“You think I didn’t try? I tried to tell him the night before we sailed. And he said, he said”—here Joe drew himself up and tucked in his chin—“‘I have always read that the Esquimaux pride themselves on their excellent memories, and the faithfulness of their storytelling. I think we may have absolute confidence in what we’ve been told.’ ”
With that Joe headed up to the crow’s nest, leaving Erasmus to ponder the eerie accuracy with which Joe had caught the inflections of Zeke’s voice.
Later, napping briefly, Erasmus dreamed that Joe had turned into an Esquimau boy, indistinguishable from the children at the hunting camp. Then he dreamed that he was himself a tiny boy, listening to his father read. Not far from the cave where the north wind rises live people who have a single eye centered in their foreheads. In Africa is a race who make in their bodies a poison deadly to snakes. On a mountain in India live men with dogs’ heads, who bark instead of talking. Near the source of the Ganges are mouthless people, who subsist on the odors they breathe; beyond them live pygmies in houses of feathers and eggshells.
He woke still within the enchanted circle of his father’s words, and then blinked to see where he was. What had his father meant to do, reading those tales to his small sons? He and his brothers had soaked up those words, which had lit their own experiments. Cutting open a little green snake, they’d been equally ready to see eggs or infant snakes or three-headed monsters. Try to see what you see, his father had said. Then integrate it with what you’ve already read and heard. Still Erasmus felt a kind of pity for him. At thirteen his father had gone to work in the firm his own father founded; after that he’d read in snatches, always standing at a printing press or setting type or inking it, lugging bales of paper or bundles of pages, always on the move and starved for time. Once he’d taken over the firm he’d been busy in other ways. I wanted things to be different for you boys, he’d said. For you not to have to work so hard. For you to be able to learn in peace, and travel wherever you wanted—especially after your mother died, I could never leave home for more than a few days.
How could Erasmus not be grateful for all he’d been given? The next morning he made what amends he could to Joe, offering the heap of little disks he found in the stomach of a bearded seal. “Specimens of the operculum from the large whelk snail,” he said.
Joe, who seemed to have recovered his good humor, examined them with interest and then butchered the carcass when Erasmus finished his dissection. Somewhere during those hours, both of them up to the elbows in blood, Erasmus said, “I’m sorry. You’re right—I should have been paying more attention. But what can we do about it now?”
“Nothing,” Joe said. “We must be thankful for what we did learn. And the Netsilik can be thankful that we’re gone; and I can be thankful that we didn’t do any more damage than we did.”
NOTHING SHONE SO brightly for Erasmus after that. It rained for three days, windy squalls that made work difficult and left him too much time to think about what Joe had said. Then Zeke appeared on deck one afternoon and asked the crew to report to him in the cabin after their evening meal. As Captain Tyler started to ask a question, Zeke said, “I would like to see all the officers together, now.”
They crowded around the cabin table in their usual formation: Zeke at one end, flanked by Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave; Mr. Tagliabeau and Mr. Francis and Captain Tyler clumped together, as separate from Zeke as was possible in such a tiny space; Sabine annoyingly underfoot. Zeke placed a sheet of paper on the table.
“I should have taken care of this before,” he said. The paper was densely written over, in his clear hand. “And I apologize for my tardiness. This is quite standard, something that most expedition leaders require their crews to sign, and I would appreciate it if you’d attend to it now.”
“May I?” Dr. Boerhaave said. Zeke nodded and pushed the paper over. Dr. Boerhaave read for a minute, before handing the document to Erasmus.
The undersigned accept Zechariah Voorhees as sole commander of this expedition, and pledge to aid him to achieve the goals of the expedition in every way possible, as deemed best by said Commander Voorhees.
The contract, stilted and formal, went on to state that, should something happen to Zeke, the expedition would then be under the shared command of Captain Tyler and Erasmus, with the captain responsible for the safe return of the ship, and Erasmus responsible for fulfilling the expedition’s goals. Erasmus had no quarrel with this: he was Zeke’s right hand and this seemed a simple formality. But a more disturbing paragraph followed, stating that all members of the crew—not exempting Erasmus, nor Dr. Boerhaave—promised to turn their journals and logs over to Zeke at the conclusion of the expedition, and further promised to refrain from lecturing or writing about their observations for a period of one year after the journey’s end.
