Killigrew and the North-West Passage Read online

  He turned to where Ågård stood. Crimson-faced, the petty officer stumbled below deck.

  * * *

  ‘Very disappointed in Ågård, Mr Killigrew,’ Pettifer remarked as soon as the Venturer was underway once more, threading her way through the lead between the pack and the shore ice.

  ‘I know what you mean, sir. But before you take any action, I feel I should point out that Olaf Ågård is one of the bravest men I’ve ever known. He’s served on every ship I have. He was with me when we stormed the walls of Chinkiang-fu. He was at my side when we attacked the Dyak stronghold at Karangan. I’ve seen him board pirate junks in the South China Seas as calmly as you or I would board an omnibus.’

  ‘I don’t doubt what you’re telling me is true, Killigrew. But you’ll own that it’s a little difficult to square that image of him with the scene we’ve just witnessed. Clearly the fellow’s lost his nerve.’

  ‘I confess I’m astonished, sir. I can only hope it was a one-off.’

  ‘Hoping isn’t good enough. It’s fortunate for us that the rest of our lads are more stout-hearted. He might have sparked off a panic; and then where would we be? Cowardice like that could get us all killed: if he hasn’t the sand, he should never have volunteered for this expedition.’

  ‘He volunteered reluctantly, sir. I had to talk him into it. I was puzzled at the time… Sir, I was the one who recommended him to you. If you’re going to blame anyone, you should blame me.’

  ‘Don’t castigate yourself, Killigrew. We all make mistakes. I was not obliged to accept your recommendation.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. We all make mistakes – well, I tell the men under my command that they’re entitled to one mistake and one mistake only. In the fifteen years I’ve known Ågård, that’s the first time I’ve ever known him put a foot wrong.’

  ‘You think I should give him another chance?’

  ‘Let me talk to him, sir.’

  Pettifer sighed. ‘Very well.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s not as if I can dismiss him now. Where would I find a replacement around here?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Killigrew said with feeling.

  Pettifer returned below deck. ‘You have the watch, Mr Cavan,’ said Killigrew.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Killigrew turned to Molineaux. ‘Would you ask Ågård to join me in the chart-room?’ No need to ask the boatswain’s mate to be discreet: Molineaux understood.

  The lieutenant made his way below. He found Yelverton in the chart-room, staring at a framed calotype of his wife and children. The master quickly tried to conceal it, but Killigrew was not going to let him off so easily. ‘Feeling homesick so soon, Mr Yelverton?’

  The master grinned. A beefy-faced salt-horse squire who had come aft through the hawse-hole to gain promotion to the quarterdeck, Giles Yelverton had been the master on Killigrew’s last two commissions. Although the two of them were too far apart in both age and class to be friends, they respected one another for their ability at their different jobs, and it was a great reassurance to have the dependable Yelverton in charge of the Venturer’s navigation on this voyage into the great unknown.

  ‘Every time I find myself regretting coming on this expedition, I look at that calotype to remind me of what I left behind…’ he grinned ruefully, ‘…and then the Arctic doesn’t seem so bad.’

  Killigrew laughed. ‘Mind if I borrow the chart-room for a few minutes?’ Although as first lieutenant he had the right to go wherever he pleased on board the Venturer, barring the captain’s quarters, the chart-room was Yelverton’s domain just as much as the sick-berth was Strachan’s, and Killigrew considered it courteous to get his permission before evicting him, no matter how temporarily.

  ‘By all means.’ Yelverton stood up. ‘Going to have a word with Ågård?’ he guessed shrewdly.

  The lieutenant nodded.

  ‘Go easy on him, Killigrew. We were all scared; Ågård was the only one who showed it, that’s all. It would be wrong to punish him because we’ve come to expect him to be so fearless, when really he’s just as human as the rest of us. And you owe him.’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten it.’

  As Yelverton squeezed out of the chart-room, Ågård arrived and knocked on the open door. ‘Come in, Ågård,’ said Killigrew. ‘Close the door behind you.’

  The ice quartermaster complied. ‘May I speak, sir?’

  Killigrew nodded.

  Ågård took off his cap and twisted it in his hands before him, the very image of contrition. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry, sir, that’s all. I lost my head. There was no excuse for it.’

