Killigrew emerged from one of the tents, stretching stiff and aching limbs, and headed briskly away from the encampment.
‘Sir?’
‘One moment, Molineaux.’ His back to the petty officer, Killigrew relieved himself into the snow.
‘Better come and take a look at this, sir,’ said Molineaux, as the lieutenant buttoned his flies.
‘What’s the matter?’
Molineaux directed the beam of the bull’s-eye at the mess.
‘Oh, Christ! How the devil did this happen?’
By way of reply, the petty officer played the beam over the snow on the ice. It did not take him long to find what he was looking for: the paw-prints of an enormous bear.
‘Jesus! Who was supposed to be on watch?’
‘What time is it, sir?’
Killigrew checked his fob watch. ‘Nearly six o’clock.’
‘Hughes’ turn, then.’
‘Where the deuce is he?’
‘Still sleeping, I expect. I was supposed to wake him at four, at the end of my watch. I didn’t, because Ågård was supposed to wake me at two.’
‘Where is Ågård?’
That was a good question. ‘Ollie?’ Molineaux called softly; and then, realising that if anyone had not been woken by the dogs, they were hardly likely to be awoken by him calling out. ‘Ollie!’
Killigrew indicated a dark shape lying in the snow, and Molineaux directed the bull’s-eye at it: a musket.
‘Ollie’s musket.’
There were more paw-prints leading to where the musket lay, and drag-marks leading away; just a few spots of something dark, which might have been blood spattering the snow.
Everyone else was crawling out from the tents now. Molineaux picked up the musket and gave it a cursory examination. It had not been fired; Molineaux would have heard the shot. And Ågård had not cried out. The bear had got so close it could kill him or knock him out before he was aware of it, and then dragged him away just as it had dragged off Thwaites and Unstead.
‘It followed us?’ asked Latimer, as Terregannoeuck studied the paw-prints. ‘For thirty-eight miles, it followed us?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Strachan. ‘It isn’t the only polar bear in the Arctic.’
Terregannoeuck rose to his feet. ‘It same one. When winter bad, nanuq often follow reindeer for hundreds of miles. And this winter very bad.’
‘Oh, no!’ Latimer had seen the mess that the bear had made of the stores on Charity. ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’
‘It didn’t touch the stores on Faith or Hope,’ observed Molineaux. ‘I wonder why not?’
‘Maybe its curiosity was sated by what was on Charity,’ said Strachan. ‘Who knows what goes through that crazy bear’s head?’
‘Evidently it prefers fresh meat to tinned mutton,’ said Varrow.
‘How much food have we lost?’ Killigrew asked quietly.
‘I’d have to take a full inventory of what’s left to know for certain…’
‘How much, Latimer?’
The clerk took a deep breath. ‘About ten days’ worth.’
‘Jesus!’ said Butterwick.
‘We’re going to end up eating our boots, just like Franklin and the others,’ moaned Hughes. ‘I just know it. It’s going to be the Donner Party all over again!’
‘All right, it’s not the end of the world…’ said Latimer.
‘Might as well be,’ sniffed Varrow.
‘…We’ll just have to head back to Horsehead Bay and collect more victuals, build another sledge, that’s all.’
Killigrew looked at the faces of the men. Tired, drawn, blackened with soot from the smoky lamps they used in the tents at night and from lack of washing. There was more to this than the simple arithmetic of victualling. Now they were at their lowest ebb; at least, he hoped this was their lowest ebb. If he told them now that the distance they had covered already – those gruelling thirty-two miles over pressure ridge after pressure ridge – was going to have to be covered all over again, not once but twice, he was going to have a dozen men with broken spirits on his hands; and it was going to take spirit as much as food to get them to Fort Hope.
‘There’ll be no turning back,’ he said, and the relief on the men’s faces was plain to see.
‘But we’ve only got forty-four days’ of food left,’ protested Latimer.
