‘You bloody fools! He has no notion! None of you does!’
‘Put Ågård in irons in the lazaretto, Jenkins,’ ordered Pettifer. Jenkins was a big man, but even he struggled to cope with the ice quartermaster’s frenzy. ‘Give us a hand, Walsh!’
Walsh abandoned his post by the ship’s bell and came to his assistance. The two of them frog-marched Ågård to the after hatch and forced him below.
‘Perhaps we should heed his advice, sir,’ said Killigrew. ‘He’s got more Arctic experience than the rest of us put together, Qualtrough excluded; and Qualtrough wasn’t too happy about the thought of pressing on.’
‘Experienced he may be, Mr Killigrew, but the man’s clearly lost his nerve,’ said Pettifer. ‘You remember how he squealed with terror as we came through the Middle Pack – came through unscathed, I might add. Besides, he said so himself: he has no experience of steamers in the Arctic.’
‘Perhaps we should ask Sørensen what he thinks.’
‘Damn it, Killigrew! I will not turn to a Danish spouter for advice! Now pipe down, mister, unless you wish to find yourself in irons in the lazaretto alongside our pusillanimous Mr Ågård! We push on, damn you!’
Pettifer was still glaring at Killigrew when the speaking tube leading to the crow’s nest whistled shrilly. Neither the captain nor the lieutenant made a move.
‘Do you want me to get that, sir?’ asked Cavan.
Neither Pettifer nor Killigrew gave any indication that they had heard him. After a pause, the mate picked up the speaking tube and listened. Then he hooked the brass mouthpiece back on the binnacle.
Pettifer turned away from Killigrew abruptly. ‘Well?’ he demanded of Cavan.
‘Qualtrough reports clear water less than two miles ahead, sir.’
Pettifer smiled. ‘Well, mister? Didn’t I tell you we’d make it? The North-West Passage is ours for the taking, gentlemen! ’
The ship lurched under their feet as the bow collided with something solid, throwing the helmsman against the wheel and the rest of them to the deck. Killigrew leaped to his feet and went to help Pettifer up, but the captain waved him away.
‘I’m all right, Killigrew,’ he snapped pettishly. ‘Go below, Mr Cavan. I want a full damage report immediately!’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Cavan scurried below.
Pettifer snatched the speaking tube from the binnacle and blew into it. ‘What the devil was that, Qualtrough? …Didn’t you see it, man? …Spare me your pathetic excuses! If we’re holed, I’ll have you disrated, damn your eyes! Pay more attention in future.’
If we’re holed, thought Killigrew, then being disrated will be the least of Qualtrough’s worries.
‘What happened, sir?’ the helmsman, Endicott, asked groggily, still dazed from his fall.
‘We ran into a floe,’ snapped Pettifer.
‘Are we holed, sir?’ asked McLellan.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Killigrew. There was no sound of water rushing into the hull, no list in the deck.
Presently Cavan returned on deck. ‘No sign of damage in the bows, sir. I think we’re all right.’
‘We’d better check the outside of the hull,’ said Killigrew. ‘With your permission, sir?’
Pettifer nodded and followed him forward. The two of them peered over the bulwark, but it was impossible to see the bow clearly from that angle. ‘We’ll have to put a boat in the water to check,’ said Pettifer.
The hull had rebounded a few feet from the floe, but what filled the gap between the foot of the prow and the floe could hardly be called water: it was brash ice, thick and sludgy. ‘A boat will make slow progress through that, sir, and there’s not much room for manoeuvre. Besides, if the wind changes and that floe closes in, we’ll be short a boat and possibly her crew besides.’
‘You have a better suggestion, Killigrew?’
‘I’ll go over myself on a lifeline.’
‘Very well. Reeve a bowline through the tackle on that cathead, Hughes!’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Killigrew secured the bowline around his waist and scrambled over the bulwark, his feet braced against the side. The soles of his boots slipped and slithered on the rime-covered timbers. If he fell into the brash ice below him, it would be like falling into an icy quagmire: his limbs would cramp and the thick sludge would suck him under before he had a chance to freeze to death. He inspected the iron plates riveted to the bows, then climbed back on deck to go over on the other side of the prow to check for damage there as well.
