Killigrew and the North-West Passage

by Jonathan Lunn

  Killigrew knew that the young marine was right. But if they followed the sledge into the freezing water, whether or not they could make it back to the Venturer would become a moot point.

  Crack… crack…

  The ice splintered under Phillips at the edge of the hole, and then he too was pulled under. Killigrew could see his mittened hands waving frantically over the surface, fumbling for purchase were there was none to be had. Cut the harness, lad, Killigrew found himself thinking. Even though to lose the large sledge would mean death for them all, he could not help willing Phillips to cut the harness before he drowned in that freezing water.

  Now Bähr and Osborne were at the edge of the hole and being dragged closer and closer every second.

  Killigrew remembered the shotgun in his hands. He reversed his grip on it and rammed the twin muzzles against the ice. They skittered off the slippery surface.

  The four of them were dragged closer to the edge. He brought the shotgun down again, and this time the muzzles bit into the ice, deep enough to give him purchase. As his shoulders took up the strain, it required all his strength to hold the shotgun in place. Their headlong slide to the hole halted, he was able to scrabble about with his feet until they too could find purchase.

  If the bear attacked now, they were all as good as dead.

  ‘Doctor! Take the knife from my belt and use that as an ice-axe!’

  Bähr nodded and complied, digging the blade into the ice. Once he had taken up some of the strain, Killigrew risked taking the shotgun away again, relying only on the purchase of his feet. He rammed the muzzles against the ice, a few inches further away this time, and pulled himself after it, until he was taking the strain of the harness once more. Then it was Bähr’s turn to inch forward a few inches. Behind them, Osborne and Jenkins did their best to help. Phillips’ hands still flailed in the water behind them.

  Then Ursula arrived with the dog sledge, heedless of her own safety on the thin ice. Keeping a firm grip on the huskies’ harnesses with one hand, she unfastened them dextrously from the smaller sledge with the other, and tied them to Killigrew’s and Bähr’s harnesses.

  ‘Marche! Marche!’

  The huskies took up the strain. It made all the difference; Killigrew knew they could not have done it without them. Inch by agonising inch, they pulled Phillips and the sledge up after them. When Phillips’ head and shoulders emerged from the hole, his searching hands were grasped by those of Osborne and Jenkins, and they hauled him up out of the water. Then all five of them pulled the sledge up after them.

  It took them three attempts. Each time they got the sledge out again, the ice cracked beneath it and it sank once more, almost pulling them after it. But at last the six of them were able to manhandle it to an area of thicker, stronger ice. They lay there, drained, frozen and exhausted, Phillips’ teeth chattering audibly. Killigrew could happily have sprawled there until his strength returned, or until the cold sapped the last of his strength and he slipped into a deep and endless sleep. But he knew he could not let down the others; besides, it was not in his nature to give up, not ever.

  ‘We’ll make for the shore,’ he gasped. ‘We’ll make camp there for the night—’

  ‘With the bear so close?’ asked Bähr.

  ‘What do you want us to do, doctor? Walk another ten miles? Phillips is going to freeze to death if we don’t get him warm and in some dry clothes in a brace of shakes. How are you feeling, Phillips?’

  ‘C-cold, sir. B-but I’ll b-be all right.’

  Killigrew was sceptical: it was hard to tell in the dim light of the stars, but it looked as if the marine was turning blue.

  ‘Maybe we should put him on the sledge and drag him with the rest of the supplies,’ suggested Bähr.

  ‘And make the sledge even heavier?’ asked Osborne. ‘Not a good idea, sir.’

  ‘We’ll get the sledge to the shore quicker if I help,’ said Phillips. ‘And it’ll help warm me up if I keep moving.’

  ‘Good for you, Phillips.’ Killigrew felt only anguish at having to expect anything more from the marine after the ordeal he had just been through, but he knew they had no other choice: everything depended on their reaching the safety of the shore. Besides, Phillips was right: his best chance of keeping warm lay in staying active.

  Crawling on their hands and knees, shuffling along on their bottoms, they moved painstakingly across the 850 yards to the coast, dragging the sledge behind them. The water saturating Phillips’ clothes froze solid and crackled with his every movement. When they were only a couple of hundred yards from the shore, their confidence in the thickness of the ice grew more assured, and they dragged the sledge on foot for the final furlong.

