CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The ice pack blocked the way north. They could do nothing but hurry their pace along the stony beach. The distance between them and the smoke column closed. Toward morning, Robinson lifted the telescope. Two distant silhouettes were framed on the skyline to the east. They readied their shotguns and waited. The men shuffled toward them, stopping to rest every few minutes. When Robinson saw they were not armed, he and Adams lowered their weapons.
The two men limped forward and halted. In torn and dirty Guernsey frocks and sealskin trousers, they had a furtive look, like escaped felons. Their faces were thin, eyes sunk deep in their skulls, bearded faces mottled with filth. One leaned on a makeshift crutch fashioned from an oar. The other leaned on a staff cut from a tentpole. A grimy bandage bound his left hand, three fingers of which appeared missing. They stared silently at Robinson and Adams, then looked at Billings, blinking.
Robinson spoke. “Identify yourselves.”
The man with the missing fingers crumpled to his knees, sliding down the length of his staff. He put his face in his ruined hand and squeezed his eyes shut. He began to laugh, a dry, desperate hack.
The other man stumbled forward, coughing. A long red scar ran down his pocked cheek and curled under the sparse red and grey whiskers along his jaw. His upper lip curled inward where teeth should have been. He reached out a trembling hand. Robinson grasped it. The hand was emaciated, knuckles unnaturally swollen, dark veins shrunken beneath dry, papery skin.
If I did not see this man standing here moving and breathing, Robinson thought, I would think this a corpse’s hand.
“You’re not from Erebus ,” the man said, a thick lisp twisting each syllable. “We thought you was from Erebus .”
“Lieutenant Frederick Robinson, Assistant Surgeon Edward Adams,” said Robinson. “We are from HMS Investigator under Captain Bird. HMS Enterprise is with her, under Sir James Ross.”
The man sank to the earth and hugged Robinson’s knees.
“Thank God,” the man said. “Thank God.”
Robinson’s nose wrinkled at the sharp odour of dried sweat and urine.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Is Captain Crozier here?”
The man looked up, his eyes still streaming. “Do you have any food, sir?”
“Some. On your feet, now.” He prised the man’s hands from around his knees and lifted him.
“Wh-where is your ship?” the man asked.
“She is frozen in at Port Leopold. Where is Captain Crozier?”
The scarred man’s face was blank for a moment; then his jaw dropped. Robinson caught a glimpse of purple-black gums. The man’s eyes widened, and his lips quivered. “Port Leopold?” His voice fell to a whisper. His face crumpled into itself, creases appearing like a piece of paper crushed in a fist. Fresh tears welled in his bloodshot eyes. He stared back at the man kneeling on the ground behind him.
“Sam, he says their ship is at Port Leopold! How far is that? Are they not here to save us?” A spasm of coughing overtook him, and he bent over and spat bloody phlegm.
“The ice stopped our ships,” said Robinson. “Sir James Ross has taken a sledge party and is searching North Somerset for you.” He put his hand on the scarred man’s shoulder. It felt light and fragile under his fingers, the bones hollow and the muscles wasted. He thought it might shatter if he squeezed.
“We shall lead you there. There are provisions at Fury Beach.”
The man called Sam hauled himself to his feet and stepped forward. He unwound the filthy bandage from his maimed hand and rewrapped the fabric tightly, pinning it to his palm with his thumb. “Three hundred miles, innit? To Port Leopold?”
“Who are you?” Robinson asked. “Are you part of Captain Crozier’s party?”
“We’re our own party.”
“What is your rank?”
“Ain’t got one no more.” The man shrugged. “Things drop off here and go missing. Fingers, toes, noses. Names and ranks too. You don’t notice them go most of the time.” He drew a long breath, seemingly exhausted by the need to explain further. “I am Petty Officer Samuel Honey. I was the blacksmith on Terror . That there’s Able Seaman John Handford.”
“Where are the officers?” Adams asked.
“Dead. Or gone.”
“Gone where? Where is Captain Crozier?”
Honey shrugged again. “People get lost out here.”
The scarred man, Handford, pushed forward to interrupt Honey. “Their ships are not here? Sam, why are their ships not here?”
