CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The drizzle persisted for hours. In the afternoon it turned to snow that fell throughout the night. Adams dreamed of snow piling up in ten-foot drifts that buried him without a trace, but in the morning there was only a thin layer of grey slush on the earth. A film of ice had formed on Robinson’s eyelashes. Adams brushed it off and pulled the blanket over the blue-white face.
He took Robinson’s shot bag and stood over the carcass of the bear, shivering in the cold. With the toe of his boot, he kicked the ramrod protruding from the bear’s eye, then bent down and gripped it with his gloved hand. It would not budge. He aimed his shotgun point-blank at the bear’s skull and held it there, shaking, for a full minute, but did not pull the trigger.
The sky was a leaden grey, the clouds full of shadows. He walked across the grass to the edge of the ridge and studied the sea. A thin layer of young ice had formed on the water during the night. When the wind rose again, long cracks appeared in the floes to the west, and the icy veneer on the water disappeared. Adams returned to the campsite and began digging the grave. He paused between swings of the shovel to chew on slivers of ox meat and glance into the low hills, searching the gullies for movement. So much blood had been spilled—the ox calf, the bear, Robinson—it would not be long before more bears appeared. When he had reached a depth of four feet, the blade of the shovel fell off the handle. He stood back, panting. Sweat ran down his face and trickled through his beard.
He crossed Robinson’s hands over his chest and wrapped his body in a piece of canvas cut from the tent. It would not leave him with enough canvas to make a tent for himself on the last leg of his journey, but if he could hobble ten miles a day, he guessed he could reach Fury Beach in eight days. If the weather held, if God no longer scowled at him, he could sleep in the open with just his blanket and a torn fragment of canvas. He dragged Robinson’s body into the grave and stood over it. He opened his Bible. The text swam in his vision. What would Robinson wish him to say? He shook his head, closed the Bible, and turned his face to the heavens.
“Father,” he said aloud, “a man of courage has laid down his life in a noble cause. During his life, he sought but could not find Thee. Now I know he walks with Thee.”
Adams put Robinson’s pipe and silver pencil case in the dead man’s coat pocket. He filled in the grave and stamped down on the earth. He looked around for a landmark he would remember when he returned for Robinson’s remains. There was nothing. The surrounding land was bare and flat—all mud, gravel, clay, and rock scraped flat for millennia by the ice. He scanned the ground for stones to build a cairn, but there were none. The land had already swallowed him.
He stood the lieutenant’s shotgun vertically in the grave, its muzzle pointing downward. The gunstock would be Robinson’s grave marker. He would see the artificial shape protruding from the earth if the weather was clear, but he would need to return within a year to find this site again. Any longer and the grave would fill with rainwater that would freeze and thaw and freeze again. The gun would topple to the earth, or a passing Esquimaux, astonished by his find, would pluck the gun from the soil, and then there would be no recovering him. Adams stood at the grave until he began to shiver, then turned away. He folded chunks of ox meat into strips of dirty canvas and placed them in his knapsack. He left the stove and the broken shovel on the ground and strapped Robinson’s telescope across his back. The sledge held little more than his blanket bag and floorcloth now. He gripped his shotgun and walked north with his unlit pipe in his teeth.
Meltwater falls emptied over two-hundred-foot cliffs. A strip of grey mist hovered over the water to the west like a cloud plucked from the heavens and laid out like a blanket on the sea. Two hours before midnight, the moon rose in a purple sky. Adams approached a stretch of moraine and picked his way gingerly over boulders the size of pumpkins. He chewed on pieces of ox meat as he walked and splashed across a flat, pebbly riverbed before reaching a field of Arctic cotton. Droplets of water hung trembling like glass lamps from the woolly white heads of each tiny plant.
From a hilltop he saw an enormous glacier filling the mouth of a valley to the north. The mile-wide river of ice stretched inland, a gigantic stream of molten glass covering the plain. As he approached, he saw the face of the glacier was riven with cracks. Teased out by the approaching summer, water gushed from beneath the glacier like arterial blood. The urgent force of the torrent had carved trenches twenty feet wide through the sharp rocks below the ice shelf, the grey water jumping and seething.
Shotgun at the ready, he followed bear tracks that descended through a series of narrow ravines, each separated by a ridge that rose like the spine of some buried monster. Purple saxifrage was an angry rash across the gravel. In the evening, a curtain of shadow rose over sheer granite cliffs above him, and it was very cold. A pair of hares bounded across the sand in front of him. He shot one and stood over the ruined carcass, looking down at the creature’s dead eye. He left the animal untouched on the ground and walked on.
