Creation (5 page)

“
It’s the Quebec surveying vessel
.”

The
SURVEYOR

LITTLE NATASHQUAN HARBOUR,
JUNE
22, 1833

… We also found another American Schooner here, the
Ripley
of Eastport, Maine, having Mr. Audubon on board, the Naturalist, with several young men, two of them medical students of Boston. Mr. Audubon has come principally for the purpose of studying the habits of the water Fowl with which the Coast of Labrador abounds and to make drawings of them for his splendid work upon the Birds of America. He sent his card onb’d with a polite note and I received him onb’d and we found him a very superior person indeed.

—
Surveying Journals
, Henry Wolsey Bayfield, Captain, Royal Navy

H
enry Bayfield stands on the foredeck of the
Gulnare
. He gazes straight ahead, but from long practice he can sense her elongated oval behind him. She is his world, a surveying ship made to his
specifications and chartered by the Royal Navy. He takes pleasure in her lines, her slender masts on which the flag now snaps in a fresh wind, and her gleaming black hull. Before him is the figurehead, the head and torso of a woman, gleaming too, in white with touches of blue and pink. He stands with feet apart, hands loosely gripped behind him, in full uniform, his cap on, prepared for any eventuality, even one as unexpected as this: that in this far-flung, rugged anchorage he should encounter an American painter of birds.

The whaleboat approaches, rowed by Yankee sailors, the same sailors who delivered a calling card only an hour previously. He has it now in his breast pocket. It is a most unusual card, bearing the stamp of a Wild Turkey and the motto “America my country.” It has the name Audubon on it; the sailors will deliver the man himself, who stands in the bow in a rough wool jacket and fisherman’s trousers baggy with damp, his head covered with a sou’wester, out of which streams a tangled mane of chestnut hair.

Augustus Bowen steps up to Bayfield’s side; the lieutenant is a contained and dapper man, tall, lean, with pale lips. He and the captain have come through rough weather relying on one another. Bowen is perhaps less robust than his superior officer; he has had a cold since May. But it has not diminished his eagerness. This summer he expects a promotion.

“I’ve heard tell of the man in London,” says Bowen. “Have you?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Bayfield has not been in London for many years. His work keeps him in the Gulf of St. Lawrence five months of every spring and summer, and he spends the winter at the garrison in Quebec.

“A colourful character, sir. He stalks through London like a Chinese coolie with his immense portfolio strapped to his back, smelling of bear grease.”

“Bear grease? Has your godfather told you this?”

Bowen’s godfather is the Duke of Sussex, a fact seldom forgotten by the young man.

“Yes, sir. You see, Audubon calls on the wealthy to raise money for his book on birds.”

“I imagine that is what artists must do.”

“There is much controversy about the merits of the birds he paints. Enormous, slatternly, violent creatures.”

Bayfield removes his eyes for one instant from the approaching boat. “Is that intended to be a recommendation?”

“Opinion is divided, sir. Some call him a genius and are reminded of Byron. Others —”

“We shall put that aside while he is my guest onboard,” says the captain. Byron indeed. The poet’s work, despite or perhaps because of the scandal associated with his name, is a favourite with Captain Bayfield, although he is loath to declare his affection at the moment.

The artist swings himself onto the rope ladder, which has been lowered over the side. When he reaches the top rung, the captain steps forward, mild, tenacious, authoritative. As he holds out his hand in greeting, the three white stripes around his sleeve flash.

The artist sweeps off his sou’wester with the woollen flaps hanging down and performs a courtly bow.

“Good evening. This meeting is propitious.”

“Welcome on board. What a coincidence that we should arrive at Little Natashquan on the same day!”

“I come to beg your assistance.”

Bayfield is a good judge of men; he’s had to be. Within seconds he has recognized the case. Here is one of God’s blessed, gifted with elegance, charisma, and no small sense of theatre. The man before him is long-legged and still strong, although his waving shoulder-length hair greys at the temples. The eyes are soulful. The peaked face, with something of the child in it, beguiles. A restless energy manifests in his hands with their prominent knuckles, veins and sinews. He is brimful of himself and perhaps not to be trusted. But no, there is the gaze, full of candour; the handshake, sincere; the earnest spirit yearning to conquer a stranger.

Audubon meets the captain’s eyes but withdraws his hand quickly, and, putting his own two together, rubs them. “I have been very cold,” he says.

“The temperature is forty-one degrees. A little lower than normal, and somewhat difficult weather for surveying, with all the wind and rain,” says Bayfield.

“Desperate for painting birds. My hands grow quite numb as I sit at my table. And it’s no better for finding specimens; when the fog comes, as it has these last three weeks, you can rarely walk nor sail.”

“On shore you will be driven mad by moschettoes and blackflies,” says the captain. “The men working at the rigging smear themselves with paint, oil and tar. It helps a little. But — I suppose the weather suits the birds.”

“The birds, but not those who pursue them.”

“You count yourself amongst their predators?”

“I am afraid I must.” The artist smiles. “But I prey on them out of love.”

Bayfield remembers the presence at his elbow. “This is Lieutenant Bowen,” he says. “The artist John James Audubon.”

Bowen steps forward.

“I have heard talk of your birds,” he drawls.

“Ah,” says Audubon.

“Ah,” says Bayfield. “Well. Well.”

Bowen stares flatly at the visitor as Bayfield fingers his watch chain.