“Now, Johnny, buck up.” Honey’s gaze remained fixed on Robinson’s face as he spoke soothingly to his man. “Three hundred miles ain’t so far. The Rosses covered more ground in ’32, and with more men too.” Honey stepped closer to Robinson and Adams and whispered urgently to them. “But others from your vessel are comin’?”
“No,” said Robinson.
“But they might, yes?” His tone was hopeful, pleading for a treat he might keep from his comrade, a treasure for himself alone. “They might come lookin’ for you?”
“No one is looking for us.”
Adams pitched the tent to shelter the two new arrivals from the wind. They sat with blank, wooden faces, exhibiting none of the animation of men. Their jaws worked slowly on shreds of reindeer meat Adams had sliced and pounded into small fragments. Billings loitered outside the tent, peering in. He beckoned to Adams.
“Are they really Sir John’s men, Mister Adams?”
“Yes, Jimmy.”
For the first time, Billings seemed to doubt him. He eyed the men suspiciously, as if he had encountered an exotic creature for the first time, only to discover it did not resemble a picture he had seen in a book.
“They don’t look right.”
“They have suffered, Jimmy.”
“That ain’t what I mean.” He frowned, groping for the words. “Their eyes.”
“No.” Adams sighed. He glanced through the tent opening at the two men’s broken, wasted bodies and sullen faces. “No, they do not look right.”
“Did they do something to that man we found in the ground?” Billings’ face had a wary, unforgiving cast.
Adams patted him on the shoulder. “I would relish some fresh fowl, Jimmy. Go and look along the beach. Tell Lieutenant Robinson if you see any ducks.”
Billings’ gaze lingered on the tent. “I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “You said we’d find Sir John, but we didn’t. You said his men were brave.” He gestured helplessly. “But they’re ... like this.” He dropped his gaze and moved off.
Adams watched him go, ashamed. There were no promises to be kept here, no certainties to rely upon. Only disappointment and resentment. He had run out of assurances for Billings.
He returned to the tent. Eating appeared to have sapped the two survivors’ strength. Honey lay on the floorcloth, a shirtsleeve across his eyes. Handford sat, staring out through the opening.
“We saw the smoke from your fire,” Adams said. “But there is no fuel here. No driftwood.”
Handford’s head lolled, too heavy to stay upright. “We burned the boat, bit by bit.”
“But how would you return to the ships if you needed to?”
“We’d walk. Weren’t goin’ to need the boat. Ice ain’t never goin’ to melt.” He sat back and grinned, his lips stretched across a black cavern of a mouth with three brown teeth. “Captain Crozier and his men took a whaleboat with them. Said they might haul it to Back’s River and use the boat to go upriver.” He shook his head. “Bloody madness, if you ask me. The bloody thing’s too heavy to drag even on flat ground. Dunno how they expect to haul it over rapids. Can I have more meat, sir?”
Adams shook his head. “Your stomach is withered. It would make you ill to have so much at once.”
“More meat, damn you!” A snarl contorted the man’s face. His sunken yellow eyes flashed like gems in mud.
Adams maintained a patient tone. “You must eat only a little, and slowly. If your belly can accept it, I will give you more.”
Handford was immediately obsequious, bobbing his head. “Yes, sir. Yes. Pardon my language, sir. Terribly rude of me, sir.” His body shook. Tears coursed down his face.
“We found human bones,” said Adams.
The man gaped at Adams with an expression the assistant surgeon could not read.
“On the beach, a few miles from here. They had injuries. Unnatural injuries,” Adams said. “What do you know of it?”
The man craned his neck, trying to see the knapsack on Adams’ back. “Is it in there? The meat?”
Adams’ gaze fell upon the man’s boots. His bare toes were visible through a large hole in the left boot. He wore no stockings. Shiny and black, the toes were misshapen and curled like overripe fruit. Adams caught the odour of rotten meat.
“How long has your foot been like this?”
The man’s eyelids flickered. He said nothing.
“Not one of us still has all his fingers and toes,” said Honey. He pulled the shirtsleeve from his eyes and raised his hand with its missing fingers. “The frostbite has touched us all.”
Adams lowered his voice, addressing Honey. “I cannot leave his toes like this. There is a risk of gangrene. I must remove them.”
