by Killigrew
A blizzard – surprisingly rare in the Arctic – blew outside, and the howling wind beat against the awning, flapping the wadding tilt noisily against the spars. Despite the best efforts to seal up the space below the awning, icy draughts still found a way through and Molineaux wished he was tucked up in his hammock on the mess deck like everyone else. With so many bodies stuffed into such a small space, it was nice and toasty down there at night.
‘What do you think, Wes?’ Endicott asked Molineaux. ‘Will they dig a fresh hole for him, or just drop him through the fire hole?’
Toying with his rosary, Walsh scowled. Johnno Smith had been one of his friends – as much as a seaman and a marine could be friends – and he did not appreciate the Liverpudlian’s levity on the subject. ‘I wish you’d shut your trap, Seth.’
‘They’ll bury him ashore, like those three coves that died at Beechey Island,’ guessed Molineaux. ‘I just hope we’re not the poor bastards that have to dig the grave in that hard, frozen soil.’
‘Reckon they’ll give him a headstone?’ wondered Endicott.
‘Aye,’ said Walsh. ‘And I know what they can write on it: “Able Seaman John Smith, born eighteen oh-two, died eighteen fifty-two. Served on board HMS Asia at the battle of Navarino. Awarded the General Service Medal and the China War medal. Devoted husband and father of three. Executed… for stealing dog food!” ’
‘All right, Walsh, keep your shirt on,’ said Molineaux. ‘The captain wasn’t to know he’d die.’
‘Thirty-six lashes for an auld feller like Johnno? He must’ve had a fairly good idea, so!’
‘It wisnae just dog food,’ said McLellan. ‘I heard it were hashed venison. That stuff costs two shillings a can!’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Endicott. ‘That dog eats better’n we do.’
McLellan sighed and stamped his feet to keep the circulation going. ‘This is a damned waste o’ time. I mean, what are we supposed to watch for? This is the middle o’ the Arctic, for Goad’s sake! Who’s going tae try tae sneak on board? Esquimauxs?’
‘Hey, if you don’t like it, complain to the Old Man,’ suggested Molineaux, wrapping his box-cloth jacket more tightly around him.
‘Maybe we’re not on guard to stop fellers from getting on,’ said Walsh. ‘Maybe we’re after stopping them from getting off.’
‘Yur, right,’ sneered Molineaux. ‘Like anyone in his right mind is going to desert while we’re in the middle of the Arctic.’
Footsteps sounded on the aft companionway and Horatia emerged from the hatch, pulling a tightly bundled figure on a leash. Molineaux was only able to recognise Cavan from the eyes that peeped out over his comforter in the shadows beneath a hat like a fur deerstalker with the ear flaps tied down.
Molineaux stood to attention. ‘Not taking her out for a walk in this weather are you, sir?’ he asked incredulously.
A smile crinkled the corner of Cavan’s eyes. ‘Captain’s orders, Molineaux. Horatia needs her exercise.’
Molineaux grinned back. ‘I wouldn’t send a dog out on a night like this. Maybe not even an officer. Why don’t you just give her a couple of turns around the deck, sir? We won’t tell, will we, lads?’
Endicott, McLellan and Walsh shook their heads.
‘That’s very kind of you, but orders are orders. Besides, I could do with some fresh air myself. It’s so stuffy down there.’
‘A little too fresh out for my liking, sir,’ said Molineaux, as Cavan took Horatia to the sealed opening in the awning. ‘Make sure you don’t wander past the perimeter, sir. You can barely see your hand in front of your face, and you wouldn’t have to go far to get lost.’
‘I know what I’m doing, Molineaux,’ Cavan said with all the confidence of youth.
‘And don’t stay out too long, sir. It’s cold out.’
‘You think this is cold? Ågård tells me it’s going to get much colder before the winter is out.’
Molineaux’s heart sank. ‘I didn’t think it could get colder than this.’ The last time he had looked at the thermometer it had registered twenty below zero, and it had grown colder since then.
Cavan nodded. ‘Ågård says it’s like the way the coldest hour is before the dawn. With the sun gone, the air just gets colder and colder until it comes back again.’
‘Well, don’t be too long, sir, all the same.’
