Left to Die Page 9

  When Peter shook his friend’s hand, he took from him more than a warm farewell. He was also taking his friend’s name! John Lundrigan had sold his berth on the Newfoundland for fifty cents. Instead of sailing in the Newfoundland, John had arranged a berth aboard the ship Southern Cross. Peter Lamb signed his friend’s name both on the Newfoundland’s registry as well as on the required statement of pledge before boarding. Peter didn’t feel good about the deceit, but, eager to join the hunt, he told himself he hadn’t broken any real law. Truthfully, it was illegal to sign aboard a ship using someone else’s name, but he comforted himself in the knowledge that it was a common practice. Once aboard the vessel he figured he would be just one of the crew, as far as the ship’s officers were concerned. They rarely spoke to ordinary sealers, anyway. If the other sealers found out, they would never tell. They always looked after their own.

  One other such hopeful was John Antle. John was from St. John’s, barely fifteen years old, and had never been to the seal hunt before. He had tried and tried to secure a berth, going to the waterfront every day. He had even managed to talk to one of the owners of the sealing ships and had told him he was sixteen, but the man saw through his lie and refused him a berth. Aside from working aboard a small inshore fishing boat, slightly more than twenty feet long, young John had never been to sea, either. Antle loved the ocean and was fearless no matter the weather. Making for sea out through The Notch was all he had wanted. But now, the lure of the seal fishery, which was a rite of manhood among the outport youth of Newfoundland in 1914, was irresistible.

  Besides, he knew of another man who had stowed away the year before. After being discovered, he had been allowed to hunt seals just like the other sealers, and he had returned with money in his pocket. Antle had tried his best, but he couldn’t secure passage. Still, he was determined to board the SS Newfoundland no matter what. He just didn’t know how he was going to get up the gangway without being seen. John Antle had no ticket and the ship showed all evidence of preparing to leave.

  * * * * *

  There was another man who was reluctant to walk aboard the SS Newfoundland, but he wasn’t a sealer. Navigator Charles W. Green wasn’t wanted aboard and he knew it. Times were changing, and the effects of some of these changes were evident on the bridge of the SS Newfoundland. The island of Newfoundland was part of the dominion of the British Empire of King George V and had to abide by her rules, especially in matters naval. Everyone on the island considered it to be a nation unto itself, with its own government under elected Prime Minister Edward Morris, but Britannia still ruled these shores. According to the British Admiralty, all ships venturing upon the high seas were required to have on their bridge an officer who had been schooled in navigation and who had a master mariner’s ticket. The captain of the Newfoundland, Westbury Kean, had neither.

  Even the pull of old Abram Kean and his many associates, influential though they were, meant nothing to the British laws of the sea. And so Captain Charles Green was ordered by Harvey and Company, the owners of the Newfoundland, to report as navigator on board on March 9, in time to prepare himself in such matters as he might deem necessary for the voyage. He was also told in no uncertain terms that he was not to interfere in any way with the young captain in the usual operations of the ship. His role was strictly one of formality and nothing more. His interference would only be accepted in the unlikely event of an emergency.

  Green walked aboard the Newfoundland well after dark on the evening of her sailing. A few men scurried about her deck, some of them making room for him as he strode toward the bridge with as much confidence as he could muster. A winch cluttered, its steel dogs clinking into the teeth of its gears as it hoisted aboard the last of the ship’s gear. A faint, low rumble arose from the deck as he crossed, and when he stopped for a minute to observe the ship’s surroundings and get the smell of her, he felt a slight vibration beneath his feet. The boilers below decks were already fired to build up steam as he climbed the bridge ladder. The Newfoundland’s idling engine sent black smoke out of the funnel just abaft the bridge. Her one smokestack was huge and black, reaching to half the height of her mast. Several cables strained to support it and keep it upright. It looked ponderous and ugly, as if it had been pushed above her decks as an afterthought.

