Voyage of the Narwhal
Page 16
He lit a candle stub, revealing the men in the feeble light. Bundled up in their fur suits and further wrapped in buffalo robes, they were huddled against the rough plank walls, far too sick and worn for any prancing. They’d been telling stories instead, Erasmus guessed, reliving memories from what seemed like another life. Some had had adventures on Boothia, which Erasmus had envied even through his disapproval: I spent a night in a tent with a young widow; the breasts of mine were tattooed; mine was warm, warm, warm—Thomas Forbes, Sean Hamilton, Ivan Hruska. Erasmus moved among them, coming to rest against the stovepipe housing.
“We’re warming ourselves,” Barton said. “And celebrating the return of the sun.”
He held out a teacup with a broken handle, into which Erasmus peered. Water. He sipped, choked, sipped again: raw alcohol. Not Captain Tyler’s port, nor Zeke’s whiskey, nor Dr. Boerhaave’s medicinal Madeira or cognac, which were in any case kept carefully locked away. He looked at the faces, scabby and marked by scurvy spots, bleary-eyed, relaxed. “Where did you get this?”
Robert laughed so hard he fell against Ivan. “It’s what you put the fishes in!” he said. “The fishes and the little things you bring up from the seafloor.”
“I took it,” Sean admitted. “From the cabinet, last night.” He held up an old oil bottle, half full of Erasmus’s preserving alcohol.
“You drained it from my specimens?” Erasmus said. “Once you break the seals and drain off the alcohol the specimens are ruined, just ruined . . .”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Ned said. “Sean took one of the unused bottles of spirits.”
“Lucky me,” Erasmus said. He sipped again; the strong spirits burned the sores on his tongue.
“Lucky us, I’d say,” Barton added. “Who wants to drink essence of dead fish?”
The men writhed with stifled laughter. “This is so bad for you,” Erasmus said. “Never mind what Commander Voorhees would say if he caught you—alcohol only makes you feel warm, you’ll all get frostbite.” He took the candle from Ned and moved toward Ivan. “Let me see your hands and your face.”
Ivan pushed his hood back and held out his hands. His left little finger and the flesh below it were waxy white, and another dead-white patch shone beside his nose. Erasmus groaned. “Look at this.” He passed the candle to Sean. “Each of you look at your neighbor and see if anyone else has frozen spots.”
Only Isaac did, a patch at the base of one thumb. Erasmus told Ned to hold his hand over Isaac’s, while he placed his own on Ivan’s frozen flesh. Still they were all speaking quietly; and still everyone but him was sipping from the teacup and the bottle. “We must all go down now,” Erasmus said. “I’ll decide whether to tell Commander Voorhees about this in the morning.”
“It’s only a little celebration,” Ned said in his ear. “We have small enough chance for it . . .”
And this was true, Erasmus knew. The men were smiling; their quarrels forgotten, their bad humor gone. Was it so bad, what they’d done? He’d been unable to sleep himself, bored and cabin-sick below, and up here where the air was fresher and no one was fighting it was amazingly pleasant. He lifted his hands; Ivan’s frozen spots seemed to have thawed without damage.
“Couldn’t we stay a bit longer?” Barton wheedled. “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
He knew he shouldn’t; he knew he ought to order them below, or discipline them, or at least not condone what they were doing by his presence. But he felt as if he’d stepped outside time for a minute, as if all the pressures of the last few months had dropped away. He sat; he took the offered teacup. He listened without comment as the men mocked Zeke and his plans for sledge trips, and he told himself that by doing so he was letting them blow off steam. He felt warmer after the teacup passed his way. Ned sat beside him and spread a buffalo robe over both of them, so that his legs warmed and his face radiated against the cool air. Barton passed around some pemmican—where had he gotten this? It was hidden in the storehouse, deep in a cask, only for use on sledge trips—and Erasmus chewed dreamily.
The men spoke about other trips, whales and seals they’d taken, bad captains and good. Ned told about his travels in the Adirondack Mountains, and Barton about a trip to Portugal. It was cold, Erasmus knew it was cold, but he was warm and every time he meant to rise and lead them into the cabin someone was telling a story, which he didn’t want to interrupt. The candle burned out and they sat in darkness, listening to each other. Each, despite the shape of his story, saying the same thing: I am here. I am here, I am here.