The thought of finding Port Leopold deserted filled him with terror. Could he live for two years on the provisions Captain Ross would leave there for Franklin’s men? He knew he would not survive that long.
But if he did? He imagined them finding him there, stick-thin and toothless, filthy and mad, tripping on his long beard. They would take him back, put him in a sideshow, and charge a penny a time. Look, good people! Come and see what the Arctic does to a man!
Then he was seized by a different fear. Perhaps they already knew what he and Robinson had discovered, what they had done. Perhaps Captain Ross’ team had reached King William Land, found the campsite at Victory Point, and returned to Port Leopold before him. They would have seen the grave of the half-eaten man, the bones on the ground. They may have crossed the ice and found Honey’s shrouded corpse with its unnatural wounds. Walker and Dunn may have spun their own tale, with Adams as the villain. Surely Investigator and Enterprise would sail away and leave him to his fate. What sort of decent Royal Navy captain would not?
A sound like a rifle shot made him whirl around. A large ice floe, two hundred yards long, had broken off the main pack and moved lazily on the tide. The floe fouled itself in the shallows and broke into four smaller pieces. Adams watched the chunks spin in the water. Then something far away on the southern skyline caught his eye. He had known only the straight, flat lines of treeless horizons for weeks. A distant, unfamiliar shape now snagged his attention like a garment on a nail. Before he raised the telescope, he knew what he had seen.
He tried to guess the distance. Ten miles? Perhaps more. The hollow sensation in his stomach was not hunger. The tremor in his hand was not fatigue.
He saw a man.
Summer was near its end, but the seasons seemed to change in reverse as Adams fled north. He crossed regions still mired in winter, with streams frozen and stretches of iron-hard ground dusted with snow. He sought the colder, harder ground that was easiest to walk upon, detouring hundreds of yards to avoid swamps of knee-deep mud.
An enormous mesa rose from the surrounding land, shrouded by a thin band of white clouds. A colony of guillemots stood guard on the two-hundred-foot cliffs. They squawked and cackled with a jarring nonchalance, like a crowd jostling and gossiping at a market on an unremarkable day. He thought to stop for eggs, but the nests were too far above his head, the bluff too sheer to climb. The birds jeered at him as he headed north.
He slept in depressions in the earth and the lee of boulders, his shotgun primed and cradled in his arms. His hands and feet were numb with cold. He had lost his flint and steel and could find no driftwood for a fire. He placed his knapsack of ox meat beneath him and pulled his mutilated canvas cape over himself. His entire body felt swollen. Pain in his stomach, his back, his feet. Bears stalked his dreams, their massive jaws wide. He tried to recall the sensation of heat upon his skin, but no such memory would come to him. When he woke, a hard shell of frost crackled on his blanket and cap.
He arrived at a ravine thirty feet across and fifty feet deep. The chasm was an enormous crack in the earth, pried apart by some great creature with gigantic claws, extending to the ocean in the west and east as far as he could see. He explored the edge of the narrow gorge on the ocean side until he found a section of the steep, rocky slope he was strong enough to descend.
Tossing his knapsack to the ravine floor, he climbed gingerly down the cliff wall. He used the harness to lower the sledge, feeling for handholds as he went. He rested to suck on some ox meat at the bottom of the chasm. Tiny pools of water glistened in a line of huge paw prints strung out across a patch of mud.
He proceeded up the opposite wall with his knapsack on his back and the sledge dangling from the rope tied around his waist. Each time he found a handhold, he paused to haul the sledge up and balance it on an outcrop before climbing higher. After two hours, he crawled over the ravine’s edge and lay gasping, staring at the sky.
“There you are.”
Adams jumped to his feet. Walker stood on the opposite side of the ravine. His face was streaked with filth, and his brown beard was shot through with grey, but he looked strong and nourished. He stared down into the chasm, then regarded Adams with admiration.
“Looks like that took some work to get across.” He dropped his bedroll and sat on the ground, canteen in hand. “I don’t fancy rushing it. Think I’ll rest for a bit first. Took a bit out of me, catching you up.” He took a swig from his canteen. “Nearly lost you comin’ over the ice,” he said.
Adams did not reply.
“I found an ox carcass,” said Walker. “Was that you? A bear had been at it, but there was a bit left for me.” He toasted Adams with his canteen. “I thank thee for that.”
Adams found his voice. “Where is Dunn?”
“Where is the lieutenant?” Walker shot back. He winked. “Didn’t do anything rash, did you?”
“A bear,” he said, then swore inwardly at himself. He owed this man no explanation.
