by Killigrew
‘Bob Jameson was the first to lose his head. I think we all went a little bit crazy – who wouldn’t? – but Bob just lost his mind, lost it completely, started screaming his head off. First we tried to calm him down, then gave up and concentrated on trying to get that hatch cover up, though we knew it were hopeless. We thought he’d run out of breath sooner or later. But he didn’t. He just went on screaming, on and on, until finally Johnny Harper couldn’t take it any longer. I don’t know how he killed Bob; used his clasp-knife, I s’pose, for he was always handy with it. We could hear Bob gurgling as he died. And then it was just me, Alex and Johnny, trapped in there and one of us a murderer.
‘We were sitting up high on the barrels, our heads and shoulders against the deck head, trying to keep ourselves out of the water as it slowly rose around us. All we could hear was the groaning of the ship’s timbers – as you hear them groaning now – and the chattering of our teeth.
‘The end came sudden like. There was a crash, like being in a thunderclap, and gallons of cold water flooding through the holes. I thought I were a dead man. To this day I’m still not sure how I got out; the ship’s bottom seemed to fall away beneath me, and I were swimming in that icy water, drowning, and the next thing I knew t’others were hauling me out on to the ice. We never did find out what happened to Alex and Johnny, if they were crushed or drowned; we never even found their bodies.
‘We were only on the ice a few days. Then another whaler came by, the Norfolk. She picked us up, took us back to Stromness. I swore I’d never go to the Arctic again. So I signed on board HMS Dreadful and… well, you know the rest, sir.’
‘Why in the world didn’t you say something sooner?’ asked Killigrew. ‘If I’d known you had an experience like that in your past, I would never have pressed you to join us on this expedition.’
Ågård grinned ruefully. ‘Didn’t want you thinking I was funky, sir, did I? Besides, I thought if I could face the Arctic again, it would help me overcome the nightmares. Looks like I were wrong, don’t it?’
‘Mr Killigrew!’ a voice roared from the quarterdeck.
The four of them whirled from the bulwark to see Commander Pettifer striding towards them.
‘Mr Killigrew! What is that prisoner doing on the upper deck?’
The lieutenant had never seen the captain so angry. He kept his voice calm, hoping to calm Pettifer down by example. ‘I said he could come up for fresh air for ten minutes, sir.’
‘Did you, sir? Did you, by God?’
‘Yes, sir. He was in a state of some distress, as I can well understand after the story he’s just told me.’
‘I’m not interested in his tales, Mr Killigrew.’
Killigrew felt himself colouring. If Pettifer wanted to weigh him off for disobeying him that was his privilege, but he would have preferred it if the captain had done so in the privacy of his day-room. ‘Sir, if you’d only let me explain—’
‘And I’m not interested in your explanations!’ snarled Pettifer. ‘I gave explicit instructions that Ågård was to be kept in irons in the lazaretto. By ignoring those instructions you have defied me!’
‘My apologies, sir. I did not want to disturb you, but it was obvious that Ågård was very much in need of—’
‘I don’t care what Ågård was in need of! He was being punished!’
Killigrew could rein his temper in no longer. ‘For what, sir? For doing his job? For warning us against entering the ice? For being right, sir?’
He thought Pettifer was going to have a seizure. ‘Why… you… you impertinent damned pup, you! How dare you answer me back? How dare you! By God, I ought to—’
A crash like distant thunder cut him off. A deep, ominous rumble sounded off to starboard, and they all turned to stare across the ice. ‘What in God’s name was that?’ demanded Pettifer, pale-faced.
Ågård gestured helplessly. ‘The ice…’ A dubious note in his voice suggested they had heard something beyond even his experience.
Killigrew stared out across the pack, his eyes straining against the gathering gloom. He saw nothing at first, but then fancied he detected some movement amongst the floes at the edge of their visibility.
Soon there was no mistaking it: a shockwave passing through the ice like a ripple through a still pond, lifting up a broad band of floes as it passed. It was hurtling towards the Venturer at an appalling rate. Even as the wave passed through the pack, they could hear the floes squealing and crackling in protest. The floes were lifted up, thrust over one another as the shockwave forced them together, the whole pack surging towards the trapped ship.
