Dan Simmons - The Terror

“What happened to the… thing?” asked Goodsir. Suddenly, he was so exhausted that he had to reach for the edge of the bloody surgical table to keep from falling.

“It must have gone out the way it came in,” said Fitzjames. “Back down the forward scuttle and out somewhere down on the hold deck. Unless it’s waiting down there still. I have armed men at each of the scuttles. It’s so cold and smoky down there on the orlop deck that we’ll have to change the guard every half hour.

“Collins saw it best. That’s why I came up… to see if I could talk to him. The others just saw the shape across the flames – eyes, teeth, claws, a white mass or black silhouette. Lieutenant Le Vesconte had the Marines fire at it, but no one saw if it was hit. There is blood all forward of the burned-out carpenter’s storeroom, but we don’t know if any of it is from the beast. Can I speak to Collins?”

Goodsir shook his head. “I’ve just doused the second master with an opiate. He’ll sleep for hours. I have no idea if he will ever awaken. The odds are against it.”

Fitzjames nodded again. The captain looked as exhausted as the surgeon felt.

“What about Dunn and Brown?” asked Goodsir. “They went forward with Collins. Have you found them?”

“Yes,” Fitzjames said dully. “They’re alive. They escaped to the starboard side of the Bread Room when the fire started and the thing went after poor Collins.” The captain took a breath. “The smoke below is dissipating, so I need to lead some men down to the hold to retrieve the bodies of Engineer Gregory and Stoker Tommy Plater.”

“Oh my God,” said Goodsir. He told Fitzjames about the bare arm he’d seen protruding from the coal bunker.

“I didn’t see that,” said the captain. “I was so eager to get to the forward scuttle that I did not look down, just ahead.”

“I should have looked ahead,” the surgeon said ruefully. “I banged into a pillar or post.”

Fitzjames smiled. “So I see. Physician, heal thyself. You have a deep laceration from your hairline to your brow and a blue swelling the size of Magnus Manson’s fist.”

“Really?” said Goodsir. He gingerly touched his forehead. His bloody fingers came away bloodier even though he could feel the thick crust of dried blood on the huge contusion up there. “I’ll sew it up with a mirror or have Lloyd do it later,” he said tiredly. “I’m ready to go, Captain.”

“Go where, Mr. Goodsir?”

“Down to the hold,” said the surgeon, feeling his guts twist with nausea at the thought of it. “To see who’s lying in the coal bunker. He might be alive.”

Fitzjames looked him in the eye. “Our carpenter, Mr. Weekes, and his mate, Watson, are missing, Dr. Goodsir. They were working in a starboard coal bunker, shoring up a breach in the hull. But they must be dead.”

Goodsir had heard the “doctor.” Franklin and his commander had almost never called the surgeons that, not even Stanley and Peddie, the chief surgeons. They – and Goodsir – had almost always been the lower “Mister” to Sir John and the aristocratic Fitzjames.

But not this time.

“We have to go down to see,” said Goodsir. “ I have to go down to see. One or the other might still be alive.”

“The thing from the ice might be alive and waiting down there as well,” Fitzjames said softly. “No one saw or heard it leave.”

Goodsir nodded tiredly and lifted his medical bag. “May I have Mr. Downing to come with me?” he asked. “I may need someone to hold the lantern.”

“I’ll come with you, Dr. Goodsir,” said Captain Fitzjames. He held up an extra lamp that Downing had carried in. “Lead on, sir.”

Lieutenant Little,” said Captain Crozier, “please pass the order to abandon ship.”

“Yes, Captain.” Little turned and shouted the order down the crowded deck. The other officers and surviving second mate were absent, so John Lane, the bosun, picked up the order and bellowed it toward the bow. Thomas Johnson, the bosun’s mate and the man who had administered the lashes to Hickey and the other two men in January, shouted the order down the open hatchway before finally closing and battening down the scuttle.

There was no one left belowdecks, of course. Crozier and Lieutenant Little had walked the ship stern to bow on each deck, looking into every compartment – from the cold boiler room with its banked furnaces to the hold deck’s empty coal scuttles to the cramped but empty forward cable locker and then up through the decks. On the orlop deck they had checked that the Spirit Room and Gunner’s Storeroom were empty of all muskets, shotguns, powder, and shot – only rows of cutlasses and bayonets remained in the racks overhead, gleaming coldly in the lantern light. Two officers had checked that all necessary clothing had been removed from the Slop Room over the past month and a half and then gone on to the empty Captain’s Storeroom and equally empty Bread Room. On the foredeck, Little and Crozier had looked into every cabin and berth, noticing how neat the officers had left their bunks and shelves and remaining possessions, then seeing the seamen’s hammocks tucked up for the final time, their sea chests lightened but still in place as if awaiting the call to supper, going aft then to notice the missing books in the Great Room where men had made their choices from the volumes and carried scores of them onto the ice with them. Finally, standing next to the huge stove that was absolutely cold for the first time in almost three years, Lieutenant Little and Captain Crozier had called again down the forward scuttle, making sure that no one had remained behind. They would do a head count above, but this was part of the protocol of abandoning ship.

Then they had gone up on deck and left the scuttle open behind them.

The men standing on deck now were not surprised by the order to abandon ship. They had been called up and assembled for it. There were only about twenty-five Terrors present this morning; the rest were at Terror Camp two miles south of Victory Point or sledging materials to the camp or out hunting or reconnoitering near Terror Camp. An equal number of Erebuses waited below on the ice, standing near sledges and piles of gear where the Erebus gear-and-supply tents had been pitched since the first of April when that ship had been abandoned.

Crozier watched his men file down the ice ramp, leaving the ship forever. Finally only he and Little were left standing on the canted deck. The fifty-some men on the ice below looked up at them with eyes almost made invisible under low-pulled Welsh wigs and above wool comforters, all squinting in the cold morning light.

“Go ahead, Edward,” Crozier said softly. “Over the side with you.”

The lieutenant saluted, lifted his heavy pack of personal possessions, and went down first the ladder and then the ice ramp to join the men below.

Crozier looked around. The thin April sunlight illuminated a world of tortured ice, looming pressure ridges, countless seracs, and blowing snow. Tugging the bill of his cap lower and squinting toward the east, he tried to record his feelings at the moment.

Abandoning ship was the lowest point in any captain’s life. It was an admission of total failure. It was, in most cases, the end of a long Naval career. To most captains, many of Francis Crozier’s personal acquaintance, it was a blow from which they would never recover.

Crozier felt none of that despair. Not yet. More important to him at the moment was the blue flame of determination that still burned small but hot in his breast – I will live .