The Terror

30 CROZIER

Gentlemen, it is time we looked at our possible courses of action in the coming months,” said Captain Crozier. “I have decisions to make.”

The officers and some warrant officers and other specialists, such as the two civilian engineers, foretop captains, and ice masters, as well as the last surviving surgeon, had been called to this meeting in Terror’s Great Cabin. Terror had been chosen by Crozier not to inconvenience Captain Fitzjames and his officers – who had to make the crossing during the brief hour of sunlight and hoped to be back before it grew dark again – nor to emphasize the change of flagship, but only because fewer men on Crozier’s ship were confined to sick bay. It had been easier to move those few to a temporary sick bay in the bow to free up the Great Cabin for the meeting of officers; Erebus had twice the number of men down with symptoms of scurvy, and Dr. Goodsir had indicated that a few of them were too sick to be moved.

Now fifteen of the expedition’s leaders were crowded around the long table that in January had been cut into shorter lengths to serve as operating tables for the surgeon but now was set to rights by Mr. Honey, Terror’s carpenter. The officers and civilians had left their rainproof slops, mittens, Welsh wigs, and comforters at the base of the main ladder, but they still wore all their other layers. The room smelled of wet wool and unwashed bodies.

The long cabin was cold and no light came through the Preston Patent Illuminators overhead since the deck remained under three feet of snow and its winter canvas cover. The whale-oil lamps on the bulkheads flickered dutifully but did little to dispel the gloom.

The gathering at the table resembled a gloomier version of the summer war council Sir John Franklin had called almost eighteen months earlier on Erebus, but now instead of Sir John at the head of the table on the starboard side, Francis Crozier sat there. On the aft side of the table, to Crozier’s left, were the seven officers and warrant officers from Terror whom he had asked to be present. His executive officer, First Lieutenant Edward Little, was at Crozier’s immediate left. Next was Second Lieutenant George Hodgson, with Third Lieutenant John Irving to his left. Then the civilian engineer – given warrant officer status on the expedition but looking thinner, paler, and more cadaverous than ever – James Thompson. On Thompson’s left were Ice Master Thomas Blanky, who appeared to be stumping along very nicely on his wooden peg leg these days, and Captain of the Foretop Harry Peglar, the only petty officer Crozier had invited. Also present was Terror’s Sergeant Tozer – who had been out of both captains’ graces since the night of the Carnivale when his men had fired on survivors of the fire but who was still the highest-ranked survivor of his heavily thinned group of lobsterbacks – speaking for the Marines.

At the port end of the long table sat Captain Fitzjames. Crozier knew that Fitzjames had not bothered to shave for several weeks, growing a reddish beard surprisingly flecked with grey, but he had made the effort today – or had ordered Mr. Hoar, his steward, to shave him. The effect only made his face look thinner and more pale, and now it was covered with countless small scrapes and cuts. Even with multiple layers of clothes on, it was obvious that Fitzjames’s garments hung on a much frailer frame these days.

To Captain Fitzjames’s left, along the forward side of the long table, sat six Erebuses. Immediately to his left was his only other surviving Naval officer – Sir John Franklin, First Lieutenant Gore, and Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme had all been killed by the thing on the ice – Lieutenant H. T. D. Le Vesconte, the man’s gold tooth gleaming the few times he smiled. Next to Le Vesconte was Charles Frederick Des Voeux, who had taken over the duties of first mate from Robert Orme Sergeant, who had been killed by the thing while overseeing torch-cairn repair in December.

Next to Des Voeux sat the only surviving surgeon, Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir. While technically the expedition’s and Crozier’s surgeon now, both the commanding officers and the surgeon had thought it appropriate for him to sit with his former Erebus crewmates.

To Goodsir’s left sat Ice Master James Reid, and to his left the only Erebus petty officer present, Captain of the Foretop Robert Sinclair. And sitting on the forward side of the table was Erebus’s engineer, John Gregory, looking much healthier than his Terror counterpart.

Tea and weevil-rich biscuits were being served by Mr. Gibson of Terror and Mr. Bridgens of Erebus since the captains’ stewards were both in sick bay with signs of scurvy.

“Let’s discuss things in order,” said Crozier. “First, can we stay in the ships until a possible summer thaw? And part of that answer has to be, can the ships sail in June or July or August if there is a thaw? Captain Fitzjames?”

