Suppose, Alexandra said. Her right hand sketched an arc in the air, as if she were still holding her paintbrush.
When Dr. Kane left, Zeke continued, he said he was going to look for signs of this phenomenon if he could. So theres nothing so strange in my wanting to look as well.
Many times in the months since the party Erasmus had sat in the offices of wealthy men, while Zeke proposed their search for Franklin. A portrait of Franklin in full-dress uniform hung in the Narwhals cabinFranklin, Franklin, Zeke had said, as he asked the men for money. It made sense that he concentrated on this aspect of the voyagehow proud the merchants were, contributing to such a good cause! In Zeke, Erasmus thought, they saw a young man who could succeed at anything. The man theyd dreamed of being, the man they hoped their sons might be. Other expeditions might have failed, but Zekes would not.
Its a theory, Zeke told Alexandra now. An interesting theory. In the arctic one can never predict where the ice will allow one to go, nor ones speed, nor even always ones direction. My plan is to follow this route and search for Franklin. But were conditions to be unexpectedly goodwere one of the northern channels to be open, sayits possible wed do some exploring.
Possible, Alexandra said. Hence you provision for eighteen months?
For safetys sake, Zeke said. He stroked his eyebrows, taming the springy golden tufts; perhaps aware that Lavinia followed the gesture intently. And perhaps, Erasmus thought, a bit annoyed that Alexandra didnt. A sensible woman, she seemed immune to Zekes charms.
Lavinia, tearing her eyes from Zekes hand, said, I dont see here on the maps where youd head north at all.
Only if he were driven to it, Alexandra said. Were he to raise this money to search for Franklin, and then purposefully head in another direction, that would be quite wrong.
Zeke gazed steadily at her, and she gazed as steadily back. The maps never tell us what we need, he said, turning toward Lavinia. Thats part of the reason we go.
Later Erasmus would realize that for all his alertness to Zekes gestures and the womens responses he hadnt been paying sufficient attention. The lamps were lit, the sun was setting, they were munching delicious chocolate cake; the maps beckoned and he was dreaming of glory. His own glory, his own desires. They might find survivors of Franklins expedition; or if not, surely better evidence of what had happened than Raes dispiriting tale. With any luck theyd find other things as well. All sorts of specimens, not just plants but seaweeds, fishes, birdshe would write a book. Hed sketch his specimens and write their descriptions; his talent was for drawing from nature, capturing the salient features as only a trained observer could. Copernicus, so skilled with color and light, would turn the sketches into paintings; Linnaeus and Humboldt would prepare the plates. Together theyd make something beautiful. For years, in the light of his disappointments, hed pretended to himself that he wasnt ambitiousbut he was, he was. And lucky beyond belief to be part of this voyage. A blaze of excitement blinded him.
And you, Erasmus, Alexandra said. What do you think of all this?
In the polar regions, he said, its true that one must be flexible, and take what opportunities are offered.
He looked down at the volume shed relinquished. He would bring it, after all. Surely there was room for one small book. Zeke and I will respond to what we find, and decide accordingly.
THAT NIGHT, IN her diary, Alexandra wrote:
Its not Lavinias fault her brothers underestimate her. I know shell be different once the men leave and were on our own; her mind dissolves in Zekes presence. Ill be glad when we can be ourselves. This house is so beautiful, so spaciouswhat would my parents think, I wonder, if they were alive to see me in these two gorgeous rooms I now call my own? The window over my bed looks down on a planting of dwarf trees. My bed-linen is changed weekly, by someone other than me. And this painting is such a pleasure, so much more satisfying than needlework. So much better paid. Beneath the lining of my sewing box Ive already tucked a surprising sum. Soon Ill be able to purchase some books of my own, an extravagance when I have the Repository shelves to browse through, once the men leaveIm impatient for them to go, I am. And wish that, like Erasmus, I might have the luxury of sleeping out there.
Does he know that he rocks the toe of his boot in the air whenever Zeke speaks? I wonder what Erasmus was like as a boy. Before he grew so frozen, before he sat with his chin tucked into his collar like that, and his right hand wringing his left so strongly one wonders he doesnt break the bones. Lavinia says that when she was a girl he was fond of beetles and moths, and teased the succession of governesses who raised her. I cant imagine him teasing anyone.
