The Rope Eater Read online

  The following morning the ice showed clear signs of breakup; dark leads were opening in the distance, and I could see the curling tendrils of frost smoke rising in the distance. By noon we were all aching to be away, aching for the work. Griffin had us pull out the ice anchor and try to warp our way over the floe, but even with all of us on the windlass, it would not go. At five, after a day of staring out at the unmoving ice, Griffin finally gave the order for us to blow it.

  Ash and Preston descended to the ice, and Ash had Preston drill a staggered set of holes every ten yards to the far end of the floe along the line of the newer ice. He set the charges, returned to the ship, and handed the detonator to Griffin. Griffin glared at the ice for a moment, then set off the charges. They blew in sequence, starting closest to the ship and moving away quickly. At first the charges seemed to have made only a series of holes, but as the smoke cleared I saw narrow cracks between several of them.

  We set the anchor closer to the ship this time, figuring that we needed only to tilt it to starboard and it would slide into the water by itself. The anchor set, we moved to the winch and crowded onto the beams, locking shoulders like rugby players in a scrum. We strained, grunted, bellowed, rocking on our heels. The ship shuddered, leaned, and the floe split with a deafening crack. The ship dropped into the water, throwing us all to the deck. We rushed to dislodge the ice anchor and move the ship into the channel. Griffin ordered us ahead, and the ship hummed with the turning of the screw. We nudged our way, scraping the sides as we went. After interminable minutes, we shook ourselves free of the floe entirely and moved out into open water. We danced and shouted as we moved to raise the sails, and we started a rowdy shanty. The sails shook and filled, and we were under way again at last. Though it was past midnight, the sun sat gaily on the horizon, as if to watch over us as we sped along. It proved to be a most maddening spectator.

  We moved quickly for about five miles before the lead narrowed again, and we were forced to pick our way, by stealth and by force. We commenced a section of the trip that can only be described as a battle. It was to last for ten days in all, and its parts blur mercifully in my memory.

  The most difficult and most maddening part of this battle was not the unceasing labor, or the frustration at our lack of progress, but the deafening uproar of the ice as it ground against itself and against our ship. There was, first, a constant rumble, like the grinding of giant teeth; then there was the crack, like shots, of the ice splitting, and a whine and squeal like tearing metal. Occasionally, the entire pack shook with deep booms, the echoes of distant catastrophes. The effect of the whole was as if we were trapped inside a gigantic machine that was being forced to work far beyond its capacity and was straining and dragging its way to a final collapse.

  These torments were exacerbated by the unsetting sun. It wobbled along over the horizon, circling drunkenly but never disappearing. Thus, the ceaselessness of the work was mirrored by the endlessness of the day. After three days of light and noise, how I craved darkness and silence! I grew to hate the staring Arctic day and its deafening racket. We, being deprived of our normal measure of rest and peace, grew bleary-eyed and irritable.

  The deeper we went into the ice, the more we relied on the boilers to drive us. I was ordered to help Aziz stoke and manage the boilers, and so was relieved from the sun and the crashing ice. Stoking was rough work, but it was warm, and the darkness and silence were a wonderful respite from the world outside.

  Aziz was an excellent companion—hardworking, uncomplaining, and thoughtful. He rigged a kettle over the boiler and made pots of a smoky, spicy tea. He had an amazing range of books crammed onto his small shelves—philosophy, poetry, accounts of the great explorers. He told me their stories as we worked, of Ibn Battutah in the middle of the Sahara discovering people who lived in houses made of salt, and of the eunuch Zheng He sailing from China in twenty-seven thousand ships. He told me about Ubar, a spice traders’ city made of red silver that was swallowed by the Sea of Sands in Arabia.

  He asked with great interest about my own travels—the war and my desertion, the riot, how I came to be aboard. He asked the questions in such a way that my own actions seemed to take shape as I answered—that there was beneath my meandering a shape and force, a searching, though with its object still not clear.

  “How did you come to be aboard?” I asked cautiously.

  “That,” he said, laughing, “is a story for another time.” And instead he described for me the Kyrgyz tribesmen training hunting falcons in the Alai mountains of central Asia.

