Across Frozen Seas (3 page)

“These 'ere ragamuffins seems to 'ave taken Sir John's fancy. See that they gets sommat to eat.”

The accent is heavy and strange, but we don't hear any more as the footman turns on his heel and leaves. One of the women comes over and starts fussing with our clothes.

“Millie, the poor mites is soaking! 'elp me get these things off 'em and give us some o' that stew'ere.”

Before we know it, we are sitting at the table wrapped in coarse blankets eating the most delicious meal I have ever tasted while our clothes steam above us. It is such a luxury to be warm and dry and well fed. Neither of us speak. We are too engrossed in the feast before us. I have almost finished my third plateful
when a door in the corner by the range opens and a tall man in black enters. The two women, who have been chattering, fall silent as he crosses the room and, to my horror, addresses me.

“Can you read boy?” he asks in a sombre voice.

“A little,” I reply with a nervous stutter.

“Well then,” he continues, “take this to the address on the front and give it to the gentleman you find there.”

I nod dumbly as he hands me an envelope. On the front, in beautiful curled handwriting, is a name, James Fitzjames, and an address. The back is sealed with wax bearing the impression of a crown and anchor. The tall man leaves and, almost instinctively, I hand the envelope to George. He looks excited.

“This is it,” he says triumphantly looking down at the piece of sealed paper in his hand. “This is what we came for. This'll get us into the Navy, maybe even on Sir Johns own ship!” He looks up at me. “We're going to have
some
adventures now, Davy boy!”

My first thought on waking up after the third dream was, “I can hear.” And so I could. I had heard the voices of Sir John, the footman, the cooks and, most importantly, my friend George. My dreams were becoming more real. I
was
beginning to
be a part of them.
The feeling of happiness I had felt at the kitchen table with the endless supply of food before me lingered on as I lay in my bed that morning. I had never been so happy. The warmth, the food, the friendship had all been so real and immediate that I missed them now that I was awake. For the first time since they had begun, I wished I were back in my dreams.

I knew now I had been in London, England, but when? Who was James Fitzjames? What was Sir John about to do? I began to think back over my dreams. What clues did I have? Obviously, my dream world was a long time ago. There were no cars, only horse-drawn carriages, and the clothes and language were antiquated.

Then it came to me. Jumping out of bed, I ran over to where my school books lay in a disorganized heap. There was one there from my English class that might help. It gave short biographies of all the famous authors we had to read. I turned to the page that listed:

“Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

...A Christmas
Carol
was one of a series of Christmas stories that Dickens wrote. First published in 1844 it became an instant popular success....”

The book George and I loved to read on the streets was a stolen, new copy of A
Christmas Carol.
My dream world must be set in the winter of 1844/45. But why?

There was one more clue I could follow. Sir John was a famous figure in London at that time. Without a surname it would be difficult to look him up, but there was one person who might be able to help me—Jim. He knew a lot about the history of that time and he had all kinds of books we could look through.

For two nights I went to bed in a turmoil of excitement hoping for the next dream, but none came. Each morning I would wake up feeling empty after a long, dreamless sleep. Finally, on Saturday, I took the bus along Highway 5 to Jim's place. It was one of those great February days when the air feels like crystal. It was about minus twenty-five degrees, but the sun was shining brightly and the snow looked as if someone had sprinkled handfuls of diamonds over it. I was wearing my parka, so I was warm enough while I walked along the gravel road.

Jim's farm is about two kilometres off the highway. It sits across the gravel road from the Hutterite farm where Jurgen lives. The Hutterites are descended from European religious refugees who came to Canada to escape persecution. They settled all over the prairies in colonies, housing up to one hundred people. They keep pretty much to themselves and still dress in hand-made clothes. They work hard and their farms are very efficiently run.

