CHAPTER TWO
Robinson woke the men in the evening. Their blanket bags were crusted with frost from their breath. They drank cocoa and ate biscuit, and then he led them south along the broken shore. A faint halo ringed the sun. Icebergs in the inlet were turquoise at their jagged tips, but a deep blue lay trapped within. Birds jostled on ledges hundreds of feet above them.
Robinson led them across a patch of gravel coated with a carapace of hard ice. For a time, the sledge slid smoothly over the ice, and their pace quickened. Then, without warning, the snow was knee deep. They walked hunched over, their faces averted from a wind that picked up long tendrils of drift and bore down on them like an army of phantoms over the ridges and depressions.
They came to a ragged circle of stones that might once have been a tent ring, but blooms of orange and green lichen suggested they had sat unmoved for centuries. Whale bones lay scattered. Nearby they discovered a pit in the earth where Esquimaux had once cached meat or blubber before concealing it with driftwood and moss. The walls of the hole were lined with flat stones, several of which had toppled into the bottom. Robinson ordered Billings and Payne to search the pit. They found nothing, and the party walked on. The raw wind swept over them. Lightning crackled far to the south, bony fingers reaching down from the heavens to rake the earth.
Porter was snow-blind. Adams bound his eyes, tied a rope around his waist, and tethered it to the sledge. Porter stumbled along behind Payne and Worthington, kicking stones across the gravel. Billings pulled the smaller sledge alone without complaint. Humphreys hobbled behind the others, leaning on a staff cut from a tentpole. He fell back, disappearing whenever the party descended a hill or turned into a bay. Robinson strode on ahead.
They pitched the tent on a flat expanse of gravel. Adams unwrapped the strips of crape from Porter’s head. The man swore and recoiled at the dim light of the candle.
“It’s like bits of glass in my eyes,” he said. Tears left pale tracks on his grimy face. “It burns inside, but you don’t feel it till it’s too late.”
“It is why we walk at night,” said Adams. “It would be worse during the day.”
Porter sighed. “I hated the winter when we were frozen in at Port Leopold. Dark all the day. Stuck below deck all the time, nowhere to go, nothin’ to do. But I miss it now, that darkness.”
“And when winter returns, you will want the light,” said Adams. “You will darn socks for your mates just for a piece of candle. You will be atop the mainmast in March, watching the horizon for the sun.”
Porter nodded. “I cried when I saw it.”
Adams bound Porter’s head with clean crape and told him to lie down.
“I don’t think we’re gonna find ’em.” Porter’s voice was a whisper. He turned on his side, facing away from Adams.
“What did you say?” Adams asked.
“Can’t see how we’re meant to.” The blanket muffled Porter’s voice. “What’s the point of watching every hill and beach for Franklin’s men? If you look at this bloody place for too long, it burns out your fuckin’ eyes.”
As the men slept, Adams listened to their breathing. He opened the tiny locket Frances had given him when he told her he would ask her father, the rector, for her hand upon his return from the Arctic. Her father was a genial man with a keen interest in science and discovery that his daughter had inherited. He had made no attempt to hide his affection for Adams but cautioned him to be patient.
“I am not a wealthy man,” he had said, “but I would sooner have a good man for her husband than a rich one. You have my permission to write to Frances, but even a good man must acquire some means if he is to take a wife. I ask you to do that. She is still young, only eighteen.”
Adams touched his fingertip to the lock of hair she had enclosed in the locket. He imagined her praying for him at St Mary’s Church and doing embroidery for the charity bazaar. How many times in the year since they parted had she consulted the fortune teller at the market about his fate? Crystal gazing had become her guilty pleasure. He knew she repented each Sunday but would not begrudge her a harmless amusement.
Dearest Frances, he wrote. Lieutenant Robinson dismisses the men’s motives as merely pecuniary, and I fear greatly he is correct. This, I believe, is a greater risk to our mission than the cold or weather. Strength arises from belief, from faith. I see now I must tend more to the men’s spirits than to their physical ailments, but we have few opportunities to commune in worship. Can one man make another brave? Surely our chances of success are better if the men embrace the higher purpose of their task. Humphreys’ feet are frozen, and Porter is blind, but I feel certain they will better endure their trials if only they acknowledge that sore feet and burning eyes are but paltry concerns when rescuing the man who would find the Passage for England. I do what I can to inspire them. I would be their lantern in the mist if only Mister Robinson would allow it.
“I always wanted to be Sir John,” Adams said.
“ Be him?” Billings appeared bewildered.
