The Surfacing

by Cormac James

  While you were still laid up, late June perhaps, one day Cabot came rushing in all a-fluster with one of the tins, that he’d fished from a lead way out, Morgan said. He knew he shouldn’t have been so surprised. The strollers were always scouring, always hoping for some sign they too were now being searched for, that help was on its way.

  It might be just what they need, Kitty said.

  Morgan didn’t see what she meant. The men already knew where their ship lay, at what date. You should have seen Cabot’s face, he said, when we opened it up.

  What if it were another date? she said. Another ship.

  Some other ship, searching for us?

  Why not? she said. Let them find it, she meant. Let it give them hope, encourage them to persist. What harm could it do? We could write out a few now. Different-coloured slips, different ink. Smuggle them out, and discreetly tag them to the end. The first to be reached by the fuse, she meant. Those that would fall closest to the ship.

  The better to justify an abandon, he thought. With the direction to take. Melville Island would be best, and most plausible. It was not such a bad idea. Afterwards, when they got to Melville Island, they would be safer. No one would mind the fraud. Saved or perished, the deceit would be of no consequence.

  When they’d done their quota, she put on her sealskin jacket and her sealskin coat. Their amusements were few and far between, and she wanted to see the thing go up. The boy was napping. She would ask Cabot to keep an ear open, to call her if need be.

  They stood their backs up against the hull, out of the wind, and watched DeHaven seal his mixture in the keg. They waited for the reaction. When it was ready, DeHaven ran out the gas through their rubber pipe, to the waiting heap of silk. The tail too was waiting nearby, in an impressive heap. A full five thousand slips of their brightest orange paper, each one handwritten with their details and coordinates.

  Morgan remembered playing hide-and-seek in his father’s garden, when he was a boy. He told her about it, asked had they that game in Denmark too.

  Hide and sick? Kitty said.

  Seek. Search. Some children hide, the other children look for them.

  Then, he’d always been impatient to be found. But how could he reasonably expect anyone to be troubling over his sort now? It was only eighteen months since they’d last been heard from. Even those aboard, most of them, appeared not to appreciate the essential fact, that they were not lost, but beyond helping. They had pushed too far.

  They watched the silk quietly come alive. Something inside was searching, prodding, feeling for a way out. They watched it swell, take shape. Its ambition was clearer now.

  Do you remember Myer wanted to send a man up in one? Morgan said. With a rope attached, obviously.

  A rope can always be cut, she said.

  The idea wasn’t as barmy as it sounds, Morgan said. It would have improved our navigation no end. How many days did we waste driving ourselves into dead ends?

  He wasn’t prepared to go up himself, though, was he?

  I don’t think the discussion ever got that far.

  Would you have gone up in one? DeHaven said. Would you go up now?

  That would depend who built it, and did they build it right, and how far up I had to go. How long are our ropes?

  We have the ropes. We have the silk. Cabot and Banes could easily knock together the frame. Slick the seams. Coke gas from the stoves run up through the pipes. I watched them do it once in a fairground in the Phoenix Park. The air here as cold as it is, she’d shoot up.

  By now the balloon was beginning to stretch and swagger, to lift itself off the ground. The last dent was gone and suddenly the thing looked solid, hard.

  How far up does she need to go? Morgan said.

  The higher the better, DeHaven said. Once the tickets are loosed, there’s only one way they’re going to fall.

  When he judged it ready, he whipped out the pipe and tied the knot. Already she was leading westward, straining. Banes and Daly were struggling to hold her in place with guy ropes. Another guy was tied to the whaleboat kedge.

  DeHaven shouted at them to keep her steady. He was fixing the quick-match tail. Now he had them let her off a little, and the tail uncoiled magically. Its papers were rattling.

  A little more, DeHaven said. Easy now. That’s enough.

  They watched him light and shield his match and heard him curse. He lit another. Eventually he managed to get it alive to the end of the tail. The thing began to crackle, just like a fuse.

  Hold her, he shouted, but the wind had risen and she was leading hard, and Banes and Daly had both to come round shipside. As in a tug-of-war, they planted their heels hard in the ground and were leaning backward, not far off forty-five degrees. The tail swung back and forth freely, smoking. DeHaven nodded to let her go. The guys slid through their gloves with a pleasant, rasping sound, fell dead on the snow.

  The anchor! Morgan roared, but it was too late.

  They watched the anchor bump along the surface, snag and snatch at the hummocks, drag on. Morgan himself went after it, but refused to rush. There was no need. The thing was too light to stall the balloon, and too heavy to lift. He could let it walk ahead of him with no risk of ever being lost.