  There was no point in berating the ice quartermaster. Ågård had made a fool of himself, and he knew it. For the rest of this voyage he would have to live with that knowledge; and for a man like Ågård, that was punishment enough.

  ‘There was every excuse for it, Ågård. But as ice quartermaster, you of all people should be the one to keep his head in a situation like that. If the others see you panic, what can they be expected to think?’

  ‘I know, sir. I should never have volunteered for this expedition. Whatever punishment the captain sees fit to give me, I’ll accept it.’

  ‘Of course you will. But I’ve spoken to the captain: he’s prepared to give you another chance.’

  If Killigrew had expected Ågård to be effuse in his gratitude, he was disappointed. ‘I’m not sure I deserve it, sir.’

  ‘The fact of the matter is, until we rejoin the rest of the squadron, Qualtrough and yourself are the only men with experience of the ice we have access to. But I think the captain would be prepared to give you a second chance even if that were not the case. You’ve never let me down in the past. Make sure it never happens again.’

  ‘I will, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, Ågård. Thank Commander Pettifer.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I will.’ The ice quartermaster started to turn to leave.

  ‘Wait a moment, Ågård. There’s just one thing I want to know.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Of all the men on board the Venturer who might have panicked… why you?’

  Ågård considered the question, and then shrugged. ‘Perhaps because apart from Qualtrough, sir, I’m the only one who really understands the dangers.’

  * * *

  ‘He’s dead.’ Bähr took off Lenz Noldner’s woollen cap and draped it over his face.

  ‘Better put him with Tegeder, then.’ Sørensen gestured to where they had laid Stephan Tegeder out on the ice a short distance away from their camp.

  ‘Shouldn’t we bury them?’ asked Ziegler.

  ‘Bury them in the ice?’ Bähr said incredulously. ‘We haven’t got the tools, and even if we did, I suggest we’d be better off conserving our energy. I think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to need it.’

  ‘I meant bury them at sea.’ Ziegler gestured to the open water nearby. ‘The least we can do is give them a Christian burial.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ said Sørensen. ‘For one thing, we haven’t got anything to put them in or anything to weigh them down with. And for another, we might need them later.’

  ‘Need them?’ Ziegler echoed. ‘They’re dead, Bjørn! What possible good can they do… Oh!’ The colour drained from his face.

  ‘You’re not suggesting we…?’ asked Fischbein. Kapitän Weiss’ nephew, Ignatz Fischbein had been one of the half-deck boys, apprenticed to his uncle to learn the craft of whaling. A freckle-faced, snub-nosed youth, he was not yet out of his teens and far too young to be stranded on the ice pack with a shattered elbow, waiting to die.

  ‘The custom of the sea, lad,’ Sørensen told him. ‘Sacrifice the dead to spare the living.’

  Fischbein shook his head. ‘I couldn’t do it. Not… not poor Stephan and Eugen. I know their families, Herr Sørensen! How could I ever look them in the face again, with such a crime against nature on my conscience?’

  ‘Not now, perhaps,’ agreed Sørensen. ‘But you’ll cha
nge your mind soon enough when the hunger pangs start to gnaw at your innards.’

  ‘Well, that’s a long way in the future, if it ever even comes to that,’ said Ziegler. ‘For now we have plenty of food to keep us going. What day is it today, Dr Bähr?’

  ‘Tuesday, I think.’

  Ziegler nodded. ‘Four days since Liebnitz left us.’

  ‘Early days yet,’ said Sørensen.

  ‘How’s Immermann doing?’ Ziegler asked Bähr.

  ‘Not good.’ The doctor lowered his voice. ‘He’s got a bad fever. He’s not long for this world, I’m afraid.’

  ‘May I speak, sir?’ Sørensen asked Ziegler. The third mate nodded. ‘I do not think we should pin all our hopes on Herr Liebnitz, sir. Even if by some miracle he does make it to Upernavik, there’s no guarantee that any ship that he can persuade to come looking for us will make it through the ice. We can’t wait here for ever for a rescue that might never come. We can’t make it to Upernavik on foot, but if we can get far enough south, there’s a chance we’ll reach some whalers waiting to take the ice at the Devil’s Thumb.’

