Across Frozen Seas

by John Wilson

  The uniform is crumpled and a couple of the brass buttons are unfastened, making it look as if he has slept, or at least dozed, in it. His face is heavy set but does not look healthy. The skin is pasty white and there are bags under both eyes. The eyes themselves look watery and bloodshot.

  As I watch in confusion, the man takes a hesitant step forward, throws back his head, closes his eyes and lets out an enormous sneeze. I cannot hear it, but even several feet away, I can see his body convulse and spit fly from his open mouth. His baton falls to the ground and rolls toward an open drain. Instinctively, I recoil, but George is more alert. Before the footman can even move, he darts down the steps and retrieves the golden stick so it doesn’t fall down the open hole. Looking small, George stands before the gentleman and offers him the rescued baton. He peers at George from behind the folds of an enormous white handkerchief.

  Finally, the footman reacts. Brushing past his master, he grabs the baton from George and catches hold of my friend’s collar. Never one to take an attack lying down, George reacts by landing a swift kick to the footman’s shin which makes the man cry out in pain. However, it doesn’t make him loosen his grip and George remains a prisoner. But not for long.

  “Unhand the boy. He’s done nothing wrong.” The great man draws himself upright and glares sternly at the footman.

  “But Sir John...” the footman protests. With a wave of his hand and a ghost of a smile on his sickly face, Sir John steps forward and unclasps the footman’s hand from George’s threadbare jacket. Realizing his rescuer is Sir John himself, George immediately begins talking. He explains who we are and why we are here. Sir John listens with a slightly amused expression on his face. Behind him, another carriage rumbles noisily past on the uneven cobblestones.

  “So, you want to go to sea?” Sir John’s voice is hoarse from his cold. For the first time, he looks over at me. I try to stand straight in what I assume to be the proper military manner. His eyes linger on me and then drift to Jack Tar on the step beside me.

  “I see we shall get two sailors for the price of one with you my lad.” Sir John smiles and, in spite of his cold, his face turns gentle. “I was your age when I fought with Nelson at the battle of Copenhagen, and I was not much older at Trafalgar.” For a moment, he seems on the verge of drifting off into the past. With visible effort he pulls himself back.

  “The world is changing my boy. Only this morning I was getting one of those new-fangled Daguerreotype pictures made. Don’t hold with them myself. I much prefer a good old-fashioned painted portrait, but they tell me this new method is more accurate and will last forever. Long after I’m dead people will see my face fixed on a glass plate. Trouble is, I’ve got this terrible cold. Is that how I want people to remember me, with a red nose and puffy cheeks? Hah! At least a painter could make me look decent.”

  His watery eyes swing away from me and back to George.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he says. Then, turning to the footman, “Take these boys around to the kitchen and see that they get a good square meal.”

  With a mumbled “thank you,” George and I follow the footman to the side of the house and through a much less imposing door. As soon as we cross the threshold we are hit by a blast of warm air. The kitchen is huge and smells of smoke and wet laundry and food. The laundry is hanging from a system of pulleys drawn up close to the high ceiling. The floor is made of flagstones and the only furnishings are a large wooden table and bench sitting in the middle of the room. One entire wall is taken up with a long, black, iron range and a variety of pots and pans. In front of the range, two women are stirring something in the pots. They turn as we come in and the footman speaks.

  “These ’ere ragamuffins seems to ’ave taken Sir John’s fancy. See that they gets sommat to eat.”

  The accent is heavy and strange, but we don’t hear any more as the footman turns on his heel and leaves. One of the women comes over and starts fussing with our clothes.

  “Millie, the poor mites is soaking! ’elp me get these things off ’em and give us some o’ that stew’ere.”

  Before we know it, we are sitting at the table wrapped in coarse blankets eating the most delicious meal I have ever tasted while our clothes steam above us. It is such a luxury to be warm and dry and well fed. Neither of us speak. We are too engrossed in the feast before us. I have almost finished my third plateful when a door in the corner by the range opens and a tall man in black enters. The two women, who have been chattering, fall silent as he crosses the room and, to my horror, addresses me.

