The Surfacing (39 page)

23rd May

They would halt at the next headland and put up in the lee of it, he announced. To
continue due south from there would take them off the island, and out onto the floe.
This would be their last chance of proper shelter for some time.

The day was clear. Under the cliffs, the shadows were blue. To the west a sprawl
of fog. At the foot of the cliff they found a circle of stones about as wide as the
tent, each stone about the size of a man's head. Placed there ten or a thousand years
before. To date, it was the only evidence the land had ever before hosted any of
their own kind.

As it was still early, he might have ordered a snow-house built for better comfort,
but he did not want them familiar with better comfort out here. In any case, he liked
the notion of doing exactly as their predecessors had done, setting up tent in the
same spot, weighing down the edges with the same stones. As a boy he had liked to
sneak into his father's bed, as soon as his father was gone and sure not to return.
He enjoyed the warmth, and the perverse satisfaction that it was somehow stolen.
His father, in a certain condition, always slept on his back, arms and legs spread,
star-shaped, and the boy he had been always liked to spread himself similarly, stretching
to try to find and fit the trace left by the larger man. Shifting a foot here, a
hand there, always trying to map himself faithfully to the heat that other body had
left in the sheet. Now the temptation was the same, a fond voice saying it must be
warmer here, where other men had once slept. The real warmth, of course, would be
afterwards. The memory of the shared bed, a bolster for days to come.

The next morning, beaded on a frozen rope, he and Daly and Banes crawled up the slope.
This was the most prominent piece of land they'd seen in a year, and had Franklin
passed this way here was where he would have left word. Also, Morgan wanted to reconnoitre
their road for the day. The road, he called it. It was the word and nothing else.
It was
whatever lay between them and where he wanted the land to be.

The snow about them glowed pink. As the sun lifted off the horizon, they watched
the colour soak down the slope, towards the tent, like cordial through crushed ice.
The smudge he'd seen yesterday – what he wanted to be another island – was now gone.
In its place, a lone grey hair had drifted down from the heavens, settled on the
surface. It looked like the slightest breath of wind would carry it off. It did not
matter, he told himself. It was due south. The rest of the page was blank. There
was no other way home.

Far below, back at the tent, he could see the little specks moving about. They seemed
of little consequence, destined to be crushed. He admired and pitied them.

With no small trouble, he wrote, we built a cairn to house a short narrative of how
we came hither, and why. It is posted with hope overreaching expectation, in a place
known by Christian or pagan neither one, and must remain unread until others' emulation
of the trials we ourselves have undergone. HM brig Impetus wintered these two years
past some 50 miles north of this point, the note read. On the 20th of May, 9 of the
crew left the vessel with the purpose of seeking aid for those remaining aboard,
who have not the means to quit it independently. Since leaving Beechey Island in
September of 1850, in the course of our travels north and west of the Wellington
Channel, we have seen no sign of any vessel except our own. From here we travel due
south, by boat and sledge, in the hope of striking the northern shore of Melville
Island, and travelling from there to the depot at Cape Dundas, which we believe is
our closest relief.

By the time they got back to the tent, his right hand was dead. There was no pain
at first, no feeling at all. It seemed someone else's hand, that was all. The fingers
were the colour and consistency of cheese, and looked so strange – so unlike flesh
– that he was tempted to hold the thing up to his nose. It was not altogether unlike
waking up with a dead arm. It would be hours before the first furious tingling began.

With his left hand, he slipped a chunk of frozen meat into his mouth. He sat there
grinding it down. In his mind, he saw her secretly slipping just such a chunk into
her mouth, letting it take her own heat, to blood temperature. He saw her chewing
patiently, before feeding the pulp to the boy, as to a baby bird. He could imagine
– himself almost taste – the thing as it thawed, gave, came to life. What he tasted
was warm blood. It would not be the first time the ragged edges had cut him open.
Perhaps it was not her mouth imagined, but his own.

