The Terror

was a gentleman and I wasn’t.”

“And what was your impression, Harry?” Bridgens’ pale blue eyes were watering more heavily, either out of emotion at seeing the sun again or just in reaction to the unaccustomed light, as pale as it was. The red disk had not completely cleared the dark clouds before it started descending again.

“Of Mr. Darwin?” Peglar was also squinting – more to bring back memory of the thin young naturalist than because of the sun’s wonderful illumination. “I found him pleasant, as such gentlemen go. Very enthusiastic. He certainly kept the men busy transporting and crating up all those damned dead animals – at one point I thought the finches alone were going to fill the hold – but he wasn’t above getting his own hands dirty. Remember the time he joined in the rowing to help tow old Beagle upstream in the river? And he saved a boat from the tidal wave that other time. And once, when whales were alongside us – off the coast of Chile, I believe – I was amazed to find that he’d climbed all the way up to the crosstrees on his own to get a better view. I had to help him down, but not before he looked through the glass at the whales for over an hour, the tails of his coat flapping in the breeze.”

Bridgens smiled. “I was almost jealous when he lent you that book. What was it? Lyell?”

“Principles of Geology,” said Peglar. “I didn’t really understand it. Or rather, I did just enough to realize how dangerous it was.”

“Because of Lyell’s contention about the age of things,” said Bridgens. “About the very un-Christian idea that things change slowly over immense aeons of time rather than very quickly due to very violent events.”

“Yes,” said Peglar. “But Mr. Darwin was very keen on it. He sounded like a man who had experienced a religious conversion.”

“I believe he had, in a manner of speaking,” said Bridgens. Only the top third of the sun was visible now. “I mention Mr. Darwin because mutual friends told me before we sailed that he is writing a book.”

“He published several already,” said Peglar. “Do you remember, John, we discussed his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle in the year I came to study with you… 1839. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but you said you’d read it. And I believe he published several volumes on the plant and animal life he saw.”

“The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle,” said Bridgens. “Yes, I purchased that as well. No, I meant he has been working on a much more important book according to my dear friend Mr. Babbage.”

“Charles Babbage?” said Peglar. “The fellow who tinkers up so many odd things including some sort of computing engine?”

“The same,” said Bridgens. “Charles tells me that all these years, Mr. Darwin has been working on a quite interesting volume discussing the mechanisms of organic evolution. Apparently it draws in information from comparative anatomy, embryology, and paleontology… all great interests of our former shipboard naturalist’s, you may remember. But for whatever reasons, Mr. Darwin is loath to publish and the book may not see print, according to Charles, in anyone’s lifetime.”

“Organic evolution?” repeated Peglar.

“Yes, Harry. That’s the idea that species, despite all civilized Christian agreement to the contrary, are not fixed since creation, but may change and adapt over time… much time. Mr. Lyell’s amounts of time.”

“I know what organic evolution is,” said Peglar, trying not to show his irritation at being talked down to. The problem with a student-teacher relationship was, he realized not for the first time, that it never changes while everything around it does. “I’ve read Lamarck on the concept. Also Diderot. And Buffon, I believe.”

“Yes, it’s an old theory,” said Bridgens, his tone sounding amused but also slightly apologetic. “Montesquieu has written about it, as has Maupertuis and the others you mentioned. Even Erasmus Darwin, our former shipmate’s grandfather, had proposed it.”

“Then why would Mr. Charles Darwin’s book be important?” asked Peglar. “Organic evolution is an old idea. It’s been rejected by the Church and other naturalists for generations.”

“If Charles Babbage and other friends Mr. Darwin and I have in common are to be believed,” said Bridgens, “this new book – should it ever be published – offers proof of an actual mechanism for organic evolution. And it should give a thousand – perhaps ten thousand – solid examples of this mechanism in action.”

“And the mechanism is what?” asked Peglar. The sun had disappeared. Rose shadows faded into the pale yellow gloom that had preceded its rising. Now that the sun was gone, Peglar hardly believed he had seen it.

“Natural selection arising from competition within the countless species,” said the elderly subordinate officers’ steward. “A selection passing along advantageous traits and weeding out disadvantageous traits – that is, ones which add to the probability of neither survival nor reproduction – over vast amounts of time. Lyellian amounts of time.”

Peglar thought about this for a minute. “Why did you bring this up, John?”

“Because of our predatory friend out here on the ice, Harry. Because of the blackened skull you left back where the ebony room had once echoed to the ticking of Sir John’s ebony clock.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Peglar. He used to say that very frequently when he was John Bridgens’s student during the five years of Beagle’s seemingly endless wanderings. The voyage had been planned as a two-year venture, and Peglar had promised Rose he would be back in two years or less. She had died of consumption during Beagle’s fourth year at sea. “Do you think the thing on the ice is some form of species evolutionary adaptation from the more common white bear we’ve encountered so frequently up here?”