Fitzjames’s voice was a hollow husk of its once-confident firmness. Men on both sides of the table leaned closer to hear him.

“I don’t think Erebus will last until summer, and it’s my opinion – and the opinion of Mr. Weekes and Mr. Watson, my carpenters, and Mr. Brown, my bosun’s mate, Mr. Rigden, my coxswain, and of Lieutenant Le Vesconte and First Mate Des Voeux here – that she will sink when the ice melts.”

The cold air in the Great Cabin seemed to grow colder and to press more heavily on everyone. No one spoke for half a minute.

“The pressure from the ice these past two winters has squeezed the oakum right out from between the hull boards,” continued Fitzjames in his small, hoarse voice. “The main shaft to the screw has been twisted beyond all repair – all of you know that it was designed to be retracted into an iron well all the way up to the orlop deck to be kept out of harm’s way, but it will no longer retract any higher than the hull bottom – and we have no more replacement shafts. The screw itself has been shattered by the ice, as has been our rudder. We can jury-rig another rudder, but the ice has torn our hull bottom to splinters all along the length of the keel. We’re missing almost half of our iron plating along the bow and sides.

“Worse,” said Fitzjames, “the ice has squeezed the hull until the iron crossbeams added for reinforcement and the cast-iron replacements for her knees have either snapped or punctured the hull in more than a dozen places. If she were to float, even if we patched every breach and managed somehow to repair the problem with the screw-shaft well leaking, she would have no internal bracing against the ice. Also, while the wooden channels added to her side for this expedition have largely succeeded in keeping the ice from climbing over the raised gunwales, the downward pressure on these channels resulting from her raised position in the encroaching ice has caused splitting of the hull timbers along every channel seam.”

Fitzjames seemed to notice their rapt attention for the first time. His unfocused stare went away and he looked down as if embarrassed. When he looked up again, his voice sounded almost apologetic. “Worst of all,” he said, “is that the twisting pressure of the ice has so cork-screwed the sternpost and started the heads and ends of planking that Erebus has been bent far out of true by the stress. The decks break upward now… the only thing holding them in place is the weight of the snow… and none of us believe that our pumps could equal the leaks should she be floated again. I will let Mr. Gregory speak to the condition of the boiler, coal supplies, and propulsion system.”

All eyes shifted to John Gregory.

The engineer cleared his throat and licked his chapped and bleeding lips. “There is no steam propulsion system left on HMS Erebus,” he said. “With the main shaft twisted and jammed in the retraction well, we’d need a Bristol dry dock to set her right. Nor do we have enough coal left for a day’s steaming. By the end of April, we’ll be out of coal to heat the ship, even at the rate of moving just forty-five minutes of hot water a day only to parts of the lower deck that we’re trying to keep habitable now.”

Crozier said, “Mr. Thompson. What is Terror’s status in terms of steam?”

The living skeleton looked at his captain for a long minute and said in a voice that was surprisingly strong, “We wouldn’t be able to steam for more than an hour or two, sir, if Terror was floated this afternoon. Our shaft was retracted all right a year and a half ago, and the screw is workable – and we have a replacement for that – but we’re almost out of coal. If we were to transfer what’s left of Erebus’s coal stores here and just heat the ship, we’d keep the boiler going and the hot water running two hours a day until… I’d venture… early May. But that wouldn’t leave any coal for steaming. With just Terror’s stores of fuel, we’ll have to stop heating by mid- or late April.”

“Thank you, Mr. Thompson,” said Crozier. The captain’s voice was soft and betrayed no emotion. “Lieutenant Little and Mr. Peglar, would both of you be so kind as to give your assessment of Terror’s seaworthiness?”

Little nodded and looked down the table before returning his gaze to his captain. “We’re not as knocked up as Erebus, but there’s been ice-pressure damage to the hull, knees, outer plating, rudder, and inner bracings. Some of you know that before Christmas, Lieutenant Irving discovered not only that we had lost most of our iron plating along the starboard side back from the bow, but that the ten inches of oak and elm in the bow area had actually sprung the timbers in the forward cable locker on the hull deck, and we’ve found since that the thirteen inches of solid oak along her bottom has been sprung or compromised in twenty or thirty places. The bow boards’ve been replaced and reinforced, but we can’t get to all her bottom because of the frozen slush down there.

