed.

Some nights the old boat squeaked and whined and it sent shivers up my spine, as if banshees were floating through the labyrinth below decks, death stalking, intent on doing us harm. To take my mind off the promise of my frozen undoing I rehearsed and learned afresh my lines, and practised using the undressed wooden puppets and fashioning the story of Punch and Punch, accompanied by the mournful sighing of that polar breeze.

I didn’t initially ask how Jack the Cabin Boy had managed to obtain three inches from the ends of the Captain’s scarf, but I set to work hurriedly making a costume for the Second Punch. On a cold, foggy morning I went out on deck to sew by whatever pale light could penetrate the dull miasma when an Arctic gull swooped down from the grey, pecked at the blue material, and flew away with it.

The next day, Jack the Cabin Boy came back with another three inches from the end of the Captain’s scarf. And wouldn’t you know it, but the same thing happened again. The appetite polar bears had for naval crewmen was matched only by that of seagulls for blue scraps of knitted wool. And I dare not fathom the method that Jack was employing to gain those fragments of blue wool until, on the third attempt, he apprised me of his method.

‘Captain Dave has a mystical bent’, Jack explained, ‘And as such is willing to believe any old tosh. For some reason he had already marked me out as having abilities beyond the normal, both psychic and visionary, which is one of the reasons why I was employed as Cabin Boy in the first place, for it is an otherwise meaningless job description. I would enter the Captain’s cabin and stand before his deck, and implore him to close his eyes and imagine, if he could, the sound of swords scraping together, for these swords were the dual aspects of his psyche. And these dual aspects were fighting one another, the sacred verses the bad from deep within him battling out their dominance in a swashbuckling duel. Lulling him almost into a trance, I’d whisper that he might listen carefully for the sound of metal on metal, sword on sword. And then, while he were justly at one with the silence, I’d cut the end of his scarf off. ‘I hear it!’, he’d yell, ‘Ever so softy! Scrape, scrape, scrape!’

‘And this worked?’

‘It giveth him the willies’.

‘I thought Captain Dave was fearless’.

‘Matters of the otherworldly turn him into a shivering wreck’.

‘Much like this vessel’.

‘The two are closely matched’.

‘And do you have psychic abilities?’

‘None in the slightest’.

My lessons from the previous seagull attacks had not been learned and a flock of them made a mockery of the second Punch’s costume. The resident zoologist conjectured that the exact shade of blue of the costume matched that of certain Arctic breeds of plankton seemingly irresistible to the native gulls. I asked why the Captain, who wore the scarf constantly, had not been similarly affected, and the zoologist conjectured that it were probably the heavy cologne that the Captain insisted on wearing which then repelled the Arctic gulls, which had he assured me, incredibly sensitive nostrils. Jack was dispatched once more, bescissored and eager. The Captain’s mood was noticeably brighter the following morning, his scarf noticeably shorter. It was almost just a cravat.

The puppet costumes were complete. My script was learned, and Christmas time had slewed its way into the week. There was, alas, no turning back.

 

Indeed, Christmas came with about as much cheer as a sob in a monastery. More so that I should gaze on my own mortality, fearing that I, but a puppeteer, should be coerced into an expedition to the mainland, and thence to meet my disembowelment at the claws of a polar bear. The Captain assured me that Christmas would be extra merry this year, for he would tell his joke, and I would prevail upon the assembled crew a Punch and Punch show the likes of which would cause mirth and merriment aplenty.

The Captain was indisposed over the two days previous to christmas. It was explained that he was pacing his cabin, rehearsing His Joke and aiming to get the delivery of it Just Right. However he had sent word that there would be an expedition to the shore of Shufflebottom Bay on Boxing Day morning, that such things would ‘lift the spirits after the excesses of our Christmas feast’. Salted walrus steaks, apparently, one cracker each, and a slice of lemon ‘to combat scurvy’.

And how we dined around the galley table. And it was a windy night, the sky an ever-present gloomy black, the ice squeezing the hull. Wind whistled around the masts and through the rigging and through the gaps in the vessel, whistled and moaned so that it joined with the squeaks and screams of the ice to create an otherworldly choir of deep foreboding. The walrus steak was rank. The boat shuddered and shook. Wolves howled in the subconscious of the moment. Captain Dave stood and silence the room, banging his fork on the side of his glass.

