“B
ack’s River, gentlemen.” Crozier traced his finger down the map.”Or if you prefer not to honor our Mr. Back, the Great Fish.” He smiled at this distinction, lifted his finger slightly and then jabbed it back.
A murmur of expectation spread around Franklin’s cabin.
“And we are somewhere approximately here.” He searched for the mark on the large empty space. Their position had been fixed to within only a few miles, but it seemed to many of them that to mark something so precisely on a map which already took so many obvious liberties in marrying the known to the unknown, was more an act of faith than a reassuring certainty. Pausing only briefly, he drew his finger west along the mainland rim, easing it through the known coastal straits in that direction.
It was across this unknown space, in a neat and direct line drawn between Barrow Strait and the mainland coast running east of Bering, that the route of the expedition had been drawn by the Arctic Council. They could all see it, and they all now saw how misleading and fatal a conceit it had become.
Crozier turned away from them, following more closely the line of the coast until he allowed his finger to be drawn as though by some quickening current out through narrow Bering and into the warm and golden Pacific.
He turned back to them, a look of satisfaction on his face, as though, having mapped their yet to be achieved escape, it was now
somehow more firmly within their grasp. The others indulged him, aware that the history of all exploration was a history of men drawing their fingers across empty spaces.
They had been digging in the ice and blowing open its capricious fractures for over a fortnight.
Seeing that he was losing their attention, Crozier said, “Any suggestions, gentlemen?” making it clear to them that this was little more than a courtesy, a polite call for silence. He went on. “The only obstacle, the only
possible
obstacle to us might now be a difficult passage through the ice toward the sea off Ross’ Farthest West, a point near enough reached by Mr. Gore and his party.” He indicated Graham Gore. “Perhaps Mr. Gore himself might care to enlighten us upon the nature of the ocean at that point and the likelihood of our passage through it into the open sea beyond. Mr. Gore.”
Gore rose to his feet, uncertain of what his report was intended to achieve in view of their current situation.
“For as far as I could see, the ocean running to the west of King William Land was frozen solid and showed signs of considerable jamming and disfigurement. The ice was neither level nor stable. For how far this extended I could not say.”
“But in all likelihood already beginning to break up and disperse, wouldn’t you agree?” Crozier said impatiently. “And, moreover, moving away to the west in the predominant current.”
Gore could not agree entirely with this and said so. Like James Ross before him, he had been surprised by the extent of the ice thrown up on that western shore, and at the violence with which this had been done. He had seen blocks of ice a quarter of a mile inland, and in many places the shore itself had been unrecognizable, torn and crushed and buried beneath an impenetrable thickness of sea ice, all of which suggested to him that the prevailing current in that region was
from,
rather than toward the west, as Crozier had hoped to suggest.
“But a fair prospect of open water all the same, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Fitzjames?” Crozier said as soon as Gore had finished speaking.
Fitzjames agreed with this. From everything he knew about the waters off the mainland coast, he expected them to remain navigable
for longer than elsewhere. He was less optimistic than Crozier about the possibility of their journey into this open sea, but he could not disagree with him on their improved chances once they reached it.
Having spoken, Fitzjames looked at the men around him, several of whom lowered their eyes rather than confront him with their own contradictory estimations.
Crozier held these meetings daily, calling for reports on each aspect of their release work, for which individual officers had been given separate responsibility, and only rarely—as on that particular morning—extending their gaze to the wider landscape and its more distant prospects. The meetings served their purpose in keeping everyone informed, but no one was blind to the fact that they were also Crozier’s way of impressing his new authority upon them. Those who had sailed with him before were surprised to see him changed in this way, particularly those who had been with him in the Antarctic, where he had gained a reputation of being one of the most cautious of all ice-captains, drawing back whenever the odds against him even slightly outweighed those in his favor.
The meeting ended with the arrival of one of the men who had been working outside, who went directly to Crozier and spoke to him in a whisper.
“Another fissure, gentlemen,” Crozier announced, as though this vindicated everything he had just said. “Running …” He prompted the man beside him.
“Running clear across our stern from one side to the other.”
“As a result of our own work?” Fitzjames asked him.
The man shook his head. “It appeared first off in the ice twenty yards to starboard and then dashed right under us the same distance out to port.” His voice was a mix of awe and surprise.
“Any open water?”
Again the man shook his head.
A similar fissure had appeared off their starboard bow two days earlier, it too having come into being independently of all their efforts. They left the cabin to examine this new rupture for themselves.
Fitzjames and Goodsir were the first to descend and inspect it more closely. There was no sign of any water, but it was undoubtedly
a natural weakness in the ice which had opened up in response to pressure from elsewhere, either far below in more volatile waters, or from farther out toward the weakening ice in the south, where explosions were now being detonated almost daily.
“It appears to be open to some considerable depth,” Goodsir observed, measuring the width of the gap and then throwing down pieces of ice and listening to them drop. He could gauge little from this, except that the fissure was a deep one, suggesting that it might continue to spread and to open up beneath them in the days to come.
A ladder was brought, and Crozier descended to join them, briefly examining the opening in the ice and then stepping back and forth across it several times. He walked to the stern, where the
Erebus
’ screw had been refitted in readiness for when she settled back in the water, and despite his earlier misgivings about leaving the engine intact, he now felt encouraged by seeing the highly polished metal amid so much apparent confusion.
