Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen Goodser

Seventy degrees five minutes north latitude, ninety-eight degrees twenty-three minutes west longitude June 1847 Private Diary of Dr. Harry Goodser: 1847 ### As Stanley and I stripped the wounded Eskimo man naked, Stanley reminded me that the man still had a talisman.A flat and smooth stone, smaller than my fist, shaped like a white bear. It seems that it is not carved out, but formed naturally. The surface is smoothed by the thumb. Neck, thick, outstretched legs, live bear walking forward.I saw this amulet when I was examining the injured man on the ice field, but I didn't think it was a problem at the time.

The bullet fired from the private Pilkington's musket entered the aborigine's chest less than an inch below the amulet, pierced the muscle between his third and fourth ribs, grazed the upper rib slightly, and then passed through. The left lung, lodged in his spine, damaged his nerves. I can't save him.According to the previous examination, if I tried to remove the bullet, he would die immediately; on the other hand, I couldn't stop the bleeding in his lungs, but I did my best, and the Eskimo was carried to the Stanley ship doctor. And I set up the operating room in the bed area.After returning to the boat yesterday, Stanley and I probed his front and rear wounds with the most ruthless instruments for half an hour, and slashed open them until we found the bullet in the spine and confirmed that he was as we expected, Impossible to live too long.

But this unusually tall, muscular gray-haired savage apparently didn't want our predictions to come true.He was still alive, continuing to breathe out of his ruptured, bloody lungs, and coughing up blood.He continued to stare at us with his disturbingly light eyes, watching our every move. At Stanley's suggestion, Dr. Macdonald also came from the Terror, and took the Eskimo girl for examination in an alcove behind the bed area, which we separated with a blanket as a curtain.I believe Stanley the ship's doctor didn't really want McDonald to check on the girl, he just wanted her to be called out of the hospital bed area while we were busy checking her husband or father's bloody wounds...seems like this Patients and girls had no particular sense of blood or wounds that would have instantly fainted any London lady or surgeon-in-training.

Speaking of fainting, Stanley and I had just finished examining the dying Eskimo's wounds when Sir John Franklin and two of the crew were helping Charles Best (who was said to have fainted in Sir John's stateroom) Just walked in.We asked those two people to put Best on the hospital bed aside, and I only checked briefly for a minute to list the reasons for his fainting: 1. Extremely tired, each of us who participated in Guoer's reconnaissance team was constantly running around 1. After ten days of starvation (the last two days and two nights on ice, with almost nothing to eat except raw bear meat), there will be such a situation; drink, so the stupid method of chewing ice and snow directly not only failed to replenish the water, but also consumed the original water in the body); 3. There is another reason that is very obvious to me, but the officers who asked him Didn't even see it.Poor Best stood reporting to the captains, with seven of his eight wool coats still on, and they gave him only a moment to remove his great blood-stained overcoat.After ten consecutive days and ten nights of activities on the ice where the average temperature is close to zero, the warmth of the Erebus was already unbearable for me. When I got to the bed area, I took off my clothes to only two layers.For Best, of course the temperature in the cabin made him unbearable faster.

We assured Sir John that Best would recover, gave him the smelling salts, and he was almost up and about, and then Sir John looked at the Eskimo patient with a slightly disgusted look, lying on his bed, bloodstained His chest and belly were down because Stanley and I were probing his back for the bullet.Will he survive, our Commander-in-Chief asked? "Not long, Sir John," said Stephen Samuel Stanley. My face twitched hearing them say that in front of patients.Doctors usually use neutral Latin when referring to the most pessimistic assessments in front of dying patients, but I knew right away that this Eskimo could not possibly understand English.

"Turn him over so he is face up," ordered Sir John. We did so carefully, and though the pain was worse than torture for the gray-haired native, he didn't make a sound.He was conscious when we probed him.His gaze was fixed on the face of our expedition commander. Sir John leaned towards him, speaking slowly and loudly, as if he were a deaf child or an idiot.He asked loudly, "You...are...who?" The Eskimo looked up at Sir John. "What's your... name?" cried Sir John. "Which... race are you...?" The dying man did not answer. Sir John shook his head in disgust, though I don't know whether it was the open Eskimo chest wound or his native stubbornness that repelled Sir John.

