Propping the book open on a crate, Kermadec smiled as he followed her careful ticks along the margin. ‘‘Flour, grain and beans. You have checked each delivery?’
She nodded. Of course.
‘Impressive,’ Kermadec said.
She smiled at his praise, but turned her face into the darkness.
‘Three months,’ he said. ‘How sure are you that these supplies will last three months?’
‘It is an estimate only, not a calculation. What does your steward say?’
‘My steward! I do not trust his counsel. He is either a negligent fool or a cunning deceiver.’ Kermadec covered his mouth with his fist, suppressing a cough. She heard the rattle in his chest as he breathed deep.
‘A deceiver? You suspect your steward is a thief?’
‘A profiteer. I suspect he sells our supplies to the crew, but I have no proof. He may simply be wasteful. I shall watch him closely on this next leg of the journey.’
He dipped his hand into an open sack of shiny red beans, letting them sift between his fingers. They glittered like jewels.
‘Will three months of supplies be enough to change course for the Admiralty Islands?’ she asked.
‘Maybe, if the winds are kind to us.’
‘And if they are not?’
He didn’t answer. He looked at her directly, his warm brown eyes intent on hers. The golden lamplight flickered and leaped across his face. She didn’t like the way her heart was flittering. She didn’t trust herself.
‘I have feared for you these last months,’ Kermadec said in a low voice. ‘I have chastised myself for suggesting this journey.’
A confusion of emotions surprised her. He had feared for her. Did that mean he cared for her? The voices in her head laughed at her. Stupid girl. He means he feared you could not do your job. She blushed, ashamed of her stupidity.
‘Crossing the line, I thought I had condemned you.’ His brow was furrowed, his eyes deep with concern.
‘I am well,’ she said, mustering a confidence she didn’t feel.
Seized by a coughing fit Kermadec crumpled over, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Girardin reached out instinctively, but stalled her hand. A cough like this was not good. She knew that much. She remembered pressing her hand to Jojo’s back, feeling the violence of the spasms in his tiny chest.
‘The air below these decks is not good for my lungs,’ he wheezed, easing himself upright. ‘I find it doesn’t have any air in it.’ He smiled and wiped his face, folding his handkerchief. His breath rattled. ‘Do not look so alarmed!’ he said with a laugh. ‘I am not in mortal danger. It is just a cough. The curse of all sailors. Come, let us take your records up on deck where I can breathe.’ When he edged past her, he was careful not to let any part of their bodies collide.
‘Captain Kermadec,’ she called after him, ‘if we find La Pérouse in the Admiralties, will we go home?’
The look he gave her was hard to read. Sadness, pity, disappointment?
‘Eventually,’ he said.
Chapter 20
Indian Ocean, latitude 34°37′ S, longitude 42°24′ E, 5 March 1792
GIRARDIN SAT ON THE DECK WITH HER LEGS DANGLING OVER THE side of the ship. The air was still, the sea flat and monotonous. All was quiet and muted without the wind and waves. Beside her, Piron leaned against the rail and sketched Armand as he slept, mouth hanging open, clay pipe fallen to his chest. In this breathless heat, there was no sign of his monkey. With a small stick of charcoal Piron drew the creases of Armand’s weathered face, the grey stubble underneath his jaw. She marvelled at his quick, sure movements, bringing simple lines into life.
The ship rocked gently, barely moving. Slow ripples lapped against her sides. Even the sailors kept their voices hushed. They must know, Girardin thought, what trouble we are in. I have consigned us to starvation. We’ll never make it to Timor in three months.
Almost three weeks had passed since leaving Cape Town and they had progressed no further north. Each day she carefully measured out the flour and told Besnard to cut the meat into smaller portions. He reminded her that Magellan had lost two hundred men for want of fresh food. The winds nudged them continually to the east instead of north. Or, worse, fell away to nothing.
Loud footsteps interrupted the silence. Piron looked up from his sketchbook as a long shadow was cast across the page.
‘You really cannot draw figures,’ said Labillardière, studying Piron’s sketch of the reclining sailor. ‘The proportions of his limbs are completely wrong.’