  ‘And what about him?’ Ziegler gestured at Immermann. ‘Are you suggesting we drag him over the ice?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Sørensen. ‘We leave him here. You heard what the doctor said: he’s dead already. We sacrifice the dead to spare the living.’

  ‘What about the provisions?’ Ziegler indicated the barrels of victuals they had salvaged from the water. ‘We can’t carry all that with us. Even if we only take enough to get us as far as the Devil’s Thumb, what if we get there and find there aren’t any ships? We’ll be no better off than we are now. In fact we’ll be worse off: at least here we’re in no danger of running out of food.’

  Immermann muttered something under his breath.

  ‘That food isn’t going to last for ever, mein Herr,’ warned Sørensen.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Fischbein. ‘Eugen’s trying to say something!’

  ‘Leave me,’ rasped Immermann. ‘No sense you all dying, just because I didn’t have the sense to get out of the way of a falling spar…’ He tried to say more, but a fit of coughing racked his body and blood bubbled up between his lips. He closed his eyes and lay still.

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked Ziegler.

  Bähr felt for Immermann’s wrist. ‘No, but his pulse is damned weak.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Fischbein, gazing off towards the south. No one paid any attention to him.

  ‘I said: his pulse is damned weak,’ repeated Bähr.

  ‘No!’ said Fischbein. ‘Look! Over there!’

  Ziegler stared in the direction Fischbein indicated. ‘Smoke!’

  ‘Another ship crushed in the ice, most likely,’ said Sørensen. Even when a whaler that was nipped did not sink immediately, it was the custom on the Greenland fishery to burn a wrecked ship once it had been stripped of anything salvageable.

  ‘There must be others stranded on the ice like us,’ said Fischbein. ‘Perhaps we can reach them…’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Sørensen. ‘Maybe they weren’t able to salvage as much food as we were. Maybe we’d find ourselves having to share what food we have with fifty of them.’ He glanced speculatively towards the distant column of smoke. ‘Wait a moment!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s not a burning ship! That’s smoke from a funnel: a steamer!’

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ sighed Bähr. ‘There aren’t any steamers in the Arctic. Whoever heard of a steam-powered whaler?’

  ‘Shows how much you know, Herr Know-Better!’ said Sørensen. ‘It’s not just whalers that come to the Arctic. What about the British naval ships that come to search for Franklin?’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Ziegler, getting his hopes up again. ‘It’s a ship all right! It must be a British ship! Look, I can see the tops of her masts now!’

  Those who could waved their arms frantically above their heads. ‘Over here!’ they yelled, even though they knew full well that the men on the ship would not be able to hear them at so great a distance.

  Ziegler fired the rifle into the air. A couple of minutes later, the ship sent up a signal rocket.

  ‘They’ve seen us!’ The third mate was ready to sob with relief. ‘We’re saved!’

  * * *

  Two hours later Dietrich Ziegler found himself sipping coffee in the captain’s day-room on board the Venturer with Pettifer and Killigrew.

  Ziegler flushed when Ursula joined them. ‘Guten Tag, Frau Weiss,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Guten Tag, Herr Ziegler,’ she returned. ‘Wie geht’s?’

  ‘Danke, gut. Und Ihnen?’

  ’Gut, gut.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Perhaps out of courtesy to our guests, we should speak English, yes?’

  ‘Please! No need to trouble on our account, Frau Weiss,’ Pettifer said jovially. ‘Whatever makes you feel comfortable.’

  ‘We both speak good English, Commander Pettifer,’ Ursula assured him.

  The four of them sat in awkward silence. Killigrew sensed there was an atmosphere in the day-room, and not just because Ziegler and Ursula were in the company of strangers. There was more awkwardness between the two Germans than between either of them and their hosts.

  Ziegler cleared his throat. ‘Where is Herr Liebnitz?’

  Ursula lowered her eyes, rearranging the crockery on the table into some abstract geometrical pattern so she would not have to meet his gaze. ‘Liebnitz did not make it, Herr Ziegler.’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘What about the others? Eisenhart, Glohr, Kracht and the rest?’

