They dragged Molineaux up on to the ice and the petty officer lay there, coughing and spluttering. ‘Couldn’t see a thing, sir,’ he mumbled between chattering teeth. ‘It’s black as the Earl of Hell’s weskit down there.’
‘Get him on board and below, quickly!’ urged Strachan. ‘Strip off his wet clothes and put him by the stove in the galley. Hot, sweet tea, and lots of it, gentlemen.’
‘Hughes! McLellan! You heard Mr Strachan!’ ordered Killigrew. ‘The rest of you resume your patrolling.’
‘What about Mick O’Houlihan?’ asked McLellan.
‘O’Houlihan’s dead, McLellan.’ Killigrew spoke wearily, his lips speaking the inescapable truth even while his brain was still too numbed with shock to accept it.
Walsh and Phillips returned to the perimeter rope, while Killigrew and Strachan followed Hughes and McLellan as they helped the shivering, sopping-wet Molineaux up the gangplank. Within a couple of minutes Molineaux sat by the stove in the warmth of the galley, his hands cupped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate, a dry blanket wrapped over his shoulders while McLellan rousted out some dry clothes from his locker. The men on the lower deck crowded around the doorway to the galley, until Killigrew chased them away, forcing them to get a garbled version of events from Hughes.
‘You bloody fool!’ Killigrew told Molineaux. ‘Were you trying to get yourself killed? It’s bad enough to lose one man; why throw your life away after his?’
In spite of his chattering teeth, Molineaux was able to lift his head and meet Killigrew’s gaze steadily. ‘Because he would have done the same for me, sir.’
The lieutenant forced himself to get a grip. Of course O’Houlihan would have done the same for Molineaux; just as he himself had been prepared to do for the pair of them, until Strachan had stopped him.
‘You don’t think it was the same bear that killed the others, do you?’ he asked Strachan.
‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure.’
‘It was the same bear,’ said Molineaux. His tone would admit no question of doubt. ‘It killed Mr Cavan, Herr Ziegler, Mr Thwaites, and now it’s got Mick O’Houlihan.’ He banged his fist against the bulkhead in frustration. ‘I want that bear, sir. I’ll rip its guts out with my bare hands if I have to!’
‘You might just get your chance,’ Killigrew told him, and turned to Strachan. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I think so. How are you feeling, Molineaux?’
‘Waxy as hell, sir.’
‘I mean, is the warmth returning?’
‘Returning? Sir, my blood’s boiling!’
‘I think he’ll live,’ said Strachan.
Killigrew slipped out of the galley and was heading aft when Bähr and Latimer stopped him in the middle of the mess deck. ‘Is it true?’ asked the clerk. ‘Has the bear attacked again?’
‘There’s been a bear attack,’ admitted Killigrew. ‘We don’t know it was the same bear that killed the others.’
‘Same bear.’ Terregannoeuck sat cross-legged on one of the seat-lockers nearby with his back to the side.
Killigrew shot him a glance of annoyance – the Inuk’s attempts to instil the bear with an aura of mysticism were not helping morale on the lower deck – before turning back to Bähr and Latimer. ‘O’Houlihan was breaking up the ice in the fire hole when the bear surfaced below him, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him under. One moment he was there, the next…’ Killigrew shook his head helplessly.
‘I didn’t know polar bears could swim,’ said Latimer.
Bähr regarded him with bemusement. ‘Why do you think it’s called Ursus maritimus?’
Killigrew turned to Ågård, who stood nearby. ‘Did you ever see a polar bear attack its prey that way?’
The ice quartermaster frowned. ‘I once saw a bear leap out of the water to kill a seal sunning itself at the edge of an ice-floe,’ he admitted. ‘But I never heard of them swimming under the ice.’
‘It must’ve held its breath a long time,’ said Killigrew. ‘There’s no open water within miles of here.’
‘When I am boy, hunting puyee with my father, I see hole in ice, with nanuq’s tracks leading to it, but no tracks lead away,’ said the Inuk. ‘We wait for nanuq to return, that we may kill it, but nanuq not return. Terregannoeuck go now. Must ask Nuliayuq what must do to end Kokogiaq’s anger.’ He abruptly sprang from the seat-locker and strode to the companion ladder.