  ‘How come the ice was so thin there, when it’s so thick everywhere else?’ asked Phillips. ‘Shouldn’t it be the same thickness everywhere?’

  ‘There must be a hot spring underwater below,’ said Killigrew. ‘What do they call them?’

  ‘A polynya,’ said Ursula.

  He nodded. ‘A polynya. Bruin avoided it; we weren’t so clever.’

  ‘You don’t suppose…?’ she asked.

  ‘That he planned it that way?’ Killigrew shook his head, trying to convince himself as much as Ursula. ‘Animals don’t make plans. Not like that.’

  Osborne took the portable stove from the sledge and filled the reservoir with spirits of wine to make some tea for Phillips. As the ice he used for water was melting over the thin flame, he looked about. ‘Where’s that gutless bastard – pardon my French, ma’am – Walsh?’

  ‘Probably too ashamed to show his face, I should imagine,’ said Bähr.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ursula indicated a dark shape a few hundred yards away, clearly silhouetted against the dusting of white snow on the land.

  ‘Wait here,’ Killigrew told the others, before setting out to investigate the shape. He paused after a few steps, and turned back to Osborne. ‘Keep a sharp lookout in case Bruin returns.’

  The bombardier nodded and reached for the makeshift bomb-gun he had constructed with Kracht.

  Killigrew checked the shotgun as he ascended the ridge. The muzzles were choked with snow; all he could do for now was to poke it out with the stub of a pencil, and hope the damned thing did not blow up in his face when he tried to use it.

  Ever since Ursula had pointed out the shape, Killigrew had known in his heart what it must be, but there was always that hope that he might be mistaken. The bloody mess he found on the ice might have been a wandering Esquimau or even the carcass of a seal, for all that Killigrew could tell from the half-devoured remains, except for the scraps of Walsh’s Royal marine uniform beneath his shredded box-cloth jacket, and the rosary still clutched in a dismembered hand.

  Killigrew crouched over the remains and sighed. If they had made it back to the Venturer, the marine would have been in for a severe reprimand, probably a week in the lazaretto on bread and water. But he had not deserved to die for his cowardice, least of all like this.

  He raised his eyes and gazed about the icescape around him, searching for the bear. He could see no sign of it, but in a very unscientific manner Strachan would not have approved of, he sensed it was watching him.

  He rose slowly to his feet. ‘Come on out and show yourself, you bastard!’ he roared. ‘You want a fight! Then fight me!’

  His words of defiance echoed back hollowly from the empty wilderness around him.

  * * *

  The aurora borealis put in its first appearance at nine twenty in the evening on the second of December.

  Molineaux had heard about it from Ågård, of course, but the ex-spouter had been unable to describe it adequately, only giving him the impression that by not having seen it he had missed out on something spectacular. During the voyage from England, Molineaux had wondered if he might not be disappointed by the reality of the phenomenon; but now, as he patrolled the perimeter with a rifled musket in his hands, he realised that if anything Ågård had understated its wondrous na
ture.

  First a narrow streak of light stretched across the heavens, terminating in a feather, and then four green-tinged masses of cumulus-shaped light appeared, seeming to reach down to the ground as they pulsated in the sky, rippling like the swell of the ocean on a gentle summer’s day, more beautiful than any fireworks he had ever seen. For a moment, all he had been through seemed to have been worth it, just to see this spectacle: then he remembered that eight men had died since they had left England, including Ziegler.

  He knew he ought to go back on board and alert the others, so that they too could see this. Yelverton, he knew, was particularly keen to see the aurora, and he was aware Strachan had instructions to take magnetic and electrical readings from his equipment to try to establish what caused the phenomenon. Doubtless the scientificer had his own theory, but even if Molineaux did not believe in God himself, he preferred to live in a magical world where some things were beyond explaining. Life was to be enjoyed, not explained away. So he lingered on the ice, torn between summoning the others and enjoying this moment of peace by himself. It was almost as if the heavens had put on this display for his benefit alone.

  A paw landed on his shoulder. The petty officer jumped nearly a foot in the air, and whirled to see Terregannoeuck standing behind him.