  “Can you read boy?” he asks in a sombre voice.

  “A little,” I reply with a nervous stutter.

  “Well then,” he continues, “take this to the address on the front and give it to the gentleman you find there.”

  I nod dumbly as he hands me an envelope. On the front, in beautiful curled handwriting, is a name, James Fitzjames, and an address. The back is sealed with wax bearing the impression of a crown and anchor. The tall man leaves and, almost instinctively, I hand the envelope to George. He looks excited.

  “This is it,” he says triumphantly looking down at the piece of sealed paper in his hand. “This is what we came for. This’ll get us into the Navy, maybe even on Sir Johns own ship!” He looks up at me. “We’re going to have some adventures now, Davy boy!”

  CHAPTER 3

  My first thought on waking up after the third dream was, “I can hear.” And so I could. I had heard the voices of Sir John, the footman, the cooks and, most importantly, my friend George. My dreams were becoming more real. I was beginning to be a part of them. The feeling of happiness I had felt at the kitchen table with the endless supply of food before me lingered on as I lay in my bed that morning. I had never been so happy. The warmth, the food, the friendship had all been so real and immediate that I missed them now that I was awake. For the first time since they had begun, I wished I were back in my dreams.

  I knew now I had been in London, England, but when? Who was James Fitzjames? What was Sir John about to do? I began to think back over my dreams. What clues did I have? Obviously, my dream world was a long time ago. There were no cars, only horse-drawn carriages, and the clothes and language were antiquated.

  Then it came to me. Jumping out of bed, I ran over to where my school books lay in a disorganized heap. There was one there from my English class that might help. It gave short biographies of all the famous authors we had to read. I turned to the page that listed:

  “Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

  ...A Christmas Carol was one of a series of Christmas stories that Dickens wrote. First published in 1844 it became an instant popular success....”

  The book George and I loved to read on the streets was a stolen, new copy of A Christmas Carol. My dream world must be set in the winter of 1844/45. But why?

  There was one more clue I could follow. Sir John was a famous figure in London at that time. Without a surname it would be difficult to look him up, but there was one person who might be able to help me—Jim. He knew a lot about the history of that time and he had all kinds of books we could look through.

  For two nights I went to bed in a turmoil of excitement hoping for the next dream, but none came. Each morning I would wake up feeling empty after a long, dreamless sleep. Finally, on Saturday, I took the bus along Highway 5 to Jim’s place. It was one of those great February days when the air feels like crystal. It was about minus twenty-five degrees, but the sun was shining brightly and the snow looked as if someone had sprinkled handfuls of diamonds over it. I was wearing my parka, so I was warm enough while I walked along the gravel road.

  Jim’s farm is about two kilometres off the highway. It sits across the gravel road from the Hutterite farm where Jurgen lives. The Hutterites are descended from European religious refugees who came to Canada to escape persecution. They settled all over the prairies in colonies, housing up to one hundred people. They keep pretty much to themselves and still dress in hand-made clothes. They work h
ard and their farms are very efficiently run.

  One time Jim took me down to visit them. That was when he was first thinking of getting one of the boys to do chores for him. When we got there, all the kids came out to see us. They rarely leave the property as all the schooling is done on the farm, so they were keen to see outsiders. They didn’t act like kids from the city. They just stood around us in silence and stared. The boys stood in the front and the girls stood behind. I said “Hi,” and waved, but they didn’t move. Then some of the elders arrived. They knew Jim and started talking. Their words were strange and old-fashioned, with lots of “thou’s” and “thee’s,” and their accents were strong. Jim said it was because they still speak medieval German among themselves.

  Jim talked with the elders for some time. He said afterwards that they weren’t keen on letting someone off the farm. The only chance boys get to leave is to go to another settlement to work when they are teenagers. There, they get menial work, but they can meet other people and often marry and settle down. When a settlement gets too big, a group will split off and go and set up a new farm somewhere else.

