Landfalls (24 page)

The wind finally shifted, and at slack water on the afternoon of July 30 the order to weigh anchor was shouted over from the
Boussole
. More than a fortnight had passed since the tragedy. They had been in the bay almost a month. The crew let out a collectively held breath when the
Boussole
, going first, passed safely through the narrow entrance. Langle piloted the
Astrolabe
out himself, grateful for a task to occupy him as they left the bay.

As they passed the spit on the starboard side, he looked over. He had walked that beach in search of survivors or bodies or wreckage, and found instead a dead gull, a rock for his son, and a girl who stole his canteen. He knew the girl would not be there again but looked for her anyway.

Of course she was not there. But standing on all fours at the point, facing the ship, was a large brown bear. Many of the men had seen bears onshore, gorging themselves on salmon along the streams, but this was the first one Langle had ever seen. Two weeks earlier the sight would have thrilled him; he would have described it in a letter home, urging Georgette to tell Charles that his father had seen the greatest beast of North America. But the creature appeared indifferent to the sight of two frigates passing before it, and Langle felt he would like nothing better than to shoot it right there where it stood. He turned back to the wheel to make a small correction, then looked back toward the point again, but they had now passed through, and the bear disappeared from view.

 

SIX

FOG

North American Coast, August–September 1786

White everywhere. Mist so thick it obliterates colors and edges. Up on the quarterdeck, our captain looks like an artist's afterthought. He stands on the port side, gazing out toward the North American coastline. But it's all one whiteness—sea, sky, and land. We can hear the flagship's bell but cannot see her.

I climb partway up the steps and wait until he notices me.

“Monsieur Lavaux,” he says, inviting me up. When I reach him, I see his face, drawn and thin. Fran
ç
ois is right: the captain hasn't been sleeping or eating.

Of course, all of us have lost sleep and weight since Alaska.

“How is your patient?” he says.

I shake my head. “It won't be long.”

One year into the campaign, and I have but
one
patient. That's never happened to me before. When I served under Admiral d'Orvilliers during the American War, the fleet lost almost a thousand men to dysentery and typhus. A
thousand
. In less than four months.

We've had no new sickness since leaving France. My current patient, a servant with one of our young lieutenants, was already ill when he joined the expedition. I still don't know by what subterfuge the lieutenant managed to sneak him aboard. The servant will be our first death from disease. I might reasonably feel proud of this. But twenty-one men drowned three weeks ago—eleven from our ship, ten from the flagship. The calamity has made pride impossible.

“And the rest of the men?” the captain asks.

“Minor complaints—a sprained finger, one deeply lodged splinter, a few colds. Their spirits are still subdued, of course.”

The captain says nothing.

“Sir,” I finally venture. “May I offer you anything? A sleeping draught, perhaps?”

The captain turns to me, searches my face for a moment. “No, I thank you, Monsieur Lavaux,” he finally says. He turns back to studying the fog and its phantoms.

Below, I make my way to the cabin of our chaplain, Father Receveur. He's waiting with Fran
ç
ois, who's stooping awkwardly in a corner.

“Well?” the priest says.

“He looks exhausted,” I acknowledge. “But he refused my offer of a sleeping draught.”

The priest nods, unsurprised. “Look what else Fran
ç
ois brought,” he says, pointing to papers spread out over his cot.

He holds up a lantern for me as I look over the crumpled sheets, each containing just one or two lines of writing:

My Lord—

My Dear Lord— It is with great regret

My Dear Lord, it is with the greatest regret that I write to report

My Lord, it is with a heavy heart that I write to inform you of the
death deaths
death of your sons.

I draw back. “We shouldn't be looking at this.” I turn to Fran
ç
ois. “Where did you get it?”

The boy tries to shrink back and hits his head on the shelf over the priest's bed.

Father Receveur interjects. “It's his job to sweep up the captain's cabin,” he says. “These papers were strewn over the captain's floor this morning.”

“Well, he obviously meant to discard them,” I say.

“He's writing to the La Borde brothers' father,” the priest says.

“I can see that.”

“The Marquis de La Borde—”

“Yes.”

“—one of the richest, most powerful—”

“I
know
who he is.”

“You know about the promise the captain made him?”

“I do.” I look back at the scraps. “A terrible letter to have to write. No wonder he hasn't been sleeping.” I turn to Fran
ç
ois. “Has he finished it?”

The boy blushes before speaking. “He has some sealed letters on his desk,” he says. “I don't know who they're for.” He blushes again, and then I remember: the boy cannot read.

“What can we do?” I say.

“I don't know,” the priest says.

It's pleasing to hear the chaplain say for once that he does not know something.

In the morning I make my daily tour of the ship, greeting the men, looking and listening for signs of illness. On deck, I can't help but regard the fog as a miasma that might infect us all. The officers murmur that we've advanced only sixteen leagues in three days and complain of the worthlessness of the Spanish charts on which they're obliged to rely. Alas, I have no remedy for frustration. Midafternoon, a break in the mist allows them to get their bearings and observe the lay of the land as it spreads southward before us. But no sooner do we approach the shore than we're surrounded again—clouds, rain, then a pallid, clinging mist in which we are becalmed for two days.

The only change is in my dying patient. He wakes in greater pain each morning, his breathing more labored, weeping to discover himself still alive. I administer laudanum—more and more each day—and try to ply him with spoonfuls of beef broth, which he ingests less and less of each day. He asks me to bleed him. In my experience, men who are bled die faster. Perhaps I should accede to his request.

The young lieutenant, his master, is busier now than ever, as he must make up for the loss of three officers in Alaska. But he spends a few hours each day by his servant's side.

