Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“I won’t sign this,” Captain Tyler said. “In your absence, Mr. Tagliabeau would naturally be my second-in-command. Not Mr. Wells.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Zeke said. “But if you don’t sign, I’ll be forced to relieve you of command.”

Then everyone was shouting. In his awkward position, Erasmus felt he shouldn’t speak — but all this quarreling had the effect of diverting his attention away from the paragraphs about the journals, and to the question of the succession of command. Perhaps Zeke counted on this. He wore down the captain, finally suggesting that the balance of the crew’s payment for the expedition, due on their return, might be withheld if he refused to sign.

Captain Tyler signed, and then Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau; they flung themselves up the ladder and Erasmus could hear shouting from the deck. The captain — who was he talking to? — said, “I would never have taken this command if there’d been anything better around. This is no fit job for a whaling skipper, this bobbing around the arctic…”

“And you?” Zeke said to Erasmus once they’d left. Sabine hopped into his lap. “My trusted friend?”

Erasmus signed and shook Zeke’s hand. When Zeke asked Erasmus to help him explain the contract to the men trickling into the cabin, Erasmus did that too. He inscribed the names of those who couldn’t write and showed them where to make their mark. Both Nils Jensen and Isaac Bond said, “But Captain Tyler would still be in charge, if something happened?”

“Absolutely,” Zeke said. “Nothing has changed.”

Ned, ever amiable, read and signed the contract himself without a murmur. Joe, the last to arrive, said, “I’ll want to make a report on the Netsilik to the Moravian missionaries in Greenland. Would that be permitted?”

“It wouldn’t go outside the church?”

“No. But they might want to establish a mission in the area at some point, and my observations could be of use to them.”

Zeke gave his permission, and Joe signed.

All throughout that evening, Sabine remained in Zeke’s lap with her delicate paws on the table, peering at the contract as if she were about to sign it herself. Now and then Zeke fed her morsels and then pointed out the neat way in which she wiped her lips.

“Isn’t she charming?” he said to Barton DeSouza, just as Erasmus was explaining the second paragraph of the contract. Barton looked disconcerted, the more so when Sabine turned, looked lovingly up into Zeke’s face, and barked.

On deck, in the shelter of one of the boats, Dr. Boerhaave stared for a long time at his journal but closed it without writing anything. Then he took out his letter case and wrote furiously to his friend William in Edinburgh:

I’ve enjoyed this expedition very much but am coming to despise our commander. He lives in a world of his own making, only aware of his own thoughts and fantasies: a boy still, for all his bulk and bluster. On Boothia, he could not see the Netsilik except as agents of his own glory, and although I tried to gather information about their customs I was never granted enough time to do so, nor to gather and prepare plant and animal specimens, and he has no appreciation for the fossils I gathered; and now this: all the notes I managed to take despite him are to be his, so that he may construct a narrative of the last days of Franklin and his men from the slight evidence he has gathered — which is slight, do not mistake this, I append a list of relics but in themselves they don’t tell us more than we knew before from Dr. Rae’s explorations and what we really learned, or might have learned, is something about this glorious place and its people, but he will make no use of that — a whole year. Of course he hasn’t the least understanding that priority is granted to the naming and description of new species not by their date of discovery but by the date of published description.

Erasmus, the following morning, made a note about a fish in his journal and then flipped through the pages, assessing his earlier entries. Had he been too personal? He drew some scales and listed the fish’s stomach contents but longed to describe how he felt. He began a long letter to Copernicus. It could not be sent; there was no way to send it, and no one to receive it; Copernicus was still out west somewhere, painting canyons and Indians. But Erasmus felt the bond between them, across the length and breadth of the continent, somehow strengthened by Zeke’s act.

ON AUGUST 20 they entered the waters of Baffin’s Bay. They’d planned to turn north and then east here, sailing around the upper edge of the pack and retracing the great arc back to Greenland, but Isaac Bond called down from the masthead and reported a ship. Zeke, the captain, and the mates took their turns with the glass: a large ship, they agreed, caught in the ice a few miles south of them, apparently abandoned and adrift. Zeke ordered the Narwhal brought as close to the ship as possible. The ice loomed before them like land.

“I can’t risk getting us caught in the pack,” Captain Tyler said. “Not this late in the season. And not when we’re so close to home.”

“It’s not your ship to risk,” Zeke said coolly. He pushed the spyglass toward the captain and pointed out the black hull marked with a band of white. “British naval vessels are all painted like that,” he said. “They’re impossible to tell apart from a distance. That could be the second of Franklin’s ships. The Esquimaux told us about one ship sinking. Only one.”

Captain Tyler scanned the distant ship. “If it were… but there’s so little chance of that. And you can see it’s deserted — why should we risk ourselves?”

“Because I tell you to,” Zeke said.

He turned his back and went below: as if a show of confidence that his orders would be followed would ensure that they were. Captain Tyler cracked his knuckles but worked the brig south through the ice, until they were finally blocked a few hundred feet from the other ship by a long, hummocked floe. The possibility that this was Franklin’s ship made Erasmus tremble with excitement. To his surprise, Zeke named as the boarding party only himself, Erasmus, Dr. Boerhaave, and Ned.

“I need everyone else on hand to work the brig, in case we’re nipped,” Zeke said.

“Take Forbes, at least,” Captain Tyler grumbled. “You may need a carpenter.”

“We’ll be fine,” Zeke said.

They lowered themselves to the ice, picked their way gingerly across the cracks, and approached the ship. Zeke said, “If this were the ship, one of the ships, if we were fated after all to find this final sign, it would be such excellent confirmation of what we’ve already learned…”

The ship was fast in the ice. Zeke shouted as they approached, but no one answered. As they clambered aboard Erasmus’s skin prickled, and he knew they all feared the same thing: that they’d find bodies inside, frozen or starved to death. The deck was in order, lines properly coiled and sails stowed, but empty of people.

Zeke pointed out the motto on the brass plate over the helm: England expects every man to do his duty. “Could it be the Erebus ?” he said. “Or the Terror?”

As they descended into the cabin, Zeke was already talking about how they might free the ship and tow it home. Erasmus had to remind himself to breathe. If this were one of Franklin’s ships, if, if, if… already he could imagine the newspaper headlines. They entered the dark and musty cabin. In a writing desk, Dr. Boerhaave found the logbook. He lifted it; he blew off the dust. Erasmus stared at the fine black hairs on the back of his friend’s hands.

Dr. Boerhaave opened the book. “The Resolute,” he announced.