by Ben Jones
That shut me. I sucked at my tea, trying to keep from shivering, trying not to hear the wind, the grinding roar of ice on ice, the groaning of timbers, trying not to see a thousand sails bearing down. I did not have long to feel sorry for myself.
Without warning, the whole ship canted toward the bow. The floor rose up and we tumbled into the cabin wall, with several dogs tumbling down the corridor on top of us. A great brawling mixture of man and dog roiled along the front of the cabin as the ship continued to tilt. The stove spilled out and coals began to smolder on our bunks. Creely shrieked as his hair caught fire—a dog howled piteously—a boot struck my chest as I scrabbled to right myself. Just as I regained my feet, the ship jerked again and dropped with an explosive splash nose first into the water. Cracks formed immediately and water began pouring in; some of the small fires were doused but pieces of flaming debris still floated, catching on fur and hair.
Reinhold led the climb out of the cabin, pulling himself up the corridor and anchoring there to help the others. Griffin, then Preston, then others, one by one, scrambled up the corridor and out on to the deck. The dogs in the cabin scratched at me as I tried to get out of the water, searching for purchase, then entreating for help. The dogs in the hold clawed over each other to escape it, only to fall skidding into the stove. Reinhold grabbed a few as they passed and heaved them onto the deck, but could do nothing for the others. Over his shoulder, I could make out dimly the black bulk of the king post. It is hard to imagine that any sound could lift itself above that cacophony, but one did. From the heart of the ship came a shuddering groan so loud and so long that we rushed as a body back into the hold. The groaning built, as if the entire ship were crying out for release. As I watched, a crooked seam appeared on the face of the king post, a licking tongue of lightning. With a booming crack, the massive king post split, edges driving past each other; the floor warped beneath me and the walls jumped inward; then with a groaning sigh, the ship settled and was still.
I pulled myself up the companionway with Reinhold close behind me. Loose lines whipped in a scouring wind. Men straggled to the rear of the ship, while one group hacked at the mast, trying to free the hatch to the officers’ quarters. I moved aft, helping the other group lower an iceboat toward the water. There was not enough space between the hull and the ice to lower it completely, so we rested it about halfway down. Ash and Preston lowered themselves on ropes to work it around the stern and into the small patch of water there. The bow of the ship was caught under the extending ridge of the iceberg in front of us; the bowsprit was already underwater and the planking of the foredeck was buckling. The whaleboats had been crushed against the bow. That left a small dinghy that hung off the stern.
Ash and Preston succeeded in working the iceboat to the water. Adney dropped over the port side and wedged himself between the ship and the ice. From there, he tossed the bundles we lowered down to Preston and Ash. Reinhold and some others worked to free the dinghy, whose lines had become tangled, then frozen solid.
Behind me, the rest of the crew had chopped through the mast and cleared the hatch. The doctor, Griffin, and Hunt disappeared below. Any hopes we might have had that the walls of the icebergs would shelter us from the wind were foolish ones; the gusts seemed to be concentrated by the narrow corridors, stripping off hats and gloves, yanking lines from our hands, and knocking us off our feet.
The doctor reappeared first, clutching a long roll of parchment and several bags slung over his shoulders. He moved directly to the gunnel, shouting for me to assist him; he cradled his possessions carefully and lowered himself down on top of Preston, then clambered into the dinghy.
Griffin and Hunt struggled up through the hatch with West swaying between them. Reinhold and I finally got the dinghy loose by swinging it over to port, where Preston could guide it into the water. He leaped in and Ash took his place in the crevice. Using the port davit and a harness, we lowered first West, then Creely down out to the boats. One by one, men mounted the side and slid down. Hunt mounted the rail to descend, but slipped and, letting out a baffled cry, shot past Reinhold and vanished into the water.