  The elders finally let someone go because Jim’s place was close by and because he had known them for a long time. The Hutterites interested me and I wanted to get to know Jurgen, but he had not been at Jim’s on the few occasions I had visited recently.

  The first thing you see at Jim’s place is the mailbox. There’s a carved and painted squirrel on top with a hole in its back where Elly used to put flowers in the summer. I think it looks pretty hokey, and I guess Jim does too, because there haven’t been flowers in it since Elly died, but then, he hasn’t taken it down either.

  The farmhouse is about fifty metres off the road, surrounded by a rundown barn and corrals. There’s even an old sty from a time when Jim kept pigs. They’re all empty now. A Jersey cow called Victoria lives in the barn. She’s long past the age of giving milk, but Jim keeps her as a kind of companion on the farm. Even in winter, he spends long hours sitting with Victoria remembering the past. Apart from Victoria in the barn, the old farmyard is dead. Life is concentrated around the new barn and the corrals down the hill on the land that is rented by one of Jim’s neighbours.

  Jim took a while to answer my ring. He can’t move around too quickly any more, but we were soon sitting at his kitchen table drinking hot chocolate. I had convinced myself that as soon as I found the answer to who Sir John was, my dreams would continue. The excitement of the past few days was too much and I blurted out the story of my dreams so far.

  Jim listened with interest, nodding occasionally. When I mentioned Sir John and Fitzjames he looked puzzled. I finished by telling him how I thought the dreams were set in the winter of 1844/45. For what seemed like a long time, we sat in silence at the table, me in an agony of anticipation, Jim deep in thought.

  “Well,” I asked eventually, unable to contain myself any longer. “Do you know what’s happening? Who is Sir John?”

  Jim looked up, then slowly rose and fetched a book from the parlour. It was hardcover and looked quite old. Carefully, he laid it on the table between us and opened it to the collection of photographs in the centre. One was of a rather jovial man in an old-fashioned uniform. He was holding a hat in his left hand and a large brass telescope in his right. Underneath, the caption read:

  “Commander James Fitzjames—Captain, H.M.S. Erebus”.

  “That’s the guy in my dream!” I said, more loudly than I had intended. “Who is he?”

  “Was he,” corrected Jim. “H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror were ships of an expedition that went to the Arctic in the 1840’s.”

  “The time’s right,” I interrupted. “What did they do?”

  Jim paused and looked thoughtfully at me for a long moment.

  “They all died,” he said finally.

  The words seemed to hang in the air between us. Again it was Jim who broke the silence.

  “The expedition was led by a man who, as a youth, fought at Trafalgar and went on to become a famous Arctic explorer. His name was Sir John Franklin.”

  The Franklin Expedition! The doomed men that Jim’s ancestor had gone in search of! My dream character must have been trying to join them. Slowly, Jim turned to the previous page. There he was! Sir John, just as I remembered—the big ears, and an imposing uniform with the two buttons undone. Even in this grainy image, his nose looked swollen and his eyes were puffy. Sir John Franklin, on the very day I met him in my dream. What does it mean?

  I hadn’t realized that I had spoken out loud until Jim answered my last question.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking at me oddly. “I thought you had forgotten all those old stories I told you.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I replied, “and anyway, you never told me Franklin’s first name or that he had a cold when his picture was taken. And what about George? Who is he? And all the details about London? How could I know all that?”

  “I don’t know. You used to read a lot. Perhaps bits from old books are coming back to you. The mind can work in very strange ways.”

  “It’s not my imagination,” I interrupted. “These dreams are real. They are telling me things I couldn’t possibly have known. Something strange is happening.”

  Jim looked at me seriously for a minute.

  “Is everything all right at school? At home?”

  I was hurt. Jim thought I was imagining it all! I had come for two reasons. I had hoped Jim could answer my questions, but I also hoped he would listen, understand, and help me figure out what was going on. But, instead, he was dismissing what I said as a bad dream brought on by stress or bad grades.