‘First of all’, quoth he, ‘I should like to announce a further expedition on the morrow to Shufflebottom Bay. I believe that the brazen winds will blow away Ay cobwebs, will it not? And I know that this is somewhat against the nature of our scientific mission, but I should very much like our puppeteer to accompany the crew, that this ship have the honour of providing the first Punch and Judy - er, Punch - performance on the most northern tip of this new continent’.

My heart, unlike the ship, sank.

‘And secondly, here cometh my joke’.

Captain Dave cleared his throat.

‘I once saw a donkey nibbling the dried flowers on my Aunt’s Sunday hat’.

Silence.

‘Though . . . Though she were not wearing it at the time!’

He fell about in fits of laughter, bent over double, gasping for air, his red face the very picture of uncontained and incomprehensible glee.

‘And now’, said he, wiping a tear from his eye, ‘Our Christmas time entertainment’.

My performance booth was wheeled out, fashioned as it was from two bedsheets and a wooden frame assembled from the bunks of our two departed crew. I positioned myself within, crouched down, and put up my puppetted hands, playing out the scenario I had rehearsed. Punch arrives. Punch number two arrives. Punch number one asks Punch number two if he has seen Judy. He hasn’t seen Judy. Punch number one says that Judy hit him with a frying pan. Punch number two says, oh dearie me, I bet that hurt. Punch number one concurred that it did. Punch number two announces that he has come round for some sausages, Punch number one says that he hasn’t got any sausages because the shops were closed. Punch number two asks if he has seen a crocodile. Punch number one says that crocodiles do not tend to thrive at this latitude. Punch number two says, no Judy, no sausages, no crocodiles, what’s going on here? What about a policeman?, and Punch number one says that the constabulary do not tend to have jurisdiction this far north, and then the two Punches just kind of look at one another for a few moments and Punch number two says, well, I’ll be off, then, and that was kind of how the show ended. Except that by now I was quite aware that there hadn’t been any audience reaction at all, let alone laughter, so Punch turned to the crew and said, ‘I once saw a donkey nibbling the dried flowers on my Aunt’s Sunday hat’, and thus ended the Punch and Punch show.

I emerged afterwards and glanced around the room fully expecting to see it devoid of any of the crew, for so silent had their reaction been, only to feel the full glare of every face staring in my direction. Captain Dave offered his thanks and then finally gave permission for some kind of applause, which I accepted almost as weakly as it had been offered, and thence did I slink back to my cubby hole, to sleep fitfully and imagine waking for my last morning upon this earth.

 

The expedition had been planned with an early start. Though sunrise is a hit and miss affair in the far north, and mostly miss this morning, that we should clamber down a rope ladder to the pack ice in a hard frost in a faltering, permanent dusk. Across the pitted and jagged ice, in that dull and permanent gloaming, I followed a line of men intent, by their own admission, not only to study the mosses and rocks of Shufflebottom Bay, but also to get away from that death trap for a few hours. Each member of our expedition was thereby seemingly conscious of their own mortality and saw an excursion to the mainland as a chance to increase their chances of survival, whereas for myself, I felt the exact opposite.

The deep snow and ice gave way at the water’s edge, and soon we were on the beach itself, scene already of three horrific maulings, and I became aware of Jack the Cabin Boy and Captain Dave observing us from the railings of the ship. How very much like the stage of a theatre the beach and bay must have seemed, that we were actors stationed there for their entertainment, and I was the clown, shortly to be the subject of some vile comic relief.

‘If you dig down a bit in the snow’, one of the scientists explained, ‘You’ll find some really cracking examples of moss’.

I had brought the performance booth with me, though the wind was sharp and it stung my face, and I worried that it would not stand upright in the gale, yet as luck would have it, the location near where Ollie the cartographer had been dismembered was happily sheltered from the wind. Through crunching snow I set up the booth and climbed inside glad, at least, that it should provide a rudimentary shelter, though the sides of the structure flapped alarmingly. The other members of the expedition did not even seem at all interested in my forthcoming performance, or at least, knew it were certain that I would shortly meet my fate and as such, wanted to stay well clear of the inevitable polar bear attack. It seemed inevitable that Boxing Day on Shufflebottom Bay would be a bloodbath and, with no audience save those watching from the ship, I began my performance.

