Goodsir frowned dubiously at the four boats around them. “Can so many of us fit in these few craft?” he asked.
“Don’t forget, Doctor,” said Edward Couch, “there are nineteen fewer of us now after the malcontents’ departure this morning. And two more dead since yesterday morn. That’s only fifty-three souls for four good boats, ourselves included.”
“And, as you say,” said Thomas Johnson, “more will die in the coming week.”
“And we have almost no food to haul now,” said Corporal Pearson from where he sprawled against the inverted whaleboat. “I wish to God it was otherwise.”
“And I’ve decided to leave all the tents behind,” said Crozier.
“Where will we shelter in a storm?” asked Goodsir.
“Under the boats on the ice,” said Des Voeux. “Under the boat covers on open water. I did it during my attempt to reach the Boothia Peninsula last March, in the middle of winter, and it’s warmer under or in a boat than in those fucking tents… excuse my language, Captain.”
“You’re excused,” said Crozier. “Also, the Holland tents each weigh three or four times what they did when we started this voyage. They never dry out. They must have soaked up half the moisture in the arctic.”
“So has our underlinens,” said Mate Robert Thomas.
Everyone laughed to one extent or another. Two of them ended the laughter with coughs.
“I’m also planning to leave all but three of the big water casks behind,” said Crozier. “Two of them will be empty when we set out. Each boat will have only one of the small casks for storage.”
Goodsir shook his head. “How will your men slake their thirst while you’re in the strait waters or on the ice there?”
“Our thirst, Doctor,” said the captain. “If the ice opens, remember that you and the sick men will be coming along, not staying here to die. And we’ll refill the casks regularly when we get to the fresh water of Back’s River. Until then, I have a confession. We – the officers – did hoard one thing we did not confess to yesterday at the Dividing Up. A bit of spirit stove fuel hidden under the false bottom of one of the last rum casks.”
“We’ll melt ice and snow for drinking water on the ice,” said Johnson.
Goodsir nodded slowly. He had been so reconciled to the certainty of his own death in the coming days or weeks that even the thought of potential salvation was almost painful. He resisted the urge to allow his hopes to rise again. Odds were overwhelming that everyone – Hickey’s group, Mr. Male’s three adventurers, Crozier’s south-rowing group – would be dead in the coming month.
Again as if reading his thoughts, Crozier said to Goodsir, “What will it take, Doctor, to give us a chance to survive the scurvy and weakness for the three months it may take us to row upriver to Great Slave Lake?”
“Fresh food,” the surgeon said simply. “I am convinced that we can beat back the disease in some of the men if we can get fresh food. If not vegetables and fruits – which I know are impossible up here – then fresh meat, especially fat. Even animal blood will help.”
“Why will meat and blubber arrest or cure such a terrible disease, Doctor?” asked Corporal Pearson.
“I have no idea,” said Goodsir, shaking his head, “but I am as certain of it as I am that we will all die of scurvy if we do not get fresh meat… even before starvation will kill us.”
“If Hickey or the others reach Terror Camp,” said Des Voeux, “will the tinned Goldner food serve the same purpose?”
Goodsir shrugged again. “Possibly, although I agree with my late colleague, Assistant Surgeon McDonald, that fresh food is always better than canned. Also, I am convinced that there were at least two types of poisons in the Goldner tins – one slow and nefarious, the other, as you remember with poor Captain Fitzjames and some others, very quick and terrible. Either way, we’re better off seeking and finding fresh meat or fish than they are pinning their hopes on aging tins from the Goldner victuallers.”
“We hope,” said Captain Crozier, “that once out on the open water of the inlet, amidst the free-floating floes, seals and walruses will be available in plentitude before the real winter sets in. Once on the river, we’ll put in from time to time to hunt deer, foxes, or caribou, but may have to pin our hopes on catching fish… a real probability according to such explorers as George Back and our own Sir John Franklin.”
“Sir John also ate his shoes,” said Corporal Pearson.
No one reprimanded the starving Marine, but neither did anyone laugh or respond until Crozier said, his rasping voice sounding totally serious, “That’s the real reason I brought along hundreds of extra boots. Not just to keep the men’s feet dry – which, as you have seen, Doctor, was an impossibility. But to have all that leather to eat during the penultimate portion of our trek south.”
Goodsir could only stare. “We’ll have only one cask of water but hundreds of Royal Navy-issued boots to eat?”
“Yes,” said Crozier.
Suddenly all eight men began laughing so hard that they could not stop; when the others ceased, someone would begin laughing again and then everyone would join in.
“Shhh!” Crozier said at last, sounding like a schoolmaster with boys but still chuckling himself.
Men at their duties in the camp twenty yards away were looking over with curiosity painted on their pale faces staring out from under Welsh wigs and caps.
Goodsir had to wipe away tears and snot before they froze to his face.
“We’re not going to wait for the ice to open all the way up to the shore here,” Crozier said into the sudden silence in the group. “Tomorrow, as Bosun’s Mate Johnson secretly follows Hickey’s group northwest along the coast, Mr. Des Voeux will take a group of our ablest men south across the ice, moving with just rucksacks and sleeping blankets – with luck, traveling almost as quickly as Reuben Male and his two friends – going at least ten miles out onto the strait, perhaps farther, to see if there is any open water. If a lead opens to within five miles of this camp, we are all leaving.”
“The men have no strength…,” began Goodsir.
“They will if they know for certain that there’s only a day or two’s haul between them and open water all the way to rescue,” said Captain Crozier. “The two surviving men who’ve had their feet amputated will be on their bloody stumps and pulling with a will if we know the water is out there waiting for us.”
“And with only a little luck,” said Des Voeux, “my group will bring back some seals and walruses and blubber.”
Goodsir looked out at the cracking, shifting, pressure-ridge surging ice jumble stretching south below low, grey snow clouds. “Can you haul seals and walruses back across that white nightmare?” he asked.
Des Voeux just grinned broadly in answer.
“We have one thing to be thankful for,” said Bosun’s Mate Johnson.
“What’s that, Tom?” asked Crozier.
“Our friend from the ice seems to have lost interest in us and wandered away,” said the still-muscular bosun. “We’ve not seen or heard him for certain since before River Camp.”
All eight men, including Johnson, suddenly reached over to one of the nearby boats and rapped their knuckles on the wood.
53 GOLDING
Twenty-two-year-old Robert Golding rushed into Rescue Camp just after sunset on Thursday, the 17th of August, agitated, shaking, and almost too excited to speak. Mate Robert Thomas intercepted him outside of Crozier’s tent.