“I think she’ll float and steer, Captain,” concluded Lieutenant Little, “but I can’t promise that the pumps will be able to keep up with the leaks. Especially after the ice has another four or five months to work at her. Mr. Peglar can speak to that better than I can.”

Harry Peglar cleared his throat. He obviously wasn’t used to speaking in front of so many officers.

“If she’ll float, sirs, then the foretop crew will get the masts reset and the rigging, shrouds, and canvas up within forty-eight hours of the time you give the word. I can’t guarantee that sailing will get us through the thick ice of the sort we saw coming south, but if we have open water under us and ahead of us, we’ll be a sailing ship again. And if you don’t mind me making a recommendation, sirs… I’d suggest we steep the masts sooner rather than later.”

“You’re not worried about ice building up and capsizing the ship?” asked Crozier. “Or ice falling on us when we’re working on deck? We have months of blizzards ahead of us still, Harry.”

“Aye, sir,” said Peglar. “And capsizing’s always a worry, even if we were just to tumble over onto the ice here, the ship being all cattywampus the way she is. But I still think it’d be better to have the topmasts up and the rigging in place in case there’s a sudden thaw. We might have to sail with ten minutes’ warning. And the topmen need the exercise and work, sir. As for the ice falling… well, it’ll just be another thing to keep us alert and on our toes out there. That and the beastie on the ice.”

Several men around the table chuckled. Little’s and Peglar’s mostly positive reports had helped ease some of the tension. The thought of even one of the two ships being able to float and sail raised morale. It felt to Crozier as if the temperature in the Great Cabin had actually risen – and perhaps it had, since many of the men seemed to be exhaling again.

“Thank you, Mr. Peglar,” said Crozier. “It looks like if we want to sail out of here, we’ll all have to do it – both crews – aboard Terror.”

None of the surviving officers present mentioned that this had been precisely what Crozier had suggested doing almost eighteen months earlier. Every officer present appeared to be thinking it.

“Let’s take a minute to talk about that thing on the ice,” said Crozier. “It hasn’t seemed to have made an appearance recently.”

“I’ve not had to treat anyone for wounds since the first of January,” said Dr. Goodsir. “And no one has died or disappeared since Carnivale.”

“But there have been sightings,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte. “Something large moving among the seracs. And men on watch hear things in the dark.”

“Men on watch at sea have always heard things in the dark,” said Lieutenant Little. “Going back to the Greeks.”

“Perhaps it has gone away,” said Lieutenant Irving. “Migrated. Moved south. Or north.”

Everyone fell silent again at this thought.

“Perhaps it’s eaten enough of us to know we’re not very tasty,” said Ice Master Blanky.

Some of the men smiled at this. No one else could have said it and been excused the gallows humour, but Mr. Blanky, with his peg leg, had earned some prerogatives.

“My Marines have been searching, as per Captain Crozier’s and Captain Fitzjames’s orders,” said Sergeant Tozer. “We’ve shot at a few bears, but none of them seemed to be the big one… the thing.”

“I hope your men have been better shots than they were on the night of the Carnivale,” said Sinclair, Erebus’s foretop captain.

Tozer turned to his right and squinted down the table at him.

“There’ll be no more of that,” said Crozier. “For the time being, we’ll have to assume that the thing on the ice is still alive and will be back. Any activities we have to do off the ships will have to include some plan of defense against it. We don’t have enough Marines to accompany every possible sledge party – especially if they’re armed and not man-hauling – so perhaps the answer is to arm all ice parties and have the extra men, the ones not hauling, take turns serving as sentries and guards. Even if the ice doesn’t open again this summer, it will be easier to travel in the constant daylight.”

“You’ll pardon my phrasing it this bluntly, Captain,” said Dr. Goodsir, “but the real question is, can we afford to wait until summer before deciding whether to abandon the ships?”

“Can we, Doctor?” asked Crozier.

“I do not believe so,” said the surgeon. “More of the canned food is contaminated or putrefied than we had thought. We’re running low on all other stores. The men’s diet is already below what they need for the work they’re doing every day on the ship or out on the ice. Everyone is losing weight and energy. Add to that the sudden rise in scurvy cases and… well, gentlemen, I simply do not believe that many of us on Erebus or Terror – if the ships themselves last that long – will have the energy or concentration abilities to make any sledge trip if we wait until June or July to see if the ice breaks up.”

The room was silent again.

