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The rest of that night went as planned They slunk out of Sandefjord Harbor undetected and turned west until co to a secluded bay that kept the hours of shoveling coal off the barge and into the Hvalur Batur’s bunkers EachBell and the captain And even as the fuel was being tossed through special access ports, Ivar and another creorking on the autothe boiler’s need for a fresh supply of water drawn through the sea inlets Bell had always understood the delicate balance needed to keep a modern boiler properly fed, he’d just never had such an up-close tutorial

When the sun finally rose and the e so it didn’t becorained coal but also split open and bloody with torn blisters His spine felt like someone had rammed a steel spear between ter vertebrae, and his shoulders and arms had never ached so cruelly in his life

“Not bad, for a city dweller,” Ivar co ht strea in the little porthole drew attention to the sweat runnels snaking through the grime “You won’t make it as a bluejacket, but you’re not completely worthless either”

To Bell, it was about the best coo soft on me, chief”

“Not to worry, Mr Detective That was the easy part”

The run across the Skagerrak Strait took less tih coal for the round trip to the Ier than anticipated The extra time allowed Captain Fyrie to provision the ship News that an iian waters reached the coen on Denmark’s northern tip while a dockside crane equipped with a cla into the Hvalur’s holds

None of the harbor authorities seemed interested in the ship, but the scuttlebutt imbued the captain with a new level of paranoia Fyrie ordered one of his rade paint with orders to obscure the vessel’s name as a precaution Even if no one in Denmark cared about them, they still had to cruise up the entire western coat of Norway They’d stay well beyond shipping lanes, yet as a northern seaman Fyrie believed in prudence above all else

They departed the Danish port twenty hours after escaping Sandefjord, and Fyrie turned theian lobe of the Scandinavian Peninsula Because of the Gulf Streae was ice-free and the teested They were about level geographically with Canada’s Hudson Bay, and, by way of contrast, those waters would remain under several feet of ice well into May and sometimes June

A day and a half out, the ship crossed the Arctic Circle, the line ringing the globe above which the sun never rises in winter and in the suraphical sites—namely, the equator—the first transect of the Arctic Circle by a sailor was marked with a ceremony The tradition dated from nearly a century, and while most such commemorations were dedicated to the world’s professional navies, soot in on it as well

Captain Fyrie, Ivar, and the others not on duty didn’t have the props and costuive the ceremony its air of mock seriousness They simply rousted Bell from his bed in a cabin he enjoyed by himself since so many of the creere home in Iceland A burlap sack was pulled over his head and he was frog-ht his natural instincts to escape and nized the spirit of as happening When the burlap was ripped away, he saw Fyrie and his nus, the third officer, was there with a daub of blue paint for the tip of the detective’s nose, and before Bell could protest, Arn, who more resembled an oak tree than a man, hoisted Bell off his bare feet and dunked them into a bucket of ice water

Just as Bell opened hisinstantly numb, a fair-sized cod was thrust at him so that its lips pressed his for a ceremonial kiss As soon as this was done, the crew roared its approval

“Congratulations, Mr Bell,” Captain Fyrie said when Arn lifted Bell fro chair A crewman handed over a towel that had been prewarmed on the stove “You have been welco into the real of the North”

Another crewman thrust a bottle of akvavit into Bell’s hands and Bell swished a mouthful to rinse away the taste of fish slime while others slapped him on the back

Isaac Bell hadable to read people without judging theence of for an opinion about his coroup