The beginning of a beautiful friendship

[igenlode]

Finally finished the last seven hundred or so words on chapter whatever-it-is (I've lost count), having decided to go with the defaced letter and the beginnings of an unlikely friendship with Lancard. Lancard saves Raoul from killing himself in a misguided attempt to swim back to shore once he realises Erik has gone, for which Raoul is not in the least grateful :-p

Which I think means that I've dealt with bullet point three four and now need to tackle a long stretch in the company of Christine and Erik. And possibly pay some attention to my timescale -- it turned out Raoul's voyage was originally due to leave around the end of March, which is rather earlier in the year than I'd had in mind for my Swedish section. Just how long can I manage to keep him shipwrecked in the Arctic?

Useful reading: I discovered that we had a copy of Conan Doyle's autobiography with its brief account of his Arctic seal-hunting voyage (which mainly emphasises how close the Arctic waters are, even under sail!), and have been reading Frank Worsley's book about the small-boat voyage of the survivors from the Endurance -- I should be able to use a few of those details (what to do with frozen feet, for example).