Dan Simmons - The Terror

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.”