Killigrew and the North-West Passage

by Jonathan Lunn

  The Inuk straightened. ‘All of them.’

  ‘What do you mean, all of them?’ spluttered the doctor.

  ‘Nanuq come here, go away. Come here, go away. Come here, go away. Come here, go away…’

  ‘I think we get the point, Mr Terregannoeuck,’ said Strachan.

  ‘I don’t get it, sir,’ said Molineaux. ‘What’s so special about this place? Why did it keep coming back here?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Bähr. ‘More to the point, which tracks do we follow?’

  Terregannoeuck shrugged. ‘Nanuq make many tracks, so we not know which to follow.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me the bear made all these tracks to throw us off the scent?’ exclaimed Bähr.

  Strachan shaded his eyes against the sun. ‘These tracks go for miles in every direction. The bear didn’t have time to make them after it got here with poor Mr Thwaites.’

  ‘He make them before,’ said the Inuk.

  ‘You mean, it planned this?’ spluttered Bähr. ‘It made all these tracks, planning to come and get one of us, knowing that we’d try to follow it?’

  ‘Nanuq very cunning.’

  ‘More clever than we are?’ asked Bähr. ‘Somehow, I doubt it!’

  ‘It’s outwitted us this time, ain’t it?’ muttered Molineaux.

  ‘Which tracks do we follow?’ asked Strachan.

  ‘Let’s split up,’ suggested Bähr. ‘We know these tracks lead back to the Venturer, so it must have gone in one of the other directions.’

  ‘Split up, sir?’ said Qualtrough. ‘So it can pick us off one by one?’

  ‘We’ve got muskets, haven’t we?’

  ‘Herr Ziegler had a barking iron when the bear got him, sir,’ Molineaux pointed out. ‘Much good it did him.’

  ‘Qualtrough’s right,’ said Strachan. ‘I doubt the bear’s as clever as Terregannoeuck seems to think it is; but it’s proved that it knows how to stalk and kill men. We’ll stick together, I think.’

  ‘So which tracks do we follow?’

  ‘These ones.’ Strachan pointed.

  ‘Those ones lead back to the Venturer!’

  ‘Exactly. Even if we did pick the right set of tracks, we might never catch it; and it could just lead us further and further away. I’m not playing its game.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Bähr. ‘You go back to the Venturer, if you haven’t got the pluck to press on. But I’ve come this far; I’m not turning back now.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, sir. I meant we’re all going back. That’s an order.’

  ‘Who the devil do you think you are, to order me around? I don’t take orders from some squit of an assistant surgeon! You’re not even a real surgeon: you’re just an apothecary!’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, I may only be qualified as an apothecary, but I also happen to be the senior officer present. And since this is a naval expedition and not an operating theatre, I’m the one who’s giving the orders. I say we go back to the Venturer and wait.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Don’t you fret about filling that space on the wall of your study, Doctor. I’ve got a feeling our bear’s going to show up again sooner or later.’

  * * *

  Strachan was starting to think that the day could not get any worse by the time the sledging party got back to the Venturer at six o’clock that evening – nearly three hours after sunset as the winter nights closed in with increasing rapidity.

  He was wrong.

  There was no sign of the cook in the sick-berth.

  ‘Where’s Armitage gone?’ he asked Fischbein.

  ‘Herr Naylor took him.’

  ‘Naylor took him? And you let him?’

  Fischbein flinched, as if he had let Strachan down. ‘Kapitän Pettifer’s orders, mein Herr. I tell him Herr Armitage is too weak to be moved, he tell me he has orders. I try to stop him, he hit me in stomach. Very hard.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Strachan set his jaw and marched the length of the lower deck until he reached Pettifer’s quarters. There was no marine on sentry duty outside. Strachan burst through the door without knocking and found Armitage propped between Naylor and Walsh before the captain’s table, his ashen face beaded with sweat in spite of the fact it was so cold in the day-room that everyone’s breath billowed from their mouths. Seated next to Pettifer at the table, Latimer looked almost as sick as Armitage.

  Pettifer launched himself from his chair. ‘Mr Strachan! How dare you burst in here unannounced?’

  ‘Never mind that!’ said Strachan. ‘What’s this man doing out of bed?’