  Wes Kean didn’t turn around as his navigator entered. He stayed at the forward window, looking at the activity on deck. There was no welcome aboard, no friendly gesture at all from the skipper. Nor did Green offer any of his own, though he realized not acknowledging him would come as a blow to the younger man’s pride. Before long, the two men exchanged greetings and then fell silent. This token civility taken care of, Green resolved to keep to himself.

  Wes Kean had every right to feel slighted. He was a very capable skipper. Incredibly, at just twenty-nine years of age, he had already spent fourteen years at sea. Though this spring would be his fourth as captain aboard the SS Newfoundland, secretly he hated the ship. She was old, cumbersome to manoeuvre among the ice, underpowered, and she shuddered as if she would break apart every time her bows shouldered the ice pans aside.

  He had received his tutelage in seafaring and the seal hunt from one of the greatest seamen and sealing captains of them all, a man every sealer loved and hated: his father, Abram Kean. Wes knew the law regarding master tickets, but having Green aboard didn’t make him feel any better. He could box the compass by the time he was seventeen years old, and he could find his way around the ragged, treacherous island of Newfoundland in stormy gale or foggy night as much by natural instinct as by dead reckoning. He couldn’t shoot the stars with the graduated disc and pointer of the astrolabe—to make astronomical calculations of the celestial bodies, day or night, to find exactly where his ship was on the ocean—but Westbury Kean was still a good skipper. He treated his men fairly and had earned the respect of all who sailed with him.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want the extra help in navigation. In fact, he longed for a master’s ticket. It was the embarrassment of knowing that, without returning to school, he didn’t possess the education to achieve such a degree. It galled him to go back to book learning, even for a master’s ticket. He had hated school just as much on the day he left it as he had the day he had first went in, though that period had not been a long one. His father had returned to school and had earned his master’s certificate more than twenty years ago, when he was in his thirties, but Wes had rebelled against it. He felt he was qualified enough and didn’t need the stuffy learning like the book-smart man who had just stepped onto the deck of his ship.

  There was nothing stuffy about Charles W. Green. He had earned his smarts from a far different world than that of any nautical school. Green was a proven master mariner. He had been one for five years, and though he had spent just one spring at the ice as navigator aboard the Beothic, the Arctic floes were no stranger to him. He had three years of experience with the Canadian Government Service and had shipped aboard the SS Arctic as third and second officer from 1906 to 1909. He had endured the rigours and privations that come with wintering on Baffin Island’s Pond Inlet during the terrible winter of 1906-07.

  The very next year, 1908-09, Green was aboard the SS Arctic, which lay frozen in Winter Harbour on Melville Island, Northwest Territories. It was the fiercest of winters and Charles Green had proven his worth.

  On April 7, 1909, he led a party of seven men from Melville Island across McClure Sound to Banks Island, on the eastern edge of the Beaufort Sea. By the time the group had returned from Bay of God’s Mercy, Banks Island, they had spent an incredible forty-one days on the frozen Arctic wastes. They pulled komatiks loaded with their provisions and slept in canvas tents. They had sleeping bags made from sheepskin. The nights were so cold they had to cover their heads with the bags to keep from freezing. They discovered after a few nights out that breathing while inside the fleece bags caused moisture to collect, which froze solid and made the bags heav
y and unusable. They discarded them and carried on, sleeping under ship’s blankets. They survived primarily by drinking Bovril, a concentrated essence of beef, diluted with water and brought to a boil on a spirit stove. All of the men under Charles Green’s leadership returned to Melville Island unharmed.

  He shipped aboard the SS Kite to Greenland as her master for three years. In 1912 he was master of yet another vessel bound into the Arctic seas. This time it was the Neptune, sailing for Baffin Island with the Lucky Scott Expedition aboard.