“Do it.”
Adams hesitated. Handford appeared to have entered a trance. He sat staring at nothing, drool hanging in a string from his lip. Adams whispered to Honey. “Does he understand what I propose to do?”
Honey shrugged. “Do it. I already told you—things fall away here. We are used to it.”
Adams sharpened his knife on a stone, then wiped it on his sleeve. He removed Handford’s boot and placed the stone beneath the man’s foot. Placing the knife blade on one of the man’s toes, he picked up another stone the size of his fist. Handford seemed to regain his senses. He swung his head around and inspected Adams’ efforts with a disinterested air. When Adams brought the stone down, there was a sound like a dart striking a board. The toe rolled in the dirt. There was no blood, and the expression on Handford’s face was unchanged. He continued to stare into the air and did not speak. Adams removed two more toes and threw them away across the gravel. When it was done, Handford put his hand on Adams’ sleeve.
“The reindeer meat. Where is the meat, sir?”
Adams did not answer him. He leaned in to peer at something. “Is this a bite mark, Mister Honey?” With a strip of cloth, he bound a crescent-shaped wound on Honey’s pale forearm and tied it off. Pinkish fluid oozed through the fabric. “How did you get it?”
Honey shrugged. “Don’t remember. Never heals.”
Adams opened the tent flap. Sunlight streamed in, bathing the tent’s interior in a yellow glow. He lifted Honey’s shirt and drew a sharp breath at the raised ridges of the man’s ribs and the scattering of bruises on his skin. The clavicles protruded like two great handles. What remained of the flesh of his torso was thin, steamed away in some awful vat. Folds of skin bunched tightly across his concave belly. Adams smelled the oddly putrid odour of dried sweat on Honey’s clothes. The stink of scurvy.
“After we came ashore last spring,” Honey said, “Captain Crozier said we’d spend the summer huntin’. We shot a few reindeer, a few foxes and geese, but it weren’t enough. There were maybe sixty alive after the winter. The sick stayed aboard Erebus with Fitzjames; the rest camped on the land. Crozier wanted to go south to find the reindeer, said if we could find enough fresh meat, we would fetch through. He wanted to place caches of meat along the coast of King William Land, then draw on ’em when he evacuated the invalids from the ships.”
Adams frowned. “An arduous task to complete in a few short weeks before the winter.”
Honey grunted his assent. “He thought some men might return to the ships before winter with meat for the sick. He hoped to meet some Esquimaux and spend the winter with them, then make for Repulse Bay or the fur-trading post on Great Slave Lake. Told him we’d stay behind and hunt until we’d shot enough game to build up our strength. But that’s not why we stayed. There’d have been too many to feed.”
“Why did the ship’s provisions not last?”
Honey sighed. The conversation appeared to bore him. “They lasted well enough. For a time, at least. We still had canned meat, some soup. A fair amount of biscuit. The more men died, the more provisions remained for the rest of us. That was the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“None of it stopped the scurvy.” He stopped and stared into space. “Last winter was the worst. We housed the ship over in November when the sun went down. It was so cold, we couldn’t sleep for the ship’s timbers cracking. Sounded like gunshots in the dark. Fifty below, some nights. The sick got sicker. Teeth fell out, limbs swelled up. Men bled from old scars. The lemon juice was all gone months before. So much debility.” He sighed again. “I remember the day we lost all hope.”
“When rations were reduced?”
“No.” He wore a sad expression. “When the grog ran out. We mixed it weaker and weaker with water, could barely taste it by the end. When it was gone, I’ve never seen more men in tears at any funeral.”
“You said you thought we were from Erebus ,” said Adams.
“Aye, we wasn’t expecting to see you. We’d stopped hopin’ someone would come. We thought it’d be better to team up with someone from the ship.”
“Better than what? Were the two of you not out here alone?”
“Not alone. We were with Mister Gregory and his men. He used to be engineer on Erebus . But there weren’t enough straws left.”
Adams frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Last time, we drew straws to see which of us would go and cut up the dead fellas. But there weren’t many straws left. We didn’t want to wait and find out what happened when they ran out.”
A serpent wound itself in cold coils in Adams’ gut. “How many men does Gregory have?”
