The Terror

There’s young Crozier, aging midshipman not even lieutenant yet who thinks he’s going to be an admiral someday, forgetting that he’s just another black Irish nigger.”

Fitzjames says nothing for a minute. Crozier can hear the snores and farts from the creaking hammocks toward the bow of the dark ship. Somewhere on deck just above them, a lookout stamps his feet to keep them from freezing. Crozier is sorry he’s ended the story this way – he speaks to no one like this when he is sober – but he also wishes that Fitzjames would get the brandy out again. Or the whiskey.

“When did Fury and Hecla escape from the ice?” asks Fitzjames.

“Twenty July the next summer,” says Crozier. “But you probably know the rest of the story.”

“I know that Fury was lost.”

“Aye,” says Crozier. “Five days after the ice relents – we’d been creeping along the shore of Somerset Island, trying to stay out of the pack ice, trying to avoid that God-damned limestone always falling from the cliffs – another gale grounds Fury on a spit of gravel. We man-hauled her free – using ice screws and sweat – but then both ships get frozen in, and a God-damned iceberg almost as big as that bastard squatting between Erebus and Terror shoves Fury against the shore ice, tears her rudder away, smashes her timbers to splinters, springs her hull plates, and the crew worked the four pumps in shifts day and night just trying to keep her afloat.”

“And you did for a while,” prompts Fitzjames.

“A fortnight. We even tried cabling her to a berg, but the fucking cable snapped. Then Hoppner tried raising her to get at her keel – just as Sir John wanted to do with your Erebus – but the blizzard put an end to that idea and both ships were in danger of being forced onto the lee shore of the headland. Finally the men just fell over where they were pumping – they were too exhausted to understand our orders – and on the twenty-first of August, Parry ordered everyone aboard Hecla and cast her off to save her from being driven aground and poor Fury got shoved right up onto the beach by a bunch of bergs that slammed her hard ashore there and blocked her way out. There wasn’t even a chance of a tow. The ice was smashing her to bits as we watched. We barely got Hecla free, and that only with every man working the pumps day and night and the carpenter laboring round the clock to shore her up.

“So we never got close to the Passage – or even to sighting new land, really – and lost a ship, and Hoppner was court-martialed and Parry considered that his court-martial as well since Hoppner was under his command the whole time.”

“Everyone was acquitted,” says Fitzjames. “Even praised, as I recall.”

“Praised but not promoted,” says Crozier.

“But you all survived.”

“Yes.”

“I want to survive this expedition, Francis,” says Fitzjames. His tone is soft but very determined.

Crozier nods.

“We should have done what Parry did and put both crews aboard Terror a year ago and sailed east around King William Land,” says Fitzjames.

It is Crozier’s turn to raise his brows. Not at Fitzjames agreeing that it is an island – their later-summer sledge reconnaissance had all but settled that – but in agreeing that they should have made a run for it last autumn, abandoning Sir John’s ship. Crozier knows that there is no harder thing for a captain in anyone’s navy to do than to give up his ship, but especially so in the Royal Navy. And while Erebus had been under the overall command of Sir John Franklin, Commander James Fitzjames had been its true captain.

“It is too late now.” Crozier is in pain. Because the Common Room shares several outer bulkheads and has three overhead Preston Patent Illuminators, it is cold – the two men can see their breath in the air – but it’s still sixty or seventy degrees warmer than it had been out on the ice and Crozier’s feet, especially his toes, are thawing in a rush of jagged pin pokes and red-hot needle stabs.

“Yes,” agrees Fitzjames, “but you were wise to have the gear and provisions sledged to King William Land in August.”

“It wasn’t a fraction of what we’ll need to ferry there if that is to be our survival camp,” Crozier says brusquely. He had ordered about two tons of clothing, tents, survival gear, and tinned food to be removed from the ships and stored on the northwest shore of the island should they have to abandon ships quickly during the winter, but the ferrying had been absurdly slow and extremely dangerous. Weeks of laborious sledging had left only a ton or so of cache there – tents, extra slops, tools, and a few weeks of canned food. Nothing more.

“That thing wouldn’t let us stay there,” he adds softly. “We all could have moved to tents in September – I had the ground prepared for two dozen of the big tents, you remember – but the campsite would not have been as defensible as the ships are.”

“No,” says Fitzjames.

“If the ships last the winter.”

“Yes,” says Fitzjames. “Have you heard, Francis, that some of the men – on both ships – are calling that creature the Terror?”

“No!” Crozier is offended. He does not want the name of his ship used to evil purposes such as that, even if the men are jesting. But he looks at Commander James Fitzjames’s hazel-green eyes and realizes that the other captain is serious and so must be the men. “The Terror,” says Crozier, and tastes bile.

