Across Frozen Seas

by John Wilson

  Watching them go at each other was just too much. Something snapped inside me. The pressure that was building up from the fights and the dreams was overwhelming. I yelled at them to shut up and stormed out of the house.

  I only went down to the arcade for a couple of hours, but I guess it made them feel bad. When I got back they were both really apologetic. Things settled down and we even began talking about where we would go for a holiday this summer. Dad suggested we go down to California, but Mom gave him one of those looks which means, “We can’t afford that.”

  “We could go camping,” she said. “Out to the coast, or maybe even down to Oregon. The beaches are nice there and we had a great time when we went three years ago.”

  Dad nodded.

  “Yeah, that would be good. Just the three of us in the tent trailer. I could get away for a couple of weeks.”

  Mom shot Dad another of her looks. This one meant, “You had better.”

  That was when I screwed up. I didn’t realize how important it was to them. Sure I had enjoyed the holiday three years ago, but I had only been eleven then. Now, my idea of fun wasn’t a tent trailer in Oregon with my folks, and I had already arranged something else. I should have told them long before this, but the dreams had me so preoccupied that it had just slipped my mind. Wayne’s parents had a cabin by a lake south of Saskatoon and I was going there for the last half of the summer. There was lots to do there: water-skiing, swimming, wind surfing, and lots of other people my age. In fact, Sarah’s parents had a cabin on the other side of the same lake. So I told them I couldn’t go to Oregon. It was lousy timing, and they looked really hurt. They didn’t say anything, but late that night I could hear them arguing again through the wall. Finally, I went to sleep, and the dreams took over.

  CHAPTER 14

  The flowers are beautiful. The ground is a flat carpet of yellow and red. There are still patches of snow in the hollows, but now small streams run here and there at random. The air seems full of birds of all different kinds. Most incredibly, the horizon is a single moving mass of life: deer (reindeer the whalers call them) in a single moving river of brown bodies. The sound is like a low groan as thousands of hooves rise and fall on the soft ground. It is interspersed with a low clack as the antlers of the male deer knock together. It is almost impossible to believe that this paradise of life and colour can exist so close to the dull world of black and grey we have been inhabiting for so long.

  The deer are so thick that they are difficult to hunt. Small groups of men are scattered all along the edge of the herd waiting for an animal to stray off. When one does, there is invariably a sharp musket crash and a scuttle of activity as it is dragged clear and cleaned.

  Behind me, makeshift racks are already full of meat hanging in the weak sun. The Commander was right, the men have livened up with the activity and fresh meat. It is almost enough to make me believe that all will be well in the end.

  “Well, this is better than that rat-infested hulk,” George says, standing beside me watching the scene. It is summer, 1848. “We should have come down here long ago. Damned officers don’t seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “I don’t know George,” I reply defensively. “Mister Crozier and Mister Fitzjames seem like good men. In any case, this game won’t stay here forever, and then we will be better off back in the ships.”

  “Davy! You have been listening to the high-andmighty’s too much. You never used to pay no heed to old Marback, and now its Mister Crozier and Mister Fitzjames. They only care for themselves and their good life. We have to look after ourselves. We always have and we can’t change now. Anyhow, things are going to be different around here soon and you had best be sure you know which side you’re on.”

  “What do you mean?” But it is too late, George turns on his heel and is already several steps ahead.

  “We’re not going back to rot for another year on those God-forsaken hulks of yours.” There is a general murmur of agreement at Seeley’s words. The cuts on his cheek where Neptune bit him have scarred, but they are still a livid red and give his face a twisted look. “You officers and any men who ain’t got the guts to stay can go if you want, but the rest of us is staying here. Right boys?” The murmur turns to a low roar which sweeps through the ranks of men standing on the shore beside the stretch of water we have named Plenty Bay.

  “This is mutiny,” Crozier’s voice is colder than the chunks of ice floating in the wide bay behind him. “It is also stupidity. The game will not stay here forever and then where will you go? Will you walk to Canada over the Barren Lands or perhaps swim Baffin Bay to seek shelter with the natives of Greenland? Your best chance—our best chance—is to return to the ships and, when the ice frees them, sail the Erebus home through the passage as we were ordered to do.”

  “And if the ice don’t free her?” Seeley has taken a step forward and is looking hard at Crozier. “What if the ice crushes her? Then you are stuck where there ain’t no game at all. I say stay here where at least a man can eat fresh meat. If they don’t come to rescue us this summer, they’ll come next for sure.”

  “Seeley, you’re a fool.” Crozier says it calmly, but the men tense at his words. “And you men are fools as well to listen to him. The game will be gone when the first snow falls. You cannot store enough now to see you through the winter and you don’t have the natives’ skills to catch seals on the ice. You’ll starve long before any help arrives. The officers and I, and any men who wish to come are taking two sleds and returning to the ships. Those who stay will be charged with mutiny when we return to England. Any who try to stop us will be shot.”

  The men behind Seeley look restless and uncertain as Crozier’s small group handle their muskets.

  “Let them go,” Seeley almost commands the men, “and any who wants to join them can. I for one ain’t going back for a fourth winter on those hellish ships. Soon enough these boys’ll be back begging us for some fresh meat and then we’ll see who’s going to be charged with mutiny.”

