And then there was Erebus’s mate, Charles Frederick Des Voeux, with his stories of men and women in France who transformed themselves into wolves. If that was possible – and many of the officers and all of the crewmen seemed to think it was – why could not a native woman with a talisman of the white bear around her neck turn herself into something like a giant bear with the cunning and evil of a human being?
No, he had seen the two together on the ice. Hadn’t he?
Irving shivered as he finished buttoning his slops. It was very warm in this little snow-house. Ironically, it was giving him the chills. He felt the blubber working at his bowels and decided it was time to go. He would be lucky if he made it back to Terror’s seat of ease in time as it was and he had no wish to stop out on the ice to see to such functions. It was bad enough when his nose became frostbitten.
Lady Silence had watched while he packed away the old napkin and his mother’s crock – items that he realized much later she might very much have wanted – but now she touched her cheek with the silk handkerchief a final time and tried to hand that back to him.
“No,” said Irving, “that is a gift from me. A token of my friendship and deep esteem. You must keep it. I would be offended if you do not.”
Then he tried to sign and act out what he had just said. The muscles along either side of the young Esquimaux woman’s mouth almost twitched as she watched him.
He pushed her hand holding the handkerchief back, taking care not to touch her naked bosom as he did so. The white stone of the bear amulet between her breasts seemed to glow from its own illumination.
Irving realized that he was much, much too hot. The room seemed to swim a bit in his vision. His insides lurched, calmed, then lurched again.
“Toodaloo,” he said – three syllables he would agonize over for weeks to come, cringing in his bunk out of embarrassment even though she could not have understood the inanity and absurdity and inappropriateness of it. But still…
Irving touched his cap, wrapped his comforter around his face and head, tugged on his gloves and mittens, clutched his valise to his chest, and dove for the exit passageway.
He did not whistle during his walk back to the ship, but he was tempted to. He had all but forgotten about the possibility of some huge man-eater lurking in the moon shadows of the seracs out here so far from the ship, but if there was such a thing watching and listening that night, it would have heard Third Lieutenant John Irving talking to himself and occasionally slapping himself on the head with his mitten.
30 CROZIER
Gentlemen, it is time we looked at our possible courses of action in the coming months,” said Captain Crozier. “I have decisions to make.”
The officers and some warrant officers and other specialists, such as the two civilian engineers, foretop captains, and ice masters, as well as the last surviving surgeon, had been called to this meeting in Terror’s Great Cabin. Terror had been chosen by Crozier not to inconvenience Captain Fitzjames and his officers – who had to make the crossing during the brief hour of sunlight and hoped to be back before it grew dark again – nor to emphasize the change of flagship, but only because fewer men on Crozier’s ship were confined to sick bay. It had been easier to move those few to a temporary sick bay in the bow to free up the Great Cabin for the meeting of officers; Erebus had twice the number of men down with symptoms of scurvy, and Dr. Goodsir had indicated that a few of them were too sick to be moved.
Now fifteen of the expedition’s leaders were crowded around the long table that in January had been cut into shorter lengths to serve as operating tables for the surgeon but now was set to rights by Mr. Honey, Terror’s carpenter. The officers and civilians had left their rainproof slops, mittens, Welsh wigs, and comforters at the base of the main ladder, but they still wore all their other layers. The room smelled of wet wool and unwashed bodies.
The long cabin was cold and no light came through the Preston Patent Illuminators overhead since the deck remained under three feet of snow and its winter canvas cover. The whale-oil lamps on the bulkheads flickered dutifully but did little to dispel the gloom.
The gathering at the table resembled a gloomier version of the summer war council Sir John Franklin had called almost eighteen months earlier on Erebus, but now instead of Sir John at the head of the table on the starboard side, Francis Crozier sat there. On the aft side of the table, to Crozier’s left, were the seven officers and warrant officers from Terror whom he had asked to be present. His executive officer, First Lieutenant Edward Little, was at Crozier’s immediate left. Next was Second Lieutenant George Hodgson, with Third Lieutenant John Irving to his left. Then the civilian engineer – given warrant officer status on the expedition but looking thinner, paler, and more cadaverous than ever – James Thompson. On Thompson’s left were Ice Master Thomas Blanky, who appeared to be stumping along very nicely on his wooden peg leg these days, and Captain of the Foretop Harry Peglar, the only petty officer Crozier had invited. Also present was Terror’s Sergeant Tozer – who had been out of both captains’ graces since the night of the Carnivale when his men had fired on survivors of the fire but who was still the highest-ranked survivor of his heavily thinned group of lobsterbacks – speaking for the Marines.
At the port end of the long table sat Captain Fitzjames. Crozier knew that Fitzjames had not bothered to shave for several weeks, growing a reddish beard surprisingly flecked with grey, but he had made the effort today – or had ordered Mr. Hoar, his steward, to shave him. The effect only made his face look thinner and more pale, and now it was covered with countless small scrapes and cuts. Even with multiple layers of clothes on, it was obvious that Fitzjames’s garments hung on a much frailer frame these days.
To Captain Fitzjames’s left, along the forward side of the long table, sat six Erebuses. Immediately to his left was his only other surviving Naval officer – Sir John Franklin, First Lieutenant Gore, and Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme had all been killed by the thing on the ice – Lieutenant H. T. D. Le Vesconte, the man’s gold tooth gleaming the few times he smiled. Next to Le Vesconte was Charles Frederick Des Voeux, who had taken over the duties of first mate from Robert Orme Sergeant, who had been killed by the thing while overseeing torch-cairn repair in December.
Next to Des Voeux sat the only surviving surgeon, Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir. While technically the expedition’s and Crozier’s surgeon now, both the commanding officers and the surgeon had thought it appropriate for him to sit with his former Erebus crewmates.
To Goodsir’s left sat Ice Master James Reid, and to his left the only Erebus petty officer present, Captain of the Foretop Robert Sinclair. And sitting on the forward side of the table was Erebus’s engineer, John Gregory, looking much healthier than his Terror counterpart.
Tea and weevil-rich biscuits were being served by Mr. Gibson of Terror and Mr. Bridgens of Erebus since the captains’ stewards were both in sick bay with signs of scurvy.
“Let’s discuss things in order,” said Crozier. “First, can we stay in the ships until a possible summer thaw? And part of that answer has to be, can the ships sail in June or July or August if there is a thaw? Captain Fitzjames?”