Zeke ordered rum for all the men and thanked them for their labor. To Captain Tyler he said, You dont understand how well weve designed this ship to resist the ice. This is not your common whaler.
If we had cut a dock, Captain Tyler said in a choked voice. His face was mottled, red on his fleshy nostrils and chin, white along his broad forehead and down the sharp bridge of his nose. His hands, Erasmus noticed, were hugely knotted at the joints. If we had Abruptly he turned the watch over to Mr. Tagliabeau and retired below, where he wrapped his head in a blanket.
Later, perched on the hatch cover, Dr. Boerhaave whispered to Erasmus that hed feared their skipper might suffer an apoplexy. They looked out at the ice, too wound up to sleep and longing to talk: not about what had just happened, but anything else. They were still a little awkward with each other. Dr. Boerhaave said, This is very different from the other expeditions I was on. Do you find it so? Im curious about your earlier trip.
I was twenty-three the last time I did anything like this, Erasmus said, watching the ice pieces spin in the tide. Twenty-three, barely older than Ned Kynd; often hed been frightened half to death. When had his commander ever taken a minute to reassure him? The sky was lit like morning, although it was past ten oclock; how delicious it was to be alive, under the shimmering clouds! Had the brig been shattered here, some of the crew would be dead by now and the rest drifting south on the fragments. He was alive, he was safe and warm. What was the point of keeping secret his time with the Exploring Expedition?
When you asked why you never saw my name in Wilkess book, he said, there were nine civilians listed as Scientifics among all those Navy men; I was the tenth. Wilkes never listed me because I joined the expedition at the last minute and didnt receive a salary.
He swallowed. Two floes touched and then parted, as if finishing a dance. My father arranged it, he admitted. The young woman to whom I was engagedSarah Louise Bettlesman, he thought; still he could see her face, and remember her touchher lungs were weak, she died six months before we were to be married. I couldnt get back on my feet after that, and my father was worried. He pulled some strings, and after promising Wilkes hed pay my keep for the voyage, he landed me a berth as Titian Peales assistant.
I am so sorry, Dr. Boerhaave said gently. But Im sure Wilkes felt lucky to have you.
While the ice waltzed around the bow and the clouds cavorted overhead, Erasmus told the rest of the story that had preoccupied him as he sorted and sifted his seeds.
The six ships of the Exploring Expedition had left Virginia in 1838. For the next four years theyd cruised the Pacific, from South America to the Fiji Islands, New Zealand and New Holland, the Sandwich Islands, the Oregon territory and more. Although Erasmus had been lonely, out of place, and often lost, hed seen things he couldnt have imagined: cannibals, volcanic calderas, sixty-pound medusoids; the meke wau, or club dance, of the Fiji nativesnatural wonders and also, always, Wilkess brutality toward his men and his constant disregard of the needs of the Scientifics. The naval men had called the Scientifics bug catchers, clam diggers, and Wilkes had blocked their way at every turn.
They werent allowed to work on deck, because of naval regulations and the bustle required to sail a ship. Below decks there was little light and less fresh air, and Wilkes forbade dissections there, as he found the odors distasteful and believed they spread disease. Their primary goal was surveying, Wilkes said, and he let nothing interfere with that. Day after day, Erasmus and his companions had watched the golden hours slip by while the naval men took topographical measurements of whatever island or coast was before them. Amazing plants and animals, always just out of reach. Theyd set scoop nets when they could, consoling themselves with invertebrate treasures. When they thought they might expire from heat and anger, they threw themselves over the rail and into the swimming basin the men had made from a sail hung in the water. In early 1840, as they set off to explore the Antarctic waters and search for a landmass beneath the ice, Wilkes arranged to leave all the Scientifics behind at New Zealand and New Holland, so that whatever geographical discoveries he made need not be shared but might be wholly to the glory of the Navy.
He left all except Erasmus, too insignificant to worry about. On a shabby, poorly equipped ship, Erasmus and the sailors had nearly frozen to death. But theyd seen ice islands several hundred feet high and half a mile long, with gigantic arches leading into caverns crowned with bluffs and fissures. Ice rafts, some carrying boulders the size of a house. The sea had been luminous, lit like silver, and the tracks they left across it looked like lightning. Their boots leaked so badly they had to wrap their feet in blankets; their pea jackets might have been made of muslin; their gun ports failed to shut out the sea. Erasmus had been awed, and very cold, the night two midshipmen first caught sight of the Antarctic continent. Climbing up the rigging to join them, hed seen the mountains for himself and then the wall of ice that almost shattered their ship. From that journey had come Wilkess famous map, charting the Antarctic coast.
