Killigrew and the North-West Passage

by Jonathan Lunn

  ‘I love you, Ursula. I’ve loved you from the moment I first set eyes on you. It was not too difficult at first; I saw you were married to Kapitän Weiss, and told myself you could never be mine. Then I came to see how he treated you, and realised that even if a wretch like me did not deserve you, at least I deserved you more than he does…’

  She clapped her hands over her head, pressing the sides of her hood against her ears in a futile effort to shut out his litany of love. ‘Please, Dietrich! Don’t do this. Do you not think that if I had felt the same about you, I might have shown it in some way?’

  ‘But I love you!’ he pleaded.

  She shook her head. ‘You only think you love me. You have an image of me in your head, and that is how you have seen me from the moment we have met, in spite of all that you have seen of me since we have got to know one another. Except that you have never got to know me, because you have blinded yourself to the truth about me as it does not fit in with your ideal image of me.’

  ‘How can you say such things?’

  ‘Because I know, Dietrich. I’ve watched you fall in love with me, as I’ve watched a dozen other men fall in love with me. And I’ve known all along it could only end in disappointment for you. Do you want to know the truth about me? The truth you’ve been blind to all these years? Watching you tear yourself apart falling in love with me should have torn at my heart. But it did not, because I find it pathetic.’

  ‘Pathetic! I’ll show you pathetic! Perhaps you prefer a stronger man. A man like your husband, eh? Perhaps, despite all your protestations, you’re really one of those women who likes to be knocked around. Well, a real man doesn’t have to hit a woman to please her. This is what a real man does…’

  He seized her in his arms, pulled her against him, and kissed her forcefully on the lips. She kept her teeth clenched, barring the tongue that slithered between his lips, and when her efforts to push him away proved futile, she lifted her knee into his crotch. He doubled up, inadvertently bringing his forehead down against the bridge of her nose. She stumbled backwards and slipped on the ice, landing on her backside, feeling dazed and woozy.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Ziegler wheezed in horror. ‘Ursula! Are you all right? I never meant to…’

  She found herself laughing. ‘I was wrong about you, Dietrich. You are nothing like Wolfgang. He would never have apologised.’

  ‘I cannot help it if I am gentlemanly.’ He stepped forward to help her to her feet, proffering his hand.

  She raised her head to look at him, and then her face twisted in horror.

  He took a step back. ‘It’s all right, Ursula. I’m not going to hurt you…’

  He saw the shadow fall from behind him and realised too late she was not looking at him. He started to turn, and then something smashed into his back, knocking him face-down on the ice. He tried to get up, but an extraordinarily heavy weight pinned him to the ground. He gasped. He felt as if the pressure must crush his ribcage.

  Ursula screamed.

  The weight was lifted off his back, but only briefly; then it crashed down again. He felt his ribcage snap under the weight – four-fifths of a ton – and saw blood splashed across Ursula’s coat. Lots of blood. His own blood. He smelled hot, fishy breath as his assailant’s maw closed over his head. Sharp teeth dug into his face and the last thing he heard was the crack of his own skull snapping like an eggshell as powerful jaws closed over it, silencing his awful screams for ever.

  * * *

  ‘They’ve been gone a long time,’ Molineaux remarked to his shipmates when they rounded the bows of the ship for the umpteenth time that morning.

  ‘Who have?’ asked Ågård.

  ‘Herr Ziegler and Frau Weiss.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Endicott. ‘They’re giving it the old…’ The Liverpudlian demonstrated what he meant by ‘the old…’ by thrusting his hips back and forth a couple of times.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Molineaux.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t think so?’ asked Endicott. ‘What else would they be doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I don’t think they’re giving it “the old…”.’ Molineaux imitated Endicott’s hip-thrusting mockingly. ‘He’s interested in her, but she ain’t interested in him.’

  ‘She told you that, did she?’ asked O’Houlihan.

  ‘No. But I’ve seen the way they look at one another. Or rather, the way he looks at her, and she avoids his gaze. And not coyly, either.’

  ‘Is that so?’ O’Houlihan said sceptically. ‘So not only do I have to put up with Seth knowing what a frow’s like in bed just by looking at her, but now it seems that a similar gift enables you to glance at a couple and guess immediately whether or not they’re chauvering.’

  ‘I think Wes is right,’ said Ågård. ‘If they are doing “t’other thing”, why did they go all the way over there to do it?’

