Dan Simmons - The Terror

“CEASE FIRE! GOD-DAMN YOUR EYES, SERGEANT TOZER, I’LL BREAK YOU TO A PRIVATE FOR THIS AND HAVE YOU HANGED IF YOU DON’T CEASE THAT FUCKING FIRE IMMEDIATELY !”

The firing popped and stopped.

The Marines snapped to a standing salute, Sergeant Tozer shouting that the white thing was out there among the men. They’d seen it backlit by the flames. It was carrying a man in its jaws.

Crozier ignored him. Shouting and shoving both Terrors and Erebuses into clumps around him on the ice, sending obviously mauled or burned men back to Fitzjames’s nearby ship, the captain was hunting for his officers – or Erebus officers – or anyone he could give an order to and have it relayed to the clusters of terrified men still running out through seracs and across pressure ridges into the howling arctic darkness.

If those men didn’t come back, they’d freeze to death out there. Or the thing would find them. Crozier decided that no one was going the mile back to Terror until they had warmed up on the lower deck of Erebus .

But first Crozier had to get his men calmed, organized, and busy pulling the wounded and the bodies of the dead from what was left of the burning Carnivale compartments.

In the first moments he found only the Erebus mate Couch and Second Lieutenant Hodgson, but then Lieutenant Little came up through the smoke and steam – the top few inches of ice were melting in an irregular radius around the flames and sending a thick fog out across the sea ice and into the serac forest – saluted clumsily, his right arm was burned, and reported for duty.

With Little at his side, Crozier found it easier to gain control of the men, get them back toward Erebus , and start taking roll. He ordered the Marines to reload and set them in a defensive skirmish line between the accumulating mass of staggering men near Erebus ’s ice ramp and the still roaring inferno.

“My God,” said Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir, who had just come out of Erebus and was standing nearby, tugging off his slops and greatcoat. “It’s actually warm out here with the flames.”

“So it is,” said Crozier, feeling the sweat on his face and body. The fire had brought the temperature up a hundred degrees or more. He wondered idly if the ice would melt and they’d all drown. To Goodsir he barked, “Go over there to Lieutenant Hodgson and tell him to begin to assess the numbers of dead and wounded and to get them to you. Find the other surgeons and get Erebus ’s sick bay fitted out in Sir John’s Great Room – set it up as they trained you surgeons to do for a combat engagement at sea. I don’t want the dead laid out on the ice – that thing is still out here somewhere – so tell your seamen to carry them to the forepeak on the lower deck. I’ll check in on you in forty minutes – have a complete butcher’s bill ready for me.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Goodsir. Grabbing up his outer clothes, the surgeon rushed toward Lieutenant Hodgson and the ice ramp to Erebus .

The canvas and rigging and ice-set masts and costumes and tables and casks and other furniture in the inferno that had been the seven coloured compartments continued to burn all through that night and deep into the darkness of the next morning.

From the private diary of Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir:

Tuesday, 4 January, 1848 -

I am the only one left.

Of the Expedition’s Surgeons, I am the only one left. All agree that we were incredibly Lucky to have lost only Five in Death to the Grand Venetian Carnivale’s Horror and Conflagration, but the fact that Three of those Five were my Fellow Surgeons is, at the very least, Extraordinary.

The two Chief Surgeons, Drs. Peddie and Stanley, died of Burns. My Assistant Surgeon counterpart on HMS Terror, Dr. McDonald, survived the flames and Raging Beast only to be Struck Down by a Marine’s Musket Ball upon fleeing the burning tents .

Both of the other two Fatal Casualties were also Officers. First Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme of Erebus had his chest crushed in the Ebony Room, presumably by the creature there. Although Lt. Fairholme’s Body was found Burned in the ice-melted wreckage of that Loathsome Tent Maze, my postmortem examination showed that he had Died Instantly when his collapsing Rib Cage had pulverized his Heart .

The final fatality of the New Year’s Eve Fire and Mayhem was Terror ’s First Mate Frederick John Hornby, who had been Eviscerated in that Canvas Enclosure in what the men had called the White Room. The sad irony of Mr. Hornby’s death was that the gentleman had been on Watch Duty aboard Terror through most of the evening and had been relieved by Lieutenant Irving not an hour before the Violence broke out .

Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames now find themselves without three of their Four Surgeons and without the Advice and Services of two of their most trusted officers.

Eighteen other men were injured – six seriously – during the Venetian Carnivale Nightmare. Of those six – Ice Master Mr. Blanky from Terror; Carpenter’s Mate Wilson, also from that ship (the men affectionately call him “Fat Wilson”); Seaman John Morfin, with whom I Traveled to King William Land some months ago; Erebus ’s purser’s steward, Mr. William Fowler; Seaman Thomas Work, also from Erebus; and Terror boatswain Mr. John Lane – I am pleased to report that all should survive. (Although it is another irony that Mr. Blanky, who had suffered less serious injuries from the Same Creature only less than a Month Ago – injuries to which all four of us Surgeons applied our time and expertise – had not been burned at the Carnivale Mayhem but was injured yet again in the right leg – mauled or bitten by the thing from the ice, he believes, although he says that he was cutting his way through burning Canvas and Rigging at the time. This time I had to amputate his right leg just below the knee. Mr. Blanky remains remarkably Chipper for a man who has sustained so much damage in so Short a Time.)

Yesterday, Monday, all of us Survivors witnessed Floggings. It was the first such Naval Corporal Punishment I have ever seen and I Pray God that I shall never see more.

Captain Crozier – who has been visibly consumed by an Anger Beyond Words since the Fire last Friday night – assembled every Surviving Crew Member of both ships on the lower deck of Erebus at 10:00 a.m. yesterday. The Royal Marines made a line with muskets at the vertical. Drums were beaten .

Erebus gunroom steward Mr. Richard Aylmore and Terror caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey, as well as a truly huge common Seaman named Magnus Manson, were marched bareheaded and wearing only their trousers and undershirts to a place in front of the ship’s Stove, where a wooden Hatch Cover had been rigged vertically. One by one, starting with Mr. Aylmore, they were Tied to this Hatch .

But before this, the men were made to stand there, Aylmore’s and Manson’s heads bowed, Hickey’s upright and defiant, as Captain Crozier read the charges.

For Aylmore, it was fifty lashes for Insubordination and Reckless Behavior endangering his ship. If the quiet gunroom steward had simply come up with the idea for the coloured tents – an Idea he acknowledged had come from some Fantastical American Magazine Story – the Punishment would have been certain but less Severe. But in addition to being a Primary Planner of the Grand Venetian Carnivale, Aylmore had made the Mistake of costuming himself as the Headless Admiral – a Major Impropriety, given the circumstances surrounding Sir John’s death, and one we all understood could have resulted in Aylmore’s hanging. We had each heard tales of Aylmore’s private Testimony before the Captains in which he had described how he had Screamed and then Fainted in the Ebony Room upon Realizing that the Thing from the Ice was there in the Darkness with the mummers.