by Robert Edric
Several more bouts followed, most as brief and brutal as the first, some lasting for five or ten minutes, and one being concluded in a draw when, after twenty minutes, neither man was able to stand and continue.
Following this there was a long interval during which tea and food were served. It was by then ten o’clock and the sun was fully risen above the cliffs.
Surprised at the silver teapots and trays, and the fine quality of the china in which their refreshments were served, John Irving asked the governor how he had acquired them. At first the man was reluctant to answer, then waving his hand in the direction of the sea, he said, “The way we acquire most things in this starved place.”
Irving knew not to pursue the matter.
It would have been more conducive to informal conversation had the chairs been drawn into a group, but the governor insisted on them remaining in a line, keeping the sea and its breezes to their backs, as though by this simple expedient he might deny its presence.
Franklin was about to comment on this, when he was distracted by a group of men entering the ring carrying a strange wooden construction consisting of two poles lashed at one end, across which a short bar had been fastened. When positioned upright this looked like either the frame for a child’s swing or a crude and miniature gallows.
The governor asked if everyone had finished their drink. He became suddenly nervous and, watching him closely as he fussed among the men collecting the trays and crockery, Franklin felt a sudden chill. He saw Fitzjames signaling to him, but could not understand what he was trying to communicate.
In the crowd, men began to shout out; others started a low chant.
“Please, please,” the governor called to them, but with no success. He turned to Franklin and the others and shrugged apologetically.
At that moment, Reid leaned forward. “Sir John, Captain Crozier, do nothing. No interruptions.”
“What is it?” Crozier asked him. “Why has that flimsy contraption been thrown up before us?”
The governor put his hand on Franklin’s shoulder. “Sir John, I feel it is my duty to inform you that what you are about to see is the work of men from those vessels,” he motioned to the wrecks, “and surely by the most despicable among them. I am assured that no harm is to come to anyone, but nevertheless I have washed my hands of the whole affair. They insisted. When you did not arrive as expected several days ago, I felt certain the whole business would be over. But your delay in coming here …” He threw up his hands, absolving himself of any responsibility for what was about to happen.
“The thing is a gallows,” Crozier said suddenly. “A gallows, Sir John.”
“Mr. Crozier,” Reid said, his voice calm. “Let us be assured and wait to see what happens.” Of them all, he alone had noticed the suspicious and hostile glances from those among the crowd who had overheard them.
“He knows,” Crozier said, looking accusingly at Reid as he sat down.
“They are whalers, you have to understand,” the governor said, encouraged by support from this unexpected quarter.
“What they are has nothing to do with it,” Reid said.
“Of course,” the governor said. “I forgot.”
“What is it, James?” Fitzjames asked Reid when the others had looked away.
“I saw it once before. A dog had gone wild, killed two of its harness companions and then turned on its driver.”
Fitzjames considered this for a moment. “You mean they intend to hang a dog? To hang it here, on that device? A dog?” His disgust at the prospect was tempered by his relief.
The men in the ring formed themselves into a line, and as the surrounding crowd fell silent, their leader approached Franklin and Crozier. “I hope our sport today does not offend you, Sir John. We intend to hang a mad dog, not a working dog, but a scavenger from the settlement. It is customary that such animals be destroyed, and we intend to hang ours.” He deliberately avoided the eyes of the governor as he spoke. “I believe we have a fair case and hope you will stay to watch. It’s true we have saved the hanging for three days, but no one would think any the worse of you or your party if you chose not to witness it.” He paused and saw that no immediate objection was forthcoming. “Then let me make our case. I am Jacob Seeley, first mate of the Dotterel.”
Franklin was impressed by the speech, having expected some coarse and illogical explanation for what was about to happen.
“Seeley,” he repeated, recognizing the name.
“My brother Abraham is an able seaman aboard your own ship.”
“Of course. A good man.”
“And I wish it were me and not him who was going with you.”
“He is younger than you,” Franklin said, having formed a vague impression of the man, with whom he was as yet unfamiliar.
“This is his first voyage under cold-water colors.”
“Whereas you, I can see, are an old hand.” Franklin was more pleased than Jacob Seeley at the easy compliment, the connection made.
“My name was on the Admiralty list for when you next went.”
“Out of my hands, I’m afraid,” Franklin said.
“I know. I only hope that we now understand one another better.”
“Of course,” Franklin said, reassured even further.
Jacob Seeley turned away, acknowledging Reid and Hodgson as he did so. He called for one of the other men in the cleared circle to join him. The man approached and held out a bandaged hand for them to see.
“The dog,” Seeley said. The man removed his bloody dressing. Beneath it his hand was badly torn and swollen, the little finger bitten off completely.
“We were stacking ashore when the animal rushed at us and made off with a side of salted meat. My companion here was foolhardy enough to try and stop it. As you can see, he would have been wiser to let the meat go.”
“I assure you, the dog was not from the settlement,” the governor interrupted. “It lives out among the boats, fed and encouraged by the men out there.”
“Nevertheless,” Seeley went on, “you now understand our motives, Sir John.”