  ‘Kracht is all right. The rest… An iceberg calved off a glacier as we rowed past, and crushed the boat. Herr Liebnitz must have been killed at once along with Bøje, Arndt and Glohr. Ohlsen managed to climb on to the iceberg with Kracht and me, but then it rolled and Ohlsen was thrown into the sea. A short while after that Eisenhart died trying to swim for the pack. Kracht and I would surely have died from the cold if Herr Killigrew and his men have not happened to chance by at that moment.’

  ‘Mein Gott!’ gasped Ziegler. ‘I… we are obliged to you, Herr Leutnant.’

  It was Killigrew’s turn to blush. ‘Think nothing of it, Herr Ziegler. It was pure chance we happened to be passing. Anyone else would have done the same in our shoes.’

  ‘Gott in Himmel!’ breathed Ziegler. ‘Only seven of us left? Out of forty-eight?’

  ‘A bad business,’ said Pettifer. ‘But at least you’re all right: that’s what matters now. We’ll do everything in our power to make you comfortable for as long as you are guests on board the Venturer. We have sufficient cabins on board for you and Dr Bähr to have one each, Herr Ziegler, once we’ve cleared out the stores.’

  ‘We do not want to be any trouble, Commander Pettifer.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense! No trouble at all. Delighted to be of assistance, young man. Where is Dr Bähr, Killigrew?’

  ‘In the sick-berth, sir. Two of the men are badly injured, and the doctor insisted on going to help Strachan attend to them.’

  ‘The rest of your men will have to sleep with the hands in the fo’c’sle,’ said Pettifer. ‘But there’s plenty of room. We’ve only got a crew of thirty – most of the space is taken up with stores.’

  ‘The chances are that the two injured men will remain in the sick-berth while they’re on this ship,’ said Killigrew. ‘That only leaves two to sleep in the fo’c’sle: the chief harpooner and Kracht.’

  ‘While we’re on board, those of us who are able will be happy to do our fair share of any work that needs to be done,’ said Ziegler. ‘I’m not much of a sailor, but I can navigate; Sørensen and Kracht are both experienced hands, and I’m sure Dr Bähr will be delighted to continue helping your surgeon in the sick-berth when the need arises.’

  ‘Not necessary, I assure you,’ said Pettifer. ‘You’ve all been through a dreadful ordeal. What you need now is rest and recuperation—’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in?’

  It was Cavan. ‘Sorry to intrude, si
r. Ågård reports open water ahead.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cavan.’

  As the mate withdrew, Pettifer rose to his feet and Killigrew followed his lead. Ziegler and Ursula made to do likewise, but the captain motioned for them both to remain seated. ‘Don’t trouble yourselves to rise, please! Stay here for now. I must attend to some business on deck. Make yourselves at home. If there’s anything you should require – anything at all – please don’t hesitate to ask Orsini, our steward.’ Pettifer opened the door and indicated one of the doors across the passageway. ‘That’s his cubby-hole. He never strays far from there for very long. If you’ll come with me, Mr Killigrew…?’

  The two naval officers put on their greatcoats and made their way up on deck to where Cavan and Yelverton waited. To the east, the open expanse of the North Water beckoned invitingly.

  Pettifer took the telescope from the binnacle to survey the scene, then snapped it shut. ‘Splendid, gentlemen! Well, let’s get under way, shall we? Loose all sails, Mr Thwaites! Sheet home and hoist tops’ls, t’gallants’ls and royals. Free the ice-anchors.’

  ‘We’re pressing on, sir?’ Killigrew asked in some surprise.

  ‘But of course! We’ve come this far, haven’t we? In record time too. I shouldn’t wonder. Let’s not squander it now.’

  ‘I thought we might wait here for the rest of the squadron to catch up, sir.’

  ‘We’ll be waiting an awfully long time if they’re ahead of us,’ Pettifer pointed out with a smile.

  ‘But no one on board the Carl Gustaf saw them come this way.’

  ‘Who is to say the Assistance and the other ships did not find some other way through the Middle Pack?’

  ‘Other way?’ Yelverton echoed in disbelief. ‘Sir, there is no other way.’

  ‘Behind us or ahead of us, we’re all bound for the same place,’ Pettifer said dismissively. ‘Beechey Island. Lay me a course for Lancaster Sound, Mr Yelverton.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. We should be able to fetch it on a course of north-west.’

  ‘Very good. All plain sail, Mr Killigrew. Course north-west.’