The Ice Child (17 page)

He thought, perhaps, that salt did not agree with him. But he did not say so. Everything that entered his mind was so entirely ludicrous. How could salt not agree with a sailor? But he truly seemed better when they did not eat the salted pork in the rations, and when they had feasted on the birds that had been shot on Beechey. He thought he would like to eat fresh meat every day. He even thought that, rather than cast off from the island, he would prefer to stay there and watch the skies fill with the thousands upon thousands of birds as they wheeled over from the south.

He liked the little dovekies best. They were small and stocky, with a black head and a clean white underbelly. Standing on Beechey’s shore, keeping still and silent, he could sense the changes around him, as if the ocean were thrashing into life, and the skies filling. The solid ground of Beechey and the rising rock of Devon were nothing, mere lifeless strands. Out there—out there in the sea—was where all life congregated, in countless numbers of fish and whale and narwhal and walrus. For those first few weeks of summer he felt he was on some sort of carriageway, where invisible streams of giant foot and horse traffic brushed past him. He could sense their body weight pressing into the empty spaces. And he would glance back at the ships—that had looked so mighty against the Greenhithe dock—and think how very small they were in such a very large world.

The ice cracked on the last day of July.

They heard an explosion out to sea—just that, an explosion, as if God had mined his own white landscape and blown it to pieces. There had been a flurry of activity, with officers on deck, and signals passing between the ships.

“Ice moving!” he heard as he clambered on deck. It was Crozier’s voice.

They came out into the Barrow Strait, into the very area where the ice had impeded them last year, and the wind rose, and
Erebus
and
Terror
plowed forward and picked up speed, racing like yachts. It was a brisk and blindingly bright day, and the roll of the water and the sound of the wind in the sails was heaven. Movement! Glorious movement! They rounded the northern shore of Somerset Island and entered Peel Sound, overjoyed to find this unknown strait going directly south.

“Now we’re at it,” the men said. “Now we’re for the Pacific.”

There were no icebergs to be seen. Only the sea, the beautiful sea with its many colors, so many wonderful colors. The relief from the gray and white of Beechey was like a drug. Blue, blue ocean—cobalt and aquamarine and dark green and deepest royal blue—rushed past them. They saw walrus and whale, of so many numbers that even Gus gasped at their quantity, their size. Enough whales to light the world with their oil, streaming past them. It was like passing through rooms of treasure, ignoring a lifetime of riches for the greater prize beyond.

On the second day after entering Peel, a message was passed from
Erebus
.

“What does it say?” Gus asked the nearest man.

“We are to keep sail,” he told him.

“But why wouldn’t we keep sail?” Gus asked, puzzled.

“Crozier wants to stop to build cairns,” he was told. “On the shorelines, to post ships that might come after us, to say where we have been and when we were here.”

Gus shrugged. It seemed stupid to halt when they were flying across the water with every hour. When they got to the Pacific, then there would be more than enough time to tell the world where they had come through and when.

“’Tis orders,” the men in the mess grumbled. But not for long. In truth, none of them wanted to halt the swift, sweet running of
Terror
.

They had been sailing out of Beechey for less than a week when they saw the ice again.

Bergs started to appear far to the south, and Thomas Blanky, the
Terror
’s ice master, was constantly on deck, as much listening for safe passage as looking for it. A man could hear the different voices in the ice as it passed—the gentle slow-stirring sound of melted ice granules in the water, the rasp of newly frozen pancake against the bows, the greater dull thump of pieces of isolated drift.

Men were posted to lookouts.

“Growlers,” came the call, at midday on the third day.

High up on the masts the lookouts could see what the crew could not until the ships were almost upon them: large weighty chunks of ice that hit the hulls and whose reverberation shuddered through the entire ship. True to their name, they growled along
Terror
’s side.

“See that floe,” Blanky said. “Old pack.”

The words filtered through the ship’s company.
Old floe
had a deeper significance even than the growlers. It meant a chunk of ice, perhaps as large as a house, with snow still stacked on top of it, and tide marks all around it. This was ice that had seen more than one winter. It did not appear in the ocean by chance; it came from deeper, faster ice behind it. Ice that had been there, packed tight, for perhaps many winters, and only the extraordinary warmth of the last weeks had freed it.

