The Broken Lands Page 7

  “And that we will be in a strong position to embark upon a full season’s exploration next year?”

  “That, too,” Crozier admitted. Glancing quickly around them to ensure that he was not overheard, he added in a low voice, “Parry is convinced that no navigable route lies directly to the west. Pushing so hard year after year broke his ships and his spirit. His loss of heart and disillusionment on his final voyage was terrible to see. I have great respect for the man, and for the Rosses too, but none of them will ever return to resume their searches.”

  The two men shook hands and Crozier called for his lieutenants to return with him to the Terror.

  They reached their Farthest North on the 17th of September, having left Cornwallis behind them and then sailed for four days among the gradually thickening ice and smaller islands, some no more than exposed rocks, in the upper reaches of Wellington Channel. They achieved 77 degrees before the ice moving south forced them to turn. There was little danger of them being caught by this, it being mostly newly formed brash, as much liquid as solid. The daily temperature were falling, but not yet swiftly, and the Arctic night proper was still two months away.

  They were surprised not to encounter the permanent Polar ice this far north, but guessed that they might now measure the distance it lay ahead of them in hours’ rather than days’ sailing. At that latitude, the ice flow from the west was known to be heavy and rapid, and a watch was kept for any bergs appearing from that quarter.

  The next day was a Sunday, and they spent this cruising east along the edge of the ice. Occasionally they encountered a channel inviting them farther toward the Pole, but they were not tempted into these restricted waters where they might suddenly find themselves unable to maneuver or turn back.

  Franklin had been vindicated by his detour: the Passage did not lie to the north or the northwest.

  It was strange but comforting, Franklin wrote in his journal on the day of their Farthest North, how often he heard the Pacific mentioned by his officers and crew, much preferred by them all in conversation as a general destination than, say, the Beaufort Sea or Bering. Cook’s Icy Cape, he noted, was seldom mentioned at all, and he regretted that Cook should have chosen such a prosaic and uninviting name for his own Farthest East, having entered the Arctic puzzle from the west.

  They cruised for a further three days, during which time the closed northern exit to Wellington Channel was explored and charted in detail.

  Returning to the broken southern shore, Franklin suggested to his officers that they might now turn their attention to finding somewhere secure to spend their first winter in the ice. Ideally, he suggested, a protected harbor to the north of Barrow Strait, somewhere from which they might make an early crossing south at the start of the following summer upon their release.

  They continued along the coast, putting out boats daily to examine more closely those places they had seen at a distance. Few of these proved suitable and they continued to the east, the two ships leap-frogging each other as one or other of them awaited the return of its boats.

  A likely place lay somewhere close to Beechey, a small island to the south of Devon, and connected to it by a slender umbilical isthmus, on either side of which were broad shallow bays. Additionally, both Devon and Beechey offered accessible landing-places where they might spend the winter ashore if the need arose.

  They had no detailed chart of Beechey. Nor, upon the map of Devon, was there any indication of the arm of the isthmus, as narrow as twenty feet in places, which connected the two land masses.

  The small island had been named in 1819 by Parry after William Beechey, who had accompanied Franklin on his own attempt on the Pole by the direct Spitsbergen route, his belated account of this voyage having been published only two years previously.

  Naming the small island, Parry had then sailed to the west without landing upon it. He named the much larger island after his home county, and Somerset to the south after the home of one of his lieutenants.

  They came within sight of Beechey on the 29th of September and entered the shallow passage between it and the mainland, sailing as close as possible to the connecting spit. The Erebus anchored here while the Terror sailed south around the island to explore the bay on the far side of this shingle divide.

  By late afternoon the two ships lay at anchor side by side. Beechey rose to the west and south of them, offering some protection from the turbulent gathering ground of Barrow Strait beyond, and to the north stretched the sheltering cliffs of Devon. The water in the shallow bay was calm and ice-free, and although it was certain to freeze over during the coming weeks, it was unlikely, judging by the settled contours of the shoreline, that the main flow of ice would enter the bay, either to threaten their anchorage or to prevent their eventual departure.

  Franklin, Crozier and their officers dined together that evening, toasted their safe arrival, and speculated long into the early hours about the nature of the coming winter, against the rigors of which they now needed to prepare themselves.

  SEVEN

  Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte. He enjoyed the rhythm and flow of his names and was proud to recite them in full whenever the opportunity arose, savoring and delivering them with the same exaggerated flourish with which he signed them. He addressed himself frequently, often in self-criticism, and by using all these names it seemed to him as though he were being rebuked—usually for his carelessness or haste—by every one of the ancestors from whom he had inherited them thirty-five years earlier.

  He wore at all times a cap upon which each of the names had been embroidered in gold thread by his mother, and inside which his wife and three daughters had added their own. He was convinced that he would rather lose his two small fingers than the cap.

  Upon arriving at Beechey, he began to map the unknown terrain around them. On his first day away from the ships he was accompanied by Fitzjames, and by Little, Hodgson and Irving from the Terror. They took Lady Franklin’s dog with them and, free after its long confinement, the animal raced ahead of them along the shore, the men following in a line abreast, each with his case of equipment. Little and Irving carried bundles of surveying poles, and Hodgson several coils of marked cable. Fitzjames carried the precious theodolite and its tripod, and Vesconte a sextant and the large pads upon which to interpret his calculations.

