Dan Simmons - The Terror

They’d set up the main grilling area in the white room. The two captains traversed the series of compartments without comment either to each other or to any of the dozens upon dozens of wildly costumed figures flitting about. From the open-ended blue room, they walked through the purple and green rooms, then through the orange room and into the white.

It was obvious to Crozier that most of the men were also drunk. How had they done that? Had they been hoarding their allotments of grog? Hiding away the ale usually served with their suppers? He knew that they hadn’t broken into the Spirit Room aboard Terror because he’d had Lieutenant Little check to make sure the locks were secure both this morning and this afternoon. And Erebus ’s Spirit Room was empty thanks to Sir John Franklin, and had been since they’d sailed.

But the men had gotten into hard spirits somehow. As a seaman of more than forty years who had served his time before the mast as a boy, Crozier knew that – at least in terms of fermenting, hoarding, or finding alcohol – a British sailor’s ingenuity knew no bounds.

Huge haunches and racks of bear meat were being grilled over an open fire by Mr. Diggle and Mr. Wall, pewter plates of the steaming victuals being handed out to the queues of men by a grinning Lieutenant Le Vesconte, his gold tooth gleaming, and by other officers and stewards of both ships. The smell of grilling meat was incredible and Crozier found himself salivating despite all his private vows not to enjoy this Carnivale feast.

The queue gave way to the two captains. Ragmen, popish priests, French courtiers, faerie sprites, motley beggars, a shrouded corpse, and two Roman legionnaires in red capes, black masks, and gold chest armour gestured Fitzjames and Crozier to the front of the queue and bowed as the officers passed.

Mr. Diggle himself, his fat-Chinese-lady’s pendulous bosoms now down around his waist and wobbling as he moved, cut a prime piece for Crozier and then another for Captain Fitzjames. Le Vesconte gave them proper officers’ mess cutlery and white linen napkins. Lieutenant Fairholme poured ale into two cups for them.

“The trick out here, Captains,” said Fairholme, “is to drink quickly, dipping like a bird, so that your lips don’t freeze to the cup.”

Fitzjames and Crozier found a place at the head of a white-shrouded table, sitting on white-shrouded chairs, pulled back for them on the protesting ice by Mr. Farr, the captain of the maintop whom Crozier had braced earlier in the evening. Mr. Blanky was sitting there with his ice-master counterpart, Mr. Reid, as were Edward Little and a half dozen of the Erebus officers. The surgeons clustered at the other end of the white table.

Crozier took his mittens off, flexed cold fingers under wool gloves, and tried the meat gingerly, careful not to let the metal fork touch his lips. The bear cutlet burned his tongue. He had the urge to laugh then – a hundred below zero out here in the New Year’s night, his breath hanging in front of him in a cloud of ice crystals, his face hidden down the tunnel of his comforters, caps, and Welsh wig, and he’d just burned his tongue. He tried again, chewing and swallowing this time.

It was the most delicious steak he’d ever eaten. This surprised the captain. Many months ago, the last time they’d tried fresh bear meat, the cooked flesh seemed gamy and rancid. The liver and possibly some of the other commonly prized organs made the men actively ill. It had been decided that the meat of the white arctic bear would be eaten only if survival demanded it.

And now this feast… this sumptuous feast. All around him in the white room, and obviously at canvas-covered casks, chests, and tables in the adjoining orange and violet rooms, crewmen were wolfing down the steaks. The noise and chatter of happy men easily rose over the roar of the grill flames or the flapping of canvas as the wind came up again. A few of the men here in the white room were using knives and forks – many just spearing the steaming bear steaks and chewing on them that way – but most were using their mittened hands. It was as if more than a hundred predators were reveling in their kill.

The more Crozier ate, the more ravenous he became. Fitzjames, Reid, Blanky, Farr, Little, Hodgson, and the others around him – even Jopson, his steward, at a nearby table with the other stewards – appeared to be wolfing down the meat with equal gusto. One of Mr. Diggle’s helpers, dressed as a baby Chinaman, came around the tables, dishing out steaming vegetables from a pan heated on one of the whaleboat’s iron stoves, but the canned vegetables, however wonderfully hot, simply had no taste next to the delicious fresh bear meat. Only Crozier’s position as expedition commander stopped him from muscling his way to the front of the queue and demanding another helping when he finished his heavy slab of bear steak. Fitzjames’s expression was anything but distracted now; the younger commander looked as if he was about to weep from happiness.

Suddenly, just as most of the men had finished the steaks and were drinking down their ale before the alcohol-rich liquid froze solid, a Persian king near the entrance to the violet room began cranking the musical disk player.

The applause – thick mittens pounding thunderously – began almost as soon as the first notes tinkled and thunked out of the crude machine. Many of the musical men aboard both ships had complained about the mechanical music player – its range of sounds emanating from the turning metal disks was almost precisely that of a corner organ grinder’s instrument – but these notes were unmistakable. Dozens of men rose to their feet. Others began singing at once, the vapour from their breaths rising in the torchlight shining through the white canvas walls. Even Crozier had to grin like an idiot as the familiar words of the first stanza echoed off the iceberg towering above them in the freezing night.

When Britain first at Heav’n’s command, Arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sang this strain;

Captains Crozier and Fitzjames rose to their feet and joined in the first bellowing chorus.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never shall be slaves!

Young Hodgson’s pure tenor led the men in six of the seven coloured compartments as they sang the second stanza.

The nations not so blest as thee, Shall in their turns to tyrants fall;

While thou shalt flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all.

Vaguely aware that there was a commotion two rooms to the east, in the entrance to the blue room, Crozier threw his head back and, warm with whiskey and bear steak, bellowed with his men:

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never, never shall be slaves!

The men in the outer rooms of the seven compartments were singing, but they were also laughing now. The commotion grew. The mechanical music player cranked louder. The men sang louder still. Even while standing and singing the third stanza between Fitzjames and Little, Crozier stared in shock as a procession entered the white room.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke;

As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak.

Someone led the procession in the theatrical costume version of an admiral’s uniform. The epaulettes were so absurdly broad that they hung out eight inches beyond the little man’s shoulders. He was very fat. The gold buttons on his old-fashioned Naval jacket would never have buttoned. He was also headless. The figure carried its papier-mâché head under the crook of his left arm, his moldering plumed admiral’s hat under his right.

Crozier quit singing. The other men did not.