  Endicott rapped his knuckles on Ågård’s forehead. ‘Hullo? Anyone in there? Maybe they want a bit of privacy?’

  ‘I’m surprised they can manage it, in this cold weather,’ said O’Houlihan. ‘I was worried I’d get really randy, being stuck here in the Arctic without a bit of mutton to warm my belly, but I’ve hardly thought about it at all since we entered the Arctic Circle.’

  Ågård wrapped an arm around Endicott’s neck and pinned his head in his armpit, rubbing his bunched knuckles roughly over the Liverpudlian’s scalp while continuing to walk around the Venturer’s hull. Endicott had no choice but to follow. ‘How many times have I got to tell you, lad? ABs like you have got to treat POs like me with some respect.’

  Endicott laughed. ‘Yur, right. Ooh! Ahh! Gerroffyabugger!’

  ‘I’m glad you said that,’ Hughes responded to what O’Houlihan had said. ‘I was starting to get worried. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, like.’

  ‘There is something wrong with you, Red,’ said Molineaux. ‘You’re full of gammon.’

  ‘Kiss my bum, Wes! But no, I can’t remember the last time I had a dirty thought.’

  ‘It was last night, to judge from what you were saying in your sleep.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Ollie,’ said Endicott, his head still trapped under Ågård’s armpit. ‘When was the last time you washed under your arms? It bloody stinks down here!’

  ‘Give over!’ protested Hughes. ‘I don’t talk in my sleep.’

  ‘Why, sure ye do, Red,’ said O’Houlihan. ‘“Ooh, Flossie, I love you so much!”’ The Irishman did a fair imitation of Hughes’ Welsh accent. ‘“You’re so soft and fleecy!” “Me-e-a-a-ah!”’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hughes said sourly. ‘The “all-Welshmen-shag-sheep” joke. I haven’t heard that one in at least ten minutes.’

  ‘Make a note of that, Wes,’ said O’Houlihan. ‘We’re not making jokes about Welshmen shagging sheep often enough. I say we step it up to once every five minutes.’

  ‘It’s not that we think all Welshmen shag sheep, Red,’ explained Molineaux. ‘Just you.’

  Ågård lost interest in the limited pleasures of tormenting Endicott and finally released him. The Liverpudlian kicked the boatswain’s mate in the seat of his trousers. Ågård tried to grab him, but Endicott ran off a short distance, laughing. The ice quartermaster disdained to give chase. ‘It’s just that, I wondered why they didn’t go into the observatory to do it,’ he said.

  ‘Eh?’ said Hughes. ‘What are you talking about, Ollie?’

  ‘Herr Ziegler and Frau Weiss. If they wanted a bit of privacy, why didn’t they go into the observatory?’

  ‘The pill-roller’s in there, ain’t he?’ said O’Houlihan. ‘Doing one of his experiments.’

  As they rounded the stern once more, Molineaux saw a figure moving across the ice towards them. Shading his eyes against the sun, he saw it was a woman from the way she ran. ‘Here comes Frau Weiss,’ he remarked to the others. ‘I wonder where Herr Ziegler’s got to?’

  They stopped and watched as she continued to run towards them, although
she was still some distance off. When they saw her slip and fall on the ice, they cheered ironically.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Thwaites, stepping up behind them.

  ‘It’s Frau Weiss, Bosun,’ said Ågård.

  ‘So? Tha’s seen her before, hasn’t thee? Keep moving…’

  ‘What’s that stuff on her?’ asked Hughes.

  ‘Looks like blood,’ said Molineaux, suddenly feeling guilty that he had cheered when she had fallen. It looked as if she had hurt herself quite badly.

  By now even Thwaites was too intrigued to tell Ågård and the others to keep moving, and he too stood with his eyes shaded against the sun.

  Frau Weiss was shouting, the words torn away by the wind.

  Not shouting, Molineaux realised. Screaming.

  ‘That’s a lot of blood,’ Endicott said soberly.

  She was covered in it. Molineaux was the first to start running towards her, but Ågård had the longer legs and soon outstripped him. He was about twenty yards ahead of Molineaux when she ran into his arms, sobbing hysterically and babbling in German.