“There’s three. Walker, Orren, and Caulker’s Mate Frank Dunn.”
“Are they armed?”
“Three shotguns between the four of ’em.”
“Ammunition?”
“Enough.”
Robinson appeared at the door of the tent. “The column of smoke has disappeared.”
Honey nodded. “Then they’ll be comin’.”
“We must leave them,” said Robinson.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the tent two hundred yards behind them, where Honey and Handford lay sleeping. “We have found them too late. They are too weak, too sick.”
He and Adams walked in a circle. Billings stood watch on the plain a mile away.
“We cannot abandon them,” said Adams.
There was only the cold and the smell of the ocean. The skyline in the west was a jagged line of white. A flat pan of shingle and scattered lakes lay to the east.
“Think of the mission,” said Robinson.
Adams rubbed his temples. “Remind me—what is the mission now?”
“We fail if we do not report back to the Admiralty. All will have been for naught. I would escort them if it were possible, truly I would. But we cannot feed them, and soon we shall have to drag them.” It was enough for Robinson that his words were sincere; he did not need to say the rest: without Franklin’s two men to muddy the waters, it would be he that the Admiralty turned to for the entire story. When they spoke of the discovery of the Passage, it would be his name on everyone’s lips.
“God may yet smile upon us,” said Adams.
Robinson’s laugh was mirthless. “I have not seen so much as a twitch of His lip thus far.”
“You wish these men dead?” Adams challenged him.
“I do not. But if their comrades pursue us, we shall be outnumbered. Do you think these two”—he gestured at the tent—“will hesitate to rejoin their old shipmates against us?”
Adams’ voice was empty of passion, his features as blank as a stone wall. “If we do not take them,” he said, “you must shoot me now, for I shall not go further with you.”
Robinson had never heard an utterance more earnest and unfeigned. The finality in Adams’ tone was absolute, the words standing like battlements between them in the cold air. No wind would take them, no tremor would knock them down.
You must shoot me now.
The image was in Robinson’s head for only the briefest instant before he pushed it away. It flashed and vanished like the beam of a lighthouse on a dark night: the gun in his hands, the recoil, the smell of gunpowder, the sight of Adams dead on the earth and Robinson standing alone. Robinson, the lauded lone discoverer of the North-West Passage, greeting his rescuers at Fury Beach. The story his alone to tell, with no one to contradict him. He saw Adams’ eyes and knew the man had imagined it too. He marvelled at how a brief fancy could be shared wordlessly with a glance. In that instant, both men knew the other’s mind with the utmost clarity; then each dismissed it a heartbeat later as a product of their weary, fevered brains. As something that could never and would never be.
Robinson coughed and looked down at the earth. He had never fought a true battle but knew when to withdraw from a skirmish. “Very well. But you must not promise Billings we will get these two men home. You build up his hopes unfairly.”
“They frighten him. He will not go near them unless I am present.”
“He is simple. You might as well ask a circus acrobat to argue the law, or a coal miner to converse in Greek. What if he tells them we could have brought them home safely when it was never possible? It will not reflect well on either of us. He need only say the wrong thing and everything we say will be questioned.”
“Everything you say will be questioned.”
Robinson sighed and turned his back. To argue with the man was like rubbing a sore. “We must leave this evening,” he said. “We must put some distance between us and them.”
In the distance, great masses of cloud along the horizon were like smoke from a fire consuming the earth.
Robinson scanned the eastern horizon with his telescope but saw no one in pursuit. He stood before the men of his party and pointed to the north.
“Victory Point is twenty miles in that direction. We shall salvage whatever we can carry, then follow the coast north to Cape Felix, cross back to Boothia over the ice, and go north to Fury Beach.”
Robinson led them north across the dead terrain of King William Land, his telescope in hand. Billings hauled the sledge carrying their bedding, tent, stove, and food. Adams strapped his gun across his back. Honey and Handford shambled along behind them like condemned prisoners.
Five thin, exhausted men shivered in the wind and watched their shadows ripple across the crushed earth. Around midnight, the wind dropped. Sea smoke rose from the tips of the small bergs grounded in the shallow water, like dead souls departing the earth.
After each mile, Robinson stopped and looked back. He saw nothing moving.