‘You think this is your nephew’s handiwork?’
Molineaux laughed. In the echoing hold, the sound was hollow. ‘No, sir. But it looks like someone was trying to build a fort here. For a last stand, know what I mean?’ He peered over a stack of barrels into the space behind. ‘What the hell is that? Sir, could you bring that light here?’
‘By all means. What have you found, Molineaux?’
‘I’m not sure, sir. It looks like—’
He broke off as the light of the candle fell across the space behind the barrels. Then he swore vilely, combining an obscenity and a blasphemy in one breath.
Killigrew saw it too. He set the candle down on an upright cask and struggled to choke back the bile that rose to his gorge.
Chapter 7
Into the Ice
Killigrew had seen some gruesome sights in his career: the slaughter of the innocents at Chinkiang-fu; the aftermath of a pilong attack; the effects of a sixty-eight-pound shell when it exploded in close proximity to men. But nothing could have prepared him for what he found behind those barrels. If it did not match what he had seen at Chinkiang-fu in scale, it more than matched it for sheer, grisly horror.
Bones. Unmistakably human, for all that something had torn the skeletons apart. A pelvis here; a piece of spinal column there. Crushed ribcages. Scattered jawbones. All had scraps of flesh adhering to them; not decayed – the Arctic cold had preserved them – but whoever these men had been, they had died some months, if not years, ago. Dark stains were splashed all about beneath the layer of rime that glistened in the candlelight.
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Molineaux. ‘It’s like a bloody abattoir! What d’you think happened here, sir?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Whoever did this must’ve been crazy, sir.’
‘Not necessarily. The way the bones have been scattered may be the work of scavengers. You saw that fox. From the mess topsides, it looks to me as if at least one polar bear was also attracted by the scent of blood.’
‘Then who killed these poor—’ Molineaux broke off and tensed.
Before Killigrew could ask him what was wrong, he heard it too: a deck board creaked somewhere overhead.
Perhaps it was just Killigrew’s imagination – hardly surprising that it was running wild, considering the macabre surroundings – but he thought he saw a couple of shadows fall across the hatch in the deck head.
But the footsteps that came down the companionway were real enough.
As one, both Killigrew and Molineaux ducked behind casks and unslung their shotguns, levelling them at the foot of the companion way. Killigrew belatedly realised that he had been so intent on following the trail of destruction, he had not bothered to check the rest of the cabins. Anyone could have been hiding in there.
He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He struggled to hold his breath for fear that it would give him away. His mouth was dry, his palms moist where they gripped the shotgun.
Molineaux gesticulated insistently; Killigrew had left the candle burning on one of the casks. Whoever these men were, they would see it and know that the intruders were not far away. But there was not time to put it out now: they must have seen the flickering light through the hole in the deck above.
Two figures descended the companion way, one gripping a loaded harpoon gun, the other brandishing an ice-axe. Both were heavily muffled against the cold, their eyes hidden behind wire-mesh snow-goggles. The man with the harpoon gun was huge; he was framed by his own shadow on the bulkhead behind him, which made him look even bigger.
‘Drop your weapons and raise your hands in the air!’ shouted Killigrew. ‘There are four shotguns lined up on you!’
The shorter man dropped his ice-axe with a Caledonian oath of fright, but his larger companion merely lowered the harpoon gun. ‘Mr Killigrew? Is that you, sir?’
Killigrew and Molineaux heaved huge sighs of relief and rose to their feet as Ågård pulled down his goggles. The Swede grinned. ‘Four shotguns, sir?’
‘I thought a little bluff wouldn’t go amiss, under the circumstances. Who’s that with you?’
‘It’s me,’ Strachan said testily, retrieving the ice-axe from the deck. ‘Damn it, Killigrew, did you have to frighten us like that? I almost dropped this confounded thing on my foot!’
‘I thought I told you to wait outside with the others?’
‘You were gone a mortal long time, Killigrew. We were starting to get worried.’
