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Authors: Robert Edric

BOOK: The Broken Lands
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Eventually the two men rose together and woke the others, scraping away the snow and ice from among the stiff and swaddled bodies.
An hour later they had all assembled and were ready to resume their downhill march. They had with them now only flour, beans, four pounds of cocoa powder and nine pounds of boiled sweets, which they crushed and dissolved in hot water before starting out. A final package of pemmican was opened and found to be rotten, but they warmed and ate this too, all of them complaining at the way even the softened pieces of pounded meat hurt their weakened gums and loose teeth.
Fairholme at last showed some signs of recovery. He was still unable to walk unaided, but he no longer needed to be carried.
They left their miserable camp and walked due east in two single-file parties a hundred yards apart. At noon it was warm enough for them to take off their jackets, and the sun warmed their arms and faces and thawed the ground ahead of them.
During the afternoon they killed a hare, and the small strips of meat and warm internal organs were divided up and eaten raw.
That night they camped in a sheltered cleft beneath a tent of ice formed by two plates which had been forced together and then lifted aslant before freezing in place.
For the first time since his injury, Fairholme was able accurately to fix their position, and he returned from his observation point with the news that they were possibly only twenty miles from where they had two months ago left the
Erebus
and
Terror.
Upon hearing this they all began to speculate on their chances of reaching the ships some time in the next few days.
At three the following morning they were woken by the sound of
a distant explosion, not unlike the first thunderclap of an approaching storm, and then by the trembling which passed through the ice upon which they slept, and which continued to reverberate for several minutes afterward, going on as they woke in alarm, and as each man realized what was happening and struggled to get himself clear of their precarious shelter, the roof of which had already been shaken loose by the tremor. They were all out and gathered together in the darkness before this finally collapsed, dropping in two heavy blades upon the ground where minutes earlier they had all been asleep, the last of their meager provisions lost to them beneath the fallen slabs.
They waited, uncertain of what had caused this destruction, and bracing themselves against any further movement, but which did not come.
Fitzjames led them back to the rubble of their buried camp and found a new sleeping space for them clear of any other stacked ice which might yet be shaken loose. Those who had lost their bags wrapped themselves in whatever they were able to retrieve and sat pressed together for warmth.
They slept uneasily for three more hours, waking frequently and then gathering in the pre-dawn light, all of them eager to complete their journey, spurred on by the alarming prospect of further nights like the one they had just endured.
They walked for two more days, during which they ate only flour mixed into a cold unleavened dough, and made hardly any more palatable by the addition of their last few ounces of cocoa and sugar.
“The last of everything,” Fitzjames wrote in his journal after a gap of nine days.
During those two days they covered seven miles, and on the third morning, the 3rd of July, Fitzjames announced that the time had finally come for them to split into two parties, and for the strongest of them to go on ahead and seek help. No one argued with this decision, but as the two groups were being decided upon, a distant noise was heard, which many in their desperation were convinced was a pistol shot and not merely some further echo of the cracking ice.
David Bryant fired his rifle in reply, and a moment later a second shot was heard, followed by others fired at random. The men on the ground rose to their feet and searched around them. Those who could not rise cheered and shouted where they lay, and some prayed.
There was now no thought of separating, and those who could not walk unaided were propped between two others or carried on the backs of those few who still had the strength to bear them.
They went forward as fast as they could manage, firing their weapons and pausing only to listen for answering shots. There was still no sign of the ships, or the men signaling to them from the broad sweep of folded ice ahead.
Moments later Philip Reddington called out that he could see something below. He fired his pistol and ran to a low rise. Scrambling up this on his hands and knees he shouted back to them that he could see the ships, and hearing this the others called upon the last of their strength and ran forward to join him.
Reid and Goodsir supported Fairholme between them, and Fitzjames walked alongside. Sitting Fairholme at the base of the small rise, the three others climbed it and stood beside the men already gathered there, where they too saw the tiny dark outlines of the distant ships, and then the men beneath them, running up the slope to meet them and firing their weapons as they came.