One time Jim took me down to visit them. That was when he was first thinking of getting one of the boys to do chores for him. When we got there, all the kids came out to see us. They rarely leave the property as all the schooling is done on the farm, so they were keen to see outsiders. They didn't act like kids from the city. They just stood around us in silence and stared. The boys stood in the front and the girls stood behind. I said “Hi,” and waved, but they didn't move. Then some of the elders arrived. They knew Jim and started talking. Their words were strange and old-fashioned, with lots of “thou's” and “thee's,” and their accents were strong. Jim said it was because they still speak medieval German among themselves.

Jim talked with the elders for some time. He said afterwards that they weren't keen on letting someone off the farm. The only chance boys get to leave is to go to another settlement to work when they are teenagers. There, they get menial work, but they can meet other people and often marry and settle down. When a settlement gets too big, a group will split off
and go and set up a new farm somewhere else.

The elders finally let someone go because Jim's place was close by and because he had known them for a long time. The Hutterites interested me and I wanted to get to know Jurgen, but he had not been at Jim's on the few occasions I had visited recently.

The first thing you see at Jim's place is the mailbox. There's a carved and painted squirrel on top with a hole in its back where Elly used to put flowers in the summer. I think it looks pretty hokey, and I guess Jim does too, because there haven't been flowers in it since Elly died, but then, he hasn't taken it down either.

The farmhouse is about fifty metres off the road, surrounded by a rundown barn and corrals. There's even an old sty from a time when Jim kept pigs. They're all empty now. A Jersey cow called Victoria lives in the barn. She's long past the age of giving milk, but Jim keeps her as a kind of companion on the farm. Even in winter, he spends long hours sitting with Victoria remembering the past. Apart from Victoria in the barn, the old farmyard is dead. Life is concentrated around the new barn and the corrals down the hill on the land that is rented by one of Jim's neighbours.

Jim took a while to answer my ring. He can't move around too quickly any more, but we were soon sitting at his kitchen table drinking hot chocolate. I had convinced myself that as soon as I found the answer to who Sir John was, my dreams would continue. The excitement of the past few days was too much and I blurted out the story of my dreams so far.

Jim listened with interest, nodding occasionally. When I mentioned Sir John and Fitzjames he looked puzzled. I finished by telling him how I thought the dreams were set in the winter of 1844/45. For what seemed like a long time, we sat in silence at the table, me in an agony of anticipation, Jim deep in thought.

“Well,” I asked eventually, unable to contain myself any longer. “Do you know what's happening? Who is Sir John?”

Jim looked up, then slowly rose and fetched a book from the parlour. It was hardcover and looked quite old. Carefully, he laid it on the table between us and opened it to the collection of photographs in the centre. One was of a rather jovial man in an old-fashioned uniform. He was holding a hat in his left hand and a large brass telescope in his right. Underneath, the caption read:

“Commander James Fitzjames—Captain, H.M.S.
Erebus”.

“That's the guy in my dream!” I said, more loudly than I had intended. “Who is he?”

“Was
he,” corrected Jim. “H.M.S.
Erebus
and H.M.S.
Terror
were ships of an expedition that went to the Arctic in the 1840's.”

“The time's right,” I interrupted. “What did they do?”

Jim paused and looked thoughtfully at me for a long moment.

“They all died,” he said finally.

The words seemed to hang in the air between us. Again it was Jim who broke the silence.

“The expedition was led by a man who, as a youth, fought at Trafalgar and went on to become a famous Arctic explorer. His name was Sir John Franklin.”

The Franklin Expedition! The doomed men that Jim's ancestor had gone in search of! My dream character must have been trying to join them. Slowly, Jim turned to the previous page. There he was! Sir John, just as I remembered—the big ears, and an imposing uniform with the two buttons undone. Even in this grainy image, his nose looked swollen and his eyes were puffy. Sir John Franklin, on the very day I met him in my dream.
What does it mean?

I hadn't realized that I had spoken out loud until Jim answered my last question.

“I don't know,” he said, looking at me oddly. “I thought you had forgotten all those old stories I told you.”