  They followed the shore to the east, walking for half an hour until it turned south, where they were quickly out of sight of the vessels. At regular intervals, Vesconte set up his equipment and took readings, Little and Irving being dispatched to stand on either side of him and drive their poles into the stony ground.

  At the first of these halts, Fitzjames took their bearings against the sun on the eastern horizon.

  When these shoreline measurements were completed, Vesconte copied out the figures and made the first sketchy outline of the land over which they had walked.

  “Is that it, is that all?” Hodgson asked him, disappointed that so little had come of all their efforts.

  Vesconte held up and studied what he had drawn. “As to distance and exact orientation, it is perfect. As to its absolute location with regard to latitude and longitude and the minutes of both, it cannot be bettered. In fact, gentlemen, I would say that we are on our way to producing a small cartographic masterpiece, in itself a marvelous thing, I’m sure you will all agree.” He shared a smile with Fitzjames. “And one for which every frost-bitten Jack who follows in our icy footsteps will surely be eternally grateful.”

  The three lieutenants were not convinced. They looked at the land around them, at the slope and the cliff above them, then back to the few unconnected lines like a child’s scribble on the pad.

  “All you see, gentlemen, are pencil marks,” Vesconte went on. “What I see, and what Fitzjames here sees, is the ground over which we have just come. A poor return on our efforts, perhaps, but once the mark is made and connected to the dozens, perhaps hundreds, which are to follow, then no one will ever have to trace the route again
. Perhaps what we are about to achieve over the next few days will remain unquestioned and unaltered—other than by the Almighty himself—for a hundred years.”

  “You should have been a politician,” Fitzjames told him, seeing how quickly the others were coming round to this encouragement of their drudgery.

  Vesconte did not answer him; instead he slapped his pad shut, rose and strode off ahead of them, calling the dog to him as he went. The others gathered up their cases, pulled free the poles and ran to keep up with him.

  They walked farther from the sheltered bay and the ships, crossing the eastern and then the southern shore of Beechey alongside the fast-flowing waters of Barrow Strait.

  They began to climb, gently at first, and then more steeply over rock-strewn land until they reached the summit of the small island and were able to look down upon it in its entirety.

  Where the terrain was more variable, and where the shoreline ceased to turn in so smooth a curve, Vesconte insisted on taking more readings, and then on checking these several times over until his figures were duplicated.

  The three lieutenants became more enthusiastic about their work, vying with each other to position their poles according to Vesconte’s directions.

  At the edge of a precipice to the south, Fitzjames took a succession of readings while both the sun and the clear horizon were visible to him. To the north of them across the narrow bay, the land stretched endlessly east and west, but to the south there was only water and a distant haze. He was joined by Vesconte, who asked him to gauge for him a line due south of where they stood. Fitzjames did this and Vesconte drew the mark on the ground with his heel.

  “North Somerset,” he said, pointing. “And beyond it, Boothia.” He spoke as though he were not entirely convinced of the existence of these places, afterward staring into the haze without speaking.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Are they one and the same piece of land?” Vesconte said without turning from the horizon. “Are they a single solid, undivided projection north from the mainland?”

  “You think otherwise?” Fitzjames said, turning to look, as though the answer lay visible before them.

  “Pure speculation.” Vesconte walked away from the edge to join the others.

  The island took shape in outline on the sheets of squared paper, and Vesconte showed it to them, pointing out its more easily identifiable features: a small indentation, a rocky promontory, an offshore islet, the partially submerged finger of land reaching out toward Devon.

  By the end of the afternoon almost half the coastline was in place. The rest might have been added with some degree of accuracy without any further measurement, but upon suggesting this, Irving was berated by Vesconte until he raised his hands in surrender.

  To guess, Vesconte told him, even at what they could actually see, would make them no better than those cartographers in the past who had invented islands, rivers, mountains, and even entire lands simply to fill an empty space and appease their own uncontrollable imaginations. Irving apologized, and Vesconte, realizing that he had responded too aggressively, made a quick sketch of him with his hands in the air and suggested that the precipice to which they were then so close should afterward be known as “Irving’s Drop.”

  Irving said he was honored, but declined the offer on the grounds that he would prefer not to have such a noble name associated with something over which a man might walk whistling to his death in a moment of carelessness.

  They ate the food they had brought with them in a sheltered hollow overlooking the ice-filled channel below. Ungloved, their hands were quickly numbed in the cold air of the peak, and when they had finished eating they rubbed grease on their lips. The dog sat at their feet and leapt for scraps. It had grown fat during the voyage and panted at the slightest exertion.

  As they were about to resume their work, Vesconte asked Irving for his mother’s name and then wrote this alongside the islet he had drawn, and which they could see beneath them. “My prerogative,” he said.

  Irving thanked him and said he would write to her about it later that evening.

