Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  March 2: Snow and fog. I have no energy.

  March 3: More snow. Slept all day.

  March 4: Wind, very much wind. Could not sleep and felt tired all day.

  March 5: Snow and wind. Much pain in my knee.

  March 6: Clear sky, very cold. The knee is worse and there is a smell.

  March 7: Colder. Fainted when Dr. B. changed my dressings.

  March 8: Felt very bad.

  March 9: Felt very bad. If I could only see Ellen . . .

  THE DAY AFTER that bleak ceremony, Erasmus was chopping ice when five figures appeared near the tip of the point. By the time he’d raced into the cabin, alerted everyone, and gathered those who could move on the bow, the figures had reached the brig and were peering gravely up at them. Zeke greeted the Esquimaux in their own language, although he still needed Joe’s help in interpreting their responses.

  Ootuniah was the name of one of the men; Awahtok another. Erasmus couldn’t catch the names of the three younger men, who hung behind the first pair and seemed hardly more than boys. All five were dressed in fur jackets and breeches, with high boots made from the leg skins of white bears. The men’s feet, Erasmus saw, were sheltered by the bears’ feet, with claws protruding like overgrown human toenails. Walking, the men left bear prints on the snow.

  “They’d like to come up,” Joe said, after speaking with them for a minute.

  “It’s too risky to let them all aboard at once,” Zeke said. “Tell them one, the oldest one, may come. The others must remain outside for now.”

  Inside the deckhouse Ootuniah fingered Joe’s tent approvingly. He opened the flap and stuck his head inside, then said something that made Joe laugh. Joe opened the hatch and led the way down the ladder, which Erasmus thought Ootuniah might find unfamiliar. But Ootuniah descended as calmly as if he’d been using ladders all his life. Inside, he opened the bunk curtains, picked up the books, fondled the stove. Erasmus saw him slip a wooden cooking spoon into his jacket.

  Ootuniah squeezed between the stove and the partitions before anyone could stop him. But Dr. Boerhaave, who’d darted belowdecks as soon as he sensed what was going on, had managed to move the sick men onto stools and chests, so that they were sitting upright when Ootuniah saw them. Ootuniah smiled and said some words of greeting, which Joe translated. Then Joe added, for the men’s benefit, “Don’t be frightened, he’s friendly.”

  Was he? Nothing seemed to surprise their visitor, Erasmus thought. Not the Narwhal itself, nor the number or condition of the crew. Dr. Boerhaave whispered to him, “What do you think of this? It’s almost as if they’ve been keeping watch on us, and took Mr. Francis’s death for a sign that we’re weak enough to be approached safely.”

  Behind Ootuniah’s back, Dr. Boerhaave signaled the men to sit up straight and smile. But when Ootuniah finally sat down at the table, the first thing he said, as Joe translated it, was, “Your people are sick. Do you have meat?”

  Before him was a plate of salt pork and beans and bread, which Zeke had asked Ned to prepare. Ootuniah poked the food with his finger and then ignored it. “Only this food,” Zeke said, and then translated his own words slowly. He looked up at Joe. “Did I say that right?”

  Joe nodded. “Tell him,” Zeke added, “or tell me how to tell him: ‘We would like to trade with you for meat. We have needles and beads and cask staves. Do you have meat to spare?’ ”

  Joe spoke to Ootuniah and listened to his response. “They have some walrus meat,” he reported to Zeke. “Ootuniah says if you will allow the others aboard, he’ll trade with us.”

  Zeke thought for a moment. “Not in here. But we’ll receive them in the deckhouse.”

  Ootuniah shrugged when Joe spoke to him, then rose, went up on deck, and spoke to the group below. They ran across the ice floes, disappearing behind a line of hummocks to return with a heavily laden sledge drawn by eight dogs. They couldn’t have been hiding there for long, Erasmus thought. But they might have spent days farther off, on the other side of the point—what an odd feeling, to think that the brig had been under observation!

