The Terror

14 GOODSIR

From the private diary of Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir:

4 June, 1847 -

When Stanley and I stripped the wounded Esquimaux man naked, I was reminded that he was wearing an Amulet made up of a flat, smooth Stone, smaller than my fist, in the shape of a White Bear – the stone did not seem to have been carved but in its natural, thumb-smoothed state perfectly captured the long neck, small head, and powerful extended legs and forward motion of the living animal. I had seen the Amulet when I’d inspected the man’s wound on the ice but thought nothing of it.

The ball from Private Pilkington’s musket had entered the native man’s Chest not an inch below that amulet, pierced flesh and muscle between the third and fourth ribs (deflected slightly by the higher of the two), passed through his Left Lung, and lodged in his Spine, severing numerous Nerves there.

There was no way that I could save him – I knew from earlier inspection that any Attempt to Remove the musket ball would have caused instant death, and I could not stem the internal Bleeding from Within the Lung – but I did my best, having the Esquimaux carried to the part of the Sick Bay which Surgeon Stanley and I have set up as a surgery. For Half an Hour yesterday after my return to the Ship, Stanley and I probed the wound front and back with our Cruelest Instruments and Cut with Energy until we found the location of the Ball in his Spine, and generally confirmed our prognosis of Imminent Death.

But the unusually tall, powerfully built grey-haired Savage had not yet agreed with our Prognosis. He continued to exist as a man. He continued to force breaths through his torn and bloodied lung, coughing blood repeatedly. He continued to stare at us through his disturbingly light-coloured – for an Esquimaux – eyes, watching our Every Movement.

Dr. McDonald arrived from Terror and, at Stanley ’s suggestion, took the second Esquimaux – the girl – into the rear alcove of the Sick Bay, separated from us by a blanket serving as a curtain, for an Examination. I believe that Surgeon Stanley was less interested in having the girl examined than he was in getting her out of the sick bay during our bloody probing of her husband’s or father’s wounds… although neither the Subject nor the Girl appeared disturbed by either the Blood or Wound which would have made any London Lady – and no few surgeons in training – faint dead away.

And speaking of fainting, Stanley and I had just finished our examination of the dying Esquimaux when Captain Sir John Franklin came in with two crewmen half-carrying Charles Best, who, they informed us, had passed out in Sir John’s cabin. We had the men put Best on the nearest cot and it took only a minute’s Cursory examination for me to list the reasons why the man had fainted: the same extreme Exhaustion which all of us on Lieutenant Gore’s party were suffering after ten days of Constant Toil, hunger (we had had virtually nothing to eat except raw Bear Meat for our last two days and nights on the ice), a drying up of all moisture in our bodies (we could not afford the time to stop and melt snow on the spirit stoves, so we resorted to the Bad Idea of chewing on snow and ice – a process which depletes the body’s water rather than adds to it), and, a reason most Obvious to me but strangely Obscure to the officers who had been Interviewing him – poor Best had been made to stand and report to the Captains while still wearing seven of his eight Layers of Wool, allowed time only to remove his bloodied Greatcoat. After ten days and nights on the ice at an average temperature near zero degrees, the warmth of Erebus was almost too much for me, and I had shed all but two layers upon reaching the Sick Bay. It had quickly proved too much for Best.

After being assured that Best would recover – a dose of Smelling Salts had already all but brought him around – Sir John looked with visible distaste at our Esquimaux patient, now lying on his bloodied chest and belly since Stanley and I had been probing his back for the ball, and our commander said, Is he going to live?

Not for long, Sir John, reported Stephen Samuel Stanley.

I winced at speaking such in front of the patient – we doctors usually deliver our direst prognoses to each other in neutral-toned Latin in the presence of our dying clients – but realized at once that it was most unlikely that the Esquimaux could understand English.

Roll him over on his back, commanded Sir John.

We did so, carefully, and while the pain must still have been beyond excruciating for the grey-haired native, who had remained conscious during all our probing and continued to do so now, he made no sound. His gaze was fixed on our expedition Leader’s face.

Sir John leaned over him and, raising his Voice and speaking slowly as if to a Deaf Child or Idiot, cried, Who… ARE… you?

The Esquimaux looked up at Sir John.