“Quite the contrary,” said Bridgens. “I find myself wondering if we might have encountered one of the last members of some ancient species – something larger, smarter, faster, and infinitely more violent than its descendant, the smaller north polar bear we see in such abundance.”

Peglar thought about this. “Something from an antediluvian age,” he said at last.

Bridgens chuckled. “In a metaphorical sense, at least, Harry. You may remember that I was no advocate of any literal belief in the Flood.”

Peglar smiled. “You were dangerous to be around, John.” He stood in the cold thinking for another few minutes. The light was fading. The stars were filling in the southern sky once again. “Do you think this… thing… this last of its breed… walked the earth when the huge lizards were around? If so, why haven’t we found fossils of it?”

Bridgens chuckled again. “No, somehow I do not believe our predator on the ice contested with the giant lizards. Perhaps mammals such as Ursus maritimus did not coexist with the giant reptiles at all. As Lyell showed and our Mr. Darwin seems to understand, Time… with a capital T, Harry… may be much vaster than we have the ability to comprehend.”

The two men were silent for a few moments. The wind had started up a little and Peglar realized that it was too cold to stay out here like this much longer. He could see the older man shivering slightly. “John,” he said. “Do you think that understanding the origin of the beast… or thing, it sometimes seems too intelligent to be a beast… will help us kill it?”

Bridgens laughed aloud this time. “Not in the least, Harry. Just between you and me, dear friend, I think the creature already has the better of us. I think our bones will be fossils before its will… although, when one thinks about it, a huge creature which lives almost completely on the polar ice, not breeding or living on dry land as the more common white bears evidently do, perhaps even preying on the more common polar bear as its primary source of food, may well leave no bones, no trace, no fossils… at least ones we are able to find beneath the frozen polar seas at our current state of scientific technology.”

They began walking back toward Erebus.

“Tell me, Harry, what is happening on Terror?”

“You heard about the near mutiny three days ago?” asked Peglar.

“Was it really so close a thing?”

Peglar shrugged. “It was ugly. Any officer’s nightmare. The caulker’s mate, Hickey, and two or three other agitators, had the men all worked up. It was a mob mentality. Crozier defused it brilliantly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a captain handle a mob with more finesse and certainty than Crozier did on Wednesday.”

“And it was all over the Esquimaux woman?”

Peglar nodded, then pulled his Welsh wig and comforter tighter. The wind was very biting now. “Hickey and a majority of the men had learned that the wench had tunneled a way out through the hull before Christmas. Until the day of Carnivale, she’d been coming and going at will from her den in the forward cable locker. Mr. Honey and his carpenter mates had fixed the breech in the hull, and Mr. Irving had collapsed the outside tunnel route the day after the Carnivale fire – and word leaked out.”

“And Hickey and the others thought that she had something to do with the fire?”

Peglar shrugged again. If nothing else, the motion helped keep him warm. “For all I know, they thought she was the thing on the ice. Or at least its consort. Most of the men have been convinced for months that she’s a heathen witch.”

“Most of the crew on Erebus agree,” said Bridgens. His teeth were chattering. The two men picked up their pace back toward the canting ship.

“Hickey’s mob had made plans to waylay the girl when she came up for her evening biscuit and cod,” said Peglar. “And to cut her throat. Perhaps with some formal ceremony.”

“Why didn’t it happen that way, Harry?”

“There’s always someone who informs,” said Peglar. “When Captain Crozier got wind of it – possibly only hours before the murder was supposed to happen – he dragged the girl up to the lower deck and called a meeting of all officers and men. He even called the watch below, which is unheard of.”

Bridgens turned his pale square of a face toward Peglar as they walked. It was getting darker quickly now and the wind was holding out of the nor’west.

“It was just at supper time,” continued Peglar, “but the captain had all the men’s tables winched up again and made the men sit on the deck. No casks or chests – just on the bare deck – and had the officers, armed with sidearms, stand behind him. He held the Esquimaux girl by the arm, as if she was an offering he was going to throw to the men. Like a piece of meat to jackals. In a sense that’s what he did.”

“How do you mean?”

“He told the crew that if they were going to do murder, that they had to do it right then… at that moment. With their boat knives. Right there on the lower deck where they ate and slept. Captain Crozier said that they would all have to do it together – seamen and officers alike – because murder on a ship is like a canker and spreads unless everyone is already inoculated by being an accomplice.”

“Very strange,” said Bridgens. “But I am surprised that it worked to deter the men’s bloodthirst. A mob is a brainless thing.”

Peglar nodded again. “Then Crozier called Mr. Diggle forward from his place by the stove.”

“The cook?” said Bridgens.

“The cook. Crozier asked Mr. Diggle what was for supper that night… and for every night in the coming month. ‘Poor John,’ said Diggle. ‘Plus whatever canned things haven’t gone rotten or poisonous.’ ”