  The Esquimaux scrambled into the deckhouse, bearing great lumps of blubber and walrus meat. Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave led the sick men up one by one, leaning them like bundles against the bulwarks. Ned and Sean put a handful of precious coal in the deck stove and brought up an iron cooking pot. In exchange for five cask staves the Esquimaux offered some chunks of meat, which Ned quickly boiled. They ate and ate, the crew slurping the hot broth and tearing at the parboiled flesh, the Esquimaux taking their own portions raw, alternating slices of meat and blubber. Zeke, after the first frenzy, said in a low voice to Joe, “See if they’d trade those dogs as well.”

  “They won’t,” Joe said after some discussion. Erasmus thought there’d been a lot said in Ootuniah’s language to yield these few words in English. Yet Zeke, who claimed to understand many words now, didn’t seem uncomfortable.

  “It’s been a hard winter, and many of their dogs have died,” Joe continued. “They can’t spare this team.” He talked with Ootuniah more, and also with Awahtok. Wiping his mouth, he said to Zeke, “This is a hunting party; they come from across Smith Sound, from a small village called ‘Anoatok,’ I think. They must bring the sledge and the dogs and the walrus back to their families.”

  “How far away is their home?” Zeke asked. “Why haven’t we seen them before?”

  “It’s some days’ journey across the Sound,” Joe said. “They believe no Inuit live on this side—they come here only to hunt.”

  Ootuniah spoke again, at some length, and Joe’s face grew still. He asked something brief, then repeated it. Ootuniah said a word Erasmus thought he recognized, and when Joe turned back to Zeke, his eyes were round.

  “They ask if we are friends with ‘Docto Kayen.’ ”

  “What?” Zeke said, leaping to his feet.

  “That’s what he said. He says last winter, and the winter before, they knew white men on the other side of the Sound. Dr. Kane, and his men. They lived in what he calls a ‘wooden idgloo,’ like this one. And had no luck hunting, and grew very sick. Ootuniah hunted for them, and traded with them. Last spring the party abandoned their ship and went south.”

  Zeke stared down at his feet for a long time. It would take weeks, Erasmus understood later, before Zeke would really absorb this information or what it meant. For now, he made only a calm proposal.

  “I’d like to make a treaty with them,” Zeke said. “If they’ll continue to bring us food, and perhaps some dogs, we’ll trade them iron and wood and other things they need. I need their help and the loan of sledges and dogs. In return I’ll help them in every way I can. Like Kane did. Tell them I’m a friend of Kane’s, and wish to be their friend as well.”

  There was more conversation, some of which Zeke seemed to understand but most of which Joe had to translate. “They thank you for this offer of friendship,” Joe said. “They’ll leave us half their walrus meat as a token of peace. And will discuss your proposal with their families. For now they say they must go home. They wish us well.”

  Zeke gave them all gifts of pocketknives. In return, Ootuniah gave Zeke an ivory-handled knife he’d concealed in his boot.

  “He must have made the blade from one of Kane’s cask hoops,” Zeke said, turning the knife in his hand. “How do we know they haven’t murdered Kane’s entire party?”

  Joe shook his head. “If they’d wanted to,” he said, “they could have murdered all of us. Instead they’ve given us walrus, when I can’t find any to save my life. Why would you think they’re hostile?”

  In the flurry of leave-taking, the iron cooking pot disappeared, and two spoons, a lantern, and a large piece of wood from the railing. The next day, when Erasmus went out to the storehouse, he found the door pried open. Only an axe and a barrel of blubber were missing—but Mr. Francis’s coffin had been moved a few inches. As if, Erasmus thought, the Esquimaux crowding around it and peering down had bumped it gently and in unison
with their bear-clawed toes.

  6

  WHO HEARS THE FISHES WHEN THEY CRY?

  (APRIL–AUGUST 1856)

  Unfortunately, many things have been omitted which should have been recorded in our journal; for though we made it a rule to set down all our experiences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to keep, for the important experience rarely allows us to remember such obligations, and so indifferent things get recorded, while that is frequently neglected. It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

  Erasmus held a caribou skin in his lap, scanning it in the dim light until he found one of the telltale scars. He set his thumbnails on either side of the perforation. “Like this?” he asked. Across from him, on another cask, Dr. Boerhaave sat surrounded by the heaps of skins they’d obtained from the Netsilik. Their knees were almost touching; beyond the yellow circle cast by the oil lamp, the rest of the storehouse was dark.