My hands were cold as I operated the puppets, numbed by the fierce winds, and my teeth chattered and the cold took away my words. Yet perform I did, crouched down behind the sheet unaware that the only person watching me was a one and a half ton polar bear, sat ever so inquisitive a few feet away. The other members of the crew wanted nothing to do with this, for they were obviously certain that the polar bear was planning its attack, but for now it seemed quite entranced by the puppets and content just to watch. It was only when Punch Number Two delivered his final words and the puppets bowed, and I heard no audience response save for the moaning of the wind and the low growling of a disgruntled bear, that I realised that my life were in immediate danger.

The bear’s humours ran from disgruntled by the end of the performance, to outright apoplexy when I stood up and looked through the gap whereat the puppets had been performing. The illusion had been spoiled! Obviously disappointed, and yet suddenly quite peckish, it vented its fury and stood on its hind legs, then lunged towards me and the booth, intent on depriving me of any claim to any earthly existence.

I could feel the warmth of its breath, that’s how close it was. And the fear overtook me, pumping metallic through my veins, my heart beating so fast as if to burst through my chest. The world slowed down, narrowed down to just myself and this fearsome creature. The cold was no longer important, the geography barely registered at all for this was obviously going to be the end, and with a sense of resignation I prepared to meet my fate.

Yet wouldn’t you know it, but it was at this exact second that a flock of Arctic gulls decided to descend, driven wild by the flash of blue of the costume worn by Punch Number Two, driven wild by the promise of Arctic plankton, and perhaps afraid that the bear might get there first, and thus began a veritable frenzy of flapping wings and sharp beaks enough to beat back the polar bear and send it scampering off into the snowy tundra. It was not until Punch Number Two were stripped bare that the flock left me in peace, the performance booth now wrecked with holes and my senses numbed by more than just the cold. People often dismiss a career in entertainment, yet it is an industry fraught with peril.

I sat on a rock and waited for the expedition to finish their scientific chores, and then, through the deepening dusk, we returned back to the HMS Hindrance.

 

On board, in the safety of my cubby hole, I placed my fingers on the wooden slats of the wall and felt the ice groaning, shuddering through the vessel. My fingers outlined the trace of a vein in the wood, jagged rings like the northern lights, like the surface of the pack ice, and I thought, there are no patterns in the universe, only chaos.

My part in the expedition, ostensibly, was at an end, and thus I retreated into my own world far from the machinations of the crew and their various scientific foibles. I would hear the Captain bellowing every now and then, particularly when his cologne ran out and the words ‘those bastard gulls have taken my scarf!, echoed around the craft.

But I had a new way of looking at the world. I saw myself as a part of some greater matrix of being, my decisions and acts dependent on those of other people, other species, other modes of existence. The narrow confines of my bunk had never felt more like a coffin, my cubby hole - which I would later learn had been intended as a broom cupboard, for snow must be constantly swept - a mausoleum. I made a private vow at that moment that I would never perform with puppets again. You never know where the next polar bear will come from.

With the spring came a thaw and the ship was buoyant once again, and on we sailed, to places new and undiscovered.

One moonlit night I escaped from my lair and wandered the deck, by chance meeting Jack the Cabin Boy, who told me that the Captain had been watching me the whole time that I was on the shore of Shufflebottom Bay. The two of us leaned against the side of the ship and looked out at the black waters of the Arctic, the stars above and the moon sending down its ethereal glow as a frost settled on the rigging and the polished wood.

‘Was he concerned?’, I asked.

‘More jubilant’.

‘How come?!’

‘You had done what he asked. You were performing a Punch and Judy show on the northern coast. That was his aim. Indeed, he said to me, that would most likely be the most defining memory of the expedition once we return to Dartmouth. It doesn’t matter how many bays we named, how many headlands we passed, or whether or not we discovered the Northwest Passage, the fact is that the general populace will only remember that one of our crew performed a Punch and Judy show on a beach far north of the Arctic circle’.

‘So he didn’t care that I was about to be killed by a bear’.

‘That would have been merely a footnote.’.

I went back to my cubby hole, and that night I heard the second officer entertaining the crew with a sea shanty.

 

Ring-a ring-a roses

A pocket full of bank notes

A tissue

A tissue

And some spare change.

 

I am yet to be told his fate.

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