Dan Simmons - The Terror

It had been two years after that voyage that Peglar had looked up the older man in London – Bridgens had been on extended shore leave with most of the rest of the fleet in 1838 – and requested more tutoring. By then, Peglar was already captain of the foretop on the HMS Wanderer .

It was during those months of shorebound discussion and further tutoring that the close friendship between the two men had moved into something more resembling lovers’ interactions. The revelation that he was capable of doing such a thing astounded Peglar – dismaying him at first but then causing him to reconsider every aspect of his life, morals, faith, and sense of self. What he discovered confused him but, to his astonishment, did not change his basic sense of who Harry Peglar was. What was even more astounding to him was that he had been the one to instigate intimate physical contact – not the older man.

The intimate aspect of their friendship lasted only a few months and ended by mutual choice as much as by Peglar’s long absences at sea on Wanderer until 1844. Their friendship survived intact. Peglar began writing long philosophical letters to the former steward and would spell all words backward, the last letter of the last word in each sentence now first and capitalized. Mostly because the formerly illiterate foretop captain’s spelling was so atrocious, Bridgens suggested in one responding letter that “your childlike idea of Leonardo’s backward-writing encryption, Harry, is almost unbreakable.” Peglar now kept his journals in the same crude code.

Neither man had told the other that he was applying for Discovery Service duty on Sir John Franklin’s North-West Passage expedition. Both were astonished a few weeks before sailing time when they saw the other’s name on the official roster. Peglar, who had not been in communication with Bridgens for more than a year, traveled from the Woolwich barracks up to the steward’s North London rooms to ask if he should drop out of the expedition. Bridgens insisted that he should be the one to remove his name from the list. In the end, they agreed that neither of them should lose the opportunity for such adventure – certainly Bridgens’ last opportunity because of his advanced age ( Erebus ’s purser, Charles Hamilton Osmer, had been a longtime friend of Bridgens and had smoothed his enlistment with Sir John and the officers, even going so far as to hide the subordinate officers’ steward’s real age by being the one to write it as “ 26” on the official rolls). Neither Peglar nor Bridgens said it aloud, but both knew that the older man’s long-standing vow never to bring his sexual desires to sea would be honoured by both of them. That part of their history, they both knew, was closed.

As it turned out, Peglar had seen almost nothing of his old friend during the voyage, and in three and a half years, they rarely had a minute alone.

It was still dark, of course, when Peglar arrived at Erebus sometime around eleven on this Saturday morning two days before the end of January, but there was a glow in the south that promised to be, for the first time in more than eighty days, a predawn glow. The slight glow did not dispel the bite from the −65-degree temperatures, so he did not dawdle as the lanterns of the ship came into sight.

The view of Erebus ’s truncated masts would have dismayed any topman, but it hurt Harry Peglar more than most since he had, with his Erebus captain of the foretop counterpart, Robert Sinclair, helped supervise the dismantling and storage of both ships’ upper masts for the endless winters. It was an ugly sight at any time and was made no prettier by Erebus ’s bizarre stern-down, bow-up posture in the encroaching ice.

Peglar was hailed by the watch, invited aboard, and he carried his message from Captain Crozier down to Captain Fitzjames, who was sitting and smoking his pipe in the aft officers’ mess since the Great Cabin was still being used as an ad hoc sick bay.

The captains had begun using the brass canisters meant for cached reports to send their written messages back and forth – the couriers hated this change since the cold metal burned fingers even through heavy gloves – and Fitzjames had to order Peglar to open the canister with his mittens, since the tube was still too cold for the captain to touch. Fitzjames did not dismiss him, so Peglar stood in the doorway to the officers’ mess while the captain read the note from Crozier.

“No return message, Mr. Peglar,” said Fitzjames.

The foretop captain knuckled his forehead and went up onto the deck again. About a dozen Erebuses had come up to watch the sunrise and more had been getting into their slops below to do so. Peglar had noticed that the Great Cabin sick bay had about a dozen men in it on cots – about the same number as Terror . Scurvy was setting in on both ships.

Peglar saw the small, familiar figure of John Bridgens standing at the rail on the stern’s port side. He came up behind him and tapped the man on the shoulder.

“Ah, a little touch of Harry in the night,” said Bridgens even before he turned.

“Not night for long,” said Peglar. “And how did you know it was me, John?”

Bridgens had no comforter over his face, and Peglar could see his smile and watery blue eyes. “Word of visitors travels quickly on a small ship frozen in the ice. Do you have to hurry back to Terror ?”

“No. Captain Fitzjames had no response.”

“Would you care to take a stroll?”

“By all means,” said Peglar.

They went down the starboard side ice ramp and walked toward the iceberg and high pressure ridge to the southeast so as to get a better view of the glowing south. For the first time in months, HMS Erebus was backlit by something other than the aurora or lantern or torchlight.

Before they reached the pressure ridge, they passed the scuffed, sooted, and partially melted area where the Carnivale fire had burned. The area had been well cleaned up on Captain Crozier’s orders in the week after the disaster, but post holes where the staves had served as tent poles remained, as did shreds of rope or canvas that had melted into the ice and then been frozen in place. The rectangle of the ebony room still showed even after repeated efforts to remove the black soot and several snowfalls.

“I’ve read the American writer,” said Bridgens.

“American writer?”

“The chap who caused little Dickie Aylmore to receive fifty lashes for his inventive set decorations for our late, unlamented carnivale. A strange little fellow by the name of Poe, if memory serves. Very melancholy and morbid stuff with a touch of the truly unhealthy macabre. Not very good, overall, but very American in some undefinable sense. I did not, however, read the fateful story that brought on the lashes.”

Peglar nodded. His foot struck something in the snow, and he bent to pry it out of the ice.

It was the bear’s skull that had been hanging above Sir John’s ebony clock, which had not survived the flames – the skull’s flesh, hide, and hair gone and bone blackened by the fire, eye sockets empty, but the teeth still ivory-coloured.

“Oh, my, Mr. Poe would love that, I think,” said Bridgens.

Peglar dropped it back into the snow. The thing must have been hidden beneath chunks of fallen ice when the clean-up parties worked here. He and Bridgens walked another fifty yards to the tallest pressure ridge in the area and clambered up it, Peglar repeatedly giving his hand to help the older man up.

On a flat slab of ice atop the ridge, Bridgens was panting heavily. Even Peglar, normally as fit as one of the ancient Olympic athletes he’d read about, found himself breathing harder than usual. Too many months of no real physical duty, he thought.