Dan Simmons - The Terror

After being assured that Best would recover – a dose of Smelling Salts had already all but brought him around – Sir John looked with visible distaste at our Esquimaux patient, now lying on his bloodied chest and belly since Stanley and I had been probing his back for the ball, and our commander said, Is he going to live?

Not for long, Sir John, reported Stephen Samuel Stanley .

I winced at speaking such in front of the patient – we doctors usually deliver our direst prognoses to each other in neutral-toned Latin in the presence of our dying clients – but realized at once that it was most unlikely that the Esquimaux could understand English.

Roll him over on his back, commanded Sir John .

We did so, carefully, and while the pain must still have been beyond excruciating for the grey-haired native, who had remained conscious during all our probing and continued to do so now, he made no sound. His gaze was fixed on our expedition Leader’s face.

Sir John leaned over him and, raising his Voice and speaking slowly as if to a Deaf Child or Idiot, cried , Who… ARE… you?

The Esquimaux looked up at Sir John.

What… your… name? shouted Sir John . What… your… tribe?

The dying man made no response.

Sir John shook his head and showed an expression of disgust, although whether because of the Gaping Wound in the Esquimaux’s chest or due to his aboriginal obdurance, I know not.

Where is the other native? Sir John asked of Stanley .

My chief surgeon, both hands busy pressing against the wound and applying the bloody bandages with which he hoped to slow, if not stem, the constant pulse of lifeblood from the savage’s lung, nodded in the direction of the alcove curtain . Dr. McDonald is with her, Sir John.

Sir John brusquely passed through the blanket-curtain. I heard several stammers, a few disjointed words, and then the Leader of our Expedition reappeared, backing out, his face such a bright, solid red that I had fears that our sixty-one-year-old commander was having a stroke.

Then Sir John’s red face went quite white with shock.

I realized belatedly that the young woman must have been naked. A few minutes earlier I had glanced through the partially opened curtain and noticed that when McDonald gestured for her to take off her outer clothing – her bearskin parka – the girl nodded, removed the heavy outer garment, and was wearing nothing under it from the waist up. I’d been busy with the dying man on the table at the time, but I noted that this was a sensible way to stay warm under the loose layer of heavy fur – much better than the multiple layers of Wool which all of us in poor Lieutenant Gore’s sledge party had worn. Naked under fur or animal hair, the body can warm itself when chilled, adequately cool itself when needed, as during exertion, since perspiration would quickly wick away from the body into the hairs of the wolfskin or bearskin hide. The wool we Englishmen had worn had soaked through with Sweat almost immediately, never really dried, quickly froze when we quit marching or pulling the sledge and lost much of its Insulating Quality. By the time we had Returned to the ship, I had no doubt that we were carrying almost twice the Weight on our backs than that with which we had departed.

I sh-shall return at a more suitable time, stammered Sir John, and backed past us .

Captain Sir John Franklin looked shaken, but whether it was because of the young woman’s sensible Edenic Nakedness or something else he saw in the Sick Bay alcove, I could not say. He left the Surgery without another word.

A moment later McDonald called me into the rear alcove. The girl – young woman, I had noticed, although it has been scientifically shown that females from savage tribes reach puberty long before young ladies in civilized societies – had put her bulky parka and sealskin pants back on. Dr. McDonald himself looked agitated, almost upset, and when I queried him as to the problem, he gestured for the Esquimaux wench to open her mouth. Then he raised a lantern and a convex mirror to focus the light and I saw for myself.

Her tongue had been amputated near the roots. Enough was left, I saw – and McDonald concurred – to allow her to swallow and to eat most foods, after a fashion, but certainly the articulation of complex sounds, if one might call any Esquimaux language complex in any form, would be beyond her ability. The scars were old. This had not happened recently.

I confess that I pulled away in Horror. Who would do this to a mere child – and why? But when I used the word “amputation,” Dr. McDonald softly corrected me.

Look again, Dr. Goodsir, he all but whispered . It is not a neat surgical circular amputation, not even by so crude an instrument as a stone knife. The poor lass’s tongue was chewed off when she was very small – and so close to the root of the member that there is no possibility she did this to herself.

I took a step away from the woman . Is she mutilated elsewhere? I asked, speaking in Latin out of old habit. I had read of barbaric customs in the Dark Continent and among the Mohammedan in which their women were cruelly circumcised in a parody of the Hebrew custom for males .

Nowhere else, responded McDonald .

Then I thought I understood the source of Sir John’s sudden paleness and obvious shock, but when I asked McDonald whether he had shared this information with our commander, the surgeon assured me that he had not. Sir John had entered the alcove, seen the Esquimaux girl without her clothes, and left in some agitation. McDonald then began to give me the results of his quick physical inspection of our captive, or guest, when we were interrupted by Surgeon Stanley.

My first thought was that the Esquimaux man had died, but that did not turn out to be the Case. A crewman had come calling me to give my report before Sir John and the other Captains.

I could tell that Sir John, Commander Fitzjames, and Captain Crozier were disappointed in my Report of what I had observed of Lieutenant Gore’s death, and while this ordinarily would have Distressed me, this day – perhaps due to my great Fatigue and to the Psychological Changes which may have taken place during my time with Lieutenant Gore’s Ice Party – the disappointment of my Superiors did not Affect me.

I first reported again on the condition of our dying Esquimaux man and on the curious fact about the girl’s missing tongue. The three captains murmured among themselves about this fact, but the only questions came from Captain Crozier.

Do you know why someone may have done this to her, Dr. Goodsir?

I have no idea, sir.

Could it have been done by an animal? he persisted .

I paused. The idea had not occurred to me . It could have been, I said at last, although it was very hard to Picture some Arctic Carnivore chewing off a child’s tongue yet leaving her alive. Then again, it was well known that these Esquimaux tended to live with Savage Dogs. I had seen this myself at Disko Bay .

There were no more questions about the two Esquimaux.

They asked for the details of Lieutenant Gore’s death and about the Creature who killed him, and I told the truth – that I had been working to save the life of the Esquimaux man who had come out of the fog and been shot by Private Pilkington and that I had looked up only in the final instant of Graham Gore’s death. I explained that between the shifting fog, the screams, the distracting blast of the musket, and the report of the lieutenant’s pistol going off, my limited vision from the side of the sledge where I knelt, the rapidly shifting movement of both men and light, I was not sure what I had seen: only that large white shape enveloping the hapless officer, the flash of his pistol, more shots, then the fog enfolding everything again.