‘Oh, dear God!’ moaned Ågård.
Killigrew felt he should do something – shout an order, call hands on deck – but it was impossible to see what could be done to avert the oncoming wave. He could not even guess what would happen when it reached them. Would it pass harmlessly beneath them, or crush the hull in the blink of an eye? Not that it mattered either way: it was only two hundred… a hundred and fifty… fifty yards away…
He grabbed hold of the bulwark. ‘Brace yourselves!’
The floes next to the hull were slammed against the side and a shudder ran through the whole ship. Pettifer and Strachan, who had been too slow to grab hold of anything, were thrown to the deck. Pushed by some unseen pressure far to the north, the floes just kept on coming, slithering over one another with eldritch screeches as they piled up against the Venturer’s starboard side. The timbers of the hull groaned dreadfully in protest at the vicelike tightening of the ice.
Chapter 9
Nipped!
The Venturer was tilted twenty degrees to port. Killigrew listened for the sound of splintering planks as the ice staved in the sides, but it never came. In the frightened silence that followed, the only sound that could be heard was the creaking of the ship’s timbers. Even Horatia had been stunned into silence by the shock. Killigrew could almost feel the immense pressure of the ice crushed against the side.
When the bitch started yapping somewhere below, the familiar sound was almost a relief. ‘Is everyone all right?’ asked Killigrew.
Phillips helped Pettifer to his feet; Strachan was left to fend for himself. ‘No bones broken here,’ he said, dusting himself down.
The groaning of the ship’s timbers, far from dying down, took on a more ominous tone. ‘She’s going to go!’ moaned Ågård.
‘She can’t!’ Pettifer protested, like a petulant child who had been promised a treat and then discovered his parents had lied to him. His face was as white as a sheet. ‘She’s built to take this kind of pressure!’
‘Not this kind of pressure, sir,’ said Killigrew. ‘Nothing could be built to withstand this kind of pressure. Unstead!’
‘Sir?’
‘Call all hands on deck.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Even as Killigrew gave the order, the first of the men came rushing up from the lower deck to find out what was going on, but Boatswain’s Mate Unstead blew into his call anyway, in case there were any slugabeds who underestimated the gravity of the situation.
Killigrew was not sure if the Germans on board would understand the boatswain’s pipes: the other hands would alert Sørensen, Kracht and Fischbein, but Ziegler and Bähr shared one cabin, while Ursula had another to herself. He was about to send Cavan below to fetch them when he saw Ziegler escorting Ursula out of the after hatch.
‘Where’s Bähr?’ he asked them.
‘He wasn’t in his cabin,’ said Ziegler.
‘Over there, sir.’ Ågård nodded towards the forecastle. Following the gesture, Killigrew was relieved to see the doctor had emerged from the fore hatch with Fischbein.
A look of panic crossed Ursula’s face, and she turned and went back down the after hatch.
‘Frau Weiss!’ Killigrew called after her. ‘Come back! Whatever you’ve forgotten, there isn’t time to…’
Ziegler started to follow her down, but Killigrew caught him by the arm. ‘Oh, no you don’t,
mein Herr! One of you below decks is more than enough for me to worry about. Wait here.’
He clattered down the companion ladder and caught up with Ursula halfway to the door to Pettifer’s quarters. Catching her by the arm, he whirled her back to face him. ‘What the devil d’you think you’re doing?’
She looked at him with fire blazing in her eyes. ‘Commander Pettifer’s dog!’
The door to Pettifer’s quarters opened and Orsini emerged with Horatia bundled in his arms; ironically, since the steward had been one of those most voluble in his protests to the lieutenant about the noise the dog made. Failing to appreciate that Orsini was trying to rescue her, Horatia writhed in his arms and tried to sink her jaws into his wrist, but the steward had enough experience of handling her to avoid being bitten.
‘Orsini will take care of her,’ Killigrew promised Ursula, pushing her towards the door at the other end of the corridor.
On the other side, she stopped and stared in amazement.
‘To your right, ma’am,’ said Killigrew, thinking she had become disorientated in her panic.
