The Broken Lands

by Robert Edric

  “Because, Mr. Fitzjames, sir, Hell to an Eskimo might appear less than totally repulsive, consisting as it does, as we are all agreed, of eternal fire and damnation. These people care nothing for damnation, and eternal fire cannot appear so repellent to them, debased as they already undoubtedly are by the animal nature of their existence.” Crozier spoke as though he were answering the naive and unwelcome questioning of a child.

  Goodsir prevented Fitzjames from responding to this, and Fitzjames remembered the similar remark made by Reid as they had waited to row ashore at Whalefish.

  “So you believe that all this, all we see around us, that this is Hell on earth?” Goodsir asked Crozier.

  “I believe it is the closest we shall come to that condition without the fire,” Crozier said seriously.

  “But surely, each man’s Hell is a different thing entirely. How can you suggest that this is Hell to the people who live here? To many of them it must surely be a paradise.”

  Crozier was reluctant to be drawn any further into the argument, and felt undermined by Franklin, who called, “Mr. Crozier?” to him in the hope of encouraging an answer.

  “Sir John,” Crozier began, pausing before he went on. “You and I have both sailed to other so-called paradises. We were both young men then, and so that might have had some bearing on our thoughts. We are older now. I cannot change my mind upon the matter and must be given leave to disagree with Mr. Goodsir, who is clearly so much better educated than I am. I bow to his superior knowledge of these things.”

  A moment of silence followed, and Franklin regretted having encouraged the discussion to this tense and inconclusive impasse.

  Sensing this, Goodsir ran across the ice to Crozier and declared loudly that, on the contrary, he bowed to his superior experience. He held out his hand and Crozier took it. Harmony was restored and the party resumed their walking.

  To the east was a vast area of rippled, barely broken surface where it looked as though the sea had frozen in an instant, the peak and trough of each wave solidifying as it rolled toward some distant shore.

  To the north lay the sea of ice through which they had already come. This was no longer flat. Bergs formed the centers of frozen tors, upon which new ice had formed, and against which boulders and slabs had built up and spilled outward in exact replicas of those other land-locked features.

  To the west the high, peaked ridge had continued to rise and to build ever since they had come to their anchorage. In the early sun it caught the light and looked sharp and clean, but when the sun went from it, it became dark and forbidding, looking more like rock and earth than ice and snow. Lately it had acquired the sheen of tarnished silver. It cut off their wider view in that direction and cast its own long shadows like loose scree toward them.

  It was from this mountainous range, which they were all agreed might persist for fifty years after their departure, that the loudest and most vigorous disturbances reached them. Even fixed as solidly as they were to the ice beneath them, both vessels were occasionally shaken by the upheavals in this direction. Some of those aboard were even tempted to believe that what they were witnessing was not merely the gathering together of the ice, but the upheaval of submerged land, the birthing of another volcano perhaps, pushing into existence and ready to declare its arrival with a fountain of flame and pillar of smoke. Even those whose imaginations did not stretch this far believed that with the onset of the thaw they would see dark rock showing through the surface as the ice fell from it in patches like the winter coat of a moulting fox.

  It was to the southwest, however, that their greatest attention was directed. Here there lay an endless mass of fractured ice so confused and disjointed that all who looked out upon it doubted if it could ever be penetrated to discover what lay beyond. In places this was broken by long straight avenues along which a coach might be driven, but elsewhere a man would exhaust himself in a day’s journey of 200 yards.

  “How does it suit you, Mr. Fitzjames?” Crozier asked unexpectedly, indicating the view ahead of them.

  Caught unaware, and unwilling to voice his true thoughts on the overland expedition he was to lead the following spring, Fitzjames could only gesture dismissively, hoping to suggest that he was little concerned by the terrain he might be forced to cross.

  “Mr. Fitzjames?” Franklin said, having overheard Crozier’s remark, and wanting to hear Fitzjames’ answer for himself.