  Dr. Boerhaave framed a similar wound with his thumbs. “Richardson did this during Franklin’s expedition to the Barren Grounds. Or so my friend William Greenstone claims. Let’s try.”

  They dug in their nails, squeezing inward as if to express pus from a wound. Both were rewarded by the sudden appearance of a fat white grub, the shape and size of a little bean.

  Dr. Boerhaave peered at his. “That’s it,” he said. “The third instar of the warble fly.”

  “Shall we?” Erasmus said.

  “Richardson claimed they tasted like gooseberries.”

  They popped the grubs in their mouths. “It’s rather good,” Dr. Boerhaave said, after some tentative chewing. “Fresh-tasting, a little sweet.”

  Erasmus swallowed. “The Indians of the Coppermine River eat these?”

  “Richardson claimed they treasure them. As we should. After all they are a form of fresh meat. And they saved Richardson and some of the other men from starvation. Really the man is an admirable naturalist.”

  Erasmus popped another from its hiding place and ate with more relish. One skin at a time, they searched for the wounds the larvae had bored before settling in for their sleepy winter’s growth. As they worked they talked about other, pleasanter times, hunting larger game. Dr. Boerhaave recalled grouse on the Scottish moors and the seals of Spitzbergen. Erasmus said, “Spearing fish is very nice—I used to do it with my brothers, as a boy.”

  “Yes?” Dr. Boerhaave said. “How?”

  Erasmus counted his little white treasures: eighteen, nineteen, twenty. “We went early in the spring, just after the ice melts and before the water weeds grow,” he said. “When the fish are crowded together in the shallow warmer water. They’re like us, then—still half-asleep from the winter, slow moving. We’d patch up the seams of our boat, and repair our spears and gather pitch-pine roots, then launch the boat at a small lake near our house.”

  He tucked his cold hands inside his fur jacket. “My brother Copernicus made an iron fire crate, which hung out over the water from the bow. On a still evening, very late, we’d light a fire in the crate and push off into the lake.”

  He was silent for a moment then, remembering the secret beauties of those nights. Where was Copernicus now?

  “The fire lit the water,” he continued. “A circle of light all around the boat, which let us see several feet down. Some of the fish hung with their bellies turned up to us. Others swam the way they do in summer. There were eels, turtles—the fish were so easy to spear that I felt like a criminal. When our fuel burned out we’d paddle home by the stars. A great fish roast for breakfast—what I wouldn’t give for a grilled perch right now!”

  Dr. Boerhaave, arranging the grubs on a tin plate, made a wry face. “Fish murderer,” he said. “One of the things that made me want to meet Thoreau was an early essay he wrote about the joys of fish spearing; and then the way he grumbled later about the fate of fishes. Somewhere he talks about fish as if they have souls. About their virtues, and their hard destiny, and the possibilities of a secret fish civilization we don’t appreciate. ‘Who hears the fishes when they cry?’ he wrote. He worries about the strangest things.”

  “All these interesting people you know,” Erasmus said. “Thoreau, Agassiz, Emerson, some of them so famous—did you ever want to be famous yourself?”

  Dr. Boerhaave ate another grub. “You mean the way Commander Voorhees does?”

  “I . . .” Erasmus said guiltily. “I guess I do mean that.”

  Dr. Boerhaave shook his head. “I don’t think about it. Somehow I always knew I wasn’t cut out for that—I’m lucky, in a way. I never wanted anything more than the chance to do some useful work. It matters to me that I contribute my bit to our knowledge of the natural world. But not that people recognize me. I suppose I was cut out to be a kind of foot soldier—it always seemed like those of us in the background have the time and privacy to get the real work done. What about you?” He smiled fondly. “Do you hunger for glory?”

  “I hunger for roast beef,” Erasmus said, returning his friend’s smile. “But glory—I don’t know, I suppose I’m like you. I’d like my work to be admired, but I hate my self to be singled out. Shall we bring in our treats?”

  They brought the plate belowdecks, where more than half the men were confined. Sean, picking at his gums, had brought out a chunk of what he thought was old food but which turned out to be his own flesh. Ivan and Robert had both lost teeth and could chew only with difficulty; Mr. Tagliabeau had been seized with biliary colic and Captain Tyler was recovering from a urinary obstruction, which had tortured him until he passed a large stone. Almost everyone suffered from hemorrhoids, which made them bad-tempered; and they were hungry as well as riddled with scurvy.