Reinhold jumped down to try to find him, but he did not surface. We passed down a boat hook that he used to prod around; Preston brought the dinghy over and poked underwater also, but there was no sign of him. The ship began to pitch forward again, nearly casting Aziz down under the bow. I descended, then Reinhold and Griffin. Ash moved into the boat and Aziz passed the last of the emergency supplies down. Griffin moved into the stern of the boat, holding on to the halyard firmly for Aziz to descend. Balanced on the thwart of the iceboat, I could barely see his head through the gusting snow. Griffin pulled the line taut and yelled for him to come ahead.
From far above, his voice reached us thinly, like a bird’s in the roar: “I will stay.”
“Don’t be a fool,” shouted Griffin. “The ship will be driven under in a manner of minutes.”
“The boats are overfilled as it is. I will make my own way.” Griffin turned to us.
“Kane, Adney, get him—”
West cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“Let him stay.”
“I will not. We cannot leave a man to his death in the middle of a storm.”
“He does not wish to come. We should be thankful for his sacrifice. Now we must move, sir!”
Griffin stood gripping the rope with both hands. It hummed in the blasts of wind and the small iceboat lurched underneath us.
“Pull away,” shouted West, “before we capsize.” Adney and Reinhold prodded the ice walls with their oars. Griffin, glaring, refused to let go of the halyard; he leaned overboard, his feet hooked underneath a thwart.
“Restrain him,” ordered West. Ash and the doctor moved forward and pried Griffin’s hands from the rope. He struggled against them, but they bore him down to the center of the boat.
“You cannot!” shrieked the captain.
“Hunt is dead already,” said West. “We can do nothing for Aziz. Now we must move.” West nodded to Reinhold and Adney. As if by some prearranged signal, Aziz cut the halyard and it fell in a heap onto Griffin’s chest.
Captain Griffin bellowed and twisted, but Ash and the doctor held him fast. Over us, the Narthex heaved again and lurched down into the water. The wave that rolled off the hull nearly capsized the dinghy and we were forced to pull away. I turned away from Griffin and tried to paddle.
I saw Aziz waving through the gouts of snow and I saw some ease in it—it was not the shaky blessing of a suicide, but the confident wave of a man with other things in his mind, and I had the distinct sense that it was not we casting off from him, but he from us.
I watched him as he disappeared, and looked with sadness at the naked, obscene rudder of the Narthex flapping ineffectually in the wind, her stern lifted to the sky in a final desperate gesture of submission.
With all of us and the supplies crowded into the iceboat, there was not enough room to row. Creely lay over the middle of the thwarts, struggling to sit up from time to time, protesting our refusal to let him help; Ash and the doctor continued to wrestle with Griffin. The rest of us crowded on the gunnels. We managed to get the oars out and into some semblance of use. I paddled awkwardly, Adney poled off the floes, West worked the tiller fiercely. We were so low that we shipped water with every wave, and they came at us from all sides. Once Griffin stopped struggling, Dr. Architeuthis baled when he could—it soon amounted to shoving the water out when the boat dipped low. The wind blew frozen spray into our faces, and the effect was like slivers of glass shot from a gun.
The men in the dinghy had an easier time as they were not so heavily loaded; their boat was so small, however, that each wave knocked them in a new direction until they were plucked from it by another. Fortunately there was no room between the icebergs for us to become separated. Ash threw a line to Preston so they could pull themselves forward as we made progress.
We poked down the lead, spending more of our energy on
remaining upright than on moving. Behind us, I could hear the mournful whimpering of a group of dogs who had somehow worked their way down near the water. Reinhold called back from the dinghy, but there was no room on either craft. They pawed the edge of the floe and looked anxiously after us. They soon disappeared in the gusting snow.