“When I was a boy, Jimmy. I was five years old. My father made me a little wooden cutlass I fancied a crusader might wield as he entered Jerusalem. I used to play at explorers with my brother, Richard.”
“A toy sword.” Billings smiled.
“Exactly. A toy. I used to wave it about when I stood on the low stone wall snaking along the boundary between my father’s estate and the neighbouring farm. I would shout, ‘I, Captain John Franklin, hereby claim this North-West Passage for King George!’”
Adams remembered standing on a low hill two hundred yards from the main house. He could make out its sandstone walls and slate tiles. The tower of the parish church in Great Barton rose above the trees in the distance.
“My brother wouldn’t always let me be Franklin, though. He had a wooden sword too. And a paper helmet. And he was three years my senior. Every time he would say I got to be Franklin last time, so it was his turn this time. I had to be someone else.”
Billings looked confused. “Who else could you be, sir?”
Adams winked at him. “Richard wanted me to be John Ross, but I refused. He hadn’t found anything at the time. He’d even missed the entrance to Lancaster Sound. But that was before his expedition to the bottom of Prince Regent Inlet in ’29.”
Adams recalled the tousled grey sky that day, the stiff breeze that had ruffled the long grass on the hill. He had wondered if the prospect of bad weather would prompt their father to return home early from London. The boys’ governess had excused them from their lessons an hour early to mark the occasion. Desperate for peace, their pregnant mother shooed them from the house. She lay, white faced and sweating, on her bed, her enormous belly slung beside her.
“Richard insisted I be Lieutenant Back or Captain Parry,” Adams continued. “Or poor Lieutenant Hood—he died on Franklin’s journey down the Coppermine. But we both always wanted to be Franklin. One day we could not agree and had to use our wooden swords to settle the matter. As we were about to have at each other, the gander waddled up the hill from the house with three geese in tow. He was in a bad mood too.”
Billings spoke in a hushed voice. “What did you do?”
“I pointed the tip of my wooden cutlass at the gander and shouted, “We ate our shoes and we are very brave!” I gave him a whack on the neck with the flat of the sword. That soon sent him packing.”
Billings nodded, sombre now. “That was brave. I got bit by a gander once.”
Adams fell quiet. He would not tell Billings the rest. He would not tell him that a shout from the house startled him and Richard as they duelled. He remembered their father emerging from the garden and starting up the hill. There was an urgency in his movements, something sharp and unfamiliar. He waved with both hands at once, his voice snatched away by the breeze. Unbuttoned at the collar, his white shirt billowed like a sail. Laughing, the boys ran toward him down the slope, scattering the geese. William Adams was not smiling when they approached. Edward’s wooden cutlass fell forgotten from his hand.
“Richard!” their father shouted. “Richard, be quick!” His eyes were round, his cheeks flushed. As the boys reached him, their father knelt and placed one hand on Richard’s shoulder, breathless from his run up the hill.
“Richard!” he panted. “Run to the town for the midwife. Your mother needs her. Now! Run! As fast as you can.”
Robinson put down his pen and closed his journal. He put both in his knapsack and placed it under his head. His sleep had been dreamless of late, but when he closed his eyes, he would imagine the future, and it would help him drift off. They would stride across the snow, and Sir John would be there, a wolfskin around his shoulders. Crozier and Fitzjames would be beside him, grinning and doffing their threadbare caps. Franklin’s men would all gather behind him, cheering.
Robinson would extend his hand long before they came together, his arm outstretched like a bowsprit. They would shake hands for a long time, Franklin clamping his left hand over their shared grip.
The captain would ask, “What is your name, sir? For it shall be known throughout the empire!”
They would pretend the water in their canteens was brandy and toast the queen. The men would cheer again, and the job would be done.
The news would reach England before they returned to the Thames, carried back by whalers they would meet in Davis Strait. After visiting Whitehall for a private meeting with the First Lord, Robinson would return to Burslem. While his brothers’ wives sat blank faced, his own wife, Elizabeth, would smile and wink at him over the dinner table, and afterward his father would regard him with a wholly unfamiliar display of pride.
“You have done well, Frederick,” his father would say. “I must confess, you have exceeded my expectations.”
Robinson rehearsed the scene in his mind, polishing the finer points like the facets of a gemstone. His father would dismiss the women and invite him to stay for port and cigars. Like distant uncles, his two brothers would blink at him curiously, stiff in their dinner jackets, their whiskers curled in the same style as their father’s. But for once, Robinson would not be required to sit in silence and listen to his father and brothers discuss the performance of their cotton mills. Instead, they would toast to his health and lie about how certain they had always been that he would bring great honour to the family. He would decline to linger, and the astonishment on his father’s face would be worth a thousand years of indifference and humiliation.