As he chewed and swallowed, he watched Banes eating sullenly. To make the cairn,
to hold the note, it had taken almost an hour to hack enough stones from the frozen
ground. It may direct others to the ship, Morgan told the man. Should we ourselves,
by some misfortune, be unable to do so.

24th May

The next morning he was first to wake. He dressed quietly, crawled out. Ahead of
them the ragged crust was a mouldy pewter. To the far south it was crushed green
glass. Day by day since setting out, his urine had darkened. By now it was the colour
of claret. He would have been afraid he was somehow injured, but that the other men
all left similar stains in the snow.

They packed up. He watched Cabot trying to lift a bread bag. Back at the ship, he
had been able to lift one alone. Now, without his even asking, Daly came and took
the other end. It was as simple as that. They were weaker than before, from cold
and want and work.

It was the 24th of May. The spring tides had not yet
managed to boost and burst the
bay-ice, and they could head straight out from the land, due south.

At noon they stopped by a block of ice that the wind had sculpted to a distinctly
human shape. While they were eating, someone put a hat on his head, gave him goggles,
a nose-shield, a pipe.

Ask him has he seen any other sailors pass by, Blacker said.

Ask him how he got so goddamned gross and healthy-looking, said Banes. Ask him where's
he squirrelled away all his grub.

Ask him has he seen any women, Leask said. Christian, heathen or pagan. Tell him
we're in no way particular.

Just then a flock of geese came cruising low over the derelict floes, braying, mourning.
They had been summoned north. Morgan lifted his head to watch, and for a moment left
off chewing, out of respect.

Today the road was too hard and too dry, and the runners stuttered along, a dry finger
on a polished table top. Their steps echoed loudly on the hard crust.

It sounds like tympani, Cabot announced. Don't you find? In France, he said, you
know how they make them, those drums? No one answered, but no one objected, and he
seemed determined to talk. They have two even four horses pulling the skin, he said.
In all the opposite directions.

Sounds more like a medieval torture, DeHaven said.

To make it so tight, Cabot explained. He seemed overexcited. I have seen it done,
he said.

To Morgan, their steps on the surface didn't sound like a drum. It sounded like other
men marching nearby, in greater numbers, with greater purpose.

They made their road through the rubble and waste. By noon it was all they could
do to keep upright, but for another eight hours that day they drove on. It is far
worse than I ever conceived, he wrote. I have always considered myself ruthlessly
honest, the enemy of deluded hope, yet today's landscape has
showed me my mistake.
Contrary to everything I ever believed, I must consider that until now I have been
an optimist.

That night he studied the faces. They were now the faces of older men. A fine white
dust had found wrinkles everywhere. Beards and eyebrows and lashes all were stiff
and grey. They lay hugged one to the other in their common bag. They would have put
her and the boy in the middle, he supposed, with the best furs and the hot-water
flasks.

Men's strength already impaired, he wrote. He and DeHaven lay side by side, as they
now did every night. In his own journal, DeHaven began to write. With this wind,
it was too cold to talk outside.

More rations, DeHaven wrote.

Too soon. Too slow, wrote Morgan.

False economy. Failing men = slower progress = more rations consumed.

On the other side of him, Daly was squirming ridiculously. He was not looking for
sympathy, Morgan knew. He was flexing his muscles, moving his limbs, trying to keep
them alive.

As they slept the false flush of the hot food drained away, and the cold came soaking
up out of the ground, to claim them. About one o'clock Morgan sat up and lit a candle.
Some of the men were shaking mechanically, like men asleep on a moving train. The
tent walls looked as stiff as card. He dared not look at the thermometer, but the
severe cold brought a strange sense of relief. He felt justified, vindicated. He
was right to have left them behind.

Several times already he had dreamed the boy was out here with them, living as they
did. He saw the scene: he'd woken suddenly, wondering was the boy breathing, was
he smothered, was he stiff. In the tent's twilight he found the little head, pulled
away a flap that had fallen on it. The lips looked blue. He leant closer, held his
breath, but it was impossible to hear anything over the general labour. He brought
the flame nearer, held it right up to the mouth. The flame wavered and settled, then
wavered again.