  ‘By God, mister. You address your captain as “sir” – and do so in a civil tone, or I’ll have you dismissed the service, by God!’

  ‘This man is sick…’

  ‘This man is on trial for drunkenness.’

  ‘Drunkenness!’ It would have been laughable had it not been so utterly insane. ‘He cut his thumb off! ’

  ‘Precisely so, Mr Strachan. Would a sober man cut off his own thumb?’

  ‘If his fingers were so numbed with cold that he could not feel them, aye!’

  ‘I know a drunkard when I see one, Strachan. Look at him, the disgusting beast! He can hardly stand!’

  ‘You’d have difficulty standing too, if you’d lost a pint of blood and been drugged to the back teeth with codeine.’

  ‘Pipe down, Mr Strachan! I will not be gainsaid by my officers, least of all a civilian officer – and a junior civilian officer at that!’

  ‘Sir, I should like to speak in Armitage’s defence.’

  ‘It’s too late for that, Mr Strachan. Petty Officer Armitage has already been examined by me and has failed to give an adequate explanation for his condition.’

  ‘I’m no’ surprised! In that state, he probably couldnae tell ye his own name!’

  ‘It is my judgement that this man will be punished with two dozen lashes of the cat after divisions tomorrow.’

  Strachan could not believe his ears. ‘You’re going to flog him? For cutting off his own thumb?’ He turned pleadingly to Latimer. ‘Am I the only one in this room wi’ a shred o’ sanity left? This is madness, damn ye! Fair madness!’

  Pettifer turned puce. ‘How dare you?’ he spluttered. ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Aw, go to Fruchie and fry mice, ye barmpot!’ Strachan turned on his heel and marched out of the room. ‘This has gone far enough!’

  ‘Mr Strachan!’ Pettifer bellowed after him. ‘How dare you walk out when I’m talking to you? This is intolerable behaviour, sir! I’ll break you, by God I will!’

  Strachan turned a deaf ear to Pettifer’s imprecations and made his way back to the sick-berth.

  ‘Is everything all right, Herr Strachan?’ Fischbein asked him.

  ‘No, Fischbein, everything is no’ all right.’ The assistant surgeon found a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in his inkwell and started to write with a trembling hand.

  30th October 1852

  To whom it may concern:

  Having had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of Commander Orson Pettifer, captain of her Majesty’s Exploring Ship Venturer, over a period of some weeks, it has been impossible to ignore the marked deterioration in his mental stability.

  Commander Pettifer is displaying classic symptoms of monomania: a morbid obsession – in this case his desire to discover the North-West Passage – combined with a state of paranoia manifesting itself in the form of a conviction that all those around him are seeking to thwart his efforts.

  In this condition, he is clearly a danger not only to himself but also to those under his command and in his care. It is my painful duty not only to recommend but also to urge that his subordinate officers deprive him of command and physically restrain him until such time as his mental condition should show sufficient and sustained improvement permitting his release.

  Strachan signed the letter and was reaching for the blotting paper when a scarlet-sleeved arm reached over his shoulder and plucked the letter from before
him. He whirled on his stool to find Naylor standing there reading the note, flanked by Walsh.

  ‘How dare you?’ spluttered Strachan. ‘That’s none of your business. Give that back!’ He tried to snatch at the paper, but Naylor gave him a shove in the chest that knocked him off the stool so that he landed painfully on the deck.

  ‘None of our business, eh?’ said Naylor. ‘Listen to this, Arthur: “It is my painful duty not only to recommend but also to urge that his subordinate officers deprive him of command”.’

  ‘Sounds like inciting mutiny to me, Corp.’

  ‘It does indeed, doesn’t it?’ Naylor reached down, grabbed Strachan by the arm and hoisted him to his feet. ‘Come along, sir. It’s the lazaretto for you!’

  ‘You bloody fools!’ sobbed Strachan. ‘You’re as mad as he is if you’re going along with this insanity!’ The two marines dragged him down to the orlop deck. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Naylor?’

  The corporal grinned. ‘You have no idea how much.’

  When they opened the door to the lazaretto, Killigrew blinked up at them from the floor in the light of Walsh’s lantern.