Into the silence, Goodsir added, “Or rather, a few men may well have the energy to haul sledges and boats in a bid for rescue or to reach civilization, but they will have to leave the vast majority of others behind to starve.”

“The strong could go for help to bring rescue parties back to the ships,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte.

It was Ice Master Thomas Blanky who spoke up. “Anyone heading south – say by hauling our boats south to the mouth of the Great Fish River and then upstream 850 miles farther south to Great Slave Lake where there’s an outpost – wouldn’t get there until late autumn or winter at the best and couldn’t return with an overland rescue party until late summer of 1849. Everyone left behind on the ships would be dead of scurvy and starvation by then.”

“We could load sledges and all head east to Baffin Bay,” said First Mate Des Voeux. “There might be whalers there. Or even rescue ships and sledge parties already searching for us.”

“Aye,” said Blanky. “That’s a possibility. But we’d have to man-haul sledges across hundreds of miles of open ice, what with all its pressure ridges and maybe open leads. Or follow the coast – and that would be more than twelve hundred miles. And then we’d have to cross the whole Boothia Peninsula with all its mountains and obstacles to get to the east coast where the whalers might be. We could haul the boats with us to cross leads, but that would triple our effort. One thing is sure – if the ice ain’t opening here, it won’t be open if we head northeast toward Baffin Bay.”

“There would be far less weight if we only take sledges with provisions and tents to the northeast across Boothia,” said Lieutenant Hodgson from the Terror side of the table. “One of the pinnaces must weigh at least six hundred pounds.”

“More like eight hundred pounds,” Captain Crozier said softly. “Without stores in it.”

“Add to that more than six hundred pounds for a sledge that could carry a boat,” said Thomas Blanky, “and we’d be man-hauling between fourteen and fifteen hundred pounds for each party – just the weight of the boat and sledge – not counting food, tents, weapons, clothes, and other things we’d have to haul with us. No one has ever man-hauled that much weight for more than a thousand miles – and much of it would be across open sea ice if we head for Baffin Bay.”

“But a sledge with runners on the ice and possibly a sail – especially if we leave in March or April before the ice gets runny and sticky – would be easier going than man-hauling gear overland or through summer slush,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte.

“I say we leave the boats behind and travel light to Baffin Bay with just sledges and survival stores,” said Charles Des Voeux. “If we arrive on the east coast of Somerset Island to the north before the whaling season ends, we’re bound to be picked up by a ship. And I would wager that there will be Navy rescue ships and sledge parties there looking for us.”

“If we leave the boats behind,” said Ice Master Blanky, “one open stretch of water will stop us for good. We die out there on the ice.”

“Why would rescuers be on the east side of Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula in the first place?” asked Lieutenant Little. “If they’re searching for us, won’t they follow our path through Lancaster Sound to Devon and Beechey and Cornwallis Islands? They know Sir John’s sailing orders. They will presume we made it through Lancaster Sound since it’s open most summers. There’s no chance at all of any of us making it that far north.”

“Perhaps the ice is as bad up at Lancaster Sound this year as it is down here,” said Ice Master Reid. “That would keep the search parties farther south, out on the east side of Somerset Island and the Boothia.”

“Maybe they’ll find the messages what we left in the cairns way up at Beechey if they do get through,” said Sergeant Tozer. “And send sledges or ships south the way we come.”

Silence descended like a shroud.

“There were no messages left at Beechey,” Captain Fitzjames said into that silence.

In the embarrassed vacuum that followed this statement, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier found a strange, hot, pure flame burning in his chest. It was a sensation rather like a first sip of whiskey after days without it, but also nothing at all like that.

Crozier wanted to live. It was that simple. He was determined to live. He was going to survive this bad patch in the face of all odds and gods dictating that he would not and could not. This fire in his chest had been there even in the shaky, sick hours and painful days after he had emerged from the pit of his malaria-and-withdrawal brush with death in early January. The flame grew stronger every day.

Perhaps more than any other man around the long table in the Great Cabin this day, Francis Crozier understood the near impossibility of the courses of action being discussed. It was folly to head south across the ice toward Great Fish River. Folly to head for Somerset Island across twelve hundred miles of coastal ice, pressure ridges, open leads, and an unknown peninsula. Folly to think that the ice would open up this summer and allow Terror – overcrowded with two crews and almost empty of provisions – to sail out of the hopeless trap that Sir John had led them into.