  I mumbled an excuse about having to get back home and left. The walk back to the road was much longer and colder than on the way out. I began to kick myself for leaving so quickly. Jim was just trying to help. But what bothered me was that he had struck a nerve. Things were not going well at home. Mom and Dad had been arguing a lot recently and were so wrapped up in their own worries that they had even less time for me. I didn’t want to tell Jim about Mom and Dad’s fights; he didn’t need to worry too.

  When I got back to town I got out my skates and went down to the rink to shoot the puck around, but my heart wasn’t in it and I soon gave up. As the day wore on I became more restless. What I had learned from Jim was always in my mind. I wasn’t tired, but I went to bed early and forced myself to go to sleep. Maybe tonight….

  CHAPTER 4

  The docks and embankments along the Thames River are lined with cheering people. Flags are flying everywhere and the harbour is full of little boats. The air is thick with music and the sound of horns. The bright spring sun glistens off the rows of medals on the chests of those who have come to see us off. Sir James Ross is here, as well as Colonel Edward Sabine of the Royal Society. Amid the chaos, our two ships are almost lost.

  It is 10:30 on the morning of Monday the 19th of May, 1845 and we are setting off on our great adventure. There is not one person watching who expects anything but for us to return to a hero’s welcome in a year or two. We will complete the Northwest Passage and be the first ships to sail around the top of the world. This should not be a difficult task. After all, there is only a sixty mile stretch of the passage unexplored along the coast of King William Land. We will collect a vast amount of invaluable scientific information, from detailed magnetic readings to specimens of every type of plant, rock and animal we come across. We will surpass the achievements of James Ross and William Parry with this single exploit. We have the best ships, the most experienced crews and the best provisions ever to have been dedicated to an Arctic voyage. How can we possibly fail?

  The Erebus leads the way through the throng of smaller vessels. She is not large and looks decidedly squat compared to some of the sleek yachts that have come to see us off. The mountains of equipment and supplies piled on her decks only add to this impression. Osmer, the purser, is standing behind me talking animatedly to anyone who will listen. As always, his conversati
on consists of little more than a list of the supplies we have on board. I have heard it a dozen times before: sixty tons of flour, thirty tons of salt meat, four tons of chocolate, three tons of tobacco, a ton each of tea, soap and candles, eight thousand cans of meat, soup and vegetables, over three thousand gallons of liquor, and ten live oxen. To prevent the dreaded scurvy, we also have over nine hundred gallons of lemon juice and one hundred seventy gallons of cranberries. We shall certainly eat well, but of greater interest to me are the seventeen hundred books in the ship’s library. They shall feed my mind in the long hours of Arctic winter darkness.

  Perhaps as important as the supplies we carry is the experience and knowledge contained in the heads of our officers and crew. Sir John, of course, has spent as long in the Arctic as any man alive save the native inhabitants of the region. Captain Crozier on the Terror has been north twice before and speaks the local language passably well. He also commanded the Terror under Sir James Ross in the Antarctic. Lieutenant Gore was mate on the Terror when she went north and Osmer himself was up there twenty years ago. The ice masters and many of our crew know well what we are getting into from their time on whaling ships searching the waters of Baffin Bay.

  Both our ships are strong and well suited for the journey. They began life as bomb ships carrying mortars that were used to bombard coastal fortresses during the wars against Napoleon. For this work they had to be broad and their timbers had to be heavily reinforced. They have been further reinforced and covered with iron sheeting to withstand the Arctic ice. We also have steam engines to help navigate through the ice. Below the black funnel jutting through the Erebus’ deck sits an entire railway engine with only the wheels missing. This will provide us with power when there is no wind. The cold will be held at bay by a system of pipes that carry hot water and steam from a small boiler to the rest of the ship. Fresh water is made from sea water in a new apparatus attached to the galley stoves.