Audubon glances at the spotless deck, the gleaming timbers and neatly coiled ropes. He looks through the gloom towards the land, the morass of pitted rock, splash pools and deep mosses which he explored earlier.

“I have come to ask for your guidance. I am having grave doubts about our pilot,” he says. “He would not take me to the river mouth.”

“The English command the trading there, and American ships are banned,” says Bayfield.

Audubon barely stops to hear him. “He cannot take us there, but neither will he take us near enough the mainland, insisting on sailing out in the open where we do not find the birds.”

“I am sorry to say your pilot may be wise in staying offshore.”

“I must find the nesting birds. It is why I have come.”

“Would it not be easier to stay in your studio and have the birds brought to you?” asks Bowen.

“I observe them as they are in Nature,” Audubon says. “Other artists may paint from specimens, but to me their work is useless. I follow my subjects to their nests. I watch their every move. It is why my paintings are superior to all others.” He gazes boldly at Bowen.

“We are preparing new charts but have nothing to offer yet,” Bayfield interjects. “As for those that exist, I am afraid that my predecessor, James Cook, did not distinguish himself in these parts. In fact he was called away to the Pacific, and his assistant did the measurements. We find they are not at all accurate.”

“You give reason to my pilot, who refuses to use them,” says Audubon, who begins to pace.

“He must use them but use caution also, I am afraid to say. It is my mission is to chart every inlet and shoal of the passage between the island of Newfoundland and the peninsula of Labrador. Seven summers, thus far, we’ve been working our way up the coast. And every year the demands of my Admiralty become more insistent with the increase of shipwrecks in the Gulf.”

“You will encourage my fears,” says Audubon.

“There is enough danger here without adding to it with your fears,” says Bayfield kindly. “My ship and I will do all we can to assist you in your journey.”

“I am grateful.”

Bayfield reaches again for his watch chain. “Time is my obsession. I race to accomplish what I can before it, and weather, see me turn tail for home. How far do you plan to travel?”

“To the Strait of Belle Isle and, if we are lucky, round the point and farther north. Then overland to Quebec.”

“Ah,” says Bayfield. “If you are lucky.”

T
HE HOLD IS VERY CLEAN
and heated by the stove. The tools of the surveyor are here, the chains and lead plumbs, the theodolite with its gleaming half circle, various compasses and arcs. A chorus of ticks of disparate timbre — low, thin, glottal, whispery — echoes in the
small space, a chorus composed of the voices of highly polished and intricate chronometers.

“How many clocks have you?” Audubon whispers.

“On this journey, we have thirteen on board.”

Time is audible, each clock slicing the instants off the remaining day, their communal ticking an ode to time in its most precise configurations. The hold is a tomb for the present.

Sweat pops out on Audubon’s brow.

Bayfield puts out his hand to give benediction to the row of clocks. “My chronometers are my most precious cargo. Without these I do not know where I am. I use them to calculate longitude between the Quebec Citadel and Greenwich. For latitude I use my sextant. I also make astronomical observations, principally by moon occultations, and eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites, to ‘fix’ our location.”

“I am astonished,” Audubon says, “that you can see the moons of Jupiter. Even with those eyepieces of yours.”

“From Quebec, it is easiest in the clarity of winter. But occasionally I see them from here, in the warmer seasons. The cloudless sky is a circumstance much to be looked for but rarely achieved, in Labrador. You can very well imagine how long we have to wait for good conditions and how rapidly we set to work when the weather is fair! I can give exact bearings of any point on water, determined by the stars, accurate to within five hundred feet. For instance, I know, at this moment, that we lie at 50° 12 north, 23° east of Quebec and 61° 53 west of Greenwich.”

Audubon is short of breath.

“And when you cannot see the stars?”

“I still take great pride in my accuracy.” Lifting a piece of chain, Bayfield explains how, on land, he measures small bases a quarter of a mile long or even less, every twenty or thirty miles. The chain is forged of narrow links, and is a little rusted, light as chains go, and folds into a neat pile at his feet as he lets it slip through his fingers.

A
S THE DOOR SHUTS BEHIND THEM,
the ticking of the chronometers is suddenly gone, and the rustling sea is again in their ears. The
sailors below ready the whaleboat. The
Gulnare
’s figurehead looms as the ship rides at anchor. Her throat, her breasts, are magnificent and bare. “How strange to see a woman’s form here, in this wretched place!” Audubon says.

“She is our spirit, Gulnare, named for the harem slave in Byron’s poem
The Corsair
. Do you know it?”

Bayfield is eager for such conversation; he has been reading on shipboard since he first joined the navy at the age of eleven, and only rarely does he find a man with whom he can discuss his likes and dislikes. Too late he realizes he has used the name Byron: does his guest know he has been compared with the renegade? He blushes, and hopes it is too dim now for anyone to notice.

Bowen coughs ever so lightly.

“I am not a learned man. I travel with one book only. This.” Audubon pulls a dog-eared copy of Linnaeus’s
Systema Naturae
from his waistcoat. From the other inside pocket protrudes a flute. He tucks the flute back in and, bursting with impatience, says, “Never have I seen a coastline I liked so little! Wild, impassable, treacherous, with stunted plants that bloom and die in six weeks. No wood to make a shelter or a fire! Sir, I tell you truly, this country is a hard and angry place.”