THE NARWHAL SET sail on May 28, in such a wild flurry that everything important seemed still undone and nothing Erasmus meant to say got said. He and Zeke stood on the deck in their new gray uniforms, waving their handkerchiefs. Above them the Toxophilites pennant streamed in the wind, snapping straight out then beginning to droop, snapping straight out again. Terns hung motionless in the high currents, and Erasmus felt as though he himself were hanging between two worlds.
The acquaintances of the Narwhals crew gathered in little knots close to shore, followed by the cheering Toxies in their green outfits. Dotting the wharf in separate clusters were Zekes and Erasmuss relatives and friends, their clothing splayed into wide colored planes by the wind whipping across the river. Alexandra had brought her entire familyher sisters, Emily and Jane; her brother, Browning; and Brownings wife and infant sonall of them huddled so tightly that it was as if even here, in the open air, they couldnt expand beyond the confines of the tiny house theyd shared since their parents deaths. They were small, neat, and yet somehow fierce-looking; abolitionists, serious young people. They dressed in the colors of sparrows and doves but more closely resembled, Erasmus thought, a family of saw-whet owls. Browning had a Bible in his hands.
Later, Alexandra would write in her diary about the argument she and Browning had over the verses he read out loud. Later shed sketch a portrait of Erasmus during these last minutes, which showed his hand clasped nervously around a stay, his graying hair curled beneath a cap that made him look oddly boyish, the tip of his long, thin nose sniffing at the wind. But for now she only stood silently, watching him watch everyone. In the oily water around the pilings wood shavings swirled and tossed.
To the left of Alexandras family stood a group of employees from the engraving firm and some representatives from the Voorhees packet line; beyond them were Linnaeus and Humboldt, as plump and glossy as beavers, and Lavinia, leaning on both of them, overdressed in swirls of blue and green and flashing in the sun like a trout. At the tip of the wharf, befitting their support of the expedition, came Zekes family. His father stood suave and proud, his still-thick thatch of ruddy hair moving in the wind and revealing his massive eyebrows and the lynxlike tufts on his ears. His mother, shrouded in black for the death of an aunt, was weeping. Not surprising, Erasmus thought; she was famous for the way she coddled her only son. Flanking her were Zekes sisters, Violet and Laurel, beautifully dressed and seemingly contemptuous of their merchant husbands, who werent sailing north.
They waved; the water opened between the wharf and the ship; the tune piped by the Toxies piccolo player shattered in the breeze until the separate and unrelated notes merged with the calls of the gulls. Behind the mountains and beyond the north wind, Erasmuss father had once read to him, past the cave where the cold arises, live a race of people called Hyperboreans. Here are the hinges on which the world turns and the limits of the circuits of the stars. Here there is no disharmony and sorrow is unknown. The figures on the wharf began to shrink. Everyone, except the dead, whom Erasmus had ever loved; every person who might be proud of him or admire his courage or worry over his fate. The faces faded, and then disappeared.
2 PAST THE CAVE WHERE THE COLD ARISES
(JUNEJULY 1855)
Of the inanimate productions of Greenland, none perhaps excites so much interest and astonishment in a stranger, as the ice in its great abundance and variety. The stupendous masses, known by the name of Ice-Islands, Floating-Mountains, or Icebergs, common to Davis Straits and sometimes met with here, from their height, various forms, and the depth of water in which they ground, are calculated to strike the beholder with wonder; yet the fields of ice, more peculiar to Greenland, are not less astonishing. Their deficiency in elevation, is sufficiently compensated by their amazing extent of surface. Some of them have been observed near a hundred miles in length, and more than half that in breadth; each consisting of a single sheet of ice, having its surface raised in general four or six feet above the level of the water, and its base depressed to the depth of near twenty feet beneath.
The ice in general, is designated by a variety of appellations, distinguishing it according to the size or number of pieces, their form of aggregation, thickness, transparency, &c. I perhaps cannot better explain the terms in common acceptation amongst the whale-fishers, than by marking the disruption of a field. The thickest and strongest field cannot resist the power of a heavy swell; indeed, such are much less capable of bending without being dissevered, than the thinner ice which is more pliable. When a field, by the set of the current, drives to the southward, and being deserted by the loose ice, becomes exposed to the effects of a grown swell, it presently breaks into a great many pieces, few of which will exceed forty or fifty yards in diameter. Now, such a number of the pieces collected together in close contact, so that they cannot, from the top of the ships mast, be seen over, are termed a pack.