  ‘Got some company for you, Mr Killigrew, sir,’ said Walsh.

  ‘Hullo, Strachan,’ the lieutenant said cheerfully.

  The assistant surgeon was shackled in irons alongside Killigrew, and the two marines closed the door and padlocked them in.

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’ Killigrew asked when the sound of the marines’ boots had faded down the deck.

  So Strachan brought him up to speed, telling him all about Thwaites’ death, Armitage’s accident, the abortive bear-hunt, and Armitage’s impending flogging. ‘He’s quite mad, you know,’ he concluded, referring to Pettifer.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Now what are we going to do?’

  The lieutenant clinked his irons. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Poor Armitage. He’s in no fit state for a flogging. They’ll kill him, as surely as they killed Smith.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s out of our hands. It’s all up to Latimer now.’

  ‘Latimer?’ Strachan shook his head. ‘Armitage is a dead man.’

  * * *

  The next day – All-Hallows’ Eve – was a Sunday, so the men paraded in their mustering rig for divisions. The smartness of their clothes only seemed to emphasise how awful their physical appearance was. Less than six months had passed since they had entered the Arctic Circle – a fraction of the time they had known they might have to spend in these waters – but they had been through too much in that time: the nerve-racking passage through the Middle Pack, the tension of being nipped in the ice off Boothia, and now the twin nightmares of Pettifer’s erratic behaviour and the attacks of the polar bear.

  Two-thirds rations was not a healthy diet for a fully grown man in ordinary conditions, and these were a long way from ordinary conditions. The men looked pale from lack of sunlight, their faces drawn and haggard with hunger. Everyone was tetchy and irritable from spending so much time cooped together, and hardly a day passed without Sørensen having to break up a fight on the mess deck. The brawny Dane had been appointed acting boatswain in the wake of Thwaites’ death. Unstead, the senior boatswain’s mate, had been disappointed not to be promoted, but he did not have the experience to be a boatswain just yet. As specksnyder on board the Carl Gustaf, Sørensen had included a similar duty amongst his functions in spite of the fact he had never served in the Royal Navy before. And the combination of his bulk and his easy-going temperament had already won him the respect of the British seamen on board the Venturer.

  The muster was taken and Pettifer calmly read the Articles of War as if this were just another ordinary day at sea, but as Ågård stood on the quarterdeck and cast his eyes over the faces of the men paraded there he could see there was going to be trouble. After a quarter of a century at sea one learned to sense these things; the way seamen stopped holding whispered conversations the moment one approached, looked guilty all the time, avoided meeting one’s eyes.

  A grating was seized up. Armitage, still ashen from loss of blood, was tied spread-eagled to it with his back exposed.

  Private Phillips played a drum-roll. Ågård kept an eye on the men watching, wondering which direction the trouble would come from. He kept a particularly close eye on Hughes.

  Sørensen handed the scarlet bag containing the cat-o’-nine-tails to Molineaux. The boatswain’s mate took the scourge out, and hesitated.

  ‘Proceed with the punishment, Molineaux,’ ordered Pettifer.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

  Pettifer stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I beg leave to remind you of Chapter Five of Queen’s Regulations, Section Two, Appendix Twenty-eight, Paragraph Five, sir? “No Officer of any description, class or age, including therefore all Subordinate and Petty Officers” –’ the emphasis was Molineaux’s – ‘“is to be subjected to Corporal Punishment for any offence committed by him whilst holding such rank.” Sir.’

  As ship’s cook, Tommo Armitage was rated petty officer. No one on board had forgotten that fact, or the fact that the flogging of petty officers was prohibited. But so extreme was the madness of having a man flogged for accidentally chopping off his own thumb, the added twist that it would be in contravention of Queen’s Regulations had seemed neither here nor there.

  For all he admired his friend’s courage and sense of fairness, Ågård’s heart sank. When a man like Molineaux refused to obey an order, you could be sure that things had gone too far. He cast his eyes at the five marines paraded on deck with their muskets, trying to gauge the expressions on their faces, but none of them gave anything away.

  Pettifer had turned white with rage. ‘How dare you quote Queen’s Regulations at me, Molineaux? You’ll deliver the first twelve lashes, by God, or I’ll have you flogged next!’