‘It’s only been ten minutes. Did you expect Molineaux and me to search the whole ship in that time? You might at least have tried calling our names when you came on board.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Ågård, ‘but for all we knew you and Wes had been done in by a couple of spouters who’d gone out of their minds after being trapped in the Arctic for so long. We didn’t think it’d be right clever to announce our arrival.’
‘If you were worried about crazed whalers, Ågård, wouldn’t it have been more sensible to bring one of the others?’ asked Killigrew.
‘As opposed to what?’ Strachan asked bitterly. ‘Bringing me, I suppose you mean? I think I resent that! Just because I wear spectacles and read a lot of books, you think I can’t be heroic?’
‘Very heroic you looked, almost dropping that ice-axe on your foot!’
‘Ah, come on now, sir,’ Ågård said with a grin. ‘Don’t tell me you weren’t scared when me and Mr Strachan came down that companion ladder? I know I was. Happen it were Mr Strachan’s idea that we come look for you. Me, I was all for giving you another five minutes.’
‘All right. My apologies to you, Strachan. You’re more heroic than I gave you credit for.’
‘Hmph! Don’t patronise me, Killigrew. What happened here, anyhow?’
‘That’s what Molineaux and I were just trying to work out. As a matter of fact, I have a theory…’
The sound of wood splintering came from somewhere at the back of the hold. Killigrew realised that Molineaux had disappeared in that direction. ‘Molineaux? Is everything all right back there?’
‘Just plummy, sir. Be with you in a brace of shakes. I just want to check something, that’s all.’
Strachan peered behind the barrels and blanched in the flickering light of the candle. ‘Jings! What happened here?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Killigrew said grimly. ‘When we get out of here, say nothing to any of the others about what we found. That goes for you and Molineaux too, Ågård. Until we can get some clue of what happened here, I’d prefer not to alarm the others. Ignorance breeds fear.’
‘They’ll be curious,’ warned Strachan.
‘Then we tell them the bare minimum: we found the ship deserted, with no obvious way of telling what happened. It’s to be hoped that the solution to this mystery lies in this log.’
‘You said you have a theory?’
‘I fear the crew of this ship were forced to resort to anthropophagy, Mr Strachan.’ Killigrew hid from the horror of it all behind the technical term, perhaps to shield himself as much as others from its grisly implications.
‘Oh my word!’ groaned Strachan.
All of this was lost on Ågård. ‘Anthropo-what, sir?’
‘The last date in that log is December eighteen-fifty,’ explained Killigrew. ‘Suppose this ship entered the Arctic in the season of ’forty-nine, but got trapped here in the ice? One winter would be bad enough, but if the ice didn’t thaw sufficiently for the ship to break free in the following summer? Whalers only carry enough provisions for one season. By December eighteen-fifty they’d have been crazed with hunger. Desperate enough to resort to the ultimate taboo.’
‘Oh! You mean cannibalism, sir.’
Killigrew nodded. ‘The ones who drew the short straws didn’t care for it – assuming they were given the chance to draw straws. However they decided the matter, the result was a desperate fight. The weaker party tried to barricade itself below decks, but the oth
ers broke in through the skylight in the captain’s stateroom. Deranged, they smashed their way through the bulkheads. The defenders retreated here, to the hold, built themselves a barricade out of these casks and prepared to sell their lives dearly. Whoever won butchered the men they killed. Then the survivors decided to set out on foot. Who knows? Perhaps they may even have made it back to civilisation.’
‘You mean the men responsible for this charnel house are still on the loose somewhere?’ exclaimed Strachan. ‘That’s a cheering thought!’
‘Don’t worry. It’s more than a thousand miles to civilisation. The chances that they made it are almost non-existent.’
‘It’s a nice, neat theory, sir.’ Molineaux returned from the depths of the hold, tossing a tin can from one hand to the other. ‘There’s just one hole in it – a hole as big as the ones in the bulkheads on the lower deck.’ He tossed the tin canister at Killigrew. ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’
The lieutenant caught it, thinking that if one more person told him to put something in his pipe and smoke it, he would not be answerable for the consequences. He looked at the label on the tin. ‘“Boiled mutton”?’