Later, when it was over, he would relay it all to Elizabeth. Recovered from her illness, she would lie beside him in bed, her head on his chest.
“My face betrayed no malice, darling,” he would say. “I made sure of that.”
She would smile. “You are not a vengeful man.”
“I put down my glass and pushed my shoulders back, and I told him, ‘I shall not stay this evening because, for the first time, I am invited, not commanded, and because, for the first time, I can refuse you.’”
She would kiss him and tell him how proud she was of him, and for a time it would almost be enough to compensate for his father’s disdain.
In the early evening, Adams took his shotgun and returned two hours later with five ptarmigan. Payne cleaned the birds and put them in the pot with a can of soup. The men woke to eat. Adams said grace, and they sat silently in a circle, bent over their pannikins. The soup had a pungent, loamy flavour, but Adams, grateful for the fresh food, crushed each piece of flesh between his teeth and held it on his tongue before swallowing.
“Corporal.” Robinson looked at Humphreys and gave a curt nod. “The flask, if you will.”
Humphreys’ beard split in a wide grin. “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” He knuckled his forehead and limped from the tent, returning a minute later with the rum flask. A cheer went up from the four seamen.
“Bless you, sir!”
“You’re a fine fellow, sir, thank you kindly!”
Humphreys poured each man a gill, then one for himself. They passed around the kettle of water and mixed the grog. Lifting their cups, they toasted the lieutenant’s health, then did the same for Adams.
When the men were asleep in their blankets, Adams stepped out of the tent. The sun was a blurry smear on a grey sky. There was no wind, and Adams found he was not shivering. He removed his cap and gloves and flexed his fingers. The morning air was coolly pleasant on his skin. He took out his sketchbook and sat on a rock overlooking the inlet. He imagined he was out on the ice, looking back at the shore, and drew a broad band of sunlight stretching away across the ice to the base of the cliffs above him. The great rock walls reached into the sky. As he outlined them with his pencil, they became Sir John’s epaulets, then his shoulders. The captain’s jaw emerged from a bank of clouds lit from behind by a bright, bursting sun. His cocked hat rose proudly. When the image was complete, Sir John was a giant gazing serenely out over the Passage. Adams put down his pencil and sat staring at his creation. He took his Bible from his coat pocket and laid it on the rock before him, then knelt and bowed his head in prayer.
Adams turned his sketchbook to a fresh page and began a new drawing. The image was as clear in his memory as on the day of their departure eighteen months earlier. His pencil moved swiftly and confidently across the page, outlining the masts and hulls along the Thames. He recalled the jolt underfoot as Investigator slipped her moorings and began to move. The ratlines thrummed and the boats creaked in their davits as the band played on the pier. The heavy-bellied ship was slow in the water, every last crevice and shelf stuffed with barrels and crates and sacks of food, equipment, and coal. Kites fluttered in the air above the water. Other navy vessels at anchor along the Thames saluted with cannon fire and hoisted signal flags. Men lined the gunwales, flapping their hats and shouting as the crew waved back and sang along to the band. Drawn by the steam tugs, Enterprise and Investigator slid slowly through the water and made their way out of the river mouth. The crowds on the bank grew smaller, until they were tiny patches of colour on the shore, their fluttering handkerchiefs no more than white dots. Adams remembered thinking, They will want to tell their friends they saw Franklin’s rescuers leave. They will all want to say they were there.
They woke in the evening. Adams ordered the men to pack the tent as Robinson stood far off on the crest of a distant rise, his telescope raised. They walked through the grey night, their boots in rhythm on the stones. Ducks flew northward and kittiwakes wheeled high above, their white bodies and yellow beaks shiny against their grey wing feathers. At midnight, the sun hovered at its nadir. The clouds fell away, and the sky was a polished bronze cuirass. They trudged on. The sun whitened as it climbed, and the light was sharp in Adams’ eyes.
At eight o’clock in the morning, Robinson called a halt. The men dropped to their knees and pressed the palms of their gloved hands to their inflamed eyes. Robinson ordered them to pitch the tent. As Billings and Worthington prepared the supper, Payne and Robinson took inventory of their provisions.
Humphreys limped into camp twenty minutes later. Adams removed the man’s boots, and again the tart stench of rotting wood rose. The tips of Humphreys’ toes were black. Adams flinched at the smell. The corporal sat staring dully at his feet.
“They offered me three quid to sign,” Humphreys said.
“What?”