‘It will have to do. The worst is behind us now: once we reach the mainland, the going should get easier. We’re not wasting another twelve days climbing back over all those pressure ridges – twice – when for all we know we’ll probably get to Horsehead Bay to find that Bruin did the same thing to the food there as he’s done here. We’ll press on. Down house, break up. I want you all to take everything you can salvage from Charity and divide it between Faith and Hope. Leave one of the tents – it’ll make things a bit cosier at night, but it’s crucial we keep the weight down. Strachan, you’re in charge of Hope from now on; I’ll take Faith. The rest of you, your teams are as follows: Latimer, Frau Weiss, Molineaux, Riggs, Orsini, Endicott and Kracht; you’re on Hope. Mr Varrow, Qualtrough, Armitage, Butterwick, Hughes and Fischbein: you’re on Faith.’
‘What about the cap’n, sir?’ Armitage indicated Pettifer. His hands bound all but permanently, the commander had hauled on his sledge harness along with the rest of them, and more tireless and uncomplaining than any of them.
‘He’s on Faith with you, Armitage. Keep a close watch on him.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Terregannoeuck, you can drive the dog sledge. Now let’s get the tents packed up back on the sledges and be on our way. We can stop for breakfast once we’ve got another pressure ridge under our belts.’
‘Wait a minute, sir!’ protested Molineaux. ‘What about Ågård?’
‘What about him?’ Killigrew answered bleakly.
‘Aren’t we even going to look for him? He might be wounded, dying…’
‘He’s dead.’
Molineaux shook his head in disbelief. Not Ollie Ågård. They had known each other for nearly five years now, serving together in the Orient, the South Seas, and now in the Arctic. Ågård had always been dependable, invincible, the one who could keep a cool head in a crisis, a constant tower of strength. And now Molineaux was supposed to believe he was dead, killed by a god-damned bear?
And what about Killigrew? He had known Ågård even longer. Even if the relationship between an officer and a rating was by definition different to that between two ratings, surely Killigrew must have felt something at the death of a man who had served with him loyally for what, fifteen years? But even if it had been Frau Weiss who had been dragged off by the bear, Molineaux knew that whatever Killigrew was feeling he would have kept it bottled up tight inside. This was not a time for hysterics. They needed to save their strength for the gruelling journey ahead of them.
He put on his harness and they set off once more. As he trudged over the ice, the words of Coleridge came once more unbidden to his lips, the rhythm of the verse fitting the ponderous tread of his feet:
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Throughout the next week the sky became imperceptibly lighter towards noon, until on the ninth they got their first sight of the sun in over a month. When its first appearance was heralded by Kracht, who saw it from the crest of the pressure ridge they were in the process of traversing, the others all scrambled up – even those who had already climbed down on the other side – to see for themselves, to reassure themselves it was real. Raised prematurely from its hibernation by the refraction of the cold air, its thin rays were enough to impart a hint of warmth to their bodies, and a promise of brighter days to come. It did not fully rise, of course, and the segment that showed itself was gone after a couple of minutes, but t
hose two minutes had been enough to give them hope. The next day the sun came fully above the horizon formed by the next pressure ridge, and stayed in the pale Arctic sky for a full thirty minutes.
Killigrew surveyed the scene as he ate breakfast the following morning. The pressure ridges had become lower and easier to traverse, the closer to the coast they came. Here they were no more than thirty feet high, and less steep; as often as not, they could get the sledges across without even taking off their harnesses.
He turned to Terregannoeuck. ‘Will this do?’
‘It as good a place as any,’ said the Inuk.
‘Good for what?’ asked Latimer.
Killigrew took a cartouche box from one of the sledges and loaded a rifled musket. ‘Varrow, I want you to take charge of Faith from here on,’ he said. Latimer was senior to Varrow, but despite the engineer’s grumbling, Killigrew knew he was tougher and would drive the men on long after the clerk had given up. ‘Ursula, I want you to drive the dog sledge.’
‘Terregannoeuck can drive it better than I can.’