What… your… name? shouted Sir John. What… your… tribe?

The dying man made no response.

Sir John shook his head and showed an expression of disgust, although whether because of the Gaping Wound in the Esquimaux’s chest or due to his aboriginal obdurance, I know not.

Where is the other native? Sir John asked of Stanley.

My chief surgeon, both hands busy pressing against the wound and applying the bloody bandages with which he hoped to slow, if not stem, the constant pulse of lifeblood from the savage’s lung, nodded in the direction of the alcove curtain. Dr. McDonald is with her, Sir John.

Sir John brusquely passed through the blanket-curtain. I heard several stammers, a few disjointed words, and then the Leader of our Expedition reappeared, backing out, his face such a bright, solid red that I had fears that our sixty-one-year-old commander was having a stroke.

Then Sir John’s red face went quite white with shock.

I realized belatedly that the young woman must have been naked. A few minutes earlier I had glanced through the partially opened curtain and noticed that when McDonald gestured for her to take off her outer clothing – her bearskin parka – the girl nodded, removed the heavy outer garment, and was wearing nothing under it from the waist up. I’d been busy with the dying man on the table at the time, but I noted that this was a sensible way to stay warm under the loose layer of heavy fur – much better than the multiple layers of Wool which all of us in poor Lieutenant Gore’s sledge party had worn. Naked under fur or animal hair, the body can warm itself when chilled, adequately cool itself when needed, as during exertion, since perspiration would quickly wick away from the body into the hairs of the wolfskin or bearskin hide. The wool we Englishmen had worn had soaked through with Sweat almost immediately, never really dried, quickly froze when we quit marching or pulling the sledge and lost much of its Insulating Quality. By the time we had Returned to the ship, I had no doubt that we were carrying almost twice the Weight on our backs than that with which we had departed.

I sh-shall return at a more suitable time, stammered Sir John, and backed past us.

Captain Sir John Franklin looked shaken, but whether it was because of the young woman’s sensible Edenic Nakedness or something else he saw in the Sick Bay alcove, I could not say. He left the Surgery without another word.

A moment later McDonald called me into the rear alcove. The girl – young woman, I had noticed, although it has been scientifically shown that females from savage tribes reach puberty long before young ladies in civilized societies – had put her bulky parka and sealskin pants back on. Dr. McDonald himself looked agitated, almost upset, and when I queried him as to the problem, he gestured for the Esquimaux wench to open her mouth. Then he raised a lantern and a convex mirror to focus the light and I saw for myself.

Her tongue had been amputated near the roots. Enough was left, I saw – and McDonald concurred – to allow her to swallow and to eat most foods, after a fashion, but certainly the articulation of complex sounds, if one might call any Esquimaux language complex in any form, would be beyond her ability. The scars were old. This had not happened recently.

I confess that I pulled away in Horror. Who would do this to a mere child – and why? But when I used the word “amputation,” Dr. McDonald softly corrected me.

Look again, Dr. Goodsir, he all but whispered. It is not a neat surgical circular amputation, not even by so crude an instrument as a stone knife. The poor lass’s tongue was chewed off when she was very small – and so close to the root of the member that there is no possibility she did this to herself.

I took a step away from the woman. Is she mutilated elsewhere? I asked, speaking in Latin out of old habit. I had read of barbaric customs in the Dark Continent and among the Mohammedan in which their women were cruelly circumcised in a parody of the Hebrew custom for males.

Nowhere else, responded McDonald.

Then I thought I understood the source of Sir John’s sudden paleness and obvious shock, but when I asked McDonald whether he had shared this information with our commander, the surgeon assured me that he had not. Sir John had entered the alcove, seen the Esquimaux girl without her clothes, and left in some agitation. McDonald then began to give me the results of his quick physical inspection of our captive, or guest, when we were interrupted by Surgeon Stanley.

My first thought was that the Esquimaux man had died, but that did not turn out to be the Case. A crewman had come calling me to give my report before Sir John and the other Captains.

I could tell that Sir John, Commander Fitzjames, and Captain Crozier were disappointed in my Report of what I had observed of Lieutenant Gore’s death, and while this ordinarily would have Distressed me, this day – perhaps due to my great Fatigue and to the Psychological Changes which may have taken place during my time with Lieutenant Gore’s Ice Party – the disappointment of my Superiors did not Affect me.

