The Surfacing (20 page)

Late in the afternoon the wind died enough to let him crawl out. The low sun came
skimming over the ice, let him admire the storm's handiwork. The gale had carried
off the youngest layer of snow, and now a long row of footprints led right to the
tent door, standing up out of the ground a good six inches, like columns of wind-worn
stone. Each a little
memorial to their passage, the weight of their boots stamping
the snow, step after step, making it far more solid than the powder. What impressed
him most was the detail, even to the grooves and grips of each individual sole. The
sledge, too, had left raised rails stretching to the southern horizon – curious,
useless, and exquisitely tooled.

By midnight the wind had died, but out in the Channel the ice was on the move. Between
the explosions, it sounded like an army on the march. He could not sleep. He struck
a match. The eyes were glistening in the dark.

By morning the wind was barrelling over the beach again from the northeast, so hard
he feared they could not face it. But face it they did. It was the 26th of October.
They all leaned into their load as a prop, hauling blind. Step by step they hauled
north along the beach, and could not tell – hardly cared – whether or not they had
veered off course.

The wind was scorching. Under the scarves and veils, his face felt raw. Inside his
head, a small sure voice was mocking his every step. With every step his mind was
growing sharper, testing, searching for flaws in his reasoning. Flaws so flagrant
as to invite ridicule. It was not resolution but stubbornness, this refusal to cede.
And the stubbornness, it said, was the product of a weary, fearful mind. He had to
keep reminding himself of the rush of pleasure it would give the others, to hear
themselves ordered down. The wind was dying now, the sky beginning to clear, and
it was another two hours before he could let himself say those words. They had made
about four miles, he judged. In such weather, it was a good day's work, and felt
like total defeat. That was the price, apparently.

As they were setting up, he walked out alone to look at a bump on the spit nearby.
It was another silly hope he needed to snuff. It was nothing. He stood up on top
of it to consider the world. He could see the coast to the north much more clearly
now. It was obviously a continuation of the beach. The opening Myer had imagined
did not exist. Their cairn seemed no nearer. Lone flakes were wandering through the
air, like flakes of ash after a fire. He himself was the tallest
thing for miles.
Here, there were no more excuses, no version but his own, and for a moment he was
thankful that Myer's plan had hustled him so far north. He was the lawmaker here,
with what felt like a lawmaker's heart – one now answering gladly to the power of
a mute, raging world.

Inside the tent, he found DeHaven kneeling over Cabot, who was laid out on his back.

It's his feet, DeHaven said. Says he cannot feel them either one.

Morgan asked how long it had been.

Perhaps an hour, Cabot said. I thought they might come back. I didn't want to slow
you up.

Morgan hung his head, as if in shame. It was not shame, it was anger. He had explained
the rules twenty times.

Already DeHaven was drawing out his skinning knife. Banes, he said, boil up a quart
of snow. He was wrestling with the laces. His fingers were numb, would not obey.
He nodded to Morgan to come and kneel beside him. He touched the tip of the blade
to the top of the boot, let it fiddle back and forth. A little V opened up, an invitation,
as Morgan pulled the sides apart.

Harder, DeHaven said.

Patiently, the blade worked its way down.

I'm sorry, Cabot said. He was lying on his back, could hear their work. I thought
I would certainly feel it. If really it was so very bad.

Exactly the opposite, DeHaven said. Even a Frenchman ought to know that.

The tip of the blade nicked the ankle, and the foot didn't even twitch. Morgan rolled
off the sock. The thing looked and felt like soap. Outside, the wind was again beginning
to bustle and fret.

An hour's hard rubbing, with no mind for his whimpers, eventually brought the blood
back. Afterwards, they wrapped the feet in blanket squares, and stockings, and boot-hose.
He would have to wear moccasins from now on.

In a way, Morgan was disappointed. In the kit made up for
the party before they set
out, DeHaven had included a small saw. Mortification, amputation, he had explained.
It's very simple, really. Morgan remembered the conversation perfectly:

Where do I cut?