‘Oh, stop fussing, for Heaven’s sake, Molineaux! You’re worse than my mama. I won’t be long. Just twice round the hull. That should be more than enough for both of us. Come along, Horatia.’ Cavan parted the flaps of the opening and slipped outside with the dachshund as a great gust of wind blew through with a flurry of thick snowflakes.
‘Oh, that’s just plummy, that is,’ McLellan grumbled, when Cavan had sealed up the flaps behind him. ‘I didna think there was any warm air in here, but I realise there must’ve been some, because it’s all gone noo.’
Outside they heard a cry and a thump: the now-familiar sound of someone slipping on the icy gangplank and coming to grief. Molineaux, Endicott, Walsh and McLellan cheered ironically.
A muffled growling sound came from close by and Endicott looked about in alarm. ‘What was that?’
‘My crammer,’ said Molineaux, and once again his stomach growled. He had known hunger in his childhood, but that had been a long time ago. Now they had been on six-upon-four for so long, he had forgotten what it was like not to be hungry all the time. Now he always felt tired and lackadaisical, and the morning run around the deck that he would normally have taken in his stride left him feeling totally drained. And he knew he was no worse off than anyone else on board. The constant cold and close confinement was making everyone fractious, and the permanent hunger only added to their irritability.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ said Walsh, voicing Molineaux’s own thoughts.
‘Maybe the cap’n’s right,’ said Molineaux. ‘Maybe we’ll be stuck here for five years. You’ll be glad enough the cap’n had the foresight to reduce our vittles then.’
‘We’ll be lucky to last one year at this rate, never mind five! What the hell are we doing here, Molineaux? Franklin’s dead, we’re never going to find him in all this; and as for the North-West Passage… even if there is one, no ship can get through with all the ice.’
‘Forget Franklin and the North-West Passage. Just think of that lovely double pay we’re getting for discovery service.’
‘We’ll never make it back to spend it on anything, if someone doesn’t do something about the captain.’
‘I’m sure Tom Tidley and the officers would welcome any suggestions you care to make to them.’
‘A bayonet up his backside, that’s what he needs,’ muttered Walsh.
‘Stow it, Walsh.’ Despite his sympathy with the marine’s sentiments, mutinous talk always made Molineaux feel nervous.
Orsini came on deck with five mugs on a tray; with his arm still in a sling, he had to balance the tray on one hand, but seemed to manage with his usual grace and élan. He took one mug to Yelverton, and carried the remaining four across to the four seamen. ‘Some hot cocoa, signores, with Signor Armitage’s compliments.’
‘God bless him,’ said Molineaux, as he and his three companions snatched the mugs from the tray. Walsh lifted his mug to his lips and cried out.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Orsini. ‘Too hot?’
Glaring at him, Walsh merely upended his mug and gave the base a solid whack with the heel of his left hand. The cocoa fell out in a perfect cylinder and hit the deck with a thump.
‘Now that’s what I call cold,’ said Molineaux.
Orsini looked puzzled. ‘I no understand. I bring the drinks up from the galley right away…’
‘You didn’t bring it up fast enough then, did you?’ said Walsh.
‘All right, Walsh, let him alone,’ said Molineaux. ‘It’s not his fault. Hot water freezes faster’n cold.’
‘I fetch you some more,’ offered Orsini, and scurried below deck once more.
All at once the dogs started howling. ‘What the devil’s got into them?’ demanded Walsh.
‘Maybe they’re hungry,’ suggested Endicott.
‘Tell ’em they ain’t alone,’ said Molineaux.
McLellan shook his head. ‘Something’s got them in a funk,’ he said, and crouched before the pens. ‘What’s up, boys?’ he asked, studying the dogs carefully as they paced up and down behind the wooden bars.
Terregannoeuck had warned Molineaux about something he called piblokto, a disease affecting dogs that manifested itself in restlessness, frothing at the mouth, convulsions, lockjaw and then death, when the helpless beast was torn apart by the rest of the pack. The restlessness was there right enough, but there could have been a hundred and one other reasons for that. Molineaux was wondering if he should send Endicott below to wake Terregannoeuck to see what he thought – if there was disease amongst the dogs they would have to be separated out as quickly as possible – when he heard a scratching sound at the awning behind him.