  On the fifteenth of June, we were fighting our way through a region of low pressure ridges and small, crumbling floes. Griffin sent me below to help Aziz as usual. We kept the boilers on full, and battered, retreated, and battered again.

  The rest of the crew sat on the deck, waiting to be called to action, and I believe this long period of inactivity more than anything led to their decision. We became aware that something had changed after a long silence from the deckhouse. The engine was not engaged, though the boilers were fully stoked, but we were given no new orders. We collapsed on the coal, happy for the rest, and Aziz brought me some water. For a time we rested, but as we recovered, we began to get uneasy.

  “Do you think we’re frozen in?” said Aziz.

  “I doubt it,” I replied, “because if we were, then Griffin would have ordered us to turn down the steam.”

  We sat awhile, then Aziz rose and called up the tube. There was no response.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ll go up and see what the trouble is,” I said, and made my way to the deck. The crew was massed around the deckhouse, scowling and silent.

  “What’s happening up here, boys? Why’ve we stopped?”

  “We’ve had enough, is why we’ve stopped,” said Reinhold angrily. “We’re working like dogs out here and we decided that we’d at least like the dignity of knowing why. Captain tried to tell us that we’d know soon enough, but we’ve heard too much of that. We need to know, and to agree, or else we told him that we can just drift south until we’re free of the ice. He can put me off if he wants, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep working myself to death.”

  Several of the others seconded Reinhold’s view vociferously. Some others—notably Preston—had not joined this group but were still at their places, not opposing, but not joining either. Hume was pretending to be busy on the foredeck. Griffin was nowhere to be seen.

  “The captain’s gone below to talk it over with West and the doctor,” said Reinhold. “You might as well stay for the fireworks.”

  I moved out of the deckhouse and sat on a coil of rope, displacing a sleepy dog. A few moments later, the hatch swung open and Griffin and West emerged, both of them grim-faced. The crew gathered around. Griffin spoke first.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice shaking, “let me first say that I am extremely disappointed in your conduct. You have violated the terms of our contract, which specify your wages and duties, and give you no right to refuse your work.” He glared at us each in turn.

  “If it were left to me, you would be dumped unceremoniously on the ice and left to make your own way. I warn you that if there is even a whisper of this behavior again, you will be prosecuted for mutiny on our return. The ship is Mr. West’s and it goes where he commands it; if you will not go farther, we will put you in a whaleboat with food and supplies, and you can go where you wish. Are there any of you who wish to leave? If you stay, I expect, under the penalty of death, that you will follow your orders from here forward. Who will leave?”

  We were all silent; I hung my head with shame. For all his faults, Griffin was unfailingly decent, and he worked harder than any of us. I felt very selfish and petty before him.

  Griffin stepped back and West stepped forward.

  “I understand, gentlemen, that you are curious as to the object of our search.” He smiled broadly but without warmth. “I am afraid that I cannot offer you a definitive answer at
this point, but perhaps I can help you understand my reluctance to say more. We are headed out to the north of Lancaster Sound—above the North Water of the whalers. We will be moving into territory that has never been explored fully, but I have strong reason to believe that we will find something there so extraordinary that if anyone were to catch wind of it before we had seized it for our own, we would never be able to keep it.”

  The men shifted on their feet. Pago put his hands into his pockets.

  “That sounds like damn lies to me,” said Reinhold. “Just tell us what it is, and let us keep the secret for ourselves. Once we know and agree, we’ll work that much harder—knowing what we’re working for. Besides, we’re on a ship—there’s no one to tell.”

  West turned to him, his smile turning harder.

  “Think of it as a vault which hides your money, and myself your banker—would you have me give each man a set of keys and let him come and go as he pleases? I thought not. I am protecting it for you from the loose tongues of your fellows, and you can trust me when I assure you that not one of you will be disappointed. We may still meet with whalers in the sound, and so we must continue our discretion. I, for one, have staked my life and considerable fortune upon the object of our quest. You will be made aware of all of the details as soon as we have passed beyond Lancaster Sound and left our final letters. Is that satisfactory?” There was some grumbling, but the group had lost its force and no one dared to speak further.