  Scott was a wealthy American mining promoter and had so much success with the discovery of rare minerals he was considered lucky. Robert Janes of Newfoundland, who prided himself as being one of only a few prospectors in Newfoundland, had been on a recent voyage to Baffin Island. While fishing for salmon in Eclipse Sound, Janes told everyone, he dislodged with his boots a nugget of solid gold. Not only that, he boasted, but there were nuggets in many other places in the cold running water. News of Janes’s discovery reached Lucky Scott and an expedition to Baffin Island was arranged with a few others. When they reached Baffin Island, Robert Janes was their leader. Under his guidance they found not one trace of gold, but coal, and even that was of poor quality. Not feeling so lucky, Janes escaped the fury of Scott and the others by fleeing over the tundra of Baffin. With bullets whizzing all around him, Janes escaped.

  Charles Green was the captain who took the men off Baffin Island and returned them south. Inside the hold of the Neptune was a fortune, not of gold but of ivory and furs. Unknown to Green, all of it had been stolen. It was an expedition plagued with scandal—with treachery, thievery, and even murder—a blight on Arctic justice.

  Such was the man who was to share the bridge of the Newfoundland with her captain. Despite his credentials, he could not interfere with the normal running of the ship. Both men were easygoing and even-tempered, which was a good thing, for the SS Newfoundland was making final preparations for sea. She was about to get under way, navigated by a man who had a certificate to be her captain, but who took orders from one who did not.

  * * * * *

  Peter Lamb watched for his chance, and when a group of sealers went lively and laughing up the gangway to board the Newfoundland, he walked behind and laughed right along with them. No one noticed. Many young men were coming aboard for the first time, and it was the same every spring. No one even asked him his name. He jumped over her gunnel as quick as you please, stepped across her deck with the same confidence as the other sealers, and disappeared below. And as simple as that, Peter Lamb had boarded the Newfoundland under the guise of John Lundrigan.

  John Antle had been walking the waterfront of St. John’s since early that morning. He had spent a sleepless night, half in dread, half in anticipation of the seal hunt. He had had many chances to board the ship the day before—there was no security of any kind—but Antle reasoned that being caught aboard before she sailed would result in his immediate discharge from the vessel back onto the wharf. He decided to wait until the last minute and not risk being discovered until he was at sea. The first light of day found him walking, hands in pockets and head down like a thief, along by the ships being fitted for the voyage.

  Earlier, he had seen a man around his age go aboard the ship behind a bunch of noisy sealers. Maybe it was another stowaway, he thought. He noted the man had walked slowly to the gangway and then quite suddenly had jumped behind the sealers as if it were a split decision. The others had given no indication that they knew him. For a moment he considered doing the same thing, but he decided he would stick with his plan. He had thought it out for days and decided he would sneak aboard after dark.

  He had watched another man walk aboard the vessel earlier with a suitcase in his hand and climb the steps to the bridge. None of the sealers carried suitcases. This man was dressed in a greatcoat that came to his ankles, like most of the skippers wore, but it wasn’t Wes Kean. Someone had pointed out Kean to Antle before. The lights of the city came on, but they did nothing to illuminate the docks. John was glad of that. The Newfoundland was in near-total darkness for a while before a few dull lights appeared in her portholes. The lamps looked as though they needed cleaning. The ones aloft in her rigging could have passed for candles. Dozens of shadows stirred on deck, faintly outlined by the ship’s lamps and the men’s glowing pipe bowls and cigarette ends. The voices of the sealers who strolled on her deck came in low tones except when they laughed or coughed.

  John Antle, still dockside, caught the smell of food coming from the ship as some of the men went below. He waited, his duffle bag by his side. Presently the shapes of a couple of men were on her deck but no one was near the gangway. John figured that, after their supper was over, the sealers would be back on deck smoking and yarning again. Antle lived in the city and he knew that sealers would line the gunnels of the ship as they left port, day or night. He sped like a startled crackie across the narrow apron, the strap of his bag slung over his left shoulder sliding partway down his arm as he ran. He shouldered it again, tighter this time, and raced on. He slowed when he reached the bottom of the gangway and forced himself to run up soft and easy, to make as little noise as possible. Leaping over the gunnels of the Newfoundland, he landed like a bobcat, on the balls of his feet, and headed for his hiding place. He knew where he was going.

