“Dr. Goodsir?”
The surgeon’s head came up.
“Would you and Mr. Morfin be so kind as to carry Mr. Hartnell into the tent and get him comfortable? We’ll put Tommy in the centre of our little huddle to try to keep him warm.”
Goodsir nodded and moved to lift his patient by the shoulders without removing him from the sleeping bag. The welt on the unconscious Hartnell’s head was now as large as the surgeon’s small, pale fist.
“All right,” said Gore through chattering teeth, looking at the tattered tent that was going up, “let’s the rest of us get those blankets spread and huddle together like the orphans we are and try to get an hour or two’s sleep.”
13 FRANKLIN
Sir John could not quite believe what he was seeing. There were eight figures, just as he had anticipated, but they were…
Four of the five exhausted, bearded, and goggled men in the sledge harness made sense – seamen Morfin, Ferrier, and Best, with the huge Private Pilkington leading – but the fifth man in harness was Second Mate Des Voeux, whose expression suggested he had been to Hell and back. Seaman Hartnell walked beside the sledge. The thin sailor’s head was heavily bandaged and he was staggering along as if he were part of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The surgeon, Goodsir, was also walking alongside the sledge and administering to someone – or something – on the sledge itself. Franklin looked for Lieutenant Gore’s distinctive red wool scarf – the comforter was almost six feet long and impossible to miss – but, bizarrely, it seemed that most of the dark, staggering figures were wearing shorter versions of it.
Finally, walking behind the sledge, there came a short, fur-parka-wrapped creature whose face was invisible under a hood but who could only be an Esquimaux.
But it was the sledge itself that made Captain Sir John Franklin cry out, “Dear God!”
This sledge was too narrow for two men to lie on side by side, and Sir John’s telescope had not lied to him. Two bodies lay atop each other. The one on top was another Esquimaux – a sleeping or unconscious old man with a brown, lined face and streaming white hair flowing back on the wolfskin hood that someone had pulled back and propped under his head like a pillow. It was to this figure that Goodsir was attending as the sledge approached
Franklin, Commander Fitzjames, Lieutenant Le Vesconte, First Mate Robert Sergeant, Ice Master Reid, Chief Surgeon Stanley, and such petty officers as Brown, the bosun’s mate; John Sullivan, captain of the maintop; and Mr. Hoar, Sir John’s steward, all rushed to the sledge, as did forty or more of the seamen who had come up on deck upon the sound of the lookout’s hail.
Franklin and the others stopped in their tracks before closing with the sledge party. What had looked through Franklin ’s telescope like a grey spattering of red wool comforters on the men turned out to be great smears of red on their dark greatcoats. The men were smeared with blood.
There was an explosion of babble. Some of the men in harness hugged friends who ran to them. Thomas Hartnell collapsed on the ice and was surrounded by men trying to help. Everyone was talking and shouting at once.
Sir John had eyes only for the corpse of Lieutenant Graham Gore. The body had been covered by a sleeping robe, but this had partially fallen away so that Sir John could see Gore’s handsome face, now absolutely white in places from drained blood, burned black by the arctic sun in other areas. His features were distorted, the eyelids partially raised and the whites visible and glinting with ice, the jaw sagging open, tongue protruding, and the lips already pulling back away from the teeth in what looked to be a snarl or expression of pure horror.
“Get that… savage… off Lieutenant Gore,” commanded Sir John. “
Several men hurried to comply, lifting the Esquimaux man by his shoulders and feet. The old man moaned and Dr. Goodsir exclaimed, “Careful! Easy with him! He has a musket ball near his heart. Carry him to the sick bay, please.”
The other Esquimaux’s parka hood was thrown back now and Sir John noted with shock that it was a young woman. She moved closer to the wounded old man.
“Wait!” cried Sir John, waving at his ship’s assistant surgeon. “The sick bay? You are seriously suggesting that we allow that… native person… into the sick bay of our ship?”
“This man is my patient,” Goodsir said with a brazen stubbornness that Sir John Franklin never would have guessed could reside in the short little surgeon. “I need to get him to a place where I may be able to operate – remove the ball from his body if that is possible. Stem the bleeding if it is not. Carry him in, please, gentlemen.”
The crewmen holding the Esquimaux looked to their expedition commander for a decision. Sir John was so flummoxed that he could not speak.
“Hurry along now,” commanded Goodsir in a confident voice.
Obviously taking Sir John’s silence as tacit assent, the men carried the grey-haired Esquimaux man up the ramp of snow and onto the ship. Goodsir, the Esquimaux wench, and several crewmen followed, some helping young Hartnell along.
