CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Barnard visited Adams in his sick bunk.
“My sledge team reached the north shore of Barrow Strait,” he said, “but we could go no further. It was only forty miles to Cape Hurd, but my men were completely spent. I have never seen such ice. Hummocks thirty feet high. I dearly wished to proceed further to Wellington Channel, but I could not in good conscience risk the lives of my men.”
Adams studied his friend. The junior lieutenant was thinner than he remembered, not the giant he had imagined when rescued at Fury Beach. Grey hairs sprouted in the young man’s brown whiskers.
“We are cutting our way out of the harbour ice,” Barnard went on. “Two hundred feet per day. But it has been so cold, Edward. There is little meltwater on the ice, and it is still several feet thick. Captain Ross has every available man at the saws. We are scattering gravel on the ice to melt it, but it is hard work, and so many of the men are unwell. If we do not get out of here, I worry we will be trapped for another winter.”
Adams lay back and closed his eyes.
“Captain Ross says we are to continue the search,” Barnard said. “Once we are out of the harbour, we are to head for the north shore of Barrow Strait and then to Wellington Channel. I believe he wants to try for Melville Island. It seems we can go neither forward nor back.” He leaned forward to whisper. “Edward, there is much sickness aboard. Most of those who went on the sledge missions remain ill. Dr Robertson himself nearly died of scurvy over the summer, and we lost poor Mister Matthias while you were away. They say he had consumption before he even left England. Two dozen men are in their sick bunks. The preserved provisions are of such poor quality, and we cannot shoot enough fowl for everybody. If we try to sail west to Melville Island, I fear for us all. Captain Ross has left a depot of provisions and built a hut for Franklin’s men from the spare spars. He has even left them Investigator ’s steam launch. Do you think they will find it?”
Adams opened his eyes and studied the ceiling. “I don’t know, John.”
“I could not see it before,” Barnard whispered. He seemed anxious to divulge a great secret.
Adams patted his hand. “What is it you see, John?”
“I could never understand how one hundred and twenty-nine men and two of Her Majesty’s ships could become trapped. I was sure that if the ice blocked Sir John and his men, they would merely turn around. I think now of my conviction, and I feel foolish.”
“Man is a creature of great hubris, John. I find myself thinking this a great deal.”
Barnard nodded dully. “Why do we think ourselves in control of what only God can determine?”
Adams gripped his hand. He sat up and gazed into Barnard’s eyes. “Yes, John. That is it precisely. Someone I knew once told me God does not enter into transactions. One cannot buy a ticket to His grace.”
“Will you write an account of your journey, Edward? The newspapers would pay well for your tale.”
“I do not wish to speak of it.” I shall write no letters, he thought. Not to Frances, not to Lieutenant Robinson’s wife. I shall make no entries in my journal.
His story was a monster trapped in his head. He would not wish it into existence and see it wreak havoc only to discover he could not banish it to whence it came. He would keep it shackled and unseen in a black hole.
Adams gazed at two-hundred-foot icebergs that emerged and then disappeared again in swirling fog banks. His scurvy symptoms had eased in the two weeks since he arose from the sick bunk to which he had been confined for a month. Investigator ’s shooting parties had brought in fresh fowl and eggs, but his weight remained twenty-five pounds less than before the sledge mission. The swelling in his ankle had subsided, but he could not arrest the tremor in his hands.
The ice that had imprisoned the two ships was breaking up. Leaving Port Leopold a month before, Ross had ordered the ships to steer north across Barrow Strait, hoping to make for Wellington Channel. Instead, Enterprise and Investigator were swept 250 miles eastward, cemented in the heart of a 200-square-mile floe. Helpless, the two vessels were like toys on an enormous white platter, borne along on the current into Baffin Bay.
Captain Ross decided not to sail back into the ice with a sick crew. When he gave the order to turn for home, the crews of both vessels wept with joy. They ran around the upper deck, whooping with excitement. Men forgot their enmities and abandoned grudges born of prolonged proximity. They embraced and slapped each other on the back.