‘Crazed with hunger, sir? So crazed they forgot about the nine hundred or so tins of food they had crated at the back of the hold? And not just boiled mutton. Roast beef, roast lamb, knuckle of veal, carrots in gravy… lumme, sir, they even had a beef à la flamande. So don’t try to tell me they wanted a bit of variation in their vittles.’
Killigrew swallowed. The fact that they could make no sense of it all only added to the horror of the scene. Perhaps there was no sense to it. Perhaps the men on this ship, driven beyond all reason by their ordeal in the Arctic, had simply gone crazy, smashing up the ship and butchering one another. He wondered if a similar fate had befallen the crews of the Erebus and Terror. Or if the same fate awaited…
He shook his head. ‘Whatever the explanation is, we shan’t find it down here. Maybe it’s in this log. The sooner we get back to the Venturer so Sørensen can do his best to translate it, the better.’
They made their way back up to the lower deck. Killigrew ducked through the hole in the bulkhead between the blubber room and the steerage, and then glanced back at the hole behind him as the others came through. He noticed some odd scratches in the wood: five parallel scars, each about two and a half inches apart. ‘What could have made these marks, do you suppose?’ he asked Strachan. ‘You don’t think…?’ He broke off and shook his head.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s too ludicrous to contemplate.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You’ll laugh.’
‘I won’t. I promise,’ said Strachan. ‘Killigrew, I’m as much at a loss here as you are. If you’ve got a theory, no matter how ludicrous it may seem, at least share it with us so we can let you know what we think of it.’
Killigrew took a deep breath. ‘You don’t think… well, is it possible… Strachan, could a polar bear have done this?’
Strachan laughed. Not one of his characteristic wry chuckles, but a deep, uncontrolled howl of laughter that doubled him up. A long laugh that left him struggling for breath so severely that at first Killigrew thought he was suffering from a seizure. At last the assistant straightened, removed his spectacles, and dabbed the tears of laughter from his cheeks with a handkerchief. ‘No,’ he told Killigrew gravely. ‘It could not.’
‘Isn’t it possible that…?’
‘That what? That an animal weighing a mere eleven hundred pounds could claw its way through four bulkheads and a hatch cover, and slaughter the entire crew of a whaler? Fifty men armed with pistols and muskets?’ He shook his head. ‘Forget it, Killigrew. If you’re trying to come up with an explanation for what we’ve seen here today, you’ll have to do better than that.’
On the upper deck, Molineaux opened a locker and helped himself to half a dozen harpoons and a box of percussion caps. Killigrew noticed he was carrying the harpoon gun Ågård had brought down to the hold. ‘What are you doing with that thing?’
‘Salvage, sir. We’re allowed, ain’t we?’
‘What do you intend to do with it?’
‘Thought it might come in handy, sir. I don’t know what made them holes in the bulkheads, but if it comes after me, I aim to be ready for it!’
‘Are we setting out for the ship immediately, sir?’ asked Ågård.
‘Would you prefer to spend the night here?’ asked Killigrew. As summer drew to a close and the Venturer headed south, the sun had finally started to dip below the horizon at midnight, but it still did not get any darker than dusk. Nevertheless, Killigrew had no wish to spend the night in proximity to this ship in the twilight. ‘Come on, let’s get back. The sooner we unravel this mystery, the happier I’ll be.’ He pulled aside a flap of canvas and walked down the gangplank, followed by Strachan.
The two petty officers lingered. ‘Did he say eleven hundred pounds?’ asked Molineaux. ‘That’s more’n a third of a ton, ain’t it?’
‘Nearer a half,’ agreed Ågård. He glanced at the harpoon gun Molineaux clutched, and clapped him heartily on the back. ‘You’re going to need a bigger gun, Wes.’
