Dan Simmons - The Terror

The lieutenant nodded gratefully.

“The pinnace is all busted up and rigged for river work and the sledge is a pain in the arse to drag,” said Hickey. “We’ll take a whaleboat.”

“You’ll get the pinnace,” said Crozier.

“We want George Chambers and Davey Leys, too,” said the caulker’s mate, folding his arms and standing legs-apart in front of his men like a Cockney Napoleon.

“The hell you say,” said Crozier. “Why would you want to bring two men who can’t take care of themselves?”

“George can haul,” said Hickey. “And we been takin’ care of Davey and want to keep doin’ so.”

“No,” said Dr. Goodsir, stepping forward into the tense space between Crozier and Hickey’s men, “you haven’t been taking care of Mr. Leys and you don’t want George Chambers and him as fellow travelers. You want them as food.”

Lieutenant Hodgson blinked in disbelief, but Hickey balled up his fists and gestured to Magnus Manson. The little man and huge man took a step forward.

“Stop exactly where you are,” bellowed Crozier. Behind him, the three surviving Marines – Corporal Pearson, Private Hopcraft, and Private Healey – while visibly ill and shaky on their feet, had lifted and aimed their long muskets.

More to the point, First Mate Des Voeux, Mate Edward Couch, Bosun John Lane, and Bosun’s Mate Tom Johnson were aiming shotguns.

Cornelius Hickey actually snarled. “We got guns, too.”

“No,” said Captain Crozier, “you do not. While you were at muster, First Mate Des Voeux rounded up all weapons. If you leave peaceably tomorrow, you’ll get one shotgun and some cartridges. If you take another step right now, you’ll all get bird shot in your faces.”

“You are all going to die ,” said Cornelius Hickey, pointing his bony finger at the men standing silently in muster formations while swinging his arm in a half circle like a scrawny weather vane. “You’re going to follow Crozier and these other fools and you’re going to die .”

The caulker’s mate wheeled toward the surgeon. “Dr. Goodsir, we forgive you for what you said about why we want to save George Chambers and Davey Leys. Come with us. You can’t save these men here.”

Hickey gestured contemptuously toward the sagging wet tents where the sick men lay.

“They’re dead already, just don’t know it,” continued Hickey, his voice very large and loud coming from such a small frame. “We’re going to live . Come with us and see your family again, Dr. Goodsir. If you stay here – or even follow Crozier – you’re a dead man. Come with us.”

Goodsir had absentmindedly worn his spectacles when he’d come out from the surgical tent and now he removed them and unhurriedly wiped moisture from them, using the bloody end of his woolen waistcoat as a rag. A small man with a boy’s full lips and a receding chin only partially concealed under the hedge of curly beard that had grown down from his earlier unsuccessful side whiskers, Goodsir seemed completely at ease. He put his spectacles back on and looked at Hickey and the men behind him.

“Mr. Hickey,” he said softly, “as grateful as I am for your boundless generosity in offering to save my life, you need to know that you do not need me along to do what you are planning to do with regards to dissecting the bodies of your shipmates in order to provide yourself with a larder of meat.”

“I ain’t…,” began Hickey.

“Even an amateur can learn dissective anatomy quite quickly,” interrupted Goodsir, his voice strong enough to override the caulker’s mate’s. “When one of these other gentlemen you’re bringing along as your private food stock dies – or when you help him die – all you have to do is sharpen a ship’s knife to a scalpel’s edge and begin cutting.”

“We ain’t going to…,” shouted Hickey.

“But I do strongly recommend that you bring a saw,” overrode Goodsir. “One of Mr. Honey’s carpenter saws will do nicely. While you can slice off your shipmates’ calves and fingers and thighs and belly flesh with a knife, you shall almost certainly require a good saw to get the legs and arms off.”

“God-damn you!” screamed Hickey. He started forward with Manson but stopped when the mates and Marines raised their shotguns and muskets again.

Unperturbed, not even looking at Hickey, the surgeon pointed toward the huge form of Magnus Manson as if the man were an anatomist’s chart hanging on a wall. “It’s not so different than carving a Christmas goose when one gets right down to it.” He slashed vertical marks in the air toward Manson’s upper torso and a horizontal one just below his waist. “Saw the arms off at the shoulder joints, of course, but you shall have to saw through each man’s pelvic bones to cut off his legs.”

Hickey’s neck cords strained and his pale face grew red, but he did not speak again while Goodsir continued.

“I would use my smaller metacarpal saw to cut through the legs at the knees and, of course, the arms at the elbow, and then proceed with a good scalpel to slice away the choice parts – thighs, buttocks, biceps, triceps, deltoids, the meaty part behind the shins. Only then do you start the real butchering of the pectorals – chest muscles – and to get at any fat you gentlemen may have retained near your shoulder blades or along your sides and lower back. There shan’t be much fat there, of course, nor muscle, but I’m sure Mr. Hickey wants no parts of you to go to waste.”

One of the seamen in the back of the group behind Crozier dropped to his knees and began to dry retch into the gravel.

“I have an instrument called a tenaculum to crack the sternum and to remove the ribs,” Goodsir said softly, “but I’m afraid I can’t let you borrow it. A good ship’s hammer and chisel – there’s one in every boat kit, you’ve noticed – should serve that purpose almost as well.

“I do recommend you attend to rending the flesh first and set aside your friends’ heads, hands, feet, intestines – all of the contents of the soft abdominal sac – for later.

“I warn you – it’s more difficult than you think to crack open the long bones for their marrow. You’ll need some sort of scraping tool, rather like Mr. Honey’s wood-carving gouge. And do note that the marrow will be lumpy and red when it’s forced from the center of the bones… and mixed with bone chips and fragments, so not terribly healthy to eat raw. I recommend you put each other’s bone marrow into a pot for cooking straightaway and let yourselves simmer before trying to digest your friends.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Cornelius Hickey.

Dr. Goodsir nodded.

“Oh,” the surgeon added softly, “when you get around to eating one another’s brains, it will be simplicity itself. Simply saw off the lower jaw, throw it away with the lower teeth, and use any knife or spoon to gouge and hack your way up through the soft palate into the cranial vault. If you wish, you may invert the skull and sit around it, scooping out each other’s brains like so much Christmas pudding.”

For a minute there were no voices raised, only the wind and the groan, crack, and snapping of the ice.

“Is there anyone else who wants to leave tomorrow?” called Captain Crozier.

Reuben Male, Robert Sinclair, and Samuel Honey – Terror ’s fo’c’sle captain, Erebus ’s foretop captain, and Terror ’s blacksmith, respectively – stepped forward.

“You’re going with Hickey and Hodgson?” asked Crozier. He did not allow himself to show the shock he felt.

“Nay, sir,” said Reuben Male, shaking his head. “We ain’t with them. But we want to try walking back to Terror .”

“No boat needed, sir,” said Sinclair. “We’re going to try hiking cross-country as it were. Straight across the island. Maybe we’ll find some foxes and such inland, away from the coast.”