Andrea Barrett: Voyage of the Narwhal

Erasmus had dismissed those words as boyish fantasies, watching unsurprised as Zeke was funneled into his family’s business. He worked in the warehouse, he sat in the office, he traveled on the ships of the packet line; he complained he had no time for his own studies, yet acted like his father’s right hand. Then a lightning bolt struck a ship he was on, burning it to the waterline and killing some of the crew. Flames shooting into the night, shattered spars, the cries of the lost; Zeke had saved twenty-six passengers, herding them toward the floating debris and caring for them until their rescue. His descriptions of the incident, Erasmus believed, had made Lavinia fall in love with him. Afterward Mr. Voorhees, as a kind of reward, had allowed Zeke a certain amount of time for his scientific investigations on each voyage.

Erasmus, thinking those investigations were just a hobby, had expected Zeke to mature into a merchant captain. Yet Zeke kept reading and planning and making notes — dreaming, while no one paid attention, of a quest that would make his name. Until finally, at Lavinia’s birthday party, he’d surprised them all.

“In the water,” Zeke had once told Erasmus, “while I was floating there, knowing I might easily die, I understood I would not die. I was not sickly, I was very strong; I could keep my head in an emergency. I was destined — I am destined — to do something remarkable. Men have made themselves famous solely by mastering a subject which others have not yet seen to be important. And I have mastered the literature of arctic exploration.”

That mastery was of little use during the first ten days of the voyage, which Zeke spent flat on his back, flounder pale, his oddly large palms and short, blunt fingers dangling over the side of his berth. Erasmus cared for him as well as he could, remembering his promise to his sister and his own early misreadings of Zeke’s character. Unpleasant work: yet for all his worry, there was still the great pleasure of being at sea again. The wind tearing the clouds to shreds, tearing his old dull life to shreds. In his journal he wrote:

How could I have forgotten what this was life? Thirteen years since I was last on a ship, waging to the sounds of halyards cracking against the masts, water rushing past the hull; and each day the sense of time stretching out before me as rich and vast as the ocean. I thinly about things I’ve forgotten for years. Outwardly this is much like my last voyage: the watches changing, the ship’s bell ringing, the routine of meals and duties. Yet in other ways so different. No military men, no military discipline; just the small group of us, gathered for a common cause. And me with all the time in the world to stand on the dec\ at night and watch the stars whirling overhead.

RAIN, FOUR DAYS in a row. Erasmus stayed in the cabin for much of that time, besotted with his new home. Between the bulkhead separating the cabin from the forecastle, and the equipment shelves surrounding the stepladder leading to the deck, everything else was squeezed: hinged table and wooden stools; lockers, hanging lamp and stove; and, stacked in tiers of three along the sides, six berths. Mr. Tagliabeau, Captain Tyler, and Mr. Francis occupied the starboard berths. On the port side, Dr. Boerhaave had the bottom, Zeke the middle, and Erasmus the upper berth, which was lined and curtained off with India rubber cloth. The rats creeping up from the hold at night might have seen the officers arranged like cheeses along their shelves and, on the opposite side of the bulkhead, the seamen swaying in their netted hammocks.

Yet physical discomforts didn’t seem to matter. With his curtain drawn, Erasmus could almost pretend he was alone; almost forget that Zeke lay just a few inches below him, Mr. Tagliabeau a few feet across from him. Two wooden shelves held his books, his journal, a reading lamp, his pens and drawing supplies. Compass, pocket-sextant and watch hung from particular pegs; rifle, flask, and pouch from others. Order, sweet order. Everything under his control, in a space hardly bigger than a coffin yet warm and dry and lit. As the rain tapered off on the fourth day he read and wrote in there, happy until he heard Zeke vomiting.

Delirious from lack of food, Zeke whimpered and called for his mother and sometimes for Lavinia. That boy in the invalid’s chair was still apparent in his eyes, although he’d already managed to make it clear that he resented whoever helped him. Erasmus opened his curtain, fetched a clean basin, soothed Zeke’s face with a damp cloth. Perhaps, he thought, Zeke wouldn’t remember this day or hold these acts against him. When Dr. Boerhaave, still a stranger, said, “Let me see what I can do,” and opened his medicine chest, Erasmus left Zeke in the doctor’s hands and went to get some fresh air. Low swells, a crisp breeze, the rain-washed sails still dripping and the clouds parting like tufts of carded wool. Beneath that sky the deck was dotted with men picking oakum. Which was Isaac, which was Ivan? Erasmus had made a resolution, after watching Alexandra’s ease with the same servants whose names he still forgot. On the Narwhal, he’d promised himself, he’d pay attention to everyone, not just the officers.

That was Robert, he thought. On that coil of rope. Scan, by the sturdy capstan. And in the galley, cooking as if he were dancing, Ned Kynd. A glance at the simmering carrots, a stir of the chicken fricassee, then a few quick kneads of the biscuit dough on a floured board.

Erasmus dipped a spoon in the stew pot and tasted the gravy. “Delicious,” he said, thinking with pleasure of the live chickens still penned on the deck. Fresh food for another several weeks; he knew, as Zeke and perhaps even Ned did not, how much this was to be relished. “You’re doing a fine job.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Ned said. “A pleasure to have such a tidy place to cook in. And then the sea — isn’t it lovely?”

“It is,” Erasmus agreed. They spoke briefly about menus and the state of their provisions; then about Ned’s quarters, which he claimed were fine. Never sick, always cheerful and prompt, Ned seemed to have made himself at home. Already he’d adopted the seamen’s bright neckerchiefs and was growing a spotty beard. After a few minutes’ chat about the weather and a spell of comfortable silence, Ned said, “May I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Erasmus said, praying it wouldn’t be about Zeke.

“Could you tell me about this Franklin we’re looking for? Who he is?”

Erasmus stared at him, a piece of carrot still in his mouth. “Didn’t Commander Voorhees explain all this to you, when you signed on?”

Ned cut biscuits. “That Franklin was lost,” he said. “That we were to go and search for him… but not much more than that.”

Where had Ned been these last years? While Ned slipped the biscuits onto a tin, Erasmus leaned against the water barrel and tried to summarize the story that had riveted everyone else’s attention.

“Sir John Franklin was, is, English,” he said. “A famous explorer, who’d already been on three earlier arctic voyages.”

The chicken simmered as Erasmus explained how Franklin had set off with over a hundred of the British Navy’s finest men. For ships he had James Ross’s old Erebus and Terror, refitted with hot-water heating systems and experimental screw propellers. Black-hulled, white-masted, the ships had left England in the spring of 1845, provisioned for three years. Each had taken along a library of some twelve hundred books and a hand organ, which played fifty tunes. The weather was remarkably fine that summer, and hopes for a swift journey high. Toward the end of that July they were seen by a whaler, moored to an iceberg at the mouth of Lancaster Sound; after that they disappeared.