  ‘Jesus, Terry! Don’t creep up on me like that! Where the hell have you been, anyhow?’

  ‘Terregannoeuck go to bottom of sea, talk to Nuliayuq.’

  ‘Ask a silly question.’

  ‘Killigrew in trouble. We go save him.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s in trouble? You saw him?’ Terregannoeuck shook his head. ‘Nuliayuq tell me.’

  ‘When you were chatting to him at the bottom of the sea.’

  The Inuk laughed. ‘You very stupid! Nuliayuq not man; Nuliayuq woman. You not know anything?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘You waste time. Killigrew and others die if we not get there in time. Kokogiaq stalk them, lead them into trap. We get dogs and sledge quickly, go warn them.’ Terregannoeuck started walking across the ice towards the Venturer.

  ‘Now hold your huskies, Terry! If I go and tell Mr Strachan that we need to take a sledge and the only remaining team of dogs to rescue Mr Killigrew and the others on the say-so of some blower you were chaffing with at the bottom of the sea, he’s going to laugh in my phizog. And then certify me nuts along with Pettifer.’

  ‘Then we not tell him we go,’ Terregannoeuck replied, without so much as a backward glance.

  Molineaux lingered at his post, staring after the Inuk’s broad back. Then he swore crudely under his breath, and set off after him. ‘Hold up, Terry! Wait for me!’

  Chapter 18

  Bait

  Killigrew and the others dragged the sledge – even heavier now that all their gear was waterlogged – across one of the many frozen lakes that littered the neck of the Boothia Peninsula. Unlike the frozen seas, the ice of the lakes was relatively smooth and free of pressure ridges, but there were other obstacles to be negotiated: thousands of fracture lines that crisscrossed the surface. Some were only a few inches wide and could be stepped over with ease, the sledge sliding across them without difficulty. Others were broad crevasses that necessitated wide detours.

  Like the one that blocked their path now, almost ten feet wide. Standing on the edge, Killigrew struck a match to light his bull’s-eye and flashed the beam into the blackness below. The chasm angled back underneath them, so that all he could see was the far wall of ice, glittering where it caught the rays of the lantern. Unlike the salt-water sea, which rarely froze to a depth of more than seven feet, the freshwater lakes could sometimes freeze all the way to their bottoms. There was no telling how deep the crevasse might be. Perhaps they could jump it, had any of them cared to try it, but there was no way of getting the sledge across.

  ‘Perhaps there’s another way around,’ suggested Bähr.

  Osborne shook his head, and nodded towards Phillips. ‘He’s beat, sir. He can’t walk another step.’

  ‘We’re all tired, Osborne.’ Killigrew cast the beam of his bull’s-eye about and directed it towards an outcrop of rock over by the lake shore, about forty yards away. ‘That looks like a likely spot. Your turn to make supper, Jenkins. Bähr, perhaps you could help Osborne get the tent up?’

  Ursula fed the dogs with herrings, after which they settled down by burrowing shallow beds for themselves in the snow. Killigrew wound up the chronometer they had brought with them and then wrote up the day’s occurrences in his journal by the light of his bull’s-eye. ‘Looks as if a storm’s coming in,’ Ursula remarked as a rising wind whipped at the pages of the journal.

  He nodded and passed his day’s workings to Bähr. ‘Would you mind double-checking my calculations, doctor?’

  ‘By all means,’ Bähr said with relish.

  Never mind the wind, the cold, the wet and the aching ankles after skiing for miles and miles over the ice; for Killigrew the most painful part of the sledging expedition was having Bähr check his calculations. Killigrew had a dirty secret: he was hopeless at arithmetic. If he had had to retake his examination for lieutenant in 1852, now that examinations were proper, fully thought-out tests, he would probably have failed on navigation; as it was, he had been promoted five years ago, and by a board composed of old-school captains who thought more of a man’s seamanship than his knowledge of sines and cosines. It did not matter on board the Venturer, where Yelverton was able to check his workings and discreetly correct them without anyone else on board being any the wiser; but Bähr took great relish in setting him straight in front of Osborne, Jenkins and Phillips. His secret was very much out.

  ‘Oh, dear me!’ chuckled the doctor. ‘Look here, you’ve forgotten to carry the one; and the logarithm of forty-two is one-point-six-two-three-two. How on earth did you get nought-point-nine-treble-nought? Don’t you know how to use a slide rule?’

