Dan Simmons - The Terror

There came a murmuring among the men crowded into the waist of the ship.

“Ten gold sovereigns a man,” repeated Sir John. “Not merely a bounty to the man who slays this beast the way David slew Goliath, but a bonus for everyone – share and share alike. And on top of that, you will continue to receive your Discovery Service pay and the equal of your advance pay in bonuses I promise this day – in exchange only for another winter spent eating good food, staying warm, and waiting for the thaw!”

If laughter had been thinkable during Divine Service, there would have been laughter then. Instead, the men stared at one another with pale, near-frostbitten faces. Ten gold sovereigns a man . And Sir John had promised a bonus equal to the advance pay that had persuaded so many of these seamen to enlist in the first place – twenty-three pounds for most of them! At a time when a man could purchase lodgings for sixty pence a week… twelve pounds for a whole year. And this on top of the common seaman’s Discovery Service pay of sixty pounds per year – more than three times what any labourer ashore could earn! Seventy-five pounds for the carpenters, seventy for the boatswains, a full eighty-four pounds for the engineers.

The men were smiling even as they surreptitiously stamped their boots on the deck to keep from losing toes.

“I have ordered Mr. Diggle on Terror and Mr. Wall here on Erebus to make us a holiday dinner today in anticipation of our triumph over this temporary adversity and the sure certainty of the success of our mission of exploration,” called down Sir John from his place at the flag-bedecked binnacle. “On both ships, I have allowed extra rations of rum for this day.”

The Erebuses could only stare slack-jawed at one another. Sir John Franklin allowing grog to be served on Sunday – and extra rations of it at that?

“Join me in this prayer, shipmates,” said Sir John. “Dear God, turn thy face in our direction again, O Lord, and be gracious unto thy servants. O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon: so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our lives.

“Comfort us again now after the time that thou has plagued us: and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.

“Shew thy servants thy work: and their children thy glory.

“And the glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon us: prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handy-work.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.”

“Amen,” came back a hundred and fifteen voices.

For four days and nights after Sir John’s sermon, despite a June snowstorm that blew in from the northwest and made visibility poor and life miserable, the frozen sea echoed day and night to the blast of shotguns and the rattle of musketry. Every man who could find any reason to be out on the ice – a hunting party, the fire-hole party, messengers passing between the ships, carpenters testing their new sledges, seamen given permission to walk Neptune the dog – brought a weapon and fired at anything that moved or gave the impression through blowing snow or fog that it might be capable of movement. No men were killed, but three had to report to Dr. McDonald or Dr. Goodsir to have shotgun pellets removed from their thighs, calves, and buttocks.

On Wednesday a hunting party who had failed to find seals did bring in – strapped across two connected sledges – the carcass of a white bear and a living white bear cub about the size of a small calf.

There was some hue and cry for the ten gold sovereigns to be paid to each man, but even the men who had killed the beast a mile north of the ship – it had taken more than twelve shots from two muskets and three shotguns to bring the bear down – had to admit that it was too small, less than eight feet long when stretched out on the bloody ice, and too thin and female. They had killed the bear sow but left the mewling cub alive and dragged it back behind the sledge with them.

Sir John came down to inspect the dead animal, praised the men for finding meat – although everyone hated boiled bear meat and this thin animal looked more stringy and tough than most – but pointed out that it was not the monster of the Leviathan that had killed Lieutenant Gore. All the witnesses to the lieutenant’s death were sure, Sir John explained, that even as he died, the brave officer had fired his pistol into the breast of the true beast. This bear sow had been riddled with shot, but there was no old pistol wound in her breast, nor pistol ball to be found. Thus, said Sir John, would the real white bear monster be identified.

Some of the men wanted to make a pet of the cub since the thing had been weaned and would eat thawed beef, while others wanted to butcher it then and there on the ice. On the advice of Marine Sergeant Bryant, Sir John ordered that the animal be kept alive, attached by collar and chain to a stake in the ice. It was that Wednesday evening, the ninth of June, that Sergeants Bryant and Tozer, along with the mate Edward Couch and old John Murray, the only sailmaker left on the voyage, asked to speak to Sir John in his cabin.

“We are going at this the wrong way, Sir John,” said Sergeant Bryant, spokesman for the little group. “The hunting of the beast, I mean.”

“How so?” asked Sir John.

Bryant gestured as if referring to the dead bear sow now being butchered out on the bloody ice. “Our men aren’t hunters, Sir John. There’s not a serious hunter aboard either ship. Those of us who do hunt shoot birds in our life ashore, not large game. Oh, a deer we could bring down, or an arctic caribou should we ever see one again, but this white bear is a formidable foe, Sir John. Those we’ve killed in the past we’ve killed more by luck than by skill. Its skull is thick enough to stop a musket ball. Its body has so much fat and muscle ringed about it that it might as well be armoured like some ancient knight. It’s such a powerful animal, even the smaller bears – well, you have seen them, Sir John – even a shotgun blast to the belly or a rifle shot to the lungs does not bring them down. Their hearts seem hard to find. This scrawny female required a dozen shots by both shotgun and musket, all at short range, and even then she would have escaped had she not stayed behind to protect her cub.”

“What are you suggesting, Sergeant?”

“A blind, Sir John.”

“A blind?”

“As if we were hunting ducks, Sir John,” said Sergeant Tozer, a Marine with a purple birthmark across his pale face. “Mr. Murray has an idea how to make it.”

Sir John turned toward Erebus ’s old sailmaker.

“We use extra iron rods meant for shaft replacements, Sir John, and bend them into the support shapes we want,” said Murray. “That gives us a light frame for the blind, which’ll be like a tent, you see.

“Only not a pyramid like our tents,” continued John Murray, “but long and low with an overhanging awning, almost like a canvas booth at a country fair, m’lord.”

Sir John smiled. “Wouldn’t our bear notice a country fair canvas booth out there on the ice, gentlemen?”

“Nay, sir,” said the sailmaker. “I’ll have the canvas cut and sewn and painted snow white before nightfall – or this gloom we call night up here. We’ll set the blind against a low pressure ridge where it will blend in. Only the slightest long firing slit will be visible. Mr. Weekes will use the wood from the burial service scaffolding to set benches inside so the shooters will be warm and snug up off the ice.”

“How many shooters do you envision in this… bear blind?” asked Sir John.

“Six, sir,” answered Sergeant Bryant. “It’s volley fire that will bring this beast down, sir. Just as it brought down Napoleon’s minions by the thousands at Waterloo.”