‘No sign of damage above the waterline, sir,’ he reported to Pettifer. ‘Some scratching on the plates, that’s all. She’s hardly dented.’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ the captain exulted as they walked back to the quarterdeck. ‘This tub can take anything the Arctic’s got to throw at her, and worse.’
‘There could be worse damage below the waterline, sir,’ warned Killigrew. ‘I can’t see more than an inch below the surface. And we can hardly send a diver over to check: he’d freeze to death in a minute.’
‘We can’t very well careen her in this ice,’ said Pettifer. ‘It’ll have to wait until we’ve broken out on the other side. Order Varrow to turn astern, half speed.’
‘Sir, if some of the iron plates have broken off the stern and we try to ram those floes, we might just finish what the floes started!’
‘I’m aware of the risk. I’m disappointed in you, Mr Killigrew. You’re starting to display an alarming tendency to faint-heartedness.’ He took the speaking tube from the binnacle. ‘Mr Varrow! Turn astern, full speed.’
As the Venturer reversed through the brash ice, Killigrew glanced astern and saw another floe had closed in behind her. ‘Stop her, sir!’
‘Damn your eyes, mister! How dare you countermand one of my orders?’
‘For God’s sake, sir! The floe!’ Killigrew gestured, and snatched the speaking tube from Pettifer. ‘Turn ahead full, Varrow! Now!’
Chapter 8
Beset
The edge of the floe had already disappeared beneath the stern when Varrow stopped the engine so he could turn ahead. Even with the brash ice sucking at the hull, the ship continued to drift backwards under her own momentum and then another shudder ran through the deck, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of splintering wood.
Thrown to the deck a second time, Killigrew scrambled for the speaking tube he had dropped. ‘Everything all right down there, Mr Varrow?’
‘Me dignity’s bruised, but I think I’ll live. Sounds like the rudder took a basting, though. What happened?’
‘We reversed against another floe.’
‘Damage report, Mr Cavan!’ roared Pettifer.
The hull had not been breeched, but the rudder had been smashed and when they tried to haul the screw up into the iron well on the orlop deck they found that one of the blades had been bent.
‘Kracht thinks he can beat it back into shape, but it’s going to take time, sir,’ Killigrew reported when Pettifer had gathered his officers in his day-room to discuss the situation. ‘Time, and a lot of coal. Coal we can’t spare. It will be quicker to replace the screw with the spare. Kracht thinks he can have it fitted within a few hours.’
‘Very well,’ said Pettifer. ‘See to it.’
‘I’m most concerned about the loss of the rudder,’ said Killigrew.
‘Riggs has sufficient timber to build a new one, hasn’t he?’
‘He says it’s going to take forty-eight hours to build it. But the difficult part is going to be fixing it to the sternpost. I wouldn’t care to be the one who has to dive into this brash ice to fix the pintles to the gudgeons below the waterline.’
‘If we shift some of the ballast forward, that may bring one more of them close enough to the surface to reach from a boat. Tell him to see what he can jury-rig. Once we’re free of this ice, we can effect more permanent repairs.’
Killigrew and Cavan made their way on deck where Qualtrough approached them, relieved from his duties
in the crow’s nest by Sørensen. ‘Forgive me, sir. I just wanted to apologise for not seeing that first floe in time. From the crow’s nest, it’s almost impossible to tell where the brash ice ends and the floes begin.’
‘That’s all right, Qualtrough,’ Killigrew assured him. ‘No one’s blaming you. If anyone’s to blame for the fix we’re in, it’s me for not seeing the second floe astern. Don’t worry, though: Chips thinks we can jury-rig a temporary rudder within forty-eight hours.’
‘Forty-eight hours, eh?’
‘What’s the matter, Qualtrough? You look dubious.’
‘It’s getting colder by the minute, sir. If this north wind keeps up it’ll only pack the ice in around us closer. I just hope that forty-eight hours is soon enough.’
‘Then we’d better get to work at once, hadn’t we?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The ice quartermaster turned away to return to his duties.
‘Qualtrough?’ Killigrew called after him.
