Dan Simmons - The Terror

“Please, Francis, stop,” said Fitzjames. “If you continue, I may vomit. And I’ve already done my vomiting for today.”

“Sorry,” said Crozier, fumbling in his pockets.

“Is there really any chance that it’s guns firing for us?” asked the younger captain. “It sounds like guns.”

“Not a snowball’s chance in Sir John Franklin’s Hell,” said Crozier. “That pack ice is solid all the way to Greenland.”

“Then where is the fog coming from?” asked Fitzjames, his voice more idly curious than plaintive. “Are you searching your pockets for something in particular, Captain Crozier?”

“I forgot to bring the brass messenger canister we brought from Terror for this note,” Crozier admitted. “I felt the lump in my slops pocket during the burial service and thought I had it, but it’s only my God-besotted pistol.”

“Did you bring paper?”

“No. Jopson had some ready, but I left it in the tent.”

“Did you bring a pen? Ink? I find that if I do not carry the ink pot in a pouch close to my skin, it freezes very quickly.”

“No pen or ink,” admitted Crozier.

“It’s all right,” said Fitzjames. “I have both in my waistcoat pocket. We can use Graham Gore’s note… write on it.”

“If this is the same damned cairn,” muttered Crozier. “Ross’s cairn was six feet tall. This thing hardly comes up to my chest.”

Both men fumbled to remove rocks from a part of the cairn far down on the leeward side. They did not want to have to dismantle the entire thing and then have to rebuild it.

Fitzjames reached into the dark hole, fumbled around a second, and withdrew a brass cylinder, tarnished but still intact.

“Well I’ll be damned and dressed in cheap motley,” said Crozier. “Is it Graham’s?”

“It has to be,” said Fitzjames. Tugging his mitten off with his teeth, he clumsily unfurled the parchment note and began to read.

28 of May 1847. HM Ships Erebus and Terror… Wintered in the Ice in Lat. 70°05′ N. Long. 98°23′ W. After having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island in Lat. 74°43′ 28″ N Long…

Fitzjames interrupted himself. “Wait, that’s incorrect. We spent the winter of 1845 to ’46 at Beechey, not the winter of ’46 to ’47.”

“Sir John dictated this to Graham Gore before Gore left the ships,” rasped Crozier. “Sir John must have been as tired and confused then as we are now.”

“No one has ever been as tired and confused as we are now,” said Fitzjames. “Here, later, it goes on – ‘Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well.’ ”

Crozier did not laugh. Or weep. He said, “Graham Gore deposited the note here just a week before Sir John was killed by the thing on the ice.”

“And one day before Graham himself was killed by the thing on the ice,” said Fitzjames. “‘All well.’ That seems like another lifetime, does it not, Francis? Can you remember a time when any of us could write such a thing with an easy conscience? There’s blank space around the edge of the message if you want to write there.”

The two huddled on the lee side of the stone cairn. The temperature had dropped and the wind had come up, but the fog continued to swirl around them as if unaffected by mere wind or temperature. It was beginning to get dark. To the northwest, the sound of guns rumbled on.

Crozier breathed on the tiny portable ink pot to warm the ink, dipped the pen through the scrim of ice, rubbed the nib against his frozen sleeve, and began writing.

(25 thApril) – HM’s ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22 ndApril 5 leagues NNW of this, having been beset since 12 thSeptr. 1846. The Officers and Crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier landed here – in Lat. 69° 37′ 42″ Long. 98° 41′. This paper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, 4 miles to the Northward, where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847. Sir James Ross’ pillar has not however been found, and the paper has been transferred to this position which is that in which Sir J Ross’ pillar was erected -

Crozier stopped writing. What the hell am I saying ? he thought. He squinted to reread the last few sentences – “ Under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831”? “Sir James Ross’s pillar has not however been found” ?

Crozier let out a tired sigh. John Irving’s first order upon ferrying the first load of matériel from Erebus and Terror long ago last August to begin the stockpile that would become Terror Camp was to find Victory Point and Ross’s cairn again, then set up the cache for Terror Camp a few miles south of it along a more sheltered inlet. Irving had marked the cairn on their earliest crudely drawn maps as four miles from the cache point rather than the actual two miles, but they’d quickly discovered their mistake during subsequent man-haulings. In Crozier’s fatigue now, his mind kept insisting that the canister with Gore’s message had been moved from some false James Ross cairn to this real James Ross cairn.

Crozier shook his head and looked at Fitzjames, but the other captain was resting his arms on his raised knees and his head on his arms. He was snoring softly.

Crozier held the sheet of paper, pen, and tiny ink pot in one hand and scooped up snow with his other mittened hand, rubbing some on his face. The shock of the cold made him blink.

Concentrate, Francis. For the sake of Christ, concentrate . He wished he had another sheet of paper so that he could start over. Squinting at the cramped scrawl moving around the margins of the paper, words crawling like tiny ants – the center of the paper already filled with the official typeset information stating officiously WHOEVER finds this paper is requested to forward it to the Secretary of the Admiralty,then several more paragraphs repeating the instruction in French, German, Portugese, and other languages, then with Gore’s scrawl above that – Crozier did not recognize his own handwriting. The script was palsied, cramped, tenuous, obviously the hand of a terrified or freezing or dying man.

Or of all three.

It doesn’t matter , he thought. Either no one is ever going to read this or they will read it long after we are all dead. It doesn’t matter at all. Perhaps Sir John always understood this. Perhaps this is why he left none of the brass message canisters behind on Beechey. He knew all along .

He dipped the pen in the rapidly freezing ink and wrote again.

Sir John Franklin died on 11 thof June 1847 and the total loss by deaths on the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 Men.

Crozier stopped again. Was that correct? Had he included John Irving in the total? He couldn’t do the arithmetic. There had been 105 souls under his care yesterday… 105 when he had left Terror , his ship, his home, his wife, his life… he would leave the number.

Upside down at the top of the sheet, on the bit of white space left, he scrawled F. R. M. Crozier and after it wrote Captain and Senior Officer .

He nudged Fitzjames awake. “James… sign your name here.”

The other captain rubbed his eyes, peered at the paper but did not seem to take time to read it, and signed his name where Crozier pointed.

“Add ‘Captain HMS Erebus ,’ ” said Crozier.

Fitzjames did so.

Crozier folded the paper, slid it back into the brass canister, sealed it, and set the cylinder back in the cairn. He pulled his mitten on and fumbled the stones back into place.

“Francis, did you tell them where we are headed and when we’re leaving?”