Nonetheless, Francis Crozier was determined to live. The flame burned in him like strong Irish whiskey.

“Have we given up on the idea of sailing out?” Robert Sinclair was saying.

James Reid, Erebus’s Ice Master, answered. “We would have to sail almost three hundred miles north up the unnamed strait and sound that Sir John discovered, then through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound, then get south through Baffin Bay before the ice closed on us again. We had the steam engine and armour plating to help us bash through the ice heading south. Even if the ice relents to levels it was two summers ago, we would have great difficulty traversing that distance just with sail. And with our weakened wooden hull.”

“The ice may be considerably less than in 1846,” said Sinclair.

“Angels may fly out my arse,” said Thomas Blanky.

Because of his missing leg, none of the officers at the table reprimanded the ice master. A few smiled.

“There might be another option… for sailing, I mean,” said Lieutenant Edward Little.

Eyes turned in his direction. Enough men had saved some rations of tobacco – stretched out by adding unspeakable things to it – that half a dozen were now smoking pipes around the table. The smoke haze made the gloom even thicker in the dim flicker of the whale-oil lamps.

“Lieutenant Gore last summer thought that he spied land to the south of King William Land,” continued Little. “If he did, that has to be the Adelaide Peninsula – known territory – which quite often has a channel of open water between the coast ice and the pack ice. If enough leads open to allow Terror to sail south – just a little over one hundred miles, perhaps, rather than the three hundred miles back through Lancaster Sound – we could follow open channels along the coast west until we reach the Bering Strait. Everything beyond here would be known territory.”

“The North-West Passage,” said Third Lieutenant John Irving. The words sounded like a mournful incantation.

“But would we have enough able-bodied men to crew the ship by late summer?” asked Dr. Goodsir, his voice very soft. “By May, the scurvy may have all of us in its grip. And what would we do for food during the weeks or months of our passage west?”

“Hunting might be good farther west,” said Marine Sergeant Tozer. “Musk oxen. Them big deer. Walruses. White foxes. Maybe we’d be eating like pashas before we got to Alaska.”

Crozier half-expected Ice Master Thomas Blanky to say, “And musk oxen might fly out my arse,” but the sometimes-giddy ice master seemed to be lost in his own reveries.

Lieutenant Little answered instead. “Sergeant, our problem is that even if the game were to miraculously return after two summers’ absence, none of us aboard seems able to hit anything with muskets… your men excluded, of course. We’d need more than your few surviving Marines to hunt. And it appears that none of us has any experience hunting anything much larger than birds. Will the shotguns bring down the game you’re talking about?”

“If you gets close enough,” Tozer said sullenly.

Crozier interrupted this line of discussion. “Dr. Goodsir made an excellent point earlier… if we wait until midsummer, or perhaps even until June to see if the pack ice breaks up, we may be too ill and hungry to crew the ship. We’d certainly be too low on provisions to start a sledge trip. And we have to assume three or four months of travel across the ice or up Fish River, so if we’re going to abandon the ships and take to the ice with the hopes of arriving at either Great Slave Lake or the east coast of Somerset Island or Boothia before winter sets in again, our departure obivously has to be before June. But how early?”

There was another thick bout of silence.

“I would suggest no later than the first of May,” Lieutenant Little said at last.

“Earlier, I would think,” said Dr. Goodsir, “unless we find sources of fresh meat soon and if the illness continues to spread as quickly as it currently is.”

“How much earlier?” asked Captain Fitzjames.

“No later than mid-April?” Goodsir said hesitantly.

The men looked at one another through the tobacco smoke and cold air. That was less than two months away.

“Perhaps,” said the surgeon, his voice sounding both firm and tentative to Crozier, “if conditions continue to worsen.”

“How could they get worse?” asked Second Lieutenant Hodgson.

The young man obviously had meant it as a joke to lessen the tension but was rewarded with baleful and angry stares.

Crozier did not want the council of war to end on that note. The officers, warrant officers, petty officers, and civilian at the table had looked at their choices and seen that they were as bleak as Crozier had known they would be, but he did not want his ships’ leaders’ morale to get any lower than it already was.

“By the way,” Crozier said in a conversational tone, “Captain Fitzjames has decided to conduct Divine Service next Sunday on Erebus – he’ll be giving a special sermon that I’m interested in hearing, although I have it on good authority that it will not be a reading from the Book of Leviathan – and I thought that since the ships’ companies will be assembled anyway, we should have full rations of grog and dinner that one day.”

