The Voyage of the Narwhal. Andrea Barrett

hunting outfit, Oonali brought out a bow and some arrows that Zeke admired.

      “I’d love to bring these home to the Toxophilites,” he said to Erasmus. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

      Erasmus was scratching steadily in Lavinia’s journal—he couldn’t write fast enough, he couldn’t get down all the details. He sketched the bow: fir strengthened with bone and made more elastic by cunning springs of plaited sinew. He didn’t sketch the curiously twisted bowstring or the slate-headed arrows, as Zeke had by then arranged to trade a pair of axe heads for the entire outfit. Next to him Dr. Boerhaave scribbled similarly, while Ned, who’d stuck his head beneath the door flap, turned his head slowly from one view to the next. Whalebone vessels and walrus-tusk knives, spoons made from what looked to be hollowed-out bones.