“When are we leaving?” Isaac Bond asked.
Erasmus reached over and rapped the spoon in exasperation. “Aren’t you curious? Aren’t any of you one bit curious as to how this got here?”
“We’re curious to know how we’re going to get home,” Barton DeSouza muttered. “And when.”
Later Ned, alone in the galley, wrote to a friend in the mountains of northern New York. Erasmus came in for some hot water just as Ned went out to relieve himself, and he leaned over the sheet of paper on the table.
Commander Voorhees is having a difficult time. Hard luck seems to plague him. Today I thought we’d discovered something important, but now it seems that the story the Esquimaux told us means little after all. One of the two ships sank, perhaps. But where are the men? Our men are all against the commander, even Captain Tyler, and it makes me sad to hear them talking as if the commander is a fool. The more the others say he is young and inexperienced and gullible, the more I like him for his enthusiasm. I think he’s only a few years older than me. But he’s the one who knew enough to press this Oonali, and so got him to reveal the story of Franklin’s ship. Perhaps this is all we can expect: it is ten years now since Franklin’s ships left England.
A good heart, Erasmus thought; Ned had come a long way from his first response to the story of Franklin, his loyalty to Zeke and their mission seeming to grow in inverse proportion to their luck. He was pleased to see Ned sticking close to Zeke over the next few days, while Zeke pored over his maps and fondled his new bow. The other men, during their hours off, wandered toward the Esquimaux camp in an ill-concealed search for feminine companionship.
Had it not been for this distraction, which Zeke seemed powerless to discourage, Erasmus wondered whether they could have prevented an open mutiny. The men wanted to leave at once: it was clear they couldn’t reach King William Land at this time of year, and that even if they did they’d find no ship. But Zeke wasn’t ready to leave. Again and again he told Erasmus he felt sure there must be other traces of the expedition, and although he had no clues he wouldn’t move. They were trapped, too, by Fletcher Lamb’s condition. On the night they returned from the Esquimaux camp he’d developed violent spasms, and a stiffness of the jaw that grew worse hourly.
“It’s lockjaw,” Dr. Boerhaave told Zeke. “There’s nothing I can do for him but try to keep him comfortable.”
The other men shunned their sick companion and returned from their forays bright-eyed and flushed. They’d hidden spirits, Erasmus guessed, which they were now sharing with their new friends. Robert Carey and Ivan Hruska, considerably inebriated, came to blows over the favors of one young woman. All Zeke did was to growl at Captain Tyler and order him to restrain his men.
Hourly Zeke, along with Dr. Boerhaave, visited Fletcher Lamb; when Fletcher died Zeke read the service over him and then crouched in the crow’s nest and wouldn’t come down. As if, Erasmus thought, he were watching over Fletcher’s grave. Thomas Forbes constructed a coffin, but the ground was stony and after hours with a pickaxe and shovels still the grave was not as deep as they would have liked and there were foxes everywhere. Ned set palm-sized pieces of flat stone around it, as if that boundary would shelter Fletcher’s bones.
NINE DAYS AFTER their first meeting, Barton DeSouza spotted a group of Esquimaux hunters returning to camp. Their dogs carried the meat, some with the front half of a caribou draped around them, ribs curving around the dogs’ backs; some pulling heaps of meat lashed to pairs of poles. Later two hunters came to the ship and invited the Narwhal’s crew to a feast. The Esquimaux were sick of them, Erasmus knew. The seamen were hunting their caribou, distracting their children, disappearing with their women; he was disgusted with them himself. Although he and Dr. Boerhaave never spoke of it, he thought the doctor shared his feelings. The men’s behavior made Erasmus restless and filled him with longings. When he retreated to the cabin, Zeke’s strange, sulky paralysis drove him away again. Although the hunters didn’t say it, Erasmus understood that they wished this to be a farewell feast. He hoped that Zeke would also see it that way.