  ‘Then have me flogged, sir. I’ll not flog a man for chopping off his own thumb.’

  ‘Flogged? By God, you’ll wish I had flogged you by the time I’ve finished with you. Refusing to obey orders, gross insubordination – I’ll have you court-martialled for this, Molineaux! You’ll swing, by God! Take the cat from him, Unstead!’

  But the other boatswain’s mate just folded his arms and shook his head. ‘Molineaux’s right, sir. I’ll not be breaking Queen’s Regulations.’

  Pettifer quivered with barely controlled rage. Ågård could see a vein throbbing in the commander’s temple as his face became suffused with blood. ‘The Queen is in England and I am here, and I am giving you a direct order to give the cat to Unstead.’

  ‘I’ll give it to him if you like, sir, but he don’t have no use for it,’ said Molineaux. Unstead nodded firmly.

  ‘Molineaux! Am I to take it that you are refusing a direct order?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You appreciate the seriousness of what you are saying? That refusing to obey your captain’s orders is punishable by death?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Guilty by his own admission, gentlemen. I see no need to waste any time with a summary trial. Private Jenkins!’

  ‘Sah!’

  ‘Shoot Petty Officer Molineaux.’

  Jenkins blinked. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You heard me. I’m giving you a direct order, private! You will shoot Molineaux! Do you hear me?’

  Jenkins stepped forward and levelled his musket uncertainly at the petty officer. ‘Come on, Wes! See sense, lad. Let Unstead have the cat.’

  Molineaux held up the scourge, as if to say: this cat? Then he crossed to the main hatch, lifted the cover and dropped it down to the lower deck. ‘You want it, you go and get it.’

  ‘Wes!’ hissed Jenkins. ‘He’s not kidding. Wes! Don’t make me do it.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ snapped Pettifer. ‘Molineaux’s had his chance. You will shoot him this instant.’

  ‘You heard the cap’n, Jenkins,’ Molineau
x said calmly. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do you hear me, Jenkins?’ screamed Pettifer. ‘I’m giving you a direct order! Shoot Molineaux, or by God I’ll have you strung up from the yard-arm!’

  Jenkins shook his head and lowered his musket, turning away. ‘Shoot him yourself, you crazy old bastard.’

  ‘Gutless chicken-heart.’ Naylor levelled his own musket at Molineaux. ‘I’ll do it, sir. It’ll be my pleasure.’

  Molineaux grabbed the musket from Jenkins and aimed it back at the corporal. ‘Put the gun down, Naylor, or ’swelp me I’ll drill you where you stand.’

  Walsh went to his corporal’s assistance, levelling his own musket at Molineaux. Ågård stepped up behind the private and seized him in a full nelson, while O’Houlihan took the musket and levelled it at Naylor. ‘You shoot Wes, Dicky Boy, and ye’ll be dead before he hits the deck.’

  To judge from the worried expression on Naylor’s face, he understood O’Houlihan was not bluffing.

  Pettifer sighed and snatched Phillips’ musket. ‘Must I do everything myself?’ he demanded, taking careful aim at Molineaux.

  ‘Put the gun down, sir!’

  Everyone turned to see Killigrew emerge from the after hatch, followed by Strachan and Yelverton, the last wearing a greatcoat over his nightshirt. The lieutenant had a pepperbox in either hand, the one in his right pointed unwaveringly at Pettifer’s head, the other down by his side.

  For one awful moment that seemed to stretch as far away as the eternity of snow and ice that surrounded the ship, Pettifer looked as though he was tempted to put Killigrew to the test. In the silence, you could have heard a pin drop on felt.

  ‘You son of a bitch!’ Naylor shattered the silence with his oath, and started to turn his musket on Killigrew. Without taking the pistol in his right hand off Pettifer, the lieutenant brought up his left hand and fired in the same instant as Molineaux and O’Houlihan. One bullet went wide, the second tore a chunk out of Naylor’s shoulder, the third drilled a hole in his forehead and blew out the back of his skull. The corporal measured his length on the deck, the blood seeping from his body to stain the snow packed there for insulation.