‘Are you still here?’ Piron said. ‘I thought we’d left you in Cape Town with the others.’ The artist winked at Girardin.
For the past three weeks, Labillardière had been sulking in his cabin. He had threatened to leave the expedition, protesting at the surgeon Joannet thinking himself one of the savants. It surprised Girardin that a professed revolutionary should be as zealous as any nobleman in his protection of his privileges. Labillardière was a man content to show his command of knowledge, his mind a compendium of Latin names, but he was reluctant to share in the pursuit of it.
And yet, no one liked to be thought dispensible, she thought. How would the carpenters, the cook, the smith react if their craft was usurped by amateurs? For Labillardière, recognition meant everything. Being a botanist, being a learned savant, she realised, was Labillardière’s entire identity.
In the end, the General had declared all collections to belong to the expedition, not individuals, which pleased no one. A mineralogist and an artist from the Espérance disembarked, along with the Recherche’s astronomer. Only Félix was overjoyed that he now had his own cabin.
Armand suddenly snorted, waking himself with a confused frown. Squinting at Girardin, he said, ‘I wouldn’t sit like that if I were you.’
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘I lost two mates that way.’
‘What foolish story is this?’ Labillardière said.
‘We were sitting here at the bow, our legs over the side, bare feet treading the breeze. I turned my head away for a moment, to share a joke with a young lad, and when I looked back, me mate Thierry was gone. Vanished.’ The sailor snapped his fingers and opened his eyes wide. ‘Sitting right where you are, right there.’
Girardin shifted uneasily.
‘Barely had time to screech out an oath or two, when she did it again! All I saw was one long tentacle.’ He raised a forefinger and wiggled it in front of Girardin’s face. ‘Poor lad never stood a chance. She sucked him down head first!’
Girardin pulled her knees up to her chest.
‘I don’t mind telling you, I moved faster than a galley rat and scuttled under a longboat. I were too afraid to move or call out a warning. And then she were upon us, all arms of slimy, reeking terror, like something from the firepits of hell! She climbed the rigging, threatnin’ to drag us under into her whirlpool lair. Gonna tip us up and throw all hundred souls into her open maw. I saw it in her eye, that hunting eye. She feeds on men’s souls.’ The last word rattled in the old sailor’s throat until his voice faded to silence.
‘Pure fantasy,’ scoffed Labillardière. ‘How much brandy have you had?’
‘Go on,’ urged Piron.
‘Not much more to tell. Some quick wits slashed her greedy tentacles from our mast and sent her reeling back to her hole at the bottom of the ocean. I still remember it curling and fizzing with its venomous magic on our deck.’
‘What was it?’ breathed Girardin.
‘Hallucination,’ said Labillardière.
‘The Kraken,’ said Armand, showing the whites of his eyes.
‘You say it has eight arms?’ said Piron, kneeling on the deck with his sketchbook in front of him.
‘Aye, eight long, muscular things they were, all covered in suckers the size of saucers.’ Armand held two hands in a ring shape in front of his face.
‘Tentacles? You mean, like an octopus?’ said Piron.
‘Aye! That’s right, like an octopus
, but a colossus. Not like any octopus I seen before. Had one great big eye, the size of a wine-barrel lid, and it looked right at me.’
‘A Cyclops?’ Girardin asked, remembering the Greek myths.
‘Well, maybe it had two eyes,’ the old sailor conceded, ‘but I only saw the one.’
Piron sketched rapidly, wrapping tentacles around the frigate’s sails. Girardin noticed the blue ink tentacle curling around Armand’s wrist. On his forearm a crude bulbous head and huge eye stared out at her. Armand carried his adventures inked on his arms. She saw tattoed serpents, sharks and palm trees. She turned her wrist to expose the blazing red brand on her own arm, understanding the need to mark your skin with memories.
‘We’ll be seeing her soon enough, no doubt,’ Armand said, crossing his arms.
Piron looked up from his sketch.
‘What do you mean?’ Girardin asked.
‘Idiotic nonsense,’ said Labillardière.