Then he saw it too, and gaped in horror.
Looking forward, they could see the deck bulging upwards as the ship’s sides were forced together by the ice. On the deck head above, the stout wooden beams bent upwards as if they were no more than bamboo canes. The creaking they made under the pressure was tremendous; it was a miracle they had not snapped already.
He opened the door to the companion way and thrust her through. ‘Up you go, ma’am.’
On deck, Cavan was already forming the men into their divisions: it was quicker to take a head count than to search the ship to make sure no one had been left behind. Killigrew guided Ursula towards Ziegler. ‘Look after her.’
‘I can look after myself,’ she retorted sharply, but went to stand with Ziegler nevertheless, staying out of the way of the other men on deck. Orsini came on deck and handed Horatia to a thankless Pettifer.
Killigrew took a head count of the men in his division. They were all there. ‘Cavan?’
‘All present and accounted for,’ returned the mate.
The boats were already stowed in their davits, ready to be lowered at a moment’s notice: they had been that way ever since the Venturer had rounded Cape Farewell at the southern tip of Greenland with the rest of the squadron, ready for an eventuality such as this. The men had had spare clothes stowed in bags on the upper deck ready for the same eventuality; now they had collected them, ready to leap for the ice if the worst came to the worst. Every man knew what to do: at Killigrew’s suggestion, Pettifer had drilled them all rigorously ready to do a ‘flit’.
And if the ship was crushed? What then? They would be stranded on the ice, over a thousand miles from civilisation. Only now, when it was too late, did Killigrew fully appreciate the folly of a ship sailing alone in the Arctic; but he had been swept up in Pettifer’s madness, deaf to the entreaties of Ågård and Yelverton, thinking only of Franklin and the North-West Passage.
He cast his eyes about the surrounding pack ice; a less inviting landscape he could not imagine. By some quirk of the pack’s crazy geometry, while the pressure built up against the Venturer’s sides a lead had cracked open in the ice about a cable’s length to the south west. But now, with the hull pinned between two floes, it might as well have been ten thousand miles away.
The ship’s timbers groaned piteously. ‘Do we jump yet, sir?’ asked Stoker Butterwick, a tall, spud-faced Geordie lad with lank black hair. He was none too bright, and easy prey for teasing of his shipmates, but his fellow stoker, Bob Gargrave, usually kept him out of trouble. Unlike the average stoker, Gargrave was a small, wiry man, but Killigrew had seen the little Geordie at work in the boiler room, making up in energy what he lacked in muscle.
‘Stow it, Jemmy!’ hissed Gargrave. ‘Mr Killigrew will give us the order when it’s time to jump. Ain’t that right, sir?’ he added to the lieutenant, tugging at the air where his forelock would have been if his hair had not habitually stuck up at all angles.
‘You jump when the bosun’s mates pipe you over the side,’ Killigrew told them.
The ship gave another groan. ‘Ready when you are, sir,’ said Molineaux, holding his call.
Killigrew turned to Pettifer. The captain stood at the bulwark, one hand gripping the upper strake so tightly his knuckles showed white in the moonlight, pounding it with his other fist and mumbling to himself.
‘Do we jump yet, sir?’ Killigrew prompted him.
Pettifer did not seem to hear him.
‘Sir?’
‘For God’s sake!’ exploded Ågård. ‘Let’s go now, while we still can.’
Pettifer whirled. ‘Pipe down, Ågård! I give the orders on this ship! We jump when I say so, not before!’
‘What the deuce is he waiting for?’ Cavan hissed out of the corner of his mouth at Killigrew.
Everyone was silent, watching the captain, waiting for the order and listening to the ominous creaking of the planks. Killigrew’s mouth was dry and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back, in spite of the bitter cold. Should he give the order? If he did, he had no doubt it would be obeyed. Pettifer would bawl him out, perhaps even have him placed under arrest pending a court martial – if his present frame of mind did not wear off – but better that than they all die needlessly when the ship was crushed in the ice.
Then the creaking stopped.
