‘It’s all right, your word is good enough for me. How’s Armitage?’
‘Up and about; but not much good in the galley with only one thumb, I’m afraid. Molineaux’s taken over his duties, so at least our food is edible again.’
‘Who did the cooking while Molineaux was out looking for Ursula and me?’
‘Butterwick and Gargrave. They don’t have many duties while the ship is overwintering, barring keeping the stoves coaled. I thought it would keep them out of trouble.’
‘Did it?’
‘Hardly. Butterwick set fire to the galley twice and Gargrave burned every meal he had a hand in. So now Molineaux’s back – by popular demand.’
‘How does he feel about it?’ While Killigrew knew that the petty officer enjoyed cooking for himself, he preferred to avoid acting as ship’s cook, which he saw as subservient.
‘You know Molineaux. He’d rather do a job himself than let someone else do it badly. Especially when he’s got to eat the results.’ Strachan hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted to discuss with Killigrew, but was reluctant even to broach the topic before he was certain the lieutenant was fully recovered from his ordeal. He took a deep breath. ‘There is one other thing…’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, Terregannoeuck brought back the bladder of the bear he killed while he was out with Molineaux. He’s hung it up over the upper deck.’
‘I hope no one’s going to order that one taken down!’
‘Faiks, no! Not that I believe in that sort of superstitious nonsense, you understand,’ Strachan added hurriedly. ‘But I appreciate how superstitious sailors can be, and I couldn’t see any harm in it. Well, there wasn’t room on the sledge to bring back the rest of the bear’s carcass as well as you and Ursula, but Molineaux did have the wit to cut off one of the bear’s paws and bring it back so I could compare it with my plaster casts. He even managed to get the right paw. You know Terregannoeuck’s been saying that the bear he killed wasn’t the bear that’s been giving us so much trouble, but Molineaux’s convinced it was? He thought I could prove him right.’
‘And?’
Strachan took another deep breath. ‘I’m afraid I had to prove Molineaux wrong and Terregannoeuck right.’
‘So Bruin’s still out there, somewhere?’
‘Apparently. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You probably scared it off, chasing it all that way and setting off bomb-guns and the like—’
‘Having faced that bear twice now, I find it hard to believe it could be scared of anything.’
‘Aye, well, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? Anyhow, now that it’s got the bodies of – well, you know – to satiate it, I doubt we’ll be seeing it again for another ten weeks or so. That takes us well into the New Year.’
‘Unless the Arctic foxes start raiding his larder. I’m starting to have my doubts about your theory that it gets hungry every two weeks, Strachan. The way that bear came after me when it had already killed Walsh, Jenkins, Osborne, Bähr, and Phillips… it’s no normal bear.’
‘Och, don’t you start turning all superstitious on me! No’ you, of all people!’
‘I’m not saying it’s some supernatural spirit seeking to avenge the deaths of its mate and cubs,’ Killigrew assured him. ‘But there’s something not right about that bear, Strachan. Something… evil.’
‘Evil! Crivvens! Will you listen to yourself, Killigrew? How can a bear be evil? It just obeys its natural instincts, that’s all. It’s a bear. All it does is hunt, eat, wander about the ice cap, and make little cubs. You know, in its way it’s really a remarkable creature. Perfectly suited to survive and thrive in the inhospitable environment of the Arctic.’
‘You sound as if you admire it.’
‘I suppose I do, in a way. I admire its… purity.’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘There’s nothing pure about this bear, Strachan. There’s something wrong with it. You tell me that polar bears only behave in a certain way, yet everything we know about the way they behave is based on anecdotal evidence and the limited observations of a few specimens by zoologists like Pennant. Suppose you were a polar bear zoologist studying human beings…’
‘Now you’re just talking daft!’
‘Humour me. Suppose you based your observations on a few humans like… oh, I don’t know… say, the men on the lower deck. From those you drew your theories about human behaviour. It would be a fairly accurate reflection of the behaviour of the breed Homo maritimus, wouldn’t it?’
