Dan Simmons - The Terror

These last weeks, his heart fluttered more frequently than not. He’d lost the use of his left fingers two weeks ago and the ache never left him. This, along with the embarrassment and inconvenience of the constant diarrhea – Peglar had always been a modest man, even about doing his business in the open over the side of a ship, which other men gave no thought to, had kept him constipated and waiting for darkness or the seat of ease.

But there was no seat of ease on this march. Not even a God-damned bush or shrub or large rock to hide behind. The men in Peglar’s hauling team laughed that their petty officer would fall behind out of sight and risk being taken by the Terror rather than allow himself to be seen taking a shit.

It wasn’t the friendly laughter that had bothered Peglar in recent weeks; it was the rushing to catch up with his team and to get back into harness. He was so exhausted from the internal bleeding and lack of food and heart flutters that he was having more and more trouble rushing to catch the receding boats.

So out of eighty-nine men this Friday, Harry Peglar was probably the only one who welcomed the blowing snow and the fog that came in after the snow began to abate.

The fog was a problem. Traveling so separately across the treacherous ice, it would have been easy for the boat teams to lose one another. Even backtracking to pick up the remaining cutters and pinnaces had been a problem, and that was before the fog grew thick as evening approached. Captain Crozier called a halt to discuss the matter. No more than fifteen men were allowed to congregate on a small area of ice at one time and that not too near a boat. They were pulling this evening with the fewest men it took to move the huge, heavy masses of boats and sledges.

The sledges were going to be a logistical problem if they ever reached the promised open water. The chances were great that they would need to load the deep-draft cutters and pinnaces with their keels and fixed rudders on sledges again before they reached the mouth of Back’s River, so they couldn’t just abandon the battered vehicles on the ice. Before leaving on Thursday, Crozier rehearsed taking the six sledged boats off, collapsing the heavy sledges as much as they had been designed to be collapsed or broken down, and stowing them properly in the boats. It took hours.

Setting the boats back up on their sledges before going out onto the pack ice was just within the men’s failing strength and abilities. Fingers stupid with fatigue and scurvy fumbled with simple knots. A shallow cut kept bleeding. The slightest jostle left hand-sized bruises on their softening arms and in the thinning skin above their ribs.

But now they knew they could do it – unload, then load again the sledges, ready the boats for launching.

If they found the lead soon.

Crozier had each boat team light lanterns fore and aft. He called back the almost useless Marine ice-checkers with their pikes and appointed Lieutenant Hodgson as officer to lead the diamond of five boats, with one of the heavy whaleboats filled with the least essential items being pulled ahead of the others in the fog.

Every man there knew that this was young Hodgson’s reward for throwing in with potential mutineers. His man-hauling team was led by Magnus Manson, while Aylmore and Hickey were also in harness, men who until now had been assigned to separate teams. If this lead boat team broke through the ice, the others would hear the screams and flailings through the heavy evening fog, but there would be nothing they could do except leave them and go a safer way.

The rest now must risk a near procession, staying close enough that they could see the others’ lanterns in the growing gloom.

Around 8:00 p.m. there did come shouts and screams from Hodgson’s lead team, but they had not fallen through. They’d found open water again more than a mile east and south of where Little had seen a lead on Wednesday.

The other teams sent men forward with lanterns, moving tentatively on what they assumed was thin ice, but the ice stayed firm and was estimated to be more than a foot thick right up to the edge of the inexplicable lead.

The cleft of black water was only about thirty feet wide, but it extended off into the fog.

“Lieutenant Hodgson,” commanded Crozier, “make room in your whaleboat for six men at oars. Put the extra supplies out on the ice for now. Lieutenant Little will then take command of the whaleboat. Mr. Reid, you will go along with Lieutenant Little. You will proceed down the lead for two hours if that is possible. Don’t raise your sail, Lieutenant. Oars only, but have the men put their backs into it. At the end of two hours – if you get that far – turn around and row back with your recommendation as to whether it’s worth our effort to launch the boats. We’ll use the four hours you are gone to unload everything here and pack the sledges into the remaining boats.”

“Aye, sir,” said Little and began barking orders. Peglar thought that young Hodgson looked as if he might weep. He knew how hard it must be to be in your twenties and know that your Naval career was over. Serves him right , thought Peglar. He’d spent decades in a navy that hanged men for mutiny and lashed them for the mere thought of mutiny, and Harry Peglar had never disagreed with either the rule or the punishment.

Crozier walked over. “Harry, do you feel well enough to go along with Lieutenant Little? I’d like you to handle the tiller. Mr. Reid and Lieutenant Little will be in the bow.”

“Oh, yes, Captain. I feel fine.” Peglar was shocked that Captain Crozier thought he looked or acted sick. Have I been malingering in any way ? The very thought that he could have been made him sicker.

“I need a good man on the sweep oar and a third assessment as to whether this lead is a go,” whispered Crozier. “And I need at least one man along who knows how to swim.”

Peglar smiled at this even as his scrotum tightened at the thought of going into that black, cold water. The air temperature was below freezing, and the water, with all its salt content, would be as well.

Crozier clapped Peglar on the shoulder and moved on to talk to another “volunteer.” It was obvious to the foretop captain that Crozier was carefully picking the men he wanted along on this scouting trip while keeping others, like First Mate Des Voeux, Second Mate Robert Thomas, Bosun’s Mate and Terror ’s disciplinarian Tom Johnson, and all the Marines, with him and alert.

In thirty minutes they had the boat ready to float.

It was a strangely equipped expedition within an expedition. They brought along a bag with some salt pork and biscuits, as well as some water bottles in case they became lost or otherwise extended the four-hour mission. Each of the nine men was handed an axe or pickaxe. If they should find a small berg overhanging and blocking the lead, or if a scrim of ice should block the way, they would try hacking their way through. Peglar knew that if a wider, thicker band of ice stopped them, they would portage the whaleboat to the next band of open water if they could. He hoped that he had the strength left to do his part in lifting, pulling, and shoving the heavy boat for a hundred yards or more.

Captain Crozier handed Lieutenant Little a two-barreled shotgun and a bag of cartridges. The items were stowed in the bow.

Should they somehow be stranded out there, Peglar knew, the heaps of supplies they kept onboard included a double-sized tent and a tarp for the floor. There were three three-man sleeping bags kept in the boat. But they did not plan to get lost out there.

The men crawled in and found their places as the ice fog curled around them. The previous winter, Crozier and the other officers and mates had discussed having Mr. Honey – and Mr. Weekes before his death on Erebus in March – raise the sides of all the boats. The small craft would have been better prepared for open seas that way. But in the end it was decided to keep the gunwales at their usual height to better facilitate river travel. Also to that end, Crozier had ordered all the oars cut down in length so that they might more easily be used as paddles on the river.