Where had this come from? The blood hummed in Erasmus’s temples, and when Sabine draped herself over his instep he nudged her aside more sharply than he meant to. Zeke had been distant since Fletcher Lamb’s death but still Erasmus hadn’t sensed how far they’d drifted apart. They were meant to be brothers; who would impose on a brother like this? When he knew he could control his voice he passed the contract to Mr. Tagliabeau and said to Zeke, “I’m sorry to disagree with you, but I think this is outrageous. You never said a word of this to me before. You’re acting the way Wilkes did on the Exploring Expedition and I object to it, I object to it strongly . . .”
Zeke raised a hand to silence him. “It’s a formality,” he said. “But surely you can see the need to present our findings quickly, and in concert; not to contradict each other. Of course I’ll expect all of you to help with the initial announcement of what we’ve learned, and I would fully acknowledge any material I draw from your notebooks.”
Looking straight at Erasmus, and ignoring the whispers of the captain and the mates, Zeke said, “It’s to avoid what happened with Wilkes’s expedition that I do this. We must have no quarrels among ourselves, no results thrown into question by any appearance of disunity among us.”
“Why should Mr. Wells share command with me, in your absence?” Captain Tyler said angrily. “He knows nothing about this ship.”
“He shares my goals for the expedition,” Zeke said. “I must be sure that if something happened to me, someone would take charge of delivering the relics and our scientific observations. As well as safely delivering the ship and its men.”
Dr. Boerhaave, who’d said nothing yet, drew the paper from Captain Tyler’s hand, took the pen Zeke had prepared, and signed. Then he rose. “Of course I will assist you in any way I can,” he said. “As I have always done. But I’m offended that you feel a need for this. If you’ll excuse me.”
He nodded stiffly and went up on deck. Erasmus, left behind, stared at the paper that blocked his dream of lecturing by himself. But he’d be with Zeke, he thought. They’d be striding into the Academy of Sciences together—and already they were sharing the journal Lavinia had meant for Zeke. Their observations would be fused together, into a single narrative that Erasmus might write himself; Zeke disliked the act of composition and preferred to toss out broad ideas and let others shape them. This contract was the act of a young man, still nervous about his position. Surely Erasmus, so much older, could afford to give in here and work out the details later? Zeke would never prevent him writing a few articles purely about the natural history of the area, with no reference to Franklin or their Esquimaux companions.
“I won’t sign this,” Captain Tyler said. “In your absence, Mr. Tagliabeau would naturally be my second-in-command. Not Mr. Wells.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Zeke said. “But if you don’t sign, I’ll be forced to relieve you of command.”
Then everyone was shouting. In his awkward position, Erasmus felt he shouldn’t speak—but all this quarreling had the effect of diverting his attention away from the paragraphs about the journals, and to the question of the succession of command. Perhaps Zeke counted on thi
s. He wore down the captain, finally suggesting that the balance of the crew’s payment for the expedition, due on their return, might be withheld if he refused to sign.
Captain Tyler signed, and then Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau; they flung themselves up the ladder and Erasmus could hear shouting from the deck. The captain—who was he talking to?—said, “I would never have taken this command if there’d been anything better around. This is no fit job for a whaling skipper, this bobbing around the arctic . . .”
“And you?” Zeke said to Erasmus once they’d left. Sabine hopped into his lap. “My trusted friend?”
Erasmus signed and shook Zeke’s hand. When Zeke asked Erasmus to help him explain the contract to the men trickling into the cabin, Erasmus did that too. He inscribed the names of those who couldn’t write and showed them where to make their mark. Both Nils Jensen and Isaac Bond said, “But Captain Tyler would still be in charge, if something happened?”
“Absolutely,” Zeke said. “Nothing has changed.”
Ned, ever amiable, read and signed the contract himself without a murmur. Joe, the last to arrive, said, “I’ll want to make a report on the Netsilik to the Moravian missionaries in Greenland. Would that be permitted?”