Strachan chuckled. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Would it prepare you for the way that Pettifer started behaving?’
‘An insane bear? That’s all we need!’
‘Not necessarily insane. Just… an aberration. You can look for your patterns in nature if you like, lay down your scientific rules about the way the laws of nature work, but you know in your heart as well as I that there are always anomalies. Specimens that are flawed in some way, that fail to match up to nature’s perfect blueprint.’
‘The exception that proves the rule, you mean?’
‘Precisely.’
Strachan rubbed his jaw. ‘I don’t know. It’s something to think about, I suppose.’ The assistant surgeon stood up. ‘But it’s nothing to lose any sleep over, I assure you. Aberration or no, that’s a mortal bear, and a bullet in its skull will end its life, the same as it would mine or yours. And we’re keeping sentries posted at all hours, just in case. So don’t you worry: you get some rest, and I’ll look in on you tomorrow, see how you’re doing.’
* * *
Molineaux concluded his magic act by singing a song of his own composition. It was a ballad about a sailor who found the North Pole and carried it back to London, where he enjoyed a variety of amorous misadventures with the aid of the abstract rod. In the style of the penny gaffs, but toned down out of consideration for the presence of the officers and Frau Weiss, the succession of single entendres nonetheless left little to the imagination.
The crew had set up a stage on the forecastle with a backcloth of wadding tilt, and Molineaux sat on a stool, singing his song while he strummed his guitar by the light of a single oil-lamp. A misty layer of condensation hung about six feet off the deck, so that from the audience’s point of view Molineaux was hidden from the neck up, but they had seen his face before and knew they were not missing all that much. He was not much of a singer, either, but he played the guitar beautifully.
Rows of benches and chairs had been set up facing the stage to form a makeshift auditorium. The crew listened and guffawed. Killigrew sat in the front row with Latimer, who giggled like a naughty schoolboy – Killigrew had the impression that the clerk was an aficionado of penny-gaff entertainments – and Ursula, who tried to pretend she did not understand the words, although the effect was marred by the smile of amusement that played on her face. Next to her sat Yelverton, who had obtained Strachan’s permission to drag himself out of bed for the Christmas Eve concert. The long rest seemed to have done him some good, and there was colour back in his cheeks now, although a fierce coughing fit during one of the earlier acts had worried Killigrew. He wanted to ask Strachan’s opinion, but the seat he had saved for the assistant surgeon was empty.
Saturday the eighteenth of December had come and gone without incident. Despite Strachan’s theory that even if the bear did attack again, it was unlikely to do so before the New Year, the hands in the forecastle had got it into their heads that the bear attacked every fortnight. Since the eighteenth was exactly two weeks after the bear had killed Walsh, Jenkins, Bähr and Phillips, the eighteenth must be the date on which Bruin would return to the Venturer. As the fatal day approached, everyone had become increasingly nervous: even Killigrew had been infected by their trepidation, and although Strachan had professed such fears foolish, the lieutenant had had his doubts that his friend had been entirely free of fear.
The eighteenth had come and gone. So had the nineteenth, and the twentieth. On the twenty-first,
Latimer – whose remarks were not always in the best of taste – had jokingly said that he was going to miss Bruin. Now it was Christmas Eve, and Killigrew dared to let himself wonder if Strachan might not be right: perhaps they had seen the last of the bear. It was just a bear, after all. Only the horror of its repeated attacks had built it up into something it was not, some mystical creature against which they were powerless. The more superstitious amongst the crew argued that the bear had been out for revenge for the murder of its cubs, and since Bähr – who had killed the cubs – was now dead, Bruin was satisfied that justice had been done.
When Molineaux had finished the song everyone applauded and the seaman stood up and took a bow. There was a brief hiatus while they waited for the next act to come on and do his turn.
‘Oh, Lor’!’ exclaimed Latimer, seated next to Killigrew. ‘I’d clean forgotten I was next! Excuse me!’ He leaped to his feet and dashed behind the backcloth to get changed. The seamen started to talk amongst themselves and Strachan took the place so recently vacated by Latimer.
‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Killigrew, mildly annoyed. He knew that the men in tonight’s performance had put a lot of effort into preparing this concert – rehearsals, costumes, scenery, not to mention putting up with Latimer’s stage-direction – and it was the least the officers could do to be seen enjoying it.
‘Standing at the back. I didn’t want to disturb Molineaux’s performance. What’s wrong with you? You’re like a bear with a sore head.’
‘Very droll.’
‘Well, how is your head?’
‘Fine. Haven’t had a headache since Sunday morning.’
‘And he was sinking the whiskeys fast enough on Saturday night,’ Yelverton put in with a grin. Killigrew scowled.
Latimer swept aside the backcloth with a flourish and stepped out on to the makeshift stage, dressed in a vague approximation of Elizabethan clothing, carrying a bundle that was supposed to represent a baby. Everyone clapped and he took a bow, lapping it up. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. My first soliloquy is from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale,’ he announced with a smirk.
Cue boos and raspberries from the hands.
‘Picture the scene: Bohemia, a desert country near the sea. I am Antigonus, a lord of Sicilia.’ He cleared his throat and launched into the soliloquy without further ado about nothing.
‘“Come, poor babe. I have heard, but not believ’d, the spirits o’ the dead May walk again. If such a thing be, thy mother Appear’d to me last night; for ne’er was a dream So like a waking. To me comes a creature…”’
‘The Winter’s Tale?’ muttered Yelverton. ‘I’d’ve thought Hamlet would’ve been more appropriate.’
‘Shh!’ said Killigrew, who privately agreed but considered heckling despicably rude.
‘“…I never saw a vessel of like sorrow…”’
‘Ah, now that’s more like it,’ muttered Yelverton. ‘Much more pertinent, I think.’
Killigrew shot him a dirty look, but the master was oblivious.
‘Oh, cheer up, Killigrew,’ murmured Strachan, as Latimer droned on. ‘No one’s seen hide nor hair – no pun intended – of our friend Bruin for nearly three weeks. The longest night is behind us now.’
‘We’re still in the longest night,’ Killigrew reminded him. ‘The sun won’t return until February, weather permitting.’
‘You know what I mean. February’s not far off. First the sun comes back, then the ice melts and before you know it we’ll be free to sail back to England. I really don’t see what can happen to us which hasn’t happened already.’
‘“…Affrighted much, I did in time collect myself, and thought This was so and no slumber. Dreams are toys; Yet, for this once, yea, superstitiously, I will be squar’d by this. I do believe Hermione hath suffer’d death; and that Apollo would, this being indeed the issue Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid, Either for life or death, upon the earth Of its right father…”’
The fore and aft spars that supported the awning creaked softly. Killigrew wondered how great the weight of snow above them was. They had allowed it to build up to act as insulation, but he suddenly found himself wondering if they had not let it get too deep.
‘“…Farewell! The day frowns more and more. Thou art like to have A lullaby too rough; I never saw the heavens so dim by day…”’
‘Now he’s hit the mark,’ muttered Yelverton.
‘“A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the—”’
Latimer never finished the soliloquy, for there came the sound of rending cloth and a great mass of snow came crashing through the awning. The single lantern flickered as the howling gale roared through the upper deck, carrying with it great gusts of snow and a vicious, merciless wind.
Killigrew leaped to his feet. ‘All right, everyone stay calm. It’s just the—’
He broke off in horror. It was not ‘just’ anything.
Bruin had made an unscripted entrance.
Chapter 20
Fire in the Night
The great bear stood there, as stunned by his sudden fall through the awning as the seamen around him. Someone made a sound – half yell, half scream, all terror – and the bear responded, rising on its hind legs with a dreadful roar.
The next few minutes would stay with Killigrew for the rest of his life.
Everything happened at once: the men scattering, dashing for the hatches, the bear swiping its terrible claws left and right, unable to miss in the crowd of bodies that panicked around it, the bang of Ågård’s pistol as he fired at the bear, feet thundering on the deck, Molineaux’s beloved guitar trampled underfoot. The bear roared, men screamed, blood splashed on the deck, on the awning, on the makeshift stage and the backdrop.