McLellan stood up and exchanged glances with Molineaux, Endicott and Walsh. Their faces were pale. The scratching – its movement visible through the wadding tilt at the opening – became more frantic, and they could hear the sound of whimpering and snuffling.
Molineaux crossed to the opening and was about to unfasten the flaps when Hughes laid a hand on his arm. ‘You don’t know what’s out there.’
The petty officer looked at him, and then opened the awning. At once Horatia scampered through in a flurry of snow, trailing her leash behind her. She scurried across the deck and curled up in a corner, whimpering.
‘Where the devil’s Mr Cavan?’ wondered Walsh.
Molineaux snatched up the nearest thing he could use as a weapon: a gaff hook. ‘Get Mr Killigrew, quick!’ he said, and then stepped out through the opening.
If it had been freezing beneath the awning, sheltered from the wind and warmed by the heat of the boilers and the men crammed on the mess deck, then outside – exposed to the full fury of the gusting blizzard – it was a hundred times worse. Molineaux was wearing about a dozen layers and the wind seemed to cut straight through them as if he was naked. It was as dark as hell and the snow seemed almost as thick in the air as it was on the ice.
‘Mr Cavan? Sir?’ Molineaux stood at the top of the gangplank and leaned into the howling wind, his voice drowned out by the mournful threnody. He could not even see the foot of the gangplank and doubted his voice would carry that far. A full orchestra could have been playing the finale from a Beethoven symphony down there for all he knew, and he would have been none the wiser. He realised that if he were to have a hope of finding Cavan he was going to have to go down there.
He took one step on to the gangplank and at once his feet shot away from beneath him. He landed painfully on his backside and dropped the gaff hook as he desperately scrabbled for a handhold. He slithered down and fetched up at the foot of the gangplank, dazed, sore and winded. No orchestra, and no Cavan either: just snow, ice and biting wind.
He picked himself up. Behind him, the Venturer was covered in a thick drift of snow, no more than a vague outline in all the whiteness. It had become so much a part of its surroundings, it was impossible to imagine it breaking free in the spring thaw and sailing back to England.
But there was no time to worry about that now. Mr Cavan was out there somewhere. Perhaps he was safe and sound and had only let Horatia get away from him, but some instinct told Molineaux otherwise. He crawled around in the snow until he found the gaff hook and then stood up, gripping it tightly.
Twice round the hull, Cavan had said. For all his youthful bravado, the mate was a sensible lad and would have done just that and no more. Molineaux started to make his way round the stern.
The wind was even stronger on the far side of the hull. Molineaux kept on calling out Cavan’s name but he began to suspect he was wasting his time. He could have passed within a couple of feet of the mate and neither of them would have realised it. He reached the bows and saw a light through the snow ahead of him, swaying back and forth, the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern picking out the swirling flakes. He waved his arms above his head.
‘Over here!’ he bawled.
Two tightly bundled figures stumbled out of the night: Killigrew with the bull’s-eye, and Walsh carrying his rifled musket, both of them heavily muffled.
‘Find anything?’ Killigrew yelled above the noise of the blizzard.
‘Can’t see a thing, sir!’
‘You should’ve brought one of these!’ Killigrew raised the bull’s-eye, and then lowered its beam to pick out the set of footprints he and Walsh had been following, already almost filled in by the snow. They followed the trail back the way Molineaux had come, Molineaux’s own prints occasionally crossing Cavan’s.
Killigrew shone the beam of his bull’s-eye a short distance ahead and it picked out something dark against the whiteness in the oval of light. All around, the snow was splashed crimson.
The three of them broke into a run.
‘Jaysus Christ!’ Walsh made the sign of the cross.
Molineaux had a strong stomach but, even so, he felt sick. What they had found might have been Cavan; but it could easily have been a beef carcass after all the best cuts had been carved off. The tattered, blood-soaked remnants of the mate’s uniform were scattered all around. Killigrew kneeled down and picked up something from the snow: Cavan’s epaulette.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ said Molineaux. ‘What could do that to a man?’
‘Nanuq.’