Franklin nodded. “My assistant surgeon.” He indicated Goodsir. “Perhaps when the proceedings here are completed …”
The injured man rewrapped his bandage and left them.
The dog was led forward by two men, each holding a rope attached to its neck, keeping it at a safe distance between them.
There was little ceremony to its hanging after such lengthy preliminaries. It was not a particularly large or ferocious-looking dog, and showed signs of the beatings and starvation it had endured over the previous days. One of its hind legs dragged uselessly along the ground and a long scar shone across its ribs. It made no attempt to escape from the men who held it. The two ropes were thrown over the crossbar and then pulled tight, dragging the dog forward until it stood directly beneath, its forelegs rigid. The proceedings were halted and words exchanged. Four men took hold of the ropes and drew in the remaining slack, forcing the animal to stand on its one good hind leg, its neck craned, its head up. At a shout from Jacob Seeley the four men pulled together, each of them calling out or grunting with the sudden exertion, and with that one pull the dog was raised to the top of the gallows, pedalling wildly until its neck broke, whereupon it fell suddenly limp, twisting and then shaking for a few seconds as its nerves received and then released the shock of its sudden death. It was inspected and lowered to the ground. The crowd cheered. A man approached and kicked the animal. It looked like nothing more than a dirty rag at his feet.
Looking up, Fitzjames saw that a small flock of expectant crows had gathered in the sky above, circling in the current of air rising off the cliff.
The dog was lifted by one of its paws and dragged away, its thin body contorting over the stony ground. Most of the crowd followed behind it, signaling the end of the proceedings. In the distance the small band had re-formed and was once again playing.
Despite the governor’s entreaties for them to remai
n longer, Franklin insisted it was necessary for himself and his officers to return to their ships, reassuring him that they would be back ashore the following day.
He led his party to the rise overlooking the beach, where he was cheered by the sight of the Erebus and the Terror, stark and impressive upon the clean bronze plane of the sea.
They were accompanied by the governor and his party back down to the water’s edge, where the Lutherans now stood among their waiting marines and inspected them in the same grim silence as though they were exhibits in a visiting fair.
Two days after their arrival three Eskimos climbed aboard the Erebus, one of whom spoke English, and who asked to see Reid. They waited at the rail as Reid was sent for. On the water below sat a dozen kayaks and two larger umiaks, filled mostly with women and children, and all of them silent and watching the men above.
Reid arrived with Fitzjames and greeted the Eskimo, the two of them holding each other in a clasp until the man finally stood back. Fitzjames envied the ice-master his easy familiarity with the natives, and the firm roots of his affection for them. He himself had had few dealings with them, and his knowledge of them was formed largely of other men’s tales, some apocryphal, some fantastic, and most tainted by ignorance and fear and contempt.
Reid introduced him to the man. “He lived in Dundee and Whitby,” Reid said.
“And two miserable Faeroe summers,” the man added, and laughed.
They were joined by Thomas Blanky, ice-master on the Terror, who came through the waiting boats calling to the individuals he recognized. He too was greeted by the man, and the two masters listened to his reports of the Middle Pack and the movement of spring storms in the bay.
Several of the waiting women then climbed aboard and traded small bone and obsidian carvings for pieces of cloth and other trinkets.
Goodsir appeared as the man with whom Reid had spoken was about to leave, and he persuaded him to wait a moment longer so that he might make a sketch of him. When he had finished the man climbed down to his canoe and paddled swiftly away, his companions following behind him, until one by one all the small craft were turned and moving across the bay, looking as light and precarious as surface-skimming insects.
“A perfect specimen,” Goodsir said to those who stood watching, holding out his sketch for them to see.
Only Fitzjames felt uncomfortable with the choice of words, but said nothing, and he too praised the drawing.
He knew of the Eskimos that they had once had cloven hooves instead of feet, and that beneath their mittens their hands were black. He knew that they believed all early Arctic explorers to have been women owing to the nature of their dress, and that they were captivated by music and thus afforded the means of their salvation. He knew that John Davis had sailed in these same waters with a four-piece orchestra on board to prove his peaceful intentions, and that Martin Frobisher had captured a man by the simple expedient of ringing a small bell until the curious native reached up to claim his prize and was hauled aboard. He knew too that the man had died soon after Frobisher’s return to England and that Frobisher had regretted the abduction for the rest of his life.
He had recently seen a portrait of that same native on the wall of Lord Haddington’s office when he was called there with Franklin and Crozier. In the picture the man stood erect with a dignified look on his face. He wore a fur suit embroidered with colored beads, and his hair was short and parted at the center. In one hand he held a limp white hare and a small bow, and in the other a plump leather pouch, from which shone the gleam of gold. Mirroring this in the background was the rigid fan of a rising sun, and around this on a perfect blue sea drifted the sculpted peaks and arches of impossible bergs. The man’s features were more Asiatic than Eskimo, Frobisher’s irrefutable evidence that he had at last located a waterway leading directly to the even greater blinding glow of Cathay.