The men smiled and bantered. None of them had expected to bring back good news to their specialized portions of the crews from this meeting.

Fitzjames raised one eyebrow very slightly. His “special sermon” and this Divine Service five days away, Crozier knew, were news to him, but Crozier thought it would probably do the thinning captain good to be preoccupied with something and to be the center of attention for a change. Fitzjames nodded ever so slightly.

“Very well then, gentlemen,” Crozier said a bit more formally. “This exchange of thoughts and information has been very helpful. Captain Fitzjames and I will consult and perhaps talk to several of you again, one to one, before we make up our minds on a course of action. I will let you Erebuses get back to your ship before our midday sunset. Godspeed, gentlemen. I shall see you all on Sunday.”

The men filed out. Fitzjames came around, leaned close, and whispered, “I may want to borrow that Book of Leviathan from you, Francis,” and followed his men forward to where they were struggling into their frozen slops.

Terror’s officers went back to their duties. Captain Crozier sat for a few minutes in his chair at the head of the table, thinking about what had been discussed. The fire for survival burned hotter than ever in his aching chest.

“Captain?”

Crozier looked up. It was the old steward from Erebus, Bridgens, who had filled in on the serving because of both captains’ stewards’ illnesses. The man had been helping Gibson clean up the pewter plates and teacups.

“Oh, you can go, Bridgens,” said Crozier. “Go on with the others. Gibson will attend to all this. We don’t want you walking back to Erebus on your own.”

“Yes, sir,” said the old subordinate officers’ steward. “But I wonder if I might have a word with you, Captain.”

Crozier nodded. He did not invite the steward to sit down. He’d never felt comfortable around this old man – far too old for Discovery Service. If Crozier had been the one to make the decision three years earlier, Bridgens never would have been included on the roster – certainly not listed with an age of “ 26” to fool the Navy – but Sir John had been amused by having a steward aboard even older than himself and that had been that.

“I couldn’t help but hear the discussion, Captain Crozier – the three options of staying with the ships and hoping for a thaw, heading south to Fish River, or crossing the ice to Boothia. If the captain doesn’t mind, I’d like to suggest a fourth option.”

The captain did mind. Even an egalitarian Irishman like Francis Crozier bridled a bit at having a subordinate officers’ steward give advice on life-and-death command problems. But he said, “Go ahead.”

The steward went to the wall of books set into the stern bulkhead and pulled two large volumes, bringing them over to the table and setting them down with a thud. “I know you’re aware, Captain, that in 1829, Sir John Ross and his nephew James sailed their ship Victory down the east coast of Boothia Felix – the peninsula they discovered and which we now call Boothia Peninsula.”

“I am very aware of this, Mr. Bridgens,” Crozier said coldly. “I know Sir John and his nephew Sir James very well.” After five years in the ice of Antarctica with James Clark Ross, Crozier thought he was understating the acquaintance.

“Yes, sir,” said Bridgens, nodding but not seeming abashed. “Then I’m sure you know the details of their expedition, Captain Crozier. They spent four winters in the ice. That first winter, Sir John anchored Victory in what he named Felix Harbour on the east coast of Boothia… almost due east of our position here.”

“Were you on this expedition, Mr. Bridgens?” asked Crozier, willing the old man to get on with it.

“I did not have that honor, Captain. But I have read these two large volumes written by Sir John detailing his expedition. I wondered if you have had the time to do the same, sir.”

Crozier felt his Irish anger building. This old steward’s brashness was skirting on impertinence. “I have looked at the books, of course,” he said coolly. “I have not had the time to read them carefully. Is there a point to this, Mr. Bridgens?”

Any other officer, warrant officer, petty officer, seaman, or Marine under Crozier’s command would have received the message and been backing out of the Great Cabin while bowing low by now, but Bridgens seemed oblivious of his expedition commander’s irritation.

“Yes, Captain,” said the old man. “The point is that John Ross…”

“Sir John,” interrupted Crozier.

“Of course. Sir John Ross had much the same problem we do now, Captain.”

“Nonsense. He and James and Victory were frozen in on the east side of Boothia, Bridgens, precisely where we’d like to sledge to if we have the time and wherewithal. Hundreds of miles east of here.”

