Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“But we’d need weeks to pack everything and prepare the boat,” Erasmus said. “And we’d never get far enough along before the pack closes for the season.”

Then he learned that chopping out the channel, even as it refroze at night, hadn’t been the only situation that resembled the work of Penelope. While he’d been — what? Sleeping, he supposed, or hunting, or scouting; apparently they’d used each moment — Ned had led the men in a secretive effort down in the hold. Remarkable nerve, Erasmus thought, for someone only recently turned twenty-one; he wasn’t sure whether he felt more admiration or anger. Under Ned’s direction, the men had broken neatly into his boxes, shifting contents until the labels no longer bore any relationship to what was inside. He’d heard them moving around in there; they’d told him they were hunting down the rats.

They’d calculated what they’d need for their journey: so much pemmican per man per day, so much biscuit and molasses and coffee; so much blubber for the stoves; so much powder and shot and so many percussion caps; so many sleeping sacks. All repacked and grouped together, ready to be fitted into the whale-boat. Isaac and Ivan had sewn sailcloth provision bags, made watertight with tar and pitch. And each man had already assembled a tiny sack of personal belongings.

“Thomas has taken care of the boat,” Ned added.

He led Erasmus to the whaleboat resting innocently under its tarpaulin. Under that cover, Thomas had fixed a false keel to the flat bottom and built up the bulwarks with planks and canvas. Those wood shavings, Erasmus thought. Earlier, when he’d noticed them, Thomas had claimed to be making standard repairs in anticipation of Zeke’s return. The large sledge, which they’d never used, had been fitted with a cradle to carry the boat. Isaac had made sturdy sets of traces, with which they might haul the loaded sledge. And Ned had made a diagram, showing where they’d fit in the cramped boat and how the provisions might be stowed; he’d thought of everything. All they needed, Ned said, was Erasmus to lead them.

“Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau cede command to you,” Ned said. “If you’ll only give the order, we could leave in two days.”

Erasmus agonized for another thirty-six hours. If Dr. Boerhaave were here, they could have decided together what to do— but Dr. Boerhaave was gone. And it was impossible that he should leave this place that had taken his friend’s bones; impossible that he should abandon the brig and Zeke. On the sodden ice he saw everywhere the Zeke he’d known as a boy: Zeke and Copernicus stringing together a reptile’s skeleton; Zeke tagging along to the creek to listen to Mr. Wells read Pliny; Zeke rolling across the Repository shelves wondering what to borrow next. Wanting so badly to be taken seriously; moving beyond Erasmus’s distracted gaze and then reappearing after a few years’ work at his father’s firm, transformed into a man they all had to take seriously. Erasmus could still hear his father saying, You should give him more credit. He behaves oddly sometimes. But his mind is sharp.

Was sharp. Is, was — how could he leave Zeke behind, even if he were only leaving Zeke’s body? Yet it was equally impossible that he should condemn the crew to another winter here. They couldn’t survive it, and the Narwhal couldn’t be moved. The only possible compromise was to send Ned and the others off in the boat while he stayed with the brig, hoping for Zeke’s eventual return. He might survive, with luck hunting and perhaps some help from the vanished Esquimaux.

“It would be mutiny,” Ned argued. “Without you. The contract said the brig was to be under Captain Tyler’s command, but you were to head the expedition. And the brig might as well be sunk. You’re in charge now.”

“You take the men,” Erasmus said to Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau. “I’ll stay here and wait for Commander Voorhees.”

Captain Tyler stared at him with frank dislike. “I will not,” he said. “The chain of command is clear. If you give the order to go south I’ll aid you in any way possible. But I’ll not take responsibility for this without you. If I made it home somehow, having abandoned the brig and you and Commander Voorhees, my reputation wouldn’t be worth a penny.”

“Nor mine,” Mr. Tagliabeau said.

“Whatever happens, then,” Erasmus said, “it will be on my head. Is that what you want?”

“It’s not what we want,” Mr. Tagliabeau said. “It’s simply your duty. Your choice.”

ERASMUS PACKED SOME instruments, his fur suit, and Lavinia’s green silk journal. He took Dr. Boerhaave’s medicine chest, both because it had belonged to his friend and because he was now the closest thing the men had to a doctor. From the relics they’d obtained on Boothia he made a painful selection: the small copper cooking pot, the prayer book and the treatise on steam engines, the silver spoons and forks and the mahogany barometer case Dr. Boerhaave had once held in his hands. The rest he had to leave behind, but he hoped that these, and the careful account in his journal, would be enough to confirm Dr. Rae’s findings and their own contact with the Esquimaux who’d seen the last of Franklin’s expedition. He packed the smaller items in the copper pot and sealed it with a piece of walrus hide.

From the hold he removed his specimens, too heavy to ferry home. Unwilling to let them sink when the Narwhal was eventually crushed by the ice, he returned them to the storehouse. He made a list of all he’d consigned there, and in a tin box he placed that, his own journal, one of Dr. Boerhaave’s precious volumes of Thoreau, and Agassiz’s work on the fossil fishes. He added the studded bit of boot sole, which had spent all this time lying flat and silent beneath his bookshelf: one little relic of his own. Then he broke into Zeke’s private box and stole Dr. Boerhaave’s journal, leaving Zeke’s black volume behind. Zeke was dead, he must be dead. That frail boy with the vibrant eyes was gone and now he must look after Ned. Lavinia — he put Lavinia from his mind.

He added Dr. Boerhaave’s journal to his own tin box and prepared to solder it closed. At the last minute, he took down the portrait of Franklin and stowed that as well. In Captain Tyler’s bunk, he saw, everything had been removed except for the paper gravestone, on which the names of their lost companions had been inscribed. Zeke’s name now occupied the bottom of the list.

He had the men clean the ship, and he left behind enough provisions to support Zeke in case a miracle brought him back. He wrote out a careful statement, explaining the situation that had driven them to leave and their proposed route; he noted the crates of specimens in the storehouse and the provisions left on board. We leave this brig August 26, 1856. In the season called aosok, he thought, remembering the word Joe had taught him. The short interval between complete thaw and reconsolidation of the ice. For their long, improbable journey they had, at most, until the end of September. Not nearly enough time.

While the men began the laborious process of hauling the boat across the level plain, toward the point that blocked them from the Sound and onto the ice belt attached to the cliffs, he checked over every inch of the Narwhal. Then he nailed his statement to the mast and walked onto the ice.