‘You can drive it well enough. Terregannoeuck’s staying behind with me.’
‘What for?’ asked Latimer.
‘What do you think?’ said Yelverton. ‘They’re going to try to ambush the bear.’
Ursula clutched Killigrew’s arm. ‘Don’t do it, please. It’s madness! You’ll be killed for sure. You tried this before, remember? When Bähr and the marines were killed?’
‘This time it’s going to be different,’ he told her. ‘For one thing, I won’t have you to worry about. And for another, I’ll have Terregannoeuck with me.’
‘And what about that time you tried to bait him with those herrings?’ asked Strachan.
‘We used the wrong bait.’
‘What are you going to use this time?’
‘Ourselves.’ Killigrew checked a musket and passed it to Terregannoeuck. ‘We know Bruin likes the taste of human flesh. We know he’s following us. While the rest of you continue on your way, Terregannoeuck and I will wait here for it. I’ve a feeling it won’t keep us waiting long. If all goes well, we’ll put our Norwegian snow-shoes on and catch you up before you make camp for the night.’
‘And what if all doesn’t go well?’ demanded Yelverton.
‘I’ll have done my bit. From then on it will be up to you.’
‘And supposing he sees you waiting for him and just gives you a wide berth without either of you being any the wiser?’ asked Strachan. ‘You’ll just be waiting here for an eternity while the bear continues to hunt us down one by one.’
Killigrew pursed his lips. ‘That is a possibility,’ he allowed. ‘Which is why you mustn’t wait for us. Just keep moving, and keep your eyes open and your guard up at all times. But put yourself in Bruin’s place. He sees us split into two parties: one of two men; and one of fifteen men, a woman, five huskies and a dachshund. Which one would you deal with first?’
Strachan nodded.
Killigrew lowered his voice so that only the assistant surgeon could hear him. ‘And whatever happens, don’t give up. For me. If I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice, I don’t care for it to be in vain, understand?’
Ursula approached again. ‘You know what you’re doing is crazy, don’t you?’
Killigrew nodded. ‘Perhaps. But this is the way it must be. I’ve already lost too many men because of that damned bear, and if we keep on like this he’ll just pick us off one by one until none of us is left. It has to stop, and Terregannoeuck and I are going to end it here.’ He gave her hand a surreptitious squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. I made a promise to you, and I’m a man who likes to keep his promises.’
‘Which promise was that?’
‘Boating on the Serpentine, remember?’
She wiped her runny nose on the back of a frost-rimed mitten, and managed a wan smile.
Killigrew turned to Molineaux. ‘This is where our ways part, Molineaux. Good luck to you; and thank you, for everything. It’s been an honour and a privilege.’
‘The privilege was all mine, sir. You know me: I ain’t got much time for gentry coves, officers least of all, but… you’re oh-kay, sir.’
Killigrew smiled. ‘From you I’ll take that as praise indeed.’
‘It’s meant as such, sir.’
The other men crowded around him and shook his hand – a few even deigned to shake Terregannoeuck’s hand as well – and then they waved and set off across the ice once more, dragging the sledges behind them, Ursula driving the dog sledge.
Killigrew and Terregannoeuck stood just below the crest of the last ice ridge and watched them go. The others disappeared over the next ice ridge, and a few minutes later were seen cresting the one beyond, and then they had disappeared from sight for good. The lieutenant and the Inuk checked their weapons again and settled down behind the crest of the ridge, watching the unending sea of ridges that stretched out behind them beneath the midday sun. The sky was clear and everything had a razor-sharp clarity to it, as if they could see for miles. Perhaps they could: the only thing to give them any sense of perspective was their own tracks in the snow behind them, visible on the crest of each ridge.
Killigrew wished he had a sip of whiskey left in his flip flask, or a cheroot to calm his nerves. But he only had one cheroot left, and he had promised himself he would not smoke that one until he had seen the others to safety. Not much chance of that now, he told himself, and got as far as putting the cheroot between his lips and striking a match when something made him stop, shake out the match and return the cheroot to his case. He was not ready to give up on any promises yet.