Adams stood at the gunwale, watching snow flurries turn to fog. Minutes later, the mist lifted to reveal blue skies scraped bare of cloud by the sun. The sea changed its cloak hourly, clear of ice one moment, then cluttered with bergs that glowed from within. Countless tiny pieces the size of a man’s hand bobbed in the water, as if a berg had detonated somewhere, belching fragments of itself out across the sea. As the sun set, the ocean turned the colour of ink, and the three masts of HMS Enterprise were stencilled like charred trees on the blazing western sky.
Captain Sir James Clark Ross went ashore at Scarborough and summoned Adams to a small tavern near the waterfront. As he made his way from the dock, Adams caught the odour of horse manure and open drains. A light drizzle was cold on his face. He pulled his cap down and turned up his collar. Carriage wheels and horses’ hooves clattered on the cobbles. He scraped the manure from his boots on a stone and stepped through the tavern door.
Ross awaited him in a small, gloomy room at the rear of the building. The walls were bare, the plaster cracked and stained. The window looked out on a narrow alley. Adams glanced through dirt-streaked glass at bricks slimy with moss. A blackened fireplace in the wall was empty and cold. A pair of candles and a bottle of brandy stood in the middle of a long table. The brandy was the colour of honey in the candlelight.
Ross ushered him into the room and closed the door. He was unsteady on his feet. Most of the sledge-team members had begun to recover in the weeks since the ships left Port Leopold, but the mission commander remained unwell. He shuffled away from the door, his cane tapping on the timbers. He walked slowly across the room to a straight-backed chair next to the table. His lined and pouchy face, red-rimmed eyes, and thick white hair made him seem far older than his forty-nine years. The captain sank into the chair with a grunt. He bent forward and placed both elbows on the table before him, bowing his head and lacing his fingers like a penitent sinner. He glanced at Adams, then looked away again.
“You are looking better, I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ross nodded distractedly. “Good.”
He examined the table’s surface, then poured some brandy into a glass and swilled it around. Adams noticed something unfamiliar in Ross’ manner. The aloof, soldierly demeanour of the navy’s greatest polar explorer was absent, replaced with the insouciance of a man exhausted after setting down a heavy load. And then he understood.
Ross was drunk.
The commander frowned at him. “Oh, at ease, man! Our mission is ended. I am weary of formalities.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Sit.”
Ross pointed to a chair. He poured Adams a brandy, pushed the glass across the table at him, then sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The two men drank. Voices carried faintly through the door from the tavern. A shoeblack called out for trade in the street outside. Adams heard the fluttering of pigeons. Ross sat back in his chair and eyed him.
“Mister Adams, we are to be conspirators, you and I. Guardians of a secret. Oh yes, Captain Bird, too, of course. But he will say nothing. Drink.”
Adams sipped from his glass and felt the brandy burn his throat. Warmth spread through his veins.
“I am to take the carriage from here straight to Whitehall,” said Ross, “and there I shall deliver my report to the Admiralty. So ...” He drained his glass, set it back on the table, and poured himself another. “This is what I shall tell them: I shall say we found no trace of Sir John. I shall recommend that no further search expeditions enter Lancaster Sound from the east. I shall tell them the ice in Barrow Strait is too heavy to penetrate and not worth more lives. All this, I happen to believe most sincerely.” He stood and turned and stared into the dead fireplace. “At least I can begin with the truth, but I cannot end with it. Lieutenant Robinson was entirely correct about one thing: I cannot possibly repeat the remainder of your tale to Whitehall. The Admiralty would not accept it, even from me. I would receive a better reception if I walked in and dumped a rotting corpse on their mahogany table.”
Adams drank. He felt lightheaded. An image of Honey’s corpse lingered in his head, sprawled across a polished wooden table, buzzing with flies. Their Lordships were sitting back and examining it sagely through their pince-nez, port and cigars in their hands. Ross turned back to face Adams across the table.
