Dan Simmons - The Terror

Crozier realized that he had not. He started to explain why… why it seemed to be a sentence of death for the men whether they stayed or went. Why he had not decided yet between man-hauling for distant Boothia or toward George Back’s fabled but terrible Great Fish River. He started to explain to Fitzjames how they were fucked coming and fucked going and why no one was ever going to read the fucking note anyway, so why not just…

“Shhh!” hissed Fitzjames.

Something was circling them, just out of sight in the rolling, swirling fog. Both men could hear heavy footsteps in the gravel and ice. Something very large was breathing. It was walking on all fours, not more than fifteen feet from them in the thick fog, the sound of huge paws clearly audible over the heavy-gun rumble of distant thunder.

Hu-uf, hu-uf, hu-uf.

Crozier could hear the exhalations with each heavy footfall. It was behind them now, circling the cairn, circling them.

Both men got to their feet.

Crozier fumbled his pistol out. He pulled off his mitten and cocked the weapon as the footsteps and breathing stopped directly ahead of them but still out of sight in the fog. Crozier was certain he could smell its fish-and-carrion breath.

Fitzjames, who was still holding the ink pot and pen Crozier had given back to him and who had no pistol with him, pointed at the fog to where he thought the thing waited.

Gravel crunched as the thing moved stealthily toward them.

Slowly a triangular head materialized in the fog five feet above the ground. Wet white fur blended with the mist. Inhuman black eyes studied them from only six feet away.

Crozier aimed the pistol at a point just above that head. His hand was so firm and steady that he did not even have to hold his breath.

The head moved closer, floating as if it were unattached to any body. Then the giant shoulders came into view.

Crozier fired, making sure to shoot high so as not to strike that face.

The report was deafening, especially to nervous systems set on edge by scurvy.

The white bear, little more than a cub, let out a startled woof , reared back, wheeled, and ran off on all fours, disappearing into the fog in seconds. The scrabbling, running paw steps on gravel were audible for a long minute after, heading toward the sea ice to the northwest.

Crozier and Fitzjames started laughing then.

Neither man could stop. Every time one of them would slow in the laughter, the other would begin and then both would be caught up again in the mad, senseless hilarity.

They clutched their own sides from the pain of the laughter against their bruised ribs.

Crozier dropped the pistol and both men started laughing harder.

They clapped each other’s backs, pointed toward the fog, and laughed until the tears froze on their cheeks and whiskers. They clutched each other for support while they laughed harder.

Both captains collapsed on the gravel and leaned back against the cairn, that action alone causing the laughter to return in force.

Eventually the guffaws turned to giggles and the giggles into embarrassed snorts, the snorts into a few final laughs, and finally those died into a mutual gasping for air.

“You know what I would give my left bollock for right now?” asked Captain Francis Crozier.

“What?”

“A glass of whiskey. Two glasses, I mean. One for me and one for you. The drinks would be on me, James. I’m standing you to a round.”

Fitzjames nodded, wiping ice from his eyelids and picking frozen snot from his reddish mustache and beard. “Thank you, Francis. And I’d lift the first toast to you. I’ve never had the honour of serving under a better commander or a finer man.”

“Could I please have the ink pot and pen back?” said Crozier.

Pulling his mitten back on, he fumbled the stones out, found the canister, opened it, spread the sheet of paper out upside down on his knee, tugged his mitten off again, cracked the ice in the ink pot with the pen, and in the tiny space remaining under his signature, wrote,

And start tomorrow, 26 th, for Back’s Fish River.

From the private diary of Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir:

Tuesday, 6 June – Captain Fitzjames has finally died. It is a Blessing.

Unlike the others who have died in the last Six Weeks since we first started Hauling the Boats south (a Living Hell of a vocation from which even the Ships’ Only Surviving Surgeon is not exempted), the Captain, in my opinion, did not perish from the Scurvy.

He had Scurvy, there is no Doubt of that. I just Completed the postmortem examination of that Good Man and the Bruises and Bleeding Gums and Blackened Lips all told the story. But I think Scurvy was not the Killer .

Captain Fitzjames’s last three days were spent here, about 80 Miles south of Terror Camp, on a frozen point on a windswept bay where the bulk of King William Land curves sharply to the West. For the first time in Six Weeks, we have unpacked All the Tents – including the large ones – and used some Coal from the few sacks we brought along and the Iron Whaleboat Stove one crew has man-hauled so far. Almost all of our meals the past six weeks have been eaten cold or only Partially Heated over the tiny spirit stoves. For the last two nights we have had hot food – never enough, a third of the rations we need for the incredibly Strenuous Work we are Doing, but warm nonetheless. For Two Mornings we have wakened in the same place. The men are calling this place Comfort Cove.

Mostly we stopped to allow Captain Fitzjames to Die in Peace. But there was no Peace for the captain in his last days.

Poor Lieutenant Le Vesconte had evidenced some of the same Symptoms of Captain Fitzjames’s last days. Lieutenant Le Vesconte died suddenly on our 13 thDay on this terrible Voyage South – only 18 Miles from Terror Camp if I remember correctly, and on the same day that Marine Private Pilkington expired – but the Symptoms of Scurvy had been more Advanced in both the lieutenant and the private and their Final Agonies less excruciatingly drawn out.

I confess that I hadn’t remembered that Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s first name had been Harry. Our intercourse had always been quite Friendly but also quite Formal, and on the Muster Rolls I recalled his name had been listed as H. T. D. Le Vesconte. It bothers me now that I must have heard the Other Officers call him Harry from time to time – perhaps a hundred times – but I had always been too busy or preoccupied to notice. It was only after Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s death that I paid attention to the other Men using his Christian name.

Private Pilkington’s Christian name was William.

I remember that day in early May after Le Vesconte’s and Private Pilkington’s brief joint burial service, one of the men suggested that we name the small spur of land where they were buried “Le Vesconte Point,” but Captain Crozier vetoed that idea, saying that if we named every place where one of us might end up buried after the dead person there, we’d run out of land before we ran out of names.

This Befuddled the men and I Confess that it Befuddled me as well. It must have been an Attempt at Humour, but it shocked me. It shocked the men into Silence as well.

Perhaps that was Captain Crozier’s Purpose. It did put a stop to the men offering to name Natural Features after their Dead Officers.

Captain Fitzjames had shown a General Weakening for some weeks – even before we left Terror Camp – but Four Days ago he seemed to have been Struck Down by something more Sudden in its attack and far more Agonizing in its effects.