‘Seems to like it up there, sir. Spends most of his time up there, at any rate.’
Killigrew took the speaking trumpet from the binnacle. ‘Mr Terregannoeuck!’
The Inuk did not stir.
‘Mr Terregannoeuck! We could use your assistance with the dogs, if you would oblige us…?’
The Inuk did not seem to hear him, even though Killigrew’s voice boomed out across the water, amplified by the trumpet. ‘Go up there and fetch him down, would you?’ Killigrew asked Hughes with a sigh.
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Hughes scrambled up the ratlines as nimbly as a monkey and joined Terregannoeuck on the maintop, first talking to him and then shaking him. ‘He’s asleep, sir!’ he called down in astonishment.
‘Then wake him up!’
Hughes shook the Inuk, gently at first, and then so vigorously he almost threw him off the maintop. ‘I can’t, sir!’
‘Is he dead?’
‘No, sir. He’s breathing. It’s like he’s in some kind of trance.’
‘A trance! Mr Terregannoeuck picked a fine time to hold his own private séance! All right, tie him to the topmast so he doesn’t fall off in his sleep and climb down, Hughes. You’ll have to come with us in his place. We’ll leave the dogs. I’m in too much of a hurry to reach that ship to want to waste time learning how to drive a team of huskies. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way: by pully-hauly. Mr Thwaites, while we’re gone, perhaps you could have Terregannoeuck brought down so Dr Bähr can take a look at him? Can’t have comatose Esquimaux cluttering up the tops of one of Her Majesty’s ships.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Hughes and the others were issued with their winter clothing. Killigrew got changed in his cabin, a feeling of excitement tight in the pit of his stomach. For the past five years, the fate of Franklin’s expedition had puzzled everyone: from Greenland to Van Diemen’s Land, from San Francisco to Hong Kong, from the middle-class paterfamilias reading The Times at the breakfast table to the ploughboy supping a pot of ale in his local country inn, from the lowest guttersnipe to the Queen herself. And now he, of all people, was being given the chance to solve that mystery. Assuming, of course, the ship was indeed the Erebus or the Terror.
Not quite sure what to expect, he decided to take his pepperboxes.
Terregannoeuck had been taken down to the sick-berth and the Venturer was anchored to the shore ice by the time Killigrew re-emerged on deck. A gangplank was lowered to the ice, and a sledge dragged down. Ågård supervised while they loaded the equipment: cooking apparatus, food, a luncheon haversack, a spare shotgun – Killigrew already had his own Verney-Carron breach-loading double-barrelled shotgun slung across his back – and plenty of ammunition, signal rockets, Strachan’s medicine chest, a shovel, pickaxe and ice-axe, and a tent.
‘Do we need all this stuff?’ Killigrew asked Ågård. ‘We’re only going five miles.’
‘Five miles there, five miles back, sir,’ the ice quartermaster reminded him. ‘It’s past noon already. If a fog comes up or the weather turns nasty, we might be stuck out there overnight. We don’t want to take any chances.’
Killigrew took his place at the head of the sledge-haulers, next to Strachan; when there was no need for someone to go ahead to blaze a trail, there was no excuse for the two officers not to haul on the sledge with the rest of the men. ‘Ready, lads?’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ they chorused.
‘Then let’s shove off.’ Killigrew pulled his wire-mesh snow-goggles up over his eyes and the men took up the strain on the harness.
They soon fell into step and built up a steady rhythm. After their previous venture on to the ice in Melville Bay, Killigrew had asked O’Houlihan and Kracht to jury-rig some kind of cleats for their sealskin moccasins so they could get a grip on the ice, using screws as studs; the modified footwear seemed to work a treat. The shore ice was three feet thick at least, and smooth, so the party made good time towards the coast. A chill wind swept down from the north, reminding Killigrew that the long Arctic winter was just round the corner, but they were well wrapped up, and the exertion of pulling the sledge kept them all warm.
It took them forty minutes to reach the shore. They did not venture on to the land itself, but stuck to the ice where the going was smoother.