“I think he's better today, Monsieur Lavaux,” he says, looking at me, eager for confirmation.

His servant lies insensible on the pallet, his feverish skin looking more like rain-beaded marble than the sheath of a living man. But I don't disabuse the young lieutenant of his hope.

Fran
ç
ois is waiting for me outside of my cabin. “He's still not sleeping or eating,” he says.

“Who?”

“The
captain
,” he says, eyebrows raised in impatience. “And I found more of these.” He offers me a fistful of wastepaper.

I uncrumple one. An ashy bootprint over the handwriting:

Please understand, My Lord, there was no wind that morning, nor a cloud in the sky. The water of the bay was like glass.

“You shouldn't be showing these to anyone, Fran
ç
ois.”

“I'm not showing them to ‘anyone,'” he cries. “I'm showing them to
you
.” He bows his head, embarrassed by his own vehemence.

“What can I do?” I say.

He bites his lower lip. “I was wondering.” He clears his throat. “Could you give
me
the sleeping draught—just a little—and— and— I could put a few drops in his water at night.”

I stare at the boy, horrified and amused and impressed.

“He always drinks water at night,” he adds.

When he leaves, he ducks his head to clear the doorway. He's grown tall in the year since we left France. Someone needs to teach him how to shave.

At last, a clear day with light, variable winds. I watch our captain and the young lieutenant work together to determine the sun's altitude then check the ship's chronometers. Father Receveur, who imagines himself a savant, joins them, but he spends more time looking at the captain than at the sky. Another officer is occupied draughting the contours and visible high points on land. The sailors take advantage of the sun to clean: Some swab the decks while others do laundry. Clothes flutter from the lines like comic signal flags. The flagship is in hailing distance off the starboard bow. Her outlines are so clear now it's hard to imagine we couldn't see her this time yesterday.

Father Receveur joins me on deck.

“How is he?” I say.

He nods. “Fine, I think,” he says. “Everyone looks happier today. Even the animals.” He indicates the three sheep we have left from our time in Chile.

“Spoken like a true Franciscan.”

He spreads his arms out before himself. “As you see,” he says, then adds: “I wonder if people recover from grief more quickly in warmer climes.”

“I was wondering the same.” In fact, I'd been enumerating in my mind the needed elements: light, warmth, visibility, colors.

“Our captain looks better rested too.”

“Mm. Yes,” I say. I do not confess to him my arrangement with Fran
ç
ois.

Just before nightfall, a strong wind from the west-northwest pushes before it a wall of white that overtakes the ships in minutes. We also encounter strong crosscurrents suggestive of a nearby bay. I've sailed enough to know the risks: we may be driven ashore and run aground, or driven into a gulf and embayed. As expected, a hail from the flagship and a command shouted across to veer back out to sea. Before long we are pitching about in the relative safety of the open ocean.

The servant dies during the night. In the morning, I wake the young lieutenant, who weeps when I tell him. He'd still believed the man might recover. I used to think that people suffered more over sudden, unexpected deaths than over long, protracted ones, but I no longer think so. Grief always lands heavily.

I make my way to the captain's cabin. He calls “Come in!” but his face falls when he sees me. “Is he dead?” he asks.

I ask when we might expect to make landfall for a burial. Not for a month, he tells me. Not till we reach Monterey. He absently places a hand on what looks like a stack of correspondence.

“I'm afraid it means another condolence letter, sir.”

He takes his hand back and looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “Not at all,” he says. “This man was not my responsibility.” It's the young lieutenant, he says, who has the difficult letter to write.

“Of course,” I say. We should bury the man at sea, I tell him. This practice, common in French ships, of keeping corpses on board till they can be buried on land, is repugnant and insalubrious.

He agrees, then instructs one of his officers to find a carpenter and sailmaker to help the young lieutenant prepare his servant's body. An hour later the captain arrives on deck, hails the flagship through the mist to report that we've had a death on board, then summons all hands for the service. Father Receveur has the perfect, sonorous voice for the office. The fog renders everything and everyone less corporeal; it's as if the priest were consigning us all to the deep. But it's the servant's body that's dropped overboard. He vanishes before we hear the splash, the mist swallowing him whole before he hits the water. The captain runs a hand roughly across his face as he turns from the burial of the man who was not his responsibility.

For the first time in my long career as a naval surgeon, I am without patients.

Fran
ç
ois finds me again. “He's still at it,” he says, clutching more pages.

My Lord, I hardly need tell you of your sons' superior qualities as officers. Had they been spared, they would have had brilliant careers.

Indeed, I begin to wonder how I can come home when they cannot.

“I need more laudanum,” Fran
ç
ois says.

“Shh!” I command. Our cabins' walls may be made of thick planks, but there are gaps. I fix the boy with what I hope is a hard stare. “You're not using it yourself, are you?”

He shakes his head, eyes wide with surprise and insult.

“Is he eating?”

“Mostly broth and bread.”

“His cook should—”

“It's what he
asks
for, Monsieur Lavaux.”

Laudanum and broth. The consumptive servant's last diet.

“You have to
do
something, Monsieur Lavaux,” the boy says. “He's going to die.”

“Nonsense,” I say sharply. “The captain is in perfect health.”

But I see no sign of the captain for several days. The officers don't say anything in my hearing about it, but I sense among them an underlying anxiety.

For a week, we alternate between white calms and white gales.

Then, a clearing. The crew pours onto the deck, starved for sunlight. We can see for leagues in every direction. Great snowbound peaks in the eastern distance. Lush green islands dotting the coastline. A bay opens before us, too deep to see to the other end. The officers note its position, but we sail on without exploring it, our orders to reach Monterey before mid-September. Father Receveur joins me again at the rail.