her bit. A case of brandy from a Wilmington banker, volumes of Thackeray from a schoolmaster in Doylestown, heaps of hand-knitted socks. His hands bristled with lists, each only partly checked-off: never mind those puddings, he thought. Where were the last two hundred pounds of pemmican? How had half the meat biscuit been stowed with the candles and the lamp oil? And where were the last members of the crew? In his pocket he had another list, the final roster:
| ZECHARIAH VOORHEES, Commander | AMOS TYLER, Sailing Master |
| COLIN TAGLIABEAU, First Officer | GEORGE FRANCIS, Second Officer |
| JAN BOERHAAVE, Surgeon | ERASMUS D. WELLS, Naturalist |
FREDERICK SCHUESSELE, Cook
THOMAS FORBES, Carpenter
Seamen:
ISAAC BOND, NILS JENSEN, ROBERT CAREY,
BARTON DESOUZA, IVAN HRUSKA,
FLETCHER LAMB, SEAN HAMILTON
Fifteen of them, all hands counted. Captain Tyler, Mr. Tagliabeau, and Mr. Francis, who together would have charge of the ship’s daily operations, were experienced whaling men. Dr. Boerhaave had a medical degree from Edinburgh; Schuessele had been cook for a New York packet line; Forbes was an Ohio farm boy who’d never been to sea, but who could fashion anything from a few odd scraps of wood. Of the seven unevenly trained seamen, Bond had reported for duty drunk, and Hruska and Hamilton were still missing.
Their companions, invisible in the hold, waited for directions—waited, Erasmus feared, for him to fail. He was forty years old and had a history of failure; he’d sailed, when hardly more than a boy, on a voyage so thwarted it became a national joke. Since then his life’s work had come to almost nothing. No wife, no children, no truly close friends; a sister in a difficult situation. What he had now was this pile of goods, and a second chance.
Still pondering the puddings, he heard laughter and looked up to see Zeke hanging from the rigging like a flag. His long arms were stretched above a thatch of golden hair; as he laughed his teeth were gleaming in his mouth; he was twenty-six and made Erasmus feel like a fossil. Everything about this moment was tied to Zeke. The hermaphrodite brig about to become their home had once been part of Zeke’s family’s packet line; with his father’s money, Zeke had ordered oak sheathing spiked to her sides as protection against the ice, iron plates wrapped around her bows, tarred felt layered between the double-planked decks. In charge of the expedition—and hence, Erasmus reminded himself, of him—Zeke had chosen Erasmus to gather the equipment and stores surrounding him now in such bewildering heaps.
Where was all this to go? Salt beef and pork and barrels of malt, knives and needles for barter with the Esquimaux, guns and ammunition, coal and wood, tents and cooking lamps and woolen clothing, buffalo skins, a library, enough wooden boards to house over the deck in an emergency. And what about the spirit thermometers, or the four chronometers, the microscope, and all the stores for his specimens: spirits of wine, loose gauze, prenumbered labels and glass jars, arsenical soap for preserving bird skins, camphor and pillboxes for preserving insects, dissecting scissors, watch glasses, pins, string, glass tubes and sealing wax, bungs and soaked bladders, brain hooks and blowpipes and egg drills, a sweeping net…too many things.
Erasmus stroked the wolf skins his youngest brother had sent from the Utah mountains. Just then he would have given anything for an hour’s conversation with Copernicus, who understood what it meant to leave a life. But Copernicus was gone, still, again, and the wolf skins were handsome, but where would they fit? The sledges, specially constructed after Zeke’s own design, had arrived two weeks late and wouldn’t fit into the space Erasmus had planned for them; and he couldn’t arrange the scientific equipment in any reasonable way. Every inch of the cabin was full, and they were not yet in it.
On the Narwhal Zeke slipped his feet from the stay, hung by one hand for a second, and then dropped lightly to the deck. Soon he joined Erasmus among the wharfs clutter, moving the theodolite and uncovering a crate of onions. “These look nice,” he said. “Do we have enough?”
While they went over the provision lists yet again, Mr. Tagliabeau walked up with the news that their cook had deserted. He’d last been seen two days earlier, Mr. Tagliabeau reported. In the company of a red-headed woman who’d been haunting the docks.
Zeke, his hands deep in onions, only laughed. “I saw that hussy,” he said. “What a flashing eye she had! But that it should be Schuessele who got her, with that monstrous beard of his…”
The wind tore one of Erasmus’s lists away and sent it spinning through the masts. “We’re leaving in three days!” he shouted. Later he’d remember this display with embarrassment. “Three days. Where are we going to find another cook?”
“There’s no need to get excited,” Zeke said. “The world is full of cooks. Mr. Tagliabeau, if you’d be so kind as to take a small recruiting tour among the taverns…”
“Wonderful,” Erasmus said. “Do find us some criminal, some drunken sot.”
They might have quarreled had not a group of young men dressed in Lincoln-green frock coats, white pantaloons, and straw hats trailing black ostrich feathers come dancing up the wharf. The United Toxophilites, Erasmus saw, making a surprise farewell to Zeke. The sight made him groan. Once he’d been part of this group of archers; once this had all seemed charming. Resurrecting the old sport of archery, flourishing the arrows retrieved from those first, magical trips to the Plains—as a boy, he’d participated in a meet that drew two thousand guests. But he’d lost his taste for such diversions after the Exploring Expedition, and he’d let his association with the Toxies lapse. Zeke, though, was part of the new young crowd that had taken over the club.
“Voorhees!” the Toxies cried. All around them, crews from other ships stared. “Voorhees! Voorhees!”
They gave Zeke three great cheers, hauled him down the length of the wharf, and formed a circle around him. Erasmus received courteous nods but no recognition. He listened to the mocking, high-spirited speeches, which likened Zeke to a great Indian chief setting off on a buffalo hunt. One youngster with a shock of red hair presented Zeke with a chalice; an elflike boy offered a patent-leather belt from which dangled a grease box and a tassel. Zeke accepted his gifts with a smile and a handshake, thanking each man by name and showing the poise that had made Erasmus’s sister call him a natural leader.
Yet what had Zeke done? So very little, Erasmus thought as he eyed the grease box. A few years of sailing from Philadelphia to Dublin and Hull on the ships of his father’s packet line, investigating currents and ocean creatures, although often, as he’d admitted to Erasmus, he’d been too seasick to work. Other than that all his learning came from books. As a boy he’d insinuated his way into Erasmus’s family, through their fathers’ friendship and an interest in natural history. Now they were further bound by Lavinia. But that Erasmus should be standing in Zeke’s shadow, setting off for the arctic under the command of this untried youth—again he was amazed by his decision.
Zeke, as if he heard what Erasmus was thinking, broke through the circle of green-coated men, seized Erasmus’s arm, and drew him into the center. “I couldn’t do this without Erasmus Darwin Wells,” he cried. “Three cheers for our chief naturalist, my right hand!”
Erasmus blushed. Was this what he wanted? A kind of worship, mixed with disdain; as if Zeke wanted to emulate him, but without his flaws. But exactly this grudging caution had stranded him alone in midlife, and he pushed