  “Your own Farthest East,” Fitzjames said, turning to acknowledge his captain. “I’ll do Back’s work for him. It can surely be no more than two hundred miles to the mainland coast.” Franklin was gratified and encouraged by the remark.

  Crozier left them to return to the Terror in the company of his own lieutenants.

  Franklin and Fitzjames walked back together, Franklin pausing frequently to cough and then to regain his breath. Stanley and Goodsir walked ahead of them, and Franklin pointed the two men out to Fitzjames, conscious of why they were remaining so close to him. At one point the spasm of coughing which racked Franklin was so violent that he stumbled and almost fell, afterward standing for five minutes until he felt sufficiently composed to continue.

  They reached the Erebus half an hour later. There were fifty men still out on the ice, singly and in small parties. Gunshots indicated where some were hunting, outbreaks of cheering and applause where others were engaged in some sport. Their two dogs barked incessantly and ran from one man to the next. Gore had set up his camera, and earlier, while the brighter light had lasted, he had taken a picture of both ships’ marines in full dress uniform against a backdrop of freshly cut ice, carved and stacked to look like distant mountains, and fooling no one but the camera.

  At three in the afternoon a maroon was fired to call everyone back to the ships. It rose weakly and exploded prematurely low, leaving the imprint of its small black moon floating above the converging men.

  The first dark day of their second Arctic night came with the unexpected death of Edward Little on Christmas Eve.

  He was discovered by Thomas Jopson, Crozier’s steward, who arrived to wake him at seven in the morning, and found him, as he at first believed, unconscious. Securing Little’s cabin, Jopson went immediately to fetch Crozier, speaking to no one he encountered on his short journey.

  The two men returned fifteen minutes later. Peddie and Macdonald were sent for, and Little’s cabin remained locked until they arrived. Macbean was told to clear the corridor and secure the door at its far end, allowing entry to no one except George Hodgson, who had also been sent for.

  There was barely room in the confined space of the cabin for Crozier and his two surgeons, and Crozier reluctantly stepped back outside to join Irving while the two medical men examined Little. It was still not apparent to Crozier that Little was in fact dead.

  The young lieutenant had not been out of his cabin for the previous four days, confessing to his fellow officers and the stewards who attended to him that the problem was not only the continuing cramps in his leg, but also the violent cold he had contracted. Only Peddie was not deceived, but this had not prevented him from prescribing solutions of laudanum in increasingly potent doses.

  Little’s cabin was spartan. His clothes lay packed in his chest, his instruments in their cases, his books on their shelf. A tin and a box on his bedside cabinet were opened to reveal his more personal belongings and a collection of letters awaiting their eventual delivery.

  Dropping his stethoscope, Peddie stooped to retrieve it, and saw in the darkness beneath Little’s narrow bunk the glint of glass, knowing what he would find before he slid his hand across the polished boards. He collected nine empty vials and held them in the dim glow of the lantern for Macdonald to see. Both men understood immediately what had happened. The revelation shocked them, and for a moment neither could speak. Peddie moved to stand against the door, preventing anyone from entering. The voices of Crozier, Irving and Hodgson could be heard outside.

  “His leg,” Peddie said, indicating the soiled
sheet covering Little. Macdonald lifted this to reveal that beneath it Little was naked, his bandages loosely coiled around his feet. The bruising on his thigh was more prominent than ever, infected and yellow and swollen with pus. They also saw that Little had emptied both his bowels and bladder into his mattress.

  Both men started at a sudden rapping on the door, and as Crozier called to be let in, Macdonald looked to Peddie, who rubbed a hand across his face and nodded once. He gathered up the empty vials and pulled the sheet back over Little’s legs.

  Crozier knew the instant he saw the look on Macdonald’s face that Little was dead, and he came into the cabin as though in a trance, standing beside the thin pale body and looking hard into the corpse’s closed eyes. For several minutes no one spoke.