Rockets were fired, and looking up from where he was giving thanks for their safe deliverance, Fitzjames saw that the ice around the two ships was littered with shelters and stores and offloaded boats, and that broad circles of gray had been trodden out of the surrounding whiteness, which at that distance and from that height gave the vessels the appearance of being the burned-out hearts of two dead fires surrounded by their scattered, paler ashes.
He closed his eyes and resumed praying as the men approaching them came closer. Then he rose, brushed the ice from his legs, and watched as those around him left their vantage point and continued down the slope, falling and sliding as often as they remained upright and running on their weakened legs.
It was only a moment later, as he watched these two parties of men converge, that it struck Fitzjames that something was wrong.
He could not explain this, but nor could he dismiss the idea, and he watched the distant figures more closely in an effort to understand why he felt this way.
The men crossing the ice below were slowing in their approach, being restrained and then called back by those who came behind them.
Goodsir too noticed that the excitement of this imminent reunion appeared to have been suddenly and inexplicably defused, and he asked Fitzjames if he had seen anything to account for this. Fitzjames shook his head, intent on examining the men below through his telescope.
“Crozier,” he said eventually, pointing out the figure walking to the rear of the others, and who now passed through them as they stopped running and congregated ahead of his own descending party, most of whom were still shouting and firing their weapons long after those ahead of them had fallen silent.
Reid and Fairholme approached.
“You’ve seen it too,” Reid said.
They watched Crozier approach the first man to arrive at the bottom of the slope and then hold him by the shoulders for a moment after which the man fell to his knees, as though the last of his failing energy had been suddenly and completely drained from him by the brief encounter.
Fitzjames searched among the other figures, the running and the still, for Franklin, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Reid suggested that they ought to continue down to the frozen plain, and supporting Fairholme between them they went on.
When they next looked, the ice around the ships grew dark as a cloud passed slowly across the face of the sun.
They reached the man who had fallen to his knees at Crozier’s touch, and saw that it was Philip Reddington, one of the strongest of them all. Fitzjames spoke to him, and was surprised to be answered only by tears. He felt Reid’s grip tighten on his arm as Fairholme sagged between them.
“Let him down,” Reid said, and they lowered Fairholme until he too was kneeling on the level ice, barely conscious of the sobbing
man beside him. Reddington reached out and held the confused Fairholme, and his tremors shook them both.
Fitzjames approached Crozier, taking off his gloves as the two men came close. John Irving and George Hodgson stood beside their captain, both waiting for Crozier to speak first.
“What’s wrong?” Fitzjames asked, confused by the nature of this greeting.
All around them the two parties came together and the strong helped the weak. Some men went on cheering and loudly praying; others met and immediately fell silent, and a few began crying as convulsively and uncontrollably as Philip Reddington.
Hodgson was the first to come forward, his hand out, but Crozier stepped quickly between the two men.
“Sir John,” he said, bowing his head and then raising it and breathing deeply.
Fitzjames looked to Hodgson, and Hodgson nodded once in confirmation and bowed his own head, followed by Irving. For the first time, Fitzjames saw the black bands on their arms, and seeing these he looked all around him and saw them too on the arms of the men moving among them with food and drink, already picking up the sick and the weak and the injured and carrying them back across the ice.
Weak and in pain himself, and with his mouth full of blood from his bleeding gums, Fitzjames was barely able to comprehend the enormity of what he believed he had just been told, and when Crozier spoke again, coming back toward him with both arms held out, he felt the words like a physical blow and his legs buckled beneath him and he fell unresisting to the hard ground, striking it full on his face.
July 1847—January 1848
H
e came round forty-eight hours later to a warbling, near-hysterical scream—whether his own, or from close by, or from elsewhere in the otherwise silent ship, he could not tell. Nor could he even be certain that the sound had actually been made, conscious that it was just as likely to have been some unreal fragment or receding echo of one of his own nightmares carried with him into an abrupt and anxious waking.