“They think it is no animal,” says Fitzjames. “They believe its cunning is something else, is preternatural… supernatural… that there is a demon out there on the ice in the dark.”

Crozier almost spits he is so disgusted. “Demon,” he says in contempt. “These are the very seamen who believe in ghosts, faeries, Jonahs, mermaids, curses, and sea monsters.”

“I’ve seen you scratch the sail to summon wind,” Fitzjames says with a smile.

Crozier says nothing.

“You’ve lived long enough and traveled far enough to see things that no man knew existed,” Fitzjames adds, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

“Aye,” says Crozier with a bark of a laugh. “Penguins! I wish they were the largest beastie up here, as they seem to be down south.”

“There are no white bears there in the south arctic?”

“None that we saw. None that any south-sailing whaler or explorer has seen in seventy years of sailing toward and around that white, volcanic, frozen land.”

“And you and James Ross were the first men ever to see the continent. And the volcanoes.”

“Aye, we were. And it did Sir James much good. He’s married to a beautiful young thing, knighted, happy, retired from the cold. And me… I am… here.”

Fitzjames clears his throat as if to change the subject. “Do you know, Francis, until this voyage, I honestly believed in the Open Polar Sea. I was quite sure Parliament was correct when it listened to predictions from the so-called polar experts – in the winter before we sailed, do you remember? It was in the Times – all about the thermobaric barrier, about the Gulf Stream flowing up under this ice to warm the Open Polar Sea, and the invisible continent that must be up here. They were so convinced it existed that they were proposing and passing laws to send inmates of Southgate and other prisons up here to shovel the coal that must be in such plentitude just a few hundred miles from here on the North Polar Continent.”

Crozier laughs with real humour this time. “Yes, to shovel coal to heat the hotels and supply the refueling stations for the steamships that will be making regular trips across the Open Polar Sea by the 1860s at the latest. Oh, God, that I were one of those prisoners in Southgate. Their cells are, required by law and for humanity’s sake, twice the size of our cabins, James, and our future would be warm and secure if we only had to sit in such luxury and wait for word of that North Pole continent being discovered and colonized.”

Both men are laughing now.

There comes a thumping from the deck above – running footsteps rather than mere feet stamping – and then voices and a sliding of cold air around their feet as someone opens the main hatch above the far end of the companionway and the sound of several pairs of feet clattering down the steps.

Both captains are silent and waiting when the soft knock comes on the Common Room’s thin door.

“Enter,” says Commander Fitzjames.

An Erebus crewman leads in two Terrors – Third Lieutenant John Irving and a seaman named Shanks.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Commander Fitzjames, Captain Crozier,” says Irving through only slightly chattering teeth. His long nose is white from the cold. Shanks is still carrying a musket. “Lieutenant Little sent me to report to Captain Crozier as soon as I could.”

“Go ahead, John,” says Crozier. “You’re not still hunting for Lady Silence, are you?”

Irving looks blank for a second. Then, “We saw her out on the ice when the last search parties were coming in. No, sir, Lieutenant Little asked me to fetch you right away because…” The young lieutenant pauses as if forgetting the reason Little had sent him to report.

“Mr. Couch,” says Fitzjames to the Erebus mate on duty who had led the two Terrors to the Common Room, “be so kind as to step out into the companionway and to close the door please, thank you.”

Crozier has also heard the odd silence as the snoring and hammock creaking has all but ceased. Too many ears in the crew’s forward berthing space were awake and listening.

When the door is shut, Irving says, “It’s William Strong and Tommy Evans, sir. They’re back.”

Crozier blinks. “What the devil do you mean, back? Alive?” He feels the first surge of hope he’s had for months.

“Oh, no sir,” says Irving. “Just… one body… really. But it was propped against the stern rail when someone saw it as all the search parties were coming in for the day… about an hour ago. The guards on duty hadn’t seen anything. But it was there, sir. On Lieutenant Little’s orders, Shanks and I made the crossing as quickly as we could to inform you, Captain. Shanks Mare as it were.”

“It?” snaps Crozier. “One body? Back on the ship?” This makes no sense at all to the Terror’s captain. “I thought you said both Strong and Evans were back.”

Third Lieutenant Irving’s entire face is frostbite white now. “They are, Captain. Or at least half of them. When we went to look at the body propped there at the stern, it fell over and… well… came apart. As best we can tell, it’s Billy Strong from the waist up. Tommy Evans from the waist down.”

Crozier and Fitzjames can only look at each other.