by Robert Edric
“Precious little,” Reid said.
“The Eskimos have been in before us,” Couch added.
The remark surprised Fitzjames. “Eskimos? Have they come here?” He looked out over the broader expanse of ice beyond the Terror, and then in the direction of the abandoned camp.
“They’ve been in the Terror,” Reid said. “But it’s not likely they’ll be after the same things we’re wanting. They’re stripping her for iron braces and good small timbers.”
“How can you be so certain they’ve been aboard?” Fitzjames asked.
Neither man was willing to answer him.
“They’ve disturbed the bodies,” Goodsir said. “Unwrapped them and then left them with only their faces covered.”
“What about here, the Erebus? John Irving?”
“Him, too,” Goodsir said. “There’s been no mutilation. Just the same as on the Terror. They undressed him and then left him with only his face covered.”
“Perhaps they thought we’d—” Fitzjames stopped himself. He had been about to suggest that the Eskimos might have thought they’d abandoned the corpses for good, but this now felt almost sacrilegious even to suggest.
A week later Fitzjames was woken by Reid with the news that a small party of the Eskimos had been spotted out on the ice half a mile to the north of them, that they appeared to have spent the night there, and that as yet they showed no sign of leaving. It was Reid’s opinion that they were awaiting some approach from the ship, possibly too frightened of their reception after their looting to come any closer. He had already woken Des Voeux, with whom he was now sharing a cabin, and who, like himself, was able to speak a few words of the natives’ language.
Already fully dressed beneath his blankets and furs, Fitzjames pulled himself from his bed. He rubbed his legs and arms, massaging the cramp in them, and hiding the pain from his foot, which had given him another largely sleepless night. Reid waited in the doorway, watching him and guessing. There was the smell of baking bread in the air as the day’s ration was prepared, and the appetizing aroma of freshly roasted coffee being ground.
Fitzjames, however, had been sick the previous evening, and the smell made his stomach turn. He told Reid to inform Goodsir what was happening and then to wait for him on deck. Reid had been gone only a few seconds when Fitzjames began to retch and was then sick, bringing up a thin and bitter bile into his water bowl. He sweated heavily, and his chest, throat and jaw ached with the strain. When he had finished he rinsed his face and combed his hair. He looked at himself in a mirror. He had not shaved since returning to the ship, and the dark growth made his cheeks appear fuller than they had become. He felt unsteady for a moment, and then went out to catch up with Reid and the others.
The sun was not yet fully risen, but there was sufficient light for him to make out the distant shelter, the glow of a shielded fire, and the six or seven figures crouched around it.
Bryant, Hopcraft and Joseph Andrews accompanied Fitzjames, Reid and Des Voeux as far as the edge of the Terror’s debris, but would go no farther. Their reaction puzzled Fitzjames, who was eager to make contact with their visitors, and who fell several times as he stumbled toward them, moving with the help of sticks rather than the crutches he had been using.
He hoped the Eskimos might be a smaller group of the party he had encountered the previous year and that they might remember him, but as he called out and they rose to greet him none gave any indication of recognizing him. He spoke and gestured to them, wanting to convey that they were welcome and that he hoped they would accompany him back to the Erebus.
They showed little sign of understanding, but when he had finished they indicated their fire and the pot upon it, in which a piece of seal meat sat in its rendered fat. Sickened further by the smell, he nevertheless accepted the offer and crouched down beside them. Reid and Des Voeux did the same.
All around them, the three men saw the crockery and pieces of cloth and wood which the Eskimos had already scavenged from the wasteland surrounding the Terror. In addition to the iron bars and various blades they had gathered up, the men also carried spears and clubs, but apart from their unsettling show of indifference to Fitzjames and his party, they exhibited no hostility.
The meal was shared, and with each mouthful he swallowed Fitzjames was convinced that he was again about to be sick. He put down his bowl when it was only half empty, signaling to his hosts that he had eaten enough. They were satisfied by this and one of them took back the bowl.
They were joined by Gore and Reddington, the latter with his forehead and both arms heavily bandaged. This was a source of great interest to the Eskimos, but despite their curiosity they did not approach too close to him, repulsed by his growth of beard.
After an hour, the natives prepared to leave. They extinguished the fire and retrieved the sticks of their shelter, letting the unsupported ice collapse into the shallow depression beneath. When they made it clear that they were not about to accompany Fitzjames back to the Erebus, he protested to them and then tried to persuade them with promises of gifts. But his raised voice only alarmed them, and after a short conference one of the men answered by shouting something unintelligible back at him. Fitzjames regretted the misunderstanding he had caused and tried to appease them before they left. He indicated the detritus all around and signaled for the Eskimos to take as much as they liked. The man who had shouted at him took a cup and saucer from beneath his jacket, showed it briefly to Des Voeux and then replaced it. Others followed his lead, proudly displaying what they too had already taken.
Reddington suggested going back to where the others were waiting midway between the two ships and returning to force the natives to accompany them to the Erebus.
Reid shook his head and asked him what purpose he thought this would serve.
“We alarm them by more than our disgusting appearance,” he said. He gestured for the Eskimos to leave, but they remained motionless, watching him.