Franklin, almost unable to hide his shock and horror, stood where he was, still looking down at the corpse of Lieutenant Gore. Private Pilkington and Seaman Morfin were unlashing the lines holding Gore in place on the sledge. “For God’s sake,” said Franklin, “cover his face.”
“Aye, sir,” said Morfin. The sailor pulled up the Hudson ’s Bay Company blanket that had slipped away from the lieutenant’s face during their rough day and a half on the ice and pressure ridges.
Sir John could still see the concavity of his handsome lieutenant’s gaping mouth through the dry sag of the red blanket. “Mr. Des Voeux,” snapped Franklin.
“Yes, sir.” Second Mate Des Voeux, who had been overseeing the unlashing of the lieutenant’s body, shuffled over and knuckled his forehead. Franklin could see that the whisker-stubbled man, his face sunburned a raw red and sandblasted by the wind, was so exhausted that he could only just raise his arm to salute.
“See to it that Lieutenant Gore’s body is brought to his quarters, where you and Mr. Sergeant will see that the body is prepared for burial under the supervision of Lieutenant Fairholme here.”
“Aye, sir,” said Des Voeux and Fairholme in unison.
Ferrier and Pilkington, exhausted as they were, shook off efforts at assistance and lifted the body of their dead lieutenant. The corpse seemed as stiff as a piece of firewood. One of Gore’s arms was bent and his bare hand, turned black from the sun or decomposition, was raised in a sort of frozen clawing gesture.
“Wait,” said Franklin. He realized that if he sent Mr. Des Voeux off on this errand, it would be hours before he could receive an official report from the man who had been second in command on this party. Even the confounded surgeon was out of sight, taking the two Esquimaux with him. “Mr. Des Voeux,” said Franklin, “after you’ve seen to Lieutenant Gore’s initial preparation, report to me in my cabin.”
“Aye, Captain,” the mate said tiredly.
“In the meantime, who was with Lieutenant Gore at the end?”
“We all were, sir,” said Des Voeux. “But Seaman Best was there with him – just the two of them – for most of the last two days we were on and near King William Land. Charlie saw everything there that Lieutenant Gore did.”
“Very well,” said Sir John. “Go on about your duties, Mr. Des Voeux. I will hear your report soon. Best, come with me and Commander Fitzjames now.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said the sailor, cutting away the last of his leather harness because he was too exhausted to untie the knots. He did
The three Preston Patent Illuminators were milky overhead with the never-setting sunlight as Seaman Charles Best stood to make his report to a seated Sir John Franklin, Commander Fitzjames, and Captain Crozier – the captain of HMS
The three officers interrupted from time to time with questions while the teetering Best made his report. When his description of the team’s laborious sledge trip to King William Land threatened to stretch on too long, Sir John hurried the man to the events of the last two days.
“Yes, sir. Well, after that first night of lightning and thunder at the cairn and then finding them… tracks, marks… in the snow, we tried to sleep a couple of hours but didn’t really succeed, and then Lieutenant Gore and I set off to the south with light rations while Mr. Des Voeux took the sledge and what was left of the tent and poor Hartnell, who was still out cold then, and we said our ‘until tomorrows’ and the lieutenant and I headed south and Mr. Des Voeux and his people headed out to the sea ice again.”
“You were armed,” said Sir John.
“Aye, Sir John,” said Best. “Lieutenant Gore had a pistol. I had one of the two shotguns. Mr. Des Voeux kept the other shotgun with his party and Private Pilkington carried the musket.”
“Tell us why Lieutenant Gore divided the party,” commanded Sir John.
Best seemed confused by the question for a moment but then brightened. “Oh, he told us he was following your orders, sir. With the food at the cairn camp destroyed by lightning and the tent damaged, most of the party needed to get back to sea camp. Lieutenant Gore and me went on to cache that second message container somewhere south along the coast and to see if there was any open water. There wasn’t any, sir. Open water, I mean. Not a hint. Not a fu-… not a single reflection of dark sky to suggest water.”
“How far did the two of you go, Best?” asked Fitzjames.
“Lieutenant Gore figured we’d traveled about four miles south across that snow and frozen gravel when we reached a big inlet, sir… rather like the bay at Beechey where we wintered a year ago. But you know what four miles is like in the fog and wind and with ice, sirs, even on land around here. We probably hiked ten miles at least to cover the four. The inlet was frozen solid. Solid as the pack ice here. Not even that usual bit of open water you get between shore and ice in any inlet during the summer up here. So we crossed the mouth of her, sirs, and then went another quarter of a mile or so out along a promontory there where Lieutenant Gore and me built