There were more recent tales, too: the tale, for instance, of Parry’s carpenter fitting a wooden peg to an Eskimo he encountered who had lost his leg, and then meeting the man’s daughter years later to discover that her father was dead and that she carried the stump with her everywhere she went, convinced that his spirit still lived within it.
TWO
The small steamboat approached the shore and the governor’s man cut the engine. Its noise faded in a long, faltering rasp just as the mound of Lively appeared. Behind them lay a thin unbroken ribbon of black over the open water. Ahead, the governor and his officials awaited them on the shore, much as they had awaited them in the settlement four days earlier, and beyond this welcoming party the lights of a single large building were visible against the darkness of the land.
Reid was the first to leap overboard, followed by Fitzjames.
“Please, please, wait for my man,” came a voice from the shore, stopping them both. It was the governor, his hands cupped to his mouth.
They turned to the man at the tiller, who had said nothing to any of them throughout their hour-long journey. He was a half-breed, Eskimo mother, white father. He left the tiller and came forward to cast out a rope to Reid and Fitzjames. He then leapt down himself, using his broad back to brace the impact of the boat upon the shore.
“Our thanks,” Fitzjames said to him, stamping the water from his boots.
The man glanced at him, but still said nothing. His eyes seemed sunk beneath his brow, his eyelids hooded, so that most of the time he gave the impression of having them closed.
“Make way for an officer and a gentleman,” Harry Goodsir shouted, jumping down, joined then by Vesconte and Gore, by Little, Irving and Hodgson, and finally by Surgeon Stanley and Walter Fairholme, leaving only Franklin and Crozier sitting in the beached steamer.
“Hard to say which of them enjoys his entrance the most,” Goodsir whispered to Fitzjames.
“Oh, our man Francis Rawdon Moira,” Edward Little answered beneath his breath. “He’d been waiting in his uniform a full two hours before our Charon here called for us.”
Only Fitzjames glanced at the mute navigator to see if he had overheard or understood the remark, but the man was now at some distance from them, pulling tight the rope he had looped through an iron ring in the beach. Fitzjames watched as he completed this task and then approached the governor, as though awaiting further instructions. He saw the governor deftly flick him on the chest with the white gloves he held.
Whereas his officials again wore gray or brown suits with their hats in their hands, looking like a party of nervous clerks about to be presented to a feared employer, the governor himself wore a tunic covered from throat to hem with an impressive pattern of embroidery and ribbons, and he carried a plumed helmet which, at that distance, looked like a hen cradled in his arm.
“My nation salutes your nation,” he said loudly. “One proud seafaring country to another.”
“Again,” Gore whispered to those around him.
“I thank you,” Franklin said, stepping forward to shake his hand. One of the officials carried a tray upon which stood a dozen glasses, and at a signal from the governor the man came forward.
“A toast to your enterprise,” the governor said, taking two of the glasses and handing one each to Franklin and Crozier. “May it achieve the glory and the riches it so justly deserves. I trust my man made a swift and safe voyage with you.”
“Excellent,” Crozier said.
“Yes. Most trustworthy. Half-breed, you will have realized, but a trustworthy one.”
“He said very little for himself.”
The governor laughed. “He said nothing, Captain Crozier. His tongue was cut out when he was four years old. Some say by his own father so that his identity might never be revealed. Some say by his mother for the very same reason. She too is in my employ. Please, follow me.” His officials parted and he passed through them, climbing the beach to his brightly lit house.
The others walked with their glasses. George Hodgson was the first to comment on the clear and bitter liquid, declaring that he had rubbed
better tasting spirit on an injured horse. Others who could not stomach the drink tipped it surreptitiously on to the beach. Only the teetotal Reid handed back his full glass without any apology for its untouched contents.
They arrived at an arch formed by the bleached jawbone of a whale, beneath which even the tallest of them was able to pass without stooping. Several similar structures stood beyond it, forming an open corridor to the house. The most impressive of these, newly painted white, was fixed to the front wall around the main entrance.
“My little folly,” the governor explained, but in a voice which suggested it was considerably more. “The wild men build their own shelters out of the rib bones and so I copied their example. Nothing quite so animal in nature, as you see, but in keeping with tradition, I think you will agree.”
All those called upon to admire these simple structure did so.
It was early evening, and although the light would not fade until eleven, there was a chill in the island air, and the governor urged them to enter.
Inside, the house was dominated by a single large room, at either end of which stood a stone fireplace. Several portraits hung from the walls, interspersed with framed certificates and trading decrees, many illegible in the poor light. A table was laid along the center of the room, upon which stood several candelabra. It was an impressive arrangement. Crockery, cutlery and glassware surrounded each setting, and bowls of fruit and decanters were set out along the center of the table.
“Just because we are far from home does not mean we should deprive ourselves of some home comforts. Indeed, gentlemen, I wager you yourselves have aboard your vessels the ingredients of a feast twice as grand. In preparation for celebration, perhaps.”
There had so far been no suggestion from either Franklin or Crozier of a reciprocal invitation for the governor to dine aboard the Erebus or Terror.