They headed into the frozen inlet. The ship was still four miles off, so after another ten minutes Killigrew signalled a break, and Molineaux brewed up some tea. No one seemed to feel like talking much: they all knew that whatever questions were preying on their minds, they would be answered soon enough when they reached the stranded ship. Behind them the Venturer looked surprisingly close, although Killigrew was sure they had covered a mile by now. Normally he had a good sense of distance and direction, but here in the Arctic he felt he could no longer rely on even those faculties.
After a ten-minute rest, they set out again, heading deeper into the inlet where the ship was entombed in the ice. They kept up a good pace – even Strachan did not falter – and it was exhilarating to be stretching their legs after being cooped up on ship for so long; even their walks on Beechey Island had felt claustrophobic, trapped on that tiny islet with the vastness of the sea around them. At least here they felt as if they were heading somewhere, eating up the miles. Killigrew let them rest ten minutes in every hour, and there was no grumbling.
When Killigrew called for their fourth halt, they had only one more mile to go. Now the Venturer looked tiny, the strange ship trapped in the ice so very near. ‘Two bells,’ he remarked. ‘They’ll be sitting down to supper on board the Venturer.’
Ågård glanced at the other men, who nodded, as if they had already discussed this by some kind of telepathy. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but if it’s left to us I think we’d all choose to go on. We want to know what’s waiting for us on that ship, and if that means having supper an hour later than usual, we don’t mind.’
Killigrew concealed his pleasure; he felt exactly the same way. ‘Very well,’ he told them. ‘One more cup of char, and we’ll be on our way.’ While Endicott took his turn to make the tea, the lieutenant studied the mystery ship through the telescope. The hulk looked utterly bereft of life; the eerie sight sent a shudder down his spine.
Then he realised something.
‘It’s not one of Franklin’s ships,’ he announced, unsure whether he was pleased that the Erebus and Terror had gone further than this, or disappointed that that particular mystery would have to wait to be unravelled some other day.
‘How can you tell, sir?’ asked Osborne.
‘The mainmast is too far forward. Both the Erebus and the Terror had their mainmasts moved aft to accommodate their engines when they were converted for discovery service.’ Killigrew handed the telescope to Ågård. ‘What do you make of her?’
The ice quartermaster was silent for a moment. ‘She’s had all her upper works taken down, no clues… Reckon she must be a whaler, though, sir. What other ships would be found in these waters?’
‘She’s a little deep in these seas for a whaler, wouldn’t you say?’ Killigrew pointed out. ‘Do whalers often sail into uncharted waters?’
‘The Elizabeth and the Larkins were sailing into uncharted waters when they passed through Melville Bay thirty-five years ago; and they profited richly by it, having the whole of the North Water to themselves that season. Perhaps the master of this ship thought he could pull off the same trick.’
‘If he did, it doesn’t look as though he profited richly by it.’
They put the harnesses back on as soon as they had drunk their tea, and covered the last mile in three-quarters of an hour. Killigrew called a halt when they were a hundred yards from the hulk, and shrugged off the harness. He pulled his comforter down from his face and cupped his hands around his mouth.
‘Hullo!’
No reply, just the gentle soughing of the wind over the treeless hills on either side of the inlet. An awning had been tented over the upper deck, but it had fallen in in places, perhaps collapsed un
der the weight of the snow, and here and there tatters of canvas flapped in the breeze. Somehow, the ship looked even more lifeless than the barren landscape around them.
‘But answer came there none,’ Molineaux muttered.
‘I’m going on board,’ said Killigrew. ‘I want one volunteer to come with me while the rest of you wait here.’
Ågård, Osborne, Molineaux, Endicott, Hughes and McLellan all stepped forward.
‘Ask a silly question,’ sighed Killigrew. ‘Molineaux, you come with me. The rest of you wait here.’ There was not one of them whose company Killigrew would not have been glad of in a pinch, but he knew from experience there was no man he preferred to have watch his back than Molineaux. ‘Take the other shotgun.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The petty officer broke open the gun, loaded two shells and stuffed some more in his pockets. ‘Just in case,’ he explained.
A gangplank ran down from the ship’s entry port to the ice. Killigrew and Molineaux approached it. ‘Hullo!’ repeated the lieutenant. ‘Is there anyone there?’
There was no reply. ‘Reckon that means one of three things, sir,’ said Molineaux. ‘Either there’s no one there; or, there is someone there, but they don’t want to reply; or, there is someone there, but they can’t reply on account of being dead.’