  It was almost a mile before the anchor finally jammed between two blocks and held. He wrapped the guy three and four times around his arm and put all his weight into it, to loosen the draw, the better to unwork the knot.

  Free, he did not let the rope go. He could feel its strength, his own measly ballast, the giddy call. Standing up straight he was nearly jerked off the ground, found himself staggering after it. He could not keep his feet, and unless he wanted to be dragged along the ground he had to run, to jump, let himself be lofted into the air. These were giant steps he was taking now, bounding grandly, due west.

  He watched it rise and watched it shrink. Very soon it was nothing but a little blue dot. Anchor in his arms, hugged to his chest, he began to slog across the crust. Coming back the wind was against him, and soon he was working hard. Already his arms were trembling, wanted only to drop their load. He drove on. He got angry. Underneath was drift deep enough to swallow him whole.

  Every few minutes he dropped the anchor and stood to breathe. He looked south. It was almost noon. He stared fearlessly at the glow. It was not a source of light, but of emotion. It did not warm his skin, but fell directly on something inside. Under its heat, Morgan felt that thing wake, stir, like a seed. He could feel it, physically, planted deep in his flesh, alive. The idea, pure and simple, of abandoning the ship.

  1st April

  APRIL, the calendar said. The word promised buds, warm breezes, greenery. What they had was raw havoc. It was another promise broken.

  He lay on his bed, letting his mind go where it would. It was fantasy. It was confession of a kind. Eyes closed, he heard open sea labouring loose ice.

  Writing his journal, he hardly knew how the sentence would end. It seems to me we have attained – he wrote, but struck that. He started over. We have reached – We have met some kind of limit, he wrote. We might persist here longer, or push a little farther by other means, if I thought it useful, which I do not. He
held off the pen and read over what he’d written, to see did he agree. He had once dreamed of pushing all the way to the west, coming out somewhere the far side of Melville Island, and from there to Behring’s Strait. He had even calculated how many weeks of open sailing might be necessary. It seemed a ridiculous notion now, as did so many of his plans.

  They had calm, clear days. They had scorching winds. Overhead, they had lurid green flames, that made the needle frantic. There was more to the days now. There was more light. The eyes stared, working hard to see their former friends. They seemed ashamed of what they saw. They looked like inmates. They were shabby, men and clothes. The weave was wafer-thin in places, failing at the seams.

  Then, on the 3rd, at noon, against a blackboard facing south, the spirit thermometer gave them 25°. Under a bell-jar, untouched for thirty minutes, it rose to just above the freezing point. Morgan had already checked the log. It was their first positive since September.

  To the men, these first hints of spring were reassuring, earned. They saw the promise of open water, open sails. Morgan envied their faith but could not share it. They were too far north. No matter what moderation, the break-up would never come. Day after day now he tried to shepherd thoughts of an abandon. Day after day, he called himself back, in the hope of being saved some other way.

  4th April

  That Sunday they woke to a stout wind from the north. After breakfast, Morgan went up to admire it alone. As he passed the galley, he suddenly stopped – mid-stride – to stare at something on the deck. Too late, the fear rushed through him, because he had almost stepped on it. His own shadow. The day was cold, the wind harsh, and under all the layers he was smiling, feeling less like an orphan than he had in years. He sent down the order for the officers all to put on their furs. For the first time in months, he had decided, they would take their coffee up on deck.

  A godsend. A veritable godsend, MacDonald told them, almost as soon as he came up.

  The lines were stirring overhead, the colours rattling happily.

  I wonder why God did not send it before, DeHaven said.

  Perhaps He feared we would not appreciate it, said Morgan.

  Cabot came and placed the tray on one of the crates, with stern formality. They watched him pour. MacDonald was watching with a kind of wonder. He waited for Morgan to raise the cup to his lips.

  I believe that is very close to blasphemy, Mr Morgan, he said. What you have just suggested.

  You are right of course, Morgan said. The Lord is watching over us and directing our doom or our salvation, as He sees fit. He dropped a lump of sugar into his cup, stirred it conscientiously.

  I do not think we can know His mind, Mr Morgan, and to cast a judgement on His motives and manner and final ends is a terrible vanity, that a man would do well to quell.

  That sounds very like a threat to your captain, DeHaven said.

  Morgan took another sip. Like tar oil, he announced. It sounded too much like praise for Cabot to take offence. In a way, the chaplain is quite right, Morgan said. All in all, I am a vain man. Complacent too, on many fronts. Although I like to think that, in a private moment, no one knows better than I the depths of my own ignorance. Does it trouble you, MacDonald, having such an incompetent man in command? My immorality, of course, we will not even mention.

  We must place our faith in a Higher Power, is all I say, Mr Morgan. Accept that we are not entirely masters of our own fate, nor do we need to be.