Killigrew followed him to the upper deck. ‘Who’s Nuliayuq?’ he asked.
Terregannoeuck did not seem to hear him. He brushed past the astonished marine on sentry duty at the entry port and slipped out from under the awning. Killigrew followed him out in time to see the Inuk step under the perimeter rope and disappear into the half-light.
‘Think he’s coming back, sir?’ a voice asked in Killigrew’s ear, startling him. It was Ågård.
‘I don’t know,’ Killigrew said wearily. ‘Not if he’s got any sense. And if we had any sense, we wouldn’t be standing here without overcoats, comforters, mittens and caps. Let’s get back inside and seal up the flaps before we let all the warm air out.’
‘Will there be a funeral for Mick O’Houlihan?’
‘There’s nothing left of him to bury,’ Killigrew said bitterly. ‘But I expect we’ll have some kind of service in the morning to mark his passing. I’ll leave it to you to auction off his effects. And you’ll need to detail someone to take over O’Houlihan’s duties at the fire hole.’
‘How about Able Seaman Hughes, sir?’
‘Hughes it is. Tell him to use a boat-hook instead of an ice-axe. A long one.’
Killigrew pulled himself back up the gangplank, using the hand-ropes to give him purchase against the icy incline, and made his way below. In the wardroom, he poured himself a measure of Irish whiskey with trembling hands and downed it in one.
The door opened. Ursula slipped in and closed the door behind her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, ma’am. I’m not all right. A polar bear is picking us off one by one, and there’s not a damned thing I can do to stop it.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s eighteen fifty-two. Man can build a bridge over the Menai Strait, send a telegraph message across Europe in the blink of an eye, and navigate to the furthest reaches of the globe using steam power. But try to kill one dumb animal, with all the resources of one of Her Majesty’s most up-to-date and well-equipped exploring vessels at our disposal?’ He shook his head.
‘It’s been lucky, that’s all. And you’ve been unlucky. Next time it comes, you’ll shoot it and kill it, and that will be the end of the matter.’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘That’s what we said last time, when we appointed guards to patrol the perimeter boundary. And all it had to do was swim under the ice and drag O’Houlihan through the fire hole. It’s been one step ahead of us all the time. I’m starting to think Terregannoeuck was right: this is no ordinary bear…’
‘Then think again.’ Strachan came through the door behind him. ‘It’s not some supernatural beast seeking vengeance for the murder of the cubs that Bähr killed: it’s just a dumb animal obeying its natural instincts. It’s hungry, Killigrew, that’s all: and I can prove it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a question of dates.’
‘Dates?’
‘Look at the calendar. The first attack was on the second of October, when Cavan was killed while taking Horatia for a walk. Ziegler was killed on the seventeenth, fifteen days later; the bosun on the thirtieth, thirteen days after Ziegler; and now O’Houlihan, exactly two weeks after the bosun.’
Killigrew pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. ‘Is there a point to any of this, Strachan?’
‘Two points. If the bear were seeking to avenge the death of the cubs by killing us all one by one, why wait between attacks? Why not just attack a couple of days later?’
‘You tell me, Strachan.’
‘Because it isn’t hungry a couple of
days after each attack. A human being gives it a feast sufficient to keep the hunger pangs at bay for two weeks. Then, when the two weeks are past, its stomach starts rumbling and it comes back to where it knows it can find a plentiful supply of food.’
Killigrew nodded thoughtfully. ‘That makes sense. But I fail to see how it helps us.’
‘Which brings me to my second point. Thirteen days between the first and second attacks; fifteen between the second and third; and fourteen between the third and fourth. It’s like I always say: there are patterns in nature. You’ve just got to study any natural phenomenon long enough for those patterns to emerge. Don’t you see, Killigrew? We can predict when the next attack will take place. To within a couple of days, at least: that’s better than nothing. Today’s the thirteenth; if my hypothesis is correct, we can expect the next attack to take place between the twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth of this month.’