Armand ignored him, relishing his tale. ‘She lives in the southern seas, needs the icy waters to calm her voracious bloodlust. She sits among the whales, gorging on their offspring.’
‘But we’re going north,’ said Girardin. ‘To the Admiralties.’ To La Pérouse, she thought. And then home.
‘Not for long. Mark my words, we’ll be turning south. Sailing through such shrieking storms and fierce tempests that you wish to God he would take you then and there. Across oceans that drop away beneath your feet as suddenly as they rear up to swallow you. And she’ll be waiting for us.’ The old sailor ran his tongue across his yellow teeth. ‘I can feel it in my bones.’
Chapter 21
Latitude 35° S, longitude 44° E, 6 March 1792
THE GENERAL ABANDONED HIS ATTEMPT AT A NORTHWARD course. When the announcement was made to turn east and take the southern route below New Holland instead of north to Timor, Girardin slumped with the relief of it. The responsibility for their supplies lasting until they reached Timor was no longer hers to bear.
Almost as soon as the ships turned, the winds turned against them. In the night, a southerly gale rose and she listened to its agonised wail. Lying in her hammock, Girardin pressed her hands over her ears. Her dreams were filled with writhing tentacles; she saw them snaking through cracks in the wood and splintering the hull. She woke to a shattering crack that rocked the ship. When morning came, she saw the windmill had been wrenched from its footing in the night. Their means of making flour was now shredded across the ocean behind them. Labillardière blamed the ferocity of the wind, but in her mind’s eye a long tentacle wrapped itself around the stem.
‘The Kraken,’ she whispered to Félix.
‘These sailors will fill your head with superstition and there will be no room left for reason. Learn to think!’ Labillardière cried in exasperation.
Félix and Girardin exchanged glances.
For weeks the ships slogged into headwinds, making little progress. All the sailors were spooked by the fickle, unnatural winds. They came upon an island covered in flame that turned the sky copper and the clouds thunderous as it burned. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Armand flick his fingers to ward off evil.
God is toying with us, she thought. He is like a boy, blowing a walnut shell boat in a puddle. When we try to go north He blows us east, when we go east, He blows us back. When she turned her face forwards, she felt God’s cold breath on her cheeks.
Even the General cursed their luck. ‘These fiendish winds turn against us. If we were to go west now, I believe the winds would turn to spite us!’
We are trapped in His whirlpool lair, Girardin thought, remembering the words of the old sailor. He will keep us here in the belly of the world, turning us around and around for eternity. He will not let us find La Pérouse. He will not let me return home for my son. What good are my wages trapped here at the bottom of the world? She looked into the swirling fathoms of blue water. Or lost at the bottom of the ocean?
‘We still have the chance to map the southern coast of New Holland,’ said Lieutenant Rossel, casting a look at Beautemps-Beaupré, who paced along the deck, desperate for a sight of the great continent.
It annoyed her, this talk of mapping coasts. How long would that take? Shouldn’t the rescue of La Pérouse take precedence above all else? She had studied the map in the General’s cabin. Great lengths of the coastline of New Holland were unknown. Only a thin dotted line suggested a sweeping boundary between sea and land, terminating in a curl of solid ink, like a misplaced hair, marking the coast of Van Diemen’s Land.
The General said nothing. He stared out at the empty horizon, squinting into the blasted wind.
‘There has never been an expedition such as this,’ cried d’Auribeau, his voice cracking in a moment of despair. ‘We are expected to look urgently for our lost compatriot and at the same time make detailed charts of foreign shores.’
‘And more importantly,’ interrupted Labillardière, ‘make biological discoveries for the betterment of France.’
Girardin saw d’Auribeau scowl.
Beautemps-Beaupré started when the General placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Forgive me, son. We must abandon the search for New Holland’s coast and sail deeper south.’
The expedition set a course for Adventure Bay in Van Diemen’s Land. There, the General assured her, they would find wood and water, fish and birds aplenty. The explorers Tasman, Furneaux and Cook had all been there before them. Girardin was relieved, both by the promise of supplies and the decision to search for La Pérouse.
