Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“I joined you to look for Franklin,” he said to Erasmus, chipping at the ice on deck. “Not for this.”

Meanwhile Ned cooked as if he’d never stop, rushing hot soup and coffee and biscuits to the frozen men. He made dried-apple pudding again and again, a food much beloved by Fletcher Lamb and Nils Jensen, who were gone. Although he’d not grieved openly for Fletcher when he died, now that Nils was also gone he set places at the table for the dead men, unable to stop until Erasmus gently reproached him.

Nils was killed on September 6. By September 8 drift ice surrounded them and foot-long icicles hung from the rigging; by September 10 they were confronted by solid pack; by the eleventh they knew that an open polar sea, if it existed at all, lay beyond this barrier of ice. Beyond their reach.

Zeke was stunned by Nils Jensen’s death, and disappointed by their failure to sail farther north, but he told the crew they’d done well. “We’ve charted a long new stretch of coastline,” he said, showing them the maps he’d drawn and the features he’d christened. Cape Laurel, Cape Violet, Cape Agatha — his sisters, his mother; but also, and more to the crew’s pleasure, Fletcher Lamb Bay and Jensen Point. What pleased them most was Zeke’s order that they turn and head for home.

But on September 14 they found their route to the south walled off by a dense mass of ice that had floated in since they’d entered the basin. A stiff wind jammed the ice against the brig and her against the coast; they sailed through hail and snow and freezing rain, which glazed the deck and the rigging. They probed the pack, searching for a passage south but blocked again and again. Plates of ice swept toward the shore, grinding over the gravel and tossing boulders aside before being crushed and heaved by other floes; the rumblings and sudden, explosive cracks made the men feel as if they’d been caught in a giant mouth, which was chewing on the landscape. Their area of movement decreased each hour, until Zeke, who’d stopped eating during the five days of their frenzied oscillation, finally conceded defeat and began to look for a suitable harbor.

Later Erasmus would wish he’d thought to remind Zeke of the advantages of a site that looked southward and eastward. But he was exhausted and so was Zeke, and so were all the men; hail was beating against their faces and they could hardly see what lay before them. From the gloom rose a towering triangular point, backed by smaller pyramids; they swept around it, forced by the wind, and to their great relief found a cove bitten into the point’s back side. Sharp walls loomed over them, blocking their view of Greenland, across the Sound, but in the harbor’s southeast corner was a small gravel beach and a bit of lumpy ground.

Still it was a poor choice, Erasmus thought, when the sky cleared the next morning. The cove opened to the northwest, the coldest prospect. As they warped the brig closer to the beach, three icebergs swept around the point and grounded on a reef, partially blocking the mouth of the cove and plugging them in like a ship in a bottle.

I n Philadelphia it was beautifully clear and warm, the chrysanthemums rust and gold in the gardens and the leaves of the sweet gum radiant on the grass. Alexandra, secure in her spacious rooms, kept her diary faithfully. It was a form of discipline, she thought. A record of her education as well as a way of honoring her parents. Her first diary, smooth black leather with gilt thistles, had been a gift from them. Today I am eight, she had written. I got a box of pencils, a Bible, this book to write in. A promise from Emily not to touch my paints. I have a bad cold. Seventeen volumes now, one for each year since then; the only gap some months from her fifteenth year, when her parents were killed and she could say nothing. She wrote:

I’ve finished my engraving of the Passaic smelt. Lavinia stopped after three lessons, she hated cutting up her hands; but I have a gift for this, I do. Even Mr. Archibault admits that my line is expressive and clear and that I have a fine touch with light and shadow. In a way I didn’t expect it’s much more than copying; more like re-making, re-creating. When I’m wording everything else drops away and I enter the scene I’m engraving. As if I’ve entered a larger life.

I meant to start on a copy of the hand’s nerves and tendons but the news set us in an uproar. First we heard that the abandoned British ship Resolute was found floating in Baffin’s Bay. A crew from an American whaler sailed her down to New London; we had hopes they might have met the Narwhal and have mail for us, but apparently not. Then Saturday the papers here carried the story of Dr. Kane’s rescue. No one can talk about anything else — such enormous good luck, the way the rescue squadron, driven backjrorn Smith Sound, met Esquimaux who’d spent time with Kane’s party and been aboard thefrozen-in ship.

Learning that Kane and his men had abandoned their ship and gone south on foot, Lt. Hartstene made his way to Godhavn and discovered the party there, just as they were about to board a Danish brig. The front page of the paper was filled with Dr. Kane’s report. Sledge trips, news of Esquimaux living farther north than anyone suspected; long stretches of coastline discovered on both the Greenland and the American sides of Smith Sound; he claims two of his men have viewed an open polar sea. Having endured extraordinary cold and starvation, and a long journey by sledge and small boat, he lost only three members of his Expedition and is now a great hero. Against this his father’s behavior stands out even more despicably.

Emily, who visited yesterday with Jane, is as angry as I’ve ever seen her. Despite the efforts of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society and others, Judge Kane committed Williamson to prison on Friday, for failing to produce the runaway slaves he’s sheltered. One of the antislavery papers notes that ‘such a man can surely be no relative of the noble-hearted explorer. His opinion makes every state a slave state…. He is the Columbus of the new world of slave-whips and shackles which he has just annexed.’ The slaves are safe, Emily says — I’m not sure whether she has direct knowledge of this — but the abolitionists who aided them may be in prison a long time. The decision has caused a split in the city, and at every social gathering. Lavinia sides with me and Emily on this, but when Emily asked if she’d be willing to let her committee meet here she declined; her brother and Zeke, she said, might be back any day, and the house must be ready for them. Later I found her crying. She’s not been sleeping, though she tries to hide this.