That night, with Zeke up on deck and not heaving into a basin, Erasmus slept soundly for the first time and so missed the actual collision. One great thump; by the time he woke and ran up on deck the Narwhal was moving backward, rebounding from a slope-sided iceberg and shorn of her dolphin striker and martingales. Past him ran Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau, Thomas Forbes on their heels with a sack of carpenters tools. Shouts and calls and terse instructions; what was damaged, what intact; a dark figure draped over the bowsprit, investigating, anchored by hands on his ankles and a rope at his waist. Erasmus rubbed sleep from his eyes and tried to stay out of the way. Captain Tyler, standing next to Zeke as his crew worked, turned and said, Had you taken the course I suggested
This course is fine! Zeke exclaimed. The man in the crows nest must have been sleeping. You there! He tilted his head back and hollered at the figure on the masthead: Barton DeSouza, Erasmus saw. Was that Barton? You look sharp there!
The moon was full and the berg gleamed silvery off the Narwhals bow. Barton muttered something Erasmus couldnt hear. A hammer beat against a doubled wall of wood as Thomas and his helpers began repairing the damage. Nothing serious, Mr. Tagliabeau called back.
Its late, Zeke pointed out. They could do that tomorrow.
Better to do it now, Captain Tyler said. Suppose a squall were to strike in the next few hours?
He turned his back, he called out orders, figures moved in response to his words. Zeke retreatedjust when he should have asserted his authority, Erasmus thought. The men had instinctively looked to Captain Tyler during Zekes illness, reverting to what they knew; on the fishing and whaling ships where theyd served before, the captain was the sole authority. Here, with an expedition commander who couldnt set a sail somehow in charge of the ships captain, they were all uneasy. Erasmus overheard them now and again, a grumpy Greek chorus: Hes never been north of New York; he doesnt know how to roll a hammock; he changes his shirt twice a weekSean Hamilton, Ivan Hruska, Fletcher Lamb. Each time Zeke gave an order they turned to the captain and waited for his nod before obeying.
Erasmus saw all this, but couldnt fix it. For the next few days he focused instead on trying out the dredge and the tow nets. Already he could see that Zeke wouldnt share his scientific work; after all he was to be alone, as hed been on his first voyage. He tied knots, adjusted shackles, replaced a poorly threaded pin, remembering how shyly his young self had hung back from his companions. While he was working up the courage to be friendly, everyone else had been pairing off, or clumping in groups of three or four from which he was excluded. Everyone had been courteous but hed been left with no particular friend; and at times hed thought he might die of loneliness.
He was older now, he was used to it. Yet still he felt grateful when Dr. Boerhaave, whod been reading near the galley, edged up and broke his solitude. Those little purple-tinted shrimps, he said, are they Crangon boreas?
Later, Erasmus would gain a clearer picture of Dr. Boerhaaves face. For now, what he first noticed was his mind: quick and shining, sharp but deep, moving through a sea of thought like a giant silver salmon. Dr. Boerhaave, Erasmus learned quickly, knew as much natural history as he did. Although he was the better botanist, Dr. Boerhaave was the better zoologist and was especially knowledgeable about marine invertebrates.
As they probed their captives, Dr. Boerhaave said hed been raised in the port of Gothenberg, but educated in Paris and Edinburgh. His excellent English he attributed to his years at sea. Over a group of elegant little medusae captured in their tow netPtychogastria polaris, Dr. Boerhaave saidhe described his trips as ships surgeon aboard Scottish whalers and Norwegian walrus-hunters.
I was curious, he said. I liked Edinburgh very much, but I didnt want to set up a practice there and see the same people for the next forty years. And the idea of returning permanently to Sweden He shrugged.
Erasmus, embalming a medusa, said, Commander Voorhees told me youd been twice to the high arctic. With whalers? Or were those more formal expeditions?
The latter, Dr. Boerhaave said. On the Swedish exploring expedition I accompanied, we went up the west coast of Spitzbergen to Hakluyts Headlandnot as far as Parry got, but we saw some of the same places that Franklin and Beechey explored with the Dorothea and the Trent.
Franklins first voyage, so long ago. For a minute Erasmus thought how that had led, by an unexpected web of events, to their own voyage.
Later I went with a Russian expedition to Kamchatka Peninsula and the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands, then into the Bering Straits. Wed hoped to reach Wrangel Island but were stopped by icepack in the Beaufort Sea.
He drew an equatorial projection of the medusa before them, revealing the convoluted edges of the eight gastric folds. He had excellent pencils, Erasmus observed. The line they made was both darker and sharper than his own.