As the old sailor had promised, the turn south brought them into the westerly wind. A snarling, roaring, icy wind. She turned up the collar of her greatcoat against its bite. The gales blew them towards Van Diemen’s Land at a pace so far unmatched in her experience. The two ships were flung across the southern ocean like stones skipped over puddles.
The wind brought storms: some drenched them in freezing water; others swept along the horizon, threatening violence. For days on end the wind blew without pause. The chaplain abandoned his attempts at Sunday sermons on the deck, as his words, along with the pages from his Bible, were whipped away with the wind.
But tonight the sea glowed with phosphorescence and the wind had calmed. After so long with the rattles, whistles and clanging of the wind through the ship, Girardin found the breathlessness eerie. What did the ocean have in store for them? By now she had begun to think of the southern ocean as a living creature, a predator. She did not trust this offering of peace.
The atmosphere was loaded with electric fluid. Félix paced the deck alongside her, anxious that this calm did not bode well. Together they watched a thunderstorm gather on the horizon. Before long, a wind began to circle them, gusting first from the west and then the east. It ruffled the surface of the luminous water. It whispered and ran away. It teased and taunted them.
And then it came directly at them, blowing ghostly fireballs from the phosphoric waves. The wind grew bolder and the ship rolled in the swell. A sudden crack of lightning struck the ocean alongside them.
Girardin yelped in fright.
‘Fire!’ someone screamed. ‘We’ve been hit!’
‘It’s St Elmo!’ Armand cried.
Girardin looked up to see a blue fire at the top of the mast. It hissed like a cornered cat, back arched and hairs spiked along its back. The wind attacked with a shriek, extinguishing the ghoulish sparks by tearing the main topsail free of the mast. She saw the shredded canvas whipped into the air before being sucked down into the waves. A piece of shattered mast bounced upon the deck and hurtled towards them. She pulled Félix down as the splintered chunk sailed above their heads and crashed through the rail of the ship.
Captain d’Auribeau screeched commands and the sailors hauled on ropes. Waves flooded the deck. The ship tilted bow-down over the crest of a huge wave and a wall of water filled the sky. No sooner had the ship levelled out than it began to rise again, climbing the next gigantic wave. Girardin glimpsed the Espérance bob to the top of a
wave, tiny and fragile against the immense sea, before falling away from sight.
A tide of sea water rushed around her, carrying pieces of the broken mast. One smashed into her knee, knocking her down. She slid along the deck towards the stern, unable to stop herself, just as the surgeon, Pierre Renard, leaped into the longboat.
She scrambled to her feet outside Labillardière’s cabin. Félix caught up with her and they both tumbled inside.
‘What are you doing in here?’ roared Labillardière. He was cowering on his bed in the corner, still fully clothed and with a rug wrapped around him.
‘Helping to protect the specimens.’ Félix stepped nimbly out of the path of a small writing desk that slid across the floor.
‘The specimens are all in the great cabin, where you should be!’
Girardin flattened herself against the wall as a chair sailed past her and smashed against the door.
The ship ached and moaned as if the wind and waves were tearing it apart. ‘When will this end?’ Girardin whispered.
Labillardière looked up at the barometer on his wall. ‘The mercury has fallen by six lines.’
Girardin took this as a bad sign. She felt the ship ride the summit of another wave and then suddenly slip sideways, pitching her stomach. She covered her head, imagining a huge wave rearing over them.
A deathly clanging sounded against the hull.
‘The Kraken!’ she cried.
‘The mizzen chains…’ Labillardière said, before an almighty crash swallowed his words. The ship bucked as though it had struck a rock and threw them sprawling to the cabin floor. Water poured through the cracks in the panelling of the walls. All three ran for the door.
In the corridor she was hit by a foaming torrent rushing down from the topdeck. Animals screamed and Girardin felt her feet wash out from under her. Helpless, she rode the water, hitting the legs of wide-eyed calves and feeling the sharp hooves of the goats climb across her back. Salt water filled her nostrils and burned the back of her throat. She raised her head above the water for a mouthful of air before she hit the hull, trapping a kid goat behind her. It struggled to free itself and stamped on her injured knee in its escape.
Into the World Page 12