  “Do you know how?” Crozier asked.

  Peddie and Macdonald exchanged a glance. Crozier saw this and grabbed Peddie’s bag from him, pulling it open and tipping its contents on to the bed, where they fell and settled around Little’s sheeted legs.

  “He took his own life,” Macdonald said quietly, indicating the closed door. “His pain became too great for him to bear and he took his own life.” He spoke mechanically.

  “He would not have wanted to become a burden,” Peddie added.

  Crozier shouted, “No!” This response shocked the two surgeons. “But how great can his pain have been? He was in bed with a cold. His leg was healing every day. Was he lying to us?”

  Macdonald nodded, and then stood aside as both Irving and Hodgson appeared in the doorway anxious to learn what had happened. A glance at the bed told them everything they had feared.

  Little’s mouth was open, his jaw pulled tight and jutting slightly, pushing his bottom lip away from his teeth, as though he were straining for a drink he could not quite reach.

  “My God,” Hodgson said. He had visited Little shortly before eleven the previous night. He pushed closer to the bed and saw the empty vials.

  Peddie drew back the sheet so that they might all look at Little’s wound, and so they might all smell the faint but distinct aroma of his tainted urine. Crozier, being the closest, took out a handkerchief and held it to his mouth.

  At the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, Irving called for the door to be shut and barred.

  “What do we do?” Hodgson said after they had all silently given the matter some thought.

  It was Irving who reached down and for the first time pulled up the sheet to cover Little’s face.

  “First we have a duty to inform Sir John,” Crozier said.

  The real question, they knew, was what the crew of the Terror would be told regarding the death.

  Crozier sent Irving and Peddie to inform Franklin of their discovery, warning them to keep nothing from him.

  They returned fifteen minutes later with both Franklin and Fitzjames. Fitzjames too had seen Little the previous day, having come from the Erebus to tell him of a fox-hunt he was organizing. Little, a keen huntsman, had faked enthusiasm for the project, and although Fitzjames had guessed immediately that the painful effort was being made for his sake alone, he had encouraged the deception until Little became too tired to continue with it.

  He drew back the sheet and looked down, his gaze drawn to Little’s open mouth.

  “If you let me have his personal effects, I’ll write to his family.”

  “Not your responsibility, Mr. Fitzjames,” Crozier said.

  “I know them. I visited them a few months before we sailed.”

  “And what will you tell them?”

  “That he—”

  “That he chose to absolve himself of every responsibility for the men under his command? That he chose to die like a—”

  “Francis,” Franklin warned.

  “My apologies. But the responsibility for communicating the news of Mr. Little’s death remains with me alone, and I shall do it as I see fit. I would appreciate it if Mr. Fitzjames would not interfere, and if he would take more care in future not to allow so-called friendship to become confused with prescribed duty and professional obligation.” He turned sharply and left them.

  Fitzjames drew the sheet back over his friend’s face. He would write privately, reassured by the knowledge that it might be two or even three years before any letter was received, and before Edward Little finally died where death was at its most complete—in the hearts of those who loved him.

  It was ten in the morning by the time they left, and the clouded darkness showed no signs of brightening, however briefly, in the glare of the hidden moon. Even without the sun they were accustomed to speaking of their bright days and their dull ones.

  Fitzjames crossed the ice with Graham Gore.

  “Did you have any idea, James? I mean even a suspicion?”

  “I knew his suffering was greater than he revealed to us.”

  “But this great?”

  Fitzjames nodded. Of all their senior officers, Little’s promotion had been the most recent, and he had the least experience of both the ice and the handling of men. They were both aware of this, and their judgments on his death remained unspoken.

  “I believe the wisest course would be not to reveal the exact nature of his death,” Fitzjames said. “Allow the gossip-mongers to do their work, and let the others believe or disbelieve entirely upon their own dislike or affection for the man.”

  “Dislike?” Gore said loudly, surprised by the bluntness of the suggestion.

