The Broken Lands Read Online Free

other a plump leather pouch, from which shone the gleam of gold. Mirroring this in the background was the rigid fan of a rising sun, and around this on a perfect blue sea drifted the sculpted peaks and arches of impossible bergs. The man’s features were more Asiatic than Eskimo, Frobisher’s irrefutable evidence that he had at last located a waterway leading directly to the even greater blinding glow of Cathay.
    There were more recent tales, too: the tale, for instance, of Parry’s
carpenter fitting a wooden peg to an Eskimo he encountered who had lost his leg, and then meeting the man’s daughter years later to discover that her father was dead and that she carried the stump with her everywhere she went, convinced that his spirit still lived within it.

TWO
    T he small steamboat approached the shore and the governor’s man cut the engine. Its noise faded in a long, faltering rasp just as the mound of Lively appeared. Behind them lay a thin unbroken ribbon of black over the open water. Ahead, the governor and his officials awaited them on the shore, much as they had awaited them in the settlement four days earlier, and beyond this welcoming party the lights of a single large building were visible against the darkness of the land.
    Reid was the first to leap overboard, followed by Fitzjames.
    “Please, please, wait for my man,” came a voice from the shore, stopping them both. It was the governor, his hands cupped to his mouth.
    They turned to the man at the tiller, who had said nothing to any of them throughout their hour-long journey. He was a half-breed, Eskimo mother, white father. He left the tiller and came forward to cast out a rope to Reid and Fitzjames. He then leapt down himself, using his broad back to brace the impact of the boat upon the shore.
    “Our thanks,” Fitzjames said to him, stamping the water from his boots.
    The man glanced at him, but still said nothing. His eyes seemed sunk beneath his brow, his eyelids hooded, so that most of the time he gave the impression of having them closed.
    “Make way for an officer and a gentleman,” Harry Goodsir shouted, jumping down, joined then by Vesconte and Gore, by Little,
Irving and Hodgson, and finally by Surgeon Stanley and Walter Fairholme, leaving only Franklin and Crozier sitting in the beached steamer.
    “Hard to say which of them enjoys his entrance the most,” Goodsir whispered to Fitzjames.
    “Oh, our man Francis Rawdon Moira,” Edward Little answered beneath his breath. “He’d been waiting in his uniform a full two hours before our Charon here called for us.”
    Only Fitzjames glanced at the mute navigator to see if he had overheard or understood the remark, but the man was now at some distance from them, pulling tight the rope he had looped through an iron ring in the beach. Fitzjames watched as he completed this task and then approached the governor, as though awaiting further instructions. He saw the governor deftly flick him on the chest with the white gloves he held.
    Whereas his officials again wore gray or brown suits with their hats in their hands, looking like a party of nervous clerks about to be presented to a feared employer, the governor himself wore a tunic covered from throat to hem with an impressive pattern of embroidery and ribbons, and he carried a plumed helmet which, at that distance, looked like a hen cradled in his arm.
    “My nation salutes your nation,” he said loudly. “One proud seafaring country to another.”
    “Again,” Gore whispered to those around him.
    “I thank you,” Franklin said, stepping forward to shake his hand. One of the officials carried a tray upon which stood a dozen glasses, and at a signal from the governor the man came forward.
    “A toast to your enterprise,” the governor said, taking two of the glasses and handing one each to Franklin and Crozier. “May it achieve the glory and the riches it so justly deserves. I trust my man made a swift and safe voyage with