  ‘My hand must’ve slipped.’

  ‘See here, you’ve put us eleven miles west of our actual position. Don’t they teach you trigonometry in the Royal Navy?’

  ‘Geometry was never my strong point.’

  ‘I should say not!’ Bähr handed back the chart they had drawn. ‘That’s where I put us.’

  Killigrew glanced over the doctor’s workings – if only for form’s sake – and as usual could not fault them.

  ‘It’s been six days since we left the Venturer,’ said Bähr. ‘If we don’t catch Bruin by tomorrow evening, we’ll have to turn back.’

  Killigrew had been hoping that the bear would lead them in an arc away from the Venturer, so that they would not be all that far from their base, but instead he had only led them further and further away. He wondered if the bear knew they were on its trail, and was deliberately leading them to the limit of their resources.

  They washed supper down with weak, tepid tea, and then crawled into the chrysalis bags. Osborne, who was on the roster for cooking duties tomorrow, settled down by the mouth, where he could crawl out to prepare breakfast first thing in the morning without disturbing any of the others.

  ‘Shouldn’t we set someone on guard, sir?’ asked the bombardier. ‘Keep an eye out for the bear?’

  ‘The dogs will do that,’ said Bähr. ‘If they scent a bear, they’ll start howling lit to wake the dead—’

  The dogs started barking. Everyone in the tent exchanged nervous glances.

  ‘Want me to take a look-see, sir?’ offered Osborne.

  ‘We’ll both go.’ Killigrew took his shotgun, handed the bombardier a rifle, and lit a bull’s-eye with a match. The two of them pulled their greatcoats on over their clothes – they had all gone to bed fully dressed – and slipped out of the tent.

  A blizzard had blown in from the north-east, and the fat snowflakes danced in the beam of the lantern. The huskies were all on their feet, barking furiously through the swirling snow at something in the darkness. Killigrew pointed the beam of the bull’s-eye in that direction. ‘See anything?�
�� he shouted at Osborne above the howling wind.

  The bombardier shook his head. ‘Is it the bear?’

  Then Killigrew saw it: the light of the bull’s-eye reflected in a pair of eyes. He dropped the lantern, brought up the shotgun and fired both barrels in quick succession. The eyes disappeared and he heard a heavy body fall to the snow with a soft thump.

  ‘I think you got it, sir!’ said Osborne.

  Killigrew reloaded both barrels of the shotgun and crouched to relight the bull’s-eye. He clipped it to his belt and the two of them advanced cautiously until they found the body.

  A dead reindeer.

  ‘Sir!’ Osborne protested accusingly, with a grin. ‘You shot Prancer!’ Killigrew sighed, feeling the tension gush out of him like blood from a severed artery. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the tent.’

  The two of them crawled back inside. ‘What was it?’ asked Bähr. ‘We heard a couple of shots.’

  ‘False alarm,’ Killigrew said truculently, feeling foolish. ‘Just a stray reindeer.’ He squirmed back into his chrysalis bag, but outside the dogs were still barking. ‘Now what?’ he sighed. ‘An Arctic vole?’

  ‘They can probably smell the blood from that reindeer,’ said Osborne.

  ‘Perhaps we should give them something to eat,’ said Ursula. Osborne nodded. ‘I’ll cut up the reindeer and let them have it.’

  ‘Go with him, Jenkins,’ ordered Killigrew. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The two marines crawled out of the tent, lacing the flaps behind them.

  Killigrew glanced across to where Ursula watched anxiously over the shivering Phillips. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not good,’ she said. ‘If we don’t get him warm soon, he’ll freeze to death.’

  Killigrew nodded. ‘We’ll start back for the Venturer tomorrow.’

  ‘But we’re so close!’ persisted Bähr.

  ‘We’ll start back for the Venturer tomorrow,’ Killigrew repeated firmly. ‘I’ve already lost one man today; I don’t intend to lose any more on this expedition. This was a foolish notion, anyhow. Thinking we could hunt Bruin down on his own territory. If we can get over the ridge to the west in the morning and travel down to the sea that way, we can be back at Horsehead Bay by Monday.’