Everything after that was sordid; how could he tell Dr. Boerhaave? The quarrels among Wilkes and his junior officers, one ship wrecked and another sunk with all hands; crewmen massacred by the Fiji Islanders and then the retaliatory raids; floggings and a near mutiny and so many specimens lost. He fell silent for a minute. The real point, he finally said, isnt what we discovered but what happened when we returned. Everyone ignored us. Or mocked us.
Thats not in Wilkess Narrative, Dr. Boerhaave said.
Its not, Erasmus agreed. Who ever writes about the failures?
Yet this was the part he couldnt get past, the part that had twisted all the years since. Wilkes court-martialed on eleven charges and then, in a fury of wounded pride, impounding all the diaries and logbooks and journals and charts, and all the specimens.
He took our notes, Erasmus said. Our drawings, our paintingshe took them all.
Back in Washington, the specimens that hadnt been lost in transit disappeared like melting ice. Wilkes had compelled the Scientifics to work on what was left there in Washington, although all the good comparative collections and libraries were in Philadelphia. Then hed ruined what work they completed. Theyd come back to a country in the midst of a depression; what the men in Congress wanted wasnt science but maps and guides to new sealing and whaling grounds. Wilkes, with his endless charts, had satisfied the politicians. But meanwhile he delayed the expeditions scientific reports again and again.
And then, Erasmus said, after Titian Peale and I had spent years working on the mammals and birds and writing up our volume, Wilkes said it wasnt any good, and he blocked its publication.
He stopped; he couldnt imagine telling Dr. Boerhaave how hed retreated from Washington to the safety of the Repository, turning finally to his seeds. Half living at home, half not; most of the privacy hed required, without the fuss of having to set up an independent household. When he desired the kind of company he wouldnt want his family to meet, he visited certain establishments downtown or returned to Washington for a few days. Small comforts, but they were all hed had as he wasted the prime of his young manhood. Although there were days when hed deluded himself into thinking he might still salvage something resembling science from that voyage, in the end it was only Wilkes whod triumphed. Despite his setbacks hed had the great success of his Narrative. Even Dr. Boerhaave, across the ocean, had read it.
Its such a bad book, Erasmus exclaimed. Anyone knowing the people involved can see the pastiche of stylesthe outright plagiarism of his subordinates diaries and logbooks. Wilkes made those volumes with scissors and paste, and an utter lack of honor. He stole the book, then had copyright assigned to him and reprinted it privately. It made him rich.
Theres a certain unevenness of style, Dr. Boerhaave agreed. He picked at a frayed bit of whipping on a line. Im sorry. I didnt knowthats a terrible story. The string unraveled in his hand. Its to your credit youve put that voyage behind you and joined up with Commander Voorhees.
Its not a question of credit, Erasmus said. Although he felt a wonderful sense of pardon, hearing those words. OnlyI want the chance to have one voyage go well. I want to discover things Wilkes cant ruin. Andyou know, dont you, that my sister is engaged to marry Zeke?
I didnt, Dr. Boerhaave said. I had no idea. Commander Voorhees never mentionedyoull be brothers-in-law?
I suppose, Erasmus said. Of course. He picked up the scrap of string, unsure whether he should speak so personally. My sisters very dear to me, he said. Even though shes so much youngerour mother died when she was born, I helped raise her. I came on this voyage partly because she wanted me to watch over Zeke. Hes so young, sometimes hes a bitimpulsive.
So he is, Dr. Boerhaave said. Youre a kind brother.
Was that kindness? Hed lost the person he loved; he wanted to spare Lavinia that. Surely that was his simple duty. He asked, Do you have brothers and sisters, yourself?
Dr. Boerhaave smiled wryly. One of each, he said. Both in Sweden, both marriedexcellent but completely unremarkable people. Theyve never been able to understand why I wanted to travel, or why I should be so entranced by the arctic. We write letters, but almost never see each other. Theyre very good about looking after our parents.
He was cut off, Erasmus thought. Cut off from home; or free from ties to home. What did that feel like? And in Edinburgh, he asked, does someone wait for you there? A woman friend?