"What about the other native?" Sir John asked Stanley. The chief ship doctor was busy pressing the wound with both hands and bandaging it with a bloody bandage. Even if he couldn't stop the bleeding completely, he hoped to reduce the amount of blood gushing from the savage's lungs.He nodded towards the alcove curtain. "Dr. MacDonald is with her, Sir John." Sir John stepped roughly through the curtain of blankets.I heard a stutter and a few broken words, and then our commander-in-chief reappeared.He came out backwards, his face so bright red that I almost thought our sixty-one-year-old commander-in-chief had suffered a stroke.

Then Sir John's red face paled with shock. Only then did it occur to me that the young woman inside must have been naked just now.I had glimpsed the alcove a few minutes earlier through the half-open curtain, and I noticed the girl nod when MacDonald gestured for her to take off her coat (her bearskin sweater).After taking off her heavy coat, she was left with nothing above her waist. I was busy tending the dying man on the table, and I still noticed that it was a good way to keep warm under the loose furs, compared to the many layers of woolen jackets worn by each member of poor Lieutenant Goer's sled team. This warming effect is much better.Wearing nothing under fur or animal hair keeps the body warm and cool enough if necessary (such as when working hard) because sweat is released from the body quickly and is covered by wolf fur. Or the fur of bearskin absorbs.Conversely, the sweaters we England wear get drenched with sweat almost immediately and never get a chance to actually dry out.As long as we stop walking or pulling sleds, sweaters will quickly freeze and lose their insulating effect.By the time we got back to the boat, I was pretty sure I was carrying almost twice as much weight on my back as I had on the way out.

"I'll... see her again at a more convenient time," stammered Sir John, and stepped back. Captain Sir John Franklin looked trembling.Whether it was the young woman's unclothed, Edenic carcass that thrilled his senses or whether he saw something else in the alcove of the bed area that made him shiver, I'm not sure.He left the operating room without another word. After a while, McDonald called me into the back alcove.The girl—the young woman, I had noted her sexuality earlier, although it had been scientifically proven that the females of savage tribes enter puberty earlier than young ladies in civilized societies, and much earlier.She had already put on her thick fur coat and sealskin trousers.Dr. McDonald looked a little anxious, even agitated, and when I asked him what was wrong, he gestured for the Eskimo girl to open her mouth.Then he held up his lantern, focused the light with a convex lens, and asked me to see it for myself.

Her tongue was cut off near the base.There's a little bit left, though, which I think is enough for her to swallow and chew most of her food, and Macdonald agrees.But, so it seems, she is absolutely incapable of making complex sounds (if any Eskimo language can be considered complex).That's an old scar, not a recent one. I admit I turned my head away in fear.Who would do that to a small child?Why do you want to do this?But Dr. McDonald gently corrected me when I used the word "truncate." "Look again, Dr. Goodser." His voice was very soft. "It doesn't look like it was cut by circumcision, and it doesn't look like it was cut with primitive tools such as stone knives. The poor girl's The tongue was bitten off when she was very young, and the broken place is so close to the root of the tongue, it is impossible for her to bite it herself."