When the hatch door popped open, the sound was as shocking as the lamplight flooding out. Zeke, showing first his hair and then his face and torso and legs, a rifle cradled in his arms, rose among them as if from a grave.
“What’s going on?” he said. “Visitors? Are there Esquimaux?” His yellow hair was matted with sleep; his jacket was open and his boots unlaced.
Erasmus stood, surprised at his own unsteadiness. “Everything’s fine,” he said soothingly. “None of the men could sleep, so they came up here where their talk wouldn’t disturb the rest of us. I woke a while ago and came up to make sure they were all right.”
Zeke held the lantern high, scanning Erasmus’s face; then he bent and swung it before the sitting men. Barton’s eyes were swollen, Sean’s cheeks were red, Ivan still had the bottle in his hand. “You’re drinking!” he said. “Without permission, in the middle of the night . . .” He spun toward Erasmus again. “Even you,” he said. “Even you.”
Erasmus was looking down at his boots when Zeke’s rifle, slashing horizontally through the air, caught him square in the gut. He fell against the rail, unable to catch his breath.
“What is wrong with you?” Zeke shouted. “I try and try to take care of you, to keep us all safe and in shape to accomplish something in the spring, and while I’m sleeping you sneak off like thieves. Wait until Captain Tyler sees this, what our laxity has come to . . .” He hurled himself back down the ladder and returned a minute later, even angrier.
“Mr. Francis is asleep at his post,” he said to Erasmus. “Or passed out; his breath stinks of wine. Captain Tyler is lying in his bunk in a drunken stupor and can’t even raise his head—was this your idea? Or did Tyler and Francis set out to corrupt you all? I knew they were drinking . . .”
“I,” Erasmus gasped, still unable to catch his breath. “I . . .”
“We had nothing to do with the captain,” Barton interrupted. “That’s the captain’s own supply, he only shares now and then . . .”
“You’re hateful,” Zeke said. “All of you. You can’t be trusted with anything, you have no pride, no discipline, no sense of esprit de corps.”
“It was the sun they were celebrating,” Erasmus said. “They shouldn’t have taken the alcohol but it was harmless, really, and I’d just about persuaded them to return to bed when you arrived.”
“You,” Zeke said.
He lowered himself a few steps down the ladder. “If I could I’d toss you all outside on the ice,” he said. “But that would make me a murderer. You’ll not see your beds for the remainder of the night, though. You like it so much up here, you stay here till breakfast.” He slammed the hatch cover behind him, bolting it from the inside.
The men laughed drunkenly, amused at Zeke’s display of temper and aware, Erasmus thought, of Zeke’s temporary powerlessness. Up here all the traditional punishments were useless. They were already on short rations, and Zeke couldn’t reduce them further without risking their lives; they couldn’t be set on the shore in solitude, or confined on the brig any more than they were; they couldn’t be mastheaded or set extra tasks outside: it was impossibly cold. They straddled such a fine line between life and death that they were, paradoxically, safe. Or so they seemed to think.
“We have four hours until breakfast,” Erasmus said. “And it’s well below freezing.” He clutched his tender middle with one hand. “We have to keep moving. ”
He made everyone rise. T
hey paced the deck in a languid oval, slowing as the liquor wore off and exhaustion overtook them. Barton dropped out of the line surreptitiously, propped himself against one of the lifeboats, and snoozed. Ivan kept walking but stopped swinging his arms; Sean lost a mitten. By the time the breakfast bell rang and Mr. Francis, sheepfaced and sullen, unbolted the hatch, they’d all been frostnipped: a heel, some fingers; lips, cheeks, a chin.
Later Zeke railed at them and then demanded that Erasmus turn over all his preserving alcohol, and Dr. Boerhaave all his medicinal brandy and Madeira. These he locked ostentatiously away. From Captain Tyler he demanded all his private supplies, but although the captain produced a half-case of port, no one but Zeke believed this was all he had.
“I’m sorry,” Erasmus said to Zeke: on the promenade, in the cabin, outside the latrine. Was Zeke going to hold a grudge forever?
