The Signature of All Things

heard beasts howling in the Arctic night. Every dry item he owned became soaked, and then iced. He watched his beard grow in. Sparse as it was, it still collected icicles. His dinner froze to his plate before he could eat it. He did not complain. He did not want it reported back to Sir Joseph Banks that he had ever complained. He traded his wolf hide for a pair of snowshoes. He watched Mr. Anderson, the ship’s surgeon, die and be buried at sea in thedreariest prospect a man could ever imagine—a frozen world of constant night. He watched sailors volley rounds of cannon fire at sea lions on shore, for sport, until there was not a creature left alive on that beach.
    He saw the land the Russians called Elaskah. He helped make beer out of spruce pine, which the sailors hated, but it was all they had to drink. He saw Indians who lived in dens not one degree more comfortable than the dwellings of the animals they hunted and ate, and he met Russians, stranded at a whaling station. He overheard Captain Cook remark of the leading Russian officer (a tall, handsome blond man), “He is clearly a gentleman of good family.” Everywhere, it seemed, even in this dismal tundra, it was important to be a gentleman of good family. In August, Captain Cook gave up. He could find no Northwest Passage, and the Resolution was already blocked in by cathedrals of icebergs. They reversed course and headed south.
    They barely stopped until they reached Hawaii. They ought never to have gone to Hawaii. They would have been safer starving in the ice. The kings of Hawaii were angry, and the natives were thieving and aggressive. The Hawaiians were not Tahitians—not gentle friends—and moreover, there were thousands of them. But Captain Cook needed fresh water, and had to remain in port until the holds were once more filled. There was much looting by the natives and much punishment by the English. Guns were fired, Indians were wounded, chiefs were appalled, threats were exchanged. Some of the men said that Captain Cook was unraveling, becoming more brutal, exhibiting more theatrical temper tantrums, and more enraged indignation, at every theft. Still, the Indians kept stealing. It could not be permitted. They pried the nails right out of the ship. Boats were stolen, and weapons, too. More guns were fired and more Indians were killed. Henry did not sleep for days in vigilance. Nobody slept.
    Captain Cook struck out on land, wishing for an audience with the chiefs, to appease them, but he was met instead by hundreds of furious Hawaiians. Inside of a moment, the crowd became a mob. Henry watched as Captain Cook was killed, pierced through the breast by a native spear and clubbed over the head, his blood mixing with the waves. In one instant, the great navigator was no more. His body was dragged away by natives. Later that night, as a final insult, an Indian in a canoe threw a chunk of Captain Cook’s thigh on board the Resolution.
    Henry watched the English sailors burn the entire settlement in retribution. The English sailors could scarcely be held back from murdering every Indian man, woman, and child on the island. The heads of two Indians were severed and put on pikes—and there would be more of this, the sailors promised, until Captain Cook’s body was returned for decent burial. The next day, the rest of Cook’s corpse arrived on the Resolution , missing his vertebrae and feet, which were never recovered. Henry watched as the remains of his commander were buried at sea. Captain Cook had never spoken a word to Henry, and Henry—who had followed Banks’s advice—had never let himself be seen by Cook. But now Henry Whittaker was alive, and Captain Cook was not.
    He thought they might return to England after this disaster, but they did not. A man named Mr. Clerke became captain. They still had their mission—to try again at the Northwest Passage. When summer returned, they sailed back north once more, into that awful cold. Henry was pelted with ash and pumice from a volcano. Every fresh vegetable had long ago been consumed, and they drank brackish water. Sharks followed the ship, to dine off the slop from the latrines. He and Mr. Nelson recorded eleven new species of polar duck, and ate nine of them. He saw a giant white bear swim past the ship, paddling with lazy menace. He watched Indians tie themselves into small canoes covered with fur, and navigate the waters as if they and their boats were one animal. He watched the Indians run on