“And yet we cannot leave them out there. I have known Sir John and Frank Crozier for thirty years. Even if they are gone, I must ensure they are buried at home. And as many of the others as we can find.” He reached out one hand and held it close to the candle flame, turning it, watching the yellow light curl and bounce on his fingertips. “I will tell Whitehall to continue the search from the west through Behrings Strait, to follow the northern coast of the mainland, past the mouth of the Mackenzie south of Wollaston Land and past Point Turnagain. I don’t suppose they shall get there before the summer of ’51.”
Adams blinked. The brandy sang in his chest and his fingertips.
“I never guessed they went as far south as they did,” said Ross softly, as if talking to himself. “My God, King William Land. Even now I cannot imagine how he managed it through so much ice.” He was silent for a moment, then poured himself another drink. “It was supposed to be me, you know, in ’45. Lord Haddington wanted me to go after I returned from Antarctica. Instead, I recommended he appoint Sir John.”
“You promised your wife you would not go to the Arctic again.” The brandy had loosened Adams’ tongue.
“You know about that?” Ross laughed. “Well, I suppose it is no secret. Of all your promises, make sure you keep the ones you make to your wife. She loved Frank Crozier as much as I did, though, so she let me go and look for my friend. But now I am finished. I cannot be the one to go next time.”
The blood in Adams’ veins was all brandy now, rich and hot. He nodded, his head heavy, wobbling on his neck. “Promises must be kept,” he intoned.
Ross regarded him with a kind expression. “Were you and Lieutenant Robinson friends?”
Adams cupped his glass with both hands and stared into its caramel depths. He thought of Robinson’s silence in the wake of Samuel Honey’s death, and then the lieutenant’s blood pooling in the gravel and his fingers going cold in Adams’ hand.
“I would not know how to describe it, sir.” He took another drink. Tears were on his cheeks. “I would need to invent a new language entirely.”
“The Arctic is full of Sirens, calling one back,” said Ross. “Nine winters I’ve spent in the ice. I would not survive another. But I would like you to go. Find the graves. Just do not mention that business on King William Land.”
“I will atone for my sins,” said Adams. The stinging burn of Honey’s flesh on his tongue was there again, reminding him. No quantity of brandy could scour it away.
“We all must,” said Ross. “I have spent my life searching for things. Sometimes we do not find them. But our friends are never truly lost. They are always somewhere.”
Adams understood that the truth of Franklin’s fate was not a secret but a disease he now shared with Ross. It was a sickness afflicting those who returned alive. It could turn a man’s hair white and line his face and leave him crippled with guilt. It was like a can of putrid meat from the ship’s stores. One caught a whiff of something unpleasant if one stood close to it. If opened and passed around, the stench would be overwhelming.
Adams stood on the wharf and looked out over the Woolwich dockyard stretching half a mile along the south bank of the Thames. Enterprise and Investigator stood like workhorses in the docks. He heard the faint clang of metal against metal from the smith’s shop. Teams of men with crates and sacks on their shoulders trudged to the wharf from the timber shed and storehouses. A succession of lighters brought barrels and crates down the fat ribbon of the river from Deptford. The air was heavy with the smell of rope and tar.
He looked out over the slipways, dry docks, and mast pond to the clockhouse tower. At the western end of the yard, a redbrick chimney rose 180 feet into the air above the steam engine factory. Shouts rang across the wharf and from the masts above. A handful of men clambered over Enterprise ’s spars, replacing the rigging. Others hung from the gunwale in harnesses, sanding, painting, and caulking the hull.
“They are going out again, Edward!”
John Barnard rushed up to Adams, almost colliding with him as his boots slipped on the timbers. “ Enterprise and Investigator —the Admiralty is sending them around to Behrings Strait to go in from the west!”
Adams smiled. “Yes, John, I know.”
Barnard placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Captain Ross has declared Franklin could only have gone west from Melville Island or north through Wellington Channel. Lady Jane and Fleet Street will not let the matter rest.”
Adams and Barnard looked out at the two ships in the dock. They watched a group of men disappear into the ships’ hatchways with casks and crates on their shoulders.