No one spoke, as if the slightest sound would be enough to set the ice off again. Even Horatia stopped barking, perhaps sensing something was wrong. The only sound was the soughing of the wind.
Killigrew exchanged nervous glances with Yelverton. ‘Now what?’ muttered the master.
‘Ågård?’
The ice quartermaster shrugged, as much at a loss as any of them.
Killigrew started to stride across the tilting deck to the bulwark, as if a glance over the side might tell him what was going on. Perhaps the pressure was easing off…
He was two steps from the bulwark when the whole ship seemed to rise up with a violent lurch.
The Venturer heeled over to port. Killigrew’s feet slipped out from beneath him on the icy deck and he landed painfully on his hip before slithering into the scuppers. He was aware of others flying around him, tumbling and sliding. The Venturer’s masts bent like saplings in a storm. The whole ship was heeled over at fifty degrees. Then the masts whipped back, lashing the air, and a couple of backstays snapped and cracked. Someone screamed and blood splashed across the deck.
Molineaux landed in the scuppers facing Killigrew. The two of them stared at one another, both of them wondering if these were their final moments before the Venturer was crushed in the ice. Then the ship gave another lurch and rolled sharply to starboard with an ugly scraping sound. Bodies slithered back to the opposite side of the deck. Killigrew had already caught hold of a lifeline and he clung there while Molineaux, wide-eyed, slipped past the helm to land against the provisions casks on the far side of the quarterdeck. Then Killigrew’s gauntlet gave up its imperfect grip on the rope and he too was sliding, falling. Something crashed painfully against his side and he found himself clinging to the binnacle, the whole deck canted over to starboard now. The deck pressed hard against Killigrew and his stomach gave a lurch. The ice that was piled up on either side of the gunwales seemed to disappear, and with a dizzy sensation he realised that the Venturer had been lifted clean out of the water and was rising up with the ice.
The dizzying ascent was brief. Then everything on deck was still, but to starboard the ice piled up rapidly, great floes rising on top of one another, their jagged edges lancing towards the sky until they towered over the deck, stacked so haphazardly they threatened to come crashing down at any second. The ice growled and crackled, and ice spicules rained down on them, blinding them. There was a final, terrible crash and then everything was deathly silent.
Killigrew clung to the binnacle and listened to his own heart pounding in his chest. Were they sa
fe? It was too much to hope for. He glanced down to where Ursula lay in Ziegler’s arms. She looked dazed but otherwise unhurt.
Killigrew stood up unsteadily on the icy, canted deck. A second later something split with a crack like a carronade. The Venturer gave another lurch. She pitched forwards and he was thrown violently against the capstan. He clung on for dear life, the breath smashed from his lungs. The bows descended sharply and then came to rest with a juddering crash. There was a sound of rending metal and then the whole ship slithered forwards, gaining momentum, until her bows splashed into water. His feet shot out from beneath him once more and he spun helplessly into the waist of the ship.
He lay there, gasping for breath, hardly able to believe he was still alive. Then he realised from the gentle, rocking motion of the deck that they were afloat once more. But for how much longer?
He caught hold of a pinrail and pulled himself to his feet. ‘Qualtrough?’
The ice quartermaster stood up unsteadily.
‘Get below. Find out if the hull’s been breached.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
As Qualtrough clumped down the companionway Killigrew looked about them. They were on a wide stretch of open water, in no immediate peril. Horatia resumed her howling.
Killigrew surveyed the chaos of the deck. Those who could were rising to their feet. Orsini clutched his arm and looked as if he was in pain. Leading Stoker Dawton lay face down on the deck in a pool of blood: when Killigrew and Molineaux turned him over they found his throat had been ripped out by one of the backstays which had parted and slashed across the deck.
Qualtrough came back on deck with Riggs, who was limping. ‘Damage report, Chips?’ asked Killigrew. Pettifer was standing nearby, but he looked so dazed and confused it was too much to expect him to take charge of things.
‘The timbers be cracked in a couple of places and they’m seeping, but we’ll be right enough, sir.’ The carpenter’s mate grinned. ‘Someone up there must like us.’
‘What about your leg?’
‘Must’ve twisted the ankle when we went over, sir.’