There's what's dead and what's not. You try to cut right along the line.

But how do I know where that is?

Again, very simple. Start where you think you should start, and if he screams, just
move the blade down a quarter of an inch. There's always going to be a grey area,
of course. Between high tide and low tide, if you will. That's where you want to
be.

Explaining, he had been bumping the blade up and down Morgan's index finger. The
teeth left their print on the skin. Morgan remembered them clearly, those little
red marks. There had been a promise in it – of great suffering, of clean hard choices,
of sacrifice. But here in the tent the saw was still wrapped up in the medicine chest,
with all its tiny little teeth. It was another promise unfulfilled.

By morning the snow was falling so hard he could not see ten feet. It was a deliberate
tease. The cairn was not two miles off, and still out of reach. All day and all the
next night again they lay in their bags. About ten o'clock on the second day the
storm lulled a little, and the same faded spectre as before appeared. Good and loud,
Daly offered to go along, if Mr Morgan wanted to push on without the other men. And
then the wind lulled a little more, daring him to refuse.

Hard sharp snow, like handfuls of fine gravel, flung through the air. Heads down,
eyes closed, feeling their way with their feet, the two men pushed on. About midday
they reached the cairn. It was not a cairn. It was nothing at all. It was a lump
of rock a little more stubborn than the rest. Without a word they turned around.
Already their last footprints were filling up.

The next morning Morgan ordered them to pack up everything. They were heading south.
He tried not to catch
DeHaven's eye, not to see his satisfied smile, his vindication.

He had decided to make a depot at Cape Osborn, where they had first made the eastern
shore. It would lighten the load, make progress less painful. And give them something
to come back to, that was not quite so far, if and when they returned. For almost
an hour they bounced the pickaxe off the shingle, until there was a neat crack. The
handle had broken. Daly stood there disconsolate, staring down into what looked like
nothing so much as a shallow grave. There was nothing for it, they piled in their
tins and bags and those sundries sufficiently cheapened by their week's work, and
piled all that over with their rubble, and over again with ice and snow, to stay
the scent. Then stamped round on top of it, triumphant.

He had done his calculations. He was leaving five days' supplies, no more, to get
them home. In a bottle, he left a note that read: 28 Oct. Search party from HM Impetus,
currently lying in Lat 75°36' N, Long 94°21' W, NE coast Cornwallis Island, under
Capt. Myer. Lt. R. MORGAN, auxiliary command. Essentials here deposited for party's
own use. Capt. Austin & other searching vessels currently at Beechey Island.
Our intention is to communicate with them.

Myer's orders were to track the coast all the way to Beechey, scouring it for clues
of Franklin. This great work of humanity, he called it. But in his journal Morgan
wrote: My people's health is my only measure. I will go as far as I safely can.

They kept at it, day after day. They had their routine. Packing up, hauling, pitching
the tent. Setting out, he thought they would soon get to know each other, like brothers,
every kink and scar. There was nothing of the sort. They were almost always too tired
to talk, even on the days they were trapped in the tent.

Day after day they inched their way down the coast. The fabric was being slowly worn
down, worn away. Underneath, through the bare threads, a lone word showed through:
Why?
He did not know. Out here, no answer could compete. He
was earning the right,
perhaps, to talk about what other men had done. Yet with every destroying day, every
hour of drudgery, more and more he felt the breach between himself and them, the
men of renown. He had read their books. For them, there had been far horizons, all
around. He had gone to the windows they had looked through, and found them walled
up. They had been lying, or he was a different sort of man. From where he stood,
there was never anything further off than the next step, the next sip of water, the
prodigious pains in his legs.

They made their camp high up on the shore, in the centre of a stone circle twenty
feet across. Morgan sent Banes to scout for driftwood, and a few minutes later they
heard him calling, screaming almost. He was up on the ridge, waving his arms. They
rushed towards him, sure the mystery had been solved. Day after day, it was the same.
Every mound on every headland looked man-made. It seemed nothing could blunt the
hope.

