Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“I’ll go,” Captain Tyler said. “I’ll walk to the first ship and bring back enough men to help.”

“No,” Erasmus said. “Too many of us are broken down, I need you here with me. The wind could change in a minute, and if the floes separate we could drift very quickly.” He longed to go himself, but knew he couldn’t walk more than a few steps. “Whoever is strongest and can move fastest must go. Barton, I think.”

Barton leapt to his feet. “I’ll run,” he said. “I’ll run the whole way.”

Four hours later he returned with with a crew of startled Shetland Islanders from a Dundee whaler. It was snowing and dark and very cold, and the ice was grinding beneath their feet. Erasmus greeted the sailors briefly, saying only that their ship was lost and they needed help. When he saw the pity on the sailors’ faces, he understood how ragged and worn they must look. “Can you help us back to your ship? Can you take us in?”

The sailors, so strong and healthy, made short work of the task. They hauled the boat up on the ice, attached the drag lines, unloaded everything but the men’s personal belongings and then, after a quick examination of the Narwhal’s crew, sat Ned, Erasmus, and Ivan on the thwarts. Twelve of them dragged the boat, as if it weighed nothing, across the ice, while the others supported the men who could still walk. Thomas cringed at the sound of the keel splintering and grinding away.

Their way was lit by the moon, and by several fires. As they drew closer, Erasmus saw that these weren’t bonfires, or cooking fires, but the remains of two ships burning. Nipped by the ice, they’d been sliced all the way through and partially sunk. Only the decking above the waterline remained. “It’s the custom,” one of the Shetland men said when Erasmus questioned him. “Among us whalers. When a ship is stove in, suchlike, we burn her remains.” By the firelight Erasmus saw masts scattered over the ice, broken whaleboats, and a whole ship lying broadside, her keel exposed forlornly.

“Twenty vessels caught here,” said the Shetland man. Magna Abernathy, or so Erasmus understood; his accent was very thick. “Three lost so far. Their crews have been taken in by the other ships, but we still have some room. Our captain started preparing for you as soon as your messenger arrived.”

Then a bark loomed before them like a castle. The Harmony, of Dundee, Magna announced. Captained by Alec Sturrock. Between the time Magna bolted up the planks and returned with his captain, Erasmus took in the cranes and whaleboats and the scarred, oily hull. After that everything happened so fast. Erasmus and his companions were carried, pushed, washed, tidied, bandaged, clothed; shown to newly hung hammocks where their belongings were stowed and then whisked away again. In the cabin they were blinded by the light of clean-burning lamps and stunned by the smell of baking bread. Ned was taken away by the ship’s surgeon, who was worried by his fever and the condition of his nose, but Erasmus was allowed to stay with the others; no one had yet seen his feet.

Inside the Harmony, pressed hard to port by the ice, everything was tilted but the table had been leveled. Chairs were drawn up for them, plates set before them and wine, small glasses of red glowing wine. Only after they’d chewed and swallowed in silence for several minutes did Captain Sturrock ask, “How was your ship lost? How long have you been out in that boat?”

Erasmus leaned forward, ready to speak, but Captain Tyler spoke first. “Amos Tyler, of New London,” he said. “I’ve captained whaling ships for twenty years.” A quick exchange of places and names followed; the two captains hadn’t met before, but had sailed the same waters and knew many people in common. Immediately Erasmus felt the balance of power shift like the bubble in a spirit level.

“Which was your brig?” Captain Sturrock asked. “We didn’t see you among the fleet earlier in the season.”

Captain Tyler curled his lip. “Not this season, indeed,” he said. Holding his glass out for more wine, he told Captain Sturrock his version of what had happened. How not this season, but last, he’d accepted a position as Sailing Master for an expedition in search of Sir John Franklin; how everything went wrong and they got stuck in the ice, because the expedition’s commander wouldn’t follow his advice. The eager questions about the fate of the Franklin expedition he answered briefly, impatiently. Then he went on and on and on, through all their own trials and the dark hopeless winter and their eventual escape. Erasmus tried to interrupt him, but couldn’t. He was dizzy, sweating; the room was horribly close after their weeks in the open air and it was so hot, there were so many smells. “The Narwhal will never be freed,” Captain Tyler concluded.

“And your commander?” asked the other captain. He looked around the cabin.

“Dead,” Captain Tyler said. “As are several others.”

Turning to Erasmus, he said, “This is the Narwhal’s naturalist, Erasmus Wells, a friend of Commander Voorhees. Commander Voorhees delegated to him responsibility for the expedition’s goals in his absence, and it was his decision to abandon the brig and organize our boat journey. I merely navigated us through the ice.

Not his decision, Erasmus thought. But Ntd’s. Even this he couldn’t take credit for. He must let them know that Zeke wasn’t surely dead, only possibly dead, that there might still be hope. When he stood to speak, the floor tilted under him and the lamps merged into one gold ball and then disappeared. He was on the floor, flat on his back. Someone had undone his boots. Captain Sturrock and his surgeon and two other men were looking down at him, talking among themselves. The surgeon touched his toes, as Dr. Boerhaave might have done. “They’ll have to come off,” he said.

AFTERWARD, RECOVERING IN the first mate’s cabin, Erasmus heard the story of how the Harmony had been trapped. He and Ned lay side by side, too weak to talk but able to listen.

In July the Harmony, along with ships from Hull and Aberdeen and Kirkcaldy and Newcastle, New Bedford, Nantucket, and Newfoundland, had crept through the heavy ice in Melville Bay. When the fleet had finally escaped into the North Water they’d crossed quickly to Pond’s Bay and then had found their route to the south blocked by fields of drifting ice. An easterly wind had driven ice into the bay, sealing the fleet inside; they’d seen no whales at all. For weeks they’d waited, anxious and bored, only to find the route south still blocked when the wind finally shifted and released them.

They’d tried to return to Upernavik; reaching Cape York again they’d found Melville Bay still choked with icebergs and heavy pack ice. Back to the west they’d gone, to be stopped again; back once more to Melville Bay, where the ice was even denser; back and forth a third time, twenty ships unable to find a safe route south. Strong winds from the southeast had crowded the fleet together, then pressed them against the ice trapped in the curve south of Cape York.

With the jib-boom of one ship overlapping the taffrail of the next they’d towed the ships through the narrow cracks until the wind closed the ice around them. The Alexander of New London had been crushed, and the Union of Hull; the Swan had been heaved on her side, where Erasmus had seen her. Since September 15 the fleet had been stuck here. And now, said Mr. Haslas— the surgeon, who visited Erasmus and Ned several times daily, and chattered while he examined them — now they could only hope that the ice might part once more. A strong wind from the northwest might still separate the floes, and if they could beat their way free before the young ice sealed the open water they might yet reach Upernavik.