“No, I haven't,” I replied, “and anyway, you never told me Franklin's first name or that he had a cold when his picture was taken. And what about George? Who is he? And all the details about London? How could I know all that?”

“I don't know. You used to read a lot. Perhaps bits from old books are coming back to you. The mind can work in very strange ways.”

“It's not my imagination,” I interrupted. “These dreams are real. They are telling me things I couldn't possibly have known. Something strange is happening.”

Jim looked at me seriously for a minute.

“Is everything all right at school? At home?”

I was hurt. Jim thought I was imagining it all! I had come for two reasons. I had hoped Jim could answer my questions, but I also hoped he would listen, understand, and help me figure out what was going on. But, instead, he was dismissing what I said as a bad dream brought on by stress or bad grades.

I mumbled an excuse about having to get back home and left. The walk back to the road was much longer and colder than on the way out. I began to kick myself for leaving so quickly. Jim was just trying to help. But what bothered me was that he had struck a nerve. Things were not going well at home. Mom and Dad had been arguing a lot recently and were so wrapped up in their own worries that they had even less time for me. I didn't want to tell Jim about Mom and Dad's fights; he didn't need to worry too.

When I got back to town I got out my skates and went down to the rink to shoot the puck around, but my heart wasn't in it and I soon gave up. As the day wore on I became more restless. What I had learned from Jim was always in my mind. I wasn't tired, but I went to bed early and forced myself to go to sleep. Maybe tonight….

The docks and embankments along the Thames River are lined with cheering people. Flags are flying everywhere and the harbour is full of little boats. The air is thick with music and the sound of horns. The bright spring sun glistens off the rows of medals on the chests of those who have come to see us off. Sir James Ross is here, as well as Colonel Edward Sabine of the Royal Society. Amid the chaos, our two ships are almost lost.

It is 10:30 on the morning of Monday the 19th of May, 1845 and we are setting off on our great adventure. There is not one person watching who expects anything but for us to return to a hero's welcome in a year or two. We will complete the Northwest Passage and be the first ships to sail around the top of the world. This should not be a difficult task. After all, there is only a sixty mile stretch of the passage unexplored along the coast of King William Land. We will collect a vast
amount of invaluable scientific information, from detailed magnetic readings to specimens of every type of plant, rock and animal we come across. We will surpass the achievements of James Ross and William Parry with this single exploit. We have the best ships, the most experienced crews and the best provisions ever to have been dedicated to an Arctic voyage. How can we possibly fail?

The
Erebus
leads the way through the throng of smaller vessels. She is not large and looks decidedly squat compared to some of the sleek yachts that have come to see us off. The mountains of equipment and supplies piled on her decks only add to this impression. Osmer, the purser, is standing behind me talking animatedly to anyone who will listen. As always, his conversation consists of little more than a list of the supplies we have on board. I have heard it a dozen times before: sixty tons of flour, thirty tons of salt meat, four tons of chocolate, three tons of tobacco, a ton each of tea, soap and candles, eight thousand cans of meat, soup and vegetables, over three thousand gallons of liquor, and ten live oxen. To prevent the dreaded scurvy, we also have over nine hundred gallons of lemon juice and one hundred seventy gallons of cranberries. We shall certainly eat well, but of greater interest to me are the seventeen hundred books in the ship's library. They shall feed my mind in the long hours of Arctic winter darkness.

Perhaps as important as the supplies we carry is the experience and knowledge contained in the heads of
our officers and crew. Sir John, of course, has spent as long in the Arctic as any man alive save the native inhabitants of the region. Captain Crozier on the
Terror
has been north twice before and speaks the local language passably well. He also commanded the
Terror
under Sir James Ross in the Antarctic. Lieutenant Gore was mate on the
Terror
when she went north and Osmer himself was up there twenty years ago. The ice masters and many of our crew know well what we are getting into from their time on whaling ships searching the waters of Baffin Bay.