I first reported again on the condition of our dying Esquimaux man and on the curious fact about the girl’s missing tongue. The three captains murmured among themselves about this fact, but the only questions came from Captain Crozier.

Do you know why someone may have done this to her, Dr. Goodsir?

I have no idea, sir.

Could it have been done by an animal? he persisted.

I paused. The idea had not occurred to me. It could have been, I said at last, although it was very hard to Picture some Arctic Carnivore chewing off a child’s tongue yet leaving her alive. Then again, it was well known that these Esquimaux tended to live with Savage Dogs. I had seen this myself at Disko Bay.

There were no more questions about the two Esquimaux.

They asked for the details of Lieutenant Gore’s death and about the Creature who killed him, and I told the truth – that I had been working to save the life of the Esquimaux man who had come out of the fog and been shot by Private Pilkington and that I had looked up only in the final instant of Graham Gore’s death. I explained that between the shifting fog, the screams, the distracting blast of the musket, and the report of the lieutenant’s pistol going off, my limited vision from the side of the sledge where I knelt, the rapidly shifting movement of both men and light, I was not sure what I had seen: only that large white shape enveloping the hapless officer, the flash of his pistol, more shots, then the fog enfolding everything again.

But you are certain it was a white bear? asked Commander Fitzjames.

I hesitated. If it was, I said at last, it was an uncommonly large specimen of Ursus maritimus. I had the impression of a bearlike carnivore – a huge body, giant arms, small head, obsidian eyes – but the details were not as clear as that description makes them sound. Mostly what I remember is that the thing seemed to come out of nowhere – just rise up around the man – and that it towered twice as tall as Lieutenant Gore. That was very unnerving.

I am sure it was, Sir John said drily, almost sarcastically, I thought. But what else could it have been, Mr. Goodsir, were it not a bear?

It was not the first time that I had noticed that Sir John never complimented me with my proper Rank as Doctor. He used the “Mr.” as he might with any mate or untutored warrant officer. It had taken me two years to realize that the aging expedition commander whom I held in such high esteem had no degree of reciprocal esteem for any mere ship’s surgeon.

I don’t know, Sir John, I said. I wanted to get back to my patient.

I understand you’ve shown an interest in the white bears, Mr. Goodsir, continued Sir John. Why is that?

I trained as an anatomist, Sir John. And before the expedition sailed, I had dreams of becoming a naturalist.

No longer? asked Captain Crozier in that soft brogue of his.

I shrugged. I find that fieldwork is not my forte, Captain.

Yet you’ve dissected some of the white bears we’ve shot here and at Beechey Island, persisted Sir John. Studied their skeletons and musculature. Observed them on the ice as we all have.

Yes, Sir John.

Do you find Lieutenant Gore’s wounds consistent with the damage such an animal would produce?

I hesitated only a second. I had examined poor Graham Gore’s corpse before we had loaded it onto the sledge for the nightmare journey back across the pack ice.

Yes, Sir John, I said. The white polar bear of this region is – as far as we know – the largest single predator on Earth. It can weigh half again as much and stand three feet taller on its hind legs than the Grizzly Bear, the largest and most ferocious bear in North America. It is a very powerful predator, fully capable of crushing a man’s chest and severing his spine, as was the case with poor Lieutenant Gore. More than that, the white arctic bear is the only predator that commonly stalks human beings as its prey.

Commander Fitzjames cleared his throat. I say, Dr. Goodsir, he said softly, I did see a rather ferocious tiger in India once which – according to the villagers – had eaten twelve people.

I nodded, realizing at that second how terribly weary I was. The exhaustion worked on me like Powerful Drink. Sir… Commander… Gentlemen…, you have all seen more of the world than have I. However, from my rather extensive reading on the subject, it would seem that all other land carnivores – wolves, lions, tigers, other bears – may kill human beings if provoked, and some of them, such as your tiger, Commander Fitzjames, will become man-eaters if forced to due to disease or injury which precludes them from seeking out their natural prey, but only the white arctic bear – Ursus maritimus – actively stalks human beings as prey on a common basis.

Crozier was nodding. Where have you learned that, Doctor Goodsir? Your books?