  “Will anyone else join us?” Crozier asks the crowd behind Seeley. A few men look uncertain but Seeley’s hard eye travels over them and no one comes over. I look hard at George standing in the front row and try to will him to come over. But he is firm, not even looking in my direction.

  So we turn and set off. Fifteen officers and twenty-three men dragging two boats over the peninsula and back up the island to what we hope are the waiting ships. Only time will tell us who is right and who is wrong. Will I ever see my friend George again?

  Our small group stands along the rail of the Erebus. It is July I849 and I have been sixteen for a scant three weeks. At last, after three winters in this place, we are in free water once more. What should be elation and joy are tempered by the sight before us.

  It is one of the saddest things in the world to see a ship sink. Especially one which has been so much a part of one’s life for so long. The ice is loosening its grip on the poor, holed Terror. The old ship who began her life fighting against Napoleon has served us well. But now she is going to rest. She lies heeled over a full thirty-five degrees and her masts are broken. The ice cracks and groans and roars as it reluctantly sets her free and she screams a last farewell as her timbers, broken by the pressure of years, are painfully released. We watch in silence as she slowly tips farther over. Now the bow is sinking and the blunt stern is being slowly forced up into the air. A sudden, horrible noise announces that the boiler has broken free. With frightening rapidity now, the poor ship rises almost to the vertical and sinks below the dark, cold water. Nothing remains except a few supplies discarded on the ice around that awful black hole.

  But we do not have time to mourn. We too are free, and our ship is unholed, so we must make the most of it. There has been some discussion about retracing our route north back through Lancaster Sound into Baffin Bay, but that would mean abandoning what men may be left at Plenty Bay. As Captain Crozier said, “They may be mutineers, but they are still my crew and I will not
abandon any of them who wish to come with us.”

  So we will continue on the route fate has mapped out for us and which we began so long ago with such high hopes. Perhaps it is open all the way through and we will still sail out in triumph to Alaska. But it will be a hollow triumph at best after all that has befallen us. I do not want to think of George or of what may await us at Plenty Bay, so I busy myself with the tasks at hand.

  I can see the tents from the rail but, fortunately, the frightfulness of that camp is hidden by the distance. What a cruel jest the name Plenty Bay seems now.

  The shore party found three men. Three men from the sixty-seven we said farewell to last year, and they too sick with scurvy to move. They are a sorrowful sight. They are swollen and covered with sores. They can barely move their limbs for the pain and their teeth may be pulled free with ease. Most strange, they bleed freely from wounds which healed years before. They have been brought on board and tell a tale we can hardly bear to hear.

  True to Captain Crozier’s prediction, the game vanished with the first snow. At first they still dined well on the preserved meat and the provisions we carried down with us, but as the weather grew worse and the supplies grew short, sickness broke out and the men became weak. A party took three boats and attempted to return to the ships. We will never know what happened to them.

  As the horrible winter wore on, Seeley became more and more crazed, berating even the sick for getting him into this predicament. To disagree with him was enough to earn a beating or even worse. Eventually the food ran out. Some of the men went mad and ran about screaming until they dropped. Others gave up, lay down and stared silently into space until they too died. Still others, led and organized by Seeley, resorted to a more frightful means to stave off death— they ate the remains of their comrades.

  As soon as the worst of the winter storms abated, Seeley led a group of survivors, no more than thirty half-starved men, east in an attempt to reach the whaling grounds. The three men we found were too sick to go and had been part of a group left behind to die. That would have been their fate in a very short time had we not come along.

  Our way too is clear now. We have come down here through uncertain passages and leads, but the ice has closed firm behind us. There is no way back and we must go on now regardless. Seeley and his devils must fend for themselves as best they can in the wilderness. And George, where is he? Did he join the unfortunate party who perished attempting to return to the ship, or did he stay at camp and die here, or is he somewhere out there with Seeley, still alive?

  This is the end, we can go no farther. The Erebus still floats free but, as far as the eye can see there is impenetrable ice. We know the way back is blocked so there is only one option left to our small party—Simpson Strait. If we can sail through it we may still be able to cross to the Gulf of Boothia and meet up with whalers before 1849 is out. We must, for another winter will be the death of us all. It will be a hard journey in our weakened state, but better than trying to cross the Barren Lands.

  The problem is that the strait is too shallow for the Erebus so we must abandon her and take to the small boats. They are loaded now and we are hauling on the oars looking back at the Erebus where she sits, calm and peaceful, at anchor in a flat open sea. On our left looms the mainland shore of the Adelaide Peninsula. On our right the bleak, hopeless rock of King William Land which has become a grave to so many of our friends. Will it be ours too before this hellish journey is over?

  CHAPTER 15

  By this time, my dreams had become like a horror movie that I was compelled to watch. Every night I was drawn back, fascinated, to the story created by the dark imaginings of my overwrought mind, but I did not want to follow where they led. The sense of loneliness was almost overwhelming and it took an enormous effort of will even to get out of bed in the morning.