  ‘Shh!’ Ågård told her. ‘Rest easy, lass. It’s all right. You’re safe now.’ He took out a clean handkerchief and started to wipe the blood from her face. ‘Are you hurt? Where are you cut? It’s all right, Wes. I don’t think it’s her blood.’

  ‘Oh, that makes it all right, does it?’ retorted Molineaux. ‘Then whose blood is it? And where’s Ziegler? Or have I just answered my own question?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Wes! You don’t think she’s done for him, do you?’

  But Ursula could only jabber hysterical in her native tongue. Molineaux caught Ziegler’s name, the word ‘tot’ – which he was pretty sure was German for ‘dead’ – and something that sounded like ‘ice-bar,’ whatever one of those was. Did she mean icicle?

  As they took her back towards the ship, the others came across the ice to meet them, gathering solicitously around Ursula until Ågård curtly ordered them to stand back and let her breathe. ‘Can you make out what she’s saying?’ Molineaux asked Kracht.

  The German nodded. ‘She says Ziegler was killed by a polar bear.’

  Molineaux swore, glanced back in the direction of the pressure ridge from which she had come, and then snatched a musket from Private Phillips, who had been on sentry-go at the top of the gangplank, and turned and ran over the ice.

  ‘Hey! That’s my musket!’ Phillips exclaimed lamely.

  Molineaux was gasping for breath by the time he reached the pressure ridge – the sharp Arctic air stung his lungs and he could taste iron in his spit – but he did not pause. The agility that had helped him to climb in and out of other people’s windows as a youth now helped him scramble up the jumbled, angular lumps of ice. At the top he paused to make sure that the musket was loaded. Then he bobbed up over the ridge, the stock of the musket hard against his shoulder, pointing the barrel this way and that in the hope that the bear that had killed Ziegler would fall in his sights.

  There was no sign of the bear, just the wide ice-field studded with bergy bits.

  But it was easy to see where Ziegler had died. The blood splashed on the ice a couple of hundred yards to his right stood out on the snow as only crimson on white could.

  He started to scramble down the other side of the ridge, lost his footing about halfway down and slithered the rest of the way, sprawling on his back at the bottom. He lay there, muttering some ripe language under his breath, and then remembered that the bear could not be all that far away – for all he knew, it was just hiding behind one of the bergy bits – and his position was not an ideal one if the bear decided it wanted to come back for seconds. He scrambled to his feet, levelling the musket once more, but he was alone on the ice.

  Downy move, Wes, he told himself. That’s the second time one of us has been cramped by a polar bear, and the second time you’ve run after it on your own. But at least this time you had sense enough to bring a barking iron.

  Then he remembered that Ziegler had also had a gun when he had set out from the ship; much good that had done him.

  Constantly turning to make sure nothing was creeping up on him from behind, he made his way to the blood-splashed snow.

  This time the bear had left even less of Ziegler than had remained of Cavan after the first attack. He found some paw-prints leading away from the grisly scene. Each print was more than a foot across. That’s some big bloody bear, Molineaux told himself. In spite of the cold, his palms were sweating inside his mittens where they gripped the musket. He glanced around the ice-field nervously. He had not met the man he could not beat in a fight – or if he had, he did not know it – but animals were another matter entirely. Even spiders scared the bejasus out of him; the thought of taking on a bloody great polar bear, even armed with a rifled musket, filled him with trepidation. He had seen how swiftly the sow had pounced on Mr Strachan; it was almost impossible to believe that such a large and lumbering animal could move so quickly. Miss with your first shot, you wouldn’t have time to reload for a second.

  He found the shotgun Ziegler had been carrying, covered now in his gore, and examined it distastefully. Ziegler had not even got one shot off, let alone two.

  He was relieved when some of the others turned up a couple of minutes later: Killigrew, Bähr, Strachan, Terregannoeuck, Bombardier Osborne, Corporal Naylor and Private Phillips.

  Bähr had fetched his hunting rifle. ‘Damn it, have I missed another one?’ he asked in annoyance. ‘You must have scared it off, Molineaux.’

  ‘It was gone long before I got here, sir,’ the petty officer replied heavily, thinking that Ziegler’s death was a far greater tragedy than Bähr’s failure to add another trophy to his collection.