To some extent, sir. But I spent most of our time at Disko Bay speaking to the locals there about the behaviour of the bears and also inquired of Captain Martin on his Enterprise and Captain Dannert on his Prince of Wales when we were anchored near them in Baffin Bay. Those two gentlemen answered my questions about the white bears and put me in touch with several of their crewmen – including two elderly American whalers who had spent more than a dozen years apiece in the ice. They had many anecdotes about the white bears stalking the Esquimaux natives of the region and even taking men from their own ships when they were trapped in the ice. One old man – I believe his name was Connors – said that their ship in ’28 had lost not one but two cooks to bears… one of them snatched from the lower deck where he was working near the stove while the men slept.

Captain Crozier smiled at that. Perhaps we should not believe every tale an old sailor has to tell, Doctor Goodsir.

No, sir. Of course not, sir.

That will be all, Mr. Goodsir, said Sir John. We shall call you back if we have more questions.

Yes, sir, I said and turned tiredly to return forward to the sick bay.

Oh, Dr. Goodsir, called Commander Fitzjames before I stepped out the door of Sir John’s cabin. I have a question, although I am deucedly ashamed to admit that I do not know the answer. Why is the white bear called Ursus maritimus? Not out of its fondness for eating sailors, I trust.

No, sir, I said. I believe the name was bestowed on the arctic bear because it is more a sea mammal than land animal. I’ve read reports of the white arctic bear being sighted hundreds of miles at sea, and Captain Martin of the Enterprise told me himself that while the bear is fast on the attack on land or ice – coming at one at speeds of more than twenty-five miles per hour – that at sea it is one of the most powerful swimmers in the ocean, capable of swimming sixty or seventy miles without rest. Captain Dannert said that once his ship was doing eight knots with a fair wind, far out of sight of land, and that two white bears kept pace with the ship for ten nautical miles or so and then simply left it behind, swimming toward distant ice floes with the speed and ease of a beluga whale. Thus the nomenclature… Ursus maritimus… a mammal, yes, but mostly a creature of the sea.

Thank you, Mr. Goodsir, said Sir John.

You are most welcome, sir, I said and left.

4 June, 1847, continued…

The Esquimaux man died just a few minutes after midnight. But he spoke first.

I was asleep at the time, sitting up with my back against the Sick Bay bulkhead, but Stanley woke me.

The grey-haired man was struggling as he lay on the Surgical Bench, his arms moving almost as if he were trying to swim up into the air. His punctured lung was hemorrhaging and blood was pouring down his chin and onto his bandaged chest.

As I raised the light of the lantern, the Esquimaux girl rose up from the corner where she had been sleeping and all three of us leaned in toward the dying man.

The old Esquimaux hooked a powerful finger and poked at his chest, very near the bullet hole. Each gasp of his pumped out more bright red arterial blood, but he coughed out what could only be words. I used a piece of chalk to scribble them on the slate Stanley and I used to communicate when patients were sleeping nearby.

“Angatkut tuquruq! Quarubvitchuq… angatkut turquq… Paniga… tuunbaq! Tanik… naluabmiu tuqutauyasiruq… umiaqpak tuqutauyasiruq… nanuq tuqutkaa! Paniga… tunbaq nanuq… angatkut ququruq!”

And then the hemorrhaging grew so extreme he could talk no more. The blood geysered and fountained out of him, choking him until – even with Stanley and me propping him up, trying to help clear his breathing passages – he was inhaling only blood. After a terrible final moment of this his chest quit heaving, he fell back into our arms, and his stare became fixed and glassy. Stanley and I lowered him to the table.

Look out! cried Stanley .

For a second I did not understand the other surgeon’s warning – the old man was dead and still, I could find no pulse or breath as I hovered over him – but then I turned and saw the Esquimaux woman.

She had seized one of the bloody scalpels from our worktable and was stepping closer, lifting the weapon. It was obvious to me at once that she was paying no attention to me – her fixed gaze was on the Dead Face and chest of the man who might have been her husband or father or brother. In those few seconds, not knowing anything of the customs of her Heathen tribe, a Myriad of wild images came to my mind – the girl cutting out the man’s heart, perhaps devouring it in some terrible ritual, or removing the dead man’s eyes or slicing off one of his fingers or perhaps adding to the webwork of old scars that covered his body like a sailor’s tattoos.

