Dan Simmons - The Terror

Conditions had not improved. If anything they were worse than when Irving had gone below for supper five hours earlier. The wind howled in from the northwest, blowing snow before it and reducing visibility to ten feet or less. Ice had recoated everything even though there was a five-man axe party hacking and shouting somewhere forward of the snow-laden canvas sagging above the hatchway. Irving struggled out through a foot of new spindrift under the canvas pyramid, lantern blowing back toward his face, as he searched for one of the men not swinging an axe in the darkness.

Reuben Male, captain of the fo’c’sle, had watch and work-party officer duty, and Irving found him by following the faint glow to the other man’s lantern on the port side.

Male was a snow-encrusted mound of wool. Even his face was hidden under a makeshift hood wrapped about by layers of heavy wool comforters. The shotgun in the crook of his bulky arm was sheathed in ice. Both men had to shout to be heard.

“See anything, Mr. Male?” shouted Lieutenant Irving, leaning close to the thick turban of wool that was the fo’c’sle captain’s head.

The shorter man tugged down the scarf a bit. His nose was icicle white. “You mean the ice parties, sir? I can’t see ’em once they get above the first spars. I just listen, sir, while I fill in for young Kinnaird’s port watch duty. He was on the third watch shoveling party, sir, and still ain’t thawed out.”

“No, I mean on the ice!” shouted Irving.

Male laughed. It was, quite literally, a muffled sound. “None of us have seen as far as the ice for forty-eight hours, Lieutenant. You know that, sir. You was out here earlier.”

Irving nodded and wrapped his own comforter tighter around his forehead and lower face. “No one’s seen Silence… Lady Silence?”

“What, sir?” Mr. Male leaned closer, the shotgun a column of ice-rimmed metal and wood between them.

“Lady Silence?” shouted Irving.

“No, sir. I understand that no one’s seen the Esquimaux woman for days. She must be gone, Lieutenant. Dead out there somewhere, and good riddance, I say.”

Irving nodded, patted Male on his bulky shoulder with his own bulky mitten, and made his way around by the stern – staying away from the mainmast, where giant chunks of ice were falling out of the blowing snow and crashing like artillery shells onto the deck – to speak to John Bates where the man stood watch on the starboard side.

Bates had seen nothing. He hadn’t even been able to see the five men of the axe party as they set to work.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I don’t have no watch and I’m afraid I won’t hear the bell what with all this choppin’ and fallin’ and the wind blowin’ and crashin’ of ice, sir. Is there much time left on this watch?”

“You’ll hear the bell when Mr. Male rings it,” shouted Irving, leaning close to the ice-shrouded globe of wool that was the twenty-six-year-old’s head. “And he’ll come around to check on you before going below. As you were, Bates.”

“Aye, sir.”

The wind tried to knock Irving off his feet as he went around to the front of the canvas cover, waited for a break in the falling ice – hearing the men curse and shout in the main-trees and thrumming rigging above – and then he hurried as quickly as he could through the two feet of new snow on deck, ducked under the frozen canvas, and clambered through the hatch and down the ladderway.

He’d searched the lower decks multiple times, of course – especially behind the remaining crates forward of the sick bay where the woman had previously had her little den – but now Irving walked aft. The ship was quiet this late at night except for the stamping and crash of ice on the deck above, the snores from the exhausted men in their hammocks forward, Mr. Diggle’s usual bangs and curses from the direction of the stove, and the ever-present howl of wind and grind of ice.

Irving felt his way along the dark and narrow companionway. Except for Mr. Male’s room, none of the sleeping cubicles here in officers’ country were empty. HMS Terror had been lucky in that respect. While Erebus had lost several officers to that thing on the ice, including Sir John and Lieutenant Gore, none of Terror ’s officers, warrant officers, or petty officers had died yet except for young John Torrington, the lead stoker, who’d died of natural causes a year and a half earlier back at Beechey Island.

No one was in the Great Cabin. It was rarely warm enough to tarry long there now and even the leatherbound books looked cold on their shelves; the wooden instrument that played metal musical disks when cranked was silent these days. Irving had time to notice that Captain Crozier’s lamp was still lit behind his partition before the lieutenant pushed forward through the officers’ and mates’ empty mess rooms and back to the ladderway.

The orlop deck below was, as it always was, very cold and very dark. With fewer provision-carrying parties coming down here because of the severe rationing due to the many spoiled cans of food the surgeons had discovered, and with fewer coal-sack hauling parties because of the dwindling coal supplies and reduced hours of heating for the ship, Irving found himself alone in the frigid space. The black wood beams and frost-covered metal brackets groaned around him as he made his way forward before working his way back toward the stern. The lamplight seemed to be swallowed up by the thick darkness, and Irving had trouble seeing the faint glow through the fog of ice crystals created by his own breathing.

Lady Silence was not in the bow area – not in the carpenter’s storeroom or the bosun’s storeroom nor in the almost-empty Bread Room aft of these closed compartments. The midship section of the orlop deck had been crammed deck to ceiling with crates, barrels, and other packages of supplies when Terror had sailed, but now much of the deck-space was clear. Lady Silence was nowhere amidships.

Lieutenant Irving let himself into the Spirit Room, using the key Captain Crozier had loaned him. There were brandy and wine bottles left, he could see by the glow of the dimming lantern, but he knew that the level of rum was low in the huge main cask. When the rum ran out – when the men’s daily noon supply of grog disappeared – then, Lieutenant Irving knew, as all officers in the Royal Navy knew, mutiny would become a much more serious concern. Mr. Helpman, the captain’s clerk, and Mr. Goddard, the captain of the hold, had reported recently that they estimated another six weeks or so of rum remained, and that much only if the standard one-fourth pint of rum in the gill, diluted with three-fourths pint of water, was reduced by half. The men would grumble even then.

Irving did not think Lady Silence could have sneaked into the locked Spirit Room despite all the whispering of the men about her witchlike powers, but he searched the space carefully, peering under tabletops and counters. The row upon row of cutlasses, sword bayonets, and muskets on the shelves above him glittered coldly in the lantern light.

He went aft to the Gunner’s Storeroom, with its adequate remaining supplies of powder and shot, peered into the captain’s private storeroom – only Crozier’s few remaining whiskey bottles sat on the shelves, the food having been parceled out to the other officers in recent weeks. Then he searched the Sail Room, Slop Room, aft cable lockers, and mate’s storeroom. If Lieutenant John Irving had been an Esquimaux woman attempting to hide aboard the ship, he thought he might have chosen the Sail Room, with its mostly untouched heaps and rolls of spare canvas, sheets, and long-unused sailing gear.

But she was not there. Irving had a start in the Slop Room when his lantern showed a tall, silent figure standing in the rear of the room, shoulders looming against a dark bulkhead, but it turned out to be only some wool greatcoats and a Welsh wig hanging on a peg.