“Yes, sir, but at the same latitude, although Victory didn’t have to face this God-cursed pack ice coming down from the northwest all the time, thanks to Boothia. But she spent three winters in the ice there, Captain. James Ross sledged more than six hundred miles west across Boothia and the ice to King William Land just twenty-five miles sou’southeast of us, Captain. He named Victory Point… the same point and cairn site that poor Lieutenant Gore sledged to last summer before his unfortunate accident.”

“Do you think I don’t know that Sir James discovered King William Land and named Victory Point?” demanded Crozier. His voice was taut with irritation. “He also discovered the God-damned north magnetic pole during that expedition, Bridgens. Sir James is… was… the most outstanding long-distance sledger of our era.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bridgens. His small steward’s smile made Crozier want to strike him. The captain knew – had known before sailing – that this old man was a well-known sodomite, at least on shore. After the caulker mate’s near mutiny, Captain Crozier was sick of sodomites. “My point is, Captain Crozier, that after three winters in the ice, with his men as sick with scurvy as ours will be by this summer, Sir John decided that they would never get out of the ice and sank Victory in ten fathoms of water there off the east coast of Boothia, due east of us, and they headed north to Fury Beach, where Captain Parry had left supplies and boats.”

Crozier realized that he could hang this man, but he could not shut him up. He frowned and listened.

“You remember, Captain, that Parry’s supplies of food and boats were there at Fury Beach. Ross took the boats and sailed north along the coast to Cape Clarence, where from the cliffs there they could see north across Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound to where they hoped to find whaling ships… but the sound was solid ice, sir. That summer was as bad as our last two summers have been and as this coming one may be.”

Crozier waited. For the first time since his deathly illness in January, he wished he had a glass of whiskey.

“They went back to Fury Beach and spent a fourth winter there, Captain. Men were close to dying of scurvy. The next July… 1833, four years after they had entered the ice up there… they set out in the small boats north and then east down Lancaster Sound past Admiralty Inlet and Navy Board Inlet, when on the morning of twenty-five August, James Ross… Sir James now… saw a sail. They waved, hallooed, and fired rockets. The sail disappeared east over the horizon.”

“I remember Sir James mentioning something about that,” Crozier said drily.

“Yes, Captain, I imagine he would,” said Bridgens with his maddening little pedant’s smile. “But the wind calmed, and the men rowed like smoke and oakum, sir, and they caught up to the whaler. She was the Isabella, Captain, the same ship that Sir John had commanded way back in 1818.

“Sir John and Sir James and the crew of Victory spent four years in the ice at our latitude, Captain,” continued Bridgens. “And only one man died – the carpenter, a Mr. Thomas, who had a dyspeptic and disagreeable disposition.”

“Your point?” asked Crozier again. His voice was very flat. He was too aware that more than a dozen men had died under his command on this expedition.

“There are still boats and stores at Fury Beach,” said Bridgens. “And my guess is that any rescue party sent out for us – last year or this coming summer – will leave more boats and stores there. It’s the first place the Admiralty will think of to leave caches for us and for future rescue parties. Sir John’s survival assured that.”

Crozier sighed. “Are you in the habit of thinking like the Admiralty, Subordinate Officers’ Steward Bridgens?”

“Sometimes, yes,” said the old man. “It’s a habit of decades, Captain Crozier. After a while, proximity to fools forces one to think like a fool.”

“That will be all, Steward Bridgens,” snapped Crozier.

“Aye, sir. But read the two volumes, Captain. Sir John lays it all out – how to survive on the ice. How to fight the scurvy. How to find and use Esquimaux natives to help in the hunting. How to build little houses out of blocks of snow…”

“That will be all, Steward!”

“Aye, sir.” Bridgens knuckled his forehead and turned toward the companionway, but not before sliding the two thick volumes closer to Crozier.

The captain sat alone in the freezing Great Cabin for another ten minutes. He listened to the Erebuses clatter up the main ladderway and stomp across the deck above. He heard shouts as Terror officers on deck bid their comrades farewell and wished them a safe crossing of the ice. The ship quieted except for the bustle of men settling down after their supper and grog forward. Crozier heard the tables ratcheted up in the crewmen’s berthing area. He heard his officers clump down the ladderway, hang their slops, and come aft for their own supper. They sounded more chipper than they had at breakfast.

Crozier finally stood – stiff with cold and body aches – lifted the two heavy volumes, and carefully set them back in their place on the shelf set into the aft bulkhead.