What about you? Dr. Boerhaave said. Your own earlier journeyI read all five volumes of Wilkess narrative of the Exploring Expedition, it was very popular when the first copies arrived in Europe. But I dont remember seeing your name mentioned. How is that so?
Erasmus flushed and directed Dr. Boerhaaves attention to some questionable seals on the preserving jars. Its a long story, he said. Ill tell you another time. How did you decide to join us?
I thought it would round out my picture of the high arctic, Dr. Boerhaave said. Different ice, different flora and fauna. Anyway I was already on this side of the ocean. I came to America several years ago, to visit some of your New England philosophers. Emerson, Brownson and the othersit interests me, what theyve done with the ideas of Kant and Hegel. You know this young Henry Thoreau?
I dont, Erasmus said.
I met him and some of his friends in Boston, which was delightful. But all along I also hoped to do some exploring, either out west or in the arctic. At a dinner party I ran into Professor Agassiz, whom Id once met in Scotlandwe share an interest in fossil fishes. He put me in touch with some members of your Academy of Sciences, which is how I learned your expedition needed a surgeon. The position was just what Id been hoping for.
Was it? Erasmus said thoughtfully. You might just as easily have had mineyoure better trained. I expect you did both jobs at once on your other trips.
Dr. Boerhaave looked down at his drawing. Differently trained, thats all. And in a way its a relief simply to be responsible for the health of the crew and to have someone else in charge of the zoological and botanical reports. Ive always thought both jobs were too much for one man to do well.
But we must be partners, then, Erasmus said. Real colleagues. May we do that?
Or course, Dr. Boerhaave said. With his pencil he drew a delicate tentacle.
DR. BOERHAAVE WROTE to William Greenstone, an Edinburgh classmate who was now a geologist of some repute:
Although were not to Greenland yet, weve not been idle. Ive examined all the men, so as to have an accurate point from which to assess their later health. On a journey this short, and with ample opportunities to acquire fresh food, there wont be signs of scurvy, but the alternation in day length and the sleep deprivation may cause changes.
But we must be partners, then, Erasmus said. Real colleagues. May we do that?
Or course, Dr. Boerhaave said. With his pencil he drew a delicate tentacle.
DR. BOERHAAVE WROTE to William Greenstone, an Edinburgh classmate who was now a geologist of some repute:
Although were not to Greenland yet, weve not been idle. Ive examined all the men, so as to have an accurate point from which to assess their later health. On a journey this short, and with ample opportunities to acquire fresh food, there wont be signs of scurvy, but the alternation in day length and the sleep deprivation may cause changes.
Its an unusual situation for me, having an official naturalist on board. I worried that hehis name is Erasmus Wellsmight be jealous of his position and equipment, and that I might have few opportunities for collecting and examining specimens. Yet in fact Mr. Wells is quite congenial and seems willing to let me share in his investigations. So far weve found nothing exciting but are in heavily traveled waters where everything we capture is well known. Yesterday we took a Cyclopterus spinosus though: not quite two inches long, covered with the typical conical spines, and very like those I saw off Spitzbergen; I was surprised to see it this far south.
I think Ill like my new companion. Hes somewhat fussy and tends to be melancholy, but hes intelligent and well traveled. His formal education is spotty by our standards, but hes read widely and seems moreI dont know, more complicated than the usual run of Americans. Not quite so blindly optimistic, nor so convinced that one can make the world into what one wishes. Perhaps because hes older. Except for him and me and the ships captain, the others are hardly more than children. I packed the bottom sampler you gave me carefully,and once we enter Baffins Bay Ill do my best to obtain samples of the seafloor for you.
HERE WAS THE arctic, Erasmus thought, as the Narwhal moved through Davis Strait and the night began to disappear. Or at least its true beginning: here, here, here.
His eyes burned from trying to take in everything at once. Whales with their baleen-laden mouths broke the water, sometimes as many as forty a day. Belugas slipped by white and radiant and the sky was alive with birds. The men cheered the first narwhals as guardian spirits and crowded around Erasmus as he sketched. With one of Dr. Boerhaaves excellent pencils he tried to capture the grooved spike jutting from the males upper jaws and the smooth dark curves of their backs. Nils Jensen, out on the bowsprit, watched intently as each surfaced to breathe and called back measurementsten feet long, twelve and halfwhich Erasmus noted on his drawings.