  “We have something good for you,” Dr. Boerhaave announced.

  Joe, who was still on his feet, looked at the tin plate. “Oh, good,” he said. “From the hides? I’ve heard about these, I should have thought of this myself.” He took two and passed the plate to Sean and Ivan.

  “What are they?” Sean asked.

  “It’s not important,” Joe said. “Just eat them.”

  “Nothing goes in my mouth without I know what it is,” Sean grumbled. When Dr. Boerhaave finally explained, most of the men refused to touch the grubs. Zeke ate heartily, Joe calmly and steadily; Ned, after some persuasion, also ate a few. Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave ate the rest and then returned to the storehouse.

  “It’s a good idea,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “But useless if we can’t get them into the men who most need them. We could ask Ned to smuggle them into some soup, but cooking will destroy their value.”

  They gathered a few more skins and returned to work. “If the ice would just open up enough for the seals,” Erasmus said.

  “All the animals will be back before long,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “We just have to hang on a few more weeks.”

  But on April 13 Zeke announced that he was done with waiting. “If the Esquimaux won’t come to us,” he said, “we’ll go to them. We must have help hunting. We must have dogs.”

  On the table he spread Inglefield’s flawed map of lower Smith Sound; then he abutted his own charts of the Ellesmere coast, up to the point where they were frozen in. “The crossing party will be composed of myself, Dr. Boerhaave, Joe, and Ned.” While Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave stared at each other, Zeke added, “It’s thirty or forty miles across the Sound to Greenland, and the village the Esquimaux described can’t be far. We’ll take the middle-sized sledge, so we can bring back as much meat as possible. With luck we’ll have dogs to pull it on the return trip.”

  “The composition of the traveling party,” Erasmus said. “Surely . . .”

  “I must have Joe,” Zeke said. “For his skill with a rifle, as well as his knowledge of the language. I’d prefer not to leave you without the services of a surgeon, but we’ll be in more danger and so Dr. Boerhaave must come. You’re needed here
, as Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau are both sick.”

  But this was a punishment, Erasmus thought with dismay, as much as a practical decision. He was being punished for that night in the deckhouse with the drinking men. Separated, purposefully, from his friend. “Let me come,” he said. “Instead of Ned.” He touched Dr. Boerhaave’s shoulder.

  “You can’t,” Zeke said. “Why can’t you understand that? I need you here, taking care of the men.”

  Dr. Boerhaave stepped forward. “If Erasmus has to stay,” he argued, “why not leave Ned to help him care for the sick? We don’t need a cook while we’re out on the ice—wouldn’t it make more sense to take one of the larger, sturdier men?”

  “I need someone I can trust,” Zeke said. “Someone who’ll accept direction without questioning me.”

  My fault, Erasmus thought. If he’d managed to placate Zeke, Zeke wouldn’t have turned to Ned.

  Ned squared his shoulders. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’d be glad to go.”

  “I’m afraid to go,” Dr. Boerhaave confessed to Erasmus later. “I don’t want to, but it’s my duty. What if something happens to Joe or Ned?”

  They left the brig on April 16. Zeke made a speech to the men left behind; Ned pressed Erasmus’s hands; Dr. Boerhaave embraced him and whispered in his ear, “Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?” While Erasmus puzzled over that cryptic comment, the crossing party harnessed themselves to the sledge, heading for the place they’d only heard named once: Anoatok.

  IN THEIR ABSENCE, Erasmus bent his energies toward improving the health of his companions. He was stronger than anyone else—perhaps from the grubs, which he ate every day for the rest of April, although no one else would touch them. Each time he ate he thought of Dr. Boerhaave. He let himself elaborate on the daydream he’d had for months: that somehow, when they finally reached Philadelphia, he might persuade his friend to settle there. Just across the creek from his home, a small stone house had been sitting vacant for several years. Dr. Boerhaave might live there, he thought—privately, yet just a short stroll from the Repository. Erasmus would give him a key. They might meet there daily; they might work on their specimens together. Sometimes they might dine together and sit by the fire afterward, reading companionably and drinking soft red wine. Nothing would separate them then.