“Reed, Sullivan, go retrieve Seaman Strickland at once,” he barked.
The two men rose and charged after Strickland, who had now reached the ice pack and was disappearing over a large hummock. Fitzjames peered again at the ship, searching for damage to the hull or signs of life above deck. But the distance was too great to observe any detail. His thoughts turned to the expedition’s commander, Franklin, whose body lay packed in ice in the depths of the hold. Maybe the old bird will yet get buried in England, Fitzjames mused, knowing that his own prospects of making it home, dead or alive, were looking quite thin.
A half hour passed before Reed and Sullivan returned to the boat. Fitzjames noticed that both men stared at the ground, while one of them clutched a scarf that Strickland had been wearing around his face and neck.
“Where is he?” the commander asked.
“He broke through a snow-covered lead in the pack ice,” replied Sullivan, a ship’s rigger with plaintive blue eyes. “We tried to pull him out, but he went under before we could get a good grip on him.” He held up the frozen-stiff scarf, showing all they had been able to grasp.
It was no matter, Fitzjames thought. Had they pulled him out, he would have likely died before they could have got him into dry clothes anyway. Strickland was actually lucky. At least he got to die quickly.
Shaking the image from his mind, Fitzjames shouted harshly to the somber crew, “Back in the harnesses. Let’s get the sledge moving,” dismissing the loss without another word.
The days passed with growing strain as the men trudged south. Gradually, the crewmen broke into separate parties, divided by their physical stamina. Crozier and a small party from the Terror blazed a path down the coastline ten miles ahead of everyone else. Fitzjames followed next but was tailed several miles behind by three or four groups of stragglers, the weakest and sickest who could not keep pace and for all practical purposes were already dead. Fitzjames had lost three men of his own, forging ahead with only thirteen to haul the heavy load.
Light winds and moderate temperatures had given the men hope for escape. But a late-spring blizzard turned their fortunes. Like an approaching veil of death, a black line of clouds appeared to the west and rolled in with a fury. Blistering winds blasted across the ice pack, pounding the low island without mercy. Buffeted by the winds and unable to see, Fitzjames had no choice but to turn the boat turtle and seek refuge beneath its wood-planked hull. For four days, the winds pounded them like a mallet. Imprisoned in their shell with scant food and no source of heat but their bodies, the emaciated men slowly began to succumb.
Like the rest of his men, Fitzjames drifted in and out of consciousness as his bodily functions slowly shut down. When the end was near, an odd burst of energy surged through him, driven perhaps by a dying curiosity. Climbing over the bodies of his comrades, he slipped under the gunwale and pulled himself upright against the exterior hull. A brief respite in the gale winds let him stand unmolested in the elements as the fading light of dusk approached. Peering over the ice, he forced himself to look one more time.
She was still there. A dark projectile scratching the horizon, the Erebus loomed, creeping with the ice like a black wraith.
“What mystery hath thou?” he cried, though the final words left his parched lips in barely a whisper. With its glistening eyes locked on the horizon, Fitzjames’s dead body wilted against the pinnace.
Across the ice, the Erebus silently sailed on, an ice-encrusted tomb. Like her crew, she would eventually fall victim to the harsh Arctic environment, a last vestige of Franklin’s quest to navigate the Northwest Passage. With her disappearance, the saga of Fitzjames’s mad crew would be obscured from history. But unbeknownst to her commander, the ship held a greater mystery, one that over a century later would impact man’s very survival on the planet.
PART I
DEVIL’S BREATH
1
The sixty-foot steel-hulled trawler was what all commercial fishing boats ought to look like but seldom did. Her nets were stowed neatly on their rollers, the deck was free of clutter. The boat’s hull and topside were absent of rust and grime, while a fresh coat of paint covered the most weathered areas. Even the boat’s worn dock fenders had been regularly scrubbed of grit. While not the most profitable fishing boat plying the northern waters of British Columbia, the Ventura was easily the best maintained.
Her shipshape appearance reflected the character of her owner, a meticulous and hardworking man named Steve Miller. Like his boat, Miller didn’t fit the bill of the average independent fisherman. A trauma doctor who’d grown tired of patching up mangled auto accident victims in Indianapolis, he’d returned to the small Pacific Northwest town of his youth to try something different. Possessing a secure bank account and a love of the water, commercial fishing had seemed the perfect fit. Steering the boat through an early morning drizzle now, he wore his happiness in the form of a wide grin.
A young man with shaggy black hair poked his head into the wheelhouse and called to Miller.
“Where they biting today, skipper?” he asked.
Miller gazed out the forward window, then poked his nose up and sniffed the air.
“Well, Bucky, I’d say the west coast of Gil Island, without a doubt,” he grinned, taking the bait. “Better grab some shut-eye now, as we’ll be reeling them in soon enough.”
“Sure, boss. Like, a whole twenty minutes?”
“I’d say closer to eighteen.” He smiled, gazing at a nearby nautical chart. He cinched the wheel a few degrees, aiming the bow toward a narrow slot dividing two green landmasses ahead of them. They were cutting across the Inside Passage, a ribbon of protected sea that stretched from Vancouver to Juneau. Sheltered by dozens of pine-covered islands, the winding waterway inspired comparisons to the scenic fjords of Norway.
Only the occasional commercial or tourist fishing boat, casting its lines for salmon or halibut, was found dodging the Alaska-bound cruise ship traffic. Like most independent fishermen, Miller chased after the more valuable sockeye salmon, utilizing purse seine nets to capture the fish near inlets and in ocean waters. He was content to break even with his catches, knowing few got rich fishing in these parts. Yet despite his limited experience, he still managed a small profit due to his planning and enthusiasm. Sipping a mug of coffee, he glanced at a flush-mounted radar screen. Spotting two vessels several miles to the north, he let go of the wheel and walked outside the pilothouse to inspect his nets for the third time that day. Satisfied there were no holes in the mesh, he climbed back to the bridge.
Bucky was standing by the rail, forgoing his bunk for a cigarette instead. Puffing on a Marlboro, he nodded at Miller, then looked up at the sky. An ever-present blanket of gray clouds floated in an airy mass yet appeared too light to dispense more than a light drizzle. Bucky peered across Hecate Strait at the green islands that bound it to the west. Ahead off the port bow, he noticed an unusually thick cloud rolling along the water’s surface. Fog was a common companion in these waters, but there was something peculiar about this formation. The color was a brighter white than that of a normal fogbank, its billows heavier. Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Bucky exhaled deeply, then walked to the wheelhouse.
Miller had already taken note of the white cloud and had a pair of binoculars trained on the mist.