Only Mr. Francis stayed behind to guard the brig. On the way to the feast the others chattered, carrying gifts of biscuits and tea and leaving a space around Zeke, who was silent even when Erasmus pointed out the lemmings slipping over the ground. Great kettles of food were stewing over fires as they arrived, but the atmosphere was strangely subdued with the hunters back in camp. Each hunter gathered his family about him, closely watching the Narwhal’s crew; the men’s easy camaraderie with the women and children vanished. Joe strummed his zither. A few men tried to dance but their feet stuttered under those watchful eyes; the Esquimaux wouldn’t dance at all and Joe soon fell silent.
Erasmus and his companions ate until they were full and then watched the Esquimaux continue eating. When they finished Joe, still trying to knit the two groups together, persuaded some of the hunters to demonstrate their skill with their bows. Their arrows flew into the distance, piercing with uncanny precision the sheets of paper Erasmus tore from Lavinia’s journal and offered as targets, but the only people smiling were the little boys who seized the targets as soon as the shooting was done. Once more they ran away, shredding the paper as they ran; once more, Erasmus saw, they clustered on the stone cairn and set the shreds flying in gusts of wind, as if trying to imitate insects or small white birds. While he pondered the children’s game, some of the women upended the cooking kettles and began scraping off the dense layers of soot. It was Ned who saw the first flash of copper.
“Look,” he said, pulling the bunch of twigs from a woman’s hands and scrubbing furiously. Metal, copper. Erasmus ran to the other kettles: copper, copper, copper. A film seemed to drop from his eyes, and he looked around and saw that the wooden tray on which some of the meat had lain could not have been made from any of the scrubby vegetation here; that in fact it resembled a part of a writing desk. Tent poles suddenly resembled oars, wooden spoons might have been shaped from gunwales, parts of spears and knives might have come from barrels.
“They’ve found a boat!” Zeke exulted. “These things come from a ship’s boat.” He seized Joe’s arm and said, “Tell them I know.”
“Know what?”
“Just tell them I know.”
As Joe translated, Zeke seized a copper pot in one hand and a stirring stick that might have been made from an ash oar in the other. A hush fell over the camp. Oonali stepped forward.
“These things are from a kabloona boat,” Zeke said. “Why didn’t you tell us before that you had found one?”
Oonali shrugged as Joe put Zeke’s questions to him. “You asked about ships,” he said through Joe. Joe looked mortified, as if he’d been the one caught lying. “And about the land across from the coast. Not a small boat found on an island.”
“What island?”
Oonali said something Joe couldn’t translate. After Zeke took out another of his maps, Oonali pressed his thumb down on a large island at the mouth of Back’s Great Fish River.
“Were there men?” Zeke said. “You told us we were the first white men you’d met.”
“I did not meet them,” Oonali said calmly. “They could not be met. They were dead.”
By now all the Esquimaux, and all the brig’s men, were pressed in a circle around Zeke and Oonali and Joe. Zeke offered axes, barrel staves, beads, and knives in return for any other items they might have picked up at the boat. In return for the story of how they’d found it.
Oonali said, “This happened some winters ago. On the island we found a wooden boat which was sheathed with this metal. Also the bodies of thirty or so men.”
There had been guns, Joe translated, just one or two, and a metal box with some papers in it, some clothes, some things they’d not known the names of. They had taken many of these things, guessing they’d someday find a use for them.
“Show me,” Zeke demanded. For a minute Erasmus thought all was lost. But Joe must have softened Zeke’s words and fra
med them courteously, because Oonali, after considering for a moment, spoke to the other Esquimaux gathered around. Some ducked into the tents, returning with full hands.
A prayer book, a treatise on steam engines, a snowshoe, and two pairs of scissors. More silver spoons and some forks. Dr. Boerhaave, holding out his hands, received a mahogany barometer case, and Erasmus’s hands filled with chisels and chain hooks and scraps of rope. Zeke stood open-mouthed, turning a broken handsaw end over end over end. “The boat?” he said. “Is the boat still where you found it?”
“We cut it up,” Oonali said. “It was of no use to those men. We cut it up and took all the wood and useful things. Some things we have cached at our other camps.”
“The bodies?” Zeke said.
“The sand has buried them. This was”—he paused to consult with two middle-aged men—“six winters ago. Or seven. We have visited this island since, and nothing is left of those men.”