Friends, Dr. Boerhaave said. Not boastingly, or in any indelicate way; just a simple statement. Now and then, between trips, Ive grown close to someone, and I stay in touch with them all. But every few years I go off like this, and it never seemed fair to get too entangled with any one woman, and then ask her to wait. Ive been alone for so long its come to seem normal.
He turned his head to follow a string of murres spangling, black and white, across the bow. I love those birds, he said. The sound their wings make. What about you? Are youdoes someone wait for you at home?
No one but my familynot since my fiancée passed on.
Such a pair of bachelors! Dr. Boerhaave said.
There was a moment, then, as the murres continued pouring past them, in which anything might have been asked and answered. Erasmus might have asked what Dr. Boerhaave really meant by alonewith whom he shared that aloneness, and on what terms. Dr. Boerhaave might have asked Erasmus what hed done since Sarah Louises death for love and companionship: surely Erasmus hadnt dried up completely? But the moment passed and the two shy men asked nothing further of each other. Erasmus didnt have to say that hed lived like a monk, except for brief entanglements that had left him feeling lonelier than before; that hed not been able to move past the feeling that if he couldnt have Sarah Louise, he wanted no one. Or that, despite his love for his family, hed often felt trapped living at home but hadnt been able to move. Where would he move to? Every place seemed equally possible, equally impossible. His father had tried to be patient with him but once, irritated by an attack of shingles, hed spoken sharply. Erasmus, hed said, was like a walking embodiment of Newtons Third Law of Motion. Set moving, he moved until someone stopped him; stopped, he was stuck until pushed again. Just like you, Erasmus had wanted to say. But hadnt.
THAT NIGHT HE lay in his bunk, mulling over what hed revealed. Perhaps he shouldnt have mentioned that voyage at allyet how could Dr. Boerhaave know him if he didnt share the biggest fact of his life? All those wasted days. While hed been stalled a host of other, younger men had thrown themselves into the search for Franklin. Now that search was also his.
Back home hed resisted the frenzy surrounding any mention of Franklins name. That men sold cheap engravings of Franklins portrait on the streets, or that because of Franklin he and Zeke had been interviewed in the newspapers and had gifts pressed in their hands, had nothing to do with him. The syrupy letters of a Mrs. Myers, saying she lived on a widows mite but wanted to donate three goose-down pillows to aid in their search; the way, when he ordered socks in a shop, clerks came out from behind their counters to ask questions in breathless voices, as if not only Franklin and his men were heroes but so were he and Zekethat puffery had made him uneasy. Hed focused on the practical, the everyday. Still there might be men alive, living off the land or among the Esquimaux; he and Zeke searched for them, not just for Franklin.
As hed told Dr. Boerhaave the story of his earlier voyage, hed seen how different it was from his present journey. This one was worthwhile. This one meant something. And when he finally slept, he dreamed he saw a column of men walking away from a ship. The ship was sinking, slowly and silently; the men turned their backs to it. Erasmus could see faces. A blond man with a broken nose, a short man with dark eyes and a mole on his chin. But not Franklin, nor any of the officers; no one whose portrait had been reproduced in the newspapers. Simply a group of strangers, waiting for help.
The dream both embarrassed and delighted him. Since the days of his first expedition, hed not let himself admire anyone, nor been willing to bend his life to follow something greater. But he woke rejuvenated, feeling as if a great hand had reached down and brushed him from an eddy back into the current.
AS THEY CONTINUED to struggle through Melville Bay, Zeke rolled off the names of the headlands they passed and said wistfully, Wouldnt you like to have your name on something here? Around his berth hed built a rodents nest of maps and papers. Wouldnt it be wonderful to discover something altogether new?
At night he pored over the accounts of Parry and Ross and Scoresby, sometimes reading passages aloud to the men while he paced the decks and they worked. He showed little interest in the amphipods Erasmus found clinging to the warping lines, or the snow geese and terns and ivory gulls that swooped and sailed above them. Nor was he interested in the miraculous refractions, which painted images in the sky near the sun. Sometimes whole bergs seemed to lift themselves above the horizon and float on nothingness, but Zeke no longer raptured over them. And Erasmus noticed that Zekes journala handsome volume, bound in green silk, which Lavinia had given himshowed only a few scrappy entries.
Youve had no time? Erasmus asked.
Zeke shook his head. I keep meaning to, he said. Lavinia made me promise Id write in here, for her to read when we get back. But its so large, and water spots the coverand anyway I have this.