Our channel widened slightly as we made our way along, and soon we were all able to paddle, after a fashion. We managed to keep from sinking, and found narrow leads between the icebergs. We worked ourselves into one gap and found shelter from the wind, then the ice creaked and shifted and we had to move again to avoid being crushed; we emerged into a wider lead and fell back into the teeth of the wind. Channel led to channel but none improved on the last. Waves built in one channel and came shooting at us broadside in another; they bounced off the ice and did battle with their former companions, met new foes, made new alliances, and turned on us, contorted by the wind; growlers— smaller hunks of ice—prowled the corridors, driven by hidden tides and currents, and set upon our hull ferociously. I paddled blindly, with no impulse to steer, no thought to guide, just pulled and pulled, not hoping even to escape but purely fleeing, though I could as easily have been pulling us into greater danger—I would have passed through the gates of the City of Woes without pausing, abandoned hope, entered, fled circle on circle till I found myself again in ice and storm. We were fortunate not to be separated from the dinghy.
We slipped out from the mass of icebergs into a lower plain of pack ice. Here we had no protection from the wind, which built over a vast distance and tried to force us back among the icebergs. I would have returned gladly, but the order came from Griffin to keep paddling ahead. We were leaking badly by this time and he was searching for a place for us to land. The pack ice had an astonishing swell running northeast through it—even large floes were borne up by it. We struggled to move across the swell, beating back jostling chunks and pausing before gaps in the lead until it passed, then paddling ahead frantically.
West brought us at last to a low ramp that led up onto a floe of considerable size. Small waves were breaking on the ramp, and pieces of ice smashed against it and shattered. We slid forward on one such wave; Adney, Ash, and I leaped out and tried to drag the boat fully onto the slope. There was no purchase, and the boat was heavily laden. It was all we could do to prevent it from sliding back into the water. With each wave, another man joined us in the slope until only Griffin and Creely remained. Ash cut some footholds for us and finally we managed to drag the iceboat and the dinghy clear of the water.
We flipped the boats over, propping the dinghy on top of the iceboat’s gunnel. Ash dug a tarp from the emergency bundle and spread it over both boats. We lashed it down and packed the edges with snow, then crawled inside. Dr. Architeuthis used one of the bags to block off the opening at the end of the boats; we crouched on the inner edge of the gunnels to keep the boats from shifting in wind. Creely was laid on some furs in the center; West huddled at the far end underneath the peak. The wind and snow still blasted through, but we were out of the worst of it.
Adney dug out a stove and fired it; Reinhold found a lantern. There was barely enough room to shift my weight without elbowing someone, or accidentally kicking Creely. Griffin refused to come in, but instead went back to the ice edge and paced back and forth in the driving wind, calling out into the corridors of ice for Hunt and Aziz. Inside, we were all hunched unnaturally under the curve of the boat hulls—but it was far better than being in the water. The stove threw off an intense heat, and insulated by the other bodies as much as anything, our clothes began to thaw, then steam. I noticed for the first time that I had lost my gloves somewhere. My fingers were bleach white and stiff. My feet had been soaked, but gradually warmed and began itching and then aching. Adney soon had cocoa ready. Pairs of men hunched over shared mugs and traded sips.
The doctor clambered from man to man examining hands, faces, and feet. Almost everyone had a touch of frostbite—some were worse than others. Ash had taken it on the nose and ears; Adney in the heel; Preston and I in the fingers. My hands looked terrible, but feeling did return as I beat them on my thighs. Only Reinhold escaped untouched, despite his bare head and tattered gloves.
We sat in silence as we sipped, listening to the faint voice of Griffin, the thrumming of the canvas overhead, and the blasting of the wind. Every now and then the bass rumble of the ice welled up. The cocoa finished, Adney set to making a hoosh. Men muttered to themselves, or stared blankly at the flame.
After a time, Reinhold went outside. When he returned, he was half carrying Griffin, who was coated with snow and had big hunks of ice on his pants legs. He collapsed in the corner of the shelter without eating anything. Around him we sat in silence.
From beneath the roar of the wind, I heard Reinhold’s voice barely audible:
Oh, ye Dead! Oh, ye Dead! whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live,
Why leave you thus your graves,
In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
To haunt this spot where all
Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wail’d you, like your own, lie dead?
Men leaned closer to hear him, like blind insects toward the light. He continued, his voice slow and sad:
It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
It is true, it is true, all the friends we loved are gone.