I took a step away from the woman. "Is there anything else wrong with her?" I said in Latin, as I was used to.I have read reports of some barbaric practices in the Darklands and the ###religion world where they are said to perform brutal circumcision on their women in a parody of what the Hebrews did to their boys. "No." McDonald replied. I thought for a moment that I knew why Sir John was suddenly pale and evidently frightened.But when I asked Macdonald if he had told the commander in chief about this observation, the ship's doctor assured me he hadn't.He said Sir John went into the alcove, saw the Eskimo girl naked, and left with some emotion.Macdonald then proceeded to tell me the results of the quick medical he had just given the prisoner (or guest) before Stanley the ship's doctor came in and interrupted our conversation. My first thought was that the Eskimo man was dead, but that was not the case.It turned out that one of the crew came to me and asked me to report to Sir John and the other two captains. I could see that Sir John, Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian and Captain Crozier were disappointed by my report of Lieutenant Gore's death.Although I would normally be saddened by this, this day may have been due to extreme fatigue, but also because my mood had changed after joining Lieutenant Goer's ice reconnaissance team, and the disappointment of the officers did not affect my emotions. I first reported the situation of the dying Eskimo man, and then I mentioned the strange thing about the girl who lost her tongue.The three captains murmured and discussed, but only Captain Crozier asked. "Do you know why anyone treats her like this, Dr. Goodser?" "I have no idea, sir." "Is it possible that an animal did it?" he pressed. I paused.I never thought of that possibility. "It's possible," I said at last, though it was hard for me to imagine any arctic carnivore that would bite off a child's tongue and leave her alive.But then again, many people know that Eskimos are used to living with vicious dogs.I saw it once in Disko Bay. They asked no more questions about the two Eskimos. They wanted to know the details of the killing of Lieutenant Guo Er, and also wanted to know what creature killed him, so I told them the truth.I was saving the life of an old Eskimo man who appeared in the fog and was shot by Private Pikington.I only looked up at Graham Gore at the last moment before he died.I also explained that the moving fog, the various screams, the distracting sound of the musket, the sound of the lieutenant's pistol going off, the limited vision of me kneeling beside the sled, the people and the light moving quickly, It's bothering me, I can't be sure what I'm seeing: I just see a big, white shape surrounding the hapless officer, the flare of his pistol, and hear more gunshots, and then the fog engulfs everything again Living. "However, are you sure it's a white bear?" Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian asked. I hesitated. "If it's really a polar bear," I said at last, "it's a polar bear of unusual size. In my mind, it's a bear-like carnivorous animal, with a huge body, huge arms, small The head and obsidian eyes, but the details are not as clear as these descriptions. Generally speaking, what I remember is that the thing seemed to appear out of nowhere, and it rose directly to surround Lieutenant Goer, and the height it stood at was Twice that of Lieutenant Goer. That was terrifying." "I believe so," said Sir John coldly, which seemed to me to be sarcasm. "But, Mr. Goodser, what is it if it's not a bear?" I noticed earlier that Sir John never called me a doctor by my official rank.He called me "Sir," the way he would call any lieutenant or Master Chief without an officer's education.It took me two years to understand that the aging Commander of the Expedition, whom I respected so much, would not return the same respect to me, a mere ship's doctor. "I don't know, Sir John," I said.I just want to hurry back and see my patient. "I know you have expressed your interest in white bears, Mr Goodser," continued Sir John. "what is the reason?" "I was trained in anatomy, Sir John, and before this expedition set sail I dreamed of being a naturalist." "Don't you think so now?" asked Captain Crozier in his soft Irish accent. I shrugged. "I find fieldwork is not my strong suit, Captain." "But you dissected the white bears we hunted at Beach Island and here," Sir John pressed on, "studying their bones and musculature, and observing them on the ice as we do." "Yes, Sir John." "Do you think the wound on Captain Guoer's body matches the wound made by this animal?" I hesitated for a second.I had checked the wounds before we loaded poor Graham Gore's body on the sled and came back through the ice like a nightmare. "Yes, Sir John," I said, "as far as I know, the polar bear in this area is the largest predator in the world. Compared with the largest and most fierce grizzly bear in North America, it is only the grizzly bear." Half its body weight, it can stand three feet taller than a grizzly when standing on its hind feet. It is also so strong that it can easily crush a man's chest and damage his spine, as happened to poor Lieutenant Goer. Not only that , polar white bears are the only predators that are accustomed to taking humans as prey." Lieutenant Fitzjian cleared his