Finding the bear between himself and the hatchway, Jacko Smith scrambled up the foremast as nimble as a monkey and clung to one of the yards that formed a ridge-pole beneath the wadding tilt awning, but in doing so he managed to catch the bear’s eye. It reared up on its hindquarters and sank its jaws into one of the seaman’s dangling ankles, dragging him back screaming to the deck. As Smith tried to crawl away, the bear batted at him with its massive paws like a cat playing with a mouse.
Killigrew shouted for everyone to stay calm, realising the futility of such an order even as he gave it. At the front of the audience, he was swept before the press of bodies and carried down the forward hatch. He dashed across the mess deck in time to meet the stampede of people descending the main hatch.
‘Out of my way! Out of my way!’ He threw himself at the crowd like a ship trying to break through the ice and managed to get down to the spirit room. Aware that every precious second would mean more deaths, his hands trembled as he took a brace of Deane & Adams revolvers from one of the racks.
By the time he re-emerged things seemed quieter. He glimpsed a few men hiding underneath the tables on the mess deck, a few more level-headed ones – Molineaux amongst them – appearing with muskets. The rest must have gone down to the orlop deck in the bowels of the ship, hiding amongst the trays of cress, where even the bear could not get them, or at least so they hoped. At that moment Killigrew would not have put anything past it.
He ran up the companion way to the upper deck with Molineaux and Ågård hard on his heels. In the confusion the lamp had crashed to the deck and spread a pool of burning oil on the forecastle. The blaze was the only source of illumination, the flickering flames torn and shaken by the wind that blew in through the tear in the awning. Killigrew searched the scene by the eerie light of that hellish blaze. He could see only two bodies: one of those still stirring, although the man’s trousers were torn to shreds and soaked with his blood. Even with great flurries of snow being swept beneath the awning, something as big as the bear should not have been that difficult to spot.
Then he saw it, or at least its hind quarters, disappearing through a fresh rent it had slashed in the awning with its razor-like claws. He levelled one of his revolvers, fi
red, and then the bear was gone.
‘Someone put that fire out!’ he yelled as he ran across to the rent in the awning. He reached it in time to see the bear lope off into the blizzard, dragging something along beside it. Killigrew realised that the object was one of the men, one ankle clamped between the bear’s jaws, his leg twisted at an impossible angle as he bounced along at the bear’s side.
And he was still alive.
Killigrew pushed through the rent and at once plunged chest-deep into the snowdrift banked against the side of the hull. Fighting his way through the snow, he raised both revolvers. He knew that in firing at the bear there was a danger he would hit the man it dragged away, and yet at the same time he knew that if he did not stop it, the man was doomed to die a horrible death, torn limb from limb. If he could have killed the man outright with one shot, it would have been a mercy killing. He fired both revolvers alternately, until all ten chambers were empty and the bear had vanished. On either side of him both Molineaux and Ågård fired their rifled muskets. At that range surely one of them must have hit it?
‘Who was it?’ he asked them.
‘Don’t know, sir,’ said Ågård.
‘Unstead,’ said Molineaux, shaken by the death of his fellow boatswain’s mate. ‘Jake Unstead.’
Killigrew stared in the direction the bear had disappeared in stunned amazement. It’s only an animal, he told himself. And yet surrounded by men – and solid Jack Tars at that – it had wreaked bloody havoc, seemingly invulnerable to the modem firearms held by Killigrew and the others. Man, created in God’s image, was supposed to be master of the globe, and yet the species that had brought about the technological marvels of the industrial revolution seemed powerless to defend itself against one polar bear.
The bear was gone now, frightened off – or at least it had taken what it had come for, and saw no reason to linger. But Killigrew’s problems were a long way from being over. He made his way around the hull with Molineaux and Ågård, and the three of them ascended the gangplank to find the blaze of the oil-lamp had spread like wildfire, eating up everything in its path: wood, ropes, wadding tilt, everything.
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 41