Angry at Reid’s criticism, Reddington asked him what he meant.
“Our size, our numbers, the ship that might have sailed down from the sun or the moon or the stars with such sorry-looking specimens as ourselves on board. They might even think we want to steal their meat and then butcher and eat them from the same pot. Perhaps—” Here, prompted by a glance from Fitzjames, Reid paused. “Perhaps we aren’t even human to them. Perhaps they look upon us as they look upon the spirits of the dead, their dead, turned white—” He stopped again, unwilling to continue his alarming speculations and all they implied for their own future.
There followed a minute of silence, during which the two parties stared at each other, the only noise coming from the distant men who were growing impatient with the encounter.
Finally unable to control his stomach, Fitzjames was sick on the ice at his feet, bringing up everything he had eaten. When he had finished and wiped the mess from his mouth and chin, he tried to apologize, but felt too nauseous to persist, finally frustrated and angered by the obdurate and ungiving nature of the men with whom he was trying to communicate.
Rather than allow any further suggestion of ingratitude or hostility to mar the failed negotiations, he turned and left them, his teeth clenched and the mixed taste of oil and blood in his mouth.
Upon his return to the ship, Fitzjames went to inspect John Irving’s corpse. It had already been dressed as fully as possible, but this had proved difficult, and whoever had attempted the task had been unable to push Irving’s legs back into his trousers or his arms into his sleeves; instead they had pressed rolled blankets around the body and then cut his shirt, jacket and trousers up the back and moulded these over him until he once again looked as though he were properly clothed. Seeing the result, Fitzjames wished something similar could be done for the desecrated corpses aboard the Terror.
Afterward, he examined the full extent of the internal damage to the Erebus, noting where the blossoming ice had made its dangerous gains since she had been left without heat three weeks earlier.
/> Upon leaving Irving’s body, Fitzjames called for Goodsir, and together they inspected the crates and casks mounded on the Erebus’ deck. Fitzjames was surprised by how much had already been collected, but Goodsir remained pessimistic, pointing out how little of this was of any value in fighting scurvy, and reminding Fitzjames of how many of their number—himself included—were scarcely able to keep down half of what they ate. Securing fresh meat, he insisted, was vital to their survival.
Almost as though prompted by this discussion, the two men were distracted by a distant gunshot out on the ice.
“Our hunters,” Goodsir said in the same unhappy tone. “Shooting at shadows and at skin and bone.”
“Have they killed nothing so far?”
“One fox, two gulls and—” Suddenly and without warning, Goodsir began to cough violently and uncontrollably, almost choking at the exertion. He bent double and then fell against the foremast to support himself. Fitzjames moved to help him, but Goodsir pushed him away until the seizure was over. Afterward, gulping to recover his breath, he wiped the sweat from his brow and spat heavily into his handkerchief.
A moment later he returned to their inventory as though nothing had happened, and before Fitzjames could comment on what he had seen.
Later in the day they found a further dozen places where the ice had breached their hull, in some instances pushing through into the quarters within and rendering these uninhabitable. Timbers had warped along her full length, and the Erebus was filled with the sound of creaking and scraping where the ice continued to assault her, probing and fingering as it came, searching out her weaknesses as meticulously and as relentlessly as it had sought out and then exploited those of the Terror.
The extent of all this and the speed with which it had taken place during their short absence concerned Fitzjames, and it worried him even more when he thought of how this prolonged and strength-sapping war of attrition might one day be so suddenly and easily lost.
The two men parted at Stanley’s surgery, where Goodsir had taken up residence. He made it clear as he unlocked the door and then stepped quickly inside that he did not want Fitzjames to follow him.
The pain from Fitzjames’ foot had grown worse, and as he negotiated the narrow passageways and stairs back to his own cabin, he frequently found himself having to rest until it subsided.
He came first upon Thomas McConvey, asleep in his bunk. His bedclothes were dirty and strewn across the floor. His pillow was stained with vomit and blood, and both disfigured further his pockmarked face. His breathing came hoarsely and erratically, punctuated by painful grunts, and it was only as Fitzjames stood beside the sick man and looked down at him that he fully understood the burden that had been placed upon Goodsir over the previous week, and to which he had now begun to sacrifice his own failing health.
Leaving McConvey, he went into the adjoining room, in which the two boys had been quartered. Thomas Evans was awake and sitting in a chair which Fitzjames recognized as having come from Franklin’s cabin. In answer to his inquiry as to his health, the boy only pointed to the sleeping form of his sick companion.
Fitzjames had not seen Robert Golding buried beneath the blankets of the bed, and moving closer he pulled these back to look at his sleeping face, the features immediately reminding him of the dying monkey. The boy’s eyes fluttered as he slept, and a thin brown line ran from his nose to his chin and was dotted upon his pillow.
“Mr. Goodsir has been looking to him, sir,” Thomas Evans said.
Fitzjames looked around the bed for any more of the broken vials and then pulled one of the boy’s arms out from beneath its mound of blankets, feeling its weight and the rigidity with which it was held by the sleeping child.
“You shouldn’t be in here with him,” he said to the other, knowing that Golding was close to death.