  It became much cooler as they returned to the ships, walking in a straight line across the top of the island in the hope that a more direct path back down to the shore might reveal itself to them.

  Arriving at a vantage-point over the sea, Vesconte pointed out to them the distant ice which already blocked the channels they had recently sailed, a broad unbroken expanse of it, tinting the sky above with its reflected glare.

  “So soon?” Hodgson said, surprised to see that it had arrived so swiftly and so early.

  All around them the setting sun threw up sudden shadows like small disturbed animals, and as it fell lower they watched the lines of light retreat over the dull brown slope as though they were being mechanically reeled back to their source.

  The four men drew up the Articles of the society they had formed, named, at Goodsir’s insistence, the Arctic Quartet, determined to produce a weekly journal throughout the months of their confinement chronicling their shipboard activities and to inform all those who were new to the region on various diverse aspects of it.

  All the positions were self-appointed. Goodsir, the founder, was to be their naturalist; Vesconte was to contribute items of geographical and geological interest; Gore was to compose poetry and music to be read out and played at their meetings and at the lectures they proposed to give; and Fitzjames was to be purveyor of curiosities and penny-philosopher to the group. Reid was invited to become the fifth member of the society, but he declined, offering instead to produce anonymous articles for the journal on the history of the ice. A theater group was also set up, along with classes on reading and writing, to which most of the junior officers agreed to contribute.

  The journal was to be produced largely by Goodsir and Gore, and to be named The Holystoners’ Almanac. For the cover of the first issue Goodsir drew a sledge upon which the four of them stood, pulled by two dogs with the faces of Reid and Blanky.

  Vesconte’s inaugural contribution was a first-hand description of the two live Antarctic volcanoes named after their ships. Gore composed a short piece for violin and flute called “Fata Morgana,” and Fitzjames wrote an article on the variety and strangeness of the charms and tokens they all carried with them. He himself had a piece of shale picked up on the shore of Baffin upon which was imprinted the perfect outline of a fossil leaf. Reid showed them his bloodstone to ward off drowning, and Goodsir took out a small spiral of polished rock widely held to be the tip of a thunderbolt excavated from the earth, and given to him by his brother Robert, also a ship’s surgeon serving in the Pacific. Gore and Vesconte carried charms given to them by their wives: Gore a small handkerchief elaborately embroidered over every inch of its surface, and Vesconte, in addition to his cap, an empty watch-case in which he kept four curls of hair. Both men were unwilling to let these items out of their grasp. Vesconte in particular guarded his curls with diligent affection, and when Fitzjames half-seriously suggested to him that he was little different from Parry’s Eskimo woman with her father’s wooden leg, Vesconte was happy to admit the comparison. The others acknowledged the privilege of having been shown these charms.

  Puzzles were devised and prizes offered for their solution. Each of the founder-members was asked to contribute one of these, the most coveted coming from Goodsir, who gave a bottle of Parfait Amour liqueur, saying he could no longer bear to be reminded of the girl who had once given it to him along with the promise of her undying love, but who had subsequently married a Brazilian nobleman whose family had made its fortune in slaves. He uncorked the bottle before handing it over, pretending to swoon at the powerful aroma. The rest contributed more prosaic prizes of cash and other delicacies.

  The journal was to be composed of thirty-two pages, and their regular meetings would take place every Sunday after Evening Service.

  A similar society was formed by Irving, Hodgson and Little on the Terror, their own bulletin being
given the extravagant title Hypaethral Hours, afterward referred to as Cathedral Flowers by its competitors aboard the Erebus.

  Much of the first week was spent in unloading stores and ferrying them ashore. Completing their daily quotas, both crews were then free to spend the hours before dusk as they chose.

  Some explored the island; others returned to their quarters and spent their time aboard ship. A large number played football and cricket on the broad, near-level shore, while others congregated in smaller groups to play at cards and dice.

  It was in one of these smaller parties that a fight broke out. A man named Henry Sait, a seaman on the Terror, accused another, Alexander Wilson, carpenter’s mate, of cheating, and when their argument could not be contained, punches were thrown. The six or seven others involved then joined in, and one man, Thomas Jopson, Crozier’s steward, was knocked briefly unconscious, hitting his head on the hard ground as he fell from a push.

  The commotion attracted the attention of those on board the Terror and Crozier dispatched his marines to investigate.

  Sergeant Tozer led the six men ashore, leaping from their boat and racing through the shallows to where the card-players were still fighting.

  He fired his pistol into the air, at which they all immediately stopped and turned to face him. The marines positioned themselves around the small group, and Tozer went to Jopson, who was just then coming round, and pulled him roughly to his feet, slapping him in the face and accusing him of having started the fight.

  Several of the others came forward in Jopson’s defense, but Tozer told them to stay where they were and remain silent. He lined them up and told them to await the arrival of Crozier. He jabbed each of them in the stomach with his pistol and demanded an explanation of what had happened. No one was willing to tell him. He approached the youngest, Cornelius Hickey, caulker’s mate, and putting his arm around the youth’s shoulders, he drew him away from the others, whispering to him as they went.