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t worry. The captain knows what he’s doing.’
Qualtrough nodded and went away.
‘You seem pretty confident of that, sir,’ said Cavan.
The lieutenant shrugged. ‘He’s the captain, Mr Cavan,’ he explained with an ironic smile. ‘The captain is always right.’
‘Sir?’
‘Yes, Mr Cavan?’
‘Did you ever wonder what would happen if the captain were ever wrong?’
Killigrew grimaced. ‘Then we’d be in damned hot water.’
The young man grinned. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
* * *
Killigrew had to haul O’Houlihan up out of the sludge and into the dingy in the Venturer’s stem. ‘One more pintle, sir,’ gasped the seaman. ‘I’ve almost got it.’
‘Belay that, O’Houlihan. You’re turning blue as it is. You go back on board, change into some dry clothes and warm yourself by the galley stove. Get a hot mug of tea inside you.’
‘Please, sir.’ O’Houlihan was shivering uncontrollably. ‘Another thirty seconds will do it.’
‘Another thirty seconds will kill you, man! Back on board this instant, O’Houlihan. That’s an order.’
Seeing what had needed to be done, O’Houlihan had volunteered to work in the brash ice without the promise of an extra ration of grog – if they could not repair the rudder, they would all be in trouble – and Killigrew had reluctantly agreed, against his better judgement.
O’Houlihan was in no state to climb one of the lifelines to the quarterdeck above them, but it was not necessary: a boatswain’s chair was already waiting. ‘Take him straight to the galley, Molineaux!’ Killigrew called up to the petty officer at the taffrail overhead once O’Houlihan had been swung inboard. ‘And put some rum in his tea: he’s earned it!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Molineaux saluted and disappeared from view.
‘Do you want me to get that last pintle?’ asked Kracht, who had offered to help with the repairs, and sat in the dinghy next to Killigrew.
The lieutenant shook his head. ‘If anyone else is going over the side into that filthy stuff, it’s me.’ He was thinking he should have gone in the first place, instead of letting O’Houlihan do it.
‘Maybe it bain’t necessary, sir,’ said the carpenter’s mate, on the other side of Killigrew. ‘We got eleven of the twelve pintles fixed now.’ Just as Strachan was an assistant surgeon without a surgeon to assist, so Jeremiah Riggs was a carpenter’s mate without a carpenter to be a mate to. The Admiralty did not think the Venturer large enough to warrant a full-blown carpenter, or was trying to pinch pennies at any rate; but Killigrew had no complaints about Riggs, and it was a mystery to him why the carpenter’s mate was not rated higher.
‘You think she’ll hold, Chips?’
‘Four would hold her, sir. It be a question of how much punishment she can take. Twelve’d be better than eleven, sir, but then thirteen would be better than twelve. Reckon eleven’ll do for now.’
Killigrew lifted his face towards the taffrail. ‘Mr Cavan!’
The mate appeared above them. ‘Sir?’
‘Hard a-starboard, Mr Cavan!’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The mate turned to someone behind him. ‘Hard a-starboard, Endicott!’
The rudder moved soundlessly to port on well-oiled hinges, churning through the brash ice.
‘Now to port!’
‘Hard a-port, Endicott!’
The rudder swung across to starboard.
‘How does she handle?’ Killigrew called up.
Cavan turned to Endicott and repeated the question. ‘He says “sluggish”, sir,’ the mate reported.
‘That’s just the brash ice,’ said Killigrew. ‘She’ll do… for now. She’ll have to.’ Kracht had already replaced the bent-bladed screw with the spare, and Riggs had excelled himself, assembling the parts of the spare rudder in twenty-four hours rather than forty-eight. But all the while the thermometer had dropped, turning the brash ice the consistency of ‘mushy peas’, as Thwaites put it, and the north wind had increased, packing the floe ice tightly on all sides of the Venturer. If they could not get out now, they would be stuck there in the pack until the spring thaw came in eight months’ time, if the ice did not crush the hull in the meantime.