‘You can be a cheerful fellow sometimes, Molineaux.’
‘What were you expecting, sir? A brass-band reception?’
‘A sign of life would be nice.’ Killigrew raised his voice again. ‘Hullo! I’m coming on board!’ He led the way up the gangplank and pulled aside a flap of canvas to step under the awning. There were enough rents in the rotten material to provide plenty of light from outside. He pulled down his snow-goggles around his neck to see more clearly. Snow had banked up here and there where it had blown in through the rents, protected from the summer thaw by the shade of the awning, and a layer of rime covered everything.
‘Not exactly shipshape and Bristol-fashioned, is it, sir?’ said Molineaux. There were ropes everywhere, harpoons, cutting-in spades and flensing knives scattered all over the deck. ‘There’s a lot of blood here.’
‘This is a whaling ship, Molineaux. Flensing whales is a messy business.’
‘Then where’s the whalebone?’
‘Hm?’
‘They hunt bowhead whales in these waters, right, sir? I don’t need to have been a spouter like Ollie to know that. Those sperm whales the Yankees hunt in the South Seas, well, they got teeth, just like you and me. But bowheads have mouths full of whalebone. They use it for stiffening ladies’ corsets; it’s as valuable as the whale-oil. So if they killed a whale, where’s the whalebone? It’s too big to be below decks; they tie it to the masts, great big curving bits of it. I’ve seen it. And if they didn’t kill a whale, where’d all this blood come from?’
The two of them stared at one another.
‘Sir, you know that prickly feeling you get on the back of your neck, when you know something’s wrong, but you can’t quite say what?’
‘You’ve got that feeling too, eh?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Molineaux nodded sombrely. He crossed to the try-works, slung his shotgun across his back, and climbed up to look inside one of the copper pots. ‘Clean as a whistle.’ He jumped down behind the try-works, and then re-emerged with a harpoon gun in his hands. ‘This looks like it’s been fired, sir. There’s a spent percussion cap on the nipple.’
‘Not lately, I’ll warrant.’
‘No, sir.’
There was a loud bang. The two of them whirled round, Killigrew levelling his shotgun, Molineaux brandishing the heavy harpoon gun like a club. A second, softer thud sounded as the door of the deckhouse aft banged in the wind.
Molineaux chuckled humourlessly. ‘Jesus! I nearly sha— That gave me quite a scare, sir.’
‘Me too.’ Killigrew crossed to the deck-house, and noticed a harpoon embedded deep in the planks. ‘Molineaux! Come and take a look at this!’
The petty officer hurried along the deck and crouched to examine the harpoon. ‘No one threw this iron, sir. Not through this bulkhead.’
Killigrew nodded. ‘So now we know where the harpoon from that harpoon gun went.’
‘Which kind of begs the question, what was it fired at?’
‘Not a whale, that’s for certain. Not unless the whale jumped out of the sea and landed on the deck. Come on. Maybe the answer to this mystery lies below.’
Molineaux made to enter the door first, but Killigrew stopped him. ‘I’ll go first.’
‘If you insist, sir.’
The deck-house was empty. A companion ladder led down to the lower deck. Holding his shotgun before him, Killigrew tiptoed below. At the foot of the companion ladder they found themselves in the steerage. A huge hole, five feet wide, had been smashed in the flimsy bulkhead aft; there was a similar hole in the bulkhead forward.
‘Jesus!’ gasped Molineaux. ‘Looks like a bloody rhinoceros went through here!’
‘There are no rhinoceroses in the Arctic.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, Sir Joseph Banks,’ muttered Molineaux. ‘Which way now, sir?’
‘Perhaps we should split up to search the ship,’ Killigrew said dubiously.
‘Yur, right.’
The lieutenant was grateful for the contempt with which the petty officer treated the suggestion. All the indications were that whatever had happened here had taken place months if not years ago; but with his flesh crawling the way it was, the thought of wandering alone in this wreck did not appeal to him any more than it did to Molineaux.
