Ian McGuire - The North Water

As he speaks, a jury-rigged blubber lamp is still burning at the center of the tent. A curlicue of black smoke twists up from it and meltwater drips off the canvas where the heat has risen and touched the half-inch inner layer of ice.

“Let us not give in to evil,” Otto continues, “but give us faith in the workings of Your Providence even in this time of our confusion and suffering. Let us remember that Your Love created this world and Your Love sustains it still at every moment.”

Webster the blacksmith coughs loudly, then leans his head out of the tent and spits into the snow. McKendrick, who is on his knees and trembling, begins to weep softly and so does the cook and one of the Shetlanders. Sumner, who is light-headed and nauseous from a combination of fear and hunger, tries to concentrate on the question of the manacles. Since Drax could not have committed three murders with his wrists and ankles chained together, he must have freed himself beforehand, he thinks, but how could he do so? Did the Yaks assist him? Did Cavendish? Why would anyone wish to help a man like Drax escape? And if they did help him, why did they all three end up dead?

“Guard and direct the spirits of those who have just died,” Otto says. “Protect them as they travel through the other realms of time and space. And help us remember always that we are a part of Your greater mystery, that You are never absent, that even if we fail to see You, or if we mistake Your presence for some other lesser thing, You are still there with us. Thank you, Lord, Amen.”

The amens come back to him in ragged, grumbling chorus. Otto opens his eyes and looks about as though surprised at where he finds himself. He suggests they sing a hymn, but before he can begin, he is interrupted by Webster. The blacksmith appears angry. His dark eyes are filled with a bitter eagerness.

“We’ve had the Devil hisself living here amongst us,” he shouts out. “The Devil hisself. I seen his footprints out there in the snow just now. The cloven hoof, the mark of Satan. I seen it clear as day.”

“I seen it too,” McKendrick says. “Like the tracks of a pig or a goat, ’cept there int no pigs or goats alive in this forsaken hole.”

“There were no such tracks,” Otto says, “no marks at all except those left by the dogs. The only Devil is the one inside ourselves. Evil is a turning away from good.”

Webster shakes his head.

“That Drax is Satan taken on a fleshly form,” he says. “He int human like you or me, he just looks that way when he chooses to.”

“Henry Drax is not the Devil,” Otto tells him patiently, as if correcting an elementary confusion. “He’s a tormented spirit. I’ve seen him in my dreams. I’ve spoken to him there many times.”

“There’s three dead men outside I’d weigh against your fucking dreaming,” Webster says.

“Whatever he may be, he’s gone now,” Otto says.

“Aye, but where is he gone to? And who says he won’t be coming back betimes?”

Otto shakes his head.

“He won’t come back here. Why would he?”

“The Devil does as he wishes to,” Webster says. “He pleases hisself, I’d say.”

The possibility of Drax’s return sets the men into a hubbub. Otto tries to quiet them, but they ignore him.

“We have to leave this place,” Webster tells them all. “We can find the Yaks’ camp and they can take us down to the Yankee whaling station on Blacklead Island. We’ll be safe there.”

“You don’t know where the Yak camp is or how far distant,” Otto says.

“It’s away off to the west somewhere. If we follow the shoreline, we’ll find it soon enough.”

“You’ll die before you get there. You’ll freeze to death for sure.”

“I’ve had about my fill of taking other men’s advisements,” Webster says. “We followed orders since we left from Hull, and it’s that has brought us to this sorry fucking pass.”

Otto looks to Sumner, and Sumner thinks a moment.

“You’ll have no tent,” he tells him, “no furs or skins to wear. There are no roads or tracks of any kind here, no landmarks any of us recognize, so even if the camp is close you may not find it ever. You might survive one night out in the open air, but for sure you won’t survive two.”

“Those as want to stay in this accursed place can stay,” Webster says. “But I int staying an hour longer here.”

He stands up and starts gathering together his possessions. His face is stiff and pale, his movements jerky and enraged. The others sit and watch him, then McKendrick, the cook, and the Shetlander stand up too. McKendrick’s sunken cheeks are still wet with tears. He has open sores on his face and neck from his time down in the hold. The cook is shivering like an animal in distress. Otto tells them to delay, to eat dinner in the tent tonight and then leave at first light if they must, but they take no notice. When he presses them, they raise their fists against him and Webster pledges he will knock down any man who seeks to stand in their way.

The four men depart shortly afterwards, without ceremony or extended farewell. Sumner gives them each their share of the frozen seal meat, and Otto hands Webster a rifle and a handful of cartridges. They shake hands quickly but neither party attempts to speak or soften the dread implications of their leaving. As they watch them walk away, their dark outlines shrinking into the general blankness, Sumner turns to Otto.

“If Henry Drax isn’t the Devil, I can’t claim to know just what he is. If there’s a word been coined for a man like him, I don’t believe I’ve learned it.”

“Nor will you learn it,” Otto says, “not from any human book, at least. A fellow like him won’t be caged in or fixed by words.”

“By what then?”

“Faith alone.”

Sumner shakes his head and laughs unhappily.

“You dreamt we’d die, and now it’s coming true,” he says. “It’s getting colder every day, and we have three weeks’ food at most and no hope of help or rescue. Those four bastards just gone are good as dead already.”

“Miracles occur. If great evil exists, why not great good the same?”

“Signs and fucking wonders,” Sumner says. “Is that the best that you can offer me?”

“I don’t offer you anything at all,” Otto answers calmly. “It’s not in my power to do so.”

Sumner shakes his head again. The three remaining men have retreated into the tent for warmth. It is too cold to linger outside for long, but he cannot bear the thought of returning to their dreary, hopeless company, so instead he sets off walking east, past Cavendish’s new-dug grave and out onto the frozen bay. The sea ice has been cracked by winds, buckled, and then refrozen into a rubbled landscape of crazed and tilted blocks fissured and motionless. Black mountains, gargantuan and sumptuous, rise off in the distance. The dangling sky is the color of milky quartz. He walks until he is breathless and his face and feet are numb, and then turns about. The wind is blowing against him as he begins to walk back. He feels it seeping through his layers of clothing, nudging and chilling his chest, groin, and thighs. He thinks of Webster and the others walking west and feels suddenly sickened and wretched at his core. He stops, groans, then leans over and vomits out gobbets of half-digested seal meat onto the frozen snow beneath. He feels a sharp pain like a lance jabbing in his stomach and releases an involuntary squirt of shit into his trousers. For a moment, he cannot breathe at all. He closes his eyes and waits, and the feeling passes. The sweat is frozen on his brow, and his beard is hard now with saliva and bile and fragments of tooth-ground meat. He looks up at the snow-packed sky and opens wide his mouth, but no sounds or words come out of it, and, after a short while longer, he closes it again and walks on silently.