Later the new fissure was staked, and the stores and shelters along its line of advance were moved beyond its reach.
Goodsir detonated his next sequence of explosions three days later. He was accompanied by Gore and Reid and two dozen others, most of them with saws and grapnels ready to take advantage of any weakness the blasts might create in the ice.
In the time since Reid and Blanky’s discovery, the widening lead had approached several hundred yards closer to the ships, and they were all encouraged by this.
Goodsir directed the men carrying the gunpowder to lay it down in several caches, and he walked on alone to the tip of the submerged channel and examined it for signs of recent or imminent activity.
Except for the daily thaw, there was still no water on the surface, but where he knelt, Goodsir could feel it moving distantly beneath him, and he could see its shadow. In places he could even feel the ice upon which he prostrated himself ripple slightly. He was not alarmed by this, and included it in his calculations when deciding
where best to detonate his charges. He estimated that at least ten feet lay between him and the water below.
Reid joined him and the two men calculated the natural line of weakness the approaching water was preparing to exploit. Choosing a point twenty feet ahead of this, Goodsir told one of the men to hollow out a depression sufficient for a six-pound charge. In calculating this point he also took into consideration the likelihood of any smaller deposits of trapped air, knowing that any charge which exploded into an empty crevasse or ice-vaulted cavern would be largely wasted, and might work against them by creating undesirable weaknesses elsewhere.
From where they waited for the man to finish his digging, Goodsir, Reid and Gore could see the two ships on the near horizon. They had made an early start and the sun was not yet high enough or bright enough to confuse them with its broad reflections and illusory distances.
Of the three, only Reid remained unconvinced that they might yet succeed in driving the open water right up to the
Erebus,
but he knew too that there was now no alternative but to make the attempt. It was already mid-August, and whatever else happened to them, whatever else they might achieve, no effort could be spared during that one precious summer month remaining to them.
The man cutting the ice signaled that he had finished, and Goodsir primed his first charge, pressing it with his good hand into the cold mush, leaving only sufficient space for the short fuse to protrude.
He waved for them all to crouch down—there was no way they might take any more effective cover from the blast—and then he lit the fuse and stood over it to ensure it was burning properly before running back to kneel beside them. Around him, some of the men had thrown themselves flat, their arms folded over their heads. Others had retreated a farther hundred yards and now sat hunched with their backs to the smoking mound.
Goodsir began to count, and upon reaching only eight, the powder exploded, punching up a small bush of black smoke and scattering a shower of ice high into the air.
One by one they all rose and watched as the smoke cleared and as the watery debris fell in a wide and harmless circle all around them.
Goodsir called for silence, and stood with his head cocked toward where the explosion had taken place, its reverberating echo still audible.
“What is it?” Gore asked him.
“Listen.” Goodsir pointed, first toward the rising smoke and then toward the ships.
At first all Gore could hear was a ringing sound, but then, as the explosion faded, he too picked up the brittle creaking which suggested that the ice had been split.
“Well done” he said, slapping Goodsir on the shoulder. “But where’s she going? Our way?”
Goodsir called again for silence, but this time he went unheeded by the cheering men.
He walked back to where he had laid the charge, searching the ground ahead of him before each step. Then he stopped suddenly, turned to his right, and shouted, “There!”
They all looked to where he pointed, and although little was at first apparent, the few men who were closest also began to shout and point, causing the others to run and join them.
Ahead, and running in almost a straight line from the charge, a clean new crack appeared in the surface ice.
“Do you think we could barge that open if we got this far to try, Mr. Gore?” Goodsir asked, and Gore, still surprised by how much that single small explosion had achieved, nodded, cautiously at first, but then with growing conviction. He ran closer than any of them to the broken unstable ice. A ball of sooty smoke hung in the air, rising from the small crater as though a fire had been lit there.
Goodsir, Gore and Reid conferred. There was little to be gained by attempting to grapple or cut the crack any wider; it might be weeks yet before the
Erebus
was able to reach it. Instead they decided to fire two more charges, and then to spend the rest of the morning searching more widely along either side of the channel.
The second explosion, though larger, was awaited with less awe than its predecessor, most of the men gathering into a single group around Goodsir to observe its effects. The charge was detonated a hundred yards from the first, sixty beyond the leading edge of the new opening, and was exploded in ice beneath which there was no water visible. Warning them all that the results were likely to be less spectacular than the first, Goodsir laid the powder and ignited it using a longer fuse.
This time the blast passed beneath them and men held out their arms like acrobats to steady themselves. There was more smoke and more scattered ice than before, but the after-effects were shorter lived. A new crack appeared on the surface, but this was only superficial and would in all likelihood reseal itself when the temperature fell. Goodsir went alone to inspect the results. He knew that it was not necessary to cut a continuous line through the ice, that a series of perforations would serve their purpose equally well.
This time the two lips of ice had remained level, but along half its length the new crack had come apart, revealing a gap of several inches in places. Cheered by this, Goodsir knelt and held his ear to the opening.
“Water,” he called out, drawing Gore, Reid and several others toward him. They knelt beside him and they too heard the sound of moving water far beneath them.
“Is it rising?” Gore asked.