Dan Simmons - The Terror

Locking doors behind him, the lieutenant went down the ladder to the hold.

Third Lieutenant John Irving, although appearing younger than his years because of his boyish blond looks and quick blush, was not in love with the Esquimaux woman because he was a lovesick virgin. Actually, Irving had had more experience with the fairer sex than many of those braggarts on the ship who filled the fo’c’sle with tales of their sexual conquests. Irving’s uncle had brought him down to the Bristol docks when the boy turned fourteen, introduced him to a clean and pleasant dockside whore named Mol, and paid for the experience – not merely a quick back-alley knee-wobbler, but a proper evening and night and morning in a clean room under the eaves of an old inn overlooking the quay. It had given young John Irving a taste for the physical which he had indulged many times since.

Nor had Irving had less luck with the ladies in polite society. He had courted the youngest daughter of Bristol ’s third most important family, the Dunwitt-Harrisons, and that lass, Emily, had allowed, even initiated, personal intimacies most young men would have sold their left bollock to have experienced at such an age. Upon arriving in London to complete his Naval education in artillery on the gunnery training vessel HMS Excellent , Irving had spent his weekends meeting, courting, and enjoying the company of several attractive upper-class young ladies, including the obliging Miss Sarah, the shy but ultimately surprising Miss Linda, and the truly shocking – in private – Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie, with whom the fresh-faced third lieutenant soon found himself engaged to be married.

John Irving had no intention of being married. At least not while he was in his twenties – his father and uncle had both taught him that these were the years in which he should see the world and sow wild oats – and most probably not when he was in his thirties. He saw no compelling reason to marry while he would be in his forties. So although Irving had never once considered the Discovery Service – he had never enjoyed cold weather, and the thought of being frozen in at either of the poles was both absurd and appalling to him – the week after he awoke to find himself engaged, the third lieutenant followed the promptings of his older chums George Hodgson and Fred Hornby and went along to an interview on HMS Terror to apply for transfer.

Captain Crozier, obviously in foul spirits and hungover that beautiful spring Saturday morning, had glowered, harrumphed, scowled, and quizzed them carefully. He laughed at their gunnery training on a mastless ship and demanded to know just how they could be of service on an expedition sailing ship which carried only small arms. Then he asked them pointedly if they would “do their duty as Englishmen” (whatever on earth that meant, Irving remembered thinking, when said Englishmen were locked into a frozen sea a thousand miles from home) and promptly assured them of berths.

Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie was distraught, of course, and shocked that their engagement should be extended over months or actual years, but Lieutenant Irving consoled her first with assurances that the extra money from the Discovery Service duty would be an absolute necessity for them, and then by explaining his need for the adventure and then fame and glory that might well come from writing a book upon his return. Her family understood these priorities even if Miss Abigail did not. Then, when they were alone, he coaxed her out of her tears and anger with hugs, kisses, and expert caresses. The consolation grew to interesting heights – Lieutenant Irving knew that he might well be a father by now, two and a half years after the consoling. But he had not been unhappy to wave good-bye to Miss Abigail some weeks later as Terror slipped her moorings and was pushed away by two steam tugs. The disconsolate young lady stood on the docks at Greenhithe in her green-and-pink silk dress under a pink parasol and waved her matching silk pink handkerchief, using another less-expensive cotton handkerchief to dry her copious tears.

He knew that Sir John fully expected to stop in both Russia and China after negotiating the North-West Passage, so Lieutenant Irving had already made plans to transfer to a Royal Navy ship assigned to one of those waters, or perhaps even resign from the Navy, write his adventure book, and look after his uncle’s silk and millinery interests in Shanghai.

The hold was darker and colder than the orlop deck.

Irving hated the hold. It reminded him, even more than did his freezing berth or the dimly lit, freezing lower deck, of a grave. He only came down here when he had to, mostly to supervise the stowing of shrouded dead bodies – or the parts of dead bodies – in the locked Dead Room. Each time he wondered if someone soon would be supervising the stowing of his corpse down here. He lifted his lantern and headed aft through the slush-melt and thick air.

The boiler room appeared to be empty, but then Lieutenant Irving saw the body on the cot near the starboard bulkhead. No lantern glowed, only the low red flicker through the grate of one of the four closed boiler doors, and in the dim light, the long body stretched out on the cot looked dead. The man’s open eyes stared up at the low ceiling and he did not blink. Nor did he turn his head when Irving came into the room and hung his lantern on a hook near the coal scuttle.

“What brings you down here, Lieutenant?” asked James Thompson. The engineer still neither moved his head nor blinked. Sometime in the past month he had quit shaving, and whiskers now sprouted everywhere on his thin, white face. The man’s eyes lay deep in dark sockets. His hair was wild and spiky with soot and sweat. It was near freezing even here in the boiler room with the fires damped so low, but Thompson was lying only in his trousers, undershirt, and suspenders.

“I’m looking for Silence,” said Irving.

The man on the cot continued to stare at the deck above him.

“Lady Silence,” clarified the young lieutenant.

“The Esquimaux witch,” said the engineer.

Irving cleared his throat. The coal dust was so thick here that it was hard to breathe. “Have you seen her, Mr. Thompson? Or heard anything unusual?”

Thompson, who still had not blinked or turned his head, laughed softly. The sound was disturbing – a rattle of small stones in a jar – and it ended in a cough. “Listen,” said the engineer.

Irving turned his head. There were only the usual noises, although louder down here in the dark hold: the slow moan of ice pressing in, the louder groaning of the iron tanks and structural reinforcements fore and aft of the boiler room, the more distant moan of the blizzard winds far above, the crash of falling ice carried down as vibration through the ship’s timbers, the thrum of the masts being shaken in their sockets, random scratching noises from the hull, and a constant hiss, screech, and claw-sliding noise from the boiler and pipes all around.

“There’s someone or something else breathing on this deck,” continued Thompson. “Do you hear it?”

Irving strained but heard no breathing, although the boiler sounded like something large panting hard. “Where are Smith and Johnson?” asked the lieutenant. These were the two stokers who worked round-the-clock here with Thompson.

The supine engineer shrugged. “With so little coal to shovel these days, I need them only a few hours a day. I spend most of my time alone, crawling among the pipes and valves, Lieutenant. Patching. Taping. Replacing. Trying to keep this… thing … working, moving hot water through the lower deck for a few hours each day. In two months, three at the most, it will all be academic. We already have no coal to steam. We’ll soon have no coal to heat.”