Walker’s expression was sympathetic. “Ah. Poor chap. Unlucky.” He took another drink. “Frankie was unlucky too.”
Adams swallowed. “Are you saying Dunn met a bear as well?”
Walker shrugged. “Something like that.”
“What is your intention?”
Walker looked surprised. “My intention? Thought you knew that. I’m goin’ home. I don’t know the way, so I’m followin’ you.”
“And when we get back?”
Walker smiled, revealing gaps between broken yellow teeth. “I’m sure we can reach an understandin’. Brave officer rescues Franklin’s last man, somethin’ like that. You’ll get to meet the bloody queen.”
“I shall report only the truth.”
Walker’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t want Sir John’s last man to hang, would you? How would that look?”
“The magistrate will decide.”
Walker clucked. “And there I was thinkin’ you were a reasonable fella. Might as well have let the lieutenant shoot me.” He let out a sigh and looked almost wistful. “I was ready for it then. I was. I’d had enough. I wanted ’im to do it.” Then his reverie was broken, and his expression was stony. “I don’t feel that way now, though. I’ve come this far. I rather fancy gettin’ home.”
Adams seized his shotgun and knapsack and ran.
He hurried north. A row of tall boulders stooped over the shingle like taciturn idols. He stumbled up a steep slope and along the top of a cliff, seeking a view to the south. He swept the horizon with his telescope but did not see Walker. He chewed his lip, waiting for his breathing to slow. The undulating coastline was pocked with small bays and cliffs. Any one of them could conceal an army. He rechecked his shotgun and limped on through a grassy field. Two butterflies with brown-and-orange wings fluttered past his head. He reached another cliff, whose edge was not sheer but a scree slope slanting down to a point twenty feet below. Beyond that was a hundred-foot drop.
He mulled tactics. Should he conceal himself behind a boulder and ambush Walker as he followed? Should he just run? A flock of ducks flew overhead and vanished into the russet sky. His boots had walked on ten thousand stones, but this one rolled under his boot, wet and slippery like a small piece of the earth come alive. He stumbled, and his boot slid out. His leg twisted. Something in his ankle tore, and a boiling liquid shot up through his leg. His back arched in agony, and the sound of a wild creature escaped his lips. The world tilted and crashed. His cheek struck the earth hard, and the telescope and his knapsack of ox meat slid from his back. Dazed, he watched them gather speed as they slid down the scree to the cliff edge. The knapsack struck a large rock, flipped into the air, and disappeared into the chasm below. The telescope slid and stopped at the precipice before it spun twice like the hands of a clock. It stood for an instant in a final salute and was gone.
He lay with his teeth clenched and his eyes screwed shut at the pain in his ankle. When he could sit up, he bent over the injured leg. He tugged his mittens off with his teeth. The skin around his ankle was intact but already blackening. Even with fingertips seared and deadened by the cold, he could feel the ankle swelling. He feared he would not get his boot back on his swollen foot if he removed it. He sat sucking air through his teeth until the pain eased from a blaze to a throb.
He still had his shotgun, and his shot bag was slung across his chest. He rolled up his blanket bag as tightly as possible, then made a crude harness from the track rope and put the rolled-up blanket on his back. The final piece of tent canvas, now barely five feet long, became a raincoat tied around his shoulders. There was no sign of Walker on the cliff behind him. Was Walker as weary as he? Was he hurt? He abandoned the sledge and hobbled north like a beggar with his bedroll on his back.
The thaw had altered the shape and colour of the country since he and Robinson had gone south seven weeks earlier. He scanned the surrounding area for landmarks but recognised nothing. The melt had made a rushing river of what had been a shallow brook running an inch deep over stones. He sat on the rocky bank and rolled down his stocking. The flesh around his ankle was fat and black, but he did not think the bone was broken. He hobbled upstream for two hours until he found a shallow place to ford the river. He removed his boot and numbed his swollen ankle in the freezing water, then bound it with a length of flannel torn from his shirt.
A duck’s nest lay at his feet. He dropped to his knees and pulled aside the down and grass lining of the nest. Five pale-green eggs. He tipped his head back, swallowed the eggs’ contents, and tossed the shells on the ground. A short silent prayer on his lips, he rose to his feet using the shotgun as a crutch and limped on, cursing his slow pace. Every minute, he stopped to look over his shoulder, ready to drop with fatigue. His head slumped, and he saw only the gravel three feet ahead.