‘And this time we’ll be ready for it.’ Killigrew’s earlier sense of doom was dispelled by Strachan’s confidence. ‘If our friend Bruin thinks he can get the better of Jack Tar, he’s got another think coming.’
* * *
Ursula was about to curl up in her bunk with the book she had been reading when she realised she had left it in the wardroom. She pulled a greatcoat over the pusser’s slops she was wearing – guernsey and trousers – but the wardroom tended to be warmer than the surrounding cabins that insulated it.
She was surprised to find the light still on, even though it was after nine o’clock and ‘ship’s company’s fire and lights out’ had been piped more than an hour ago. She knocked hesitantly on the door.
‘Come in?’
She recognised Killigrew’s voice and opened the door. He was sitting at the table, poring over a ledger with a cheroot in one hand and a glass of Irish whiskey close by his elbow. He stood up as she entered. ‘Good evening, Frau Weiss.’
‘Good evening. I, er… I forgot my book.’ She started to move to fetch it from where she had left it on the sideboard, but he got there first. Picking it up, he glanced at the spine before handing it to her. ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? I’d’ve thought we had enough nightmares to deal with.’
‘It seemed appropriate. I’ve always wanted to read it: part of it is set in the Arctic.’
Killigrew nodded. ‘The explorer whose quest to reach the North Pole parallels Frankenstein’s ill-fated hunger for scientific discovery. Appropriate indeed!’
She glanced at the sheaf of papers on the table: handwritten notes in the pedantic scrawl of a man who had learned to write late in life. ‘What are you reading?’
He grimaced. ‘More nightmares. The log of the Jan Snekker, the whaler we found trapped in the ice back in August.’
‘Does it make interesting reading?’
‘Well, either the master of the Jan Snekker wasn’t much of a prose stylist, or his writings have lost something in the translation. But the story’s gripping enough to make up for that. It’s just a pity it ends rather abruptly shortly after a fourth member of the crew is killed by a polar bear.’
‘It happened to them, too?’
‘Apparently.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘For nine years I have been coming to the Arctic, taking tea with the wives of other whaling captains and swapping stories. But never have I heard of a polar bear doing anything like this. And you say it’s happened before? You do not suppose it could be the same bear?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Have you spoken to Terregannoeuck about this? As an Esquimau, he must know even more about polar bears than Herr Strachan.’
‘Terregannoeuck is of the opinion that the bear is a ten-legged spirit-monster out to avenge the murder of the sow and the two cubs killed by Molineaux and Bähr. I find that kind of advice less than helpful. Anyhow, Terregannoeuck’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
Killigrew nodded. ‘Just walked off the ship and disappeared into the night shortly after O’Houlihan was killed. We haven’t seen him since.’
‘Like a rat deserting a sinking ship.’
‘Rats are many things, Frau Weiss. Foolish is not one of them.’
* * *
‘What have you got for me?’ asked Killigrew.
‘This, sir.’ Bombardier Osborne held out the harpoon-gun, which had evidently undergone some modifications since Molineaux had found it on the Jan Snekker. ‘It was Molineaux’s idea. He says he saw something like it when he was with you in the South Seas a couple of years ago?’
‘You remember, sir?’ prompted Molineaux. ‘That bomb-gun they had on board the Lucy Ann, for killing whales?’
‘I’m not likely to forget!’ Killigrew said with some feeling.
‘The way I see it, if a gun like that could kill a whale… well, Bruin’s not going to stand a chance, is he?’
‘Kracht did all the work,’ said Osborne.
‘According to Herr Osborne’s design,’ Kracht said modestly.
The four of them stood on the ice, just outside the perimeter rope. Close by, Privates Walsh and Jenkins were keeping a sharp lookout for the bear, with huskies snapping at their heels. It was the twenty-fifth of November, and they could expect the bear to return any day now. It was five minutes to noon, only the upper half of the sun showing over the horizon, and it would sink out of sight again as many minutes after noon, not to be seen again until mid-January, if Yelverton’s calculations were correct; and they usually were.
‘How does it work?’ asked Killigrew.
