“What’s the alternative? ” asked the foretop captain.
“We could stay here at Terror Camp,” said Bridgens. “Or even return to Terror, once our numbers have … decreased.”
“To do what?” demanded Peglar. “Just to wait to die?”
“To wait in comfort, Harry.”
“To die?” said Peglar, realizing that he was almost shouting. “Who the fuck wants to wait in comfort to die? At least if we get the boats to the coast — any of the boats — some of us may have a chance. There might be open water east to Boothia. We may be able to force passage up the river. At least some of us. And those who make it will at least be able to tell the rest of our loved ones what happened to us, where we were buried, and that we were thinking of them in the end.”
“You are my loved one, Harry,” said Bridgens. “The only man or woman or child left in the world who cares whether I am alive or dead, much less what I may have thought before I fell or where my bones will lie.”
Peglar, still angry, felt his heart pounding inside his chest. “You’re going to outlive me, John.”
“Oh, at my age, and with my infirmities and proclivities toward illness, I hardly think …”
“You’re going to outlive me, John,” grated Peglar. He shocked himself by the intensity of his voice and Bridgens blinked and fell silent. Peglar took the older man’s wrist. “Promise me you’ll do one thing for me, John.”
“Of course.” There was none of the usual banter or irony in Bridgens’ voice.
“My diary … it’s not much, I have trouble even thinking, much less writing these days … I’m quite sick with this God-damned scurvy, John, and it seems to addle my brain … but I’ve kept the diary for the past three years. My thoughts are in it. All of the events we’ve experienced are put down there. If you could take it when I … when I leave you … just take it back with you to England, I’d appreciate it.”
Bridgens only nodded.
“John,” said Harry Peglar, “I think Captain Crozier is going to decide to take us on the march soon. Very soon. He knows that every day we wait here we get weaker. Soon we won’t be able to haul boats at all. We’ll begin dying by the dozens here at Terror Camp before long, and it won’t take that thing on the ice to carry us away or kill us in our beds.”
Bridgens nodded again. He was looking down at his mittened hands.
“We’re not on the same man-hauling teams, won’t share the same boats, and may not even end up together if the captains decide to try for different escape routes,” continued Peglar. “I want to say good-bye today and never have to do it again.”
Bridgens nodded mutely. He was looking at his boots. The fog rolled over the boats and sledges and moved around them like some alien god’s cold breath.
Peglar hugged him. Bridgens stood upright and brittle for a moment and then returned the hug, both men clumsy in their many layers and frozen slops.
The captain of the foretop turned then and walked slowly back toward Terror Camp and his tiny circular Holland tent with its group of off-duty shivering, unwashed men huddling together in inadequate sleeping bags.
When he paused and looked back toward the line of boats, there was no sign of Bridgens at all. It was as if the fog had swallowed him without a trace.
43
CROZIER
Lat. 69° 37′ 42″ N., Long. 98° 41′ W.
25 April, 1848
He fell asleep while walking.
Crozier had been talking to Fitzjames about arguments for and against letting the men spend more days at Terror Camp as the two walked the two miles north through the fog to James Ross’s cairn when suddenly Fitzjames was shaking him awake.
“We’re here, Francis. This is the large white boulder near the shore ice. Victory Point and the cairn must be to our left. Were you really sleeping while walking?”
“No, of course not,” rasped Crozier.
“Then what did you mean when you said, ‘Watch out for the open boat with the two skeletons’? and ‘watch out for the girls and the table rappings.’ It made no sense. We were discussing whether Dr. Goodsir should stay behind at Terror Camp with the seriously ill men while the stronger ones try for Great Slave Lake with just four boats.”
“Just thinking aloud,” muttered Crozier.
“Who is Memo Moira?” asked Fitzjames. “And why should she not send you to Communion?”
Crozier pulled his cap and wool scarves off, letting the fog and cold air slap his face as he walked up the slow rise. “Where the hell is the cairn?” he snapped.
“I don’t know,” said Fitzjames. “It should be right here. Even on a sunny, clear day, I walk this inlet coastline to the white boulder near the bergs and then left up to the cairn at Victory Point.”
“We can’t have walked past it,” said Crozier. “We’d be out on the fucking pack ice.”
It took them almost forty-five minutes to find the cairn in the fog. At one point when Crozier said, “The God-damned white thing from the ice has taken it and hidden it somewhere to confound us,” Fitzjames had only looked at his commanding officer and said nothing.
Finally, feeling their way along together like two blind men — not risking separating in the roiling fog, sure that they wouldn’t even hear the others’ calls over the constant drumbeat of approaching thunder — they literally stumbled into the cairn.
“This isn’t where it was,” croaked Crozier.
“It doesn’t seem to be,” agreed the other captain.
“Ross’s cairn with Gore’s note in it was at the top of the rise at the end of Victory Point. This must be a hundred yards to the west of there, almost down in this valley.”
“It is very odd,” said Fitzjames. “Francis, you’ve come to the arctic so many times. Is this thunder — and the lightning if it comes — so common up here so early?”
“I’ve never seen or heard either before midsummer,” rasped Crozier. “And never like this. It sounds like something worse.”