His body felt heavy, pressed down, and he could scarcely open his eyes to peer at the unfamiliar objects in the dimly lit room around him, aware only that he was in Stanley’s sick-bay, surrounded by pungent and reassuring odors, and that there was an empty bunk alongside his own. The effort of raising his arm or sitting upright was too much for him, and so he lay perfectly still, dulled by whatever medicines he had been given, stupefied almost, and waiting only to fall back into his drugged sleep and come round again when he was better able to attempt his recovery.
It was then, as he felt himself falling, that he heard a scraping sound beneath him, as though a small creature, a rat most likely, were scratching at the timbers as it scrambled blind along one of the ship’s numberless buried passages and ducts. He tried to ignore the noise, but it continued and distracted him, at times penetratingly clear, and then as insubstantial as the scream which might or might not have waken him. He wanted to call out, to scare whatever it
was away, but could find neither his voice to form the words nor his mouth to issue them.
He was about to try again when the same shrill cry sounded immediately beside him, and he turned in panic to see the outline of a small, near-demonic creature sitting on the empty mattress and watching him closely. At first he believed his suspicions had been confirmed, and that it was a large and bedraggled rat, but as he watched it more closely he saw its long thick tail curl upright and then stiffen, after which it looped from side to side. It was the monkey, and realizing this, he felt himself relax. He mumbled to it and continued watching it. The animal rose on its hind legs, stood regarding him for a moment longer, and then collapsed, after which it had difficulty pushing itself back into a sitting position, scrambling and making the noise that had first alerted him to its presence. Its limbs, he saw, were stick thin, the knots of its elbows and knees bulging with edema. It continued to flail around, swinging its arms and legs as though it had no control over them, as though they were moved only by the dying momentum created by the shaking and twisting of its wasted body. Its eyes were yellow and enlarged, and a string of glistening mucus hung from its chin to the matted fur of its chest.
He watched it for several minutes longer, until he at last understood more fully what he was seeing, and until the small creature had exhausted itself and lay on its back with its head turned to him, breathing hoarsely through chattering teeth, and staring vacantly toward him through the darkness, as though he too were not real, merely the illusory residue of some dream.
 
He slept for twelve more hours, and this time was woken by the voices of men in the room around him. One of these sounded like Franklin, and the instant he heard it, still on the boundary of sleep and arousal, he called out to let whoever it was know that he was awake. For a moment he could not square what he believed he had just heard with what he had learned three days previously, and for the few seconds it took him to come round more fully, he was convinced
that the news of Franklin’s death during his absence was all part of that same forgotten nightmare.
Stanley leaned over him, a vial of blood in his hand, which he shook and then held to the light of a lamp.
“Not yours, James,” he said without looking down. “Another fatality during the night.”
Fitzjames asked who, but the words came out as little more than a dry croak.
“Not who, what.” Returning the vial to a rack on the wall, Stanley lifted the corpse of the monkey by its tail. It hung barely weighted, an outline of bone in a bag of loose skin, spinning as its limbs untangled. “A great pity. Killed by its own gluttony and yet reduced to this. Three pounds two ounces. At Greenhithe it weighed eight pounds six.” He carried the small corpse to a case beside his chair and let it drop.
“Franklin,” Fitzjames said suddenly, the thought, realization and word arriving simultaneously, and together being strong enough finally to pierce the cloud of his leaden senses. He felt a sharp pain in his mouth and tasted fresh blood. Seeing this upon his lips, Stanley wiped them with a soft cloth.
Using his tongue, Fitzjames felt teeth loose in their sockets. He also felt the flaps of skin which hung from his cheeks and from the roof of his mouth; his tongue too felt sore, raw, as though its sensitive surface had been peeled away at the tip. He looked down and saw the blood slowly soaking into Stanley’s cloth.