throat. "Let me tell you, Doctor Goodser." He said softly, "I once saw a very ferocious tiger in India. According to the people in the village, it had already eaten twelve people." I nodded, and at that moment I suddenly found myself very weak.Fatigue has the same effect on my body as a very strong drink. "Sir... Lieutenant Colonel... gentlemen... you all have much richer life experience than I do. However, according to my experience from reading a lot of books on this subject, other carnivorous animals on land, such as wolves, lions, Tigers, as well as other species of bears, have the potential to kill humans when provoked, and some of these animals, such as the tiger you mention, Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian, are unable to hunt their usual prey because of illness or injury. It will become a habit of eating human flesh. But only the white bears in the Arctic, polar bears, usually follow and hunt humans as prey." Crozier nodded. "Where did you learn this, Dr. Goodser? In a book?" "To a certain extent, sir. But I spent most of my time at Disko Bay discussing bear behavior with the locals, and when we moored near Baffin Bay, I went to the Adventure and Wells. On the Prince, I consulted Captain Martin and Captain Darnart. These two gentlemen not only answered my questions about the white bear, but also introduced me to several of their crew members, including two old American whalers. Been there for more than ten years. They all know many stories of white bears lurking and attacking the native Eskimos, and even mentioned anecdotes of people trapped in the ice sea, and the white bears took them straight from the boat. One of the old people, I remember his name was Connors, he says two of their cooks were killed by bears in 1828, one of them was attacked in the main cabin while the others were asleep and he was busy near the fire." Crozier smiled after hearing this. "Perhaps we shouldn't take everything an old sailor says, Dr. Goodser." "Yes, sir. Of course not entirely, sir." "Well, that's all, Mr. Goodser," said Sir John. "If there is any further question, we will call you back." "Yes, sir." After I finished speaking, I turned around wearily and prepared to go back to the hospital bed area towards the bow. "Oh, Dr. Goodser." Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian stopped me before I could leave the door of Sir John's cabin. "I have a question, though I'm ashamed to admit I don't know the answer to it. Why is the polar bear called Ursus maritimus (sea bear)? It's not because it likes to eat sailors, is it?" "No, sir," I replied, "I think it's because it's more of a sea-dwelling mammal than a land-dwelling one. I've read reports that people have watched it from hundreds of miles offshore. I passed it, and Captain Martin of the Adventure also told me personally that this kind of bear is very fast to attack on land or ice, and can charge at you at a speed of more than twenty-five miles per hour. It is also the best at swimming ice in the sea. One of the creatures that can swim sixty or seventy miles without rest. Captain Danat said that once his ship was sailing at a speed of eight knots in the sea far from the land. The white bear swam side by side with the boat for about ten nautical miles, and finally left the boat behind, swimming towards the distant ice floes at a leisurely speed like a white whale. Therefore, the scientific name... Ursus maritimus... Although it is a mammal, it is roughly It's a creature of the sea." "Thank you, Mr Goodser," said Sir John. "You're welcome, sir." With that, I left. 1847 ### continued The Eskimo man died just minutes after midnight.But he said something before he died. I was sitting up sleeping with my back against the bulkhead in the bed area when Stanley woke me up. The grey-haired man lay dying on the operating table, his arms shaking in a way that looked like he was trying to swim into the air.His perforated lung was bleeding profusely, and blood gushed from his chin to his bandaged chest. As I turned up the lantern, the Eskimo girl rose from the corner where she had slept, and the three of us leaned forward to look at the dying man. The old Eskimo bent a strong finger and poked himself in the chest, fairly close to the bullet hole.He pumped more bright red arterial blood with each breath, but the sounds he coughed were probably just words.I wrote his pronunciation with a piece of chalk on the slate that Stanley and I communicated with while the sick were asleep. "Ankakut Tuluk! Kharubavi Chief...Ankakut Tuuk...Panig...Tongbak! Tanik...Nanuaba Miao Tutuyasi Road ...Yumiapa Tukutyashilu...Nanuk Tukka! Panig...Tongbak Nanuk...Ankakut Kukuluk!" Then the bleeding was so severe that he could no longer speak.The blood gushed out of him like a fountain, making him choke, and even when Stanley and I propped him up and tried to clear his airway, he could only breathe his own blood.After a final horrific struggle, his chest no longer rose and fell, and he lay back in our arms, his staring eyes frozen and lifeless.Stanley and I lay him back on the platform. "Be careful!" Stanley yelled. At first I didn't know what the ship's doctor was warning me about.The old man is dead and can't move, and I can't measure his pulse or breathing when I lean against him.But then I turned and saw the Eskimo woman. She took a blood-stained scalpel