When he had not slept for a day, a tall shadow rose before him, and he cried out in fear. The sun was in his eyes. His injured ankle gave way, and he fell backward. He pulled the trigger of the shotgun and heard the ball strike stone. The sound of the blast receded. He squinted up at the shape looming over him. Silhouetted against the sun was the cairn of stones he and Robinson had built seven weeks earlier to alert Franklin’s men to the provisions left for them at Port Leopold. He stared at the structure and thought of Robinson returning Crozier’s message cylinder to the cairn at Victory Point, two hundred miles and half a dozen men’s lives ago.
Who will reward us for delivering such news? Robinson had asked. They will call us liars.
Would Robinson have had him tear this cairn down too? Perhaps he would have urged Adams to leave no trace of their passage along this shore. There would be so many questions. He hung his head and tried to think. To the west, the ice pack was streaked with wide cracks. Small chunks of ice bobbed in the shallows. A waning gibbous moon was like a broken button on the sky. The scurvy left his mind feeling dull, like an overused blade. He remembered Samuel Honey’s words: Some questions a man has no answer for.
He groaned and rose to his feet.
Walker had not shown himself for hours, but Adams’ pace had flagged since his injury, and he knew the man must be close. He would have heard the shot.
Adams thought he might die here.
He stood at the top of a rocky bluff, staring down at a mile-wide channel of boiling black water he had no means of crossing. He dropped to his knees and put his face in his hands, a gnarled claw in his gut. The thread of my life has unravelled and brought me farther than I ever imagined, he thought, but I think no more remains on the spool.
He was very tired. He could not remember crossing such a wide channel on his journey south with Robinson. How could they have missed it? Then he thought of the pack he had seen splinter in the ocean to the west and understood. A month earlier, the shore ice had extended west into the waters of the sound, allowing them to travel quickly down the coast. They had unknowingly crossed the mouth of a frozen strait, thinking it merely the floor of another snow-covered valley.
How was he to cross a mile of open water? He cursed himself for agreeing to abandon the airboat on the shores of Boothia after crossing the ice pack from King William Land. Had it been a week since then? A hundred miles? Too far to go back and retrieve it. He thought of the whaleboat abandoned by Crozier’s men on King William Land. Sitting on a sledge dragged across miles of gravel, it had seemed so absurd. But Crozier had known open water lay ahead.
He would have to find a place to cross. A mile to the east, a bank of mist hovered over the strait. With the arrival of summer, much of the snow had melted from the surrounding ridges, revealing featureless brown hills. He stumbled down a gravel slope before making his way eastward for two miles along the shore of the strait. An enormous bank of grey clouds billowed in the northern sky, poised like a beast’s claws about to strike. A powerful wind buffeted his face. He smelled rain.
The width of the channel narrowed as he progressed, until it was no more than half a mile. Confined in the sheltered part of the channel, a section of ice remained intact where the two sides of the strait were closest, forming a bridge two hundred yards wide.
He would cross here.
Light rain began to fall. The sky darkened. Downstream from the rigid section of ice, loose pieces of the floe rose and fell on the strong current. The wind freshened. A large fragment of ice bucked on the swell, detached itself from the pack’s western edge, and began moving away on the tide toward the mouth of the strait. He realised the ice bridge to the far shore was breaking up. If he did not traverse it now and reach the opposite shore, the ice would disintegrate, and he would never get across.
Soon I shall encounter Charon, waiting on his skiff, he thought, but I have no money to pay him, so I must wander these shores for a hundred years.
He sensed movement behind him and turned.
Walker stood no more than a hundred yards away.
The seaman shouted to be heard over the wind. “What is your name?”
Adams stared back at him.
Walker called again. “You never told me your name!”
Adams levelled his shotgun and fired. Walker flinched at the sound of the blast, dropping into a crouch. When he saw he was not struck, he straightened, blinking. His own shotgun was at his shoulder as he approached. Adams aimed and pulled the trigger again. He heard the click, but no explosion followed.
Walker grinned. “They will do that. ’Specially when they get wet.” He crossed the distance between them and stopped three feet from Adams with the barrel of his gun pointed at his face.
“I have a confession,” he said. He threw the shotgun to the ground. “I’ve had no ball or shot left this past week. But it’s good for show. Helped me get close to you, didn’t it?” He reached a hand under his coat and brought out a knife. “This still works, though.”
Adams bent over in surrender. He lowered his shotgun.
Walker smiled.
Adams went for him then.
Expecting Adams to recoil from the knife, Walker’s eyes widened as Adams brought the shotgun around, gripped in both hands like an axe. Walker threw his arms up to protect his face, but Adams had gone for the leg. The shotgun barrel struck Walker on the side of the knee. Something cracked. Walker screamed. The force of the blow swept both his legs out from under him and he went down.
Adams ran.