From each side of him, men glared angrily at him. He pressed on, his voice building with defiance until he spat the words:
But still thus even in death,
So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flowers in our youth we wander’d o’er,
That ere, condemn’d, we go
To freeze ’mid Hecla’s snow,
We would taste it a while, and think we live once more!
He began the second verse again, now shouting at the storm and shaking his fist. One by one we joined him, yelling out the words. He began again, chanting more than singing, and we joined, swaying our bodies in time, and then again, lapsing into the melody, and again fiercely, and softly, moaning through it, and heartily, and beseechingly, and again and again, crying out against the storm, against the ice, for Pago, for Aziz, for poor Hunt, for the dogs, for our poor selves. We sang on through our thin hoosh, through howl of wind, through endless, interminable, measureless ages, rousing again as we lagged, drifting into sleep and waking to join in, until finally we sang—hoarsely rasped—against the silence. I crawled past sleeping bodies, past the still, stiff form of the captain, and peered out from under the frozen canvas; from between black clouds, diamond white stars appeared fixed and unyielding while around them danced the gauzy wisps of the northern lights.
fourteen
When I awoke, I had an aggrieved sense that it was my due to rest until the sun returned, to sleep, to eat my fill. Instead we were pricked from sleep by the cold and roused from our lethargy by Griffin. He lit the lantern and Adney fired the stove. Soon the low, close air filled with the smell of tea. Architeuthis and Ash clambered out, letting in a blast of frigid air that nearly doused the stove and set off a brushfire of genial cursing. Despite the stove, a viscous, heavy cold had settled over us, pressing us beneath it and sliding into any gap or crease that we bared; when I sat up, it seemed to flood into my clothes, and I shuddered.
A night’s cramped breathing had already coated the underside of the boat with ice; drifting snow and frost sparkled from our clothing. Griffin barked orders, as if nothing unusual had passed the night before, and I strained to bring my mind to bear on him, but could not; his voice was like the shrilling of a locust. Tea was passed and it began to cut through my drowsing brain. We finished and passed back our mugs, waiting expectantly for the hoosh to follow.
“No hoosh,” said Griffin, his voice finally resolving into words. “We need to start
our rationing. One hoosh a day, and tea the rest.”
“But why not have it in the morning?” I asked plaintively. “We need it to work all day.”
“You’ve had tea. The hunger will keep you working. Hoosh at midday. Now let’s get moving.”
Grumbling, we gathered our gear and crawled out into the cold. Creely and West remained inside. Architeuthis and Ash returned as we stowed the gear and prepared to dismantle our shelter.
“Not so fast, boys,” said Ash.
Dr. Architeuthis approached the captain.
“Lots of ice movement during the storm,” he said. “It’s difficult to see where we came from, but the whole pack is in motion. It’s likely that the ship’s sunk but we should see if we can find Aziz or the dogs, or salvage something more from the wreckage. We can send some men to scout if you think it wise, but I believe we’d do better to insulate the boats as best we can. The entire pack will freeze solid soon enough and we’ll be able to walk to find the ship if she’s still up—and we still need to.”
“I see,” said Griffin. “Any sign of land?”
“None that we saw, but the islands can’t be more than about fifty miles to the north—”
Griffin waved him away.
“Captain, the Barrier is just to the north. It is certainly our best hope from here. You can’t think that we’ll go back south. We’ll never make it. The map clearly indicates—”
“The map has sunk our ship, sir; it has killed four of our men. It has deposited us on the ice in insufficient boats with less than three weeks of rations and fuel. I would suggest that the map has done enough for us already. We will move east onto firmer pack and out of these icebergs, and south from there to Lancaster Sound.” He glared at Dr. Architeuthis.
“But why south?” asked Adney. “If we are as close as the doctor says, why not continue north? We could be two days’ march from the islands—warm air, food—and instead we’re heading back into the ice. Even if we make the sound, it will be months until the whalers return.”