* * *
‘Are you all right, Killigrew?’ Pettifer asked when his lieutenant reported to him the privacy of his day-room. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’
Killigrew smiled thinly. ‘A ghost ship, sir. It’s not the first time I’ve been on board a ghost ship, but they always leave me in a funk.’ Searching the Jan Snekker had reminded him of a couple of ships he had encountered in the China Seas, victims of piracy, dredging up memories he would have preferred to forget.
Pettifer poured a couple of glasses of sherry from a crystal decanter. ‘Perhaps a drink will help calm your nerves.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Killigrew tossed his back in one go.
‘Good gracious! You are shaken up, aren’t you? I overheard Ågård tell the bosun it wasn’t the Erebus or the Terror. What was it?’
‘Norwegian whaler, sir. Must’ve got trapped in the ice back in ’forty-nine.’
‘Any survivors?’
‘No, sir. At least, none on the ship. A few corpses, though. What was left of them. They’d been pretty badly mauled by scavengers, from the look of it. Whatever happened there, it must’ve been an utter massacre. If there were any survivors, they must’ve set out for the mainland on foot. With your permission, sir, I’d like to go back to the whaler tomorrow and see what else I can learn.’
‘Go back?’ Pettifer gave him a puzzled smile. ‘Why?’
‘I want to know what happened on that ship, sir. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a mystery without an explanation.’
‘One mystery at a time, Mr Killigrew. Our mission is to find Franklin and the others. Naturally, we’ll report the whaler when we get back to England; someone must’ve reported it missing. I dare say there’ll be some women in Norway as yet unaware they are widows.’
‘And can we tell them that they are?’
‘You say you found no survivors; whoever was on that whaler is either dead or long gone. There’s nothing more we can do for them. We’ll set sail immediately.’
‘In which direction, sir?’
‘South, of course. You say you abhor a mystery. Don’t you want to know where this sound leads? We’re on the verge of discovering the North-West Passage. Surely you don’t want to turn back now, just because you found a stranded whaler?’
‘Something strange happened on that whaler, sir. How do we know the same thing won’t happen to us?’
‘Now you’re just being foolish, Killigrew. Mind you, from what you’ve told me of what you saw on that whaler, I can appreciate that you might be unnerved. You get back to your cabin and have a good night’s rest. I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.’
‘I suppose you’re right, sir.’
‘Of course I am!’
Killigrew put down his sherry glass. ‘One other thing, sir. O
nly I, Strachan, Ågård and Molineaux went aboard the whaler. The rest didn’t see what we saw, and I told the others to make no mention of the human remains. I thought it best not to spread panic and alarm through the crew. You know how superstitious seamen can be.’
‘Very wise, Killigrew. Did you get the log?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s in Norwegian; Sørensen’s doing his best to translate it.’
‘All right. Perhaps it will solve the mystery of what happened. But we have bigger fish to fry.’
Killigrew took his leave of the captain. As he passed through the wardroom, Yelverton, Ziegler and Bähr confronted him, demanding to know what he’d found on the mysterious ship.
‘Nothing,’ Killigrew told him. ‘We didn’t find anything. The crew must’ve abandoned ship when they realised the ship was permanently trapped in the ice.’
‘Then how come they left the log behind?’ demanded Yelverton.
‘I don’t know,’ Killigrew retorted impatiently. He felt he could confide in the master what he had discovered on the ship, but he was too tired, too drained to do it tonight, and he did not want to discuss it in front of Ziegler and Bähr. ‘Perhaps we’ll know when Sørensen’s finished translating it. By the way, doctor, did you get a chance to examine Terregannoeuck?’
‘Up to a point,’ said Bähr. ‘They brought him into the sick-berth and I was just starting to look at him when the damned fellow woke up on me. Refused to let me examine him properly and went back up on deck without so much as a by-your-leave, let alone an explanation.’
‘Anything wrong with him?’
‘Not that I could see – apart from his deuced rum behaviour, of course. Rather put me in mind of a Hindu holy man I saw in India once,’ he added thoughtfully.
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 15