“What could be worse than a thunderstorm in late April with the temperature still below zero?”
“Cannon fire,” said Crozier.
“Cannon fire?”
“From the rescue ship that came down open leads all the way from Lancaster Strait and through Peel Sound only to find Erebus crushed and Terror abandoned. They’re firing their guns for twenty-four hours to get our attention before sailing away.”
“Please, Francis, stop,” said Fitzjames. “If you continue, I may vomit. And I’ve already done my vomiting for today.”
“Sorry,” said Crozier, fumbling in his pockets.
“Is there really any chance that it’s guns firing for us?” asked the younger captain. “It sounds like guns.”
“Not a snowball’s chance in Sir John Franklin’s Hell,” said Crozier. “That pack ice is solid all the way to Greenland.”
“Then where is the fog coming from?” asked Fitzjames, his voice more idly curious than plaintive. “Are you searching your pockets for something in particular, Captain Crozier?”
“I forgot to bring the brass messenger canister we brought from Terror for this note,” Crozier admitted. “I felt the lump in my slops pocket during the burial service and thought I had it, but it’s only my God-besotted pistol.”
“Did you bring paper?”
“No. Jopson had some ready, but I left it in the tent.”
“Did you bring a pen? Ink? I find that if I do not carry the ink pot in a pouch close to my skin, it freezes very quickly.”
“No pen or ink,” admitted Crozier.
“It’s all right,” said Fitzjames. “I have both in my waistcoat pocket. We can use Graham Gore’s note … write on it.”
“If this is the same damned cairn,” muttered Crozier. “Ross’s cairn was six feet tall. This thing hardly comes up to my chest.”
Both men fumbled to remove rocks from a part of the cairn far down on the leeward side. They did not want to have to dismantle the entire thing and then have to rebuild it
.
Fitzjames reached into the dark hole, fumbled around a second, and withdrew a brass cylinder, tarnished but still intact.
“Well I’ll be damned and dressed in cheap motley,” said Crozier. “Is it Graham’s?”
“It has to be,” said Fitzjames. Tugging his mitten off with his teeth, he clumsily unfurled the parchment note and began to read.
28 of May 1847. HM Ships Erebus and Terror … Wintered in the Ice in Lat. 70°05′ N. Long. 98°23′ W. After having wintered in 1846–7 at Beechey Island in Lat. 74°43′ 28″ N Long …
Fitzjames interrupted himself. “Wait, that’s incorrect. We spent the winter of 1845 to ’46 at Beechey, not the winter of ’46 to ’47.”
“Sir John dictated this to Graham Gore before Gore left the ships,” rasped Crozier. “Sir John must have been as tired and confused then as we are now.”
“No one has ever been as tired and confused as we are now,” said Fitzjames. “Here, later, it goes on — ‘Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well.’ ”
Crozier did not laugh. Or weep. He said, “Graham Gore deposited the note here just a week before Sir John was killed by the thing on the ice.”
“And one day before Graham himself was killed by the thing on the ice,” said Fitzjames. “‘All well.’ That seems like another lifetime, does it not, Francis? Can you remember a time when any of us could write such a thing with an easy conscience? There’s blank space around the edge of the message if you want to write there.”
The two huddled on the lee side of the stone cairn. The temperature had dropped and the wind had come up, but the fog continued to swirl around them as if unaffected by mere wind or temperature. It was beginning to get dark. To the northwest, the sound of guns rumbled on.
Crozier breathed on the tiny portable ink pot to warm the ink, dipped the pen through the scrim of ice, rubbed the nib against his frozen sleeve, and began writing.
(25th April) — HM’s ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April 5 leagues NNW of this, having been beset since 12th Septr. 1846. The Officers and Crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier landed here — in Lat. 69° 37′ 42″ Long. 98° 41′. This paper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, 4 miles to the Northward, where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847. Sir James Ross’ pillar has not however been found, and the paper has been transferred to this position which is that in which Sir J Ross’ pillar was erected —
Crozier stopped writing. What the hell am I saying? he thought. He squinted to reread the last few sentences — “Under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831”? “Sir James Ross’s pillar has not however been found”?
Crozier let out a tired sigh. John Irving’s first order upon ferrying the first load of matériel from Erebus and Terror long ago last August to begin the stockpile that would become Terror Camp was to find Victory Point and Ross’s cairn again, then set up the cache for Terror Camp a few miles south of it along a more sheltered inlet. Irving had marked the cairn on their earliest crudely drawn maps as four miles from the cache point rather than the actual two miles, but they’d quickly discovered their mistake during subsequent man-haulings. In Crozier’s fatigue now, his mind kept insisting that the canister with Gore’s message had been moved from some false James Ross cairn to this real James Ross cairn.
Crozier shook his head and looked at Fitzjames, but the other captain was resting his arms on his raised knees and his head on his arms. He was snoring softly.
Crozier held the sheet of paper, pen, and tiny ink pot in one hand and scooped up snow with his other mittened hand, rubbing some on his face. The shock of the cold made him blink.