Still keeping a swift pace, despite the ice,
Erebus
and
Terror
covered almost 250 miles.

“Land!” came the cry.

All hands rushed to the side, following the direction of the lookout’s outstretched arm.

Only just visible in the distance was a low, dim outline.

“What is it?” Gus asked.

“King William Land!” was the reply. “King William Land!”

Gus immediately looked to Blanky, and to Crozier, who were upon the bridge. He saw that Blanky was not looking south, but back, to the northwest, to the direction of the large, open stretch of sea guarded by Gateshead Island. They had passed the entry to it forty-eight hours before. As Gus followed Blanky’s gaze, he saw how much white was piled in the sea in their wake—more white now than blue.

We’re being closed in again
, flashed through the boy’s mind.
We shall be trapped
. And he shoved the idea away, pressed it out of his head. It didn’t matter if the ice closed in behind them, as long as it kept open in front. King William Land, he knew, was not very far from the channel called Simpson Strait. If they passed King William, they would be in Simpson. And Simpson was past halfway, much closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic. The glimpse of King William was a glimpse of salvation.

Better not to look back at all.

At six in the evening the ships hove to. Clouds were gathering on the horizon, but the sea was calm. Crozier came on deck, with lieutenants Little and Hodgson, and with the captain’s steward, Jopson. Jopson came down the gangway and grabbed Gus by his shoulder, hauling him to the rail.

Gus shrank under Crozier’s inspection. The captain seemed smaller now than he had at Greenhithe the previous year. His gaze was stonier. His smile less ready.

“Augustus,” Crozier said, “you’re coming with me. I want you to see Mr. Goodsir.”

Jopson pushed him in the back, between his shoulder blades.

“Aye, sir,” Gus replied.

Crozier looked hard at him for a second or two. “Good lad,” he murmured.

You would not have known that
Erebus
was the younger ship by some thirteen years. Bigger than
Terror
at 372 tons, she was 105 feet long, with a twenty-nine-foot beam. She looked darker, uglier; as if scarred by age. Boarding her at sea was a prolonged business, to get over the wood projecting two feet from the topside, built especially to prevent rising sea ice encroaching onto the decks.

As they neared her, Gus looked up at her slightly rotund, rolled shape. She was like a great floating dock. She moved in the swell of the ocean like a heavyweight boxer feeling his way around a dirt circle, his arms loose at his sides, eyeing the enemy. As he was brought up, Gus couldn’t imagine that the growlers that still churned away to left and right could ever beset this almighty ship. It was almost as if she were staring them down. The fighter, ready for the fight.

They went down through the single hatch on an almost vertical seven-foot ladder to the lower deck. This was the only deck that was heated, and Gus could still smell the sooty residue of the winter; though brushed, the beams were dark, and the wood a little greasy to the touch. They went down a two-foot-wide companionway, a narrow tunnel with very little light. Gus realized where they were going. It was almost the same as
Terror;
they might even have been in the same ship. At the end was the officers’ messroom. It was here that Jopson opened the door, and stood back to let Crozier, Little, Hodgson, and Blanky enter.

“Stay there,” Crozier said to Jopson. “Wait until Mr. Goodsir comes to you.”

Gus peered through the crack of the door.

The Preston patent illuminators, the circular glass skylights, let in pools of sunlight, scattering watery refraction across the cabin. Under one of these, his face rather ghostly in the bluish tone, sat Franklin himself.

Gus had not seen the great man in recent weeks. Not close like this.

The boy stared at the legend, a coat wrapped around him despite the risen temperatures. Franklin was looking down at maps spread on the center table; Gus noticed the roll of flesh at the collar, the drooping of the skin around the eyes. He looked far more than his sixty years.

The officers were already talking. As Gus watched, Franklin interrupted his men.

“There is no choice,” he said, in a slow and surprisingly frail voice. “Poctes Bay may well provide ample wintering. But we are not looking for winter quarters.”

They leaned forward over the map.