The men in the boat climbed up the lifelines to the deck so the dinghy could be hoisted back into its davits. Black smoke billowed from the funnel as the stokers shovelled coal into the furnace to get steam up, but instead of rising into the sky the smoke dropped to the deck as soon as it met the cold air, and only the breezes gusting in from the starboard quarter prevented the men on the forecastle from being choked.
‘Tell the captain we’re ready when he is,’ Killigrew told Cavan. Even as the mate descended the after hatch, Killigrew spoke into the speaking tube. ‘Stand by in the engine room.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied Varrow.
Pettifer came on deck. ‘Well, gentleman, if you’re ready? We shall endeavour to break out of our icy cage. Instruct Varrow to set on, Killigrew. Turn ahead, full speed.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Killigrew took the speaking tube from the bulwark. The gutta-percha had split now, and he had to cup one hand over the hole to blow the whistle at the other end. ‘Full ahead, Mr Varrow.’
‘Full ahead it is, Mr Killigrew.’
They felt the deck throb beneath their feet as the engine started up: slowly at first, but accelerating with every second as Varrow increased revolutions. Killigrew could hear the floes of ice squeak in protest as the Venturer strained against them, but they did not give. Astern, the screw churned the brash ice and pushed it about ineffectively.
‘She’s not budging, sir,’ Killigrew said when the engine reached the plateau of its power.
‘We need more revolutions,’ said Pettifer.
‘We’re already going full ahead, sir.’
‘That’s not good enough!’ snapped the captain. ‘Go below and see if anything can be done.’
Killigrew hesitated, knowing it would be a wasted journey. But he preferred Varrow’s company in the dark, filthy and noisy sweatbox of the Venturer’s engine room than he did being on deck with Pettifer in his present frame of mind, demanding the impossible. He shed some of his Arctic clothes in his cabin on the way below and descended to the engine room.
‘The captain wants more!’ he told Varrow, shouting to make himself heard above the clamour of the engine.
The engineer shook his head. A squat, neckless man with thinning hair, a wide mouth and bulging eyes that gave him a toad-like appearance, Assistant Engineer (First Class) Walter Varrow was the first engineer Killigrew had met who never seemed ill at ease in his filthy overalls when surrounded by officers in their epauletted frock-coats. Varrow had a uniform of his own somewhere, but only wore it when he had to, and could be relied on to get it rumpled so quickly that somehow it looked even filthier than his overalls.
‘The pressure gauge is in the red as it is. And the lads are shovellin
g coal in at an alarming rate.’ Varrow nodded to where the three stokers were hard at work, stripped to the waists, the sweat running in rivulets over muscular bodies filthy with coal dust.
Killigrew nodded. Now he understood what had happened to the Franklin expedition as clearly as he ever would. There had been no unexplained disaster, no mystery, just the ice creeping in around them, freezing them in for eternity. They had challenged the Arctic and lost, just as it now seemed that the Venturer had made the same gamble and faced the same end. Feeling slightly sick, trying to tell himself it was not all over yet, he made his way back on deck.
‘They’re doing all they can down there, sir, but it’s no good. We’re just wasting coal – coal we can ill afford to spare.’
‘Turn astern, full speed,’ ordered Pettifer.
Killigrew relayed the order to the engine room via the speaking tube. Varrow put her in reverse, but they made no more progress astern than they had done ahead.
They tried stopping the engines and starting them again suddenly. They tried stopping them, and slowly bringing them up to full revolutions. They called all hands on deck and ordered them to run from one side to the other, in the hope that the rocking motion they set up would break up the ice around them. They tried attaching ice-anchors to one of the thickest floes ahead of them and turning about the capstan to kedge through the ice. In desperation, they even broke out more gunpowder charges and tried to blast their way through the ice. Nothing worked: the Venturer was stuck fast.
Less than two miles from open water, and they could not budge her an inch.
Pettifer’s shoulders slumped. He seemed to have shrunk six inches. ‘Let fires die out,’ he ordered.
‘What do we do now, sir?’ asked Cavan.
Pettifer looked at him. ‘Do? We do nothing, Mr Cavan. We wait.’ He turned and stalked down the after hatch, a broken and defeated man.
‘Wait for what?’ muttered Cavan.
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 17