Zeke gazed at him stonily. “You betrayed my trust.”
“I was trying to help you,” Erasmus said.
Still Zeke shunned him, speaking to him only when absolutely necessary. At night, inside the cabin, the air was hazed with tension. Joe, who’d slept through the disastrous party, pitched a caribou-skin tent beneath the plank housing and began sleeping there. Dr. Boerhaave began reading a chapter of David Copperfield out loud each night—a way, he told Erasmus, of binding everyone together and lightening the mood. But only Ned, ashamed of his role and frightened by Zeke’s frigid mood, joined Erasmus in apologizing outright.
TIRED, HUNGRY, SCURVY-ridden, they moved through March in a pale imitation of their old routine. The sun, now hanging a few degrees above the horizon and gilding the mountains, cheered them despite the continued cold. They ate pickled cabbage, hardtack, salt pork and beef; all their fresh meat was gone. Zeke continued to draw up plans for sledge trips and Ned, somewhat shamefaced, helped him, thawing casks of pemmican and repacking it into small bags. He no longer helped Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave with their work; Zeke kept him busy all the time, assisting with the meteorological records as well as the travel preparations.
One morning Zeke took Ned to determine the condition of the ice belt north of them. As soon as they left, the mood lightened on the brig. Joe trapped two foxes that afternoon, which Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave were helping him skin and butcher. Everyone was looking forward to dinner when Zeke and Ned returned, carrying with them a human skull.
“We found an Esquimaux grave,” Zeke said, resting the skull on the capstan like a prize. “Three mummified bodies wrapped in skins, and this—isn’t it something?”
Erasmus, easing a fox hide from its tricky attachment over the heel, looked at Dr. Boerhaave, who was blotting the blood. Only months ago, Zeke had refused to touch the graves of Franklin’s crew. Dr. Boerhaave, as if he heard what Erasmus was thinking, raised an eyebrow. Those had been the graves of Englishmen.
Joe stuck his knife into one of the fox haunches and examined the skull: brown, stained, old. “You broke open a grave?”
“It was already open,” Zeke said. “Some bears had pushed away the rocks at the foot.”
“And you moved the rest,” Joe said.
Zeke rested his hand on the skull, looking away from the fox parts. Yet he would eat with the rest of them, Erasmus knew. No matter how sharply he remembered Sabine. He would have to eat.
“We did,” Zeke said. “What was the harm in that? When we try out our sledges, I mean to bring one of those mummies back, for the museum at home.”
“It’s wrong,” Joe said. “The spirits of these people can’t rest if their graves are disturbed.”
Joe stared at Zeke and Zeke stared back, until Joe left the deck.
Ned picked up Joe’s knife and Joe’s task, trying to shape pieces that would be appetizing and not resemble fox. Afterward he stood silently at the stove, although he would rather have helped Erasmus prepare the skins. Sew up from the inside any bullet or knife holes, Erasmus had taught him. He’d made notes. Rub on the inside of the skin as much of the mixture of alum and arsenic as will stick there. Wrap a little oakum around the bones of each leg, to keep them away from the skin.
But Erasmus was working away without him, not even asking if he wanted to help. After supper, though, Erasmus joined him on his nightly walk to fetch clean ice from the Follies. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Erasmus said.
“Do you even know?” Ned asked.
“I know you’re trying to keep Commander Voorhees company,” Erasmus said. “Make him feel less isolated. He’s still angry at me, he won’t confide in me. I know you’re trying to take up the slack.”
“Something’s wrong with him,” Ned said. “He talked all day while we were out, he feels like everyone’s against him. Someone has to listen to him.”
They’d reached the first iceberg; together they began prying off chunks and heaving them into the washbasin. “My father got like this,” Ned said. “Living on dreams, cut off from everyone. Flailing out at anyone around the minute he was criticized.”
“It helps us all, what you do,” Erasmus said. “Whatever you can do to calm him.”
Ned made a face. Each time Ned did something like this, Erasmus realized, even a day’s walk with Zeke, he set himself off both from the other men and from Captain Tyler and the mates. Soon he’d be stranded. As they dragged the ice back to the brig, Erasmus reminded himself that he and Dr. Boerhaave must be particularly careful to include Ned in their activities.
