Dan Simmons - The Terror

“Relays?” said Bridgens. “Dear heavens, it will take us forever to move even ten boats if we’re constantly going back and forth. And the weaker and sicker we become, the slower we will go.”

“Yes,” said Peglar.

“Is there any chance that we shall get these boats all the way to the Great Fish River and then up the river to Great Slave Lake and the outpost there?”

“I doubt it,” said Peglar. “Perhaps if a few of us survive long enough to get the boats to the mouth of the river and the right boats make it and they’re rigged just perfectly for river running and… but, no, I doubt if there’s any real chance.”

“Then why on earth would Captains Crozier and Fitzjames put us through such labour and misery if there is no chance?” asked Bridgens. The older man’s voice did not sound aggrieved or anxious or desperate, merely curious. Peglar had heard John pose a thousand questions about astronomy, natural history, geology, botany, philosophy, and a score of other subjects in precisely that same soft, mildly curious tone. With most of the other questions, it had been the teacher who knew the answer quizzing his student in a polite way. Here, Peglar was sure that John Bridgens did not know the answer to this question.

“What’s the alternative? ” asked the foretop captain.

“We could stay here at Terror Camp,” said Bridgens. “Or even return to Terror , once our numbers have… decreased.”

“To do what?” demanded Peglar. “Just to wait to die?”

“To wait in comfort, Harry.”

“To die ?” said Peglar, realizing that he was almost shouting. “Who the fuck wants to wait in comfort to die? At least if we get the boats to the coast – any of the boats – some of us may have a chance. There might be open water east to Boothia. We may be able to force passage up the river. At least some of us. And those who make it will at least be able to tell the rest of our loved ones what happened to us, where we were buried, and that we were thinking of them in the end.”

“You are my loved one, Harry,” said Bridgens. “The only man or woman or child left in the world who cares whether I am alive or dead, much less what I may have thought before I fell or where my bones will lie.”

Peglar, still angry, felt his heart pounding inside his chest. “You’re going to outlive me, John.”

“Oh, at my age, and with my infirmities and proclivities toward illness, I hardly think…”

“ You’re going to outlive me, John ,” grated Peglar. He shocked himself by the intensity of his voice and Bridgens blinked and fell silent. Peglar took the older man’s wrist. “Promise me you’ll do one thing for me, John.”

“Of course.” There was none of the usual banter or irony in Bridgens’ voice.

“My diary… it’s not much, I have trouble even thinking, much less writing these days… I’m quite sick with this God-damned scurvy, John, and it seems to addle my brain… but I’ve kept the diary for the past three years. My thoughts are in it. All of the events we’ve experienced are put down there. If you could take it when I… when I leave you… just take it back with you to England, I’d appreciate it.”

Bridgens only nodded.

“John,” said Harry Peglar, “I think Captain Crozier is going to decide to take us on the march soon. Very soon. He knows that every day we wait here we get weaker. Soon we won’t be able to haul boats at all. We’ll begin dying by the dozens here at Terror Camp before long, and it won’t take that thing on the ice to carry us away or kill us in our beds.”

Bridgens nodded again. He was looking down at his mittened hands.

“We’re not on the same man-hauling teams, won’t share the same boats, and may not even end up together if the captains decide to try for different escape routes,” continued Peglar. “I want to say good-bye today and never have to do it again.”

Bridgens nodded mutely. He was looking at his boots. The fog rolled over the boats and sledges and moved around them like some alien god’s cold breath.

Peglar hugged him. Bridgens stood upright and brittle for a moment and then returned the hug, both men clumsy in their many layers and frozen slops.

The captain of the foretop turned then and walked slowly back toward Terror Camp and his tiny circular Holland tent with its group of off-duty shivering, unwashed men huddling together in inadequate sleeping bags.

When he paused and looked back toward the line of boats, there was no sign of Bridgens at all. It was as if the fog had swallowed him without a trace.

He fell asleep while walking.

Crozier had been talking to Fitzjames about arguments for and against letting the men spend more days at Terror Camp as the two walked the two miles north through the fog to James Ross’s cairn when suddenly Fitzjames was shaking him awake.

“We’re here, Francis. This is the large white boulder near the shore ice. Victory Point and the cairn must be to our left. Were you really sleeping while walking?”

“No, of course not,” rasped Crozier.

“Then what did you mean when you said, ‘Watch out for the open boat with the two skeletons’? and ‘watch out for the girls and the table rappings.’ It made no sense. We were discussing whether Dr. Goodsir should stay behind at Terror Camp with the seriously ill men while the stronger ones try for Great Slave Lake with just four boats.”

“Just thinking aloud,” muttered Crozier.

“Who is Memo Moira?” asked Fitzjames. “And why should she not send you to Communion?”

Crozier pulled his cap and wool scarves off, letting the fog and cold air slap his face as he walked up the slow rise. “Where the hell is the cairn?” he snapped.

“I don’t know,” said Fitzjames. “It should be right here. Even on a sunny, clear day, I walk this inlet coastline to the white boulder near the bergs and then left up to the cairn at Victory Point.”

“We can’t have walked past it,” said Crozier. “We’d be out on the fucking pack ice.”

It took them almost forty-five minutes to find the cairn in the fog. At one point when Crozier said, “The God-damned white thing from the ice has taken it and hidden it somewhere to confound us,” Fitzjames had only looked at his commanding officer and said nothing.

Finally, feeling their way along together like two blind men – not risking separating in the roiling fog, sure that they wouldn’t even hear the others’ calls over the constant drumbeat of approaching thunder – they literally stumbled into the cairn.

“This isn’t where it was,” croaked Crozier.

“It doesn’t seem to be,” agreed the other captain.

“Ross’s cairn with Gore’s note in it was at the top of the rise at the end of Victory Point. This must be a hundred yards to the west of there, almost down in this valley.”

“It is very odd,” said Fitzjames. “Francis, you’ve come to the arctic so many times. Is this thunder – and the lightning if it comes – so common up here so early?”

“I’ve never seen or heard either before midsummer,” rasped Crozier. “And never like this. It sounds like something worse.”

“What could be worse than a thunderstorm in late April with the temperature still below zero?”

“Cannon fire,” said Crozier.

“Cannon fire?”

“From the rescue ship that came down open leads all the way from Lancaster Strait and through Peel Sound only to find Erebus crushed and Terror abandoned. They’re firing their guns for twenty-four hours to get our attention before sailing away.”