  “Then, gentlemen, to your work and to your fortunes.” West turned from them and returned below. Griffin ascended the mast in silence, and began giving orders. I lingered on the deck for a moment watching the men disperse; West, to his credit, had turned their anger from him to mistrust for their companions. Men glared and glowered at each other, and worked with angry carelessness, thrashing the ropes around and letting the sails jerk to the end of their halyards before restraining them. The general discontent had fragmented into tiny furies, each man harboring and breeding his own. I hoped we would not be in the pack much longer.

  six

  As we moved north, the pack began to change in character. Where there had been large, low floes with pressure ridges between them, there were smaller floes and broader leads. There were also more icebergs, carving their own, often contradictory paths through the pack. They created many lanes for us to follow, and enabled us to make excellent progress. The icebergs, too, changed as we sailed north: their edges became sharper, their summits higher. Farther south, they had had smooth, sweeping lines and were mostly gray-white in color; here they showed angles of fracture, like gemstones, fresh from the glaciers that had spawned them, and tended toward a dazzling blue-white, but with a full range of greens, pinks, and yellows.

  At noon on the third of July, the coast of Greenland appeared on the horizon and we made directly for it. The coastline consisted of sheer rocky cliffs carved out by low glacial valleys. The water was thick with bergs along the coast and we had to pick our way carefully. Some lanes appeared to be wide open, but were blocked by ridges of submarine ice; others closed quickly as icebergs collided with great momentum. In the pack, we could rely on the low ice to keep us somewhat safe—if we got badly pinched, we would simply rise up on the ice edge. Here, sheer walls rose higher than the tops of the mast. If we were to get pinched, there would be no escape, no blasting free. I kept a nervous eye on the barometer. The icebergs moved with a silent majesty; it seemed impossible that they could glide so noiselessly past, and yet there they went. Gone was the crash and battle of the pack, replaced by the cascade of winds through these corridors of ice. There were still explosions occasionally, to be sure, when the icebergs collided, unearthly shudderings as submarine ridges ground at each other, and great splashes as chunks of ice melted free and fell into the water, or shot up from the bottom as if fired by submarine cannons.

  We tried to skirt them by hugging the coast. Most of the larger icebergs ran aground while the Narthex, with her shallow draft, was able to slip past. As the coastline steepened, however, they drifted right up to the face of the cliffs, and we were forced to dodge out to sea. Finally we ran into a huge iceberg that was aground in the deep water and had trapped a shelf of ice behind it. We were forced to turn south and then west to skirt the edge of the pack that had accumulated behind it. We moved out of sight of the coast again before we were able to continue north into a dense field of icebergs.

  Griffin was very animated in the crow’s nest, muttering to himself, debating his invisible companion, swinging his glass fretfully from side to side, snapping it shut, and jerking it open. He stood with his hands on the rail and strained forward, willing a way to open. He threw down curt words to the silent Creely.

  At times Griffin would bob up and down, like a mating bird, entreating the icebergs to shift, for lanes to open. His voice, when I could hear it, shifted from pleading to commanding, soliciting, tempting, begging, challenging, cursing. He cast down his head in despair as a lead narrowed, then swung it forward again, his eyes hopeful, his body tensed. He shouted at us in a frenzy, then subsided into murmuring. The wind was almost undetectable and the engines still, yet we glided steadily through the water. The sun was low in the northwest, the sky a golden gray over us, and we were lost amid the velvety shadows of the icy peaks.

  As the night wore on, Griffin’s soliloquy spun itself into an incantation, wove us into the ice like fog into mountains. He battled no longer, no longer tried to tempt or bully, to challenge; instead he supplicated quietly and earnestly, his voice even and soft, a gentle paean over us. Under the low sun’s light, the ridges of the icebergs were extraordinary reds and yellows, shot through with brass and copper, the shadows hyacinthine, blue-black. Rays caught and reflected by the tips of the icebergs refracted through facets, pearled, coruscated on the water, cast light where there should have been shadow. There was no white and no black, only rich and vivid colors, a world lit wholly, colored wholly. Through this pageant, the ship moved darkly, a void in this world of light, driven by the chanting hymn of the captain.