Inside the cabin Captain Tyler, who used to sit almost on top of the stove, positioned halfway between the men and the officers, glanced slyly at Erasmus and shifted his stool all the way to the men’s side of the partitions. He’d been doing this for weeks: murmuring, murmuring—what was he saying?
“Can you hear him?” Erasmus whispered to Ned.
“I can’t,” Ned said. He packed the ice more tightly in the melting funnel. “He never does that when I’m in there.”
Erasmus strained his ears, pretending unconcern when Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau slipped through the gap as well. Zeke was pacing the promenade, guarding the brig against nothing and no one with his rifle in his arms—unaware, Erasmus thought, that his command was slipping away. There would be no sledge trips, Erasmus heard Captain Tyler telling the men. Was that what he heard? We’ll be out of here the instant the ice breaks up. Low laughter followed. Only when Dr. Boerhaave came in and said, “Are you feeling sick?” did Erasmus realize he was clutching his stomach.
Later, after everyone else had gone to bed, Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave sat at the cabin table by the sputtering light of a salt-pork lamp. They couldn’t talk about what was going on; anyone might be awake and listening.
“Try to do some work,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “You’ll feel better.”
For a second he rested his hand on Erasmus’s forearm. He was breathing slowly and deeply: in, out, in, out, looking into Erasmus’s eyes. Erasmus felt his own breathing steady into a rhythm that matched his friend’s. He took out his letter case and wrote to Copernicus about that skull, so delicate and troubling; halfway through, he found himself writing instead about Ned’s attempts to calm Zeke. Dr. Boerhaave opened his volume of Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Since Zeke’s punishment of the drinking men, he’d begun using his journal solely to record passages from his reading. Now he copied:
“But continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the after life of those who have traveled much is very pathetic. True and sincere traveling is no pastime, but it is as serious as the grave, or any part of the human journey, and it requires a long probation to be broken into it.”
He turned the journal so Erasmus could read what he’d written. “Thoreau gave me this copy himself,” he said. “He published it at his own expense.”
Erasmus, puzzled, said, “And you copy his words out because . . . ?”
BARTON COLLAPSED FIRST, then Ivan, then Isaac; Sean and Thomas were very weak and after Mr. Francis fell down the ladder, tearing a chunk of flesh from his knee, the wound refused to heal and he too was confined to bed. Those who could keep to their feet nursed the others, preparing and serving meals and emptying slops and laundering bandages, drawn together again by their common crisis. They weren’t starving, exactly: they still had food, although it was the wrong sort. Joe stalked a bear but lost it. There were walrus, he suspected, south of the brig, but as yet he’d seen none. He’d had no luck trapping since that anomalous pair of foxes.
Erasmus, moving among the sick as Dr. Boerhaave’s chief assistant, was shocked at how quickly Mr. Francis deteriorated. The wound bled, suppurated, refused to close, deepened; in a week the bone was exposed. Captain Tyler sat with him for hours, and Erasmus was touched by this kindness until the afternoon when, bending over Mr. Francis shortly after the captain left him, he smelled brandy and realized his stupor was not just the result of infection.
Outside, far from Zeke, Erasmus seized Captain Tyler by the arms and shook him. “What are you doing?” he said. “Drink yourself to death, for all I care—but how can you give that poor man spirits? It’s the worst thing for him, the very worst thing.”
Captain Tyler pulled away with a growl. “Lay hands on me again,” he said. “Touch me like that again and . . . Mr. Francis is a dead man. Why shouldn’t he have some comfort in his last days? Dr. Boerhaave spares the laudanum—for you, for his friends, we’re all going to die up here and he wants to make sure your last days are peaceful. The brandy eases my friend.”
Two days later Mr. Francis died in his sleep. Thomas was too sick to work, but Ned and Robert managed to put together a rough coffin. Captain Tyler, Mr. Tagliabeau, Erasmus, and Zeke carried the body to the storehouse, and Zeke read the service for the burial of the dead, although they couldn’t bury him. Later Erasmus, packing up Mr. Francis’s effects, looked briefly at his journal before handing it over to Zeke.