The three of them whirled. Molineaux hefted the gaff hook and Walsh raised the barrel of his musket. Terregannoeuck backed away, his harpoon in one hand and a bull’s-eye in the other.
They lowered their weapons again. ‘Jesus, Terry!’ protested Molineaux. ‘Don’t you know better than to go creeping up on a cove like that?’
‘Nanuq do this,’ said Terregannoeuck. He flashed the beam of his bull’s-eye over the snow and revealed some massive paw-prints in the snow, over a foot across. ‘Big one.’
* * *
‘“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the souls of our dear brothers here departed, we therefore commit their bodies to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and in certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, according to the might working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”’
Solemn-faced, Pettifer closed his prayer book. He looked awful: unshaven, white-faced and hollow-eyed. Shrouded in sacking, the body of Johnno Smith, and the last mortal remains of Mate Sebastian Cavan, were lowered into their respective graves on the rocky shore near where the Venturer was anchored in the ice. The graves were shallow: Stokers Butterwick and Gargrave had dug them, but the permafrost had defeated them less than two feet below the surface. The bodies would have to be heaped over with stones: the bigger the better, to stop any more bears from coming by and digging them up. Riggs had done both men proud, working all night to carve and inscribe two wooden headboards for the graves.
Pettifer read from the Bible: something entirely inappropriate from the Book of Revelation, but Killigrew was too distracted to pay much attention. The blizzard had died down during the night, giving way to a pale, thin sunlight that failed to warm the thickly bundled men who stood shivering on the rocky, ice-bound shore. It was too cold to stand around listening to the captain blethering on about the Whore of Babylon: ‘a measure of wheat for a penny, three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine!’
As the rest of the ship’s company folded their hands before them and gazed down in the gaping maws of the graves, Able Seaman Hughes started to sing ‘Faith’s Review and Expectation’: one of the tunes that the band had played as Sir Edward’s squadron sailed from Woolwich. Even then Killigrew had wondered at the potential irony of the line ‘I once was lost, but now am found’
; now it no longer even brought a smile to his lips. They could locate their position on the globe with sextant and chronometer, but it put them in a blank in the middle of the Arctic. The ice notwithstanding, Killigrew little doubted they could have found their way back to Beechey Island without those charts. But the ice was everything. It had closed in, sealing off Peel Sound, trapping the Venturer in its cove on the west side of Boothia.
Perhaps, somewhere not so very far away, a few survivors of the Franklin Expedition were still alive. Perhaps they too could pinpoint their location to within a minute of a degree; much good it could do them while they were trapped in the ice.
Ursula left Ziegler’s side and approached Pettifer, taking one of his massive paws in her tiny mittens. ‘On behalf of both myself and the men from the Carl Gustaf, Commander Pettifer, I should like to offer you our condolences. Herr Cavan’s death was a tragedy, but the kind of tragedy that is by no means unusual in the Arctic; and as for Seaman Smith, well… I am sure it was not your intention that his life should end this way, and that no one on board the Venturer feels his loss more keenly than yourself…’
Pettifer raised his face from the grave at his feet and turned slightly to look into her eyes. ‘You…’ he muttered, almost to himself.
‘I, Herr Kapitän?’
‘You killed them,’ said Pettifer. ‘Cavan, Smith, Dawton… it’s all your fault. Everything was going perfectly swimmingly until Mr Killigrew brought you on board. It’s true what the sailors say about women being bad luck. You’ve jinxed this ship, as surely as you jinxed the Carl Gustaf.’ He turned his back on her abruptly and set off back to the Venturer.
Killigrew remained as the others started to file back to the ship. He stared down at the limp, bloodstained sacking that lay in Cavan’s shallow pit. It was impossible to accept that the cheerful, carefree young mate had been reduced to nothing more than a mess of bone and gristle. Johnno Smith’s death was bad enough, but Killigrew had only known him a few months, and not very well at that. But he had known Cavan for seven years, ever since they had served together chasing slave traders on the Guinea Coast. He had watched him grow from a callow youth into a promising young officer: if Killigrew was any judge, he should have had a long and glittering career before him. Now it had been cut short, and by a passing polar bear of all things. What was he to say to Cavan’s parents when he got back to England?