He kicked Cabot awake. Grog, he whispered. It was a voice with ragged edges, close
to tears.

He listened to the man fumbling with the matches. One by one, the terrified hands
managed to light all the wicks.

We were in very real danger of freezing, he wrote. We were in mortal danger of falling
into a sleep from which we should never wake. We were cold almost to the core. I
told Cabot I wanted it scalding. I told him I wanted it steeled with rum.

In his dream, he dipped his finger in it, rubbed it on the boy's lips, as they had
wet with fine wine the lips of the newborn kings of France.

25th May

All morning a bear tracked them. No man was to so much as turn his head, Morgan ordered,
even if she came alongside. He wanted to encourage an attack. But the next time he
looked, she'd fallen back, was almost out of sight.

Before he could stop the man, Cabot was out of the traces and striding back the way
they'd come. Immediately, the bear halted her retreat.

Then she was bounding towards them, towards Cabot, at about four hundred yards. And
still the man kept striding on to meet her.

Hold, Morgan told the guns.

Remind me which one is Cabot, said DeHaven.

He's the big mass of fur.

She was sprinting now.

Hold, Morgan said again.

Afterwards, they watched as she tried to lift herself up off
the snow. They laid
into her with their rifle-butts, about the head.

Like a cook testing a cake, Cabot eased his carving knife into the gut. Looking on,
the men were stepping from foot to foot in a bizarre dressage, to spare their feet.
He cut out the tongue, and split her from crotch to thrapple with the axe. The stomach
was empty. They left the offal steaming and blubbering on the ice. The birds had
already heard the news.

The liver is the best part, Morgan told them, but not a man was willing to try. So
he forced himself, to give the example. A minute later he was retching grandly onto
the ice a yard from the tent door.

There he was, on his hands and knees, the steam of his own sick rising up into his
face. He raked up a handful of clean snow, pushed it into his mouth, chewed it round,
spat it out.

Commander Morgan, he said out loud. At your service.

For four days solid, breakfast, dinner and supper, they ate nothing else. Not one
man liked it and not one man complained. At supper on the third day, DeHaven told
the tent:

He who suffers most in the Arctic is the man with a refined palate.

Only Morgan looked up from his tin. The others were too busy eating, seemed not to
have heard. Morgan knew he had only a few seconds to speak. Afterwards, the moment
would be gone, and their interminable evening resume.

I am not altogether sure I can agree with you, Doctor, he said.

DeHaven stirred his hand in the air. He was giving his friend permission to make
a fool of himself.

For example, Morgan said, Arctic hare I personally find not merely inoffensive, but
quite as appetizing as pheasant, as I remember it.

Perfect proof, DeHaven said, that you've been away too long.

You're saying memory deceives?

Isn't that its prime purpose?

But Morgan refused to take the bait. The marrow of the musk ox, you must admit, is
a great treat, he said. From what I remember, these boys here nearly came to blows
over it, last time round.

They'd eat rotten offal if sufficiently starved, DeHaven said. Wouldn't you Banes?

Banes considered him hatefully, the man who worked so hard to keep them all in good
hauling health.

Eat a bloody lizard in India, one time, he said. Out in the desert. Eyes and all
and glad to get them. Warn't nothing else.

And Cabot's whale chumps in red wine. Close your eyes and you'd take it for boeuf
à la Bourguignonne. You'd almost think you were back in Paris, wouldn't you, Geoff?

Bear, DeHaven said. It was a glove thrown down. Tell us how delicious bear can be.

Bear, I will concede, is an acquired taste.

Acquired or imposed? Leask put in.

This was good. They were listening. Some were even interested now.

Necessity is a fine gravy, of course, Morgan said.

The others sat chewing their lumps of meat. It might as well have been opium, Morgan
thought. The conversation had lifted the heads a few minutes, but they were withdrawing
again, one by one, each to his own private world. Cabot had closed his eyes just
for a moment, nodded off, but did not topple. He sat propped inside the hard shell
of his coat.