Overhead, vertical cliffs. Beyond, clouds of impeccable fleece feathered the sky.
Banes was pointing to the next headland, its knob of rock, perfectly turned to tempt
them. Beyond it, the coast drifted away to the southeast, as far as they could see.

Morgan lifted the glass to his eye, and let out a long, stale breath, that sounded
like a punctured balloon. The thing looked as much of a cairn as the rest. He told
them to go back to the tent, set the conjuror going, get themselves into their bags.

He spent almost an hour climbing. The heap of stones was no more than three feet
high, but definitely hand-built. At the bottom, for once, to balance against all
their efforts, was a little green bottle. It had been left by a search party Austin
had sent up the coast. Here turning back, the note said. This was their farthest
point north. The disappointment felt familiar, almost reassuring. It was as though
a trick were being played, by someone watching, hidden, and always slyly
moving ahead
of them, determined to draw them on. At the bottom of the sheet he scribbled Morgan,
Impetus search party, 31 Oct, continuing S, and shoved the paper back into the bottle,
for the next fool.

By morning the wind was barrelling down off the land, and kept them in their bags.
It gave them time to mull over the note. Here turning back, it said. It gave the
date, and the officer commanding. It said Austin would winter at Beechey, Morgan
told the men. He was trying to tell them they were not obliged to go back to the
ship. Previously, he'd always pushed that thought from his mind. Now he let it come,
with all its arguments prepared. He figured their distance from the
Impetus
. He wrote
the figure down, in geographical miles. It was a fantasy, of course, with straight
lines – not the scribbled course they would be forced to take, if they went back.
The truth was, he was afraid to go on. At Beechey, with food and fuel and shelter,
he would not have the courage to about turn and go north again. It would be too far,
and too cold, and too stupid, and too brave.

That evening, waiting for his dinner, he read over his journal, to see in black and
white the decision he wanted to make. Only two days before, he'd written: We move
too slowly, but cannot quicken our pace. We must match our ambitions to our means.
Let it be said, I have full faith in the men's desire to pursue our course. However,
I believe our efforts might be better directed, over greater distances, with greater
chance of success, in the spring. To continue now, in our current state, would not
only put at risk our own lives, but also, indirectly, the lives of those it is our
purpose here to locate, for the capacities of some of our party, I fear, are likely
to be reduced permanently, if we now persist. The food was still not warm, and he
read the passage over again. It all sounded so wise and reasonable, yet he had said
nothing of any of this to the men, and they had not turned back, but gone on exactly
as before, south.

He set the next tin on the scales, began to spoon the mess into it. Watched the scale-pan
lift cautiously from the floor.
The spoon in mid-air, waiting. The pans levelled
off, settled, and were still.

On the other side of the conjuror, Cabot sat with his eyes closed.

Next, Morgan said, picking up a tin.

Banes, Cabot said.

Morgan handed it on, picked up another.

Next, he said.

And so the food was shared out.

He waited until the last tin had been handed over. They would want to eat while it
was still warm, and that let him speak. He asked them what they wanted to do, and
gave them their choices. It was time to decide, he said, whether to push on or turn
about. If they pushed on and were by some mishap delayed, they might not be able
to get back. It was a simple enough calculation, he said. Pounds of meat per mile
per man. On the other hand, tempering their ambitions now meant they might be renewed
and extended at a later date, he said. He spoke with no great conviction. But to
men spent and sore, for the moment that seemed buffer enough against what might be
said back at the ship. They offered grunts of acknowledgement, that was all. He had
expected more resistance, but they had disappointed him.

If you have a contrary opinion, Banes, now is the time to state it, Morgan said.

I do what I'm told, Banes said. That's what I'm doing this past fortnight, isn't
it?

Morgan explained again as simply as he could. The simple fact was, their food and
fuel for the outward leg was now consumed. Not only was it credible, it was true.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, Morgan said, but we've had an extra mouth to feed,
all the way down.