Erasmus wrote down everything, piecing the story together as fast as he could scribble the words. Thirty men, at least one boat, a winter that might be either 1848 or 1849; an island some two hundred miles from the point at which Franklin’s ships had supposedly been beset. The men must have dragged the boat all that distance, perhaps on one of their sledges: and who were “they,” and had they been the only ones left? And how had they thought to get that boat up the river’s fierce rapids? In his rush Erasmus spotted his journal with caribou grease.
Someone sneezed, delicately; he looked up to see Oonali’s wife. The three young women who’d served him tea during his first visit had turned out to be Oonali’s daughters; this woman, their mother, had stood off to the side then, and he’d noticed her only when Joe pointed her out. She had a fine white scar running from the outside corner of her left eye into the hair at her temple, worn teeth, shy eyes. She was holding out something to him in her closed hand.
“For me?” he asked. But of course she couldn’t understand his words. She had her back to everyone else and her gesture was furtive. He tore off the last of his jacket buttons and offered it on his open palm. With one hand she scooped the button up, holding the other hand over his palm and then spreading her fingers. A scrap of dried and hardened leather, spiked through with bits of metal, dropped into his hand.
He thanked her, put down the scrap, and kept writing. Then a few minutes later thought to pick it up again. Once more that film seemed to drop from his eyes: part of a boot sole, he saw, the front part, from the toes to the ball of the foot. Seven short, wide-headed screws had been driven through it, from the inside out—a line of two, at the tips of the toes, then a line of three and another line of two. Wood screws, the sort one might use to fasten a cleat or an oarlock to a boat. The heads had been countersunk, set flush with the inner layer; the tips of the screws protruded perhaps a quarter of an inch.
Staring at those broken, rusted tips, Erasmus imagined the rest of the sole, the worn heel, the broken-down upper. The broken-down man who, trying to walk across the ice, perhaps pulling a sledge or a boat behind him, might have studded his shoes for a better grip. Without thinking he slipped the scrap into his jacket pocket.
Across from him Zeke purchased every item brought for his inspection, naming each so Erasmus could note it in his journal. A riot of objects, an orgy of objects. Dr. Boerhaave bent over a mildewed black notebook. When he opened it, Erasmus saw it was only a shell, two covers with just a few pages remaining, all the rest torn out. “It could have been someone’s journal,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “Even Franklin’s.” But the pages still caught in the binding were blank, and Erasmus saw where the rest had gone: little boys, given this as a toy, had ripped the sheets out one by one. What could have been the words of one of Franklin’s crew sent sailing on the breeze. He stared, then turned back to his own journal: tidy notes, long columns aligned. Everything listed except that bit of boot.
Finally, with everything piled and noted, Oonali said, “Perhaps you will return to your own place now. We have given you everything we have.”
“I would like to buy some of your dogs,” Zeke said. “All your dogs, if you’ll part with them.”
The land between here and the river was a soupy, pond-riddled, hazardous place, nearly impossible to cross at this time of year; Zeke, Erasmus saw, could only have one thing in mind. He meant, if he could obtain enough dogs, to stay here through the winter and then travel, if not to King William Land, then across the frozen strait to the island. For a moment Erasmus gave in to a vision: he and Zeke walking side by side into the Academy of Sciences, bearing these relics and full of stories. How much more glorious their entrance would be were they to say: We saw men from Franklin’s ships. We gave them proper burial.
“It is impossible,” Oonali said. “We need the dogs to carry our tents and other things. We leave tomorrow. Already we must begin packing.”
As if to demonstrate, a woman began piling skins and clothes on a dog. The dog grimaced and drooped his tail, then turned to bark at a raven stealing some bits of fat.
“Let me have just a dozen,” Zeke begged.
“Impossible,” Oonali said.
FOR ANOTHER DAY Zeke wrestled with himself, writing and writing in his black book, talking and talking to Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave, as he tried to figure out a way to explore more territory and find clearer signs of the lost expedition. The following morning he rose, stared at his coffee, and then said into the dim cabin, “He who does not see the hand of God in all this is blind.”
Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau exchanged a glance, as did Dr. Boerhaave and Erasmus. Zeke turned and faced into his bunk, his arms spread above his head and his hands grasping the supports. As he spoke he swayed slightly, leaning into the bunk and then back out, against the air, while a white figure barked at him from a tub of ice in the corner: the little white fox Ned had trapped, which Zeke had appropriated as a pet to replace his lost Wissy. She ate from Zeke’s plate; he had named her Sabine.
“I read the dogs’ death as a bad omen,” he said. “Or even an act of sabotage. Especially Wissy’s. But it was not, it was an illness pure and simple. That we could not penetrate Peel Sound, and that Bellot Strait was closed to us, also seemed to signal the failure of our expedition. Fletcher Lamb’s death, for which no one would have wished, delayed us when we might have departed. Yet in fact all these events have conspired to place us exactly here, at exactly this time, where we could meet precisely this group of Esquimaux. We are the favored ones. We’ve uncovered much more than did Dr. Rae. That we can’t pursue this further is a sign that what we’ve found is sufficient. More than sufficient. Through patience and persistence we’ve twice seen past the Esquimaux deceitfulness and uncovered the true story. I was tempted to winter here—but those men are dead, and we know where they died. We’ll leave as soon as we can ready the ship.”
The men cheered when Zeke announced his decision. Erasmus, listening to them bustle about as they prepared the Narwhal for the last leg of her voyage, considered their accomplishments. While they hadn’t seen either bodies or ships, their evidence was much more direct than Dr. Rae’s. They’d dined with people who’d seen bodies and carved up one of Franklin’s boats. They’d eaten soup with Franklin’s silver spoons and lost only a single member of their own crew. He looked forward to arriving home in triumph, bearing his neatly written journal in its green silk dress. After dusting the grease spots with salt, he wrote:
I try to set my feelings aside; I try to record here simply what I saw, what I heard, what has happened. But I admit I’ve found these days exciting. These are very different Esquimaux from the civilized tribes of southern Greenland. And it was thrilling to delve below their superficial deceit and uncover the crucial story about the boat. I feel as though my small role—keeping Zeke steady and providing a sympathetic ear, while maintaining all the scientific observations—has contributed much to our success. Is it ridiculous to hope I may return home as a sort of hero: the steady, older naturalist who has been of inestimable aid t
o the commander, and made all the important observations? Lavinia will be so proud of Zeke. Of us.
Although there was no possibility of sending letters for some weeks, Dr. Boerhaave wrote to his English friend Thomas Cholmondelay:
Do you remember the story I told you, about Mr. Thoreau’s pilgrimage to Fire Island and his attempt to gather up the relics of Margaret Fuller’s drowning? It sticks in my mind: how he found that shift with her initials embroidered on it; her husband’s coat, from which he took a button; her infant’s petticoat. The relics we’ve uncovered here—I append a list that will sadden your heart—put me in mind of that other shipwreck. There is something so terribly personal about these small objects.
We’ve had a death on our own ship as well: a pleasant young man named Fletcher Lamb, who succumbed to lockjaw after cutting himself with a razor. The smallest of accidents; it too meaningless in itself. Yet by that act our tiny crew is reduced by one. I kept him as comfortable as possible but could do nothing to avert the end. He died quietly, after having said his prayers and dictating a brief note of farewell to his mother and sisters. I’ve lost patients before, of course. But this death, so needless, hurt more than most. And it is disturbing that our commander reads into the delay caused by that death a form of divine intervention, which allowed us to make our discoveries. Are you well?
THEY SET SAIL on August 9. From the shrouds hung seven caribou, which, along with the clusters of birds suspended in the rigging, gave the Narwhal the appearance of a butcher shop under sail. Sabine, chained to her tub of ice beneath the dead wildlife, watched the bustle curiously.
“Don’t you think I’m doing well with her?” Zeke asked Erasmus. He slipped Sabine a morsel of bread, while Captain Tyler called out the sequence of orders that would set them moving again. “She was so shy when Ned brought her in, but I think she’s becoming quite civilized.”
She was half grown or perhaps a bit more, four pounds of energy with a coat resembling that of a fancy cat. As they began to move she stood and howled to her relatives back on shore.
Voyage of the Narwhal Page 10