“Remarkable,” Barnard said. “Only three weeks since our return, but wipe them down and copper their hulls, replace a few spars and a bit of oakum, and they are almost ready again. Did you get a letter?”
Adams withdrew an envelope from his inside pocket and held it up. “I did.”
“Which ship, Edward?” Barnard asked urgently. “I am to be second lieutenant on Enterprise .”
Adams smiled at him. Barnard’s neatly trimmed whiskers were incongruous against a face roughened by the Arctic air.
“They have also asked me to serve aboard Enterprise .”
“Then we shall be together again! We are to go around via Valparaiso and the Sandwich Islands. I wonder who will be in command. They say Captain Ross will not go; he is too old. We shall find them this time. They must be stuck in the west, poor fellows.”
“We might do well to temper our expectations, John.” Adams hunched his shoulders against the breeze rising off the river. “This is their fifth winter. We lost eight men in just one.”
Barnard was solemn. “Indeed, Edward. But I am seized by the sense of a task unfinished.”
“As am I.” Adams nodded. “We must fetch them home.”
“Then will you go?”
He gripped Barnard’s hand. “I will go.”
“Splendid! Come now, and dine with me.”
“I hope you will excuse me,” Adams said. “I may have eaten something that disagreed with me. Perhaps I will feel better soon.”
“Of course.” Barnard clapped his left hand on Adams’ shoulder. “God bless you, Edward.”
Adams smiled. “I can only hope He will.”
After Barnard left him, Adams watched the work continue at the dock until the sun descended and the shadows lengthened on the river. A bell tolled. The men in the rigging and dangling from ropes along the hull took their tools and disappeared toward the taverns and brothels. Silence fell upon the wharf. Lamps flared on the barges in the river. The silhouette of the two ships’ masts grew fainter as the sky darkened.
Stars glimmered in the dusky sky. He realised now how much he had missed them during the long Arctic summer. Invisible through months of relentless sunlight, they remained hidden behind a sky of blue or grey or primrose, but never black. Curious that some things are revealed only in darkness, he thought. Leaving for Fury Beach under the midnight sun, he had believed his path was clear. It occurred to him now that the ceaseless glare had obscured the truth that Franklin’s fate had never been his to know. Robinson had seen it, accusing him of hubris, of demanding a bargain with the Almighty for which he, Adams, could set his own terms. Only when the hours of darkness lengthened and men began to die did it dawn on him that his journey had a wholly different objective. Robinson had told him his faith was a strength. He now suspected it sustained and blinded him in equal measure.
The white moon rippled in the glassy black surface of the river. The lights of the city to the west blurred in the fog drifting on the water. He decided he would no longer presume to know his fate. The need to atone for his father’s sin had left him. The Passage, too, had lost its allure. Frances had been right. No navigable route existed through the ice. This was more hubris, of which both he and the Admiralty were guilty, a shared hysteria. That much he would admit to her when she arrived on the train from Ipswich with her father.
He felt not cheated of a prize but chastened, redirected to a path from which he had strayed. A lightness of spirit came upon him, a clarity of purpose. By serving man he would serve God, and this time he would ask for nothing for himself. When Enterprise reached Wollaston Land, he would volunteer to lead a sledge team east to King William Land. He would bring home as many as he could. He thought of Robinson in his grave on a lonely beach far away. Of Billings and Handford laid to rest beneath the stones. Captain Ross was right, he thought. Our friends are never lost. They are always somewhere.
The breeze died away, and he wrinkled his nose at the smell of human waste rising from the river. Below him, a dim figure in a lighter pulled on his oar in the darkness. Sure of his direction, the man required no lamp.
Ross had said he and Adams were to be conspirators. Untroubled and guiltless at the lies of omission that would entail, Adams felt no anguish at such a pact. The notion of truth required such malleability. Robinson would have had him conceal Fitzjames’ fate and the discovery of the survivors on King William Land to protect his own reputation, but he and Ross would do it for theirs. What was it Fitzjames had said? Knead your tale into something appetising. Thus, heroes are born of men.