  Too true, Mr MacDonald. Too true. We are all ignorant and powerless. To a greater or lesser extent, obviously, Morgan said. It was he who was threatening now.

  That is what I believe, MacDonald said.

  And you believe, too, I suppose, something to the effect that it rests with God to console, or chastise, or care for, or neglect, or even afflict each and every man as He sees fit, according to processes and principles beyond our understanding.

  God is good, MacDonald said. That is all we know. I think you must have proof enough of that in the shape of your little boy. He was inching back from the edge.

  You must admit that on occasion it is difficult not to doubt. There is a great deal of contrary evidence put in our way.

  We are tested every day.

  Is that what He has been at, these past eighteen months? Testing us? Morgan said. Stack us one on the next in our little box, and let us brew? Day after day, night after night, staring at each other’s faces, and staring at the planks, and breathing each other’s stink, two winters and two summers now, and another one coming on? Whatever else may be said of Him, He has patience, I’ll give Him that.

  I would not presume to say, Mr Morgan. In any case, I don’t believe patience is a term that can be properly applied to the Almighty.

  Yet, if nothing else, I think we can safely say that we have been tested. Unless of course you think there is some other agency at work?

  It has been a trial, yes. The purpose of the trial, I do not know. As I have said, wherever we see the sign of direction, we have no means of judging if it be for a first or final end.

  Mr MacDonald, Morgan said, I do not mind being tested. Only, I think I would like a clear choice, between one thing and the other. One choice would be easy, of course, and wrong. The other painful, and right. That is generally how it works, I believe. But what have I had to choose between, these past two winters? If I knew that, I think, it might have been easier to face.

  We must trust, MacDonald said, that will all be revealed in time.

  7th April

  A lone snow bunting was perched on their main topsail yard. They had last seen him at Beechey, in another life. Since then he had been to America. Within days, Morgan knew, the sky would be alive with them. The thought irritated him profoundly. He could not imagine what lured so many so far, to such an inhospitable place.

  They come here to breed, DeHaven said. As you yourself did.

  They watched him gorging himself on their piles of filth. The men leaned over the gunwales, flinging down bits of bread and tack. It looked like they were trying to frighten him away.

  They’ll be an absolute blessing, DeHaven said. And I don’t just mean the hospital. The little lad, fresh meat will do him no harm at all. Mince it up good and get those new teeth of his to work. And the men too, as soon as we get enough of it into them, I can get the gymnastics going again.

  Morgan spent all the next day out on the ice. Scanning, spotting, taking aim. By late morning everything was wrapped in gauze. By mid-afternoon, he felt he was looking at the world through some kind of window that was at once dirty and bright. By afternoon’s end, he had bagged almost fifty, and wandered miles from the ship, almost to the island. He brought his compass up to his nose, cupped his hand as a blinker, to look for the sun. The light blared up off the snow. He could see nothing. He was blind. With the birds strung boa-like about his neck, he shuffled westwards. Every few minutes he roared for help.

  They had hoisted their train-lamps onto poles, set them up in two converging lines, that stretched from the ship almost a quarter mile. Banes and Blacker and DeHaven watched their captain groping his way from post to post. Bloated with laughter, they crouched behind one of the whaleboats, as he stared stupidly into the future, calling out was anybody th
ere?

  He knew they were watching. He could hear them, was deciding what to do. Since boyhood he’d been able to load his gun in the dark. He loaded it now, and knelt, and fired a shot as level as he could out over the snow. He paused to listen. As far as he could tell, nothing had been touched. He turned a few degrees to his left and started to load again.

  10th April

  Ba, little Tommy said.

  No one seemed to hear. Brooks and MacDonald were lying on their backs, reading and pretending to read. At the table, DeHaven was playing with the numbers in his notebook, as though his calculations were rules to be obeyed.

  Ba, he said again. Bread was what he meant. He sat in the chair Cabot had made for him, in what had once been Myer’s place. Head of the household, they said. Life was better with him aboard.

  Without looking up, DeHaven tore a few scraps from the loaf and flung them down the table.

  He’s not a bird, Morgan said. Can’t you just reach over and put it on his plate?

  Today, for the first time in an age, dinner would be something called stew. To celebrate, Cabot had baked a batch of fresh loaves, and the sinister smell of it filled the ship, making them all homesick.

  Not the crust, Morgan ordered. The scraps were too big, and too many. Delighted, the boy would grab and shove them all into his mouth. Morgan was terrified of him choking, and he choked at least once a day. He would go red in the face and fall silent, then begin to jerk his head back and forth, trying to cough up the lump wedged in the back of his throat.