Bellot Strait was completely choked with ice. The men stood mashed together on the bow, muttering with disappointment: “God damn this ice!” Captain Tyler said, before disappearing below. Their last chance to reach King William Land by water had just disappeared, Erasmus knew, and with it any chance of finding Franklin’s ships. But they might still find traces of the expedition by land, as Rae had done. On Zeke’s order they continued southward, along the massive hills and into the Gulf of Boothia.
Zeke grew cool and distant, hardly speaking except to give orders and treating Captain Tyler as if he were the skipper of a ferryboat. He allowed no stops, neither for the men to hunt nor for Erasmus to gather specimens. The winds and currents here seemed to concentrate the ice, which poured into the bay from the north and then swirled and massed, several times almost crushing the brig. The men grew nervous and muttered among themselves. Out here, far from the traditional whaling grounds, they seemed to wake as a group from a dream. Why had they come? Because they needed work, Erasmus slowly understood; not because they were inspired by the expedition’s goals but because they’d needed jobs back in the spring, when Zeke was recruiting men. They’d signed on because the wages were good and because, despite all Zeke’s stories, they had not really been able to imagine their task. The men who’d never been to sea before had had no useful information, no way to imagine what lay before them; those with whaling experience must have imagined that searching for Franklin would be like searching for whales.
The idea of moving just for the sake of moving, pressing deeper and deeper into the ice with no assurance of reward, was as strange to them, Erasmus thought, as flensing a bowhead would have been to him. Every order Zeke gave brought a grumble: we should have anchored in Cresswell Bay; the men need fresh meat; the floes are scraping away the siding—Mr. Francis, Ned Kynd, Mr. Tagliabeau.
Fletcher Lamb, who was stropping his razor when they crashed into one of the monstrous bergs, jolted his hand and cut off the tip of his left ring finger. Two of the dogs, knocked to their feet, turned on each other and filled the air with chunks of fur and a spray of blood; a kettle slipped overboard. When the Narwhal was finally forced to stop, separated from King William Land by the full width of Boothia, the men began clamoring to turn around the same day they dropped anchor.
Discouraged, Erasmus stared at the charts. They’d not discovered even the smallest scrap of new coastline; the excellent map of the Rosses detailed every cove they saw. Yet here, no matter what the crew thought, they might begin their real search for any traces of Franklin and his men. This was the place, Erasmus thought: the true beginning after all. What began, instead, was the death of the dogs.
The dozen left after the earlier mishaps tore around the ship, raising and lowering their heads and tails and all the while barking furiously at some invisible threat. The lead dog, enormous and black, fell first: a damp heap at the base of the mainmast. His white-footed consort followed, then two of the puppies Joe had earlier saved: red-eyed, fevered, frothing. They turned on Zeke and Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave, who worked frantically to help them. Dr. Boerhaave wrote:
Why did I never make time for some veterinary training? In my autopsies I’ve found nothing more than livers that appear to be mildly enlarged, but I can’t be sure of this: what does a healthy dog’s liver look like? At Godhavn we heard rumors of a mysterious disease among the dogs of southern Greenland, but our own appeared to be in perfect health and continued so throughout Lancaster Sound. I should have been paying more attention. I’m not sure of the course of rabies in canines but was forced to consider this, and when four fell on their sides, pawing at their jaws, I ordered them shot to prevent the spread of disease. Commander Voorhees, who is sentimental about animals, was furious with me and we had an argument — he can’t seem to grasp the idea that the sick dogs may endanger the men. In any event my efforts weren’t successfuclass="underline" we lost the last adult today and only Wissy and one other puppy are left. I’m grateful none of us were bitten. On dissection I found no apparent brain inflammation, nor anything unusual in the spinal cord or nerves. Why didn’t I thinly to bring along a boot of veterinary medicine?
The flesh on Fletcher Lamb’s injured finger has begun to mortify beneath the bandage I applied. I’ve debrided and irrigated the wound, but remain worried.
ZEKE HAD BEEN keeping Wissy in the cabin, where he hoped she might be safe, but the day after the other remaining puppy died she began running about, crashing off the bunks and the walls. Zeke held her in his arms, despite her mad strength; he tried to feed her tidbits and wouldn’t let Dr. Boerhaave touch her. She squirmed and bit and then lay still, her head thrown back and her eyes blankly staring. Above her a tern cut through the rigging, back and forth and around the shrouds.
“You know what we have to do,” Dr. Boerhaave said.
Zeke handed her to Robert Carey, who’d proved his skill with a gun by obtaining numerous birds on Beechey Island. Afterward Zeke wouldn’t look at Dr. Boerhaave and nothing Erasmus said could console him. Dr. Boerhaave retreated to a corner on deck, turning a skull around in his long fingers and staring at his notes as if he might bring the dogs back to life. Caught between the two men, Erasmus wondered what the dogs’ deaths meant.
Here they were, he thought, blocked from further sailing by ice, and blocked from overland travel by the lack of it. The snow on the land was mostly gone, except high on the hills and in hidden hollows; the land-fast ice was heaved and cracked and waterlogged. Even if they could cross Boothia, the strait between its far side and King William Land could no longer be frozen solid, but must be a mass of loose and shifting floes. Sledging was impossible; sledge travel was meant for spring, when the sun had returned but the ice was smooth and solid everywhere. Why, then, had they brought dogs and sledges in the first place?
But he knew the answer. Ever since they’d acquired the dogs, he’d worried that Zeke meant to overwinter somewhere if the brig failed to reach its destination. Some of the crew must have guessed this as well, but they’d all wanted to believe the dogs wouldn’t be needed. Then, after every stage of their desired route had been blocked, Ned had seized Erasmus’s arm and said, “Some of the men say we won’t go home this summer now. That we’ll stay all winter, in the ice — is it true?”
Erasmus hadn’t known what to say. He’d seen Zeke take out a new set of maps and scribble in his little black book; but now the dogs were gone. Once, but only once, Zeke leaned his head against the mast and said, “I wonder if someone poisoned them.”
“You know that’s not true,” Erasmus said gently. Everyone else pretended not to hear him.
Joe, perhaps wishing to deflect attention from the dead dogs and Zeke’s foul mood, told stories that caused a different kind of uneasiness. The West Greenlanders among whom he’d lived, he said, had wonderfully designed harpoons and winter houses made of stone and turf with seal-intestine windows and seal-blubber lamps. How warm those houses could be in winter! So warm, he said, packed with bodies and lamps, that the women wore only fox-skin knickers unless they had visitors.
A hush fell over the men. For a moment, in that silence, they visualized warm, curved flesh decorated with those flirtatious frills. In Melville Bay they’d traded tales of the women who’d taken up with members of both Parry’s and Franklin’s earlier expeditions, and Ivan Hruska and Robert Carey had talked about Esquimaux men who’d brought their wives aboard the visiting ships and offered them in trade for knives and wood. Perhaps they’d all hoped for a similar chance.