‘The tail of the projectile fits into the barrel of the harpoon-gun, thus.’ Osborne demonstrated. ‘This tube is packed with gunpowder, the nose pointed to penetrate the bear’s hide. As it does so, these two toggles on either side of the projectile catch against the sides of the wound and are rammed back against a mercury percussion cap contained within the tube. That sets off the powder charge and… boom! Goodbye, Bruin.’
‘Have you tried it yet?’
‘Not yet, sir.’ Osborne nodded to where Stokers Butterwick and Gargrave had built a snowman about fifty feet away. The snowman seemed to bear a striking resemblance to Varrow, but perhaps that was only Killigrew’s imagination: the stocky, neckless engineer bore a striking resemblance to a snowman, now that he thought about it. ‘With your permission, sir…?’
‘Fire when you’re ready, Osborne.’
The bombardier raised the gun to his shoulder and took aim. Molineaux and Kracht stepped back hurriedly, in case the weapon exploded in Osborne’s hands.
‘Lean into it, Osborne,’ warned Molineaux. ‘I’ll bet that thing’s recoil has got a kick like a mule.’
Osborne pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang and the gun bucked in his hands, but not before the projectile had been sent shrieking through the air. It plunged into the snowman’s belly and there was a bright flash, dazzling in the gloom of the Arctic noon, a loud crack, and the four of them hurriedly turned away as sludge and ice spicules came flying back in their faces. When they looked again, there was nothing left of the snowman but a smoking crater in the ice.
Osborne smirked. ‘As I said: goodbye, Bruin.’
* * *
‘He’s close, sir,’ said Ågård.
‘You can see him?’ Killigrew did not take his eyes off the snowy landscape beneath the pink sky of the sunless noon.
The ice quartermaster shook his head. ‘I feel him.’
Killigrew did not like it when Ågård spoke that way, as if the bear was some kind of mystical presence that could only be beaten by supernatural means. Crouched with Ågård and Jenkins inside a covert made from blocks of ice, igloo-style, he clutched his rifled musket and stared down to where a bunch of salted herrings, suspended from a tripod of iron pylons, roasted over a fire. The herrings had been Bähr’s idea, a sure-fire way to catch a polar bear’s attention, according to one of the books he had read in the ship’s library.
Buried deep in the ice beneath the fire – deep enough for the heat from the flam
es not to set it off, according to Osborne – was a canister of gunpowder. Under a thin layer of snow, wires ran from the canister to where the bombardier crouched over the galvanic battery in another covert. Killigrew was convinced that the twenty-pound charge was excessive: the ice had grown so thick there was no danger of cracking it, yet four or even two pounds would have done the job just as well. But after losing four men to the bear, he wanted to make sure of it.
If the booby-trapped herring-pyre was the centre of a clock, then Killigrew’s covert was at three o’clock and Osborne’s was at noon. Bähr crouched next to the bombardier in the other covert: disdaining the makeshift bomb-gun held by Private Jenkins as newfangled, he had his double-barrelled shotgun. Between the bomb-gun, Bähr’s shotgun, Killigrew’s rifle and the gunpowder charge, the lieutenant had initially been confident that Bruin’s next visit to the Venturer would be his last.
It had seemed like a good plan when he had first come up with it. Ågård had never been especially enthusiastic about it, although he had grudgingly allowed it might work. Certainly no one had been able to come up with a better idea. After three days of freezing to death on the ice alternately with Jenkins and Phillips, Killigrew was starting to think the only thing he was going to catch was a nasty case of frostbite.
‘Then where the devil is it?’ he demanded irritably.
‘Not far off,’ said Ågård.
‘You couldn’t be more specific, could you?’ Killigrew cast his eyes over the scene once more, squinting through the deteriorating conditions. A thick mist was drifting over the ice. He could barely see the covert where Osborne and Bähr were concealed; in a few more minutes even the fire itself would be invisible. Killigrew did not like it. The failing visibility meant there was too great a risk that he and Bähr would end up shooting at one another instead of the bear.
He heard footsteps crunching on the snow and twisted his head in time to see Phillips approaching. ‘Reporting for duty, sir.’
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 34