Dan Simmons - The Terror

At eight bells at the beginning of the first dogwatch – 4:00 p.m. – the two ships’ companies assembled at the burial site a quarter of a mile across the ice from Erebus . Sir John had ordered everyone except the smallest possible ship’s watches to be present for the service and furthermore had ordered them to wear no layer over their dress uniforms, so at the appointed time more than one hundred shivering but formally dressed officers and men had gathered on the ice.

Lieutenant Gore’s coffin was lowered over the side of Erebus and lashed to an oversized sledge reinforced for this day’s sad purpose. Sir John’s own Union Jack was draped over the coffin. Then thirty-two seamen, twenty from Erebus and a dozen from Terror , slowly pulled the coffin-sledge the quarter mile to the burial site, while four of the youngest seamen, still on the roster as ship’s boys – George Chambers and David Young from Erebus , Robert Golding and Thomas Evans from Terror – beat a slow march on drums muffled in black cloth. The solemn procession was escorted by twenty men, including Captain Sir John Franklin, Commander Fitzjames, Captain Crozier, and the majority of all the other officers and mates in full dress, excluding only those left in command in each near-vacant ship.

At the burial site, a firing party of red-coated Royal Marines stood waiting at attention. Led by Erebus ’s thirty-three-year-old sergeant, David Bryant, the party consisted of Corporal Pearson, Private Hopcraft, Private Pilkington, Private Healey, and Private Reed from Erebus – only Private Braine was missing from the flagship’s contingent of Marines, since the man had died last winter and been buried on Beechey Island – as well as Sergeant Tozer, Corporal Hedges, Private Wilkes, Private Hammond, Private Heather, and Private Daly from HMS Terror .

Lieutenant Gore’s cocked hat and sword were carried behind the burial sledge by Lieutenant H. T. D. Le Vesconte, who had assumed Gore’s command duties. Alongside Le Vesconte walked Lieutenant James W. Fairholme, carrying a blue velvet cushion on which were displayed the six medals young Gore had earned during his years in the Royal Navy.

As the sledge party approached the burial crater, the line of twelve Royal Marines parted, opening to form a lane. The Marines turned inward and stood at reverse arms as the procession of sledge-pullers, funeral sledge, honor guard, and other mourners passed between their ranks.

As the hundred and ten men shuffled to their places amid the mass of officers’ uniforms around the crater – some seamen standing on pressure ridges to get a better look – Sir John led the captains to their place on a temporary scaffolding at the east end of the crater in the ice. Slowly, carefully, the thirty-two sledge-pullers worked together to unlash the heavy coffin and lower it down precisely angled boards to its temporary resting place on the wooden superstructure just above the rectangle of black water. When the coffin was in place, it rested not only on the final planks but on three sturdy hawsers now manned on either side by the same men who had been chosen to pull the sledge.

When the muffled drums quit beating, all hats came off. The cold wind ruffled the men’s long hair, all washed, parted, and tied back with ribbons for this service. The day was chilly – no more than five degrees at the last measuring at six bells – but the arctic sky, filled with ice crystals, was a solid dome of golden light. As if in honour of Lieutenant Gore, the single circle of the ice-occluded sun had been joined by three more suns – sun dogs floating above and to either side of the south-hanging true sun – all connected by a halo-band of rainbow-prismed light. Many men present bowed their heads at the aptness of the sight.

Sir John conducted the Service for the Dead, his strong voice easily audible to the hundred and ten men gathered round. The ritual was familiar to all there. The words were reassuring. The responses were known. By the end, the cold wind was ignored by most as the familiar phrases echoed across the ice.

“We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

“Amen,” said the assembled men.

The twelve men of the Royal Marine firing party raised their muskets and fired three volleys, the last one having only three shots rather than the four in the two volleys that had preceded it.

At the sound of the first volley, Lieutenant Le Vesconte nodded and Samuel Brown, John Weekes, and James Rigden slid the planks out from under the heavy casket, which now hung suspended only by the three hawsers. At the sound of the second volley, the coffin was lowered until it touched the black water. At the sound of the final volley, the hawsers were slowly let slip until the heavy casket with its copper plaque – Lieutenant Gore’s medals and sword also now perched atop the mahogany – disappeared beneath the water’s surface.

There was a slight roiling of icy water, the hawsers were pulled up and tossed aside, and the rectangle of black water was empty. To the south, the sun dogs and halo had disappeared and only a sullen red sun glowed under the dome of sky.

The men dispersed silently to their ships. It was only two bells into the first dogwatch. For most of the men it was time for their evening meal and their second portion of grog.

The next day, Saturday the fifth of June, saw both crews huddling in the lower decks of their ships as another arctic summer lightning storm exploded above them. Lookouts were called down from the topmains and those few who kept watch on deck kept away from all metal and masts as lightning crashed through fog, thunder rolled, great bolts of electricity struck and then restruck the lightning rods set on the masts and cabin roofs, and blue fingers of Saint Elmo’s fire crept along the spars and slithered through the rigging. Haggard lookouts coming below after their watch told their wide-eyed mates of spheres of ball-lightning rolling and leaping across the ice. Later in the day – with the lightning and airborne electrical displays growing even more violent – the dogwatch lookouts reported something large, much too large to be a mere white bear, prowling and pacing along the ridges in the fog, now concealed, now made visible by lightning flash for only a second or two. Sometimes, they said, the shape walked on four legs like a bear. Other times, they swore, it walked easily on two legs, like a man. The thing, they said, was circling the ship.

Although the mercury was falling, Sunday dawned clear and thirty degrees colder – the temperature at noon was nine below zero – and Sir John sent out word that Divine Service would be compulsory that day on Erebus .

Divine Service was compulsory each week for the men and officers of Sir John’s ship – he held it on the lower deck all during the dark winter months – but only the most devout Terrors made the ice crossing to join in the service. Since it was mandatory in the Royal Navy, by tradition as much as by regulation, Captain Crozier also held Divine Service on Sunday, but with no chaplain aboard it was an abbreviated effort – sometimes amounting to little more than reading the Ship’s Articles – and ran twenty minutes of a morning rather than Sir John’s enthusiastic ninety minutes or two hours.

This Sunday there was no option.

Captain Crozier led his officers, mates, and men across the ice for the second time in three days, this time with their greatcoats and mufflers over any dress uniforms, and they were surprised upon their arrival at Erebus to see that the service was to take place on deck, with Sir John preaching from the quarterdeck. Despite the pale blue sky above – no gold dome of ice crystals or symbolic sun dogs this day – the wind was very cold, and the mass of seamen huddled together for at least the illusion of warmth in the area below the quarterdeck, while the officers from both ships stood behind Sir John on the weather side of the deck like a solid mass of greatcoated acolytes. Once again, the twelve Marines were drawn up in rank, this time on the lee side of the main deck with Sergeant Bryant in front, while the petty officers massed before the mainmast.