Killigrew ducked his head to step through the hole leading to the captain’s stateroom. The table that had once dominated the centre of the room was smashed, the legs broken underneath it, as if a stout party had tried to sit on it. There was a dusting of snow on the surface of the broken table, with shards of glass in it. Killigrew and Molineaux both glanced up to see that the skylight above was smashed in.
Molineaux nodded at the gun rack in one corner. ‘No guns,’ he remarked.
‘They must have taken them with them.’
‘Taken them where? There were eight boats stowed on the upper deck; I don’t reckon a ship of this size would have more’n that.’
Killigrew crossed to the bureau in one corner and opened a drawer. There was a ledger within. He opened it up and glanced at the title page. The ship was the Jan Snekker. ‘The captain’s log,’ he said. ‘No skipper would abandon ship and leave his log behind. Not unless he was in a devil of a hurry; and the ship obviously wasn’t sinking.’
‘So either they didn’t abandon ship, or when they did the skipper and anyone clever enough to think of bringing the log was already dead.’
Killigrew leafed through a few pages of the log. The date of the final entry was ‘13 Desember 1850’.
‘What language is that?’ asked Molineaux, peering over his shoulder at the text. ‘Swedish?’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘“December” is spelled with a C in Swedish, the same as in English.’
‘It’s got to be one of those Scandinavian languages, though,’ said Molineaux. ‘Look at all them lines through the Os, and the little circles over the As. Norwegian, I reckon; that, or Danish. Can you make it out, sir?’
‘A few words here and there, which look the same as they do in Swedish. Not enough to make any sense of it.’ Killigrew closed the ledger and tucked it under one arm.
‘Maybe Sørensen can read it,’ suggested Molineaux. ‘He’s Danish.’
‘All right, we’ll let him take a look at it when we get back to the Venturer. Shall we check the rest of the ship?’
Molineaux nodded. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
‘Take this.’ Killigrew handed him the log and found the stub of a candle resting in a saucer. He lit it with a match, and with his shotgun in one hand and the candle in the other, he ducked through the hole on the other side of the steerage and emerged into the blubber room, where a third hole was smashed thr
ough the bulkhead on the far side.
‘What the devil did this?’ Killigrew wondered out loud.
Molineaux shrugged. ‘Sixty-eight-pound round shot?’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘Too small.’
‘Ninety-eight-pound?’
‘Where did it enter the hull? There was no breech in the captain’s stateroom, and whatever it was, it was travelling this way.’ He pointed forward.
Molineaux nodded. He could see for himself that the splinters of wood smashed in the bulkheads lay forward of the holes.
Killigrew looked up at the hatch in the deck head. It had been barred from below with boards nailed across it. ‘Looks as if they were determined to keep someone out.’
‘Or something.’ Molineaux indicated the large hatch in the centre of the deck, the hood smashed in as if some great weight had landed on it. ‘I guess they didn’t have much luck.’
The two of them crouched over the hatch. The light from the candle did not penetrate the inky depths of the hold. ‘Shall we go down?’ asked Killigrew.
‘It’s either that, sir, or spend the rest of our lives wondering.’
The lieutenant indicated the hole in the forward bulkhead. ‘We’ll check the fo’c’sle first,’ he decided, telling himself he was just being methodical.
Like the rest of the ship, the forecastle was in disarray: broken crockery everywhere, upset stools, fold-down tables wrenched from the sides. The two of them found a companion way down to the hold. They were about to descend when something streaked past them, level with their ankles, making them both jump.
‘Jesus!’ said Molineaux. ‘What was that? Ship’s cat?’
‘Arctic fox. Come on.’
They descended. The candle cast a flickering, eerie light about the hold, the shadows of the stacked casks dancing threateningly on the sides. Some of the casks had been stacked across the far end of the hold, but they had been pulled down and smashed to one side.
‘Did I tell you about my nevvy Harry, sir? Nine years old. You know what his favourite game is, sir? Playing forts. Ever since his dad told him he was named after the Hector of Afghanistan, Harry likes to pretend he’s defending Piper’s Fort against the heathens, just like his namesake. He can make a fort out of just about anything. Many’s the time Luther’s opened up the King’s Head to find that Harry’s rearranged all the furniture for a re-enaction of the last stand of the Fighting Forty-Fourth. The thing is, sir, the way these barrels are stacked…’
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 14