Thomas Evans couldn’t answer him, his only response being to draw his knees closer to his chest, wrap his arms around them and then press his face into his thighs as though he believed he was about to be pulled from his chair and dragged from the room.
Fitzjames left him without saying anything more.
The next half a dozen cabins he inspected were all empty, their contents strewn around them, charts emptied from their cases and torn into fragments, pieces of glassware and crockery smashed in drifts where they had been thrown by men with no further use for them.
Coming repeatedly upon these small scenes of wanton destruction, he wondered if any of it had been caused by the scavenging Eskimos, and how much more they might yet attempt as those who had come back aboard gradually lost the strength and the will to resist them.
At the end of the short passageway he came upon the starved, bald bodies of a dozen rats nailed to the wall, the result of a hunt by the two marines bringing aboard the last of their stores. He wondered if they had been hung in display as trophies, or if they were waiting to be cooked and eaten. Regardless, he swung his stick at them and knocked half of the stiff and elongated corpses to the ground, where they rolled around him like bowling pins.
He entered John Irving’s cabin, sought out his chronometer and sextant, and packed the remains of his library into a case which he then dragged into the passageway to collect later when he had the strength.
He came upon the rest of the men gathered together in the galley. The stove was alight and the room and those adjoining it were warm. A thin pall of sulfurous smoke hung across the ceiling, barely disturbed by the few draughts of fresher air which penetrated that far into the raw innards of the ship.
At his approach, those who were able to stand did so, and of them all, only John Weekes and Edward Hoar showed little sign of the sickness which all too clearly burned inside the others.
Greeting them, Fitzjames made the effort to appear optimistic about their chances of recovery during the easier, recuperative summer months ahead, and in return none of the men gave voice to their own individual fears, preferring instead briefly to submerge these in this shared delusion of hope.
A small piece of cooked meat was taken from the oven and laid on the galley table. This was then cut into six smaller pieces, and each man spent longer looking at his share and juggling it from hand to hand than he did eating it, savoring the expectation rather than the taste.
Fitzjames returned to his cabin, surprised to find Goodsir there ahead of him. As he entered, Goodsir was withdrawing the needle of a syringe from his inner arm. He then sucked at the drop of blood which appeared before bending his arm double and acknowledging Fitzjames. A bottle of port and another of rum stood on the table beside him, both uncorked, their mixed scent adding an edge to the more usual fetid muskiness of the room.
Neither man spoke, and when Goodsir finally threw one of the bottles toward him, Fitzjames made no attempt to catch it, watching as its contents spilled onto his bed, whether rum or port he could not tell through the pain which blurred his vision, and a minute later he fell asleep to the sound of Goodsir’s laughter, neither knowing nor caring about what he found so amusing.
THIRTY-ONE
Robert Golding died on the 21st of May. He was alone and barely conscious, unable to speak or respond, and with hardly the strength to keep his eyes open for the final few moments during which he came round from his drugged sleep.
Gore and Goodsir stripped and washed the small corpse, and afterward Goodsir inspected it to determine the severity and extent of the disease which had finally closed tight its grip on the boy. He scraped away the dried pus which had leaked from Golding’s swollen joints and washed him clean of the blood which had accumulated from the raw skin beneath his finger- and toe-nails. Gore, who had seen such ravages before, could hardly bring himself to look at them on the weightless shrunken body of the child.
Goodsir performed his work silently and clumsily, directing Gore in all the tasks he himself could not perform, and when they had finished the two of them dressed the boy in clean clothes, combed down what little remained of his hair and invited in those waitin
g to pay their last respects.
The body was taken out an hour later and placed alongside John Irving’s in the empty engine room, now ice-caulked and airless.
The boy’s death cast its desolate spell over them all, and alerted by the speed with which it had come, Fitzjames established a rota of daily medical inspections from which no one was exempt. Those confined to their bunks were visited twice daily, and last thing each night Goodsir reported to Fitzjames on the condition of them all. With the few medical supplies at their disposal, treatment was largely confined to the washing and dressing of wounds.
Fitzjames’ own injuries were growing worse, and there were now days when he was barely able to stand, and when he too was confined to his bed.
Following his request to be informed by Goodsir on the condition of the others, he also secretly asked Reid to confide in him on the health of Goodsir himself, convinced that he was now taking larger and larger doses of his stimulants to enable him to carry out his duties.
In addition to his injured foot, Fitzjames felt his other limbs stiffening, and the skin of his joints turning ever more tender and sore as the flesh became swollen and hard and then split. Having regained most of his hair after losing it the previous year, it was once again becoming brittle and loose, and skin peeled from his scalp in small circles. He began to sleep for longer and longer each night, twelve and then fourteen or fifteen hours, but after waking from even these long periods he felt as though he had scarcely rested and remained in his bed until something required his attention.
The disappointing inventory of their stores was completed, and upon being told of what remained, Fitzjames cut their ration of lemon juice to an ounce and a half, and six days later to an ounce.
A candle was lit alongside the body of the boy as a mark of respect, but so cold was the engine room that this burned only down its center, leaving intact a tube of translucent wax inside which the flame was quickly extinguished.