“You yourself have also lost a great deal of weight,” Stanley said.
“Franklin,” Fitzjames repeated, allowing himself to sink back into his pillow as Stanley drew away, and as the strain of leaning forward became too great for him.
“Sir John died on the eleventh of June,” Stanley said with his back to him. “Captain Crozier has assumed command of the expedition. He asked me to let you know that he would call on you when you felt up to receiving him.”
“How?” Fitzjames asked, some innermost part of his mind still not fully convinced of what he had been told once upon his return
and was being told again now in his struggle to recover.
“A sudden brain fever. Cerebral hemorrhage. He was struck down shortly after dinner on the ninth, lingered beyond his senses or rational thought for a further thirty-six hours, suffered a second, more powerful attack on the morning of the eleventh and passed away only minutes later. At first we believed it might have been Caesar’s disease, but my examination …” Here Stanley paused, turning further away from him. “His body is out upon the ice, in our mausoleum, awaiting your return so that everyone might be present at his interment. Mr. Gore and his party had returned from the south only a week earlier. We expected you back sooner.” He paused again. “When you were spotted on the slope we thought at first you were Eskimos. Mr. Gore returned marching in formation, barely half his supplies used up and every one of his party in better health than when they departed.”
Fitzjames was sufficiently recovered by then to recognize the veiled criticism in this remark.
Stanley went on, becoming uncharacteristically emotive as he strayed further from the immediate facts of Franklin’s death.
“Sir John spoke of Lady Jane in his delirium. He spoke with great affection and respect. I stayed with him, as did Peddie and Macdonald, throughout his entire confinement. We hoped at first that he might retain his spirit and gradually regain his senses, but after the second, more violent seizure it became clear to all who saw him that there was nothing more to be done. Each day the men pay their respects to the body out on the ice.” He stopped speaking and regained his composure.
They were interrupted a moment later by the appearance of Goodsir. He came into the room and stood behind Stanley. He moved awkwardly, and it was not until he leaned against the wall that Fitzjames saw he was walking with the help of crutches.
Stanley criticized him for having left his own bed in the adjoining cabin. Unlike Fitzjames, Goodsir appeared to be suffering none of the after-effects of any medication. It was the first time Fitzjames had seen him out of his thick outdoor clothing in a month, and he was shocked to see how thin he had grown, how discolored his skin
was. A large patch of hair above Goodsir’s temple had fallen out completely and there were dark circles around his eyes. The skin of his chin and cheeks was bruised, and his lips were pulled to one side, as though an invisible finger were jabbed into his jaw.
Looking at him, Fitzjames realized that in all likelihood he too must have looked much the same.
“Hair loss,” Goodsir said, as though pronouncing a verdict on someone else entirely, his spirits apparently undiminished by his symptoms now that he was in charge of his own recovery. “To be expected. Rest assured that I am saving every single strand to send to all those heartbroken young women I scatter behind me wherever I go. Say the word and I shall bring you a small casket in which to save your own.”
Angered by this outwardly cavalier disregard for his own health, Stanley said again that it was too soon for Goodsir to be out of his bed and warned him to stay no more than a few minutes, pointedly remarking that Fitzjames was not yet even partially recovered and that any exertion would quickly tire him. He left the two men, retrieving the corpse of the monkey as he went.
“Bryant’s marine died in the night,” Goodsir said solemnly when they were alone, and when Stanley’s receding footsteps no longer sounded like the tapping finger of someone watching over them. “The man had been walking for a week on two feet frostbitten beyond salvation as far as the ankle. Stanley operated last night and he died a few minutes later. Joseph Healey, twenty-three.”
Fitzjames pushed himself up into a sitting position.
