Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

The men spoke about other trips, whales and seals they’d taken, bad captains and good. Ned told about his travels in the Adirondack Mountains, and Barton about a trip to Portugal. It was cold, Erasmus knew it was cold, but he was warm and every time he meant to rise and lead them into the cabin someone was telling a story, which he didn’t want to interrupt. The candle burned out and they sat in darkness, listening to each other. Each, despite the shape of his story, saying the same thing: I am here. I am here, I am here.

When the hatch door popped open, the sound was as shocking as the lamplight flooding out. Zeke, showing first his hair and then his face and torso and legs, a rifle cradled in his arms, rose among them as if from a grave.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Visitors? Are there Esquimaux?” His yellow hair was matted with sleep; his jacket was open and his boots unlaced.

Erasmus stood, surprised at his own unsteadiness. “Everything’s fine,” he said soothingly. “None of the men could sleep, so they came up here where their talk wouldn’t disturb the rest of us. I woke a while ago and came up to make sure they were all right.”

Zeke held the lantern high, scanning Erasmus’s face; then he bent and swung it before the sitting men. Barton’s eyes were swollen, Scan’s cheeks were red, Ivan still had the bottle in his hand. “You’re drinking?” he said. “Without permission, in the middle of the night…” He spun toward Erasmus again. “Even you,” he said. “Even you.”

Erasmus was looking down at his boots when Zeke’s rifle, slashing horizontally through the air, caught him square in the gut. He fell against the rail, unable to catch his breath.

“What is wrong with you?” Zeke shouted. “I try and try to take care of you, to keep us all safe and in shape to accomplish something in the spring, and while I’m sleeping you sneak off like thieves. Wait until Captain Tyler sees this, what our laxity has come to…” He hurled himself back down the ladder and returned a minute later, even angrier.

“Mr. Francis is asleep at his post,” he said to Erasmus. “Or passed out; his breath stinks of wine. Captain Tyler is lying in his bunk in a drunken stupor and can’t even raise his head — was this your idea? Or did Tyler and Francis set out to corrupt you all? I knew they were drinking…”

“I,” Erasmus gasped, still unable to catch his breath. “I…”

“We had nothing to do with the captain,” Barton interrupted. “That’s the captain’s own supply, he only shares now and then…”

“You’re hateful,” Zeke said. “All of you. You can’t be trusted with anything, you have no pride, no discipline, no sense of esprit de corps.”

“It was the sun they were celebrating,” Erasmus said. “They shouldn’t have taken the alcohol but it was harmless, really, and I’d just about persuaded them to return to bed when you arrived.”

“You,” Zeke said.

He lowered himself a few steps down the ladder. “If I could I’d toss you all outside on the ice,” he said. “But that would make me a murderer. You’ll not see your beds for the remainder of the night, though. You like it so much up here, you stay here till breakfast.” He slammed the hatch cover behind him, bolting it from the inside.

The men laughed drunkenly, amused at Zeke’s display of temper and aware, Erasmus thought, of Zeke’s temporary powerless-ness. Up here all the traditional punishments were useless. They were already on short rations, and Zeke couldn’t reduce them further without risking their lives; they couldn’t be set on the shore in solitude, or confined on the brig any more than they were; they couldn’t be mastheaded or set extra tasks outside: it was impossibly cold. They straddled such a fine line between life and death that they were, paradoxically, safe. Or so they seemed to think.

“We have four hours until breakfast,” Erasmus said. “And it’s well below freezing.” He clutched his tender middle with one hand. “We have to keep moving. “

He made everyone rise. They paced the deck in a languid oval, slowing as the liquor wore off and exhaustion overtook them. Barton dropped out of the line surreptitiously, propped himself against one of the lifeboats, and snoozed. Ivan kept walking but stopped swinging his arms; Scan lost a mitten. By the time the breakfast bell rang and Mr. Francis, sheepfaced and sullen, unbolted the hatch, they’d all been frostnipped: a heel, some fingers; lips, cheeks, a chin.

Later Zeke railed at them and then demanded that Erasmus turn over all his preserving alcohol, and Dr. Boerhaave all his medicinal brandy and Madeira. These he locked ostentatiously away. From Captain Tyler he demanded all his private supplies, but although the captain produced a half-case of port, no one but Zeke believed this was all he had.

“I’m sorry,” Erasmus said to Zeke: on the promenade, in the cabin, outside the latrine. Was Zeke going to hold a grudge forever?

Zeke gazed at him stonily. “You betrayed my trust.”

“I was trying to help you,” Erasmus said.

Still Zeke shunned him, speaking to him only when absolutely necessary. At night, inside the cabin, the air was hazed with tension. Joe, who’d slept through the disastrous party, pitched a caribou-skin tent beneath the plank housing and began sleeping there. Dr. Boerhaave began reading a chapter of David Copperfield out loud each night — a way, he told Erasmus, of binding everyone together and lightening the mood. But only Ned, ashamed of his role and frightened by Zeke’s frigid mood, joined Erasmus in apologizing outright.

TIRED, HUNGRY, scurvy-ridden, they moved through March in a pale imitation of their old routine. The sun, now hanging a few degrees above the horizon and gilding the mountains, cheered them despite the continued cold. They ate pickled cabbage, hardtack, salt pork and beef; all their fresh meat was gone. Zeke continued to draw up plans for sledge trips and Ned, somewhat shamefaced, helped him, thawing casks of pemmican and repacking it into small bags. He no longer helped Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave with their work; Zeke kept him busy all the time, assisting with the meteorological records as well as the travel preparations.

One morning Zeke took Ned to determine the condition of the ice belt north of them. As soon as they left, the mood lightened on the brig. Joe trapped two foxes that afternoon, which Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave were helping him skin and butcher. Everyone was looking forward to dinner when Zeke and Ned returned, carrying with them a human skull.

“We found an Esquimaux grave,” Zeke said, resting the skull on the capstan like a prize. “Three mummified bodies wrapped in skins, and this — isn’t it something?”

Erasmus, easing a fox hide from its tricky attachment over the heel, looked at Dr. Boerhaave, who was blotting the blood. Only months ago, Zeke had refused to touch the graves of Franklin’s crew. Dr. Boerhaave, as if he heard what Erasmus was thinking, raised an eyebrow. Those had been the graves of Englishmen.

Joe stuck his knife into one of the fox haunches and examined the skull: brown, stained, old. “You broke open a grave?”

“It was already open,” Zeke said. “Some bears had pushed away the rocks at the foot.”

“And you moved the rest,” Joe said.

Zeke rested his hand on the skull, looking away from the fox parts. Yet he would eat with the rest of them, Erasmus knew. No matter how sharply he remembered Sabine. He would have to eat.

“We did,” Zeke said. “What was the harm in that? When we try out our sledges, I mean to bring one of those mummies back, for the museum at home.”

“It’s wrong” Joe said. “The spirits of these people can’t rest if their graves are disturbed.”