Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

With his thumb Oonali pressed the edge of the map, which showed the east coast of King William Land butted up against the border. He moved his thumb off the paper and a few inches into the air, where the west coast might have been had the map been larger, and the west coast charted.

“This is where the ship is sunk.”

“Sunk?” Zeke said.

Erasmus didn’t know whether to watch Oonali or Joe, whose face was so surprised that he could hardly form words.

“Underwater,” Joe translated. “Those Inuit, they did not at first take all the goods they found, but piled them on the deck to carry back later. Then they went hunting. The hunting was good that winter. When they returned the ice had begun to break up, and the ship was gone except for the tops of the three tall poles, which pierced the water. The things on the deck had disappeared. It is thought that taking the wood away from the wound in the side caused the water to pour in.”

“Is there anything left?” Zeke said. “Anything for us to see?”

“There is nothing,” Oonali said. “The men who told me this story, they took from the shores all the things that floated in. Nothing is left.”

THAT NIGHT, WHEN they returned to the Narwhal with their bow and arrows, the musk-ox bowls Dr. Boerhaave had traded for, and their precious silver spoon, Zeke gathered the entire crew and told them what he’d learned. He meant the men to be impressed, Erasmus thought, to be seized with the knowledge that they were close to the site where at least one of Franklin’s ships had been. But Scan Hamilton said, “This Oonali — he didn’t actually see the ship? And the ship is gone? And all we have to show for this story is a spoon?”

“The spoon has a crest on it,” Zeke said angrily. “We’ll undoubtedly be able to show exactly which of the officers it belonged to.”

Scan shrugged. “I don’t see how that’s more than what your Dr. Rae came home with. All this way, and you’ve got a story told by a lying Esquimau.”

“When are we leaving?” Isaac Bond asked.

Erasmus reached over and rapped the spoon in exasperation. “Aren’t you curious? Aren’t any of you one bit curious as to how this got here?”

“We’re curious to know how we’re going to get home,” Barton DeSouza muttered. “And when.”

Later Ned, alone in the galley, wrote to a friend in the mountains of northern New York. Erasmus came in for some hot water just as Ned went out to relieve himself, and he leaned over the sheet of paper on the table.

Commander Voorhees is having a difficult time. Hard luck seems to plague him. Today I thought we’d discovered something important, but now it seems that the story the Esquimaux told us means little after all. One of the two ships sanl{, perhaps. But where are the men? Our men are all against the commander, even Captain Tyler, and it maizes me sad to hear them talking as if the commander is a fool. The more the others say he is young and inexperienced and gullible, the more I like him for his enthusiasm. I thinly he’s only a few years older than me. But he’s the one who knew enough to press this Oonali, and so got him to reveal the story of Franklin’s ship. Perhaps this is all we can expect: it is ten years now since Franklin’s ships left England.

A good heart, Erasmus thought; Ned had come a long way from his first response to the story of Franklin, his loyalty to Zeke and their mission seeming to grow in inverse proportion to their luck. He was pleased to see Ned sticking close to Zeke over the next few days, while Zeke pored over his maps and fondled his new bow. The other men, during their hours off, wandered toward the Esquimaux camp in an ill-concealed search for feminine companionship.

Had it not been for this distraction, which Zeke seemed powerless to discourage, Erasmus wondered whether they could have prevented an open mutiny. The men wanted to leave at once: it was clear they couldn’t reach King William Land at this time of year, and that even if they did they’d find no ship. But Zeke wasn’t ready to leave. Again and again he told Erasmus he felt sure there must be other traces of the expedition, and although he had no clues he wouldn’t move. They were trapped, too, by Fletcher Lamb’s condition. On the night they returned from the Esquimaux camp he’d developed violent spasms, and a stiffness of the jaw that grew worse hourly.

“It’s lockjaw,” Dr. Boerhaave told Zeke. “There’s nothing I can do for him but try to keep him comfortable.”

The other men shunned their sick companion and returned from their forays bright-eyed and flushed. They’d hidden spirits, Erasmus guessed, which they were now sharing with their new friends. Robert Carey and Ivan Hruska, considerably inebriated, came to blows over the favors of one young woman. All Zeke did was to growl at Captain Tyler and order him to restrain his men.

Hourly Zeke, along with Dr. Boerhaave, visited Fletcher Lamb; when Fletcher died Zeke read the service over him and then crouched in the crow’s nest and wouldn’t come down. As if, Erasmus thought, he were watching over Fletcher’s grave. Thomas Forbes constructed a coffin, but the ground was stony and after hours with a pickaxe and shovels still the grave was not as deep as they would have liked and there were foxes everywhere. Ned set palm-sized pieces of flat stone around it, as if that boundary would shelter Fletcher’s bones.

NINE DAYS AFTER their first meeting, Barton DeSouza spotted a group of Esquimaux hunters returning to camp. Their dogs carried the meat, some with the front half of a caribou draped around them, ribs curving around the dogs’ backs; some pulling heaps of meat lashed to pairs of poles. Later two hunters came to the ship and invited the Narwhal’s crew to a feast. The Esquimaux were sick of them, Erasmus knew. The seamen were hunting their caribou, distracting their children, disappearing with their women; he was disgusted with them himself. Although he and Dr. Boerhaave never spoke of it, he thought the doctor shared his feelings. The men’s behavior made Erasmus restless and filled him with longings. When he retreated to the cabin, Zeke’s strange, sulky paralysis drove him away again. Although the hunters didn’t say it, Erasmus understood that they wished this to be a farewell feast. He hoped that Zeke would also see it that way.

Only Mr. Francis stayed behind to guard the brig. On the way to the feast the others chattered, carrying gifts of biscuits and tea and leaving a space around Zeke, who was silent even when Erasmus pointed out the lemmings slipping over the ground. Great kettles of food were stewing over fires as they arrived, but the atmosphere was strangely subdued with the hunters back in camp. Each hunter gathered his family about him, closely watching the Narwhal’s crew; the men’s easy camaraderie with the women and children vanished. Joe strummed his zither. A few men tried to dance but their feet stuttered under those watchful eyes; the Esquimaux wouldn’t dance at all and Joe soon fell silent.

Erasmus and his companions ate until they were full and then watched the Esquimaux continue eating. When they finished Joe, still trying to knit the two groups together, persuaded some of the hunters to demonstrate their skill with their bows. Their arrows flew into the distance, piercing with uncanny precision the sheets of paper Erasmus tore from Lavinia’s journal and offered as targets, but the only people smiling were the little boys who seized the targets as soon as the shooting was done. Once more they ran away, shredding the paper as they ran; once more, Erasmus saw, they clustered on the stone cairn and set the shreds flying in gusts of wind, as if trying to imitate insects or small white birds. While he pondered the children’s game, some of the women upended the cooking kettles and began scraping off the dense layers of soot. It was Ned who saw the first flash of copper.