  ‘Give Phillips back his musket, Molineaux,’ Killigrew ordered crisply. ‘What the devil did you think you were playing at, running off on your own like that? What if the polar bear had still been around? You might have ended up as another meal for it. Losing two men to polar bear attacks is quite bad enough, thank you!’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Molineaux replied in chagrin. ‘I thought maybe Herr Ziegler might still be alive, that I could save him; and if I couldn’t, at least I could make sure I stopped the bear from killing any more of us.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ asked Osborne. ‘Kill one polar bear, there are plenty more out there to take its place.’

  ‘All right,’ Killigrew allowed, in response to Molineaux’s defence. ‘But in future I’m sure we’d all prefer it if you reserved your initiative for times when there are no officers around to give you orders, hoist in?’

  Terregannoeuck was crouching over the bear’s paw-prints. ‘Any chance of tracking the bugger?’ Bähr asked him eagerly.

  ‘Nanuq move too fast,’ replied the Inuk.

  ‘But you Esquimaux hunt bear with your dog sledges, don’t you?’

  ‘One man, one dog sledge. Terregannoeuck not fear nanuq. But this not nanuq, this Kokogiaq. Kokogiaq not die. Terregannoeuck try to kill Kokogiaq, Terregannoeuck be dead, I think.’

  ‘“Kokogiaq”?’ echoed Molineaux. ‘You said that before, after Mr Strachan was attacked. What does “kokogiaq” mean?’

  Terregannoeuck tapped the paw-print before him. ‘Amongst my people, legends tell of Kokogiaq, ten-legged nanuq. When Terregannoeuck young man, one winter hunting party set out to hunt puyee in the land to west of Arvirtuurmiut. One man, Hoeootoerock, kill nanuq and two cubs. But Hoeootoerock not honour tatkoq of nanuq. He say nanuq dead because he kill her, not because she let him kill her. This pride makes Kokogiaq angry. For many years, all men who hunt in land to west of Arvirtuurmiut not come back. Finally, elders say matter must be settled: Hoeootoerock must appease Kokogiaq. Hoeootoerock return to land to west of Arvirtuurmiut to find Kokogiaq. Hoeootoerock not return. But afterwards, men who hunt in land to west of Arvirtuurmiut hunt safely and successfully. And from that day on, my people always take care to honour tatkoq of nanuq they kill.’

  Te
rregannoeuck tapped one of the paw-prints again. ‘This same nanuq that kill Mr Cavan. This nanuq Kokogiaq.’

  Molineaux felt a shiver run down his spine. He did not consider himself a superstitious man – he did not even believe in God, much – but he had seen some strange things in his years as a sailor, things that scientificers like Mr Strachan could not explain to his satisfaction. Could it really be that because Bähr had killed the cubs, because Pettifer had taken down the sow’s bladder from inside the Venturer before the five days were up, this Kokogiaq was out to be avenged on them all?

  It was Strachan who broke the uneasy silence. ‘Piffle,’ he said succinctly. ‘Maybe Ziegler was killed by the same bear that killed Cavan, maybe not. We can soon find out: I took a plaster cast of one of the paw-prints by Cavan’s remains; I’ll take a paw-print of one of these, and we can compare the two. But I misdoubt it was the same bear. Even Pennant acknowledges that human beings aren’t polar bears’ natural food. If they were, then both bears and Esquimaux would have died out long ago.’

  ‘Then why were Cavan and Ziegler killed?’ demanded Killigrew.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a rogue male,’ suggested Bähr. ‘You get that with lions, sometimes. Something happens that means they can’t hunt in the usual manner of lions, in packs; either they become too old, become outcast from their pride, or they break an incisor. It’s something that no one’s ever been able to explain properly…’

  ‘Yet,’ said Strachan, who believed that everything had a rational, scientific explanation.

  ‘But they start to hunt alone, and sometimes they decide they prefer the taste of man flesh to wildebeest and antelope,’ concluded Bähr.

  Strachan shook his head. ‘Polar bears don’t hunt as packs.’

  ‘So in a way, they’re all rogue males?’ suggested Killigrew.

  Strachan glared at him. ‘That doesn’t explain why one would decide it preferred human flesh to seal-meat.’ He shook his head again. ‘I think you’ll find that the bear that killed Cavan was different from the one that did this.’ He gestured at the mess. ‘One thing is certain: whatever bear did this, it walked on four legs, not ten. And it killed Herr Ziegler not because it wanted to avenge an insult to the dead sow’s soul, but because it was hungry.’