  Fitzjames walked ahead, regretting how sanctimonious and judgmental the honest remark had sounded.

  Little was buried on the second day of the new year, having first been laid out in a roughly built mausoleum on the ice. The presence of the corpse tolled a mournful note over their festive celebrations, particularly aboard the Terror, where the morale of the crew had been low since the discovery of the body.

  The funeral took place mid-morning, a party having left several hours earlier to saw through the ice of the grave-site two hundred yards west of the ships. Here the surface had long since folded and overlapped and lay now in a succession of slabs, each with several feet of level surface. It was one of these near-horizontal pieces that had been chosen to accommodate Little’s grave.

  As with their earlier burials, Franklin read the service and related something of Little’s previous history, most of which he had learned from Fitzjames earlier that same day. Men threw in handfuls of crushed ice just as they might, in other circumstances, have thrown in soil. An artificial wreath had been made and this too was thrown down upon the coffin.

  The temperature that morning had been measured by Vesconte at 49 degrees below freezing, their coldest yet, and despite the braziers they had brought with them, no one was able to stand for more than a few seconds without flapping his arms or stamping his feet.

  A headboard had been carved, to which a printed tin shield was attached. This disclosed nothing other than the name of the man buried there, his dates of birth and death, and the expedition upon which he had been embarked. Crozier had suggested to Franklin that an appropriate line from the Scriptures might be added, but having considered this in the light of the nature of Little’s death, Franklin rejected the idea, unwilling to make this everlasting and damning judgment on the man.

  Graham Gore speculated on the creation of the first wholly photographic panorama of the Arctic, similar to those he had visited in London prior to their departure. He had taken his wife and three children to the Haymarket Gallery, queueing for two hours to see Brownlow’s Polar Panorama, part photographed, part painted, the detail and beauty of which had impressed him beyond all expectation.

  He had sailed in Arctic waters before and knew how great the difference was between the reality and what Brownlow had skillfully created using photographs taken in the Alps and the Norwegian fjords, and it was only now that he felt he had mastered the equipment in his charge that he seriously considered the possibility of attempting such a project.

  His thoughts on this as he gazed out into the surrou
nding darkness were interrupted by the arrival of Goodsir and Vesconte. They were accompanied by the boy Robert Golding, who had been more distressed than most by the death of Edward Little, having been seconded to him by Crozier on Peddie’s recommendation to assist Little with all the routine activities and duties he found too tiring or painful to carry out. The boy had responded well to this new responsibility and was frequently Little’s only companion during the hours of his confinement. In the month before his death, Little had taught the thirteen-year-old Golding the elementary moves in chess-playing and was teaching him to read and write.

  The first Gore heard were the whispering voices behind him; he turned and saw the two men and the boy all holding up their gloved hands and framing him in the squares made by their fingers and thumbs. It was something he himself had been advised to do by Adamson, and something he now did almost without thinking whenever a particular composition of men or natural features presented itself to him. Eventually it had become a substitute, particularly now that the light had gone, for making the picture itself.

  Participating in the joke, Gore drew himself upright, pulled straight his jacket and stood with his arms by his side. Goodsir started the slow count to twenty and Gore spoke to them through his clenched teeth.

  After inquiring about Golding’s reading lessons, which others had volunteered to continue, he told them about his idea concerning the panorama he intended to make when the opportunity next arose during the following spring or summer.

  “A circle encompassing the full three hundred and sixty degrees, myself as its pivot. Fifty, or perhaps even a hundred individual plates, each one overlapping in a broad sweep. Here the ships, there an imposing mountain of ice; here a boat of rowing men, there a distant horizon blanketed with fog; here, perhaps, a blowing whale or colony of seals, and there a party hauling a sledge of stores.” Gore raised both hands, as though holding up invisible balls. “To the left the returning sun, its rays solid and fanning out upon the scene, and to the right the waning moon, spectral in the brightening sky.”