Dan Simmons - The Terror

Sir John stood at the binnacle, which had been covered with the same Union Jack that had been draped over Gore’s casket “to answer the purpose of a pulpit,” as per regulation.

He preached for only about an hour and no toes or fingers were lost as a result.

Being an Old Testament man by nature and inclination, Sir John led the way through several of the prophets, focusing awhile on Isaiah’s judgement upon the earth – “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof” – and slowly through the barrage of words, it became apparent to even the most dimwitted seaman in the mass of greatcoats, mufflers, and mittens on the main deck that their commander was really talking about their expedition to find the North-West Passage and their current condition frozen in the icy wastes at latitude 70°- 05' N., longitude 98°- 23' W.

“The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word,” continued Sir John. “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth… And it shall come to pass that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake… The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. They shall reel to and fro like a drunkard…”

As if in proof of this dire prophecy, a great groaning came up from the ice all around HMS Erebus and the deck shifted under the standing men. The ice-rimmed masts and spars above them seemed to vibrate and then make small circles against the weak blue sky. No man broke formation or made a noise.

Sir John shifted from Isaiah to Revelation and gave them even more dire images of what awaited those who abandoned their Lord.

“But of what of he… of we… who do not break covenant with our Lord?” asked Sir John. “I commend you to JONAH.”

Some of the seamen sighed in relief. They were familiar with Jonah.

“Jonah was given a commission by God to go to Nineveh and to cry against it because of its wickedness,” cried Sir John, his often weak voice now rising in volume as strongly and well as any inspired Anglican preacher’s, “but Jonah – you all know this, shipmates – Jonah fled from his commission and from the presence of the Lord, going down to Joppa there to take a berth on the first ship leaving, which happened to be destined for Tarshish – a city beyond the edge of the world then. Jonah foolishly thought that he could sail beyond the limits of the Kingdom of the Lord.

“ ‘But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.’ And you know the rest… you know how the sailors cried out asking why this evil had fallen upon them, and they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. ‘And they said unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? And he said unto them, Take me up and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.’

“But at first the sailors did not cast Jonah overboard, did they, shipmates? No – they were brave men and good sailors and professionals and rowed hard to bring their foundering ship to land. But finally they weakened, cried unto the Lord, and then did make a sacrifice of Jonah, casting him overboard.

“And the Bible says – ‘Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’

“Notice, shipmates, that the Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale . No! This was no beluga nor right nor baleen nor sperm nor killer nor fin such as we would see in these high waters or in Baffin Bay on a normal arctic summer. No, Jonah was swallowed up by a ‘great fish’ which the Lord had prepared for him – which means a monster of the deep that Lord God Jehovah had made at the Creation for just this purpose, to swallow Jonah someday, and in the Bible this monster of a great fish is sometimes called Leviathan.

“And just so have we been sent on our mission beyond the farthest known edge of the world, shipmates, farther than the Tarshish – which was only in Spain, after all – we have been sent out to where the elements themselves seem to rebel, where lightning crashes from frozen skies, where the cold never relents, where white beasts walk the frozen surface of the sea, and where no man, civilized or otherwise, could ever call such a place home.

“But we are not beyond the Kingdom of God, shipmates! As Jonah did not protest his fate nor curse his punishment but rather prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly for three days and three nights, so we must not protest, but accept God’s will of this exile of three long nights of winter in the belly of this ice, and like Jonah we must pray unto the Lord, saying, ‘I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains: the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.’

“ ‘When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities foresake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

“ ‘And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land .’

“And, beloved shipmates, know in your hearts that we have given and must continue giving sacrifice unto the Lord with the voice of thanksgiving. We must pay that that we have vowed to pay. Our friend and brother in Christ, Lieutenant Graham Gore, may he sleep in the bosom of the Lord, saw that there would be no release from this belly of the Leviathan winter this summer. No escape from the cold belly of this ice this year. And this is the message he would have brought back had he survived.

“But we have our ships intact, shipmates. We have food for this winter and longer if need be… much longer. We have coal to burn for warmth and the deeper warmth of our companionship and the deepest warmth of knowing that our Lord has not abandoned us .

“One more summer and then winter here in the belly of this Leviathan, shipmates, and I swear to you that God’s divine mercy shall see us out of this terrible place. The North-West Passage is real; it is only miles over that horizon to the southwest – Lieutenant Gore could almost see it with his own eyes a mere week ago – and we shall sail out to it and through it and out of it and away from it in a very few months, when this uncommon extended winter ends, for we shall cry by reason of our affliction unto the Lord, and he shall hear us out of the belly of Hell itself, for he has heardest my voice and yours.

“In the meantime, shipmates, we are afflicted by the dark spirit of that Leviathan in the form of some malevolent white bear – but only a bear, only a dumb beast, however the thing seeks to serve the Enemy, but like Jonah we shall pray unto the Lord that this terror too shall pass from us. And in the certainty that the Lord shall hear our voices.

“Kill this mere animal, shipmates, and on the day we do, by the hand of whichever man among us, I vow to pay each and every one of you ten gold sovereigns out of my own purse.”