He gripped his musket tightly and strained his eyes watching the landscape behind them, waiting for the bear to show up. He would not shoot it at once; he would hold his fire, wait for it to get closer, and then make sure of his shot.
Terregannoeuck waited placidly, as if his whole life had been building up to this moment and now he was ready for it. Killigrew suddenly realised how little he knew about the Inuk. ‘Have you got a wife waiting for you back in Greenland, Terregannoeuck?’
‘No. I used to have woman, but I leave her.’
‘Why?’
‘It was time to move on.’
Killigrew nodded. He had heard that sharks had to keep moving constantly, otherwise they sank to the bottom of the sea and drowned. Some people were like that too, constantly driven onwards by some inner demon, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. He wondered if he himself were such a man, doomed to sail the seas for eternity, or would he one day settle down and raise a family? Once he had been convinced that he would live for ever, but his twenties seemed to have flashed by without him being aware of it and now, in a couple of years, he would be thirty. When he had been a midshipman in his teens, he had looked at the older officers on board his ship and envied them their age and experience, their responsibility, and wished he could be as old as they. Thirty had seemed like a good age then. Now it was almost upon him, he wished he could be in his teens again. It was nine months since he had sailed from Woolwich on this senseless mission, a year wasted, and it would be many months before he returned to England.
If only he could live through today.
A thought popped into his head, a question he had been wanting to ask the Inuk for some time, and this seemed as good a time as any. ‘Terregannoeuck, that time I went out with Frau Weiss, Dr Bähr and the others, and Frau Weiss and I fell down that crevasse… how did you find us?’
‘Wes knew you were not dead.’
‘Yes, but… how did you find me? By then the snow had covered over our tracks, you could hardly see your hand in front of your face in that blizzard. But still you managed to follow us closely enough for you to see the rocket we sent up.’
Terregannoeuck grinned. ‘It was magic.’
‘I don’t believe in magic.’
‘I would not believe in the power of your steam engines, if I had not seen them for myself. Your culture has the kabloonas’ magic, just as mi
ne has ours.’
‘Seeing is believing,’ said Killigrew, not believing a word of such damned superstitious nonsense, but unwilling to insult Terregannoeuck by saying as much. Besides, if it had not been magic, then what had it been? Some kind of native trick, he supposed. The snow might have hidden the tracks from a white man’s eyes – and a black man’s eyes, for that matter – but perhaps traces had remained that an Inuk, living his whole life in this world of snow and ice, could pick out.
Terregannoeuck suddenly took off the bear’s tooth he wore on a thong around his neck and proffered it to Killigrew. ‘Wear this,’ he said gravely. ‘It will protect you.’
More superstitious nonsense. ‘I couldn’t. You killed that bear, you earned it. Besides, don’t you need protection, too?’
Terregannoeuck insisted on looping the thong over Killigrew’s head.
‘I have Nuliayuq to protect me, just as you have your kabloona god.’
Killigrew thought about what Strachan had told him when he had dissected the sow Molineaux had shot. Was the Bible wrong? Was Christianity no more than the same superstitious nonsense that so many unenlightened heathens around the world indulged in? Seeing was believing. What had Killigrew ever seen to convince him that there was a God? Precious little. But that was the essence of Christianity: faith. Without faith… he caught himself. If Christianity was so much gammon, then all this nonsense about needing faith was the perfect cloak.
What do you believe in, Kit Killigrew? God, or science.
‘I’ve no idea how this is going to turn out,’ he told Terregannoeuck. ‘But I want to thank you for helping us, staying with us so long. Even though we didn’t always heed your advice. I find it hard to believe that this bear is after us because we didn’t honour the she-bear’s tatkoq, but there are some things in life even Mr Strachan’s beloved science can’t explain…’ Killigrew grimaced, knowing that as an apology it sounded lame.
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 46