  After the holiday disappointment, Mom and Dad’s fights just kept getting worse. It seemed like they argued every day and it didn’t matter whether I was around or not. When they weren’t actually arguing, they were bickering at each other. The pressure began to build again.

  It was Friday night and their third fight of the week. I was watching TV and they were going at it behind me.

  “That place is like an albatross around our necks,” my Mom was saying. “You have to get rid of it.”

  “No,” my Dad shouted. “I have to give it a chance.”

  “You’ve given it a chance. It’s not working.”

  It was the same old stuff as before. Their voices were mingling with whatever I was watching on TV

  “Look.” Mom was trying to calm down and try a different approach. “I can get a job. Dorothy says she needs some help at the store. It wouldn’t pay much, but it would help us over this spell. But I won’t do it to support the chicken place. We have to get out from underneath that.”

  “All I need is more time.” Dad was still being defensive. “I know it will work out.”

  “No it won’t,” I hadn’t planned to say anything, it just came out. I certainly hadn’t planned to take anyone’s side. “Dad, no one is going to go there. The place is a joke. My friends wouldn’t be caught dead there. How many people under sixty do you see there in a week? Without a younger crowd, it doesn’t have a hope.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence while both my parents looked at me in amazement. Mom was about to say something, but Dad got in first. He was furious.

  “What do you know about running a business?” he screamed. “It’s damned hard work, and I do it for you. You’re just some ungrateful, smart-assed kid who should learn to keep out of other people’s affairs. You can’t even get decent grades in school any more. All you do is hang out with that no-good bunch of layabouts. You should get out and get a job.”

  I had had enough. My anger got the better of me.

  “Well, at least it’s better than being a loser that everyone laughs at,” I shouted. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet and heading for the door. With every step, I expected to hear a shout. I expected, no I wanted, him to come running after me. But he didn’t. He never said a word and the silence when I closed the door was worse than anything he could have said.

  I felt I was the only person in the world. That was why I didn’t go to the mall, hang out for a few hours, and then sneak back in after they had gone to bed. That silence had scared me.

  It was almost dark, and it was the middle of February. All I had were the clothes I wore and the baseball jacket I had grabbed on the way out, and it was beginning to snow. It wasn’t how I had planned to run away. Then I had an idea—Jim’s place. I hadn’t seen him since the time he came around to visit. He had dismissed my dreams in the past, but a lot had happened since then. Perhaps now he would believe me. In any case, he would give me a bed for the night and I wouldn’t have to listen to the shouting through the wall.

  I walked down to the highway and stuck my thumb out. I didn’t have to wait long (the advantage of a small town). A truck soon stopped for me. It was an old farmer I’d seen a couple of times at the market. He was driving a beat-up 4x4, but the cab was warm.

  By the time we got to Jim’s road, it was snowing pretty hard and the old guy warned me about the storm. He wanted to know where I was going dressed in such a light jacket. I told him it wasn’t far and I’d walked it a hundred times, even in winter. He still wasn’t happy, so I pointed out some lights that we could just see through the snow and said that was Jim’s place. It wasn’t, but there was no way I was going to let this guy stop me.

  Eventually, he let me out but he sat there for the longest time, I guess until he couldn’t see me any more. I made as if I was heading for the lights and then, when I heard him drive off, I turned back onto the dirt road.

  It seemed a lot colder than it had been in town, but I figured that was just because it was dark now. I was soon wishing I had grabbed my down parka. The baseball jacket was beginning to seem awfully thin. The snow was getting heavier too, and was already drifting in t
he ditches. Still, I wasn’t worried, all I had to do was follow the road until I came to Jim’s mailbox.

  By the time I recognized the carved squirrel, it was snowing so hard that I couldn’t see Jim’s house. In fact, if I looked down I couldn’t even see the ground in front of me. I guess it’s what’s called a white out. It was like being wrapped in a huge, soft, white blanket, except that there was no warmth. My feet and hands had gone numb and I was so cold I had even stopped shivering. The only reason I found the mailbox at all was that I was staggering along holding onto the fence beside the ditch. It meant wading through the drifts which was hard work, but in the centre of the road I could have been walking through downtown Saskatoon for all I could see. Plus, I couldn’t keep to a straight line and was always stumbling into the ditch. Anyhow, I had found the mailbox. Now all I had to do was find Jim’s front door.

  I’ll never know how I missed the house. When I left the mailbox I was walking straight towards it and it couldn’t have been more than fifty metres away. Even in a white out I was sure I could walk straight for that far. But I couldn’t. Once I missed the house the first time I was completely lost.

  I kept falling over fences and banging into broken-down walls. Once I was sure I had found the house, but it was just the side of the old ramshackle barn and as soon as I left it I was lost again. By the time I stumbled over the pigsty I was getting pretty scared. Jim hadn’t kept pigs for years, but I crawled in anyway just to get out of the snow. Then a funny thing happened, I began to feel warm. It was still twenty-five degrees below zero and there was still a blizzard raging, yet I felt warm. So warm that I could curl up and go to sleep. I’d sleep the storm out and then I’d find the house in the daylight. I crawled into the corner and pulled my knees up. The snow was blowing through cracks in the wood, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was warm and my eyes were getting heavy.