Franklin’s finger was resting on the Admiralty North Polar chart given to him just before the ships had sailed. On it King William Land was clearly marked in their own vicinity; but the southern coast was not known. All that could be known for certain was that, from where they were anchored now, straits passed to either side of King William; to the east was James Ross Strait, to the west Victoria.

Crozier sat down at Franklin’s side. He looked steadfastly for some time at Poctes Bay, a dotted line running from east to west, indicating that King William was fastened to the Boothia Peninsula and, as such, was part of the American continent.

“There is no way out down James Ross Strait,” Franklin said.

Crozier looked up.

“This is my contention,” Franklin said, seeing the expression on Crozier’s face.

“I am not convinced, sir,” Crozier murmured. “I am sorry.”

It was his first utterance since entering the room. A small murmur went around the other officers.

“You don’t agree?” Fitzjames asked.

“I am not convinced.”

“No man can be convinced until he has seen with his own eyes, and the channel is traversed,” Fitzjames agreed. “But fair guessing …”

“It is not my fair guess either,” Crozier said.

A look passed between Crozier and Blanky, the ice master of the
Terror
. Franklin sat back in his seat. The reflection of the waves rippled over his folded hands. “Expand upon your theory,” he said.

Crozier turned the sister chart, No. 261, toward him. “Here at the southernmost tip we assume the isthmus between King William and Boothia,” he said, quietly. “Dease and Simpson and Ross have all assumed such a link.”

“And the assumption is of sufficient strength to be mapped,” Franklin said.

“But nevertheless it is an assumption,” Crozier replied.

Franklin waved his hand. “And you think there is no isthmus, and the way is clear to Victoria, to the west? That King William is an island?”

“Yes, sir. It may well be so.”

“And what relevance,” Franklin asked, “is this to our discussion?”

“That if we went east, we find our way through as effectively as if we went west,” Crozier said. “And we may not meet such heavy ice.”

There was silence. Franklin considered Crozier for some time. At last he said, “There is no gamble in going west. There is a gamble—the gamble that we will meet the isthmus exactly as marked, and find ourselves in a bay, exactly as marked—in going east.”

“But there
is
a gamble going west,” Crozier said.

“Name it,” Franklin retorted.

Crozier glanced up at Blanky. The Yorkshireman shifted a little, uncomfortably. He had sailed with the same Ross for whom this strait was named.

“I know nothing more than the next man,” Blanky replied, “as to whether east is a dead end or not. But”—he glanced warily around the faces of the other officers—“with respect, Sir John, I do know the ice. And we have ice coming hard from Victoria. There is ice ahead, terrible fast. There may not be such ice on the other side.”

“You cannot know it is fast,” Franklin said.

“It is my opinion, sir.”

“Based on what?”

“The condition of the passing bergs,” Blanky said.

“We have steam to break through passing berg,” Franklin commented.

“But not enough steam to break through fast pack and floe,” Blanky answered.

Franklin smiled. “We have railway locomotives belowdeck, man.”

“Not even they will break through what is to come,” Blanky said.

There was complete silence. Franklin’s expression was dead. Fitzjames made a little breathy sound and settled himself opposite Franklin, raising his eyebrows.

Franklin turned to James Reid. The
Erebus
ice master had his gaze fixed on Chart 261.

“What say you, Mr. Reid?” Franklin asked.

Reid colored. He did not always like to speak too loud; he was conscious of his North Country accent. He felt self-conscious belowdeck, even now, when the entire expedition rested on his and Blanky’s skill.

“There is old ice coming past us,” he said, finally. “But Victoria is the shortest and most direct route.”

Franklin, for the first time, smiled. “Exactly,” he said. “Exactly my point. We can outrace winter. Outpace the ice before it becomes solid.”

Crozier visibly blanched. Blanky looked away.

“We have in our ships the most powerful methods of breaking through even compacted floe,” Franklin said. “We are armored. No ships are better equipped to break through. And we must seize our chance now. There may be less than two weeks before Mr. Blanky’s predictions come true. I contend they are not true yet. But they might become so if we do not act quickly and make speed. Speed, down the shortest route.”