“It wouldn’t go outside the church?”
“No. But they might want to establish a mission in the area at some point, and my observations could be of use to them.”
Zeke gave his permission, and Joe signed.
All throughout that evening, Sabine remained in Zeke’s lap with her delicate paws on the table, peering at the contract as if she were about to sign it herself. Now and then Zeke fed her morsels and then pointed out the neat way in which she wiped her lips.
“Isn’t she charming?” he said to Barton DeSouza, just as Erasmus was explaining the second paragraph of the contract. Barton looked disconcerted, the more so when Sabine turned, looked lovingly up into Zeke’s face, and barked.
On deck, in the shelter of one of the boats, Dr. Boerhaave stared for a long time at his journal but closed it without writing anything. Then he took out his letter case and wrote furiously to his friend William in Edinburgh:
I’ve enjoyed this expedition very much but am coming to despise our commander. He lives in a world of his own making, only aware of his own thoughts and fantasies: a boy still, for all his bulk and bluster. On Boothia, he could not see the Netsilik except as agents of his own glory, and although I tried to gather information about their customs I was never granted enough time to do so, nor to gather and prepare plant and animal specimens, and he has no appreciation for the fossils I gathered; and now this: all the notes I managed to take despite him are to be his, so that he may construct a narrative of the last days of Franklin and his men from the slight evidence he has gathered—which is slight, do not mistake this, I append a list of relics but in themselves they don’t tell us more than we knew before from Dr. Rae’s explorations and what we really learned, or might have learned, is something about this glorious place and its people, but he will make no use of that—a whole year. Of course he hasn’t the least understanding that priority is granted to the naming and description of new species not by their date of discovery but by the date of published description.
Erasmus, the following morning, made a note about a fish in his journal and then flipped through the pages, assessing his earlier entries. Had he been too personal? He drew some scales and listed the fish’s stomach contents but longed to describe how he felt. He began a long letter to Copernicus. It could not be sent; there was no way to send it, and no one to receive it; Copernicus was still out west somewhere, painting canyons and Indians. But Erasmus felt the bond between them, across the length and breadth of the continent, somehow strengthened by Zeke’s act.
ON AUGUST 20 they entered the waters of Baffin’s Bay. They’d planned to turn north and then east here, sailing around the upper edge of the pack and retracing the great arc back to Greenland, but Isaac Bond called down from the masthead and reported a ship. Zeke, the captain, and the mates took their turns with the glass: a large ship, they agreed, caught in the ice a few miles south of them, apparently abandoned and adrift. Zeke ordered the Narwhal brought as close to the ship as possible. The ice loomed before them like land.
“I can’t risk getting us caught in the pack,” Captain Tyler said. “Not this late in the season. And not when we’re so close to home.”
“It’s not your ship to risk,” Zeke said coolly. He pushed the spyglass toward the captain and pointed out the black hull marked with a band of white. “British naval vessels are all painted like that,” he said. “They’re impossible to tell apart from a distance. That could be the second of Franklin’s ships. The Esquimaux told us about one ship sinking. Only one.”
Captain Tyler scanned the distant ship. “If it were . . . but there’s so little chance of that. And you can see it’s deserted—why should we risk ourselves?”
“Because I tell you to,” Zeke said.
He turned his back and went below: as if a show of confidence that his orders would be followed would ensure that they were. Captain Tyler cracked his knuckles but worked the brig south through the ice, until they were finally blocked a few hundred feet from the other ship by a long, hummocked floe. The possibility that this was Franklin’s ship made Erasmus tremble with excitement. To his surprise, Zeke named as the boarding party only himself, Erasmus, Dr. Boerhaave, and Ned.
“I need everyone else on hand to work the brig, in case we’re nipped,” Zeke said.
“Take Forbes, at least,” Captain Tyler grumbled. “You may need a carpenter.”
“We’ll be fine,” Zeke said.
