Dan Simmons - The Terror

This evening at Supper each man will get one Ship’s Biscuit, a sliver of Cold Salt Pork, one Ounce of chocolate, a Palm Full of Tea, less than a Spoonful of Sugar, and his Daily Tablespoon of Rum.

And his Bit of Tobacco that we’d hoarded for them, added Mr. Osmer .

I nodded . Yes, and his bit of tobacco. And they do love their tobacco. That was a brilliant stroke to keep some hidden in the Stores. But no, Captain, I cannot say that the Men can get by on less than the Current Inadequate Amount of Food.

They must, said Captain Crozier . We shall be out of the salt pork in six days. Out of the Rum in ten.

Mr. Des Voeux cleared his throat . Everything depends upon us Finding and Shooting more seals on the Floes.

So far, I knew – everyone in the Tent knew, everyone on the Expedition knew – we had shot and Enjoyed precisely 2 Seals since leaving Comfort Cove two Months earlier.

I am thinking, said Captain Crozier , that heading North again for the Shore of King William Land – perhaps Three Days’ pull, perhaps Four – might be Best. It is possible to eat Moss and Rock Tripe. I am told that the proper Varieties cook up into an Almost Palatable soup. If one can find the proper Varieties of Moss and Rock Tripe.

Sir John Franklin, I thought in my weariness . The Man Who Ate His Shoes. My older Brother had told me That Story in the Months before our Departure. Sir John would have known, from Pathetic Experience, precisely which Moss and Rock Tripe to choose .

The Men will be happy to get off the Ice, Captain, was all that I could Say . And they will be Overjoyed to Hear that we shall be Hauling Fewer boats.

Thank you, Doctor, said Captain Crozier . That is all.

I bobbed my head in a pathetic Sort of Salute, left, made the rounds of the worst Scurvy victims in their Tents – we no Longer Have a Sick Bay Tent, of course, and Bridgens and I nightly go from tent to tent to counsel and Dose our Patients – and then I staggered back to my own Tent (shared with Bridgens, the unconscious Davy Leys, the dying Engineer, Thompson, and the seriously ill carpenter, Mr. Honey), and fell Instantly Asleep.

That was the night that the Ice opened and swallowed up the Holland Tent in which Slept our Five Marines – Sergeant Tozer, Corporal Hedges, Private Wilkes, Private Hammond, and Private Daly.

Only Wilkes got out of the Tent before it Sank into the Wine-Dark Sea, and he was pulled from the Ice Crevice seconds before it Closed with a Deafening Crash.

But Wilkes was too Chilled, too Ill, and too Terrified to Recover, even when Bridgens and I wrapped him in the Last Dry Clothes in our Reserve and put him Between us in our Sleeping Bag. He died just before real Sunrise.

His Body was left behind on the Ice the next morning along with more Clothes and the Four Discarded Boats and their Sledges.

There was no Burial Service for him or the other Marines.

There was no Hurrah when the Captain announced that the four Sledges and Boats would no longer be hauled.

We turned North toward Land just over the Horizon. No retreat from Moscow ever felt such a sense of Defeat.

Three Hours Later, the Ice Cracked Again, and we were faced with Leads and Lakes to the North which were too small to justify launching the boats yet too large to allow us to haul the boats and sledges across.

When Crozier slept – even for a few minutes – the dreams returned. The two skeletons in the open boat. The intolerable American girls snapping toe joints to simulate a spirit rapping at a table in a darkened room. The American doctor posturing as a polar explorer, a pudgy man dressed in an Esquimaux parka and wearing heavy makeup on an overbright gaslit stage. Then the two skeletons in an open boat again. The night always ending with the dream that disturbed Crozier the most.

He is a boy and is with his Memo Moira in a vast Catholic cathedral. Francis is naked. Memo pushes him toward the altar rail, but he is afraid to go forward. The cathedral is cold; the marble floor under young Francis’s bare feet is cold; there is ice on the white wooden pews.

Kneeling at the altar rail, young Francis Crozier can feel Memo Moira watching approvingly from somewhere behind him, but he is too frightened to turn his head. Something is coming.

The priest seems to rise up from some trapdoor set into the marble floor on the opposite side of the altar railing. The man is too large – far too large – and his vestments are white and dripping water. Smelling of blood and sweat and something ranker, he towers over little Francis Crozier.

Francis closes his eyes and, as Memo taught him while he knelt on the thin rug of her parlour, extends his tongue to receive the Eucharist. As important as this Sacrament is, as necessary as he knows it must be, Francis is terrifed to receive the Host. He knows that his life will never be the same after receiving the Papist Eucharist. And he also knows that his life will end if he does not receive it.

The priest looms closer and leans toward him…

Crozier awoke in the belly of the whaleboat. As always when he came up out of these dreams, even if he had caught only a few minutes’ sleep, his heart was pounding and his mouth was dry from fear. And he was shaking hard, but from cold more than from fear or the memory of fear.

The ice had broken up in the part of the strait or gulf they were in on the 17th and 18th of July, and for four days after that, Crozier had kept the men together on the large ice floe where they had stopped – the cutters and pinnace removed from their sledges, all five of the boats fully loaded except for their tents and sleeping bags, and rigged for open water.

Each night the rocking of their large floe and the cracking and fracturing of ice sent them scurrying from their tents, half awake, sure that the sea was opening up beneath them and ready to swallow them as it had Sergeant Tozer and his men. Each night the gunshot explosions of the ice cracking eventually abated, the wild rocking fell into a more regular rhythm of swells, and they crawled back into their tents.

It was warmer, some days rising almost to the freezing point – these few weeks of late July would almost certainly be the only hint of summer this second frozen-in arctic year would see – but the men were colder and more miserable than ever. Some days it actually rained. When it was too cold to rain, ice crystals in the foggy air soaked their wool clothing since it was too warm now to wear waterproof winter slops over their peacoats and greatcoats. Sweat from their man-hauling soaked their filthy underwear, filthy shirts and socks, and their ragged, ice-crusted trousers; despite their almost-depleted stores, the five remaining boats were heavier than the ten boats they’d hauled before ever had been, for in addition to the eating, breathing, but still comatosely staring Davey Leys, more sick men had to be hauled along every day. Dr. Goodsir reported to Crozier each day that more feet – always soaked and in wet socks in spite of all the extra boots Crozier had thought to bring along – turned rotten, more toes and heels turned black, and more feet had grown gangrenous and were now in need of amputation.

The Holland tents were soaked and never dried. The sleeping bags they cracked open in the late evening and crawled into as darkness fell were soaked and frozen inside and out and never dried. When the men awoke in the morning after a few stolen minutes of fitful sleep – no amount of shivering could make one warmer – the inside of the circular and pyramid tents were lined with thirty pounds of hoarfrost that fell and dripped on the men’s heads, shoulders, and faces as they tried to drink the tiny bit of lukewarm tea that was brought around to the tents each morning by Captain Crozier, Mr. Des Voeux, and Mr. Couch – a strange reversal of commanders as morning stewards that Crozier had instigated during their first week on the ice and which the men now took for granted.