When the collection of pieces can be seen across, if it assume a circular or polygonal form, the name of patch is applied, and it is called a stream when its shape is more of an oblong, how narrow soever it may be, provided the continuity of the pieces is preserved.
Pieces of very large dimensions, but smaller than fields, are called floes; thus, a field may be compared to a pack, and a floe to a patch, as regards their size and external form. Small pieces which break off, and are separated from the larger masses by the effect of attrition, are called brash-ice, and may be collected into streams or patches. Ice is said to be loose or open, when the pieces are so far separated as to allow a ship to sail freely amongst them; this has likewise been called drift ice. A hummock is a protuberance raised upon any plane of ice above the common level. It is frequently produced by pressure, where one piece is squeezed upon another, often set up on its edge, and in that position cemented by the frost. Hummocks are likewise formed, by pieces of ice mutually crushing each other, the wreck being coacervated upon one or both of them. To hummocks, the ice is indebted for the variety of fanciful shapes, and its picturesque appearance. They occur in great numbers in heavy packs, on the edges and occasionally in the middle of fields and floes. They often attain the height of thirty feet or upwards
A bight signifies a bay or sinuosity, on the border of any large mass or body of ice. It is supposed to be called bight from the low word bite, to take in, or entrap; because, in this situation, ships are sometimes so caught by a change of wind, that the ice cannot be cleared on either tack; and in some cases, a total loss has been the consequence.
WILLIAM SCORESBY, The Polar Ice (1815)
Zeke started heaving over the Narwhals rail before they cleared the bay. He had mentioned, Erasmus remembered, some seasickness on his fathers shipsbut this was no spasm, a few hours illness and a nights recovery. This was endless retching and a white-faced speechless headache. As they passed New York and surged ahead of the ship heading off to search for Dr. Kane, the elation Erasmus might have felt was squelched by worry over Zekes condition.
Why didnt you warn me? he asked. Around him the crew hovered, disdainfully watching Zeke respond to the slightest swells.
I thought it would be different this time, Zeke whispered.
Erasmus, contemplating Zekes falsehood, remembered an image hed long forgotten. A pale, frail, yellow-haired boy reading mounds of natural history books and explorers journals in a deep chair piled with pillowsthat had been Zeke, aged thirteen or fourteen.
His own father, Erasmus remembered, had acted as a sort of uncle to Zeke during Mr. Voorheess business trips: an antidote to a houseful of women. Hed brought armfuls of books during the year Zeke spent in bed after a bout of typhus, and had later welcomed Zekes visits to the Repository. Erasmus, just back from the Exploring Expedition then, had been only vaguely aware that Zeke regarded him as some sort of hero. But after Zeke finished reading the journals of Franklins first voyage, Erasmus had heard him say to his father, This is how I want to live, Mr. Wellslike Franklin and his men, like Erasmus. I want to explore. How can anyone bear to live and die without accomplishing something remarkable?
Erasmus had dismissed those words as boyish fantasies, watching unsurprised as Zeke was funneled into his familys business. He worked in the warehouse, he sat in the office, he traveled on the ships of the packet line; he complained he had no time for his own studies, yet acted like his fathers right hand. Then a lightning bolt struck a ship he was on, burning it to the waterline and killing some of the crew. Flames shooting into the night, shattered spars, the cries of the lost; Zeke had saved twenty-six passengers, herding them toward the floating debris and caring for them until their rescue. His descriptions of the incident, Erasmus believed, had made Lavinia fall in love with him. Afterward Mr. Voorhees, as a kind of reward, had allowed Zeke a certain amount of time for his scientific investigations on each voyage.
Erasmus, thinking those investigations were just a hobby, had expected Zeke to mature into a merchant captain. Yet Zeke kept reading and planning and making notesdreaming, while no one paid attention, of a quest that would make his name. Until finally, at Lavinias birthday party, hed surprised them all.