They lowered themselves to the ice, picked their way gingerly across the cracks, and approached the ship. Zeke said, “If this were the ship, one of the ships, if we were fated after all to find this final sign, it would be such excellent confirmation of what we’ve already learned . . .”
The ship was fast in the ice. Zeke shouted as they approached, but no one answered. As they clambered aboard Erasmus’s skin prickled, and he knew they all feared the same thing: that they’d find bodies inside, frozen or starved to death. The deck was in order, lines properly coiled and sails stowed, but empty of people.
Zeke pointed out the motto on the brass plate over the helm: England expects every man to do his duty. “Could it be the Erebus?” he said. “Or the Terror?”
As they descended into the cabin, Zeke was already talking about how they might free the ship and tow it home. Erasmus had to remind himself to breathe. If this were one of Franklin’s ships, if, if, if . . . already he could imagine the newspaper headlines. They entered the dark and musty cabin. In a writing desk, Dr. Boerhaave found the logbook. He lifted it; he blew off the dust. Erasmus stared at the fine black hairs on the back of his friend’s hands.
Dr. Boerhaave opened the book. “The Resolute,” he announced.
And there they were, in a cold, dark ship that for a minute was only a ship. Then it was something else, though still not glorious. They’d all heard about this ship; it belonged to Edward Belcher’s expedition, which had been frozen in during the winter of ’53 and ’54. Belcher, Erasmus knew, had abandoned his fleet that May, a thousand miles west of them. As he and Zeke were planning their own voyage, they’d heard the gossip about Belcher’s return to England on a rescue ship. He’d been court-martialed for his poor judgment, and barely acquitted; there’d been little reason to think his vessels wouldn’t be free come summer, and no one understood why he’d left them.
Zeke’s face sagged as they recollected the squalid story. They stood in one of Belcher’s ships, which had broken free and made the long journey eastward by itself. A discovery, but hardly an earthshaking one.
“Should we try to tow her out?” Erasmus asked.
“Let someone else salvage her,” Zeke said. “It’s not our job to repair that man’s mistakes.” He took the logbook but left the Resolute to continue drifting southward with the pack.
> Back across Lancaster Sound again, then along the coast of North Devon; Zeke sullen with the knowledge that their detour had come to nothing. From Jones Sound the water stretched east and north nearly free of ice, a sight that made everyone smile: all of them dreaming of home. Erasmus dreamed of his narrow bed in the Repository, his orderly specimen cases and shelves; of the cook bringing into his dining room a dish of roasted veal and glazed carrots. Dr. Boerhaave was looking forward to a trip to Boston; the men spoke of sweethearts and things they might buy with their wages; Captain Tyler said he missed his wife. Perhaps Zeke dreamed of Lavinia. Or perhaps he dreamed of other things.
IN PHILADELPHIA, WOMEN dreamed that the Narwhal was sailing toward them. Alexandra wrote:
Just another six or eight weeks, if all goes well. I thought I’d look forward to the end of this time, but in fact I’ll miss being here: a retreat from the noise and crowding of my family’s house. I’ve come to love my hours in the Repository and have grown very attached to Lavinia. We’ve completed the plates for the entomology book, but Linnaeus and Humboldt have no more hand-coloring work. They offered me a small stipend simply to continue as Lavinia’s companion, but I’ve persuaded them to let me—and Lavinia too, I said; she needs to stay occupied—take engraving lessons from one of their employees in lieu of a salary. I have a substantial nest egg in my sewing box now. What I need is a skill I may take with me when I leave. If this is the life I am to lead—here in this city, unattached, dependent on my brother—I must do what I can to make the best of it.
The brothers objected on the usual grounds but I cited the example of Thomas Say’s wife, Lucy. As their father helped arrange her election as the first woman member of the Academy of Sciences, this made them think. Lavinia made them look at Mrs. Hale’s book, which she brought back from town: “Women’s Record, or Sketches of All Distinguished Women from ‘The Beginning’ till A.D. 1850. Arranged in Four Eras. With Selections from Female Writers of Every Age.” I mean to be an advanced woman, she told her brothers. Like those women. Isn’t that what you want for me?
Voyage of the Narwhal Page 12