from the operating table, approached us, and raised the weapon.I could tell right away that she wasn't paying attention to me at all.Her eyes were fixed on the dead face and the chest of the man who might have been her husband, father or brother.In those few seconds, completely ignorant of the customs of her exotic tribe, I had images of insane acts of the girl digging out the man's heart, perhaps performing a gruesome ritual, and then eating the heart or gouging out his eyeballs, or cutting off one of his fingers, or adding a few more lines to those old web-like scars on his body that resemble sailor tattoo totems. She didn't satisfy my wild imagination.Before Stanley could grab her and I just wanted to curl up defensively over the dead man, the Eskimo girl flicked forward with a surgeon's dexterity, apparently using sharp The incomparable knife cut the cowhide rope tied to the amulet on the old man's chest. After she took the flat, white, blood-stained bear-shaped stone and the severed leather cord, she hid them discreetly in the fur coat somewhere on her body, and put the knife back on the operating table. Stanley and I looked at each other.Then the chief ship doctor of the Nether woke up the young sailor who was the assistant in the bed area, and asked him to inform the officer on duty, and asked him to tell the captain that the old Eskimo was dead. We buried the Eskimos at one-thirty in the morning, around three bells.We wrapped his body in canvas and stuffed it into a fire-hole in the ice twenty yards from the ship.The fire hole, which allowed us to draw water fifteen feet below the ice, was the only hole that remained open in the cold summer.As I said before, nothing sailors fear more than fire.Sir John's orders were to throw the body into this hole.As Stanley and I struggled to shove the body into the narrow hole with our boat spears, we heard hacking and occasional cursing coming from the ice field a few hundred yards to the east.A twenty-man engineering team was working overnight to dig a more decent hole for Lieutenant Goer's funeral the next day, or later the same day. Now in the middle of the night, there is still enough light to read the bible - if someone takes it to the ice to read it, but no one will do it - the weak light allows us two ship doctors and two who were called to help It was easier for the crew to poke, prod, jostle and let the body slide, packing the Eskimo's body deep into the blue ice before letting it fall into the black water below. The Eskimo woman stood and watched quietly, still expressionless.A gust of wind from the west-northwest lifted her black hair from the stained hoodie and spread across her face like a crow's neck. The burial was originally just us, Stanley the ship's doctor, two gasping, softly cursing crew members, the Aboriginal woman, and me.But then Captain Crozier and a tall, thin lieutenant also showed up in the blizzard to watch us do the last-stage RBI or the final two-stage shove.At last the body of the Eskimo man slid the last five feet and disappeared into the black current fifteen feet below the ice. "Sir John's order is that this woman is not allowed to spend the night on the Erebus." Captain Crozier said softly, "We will take her back to the Terror." Come to think of it, called Irwin) said: "John, she is in your charge. Help her find a place where the crew can't see her, maybe in the cargo pile in front of the bed area, and make sure she doesn't get hurt .” "Yes, sir." "Excuse me, Captain," I said, "but why not let her go back to her people?" Crozier smiled after hearing this. "Usually I would agree with you, Doctor. But as far as we know, there is no tribe of Eskimos, not even a small village, within three hundred miles. They are a drifting people, especially those we call the Northern Highlanders." Tribe. But how did this old man and this young girl come to such a northern ice pack in the summer? No whales, no walruses, no seals, no caribou on this ice pack, except the white bear and the murderer on the ice, And no other living things." I don't know how to proceed, it doesn't sound like it's answering my question. "Maybe one day," Crozier said, "our survival will depend on finding and befriending the Native Eskimos. Are we going to let her go before we're friends with her?" "We shot her husband or father," Stanley said.His eyes were on the young woman, who was still staring at the now empty fire escape. "This lady of silence is unlikely to be lenient with us." "That's right," said Captain Crozier. "We've got enough problems, and we don't want to see the little girl come back to our ship with a band of angry Eskimo warriors to murder us in our sleep. No, I think Captain Sir John is right... she should be kept until we know what to do with her and our own problems." Crozier smiled at Stanley.In the past two years, this is the first time I have been impressed by Captain Crozier's smile. "Ms. Silence. That's a good name, Stanley. Very nice. Come on, John, come on, ma'am." They braved the wind and snow to the west and walked towards the first ice ridge.I climbed up the Nether along the snowdrift.I'm going back to my little cabin, which seems like the perfect paradise to me right now.I want to get a solid night's sleep. I haven't had a good night's sleep since Lieutenant Goer took us to the south-southeast ice field more than ten days ago.