If he could not persuade Tikerqat and the others to come back with them — and old Asiajuk the shaman might be a problem convincing — Irving and a few of his party would stay with the Esquimaux here in the valley, convince them to stay there with conversation and other presents from some of the other men’s packs, while he sent the fastest seamen running back to the coast to bring Captain Fitzjames and many more men to this place.
I can’t let them get away. These Esquimaux could be the answer to our problems. They may be our salvation.
Irving felt his heart pounding against his ribs.
“It’s all right,” he said to Tikerqat and the others, speaking in the calmest and most confident tones he could summon. “It’s just my friends. A few friends. Good men. They won’t harm you. We only have one rifle with us, and we won’t bring that down here. It’s all right. Just friends of mine whom you will enjoy meeting.”
Irving knew that they couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but he kept talking, using the same soft, reassuring voice he would have used at his family’s stables in Bristol to calm a skittish colt.
Several of the hunters had pulled their spears or harpoons from the snow and were holding them casually, but Amaruq, Tulugaq, Taliriktug, Ituksuk, the boy Qajorânguaq, the old man Kringmuluardjuk, and even the scowling shaman Asiajuk were looking to Tikerqat for guidance. The two women quit chewing blubber and quietly found their place behind the line of men.
Tikerqat looked at Irving. The Esquimaux’s eyes were suddenly very dark and very alien-looking to the young lieutenant. The man seemed to be waiting for some explanation. “Khatseet? ” he said softly.
Irving showed open palms in a calming gesture and smiled as easily as he could. “Just friends,” he said, matching the softness of Tikerqat’s tone. “A few friends.”
The lieutenant glanced up at the ridgeline. It was still empty against the blue sky. He was afraid that whoever had come looking for him had been alarmed by the congregation in the valley and might be headed back. Irving was not sure how long he could wait here… how long he could keep Tikerqat and his people calm before they took flight.
He took a deep breath and realized that he would have to go after the man up there, call him back, tell him what had happened and send him to bring back Farr and the others as quickly as possible. Irving couldn’t wait.
“Please stay here,” said Irving. He set his leather valise in the snow near Tikerqat in an attempt to show that he was coming right back. “Please wait. I shan’t be a moment. I won’t even get out of your sight. Please stay.” He realized that he was gesturing with his hands as if asking the Esquimaux to sit, the way he would talk to a dog.
Tikerqat did not sit, nor did he reply, but he remained where he was standing while Irving backed away slowly.
“I’ll be right back,” called the lieutenant. He turned and jogged quickly up the steep scree and ice, onto the dark gravel at the top of the ridgeline.
Barely able to breath with the tension, he turned back at the top and looked down.
The ten figures, barking dogs, and sled were exactly where he had left them.
Irving waved, made gestures to show that he would be right back, and hurried over the ridge, ready to shout at any retreating sailor.
Twenty feet down the northeast side of the ridge, Irving saw something that made him stop in his tracks.
A tiny man was dancing naked except for his boots around a tall heap of discarded clothing on a boulder.
Leprechaun, thought Irving, remembering some of Captain Crozier’s tales. The image made no sense to the third lieutenant. It had been a day of strange sightings.
He stepped closer and saw that it was no leprechaun dancing but rather the caulker’s mate. The man was humming some sailor’s ditty as he danced and pirouetted. Irving could not help noticing the grubwhite paleness of the little man’s skin, how his ribs pushed out so visibly, the goose bumps everywhere rising on his flesh, the fact that he was circumcised, and how absurd the pale white buttocks were when he pirouetted.
Walking up to him, shaking his head in disbelief, not in the mood to laugh but his heart still pounding with the excitement of finding Tikerqat and the others, Irving said, “Mr. Hickey. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
The caulker’s mate quit pirouetting. He raised one bony finger to his lips as if to shush the lieutenant. Then he bowed and showed Irving his arse as he bent over his pile of coats and clothing on the boulder.
The man’s gone mad, thought Irving. I can’t let Tikerqat and the others see him like this. He wondered if he could slap some sense into the little man and still use him as a messenger to bring Farr and the others here quickly. Irving had a few sheets of paper and a stub of graphite with which he could write a note, but they were in his valise down in the valley.
“See here, Mr. Hickey…,” he began sternly.
The caulker’s mate swung up and around so quickly with his arm fully extended that for a second or two Irving thought he was resuming his dance.
But there had been a sharp boat knife in that extended hand.
Irving felt a sudden sharp pain in his throat. He started to speak again, found that he couldn’t, raised both hands to his throat, and looked down.
Blood was cascading over Irving’s hands and down onto his chest, dripping onto his boots.
Hickey swung the blade again in a wide, vicious arc.
This blow severed the lieutenant’s windpipe. He fell to his knees and raised his right arm, pointing at Hickey through vision that had suddenly been narrowed by a dark tunnel. John Irving was too surprised even to feel anger.
Hickey took a step closer, still naked, all sharp knees and thin thighs and tendons, crouching now like some pale, bony gnome. But Irving had fallen to his side on the cold gravel, vomited an impossible amount of blood, and was dead before Cornelius Hickey ripped away the lieutenant’s clothing and began wielding the knife in earnest.
38
CROZIER
His men collapsed into tents and slept the sleep of the dead as soon as they reached Terror Camp, but Crozier did not sleep at all the night of 24 April.
First he went to a special medical tent that had been erected so that Dr. Goodsir could do the postmortem and prepare the body for burial. Lieutenant Irving’s corpse, white and frozen after its long voyage back to camp on the savages’ requisitioned sledge, did not look quite human. Besides the gaping wound on the throat — so deep that it exposed the white vertebrae of his spine from the front and made the head yaw back as if on a loose hinge — the young man had been emasculated and disemboweled.
Goodsir was still awake and working on the body when Crozier came into the tent. The surgeon was inspecting several organs removed from the corpse, poking at them with some sharp instrument. He glanced up and gave Crozier a strange, thoughtful, almost guilty look. Neither man said anything for a long moment as the captain stood over the body. Finally Crozier brushed back a strand of blond hair that had fallen over John Irving’s forehead. The lock had been almost touching Irving’s open, clouded but still staring blue eyes.