“Bryant himself lost two toes,” Goodsir went on, and before Fitzjames could respond, added, “And Fairholme is once again unconscious, but appears to have a gangrenous calf; Mr. Reid is strapped up for ice-lung, and eight more small toes, two ears, and one nose have been slight-cut. In fact I myself—” here he faltered. “I myself appear to be incomplete by half a thumb.” He held up his hand, and Fitzjames saw for the first time that it was heavily bandaged. His feet too had been reduced to balls of white padding, making them look ridiculous and pathetic in equal measure.
Fitzjames tried to pull his arms from beneath the blankets, but was unable to until assisted by Goodsir.
“You, too,” Goodsir said the instant Fitzjames’ own bandaged hands were revealed, and before Fitzjames could remark on them. The dressings were tight, and he could feel little beneath them.
Goodsir reassured him that every one of his fingers and thumbs was intact, and that Stanley had only bandaged them as a precaution. He looked at his own dressing as he spoke. It was the joint of his right hand which had been removed, and a small stain showed through the bandage, looking as though it had been dabbed on the surface rather than bled through from deep within.
After a brief silence between them, during which Goodsir inspected the contents of the room, picking up and coiling the collar and lead of the monkey, Fitzjames said that Stanley had told him about Franklin.
“We’ll pay our respects together when you’re well enough to walk,” Goodsir said. “There’s no urgency. I believe Crozier intends to make a fitting occasion of the funeral. There are those who believe the body should be preserved and taken home with us.”
“What about Reid?” Fitzjames managed to say.
“He’ll recover. His chest is strapped and he has a warm mask.”
A steward arrived with tea for the two men, and he shared their feeble laughter when both held up their bandaged hands to him. The man sat with them for several minutes, holding the cup to Fitzjames’ lips and catching in the saucer what he spilled.
When he had finished drinking, and when the steward had wiped the fresh blood from his lips, Fitzjames felt revived and better able to speak. He asked the steward to find out how well or sick the other members of the expedition were and to report back to him.
Waiting until they were once again alone, he asked if Goodsir believed that what they had found on their march would be of any benefit to them when the breakup came and they continued to the south or southwest.
Goodsir became evasive. “I visited Reid this morning,” he said. “Blanky was with him.”
Guessing what he was about to be told, Fitzjames said, “Are we going to be late in freeing ourselves?”
“Blanky says he can see no sign whatsoever of the breakup, nor even of cracking or fissures.”
Momentarily stunned by this, Fitzjames could think of nothing to say in reply.
Goodsir went on. “Gore and Des Voeux put us only twelve to fifteen miles north of King William Land, and Crozier is convinced that if we don’t get open water by the first week in August then we ought to continue overland to Back’s River, and from there west and south in the hope of contacting an outpost of the Hudson Bay Company. By his reckoning we are less than a hundred miles from Franklin’s own Farthest East of twenty-five years ago. Imagine—the gap remaining to be bridged is suddenly that small, James, and so easily attainable.”
“But the Passage—
the
Passage—needs to be completed by sea,” Fitzjames almost shouted, flecking his sheets with blood.
Goodsir only shrugged. “A week ago the
Terror
was squeezed in a pressure ridge. Nothing too savage, but her starboard prow was crushed. If the ice around her thaws or disperses before repairs can be made then she’ll take on water faster than she can be pumped clear.”
“Is there any sign of that?”
Goodsir shook his head. “Blanky calculates at least fifteen feet of ice beneath her.”
“Surely not,” Fitzjames said. “Not this late.”
“By his estimation—and Reid agrees with him—it’s been building up beneath us all winter, freezing downward and stacking in slabs. When our release comes—
if
it comes—it is unlikely to be in the form of a gradual thaw and disintegration as it was at Beechey. According to Blanky, the ice in this strait has been accumulating for at least thirty years. It seems we entered it during a good year and that we were altogether too keen to haul and cut our way into a good harbor. I went on deck before coming to see you. There’s a range of peaks, some up to a hundred feet high, which wasn’t there when we
departed. Solid ice, dark ice. There might very well be open leads toward the southwest, but there’s little chance that we can make our way toward them in the ships as we now stand.”

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