  We approached a gap between two massive faces, their tops towering over our mast, their bulk blocking suddenly even faint hints of the distant sun. They rose like ramparts in the darkness, with flying buttresses spreading off to the sides. We nosed into a gap about forty feet wide. No glint of light showed in the distance. The soaring walls pulled my breath from me, impelled my eyes upward. I watched the last edge of the light disappear as the passage curved and a luminous darkness fell. We sailed thus in silence and darkness for long moments until, from the crow’s nest, the light of a single lantern flared. Griffin stood rigidly upright as the walls closed in; the passage became scarcely twenty feet wide, the spars nearly scraping on either side. I could see the edges of the fractured ice, just beyond the end of the davits, and still we did not slow and still we did not turn. The murmur of Griffin’s voice held us transfixed, joined the lapping-past of the water.

  High above the mast, a strip of golden red appeared. Its glow spread down the upper reaches of the walls, suffusing them with crimson and saffron. It was as if we were submerged, as if we had spent our lives in the muck of the ocean depths and for a moment had caught sight of the world of air and light, the dazzling, distant, alien world of the surface, and could see it, unreachable, over us.

  As quickly as the glow had built, it subsided. The iceberg’s effulgence gave way to the glare of the morning as the passage opened and we sailed out into the ordinary yellow of an Arctic day.

  Release came finally on the twelfth of July. A lead widened and then simply dropped away, and the icebergs faded behind us. A few small floes straggled behind, and a few stately bergs sailed on the horizon, but otherwise there was only beautiful blue-black water as far as the eye could see. The day was clear and bright, as if the sky went on forever, and a steady wind pushed up from the south. It was exhilarating to stand on deck and hear only the whip of the sails in the wind and the breaking of waves beneath the bows. Freed from the backbreak
ing frustrations of the ice and the quiet menace of the icebergs, men were themselves again—enthusiastic, hopeful, cheerful. Shanties burst out in gushing streams and men sped happily to their tasks. Like that, the world had righted itself and ran as it should, responding to our demands of it and rewarding our labor with progress. The promise of knowing what we sought hung out over the horizon, and we strained to meet it.

  The waters we sailed into were teeming with life. Gulls descended on us in squadrons, squawking at our dogs and drawing frenzies of barking in return. Kittiwakes and guillemots dove sharply after fish, and sleek flashes of silver passed in the water as seals did the same. Arctic geese and eiders passed overhead in massive flocks, darkening the sky for miles and taking hours and hours to pass. Ghostly clouds of plankton and tiny shrimp hung in the translucent water. Adney spent the days with the rifle on his shoulder, procuring ducks and dovekies to liven our steady diet of salt pork stew and biscuits. The tops of the cliffs were still snowy, but sheltered stretches showed brown and green in gently sloping valleys. The icebergs when they passed now seemed like companions, fellows, throwing off cascades of blue-white meltwater like gentle hurrahs. Great herds of walrus crowded the rocky shore, lolling in the sun, their bellows and grunts echoing over the water. Once, in the distance, we saw the blue strength of whales pulse beneath the surface.

  We sailed along the coast for a day, skirting the mouths of two deep fjords; the waterfalls off their cliffs looked like gateways to faery kingdoms, impossibly sparkling in the sun. The cliffs bristled with birds and the water exploded with fish.

  In the evening—though there was none; the sun remained the same throughout, only nodding to the horizon in the west—we moored in the bay of a small island. Adney, Pago, Griffin, Dr. Architeuthis, and Reinhold went ashore first. Adney and Pago were dispatched to hunt walrus and seal for the dogs, while the others hunted for rock samples. Those who felt we were seeking a mine—Hume in particular—walked the deck with a pronounced smugness. The officers returned with bags of rocks, while the men returned draped in meat that they threw in a heap for the dogs.