She did none of that. Before Stanley could seize her and while I could think of nothing but to cower protectively over the dead man, the Esquimaux girl flicked the scalpel forward with a surgeon’s dexterity – she obviously had used razor-sharp knives for most of her life – and she severed the rawhide cord that held the old man’s amulet in place.

Catching up the flat, white, blood-spattered bear-shaped stone and its severed cord, she secreted it somewhere on her person under her parka and returned the scalpel to its table.

Stanley and I stared at each other. Then Erebus’s chief surgeon went to wake the young sailor who served as the Sick Bay mate, sending him to inform the officer on watch and thence the Captain that the old Esquimaux was dead.

4 June, continued…

We buried the Esquimaux man sometime around one-thirty in the morning – three bells – shoving his canvas-wrapped body down the narrow fire hole in the ice only twenty yards from the ship. This single fire hole giving access to open water fifteen feet below the ice was the only one the men have managed to keep open this cold summer – as I have mentioned before, sailors are afraid of nothing so much as fire – and Sir John’s instructions were to dispose of the body there. Even as Stanley and I struggled to press the body down the narrow funnel, using boat pikes, we could hear the chopping and occasional swearing from several hundred yards east on the ice where a party of twenty men was working through the night to hack out a more decorous hole for Lieutenant Gore’s burial service the next day – or later the same day, actually.

Here, in the middle of the night, it was still light enough to read a Bible verse by – if anyone had brought a Bible out here on the ice to read a verse from, which no one had – and the dim light aided us, the two surgeons and two crewmen ordered to help us, as we poked, prodded, shoved, slid, and finally slammed the Esquimaux man’s body deeper and deeper into the blue ice and thence into the Black Water beneath.

The Esquimaux woman stood silently, watching, still showing no expression. There was a wind from the west-northwest and her black hair lifted from her stained parka hood and moved across her face like a ruffle of raven feathers.

We were the only members of the Burial Party – Surgeon Stanley, the two panting, softly cursing crewmen, the native woman, and me – until Captain Crozier and a tall, lanky lieutenant appeared in the blowing snow and watched the final moment or two of struggle. Finally the Esquimaux man’s body slid the last five feet and disappeared into the black currents fifteen feet below the ice.

Sir John ordered that the woman not spend the night aboard Erebus, Captain Crozier said softly. We’ve come to take her back to Terror. To the tall lieutenant whose name I now remembered as Irving, Crozier said, John, she will be in your charge. Find a place for her out of sight of the men – probably forward of the sick bay in the stacks – and make sure no harm comes to her.

Aye, sir.

Excuse me, Captain, I said. But why not let her go back to her people?

Crozier smiled at this. Normally I would agree with that course of action, Doctor. But there are no known Esquimaux settlements – not the smallest village – within three hundred miles of here. They are a nomadic people – especially those we call the Northern Highlanders – but what brought this old man and young girl out onto the pack ice so far north in a summer where there are no whales, no walruses, no seals, no caribou, no animals of any sort abroad except our white bears and the murderous things on the ice?

I had no answer to this, but it hardly seemed pertinent to my question.

It may come to the point, continued Crozier, where our lives might depend upon finding and befriending these native Esquimaux. Shall we let her go then before we’ve befriended her?

We shot her husband or father, said Surgeon Stanley, glancing at the mute young woman who still stared at the now empty fire hole. Our Lady Silence here might not have the most charitable of feelings toward us.

Precisely, said Captain Crozier. And we have enough problems right now without this lass leading a war party of angry Esquimaux back to our ships to murder us as we sleep. No, I think Captain Sir John is right… she should stay with us until we decide what to do… not only with her, but with ourselves. Crozier smiled at Stanley. In two years, this was the first time that I could remember seeing Captain Crozier smile. Lady Silence. That is good, Stanley. Very good. Come, John. Come, m’lady.

They walked west through the blowing snow toward the first pressure ridge. I went back up the ramp of snow to Erebus, to my tiny little cabin which seemed like pure heaven to me now, and to the first solid night’s sleep I had had since Lieutenant Gore led us south-southeast onto the ice more than ten days earlier.