One day the coast of Greenland appeared, the peak of Sukkertoppen rising above the fog and flickering past as they sailed to Disko Island. A flock of dovekies sailed through the rigging, and when Robert Carey knocked one to the deck Erasmus remembered how, as a little boy, hed glimpsed three of these tiny birds in a creek near his home, bobbing exhausted where theyd been driven after a great northeaster. This one looked like a black-and-white quail in his hand. Bending over the rail to release it, he saw fronds of seaweed waving through ten fathoms of transparent water. As soon as they anchored at Godhavn he and Dr. Boerhaave sampled the shallows, finding nullipores, mussels, and small crustaceans. Then they saw people, floating on the water and looking back at them.
In tiny, skin-covered kayaks the strangers darted among the icebergs; their legs were hidden inside the boats, their arms extended by two-bladed paddles. Flash, flash: into the ocean and out again, water streaming silver from the blades. The paddles led to tight hooded jackets; the jackets merged into oval skirts connecting the men at their waists to the boatslike centaurs, Erasmus thought. Boat men, male boats. It was all a blur, he couldnt see their faces.
Sean Hamilton tossed them bits of biscuit and Erasmus revised his first opinion: This was where the journey began, with this first sight of the arctic men hed read about for so long. That these Greenlanders had traded with whalers for two centuries, been colonized by the Danes and converted by Moravian and Lutheran missionaries, made them less strange: but they were still new to him. On the first night in port, over a dinner of eider ducks at the huge-chimneyed home of the Danish inspector, he looked alternately at a bad engraving of four Greenlanders captured near Godthaab and brought to Copenhagen and, out the window next to the portrait, at the jumble of wooden huts and sealskin tents into which the mysterious strangers disappeared.
ON THE NARWHAL the crew made their final preparations. Thomas Forbes, Erasmus saw, kept his carpenters bench in perfect order. Ivan Hruskas hammock had a hole in it, which he repaired beautifully. Mr. Francis appeared to regard the boatswains locker as a treasure chest, keeping close track of every marlinspike and bit of spun yarn he passed out. All this bustle pleased Erasmus. This was their last chance to ready the brig for her encounters with the pack, and finally, he thought, the men had been infected with the sense of urgency hed had for months.
He and Zeke, equally busy, acquired sixteen ill-mannered Esquimaux dogs, a stock of dried codfish, bales of seal and caribou skins, full Esquimaux outfits for all the crew, and an interpreter, Johann Schwartzberg. After sharing a walk with him, Erasmus wrote:
Hes a Moravian missionaryan extremely interesting man. Hes lived among the Esquimaux both here and in Labrador, and he knows their language as well as Danish, English, and German. Hell be invaluable if we meet Esquimaux around King William Land. When Zeke approached him, we learned that hed followed the news of Franklins expedition avidly and had already heard about Raes discoveries. He seems genuinely thrilled to join us. The men call him Joe, and already I can see that hes sensible, mild-tempered, good-humored, and handy.
It was Joe who determined how many knives and needles and iron bars they should barter for the fish and the furs, and Joe who examined each Esquimaux outfit for proper fit. Zeke asked Mr. Tagliabeau and Mr. Francis to work with the dogs; when they tangled the traces and crashed the sledge and fumbled helplessly, it was Joe who demonstrated how to control them. Buff and brown and white and black, long-haired, demonic, and curly-tailed, the dogs were nothing like the well-mannered hounds Zeke kept at home. With a peculiar turn of the wrist, Joe directed the whip toward the head of the most recalcitrant creature and clipped off a piece of its ear.
Zeke, watching this with Erasmus, caught his breath and said, Oh, how cruel!
Mr. Francis shot a contemptuous glance back over his shoulder. Perhaps youd like to reason with them? There was something weasel-like about him, Erasmus thought. That narrow chest; the thick hair growing low on his forehead and shading his deep-set eyes. Maybe you can persuade them, Mr. Francis added.
Would you take over? Zeke asked Joe. He pulled Erasmus away. A good commander recognizes those things that are abhorrent to him, or which he does badly, and gives others charge of them, he said. Dont you think? Joes a fine teacher, and Mr. Tagliabeau and Mr. Francis are coarse enough to be good drivers.
Joe also knew how to build a snow house and how to repair a sledge. And it was Joe who helped Erasmus overcome his initial discomfort around the short men with their glossy hair and unreadable eyes. Hyperboreans, Erasmus thought, recalling his fathers tales. Was it Pliny whod claimed they lived to a ripe old age and passed down marvelous stories? But his unease was grounded in experience, not myth. At Malolo in western Fiji, hed seen savages murder two of the Exploring Expeditions men with no apparent provocation. In Naloa Bay hed watched a native calmly gnaw the flesh of a cooked human head, which Wilkes had later purchased for their collection.