  Antle had heard that one of the first places the ship’s officers looked for stowaways was aboard the lifeboats, which were usually covered in heavy tarps. He would not risk hiding in such an obvious place. He would put up with the consequences after being discovered at sea, anything to go to the ice, but he would not take the chance of being discovered while still in port. The forward hatches of the Newfoundland were covered and battened down. The forward derricks were raised parallel to the foremast, indicating loading for that part of the vessel was complete. That part of the ship was also in plain view of anyone who might be looking out of the bridge windows.

  One of the after derricks was still pointing away from the mainmast and stretching horizontally over the wharf, as if waiting for one last load to swing aboard. One of the after hatches was open and there was no one around it. Antle walked aft toward it, forcing himself to walk at a casual pace, fearing he would attract attention. His heart was pounding against his chest as he reached the hatch coaming and peered down into the ship’s hold. At first he could see nothing, but he waited for a few moments to pass for his eyes to adjust. Barrels stood on their ends and boxes were stowed between them. Antle figured it would be no more than a three- or four-foot drop after lowering his body down. He sat on the edge of the coaming, swung his legs in over the edge, hung on by his arms for a second or two, and then let go. He landed on the edge of a barrel and twisted his ankle, but he didn’t let out a sound.

  Looking upwards through the open hatch, it seemed as though the light would give away his hiding place, but he knew it wouldn’t. Still, he scrambled over the stowed gear as fast as he could on his tender ankle. He had barely made it across the tops of piles of provisions, settling himself between the hull of the ship and a bag of what smelled like oakum, when the after winch started up again. It was followed by the clatter of gears and shouts coming from a couple of the crew. While he watched, he saw the head of the jib come into his view, its top stay whining through its tackle, and then it stopped. The light of the hatch was suddenly blocked by a load of goods swinging in a loading net. Antle watched as the whip line was pulled tight across the hatch opening, where it steadied and guided the load in place. The top stay tackle whined again and the load was gently lowered down into the hold. From above, the mainstay of the derrick was released and the end of it fell down with a thump. Its standing part was rapidly pulled back through the bights of the netting, leaving Antle alone with the load, which gave him only a dim view of topside.

  He could hear the derrick swing again and he thought another load was coming aboard. For a moment he was afraid of being crushed, but the hatch cove
r dropped with a thud and he heard someone hammering it in place. Now he was in complete darkness. He didn’t like it much, but he knew there had to be a door to the after bulkhead somewhere. The main thing was that he was safe aboard the ship. He was a stowaway. He had done it! It hadn’t been difficult at all. But what John Antle didn’t know was that this was not the SS Newfoundland’s final port of call. She had to make another stop at Wesleyville, and if he were discovered, Wes Kean would put him ashore there in that isolated seaport without a second thought, leaving him a penniless stranger 300 miles from home.

  8

  For days before it appears, the people on the northeast coast of Newfoundland can see the glow on the horizon above the ice floes. Sealers call it the “ice blink.” The wind is raw and the bays are filled with northern slob, easily differentiated from local bay slob by men who know the ways of the ice. The Great White Plain is bearing south at a steady gait, but now the plain is different. The quiet of the ice has changed, for now it is spattered with stains of blood, and it cradles the countless young of the harp females. Continuing without stop day and night over a two-day period, they have given birth to their pups by the hundreds of thousands.

  From the dilated genitals of the female her pup emerges as she lies on the ice bearing the pangs of birth in silence, her body extended with contraction. Following it is the clear, yellowish placenta, flecked with the blood of birth. Immediately the new mother twists and squirms around, tearing the umbilical cord out of her body, physically separating herself from her young forever. She sniffs loudly at her newborn’s nose, pushing aside its filmy caul, identifying its scent and then noses the crying pup to her swollen teats. The pup cries all the more, confused, afraid, hungry, and nearly blind. So human-like are the cries of the pups, seal hunters refer to them as cradle wails.