“When I joined up. I was a weaver back in Middleton. The recruiters said they’d give me three quid to sign my name. Never thought I’d get paid that much to sign my name. The buggers didn’t think I could write, but I did it.”
He leaned forward, took one of his blackened toes between his thumb and forefinger, and gently moved it back and forth, then sighed and lay back in the tent’s gloom. The wiry silhouette of his beard moved when he spoke.
“Only gave me two shillings, sixpence up front, though. Had to wait for the rest. But the wife was happy.”
Adams bound Humphreys’ toes with fresh linen. He found his own spare pair of dry stockings and put them on the marine’s feet.
“Keep them dry,” Adams said. “If we must cross a river, get one of the others to carry you on his back.”
Humphreys’ beard moved again. “I told Alice I’d just be away for the one voyage, y’know. Then they was offering double pay to come and find Sir John.” He shook his head and gave a low whistle. “Well, that was quite somethin’, wasn’t it? How could a man say no to that?”
Robinson watched a mass of iron-grey clouds stretch across the southern horizon like a dark gate to another world. He was anxious to make a start. The men ate their biscuit and drank their cocoa; then Robinson ordered them to march. With the inlet to the east, they continued down the coast over large patches of snow-covered ground and sweeping pebble-strewn beaches.
The storm clouds swelled, pushing toward them. Flecks of snow fell. The water in the channel turned black. The clouds bunched and darkened, turning the colour of old copper in the late-evening sun. Robinson crouched on the shale, rubbing dirt between his fingertips. The terrain to the south and west was flat and featureless. He eyed the tumescent sky and spoke to the men.
“Fetch the largest stones you can find—so large each wants two men to lift it. Take one of the sledges. Bring the stones here and fasten the tent ropes to them with your stoutest knots. Do it quickly.”
The wind freshened. Robinson and Adams worked with the men to haul the stones to the campsite. The snow stung their faces. The ice in the inlet a hundred yards to the east was no longer visible. They brought the sledges into the tent and looped ropes around the runners to secure them. The gale howled down over the white earth. They lay in their blanket bags with their hands over their ears as the wind tore at the tent, and each man said his own kind of prayer.
The gale trapped them in the tent for a day and a half. Robinson lit a single tallow candle and took out his journal and writing implements. Adams puffed on his pipe in the shadows. A soft chorus of snores emanated from the row of seamen.
“To whom do you write?” Adams asked Robinson.
Robinson frowned at him, his pen poised above his ink bottle. The man’s clumsy attempts at familiarity vexed him.
Adams looked away. “I did not mean to intrude. I was merely curious.”
“Do not be.” Robinson returned his attention to his writing. He dipped the nib into his ink bottle. The scratch of the pen across the paper was like a whisper in the tent.
Adams was undeterred. “I write to my sweetheart, Frances. We knew each other as children in Great Barton. One day we hope to marry.”
Robinson did not reply or look up. If he ignored the man, Adams might be silent. His pen scribbled. The wind blew. The canvas walls convulsed. The stitched tent seams squeaked and groaned.
“I had not seen her since she was a little girl,” Adams continued, “but we were reunited when I visited my brother in Great Barton after my time at Haslar Hospital with Captain Parry.”
At this, Robinson put down his pen. “You were at Haslar?”
“I was. For three months, before I transferred to Devonport.”
Robinson stroked his whiskers. The man might be of more use than he first imagined. “Tell me, did you treat men at Haslar for scurvy?”
“Mild cases, yes,” said Adams. “Many men on the voyage home from the East Indies would eat only salt pork and biscuit. They would not even take their lemon juice.”
Robinson grunted. “In the Arctic, scurvy is rarely mild. Franklin’s men may be sorely afflicted.”
“Fresh food is of the utmost importance. Preferably fresh meat.”
“I suspect they will have little of that with them,” said Robinson.
“If nothing else is available,” said Adams, “I would suggest adopting the Esquimaux diet: reindeer, geese ... or we could hunt seals.”
The man’s ignorance rankled him now. “Have you ever shot a seal?” asked Robinson.
“No.”
“You cannot even get close to them. They are far too shy.”
Robinson lay down in his blanket bag and gazed at the tent’s ceiling. He tried to imagine an Esquimaux taking a seal, crouched for hours beside the animal’s breathing hole, spear raised. Parry, John Ross—they had shot plenty of game: bears, ducks, foxes. Would there be reindeer? He wondered if a narwhal or beluga could be taken with a shotgun. He extinguished his candle and lay in the gloomy light. The wind plucked and shook the tent walls.
If he found Franklin and his men, how would he feed them?