Concentrate, Francis. For the sake of Christ, concentrate. He wished he had another sheet of paper so that he could start over. Squinting at the cramped scrawl moving around the margins of the paper, words crawling like tiny ants — the center of the paper already filled with the official typeset information stating officiously WHOEVER finds this paper is requested to forward it to the Secretary of the Admiralty, then several more paragraphs repeating the instruction in French, German, Portugese, and other languages, then with Gore’s scrawl above that — Crozier did not recognize his own handwriting. The script was palsied, cramped, tenuous, obviously the hand of a terrified or freezing or dying man.
Or of all three.
It doesn’t matter, he thought. Either no one is ever going to read this or they will read it long after we are all dead. It doesn’t matter at all. Perhaps Sir John always understood this. Perhaps this is why he left none of the brass message canisters behind on Beechey. He knew all along.
He dipped the pen in the rapidly freezing ink and wrote again.
Sir John Franklin died on 11th of June 1847 and the total loss by deaths on the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 Men.
Crozier stopped again. Was that correct? Had he included John Irving in the total? He couldn’t do the arithmetic. There had been 105 souls under his care yesterday … 105 when he had left Terror, his ship, his home, his wife, his life … he would leave the number.
Upside down at the top of the sheet, on the bit of white space left, he scrawled F. R. M. Crozier and after it wrote Captain and Senior Officer.
He nudged Fitzjames awake. “James … sign your name here.”
The other captain rubbed his eyes, peered at the paper but did not seem to take time to read it, and signed his name where Crozier pointed.
“Add ‘Captain HMS Erebus,’ ” said Crozier.
Fitzjames did so.
Crozier folded the paper, slid it back into the brass canister, sealed it, and set the cylinder back in the cairn. He pulled his mitten on and fumbled the stones back into place.
“Francis, did you tell them where we are headed and when we’re leaving?”
Crozier realized that he had not. He started to explain why … why it seemed to be a sentence of death for the men whether they stayed or went. Why he had not decided yet between man-hauling for distant Boothia or toward George Back’s fabled but terrible Great Fish River. He started to explain to Fitzjames how they were fucked coming and fucked going and why no one was ever going to read the fucking note anyway, so why not just …
“Shhh!” hissed Fitzjames.
Something was circling them, just out of sight in the rolling, swirling fog. Both men could hear heavy footsteps in the gravel and ice. Something very large was breathing. It was walking on all fours, not more than fifteen feet from them in the thick fog, the sound of huge paws clearly audible over the heavy-gun rumble of distant thunder.
Hu-uf, hu-uf, hu-uf.
Crozier could hear the exhalations with each heavy footfall. It was behind them now, circling the cairn, circling them.
Both men got to their feet.
Crozier fumbled his pistol out. He pulled off his mitten and cocked the weapon as the footsteps and breathing stopped directly ahead of them but still out of sight in the fog. Crozier was certain he could smell its fish-and-carrion breath.
Fitzjames, who was still holding the ink pot and pen Crozier had given back to him and who had no pistol with him, pointed at the fog to where he thought the thing waited.
Gravel crunched as the thing moved stealthily toward them.
Slowly a triangular head materialized in the fog five feet above the ground. Wet white fur blended with the mist. Inhuman black eyes studied them from only six feet away.
Crozier aimed the pistol at a point just above that head. His hand was so firm and steady that he did not even have to hold his breath.
The head moved closer, floating as if it were unattached to any body. Then the giant shoulders came into view.
Crozier fired, making sure to shoot high so as not to strike that face.
The report was deafening, especially to nervous systems set on edge by scurvy.
The white bear, little more than a cub, let
out a startled woof, reared back, wheeled, and ran off on all fours, disappearing into the fog in seconds. The scrabbling, running paw steps on gravel were audible for a long minute after, heading toward the sea ice to the northwest.
Crozier and Fitzjames started laughing then.
Neither man could stop. Every time one of them would slow in the laughter, the other would begin and then both would be caught up again in the mad, senseless hilarity.
They clutched their own sides from the pain of the laughter against their bruised ribs.
Crozier dropped the pistol and both men started laughing harder.
They clapped each other’s backs, pointed toward the fog, and laughed until the tears froze on their cheeks and whiskers. They clutched each other for support while they laughed harder.
Both captains collapsed on the gravel and leaned back against the cairn, that action alone causing the laughter to return in force.
Eventually the guffaws turned to giggles and the giggles into embarrassed snorts, the snorts into a few final laughs, and finally those died into a mutual gasping for air.
“You know what I would give my left bollock for right now?” asked Captain Francis Crozier.
“What?”
“A glass of whiskey. Two glasses, I mean. One for me and one for you. The drinks would be on me, James. I’m standing you to a round.”
Fitzjames nodded, wiping ice from his eyelids and picking frozen snot from his reddish mustache and beard. “Thank you, Francis. And I’d lift the first toast to you. I’ve never had the honour of serving under a better commander or a finer man.”
“Could I please have the ink pot and pen back?” said Crozier.
Pulling his mitten back on, he fumbled the stones out, found the canister, opened it, spread the sheet of paper out upside down on his knee, tugged his mitten off again, cracked the ice in the ink pot with the pen, and in the tiny space remaining under his signature, wrote,