The Terror

35 IRVING

Except for the fact that John Irving was sick and half-starving and his gums were bleeding and he feared that two of his side teeth were loose and he was so tired that he was afraid he would collapse in his tracks at any moment, this was one of the happiest days of his life.

All this day and the previous day, he and George Henry Hodgson, old friends from the gunnery training ship Excellent before this expedition, had been in charge of teams of men doing some hunting and honest-to-God exploring. For the first time in this accursed expedition’s three years of sitting around and freezing, Third Lieutenant John Irving was a true explorer.

It was true that the island he was exploring eastward across, the same King William Land to which he’d come with Lieutenant Graham Gore a little more than eleven months ago, wasn’t worth a drop of Chinaman’s piss what with it being all frozen gravel and low hills, none rising more than twenty or so feet above sea level, inhabited only by howling winds and pockets of deep snow and then more frozen gravel, but Irving was exploring. Already this morning he had seen things that no other white man – and perhaps no other human being on the planet – had ever seen. Of course, it was just more low hills of frozen gravel and more windswept pockets of ice and snow, not so much as an arctic fox track or a mummified ring seal to be found, but it was his discovery: Sir James Ross had sledged around the northern coast to reach Victory Point two decades or so ago, but it was John Irving – originally from Bristol and then the young master of London Town – who was the first explorer of the interior of King William Land.

Irving had half a mind to name the interior Irving Land. Why not? The point not far from Terror Camp was named after Sir John’s wife, Lady Jane Franklin, and what had she ever done to deserve the honour except marry an old, fat, bald man?

The various man-hauling teams were beginning to think of themselves as distinct groups. So yesterday, Irving led this same band of six men on a hunting party while George Hodgson took his men out to reconnoiter the island, as per Captain Crozier’s instructions. Irving’s hunters had found not so much as an animal track in the snow.

The lieutenant had to admit that since all of his men had been armed with shotguns or muskets yesterday (Irving himself had carried only a pistol in his coat pocket, as he was doing today), there had been moments when he had felt some concern about the caulker’s mate, Hickey, being behind him and carrying a gun. But, of course, nothing had happened. With Magnus Manson more than twenty-five miles away at the ship, Hickey was not only polite but actually deferential to Irving, Hodgson, and the other officers.

It reminded John Irving of how their tutor used to separate his brothers and him during classes at their Bristol home when the boys had become too rowdy during the long, dreary days of lessons. The tutor would actually set the boys in separate rooms in the old manor and conduct their lessons separately for hours, moving from one part of the second floor of the old wing to the next, his high-heeled buckled shoes echoing on the ancient oak floors. John and his brothers, David and William, such a handful around Mr. Candrieau when the three were together, became almost timid in front of the pale-faced, knobby-kneed beanpole of a white-wigged tutor when alone with him. Originally very reluctant to approach Captain Crozier about leaving Manson behind, Irving was now glad he had spoken up. He was even gladder that the captain had not pressed him for a reason; Irving had never told the captain about what he had seen going on between the caulker’s mate and big seaman that night on the hold deck and never would.

But today there was no tension about Hickey or anything else. The only member of the scouting party to carry a weapon, other than Irving himself with his pistol, was Edwin Lawrence, who was armed with a musket. Shooting practice near the line of sledge-mounted boats at Terror Camp had shown that Lawrence was the only man in this group who could shoot a musket worth a damn, so he was their guard and protector today. The rest carried only canvas packs slung over their shoulders, jury-rigged bags hanging from one strap. Reuben Male, the captain of the fo’c’sle and an inventive type, had worked with Old Murray the sailmaker to make up these packs for all the men, so naturally the seamen called them Male Bags. In the Male Bags they kept their lead or pewter water bottles, some biscuits and dried pork, a tin of Goldner’s canned goods for emergency rations, some extra layers of clothing, the wire goggles that Crozier had ordered made up to protect them from sun blindness, extra powder and shot for when they were hunting, and their blanket sleeping bags just in case something should prevent them from returning to camp and they had to bivouac that night.

This morning they had hiked inland for more than five hours. The group stayed on the slight gravel rises when they could; the wind was stronger and colder there, but the walking was easier than in the snow- and ice-filled swales. They had seen nothing that might enhance everyone’s chance of survival – not even green lichen or orange moss growing on rock. Irving knew from reading books in Terror’s Great Cabin library – including two books by Sir John Franklin himself – that hungry men could make a sort of soup from the scrapings of moss and lichen. Very hungry men.

When his reconnoitering team had stopped for their cold dinner and water and some much-needed rest while huddled down out of the wind, Irving had handed over temporary command to Captain of the Maintop Thomas Farr and gone on for a while by himself. He told himself that the men were exhausted by their extraordinary sledge pulls of the past few weeks and needed the rest, but the truth was, he needed the solitude.

Irving had told Farr that he would be back in an hour and that to make sure he did not get lost he would frequently dip down across snowy patches out of the wind, leaving his boot tracks for himself to follow back or for the others to use to find him if he was late returning. As he walked farther east, blissfully alone, he had chewed on a hard biscuit, feeling how loose his two teeth were. When he pulled the biscuit away from his mouth, there was blood on it.

As hungry as he was, Irving had little appetite these days.

He waded up through another snow field onto frozen gravel and trudged up the rise to yet another windswept low ridge, then stopped suddenly.

Black specks were moving in the broad snow-swept valley ahead of him.

Irving used his teeth to tug off his mittens and fumbled in his Male Bag for his prized possession, the beautiful brass telescope his uncle had given him upon entering the Navy. The brass eyepiece would freeze to his cheek and brow if he allowed it to touch, so it was harder getting a steady image while holding it away from his face, even holding the long glass in both hands. His arms and hands were shaking.

What he had thought to be a small herd of woolly animals turned out to be human beings.

Hodgson’s hunting party.

No. These forms were dressed in heavy fur parkas of the sort Lady Silence wore. And there were ten figures laboriously crossing the snowy valley, walking close together but not in a single-file line; George only had six men with him. And Hodgson had taken his hunting party south along the coast today, not inland.

This group had a small sledge with them. Hodgson’s hunting party had no sledge with them. There was not a sledge this small at Terror Camp.

Irving fiddled with the focus of his beloved telescope and held his breath to keep the instrument from shaking.

This sledge was being pulled by a team of at least six dogs.

These were either white rescuers wearing Esquimaux garb or actual Esquimaux.

Irving had to lower the telescope and then go to one knee on the cold gravel and lower his head for a moment. The horizon seemed to be spinning. The physical weakness he’d been holding back for weeks through sheer force of will welled up through him like concentric circles of nausea.

This changes everything, he thought.

The figures below – they still did not appear to have seen him, probably because he had crossed over the rise and would not be very visible here with his dark coat blending into the dark rock – could be hunters out from some unknown farther-north Esquimaux village that was not far away. If so, the 105 survivors of Erebus and Terror were almost certainly saved. The natives would either feed them or show them how to feed themselves up here in this lifeless land.

Or there was a chance that the Esquimaux were a war party and that the crude spears Irving had caught a glimpse of in the glass were meant for the white men they’d somehow heard had invaded their lands.

Either way, Third Lieutenant John Irving knew that it was his job to go down, encounter them, and find out.

He closed the telescope, set it carefully amid extra sweaters in his shoulder bag, and – throwing one arm high in what he hoped the savages would see as a gesture of greeting and peace – started down the long hill toward the ten humans who had suddenly stopped in their tracks.