Brownlee dies from a fractured skull and Cavendish takes command. Jones saves Sumner by threatening Drax with a rifle Drax is imprisoned and McKendrick set free. Unmasked as the murderer, Drax bludgeons Brownlee with a whalebone cane. However, Brownlee notices an abscess on Drax's arm, and, when Sumner examines it, he discovers part of a tooth embedded in the wound. Brownlee is unmoved, but allows Sumner to examine Drax, who is also found to be free of venereal disease. Sumner believes that McKendrick is innocent due to a hand injury that would have made it impossible for him to strangle Hannah. With the Hastings nearby, the Volunteer continues further into ice fields. McKendrick is imprisoned, and Sumner begins to suspect Drax. Sumner examines McKendrick, who admits to being homosexual but says that he is not interested in boys, finds that he does not have venereal disease, and believes that he is innocent. Suspicions fall on carpenter McKendrick after Drax gives an account of seeing him and Hannah together. Hannah is later found dead in an oil barrel, having been strangled and missing part of his front tooth. Reporting it to Brownlee, the captain becomes determined to find the culprit, but Hannah refuses to name his assailant out of fear. After his recovery, Sumner is visited by cabin boy Joseph Hannah, who complains about a stomach ache upon examination Sumner discovers Hannah has been sodomised and has venereal disease. The whalers, led by Drax, catch and kill their first whale. Sumner manages to crawl out of the water, is found by Jones, and recovers from frostbite on the Volunteer, which proceeds to head further north. During a sealing expedition, in which Sumner participates, Drax leaves the surgeon behind across an ice floe Sumner attempts to jump across but falls in the icy waters. Drax and Cavendish, who are both complicit in Baxter's scheme, discover Sumner is in possession of a valuable ring from the spoils of his time in India, and plan to kill him to sell the ring off. Working with the ship's owner Baxter in an insurance scam, Brownlee plans to sink the Volunteer in northern waters, with the crew being rescued by a nearby ship, the Hastings. He becomes acquainted with the rest of the crew, including the vulgar first mate Cavendish, the friendly and ambitious second mate Jones, and the master harpooners Otto, a pious Dane, and the thuggish Henry Drax, who has already murdered and robbed a man before leaving Hull. In Hull, 1859, Patrick Sumner, a cashiered Irish army surgeon boards the whaling ship Volunteer as its ship's surgeon under Captain Brownlee.
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