“Men on watch at sea have always heard things in the dark,” said Lieutenant Little. “Going back to the Greeks.”
“Perhaps it has gone away,” said Lieutenant Irving. “Migrated. Moved south. Or north.”
Everyone fell silent again at this thought.
“Perhaps it’s eaten enough of us to know we’re not very tasty,” said Ice Master Blanky.
Some of the men smiled at this. No one else could have said it and been excused the gallows humour, but Mr. Blanky, with his peg leg, had earned some prerogatives.
“My Marines have been searching, as per Captain Crozier’s and Captain Fitzjames’s orders,” said Sergeant Tozer. “We’ve shot at a few bears, but none of them seemed to be the big one… the thing.”
“I hope your men have been better shots than they were on the night of the Carnivale,” said Sinclair, Erebus’s foretop captain.
Tozer turned to his right and squinted down the table at him.
“There’ll be no more of that,” said Crozier. “For the time being, we’ll have to assume that the thing on the ice is still alive and will be back. Any activities we have to do off the ships will have to include some plan of defense against it. We don’t have enough Marines to accompany every possible sledge party – especially if they’re armed and not man-hauling – so perhaps the answer is to arm all ice parties and have the extra men, the ones not hauling, take turns serving as sentries and guards. Even if the ice doesn’t open again this summer, it will be easier to travel in the constant daylight.”
“You’ll pardon my phrasing it this bluntly, Captain,” said Dr. Goodsir, “but the real question is, can we afford to wait until summer before deciding whether to abandon the ships?”
“Can we, Doctor?” asked Crozier.
“I do not believe so,” said the surgeon. “More of the canned food is contaminated or putrefied than we had thought. We’re running low on all other stores. The men’s diet is already below what they need for the work they’re doing every day on the ship or out on the ice. Everyone is losing weight and energy. Add to that the sudden rise in scurvy cases and… well, gentlemen, I simply do not believe that many of us on Erebus or Terror – if the ships themselves last that long – will have the energy or concentration abilities to make any sledge trip if we wait until June or July to see if the ice breaks up.”
The room was silent again.
Into the silence, Goodsir added, “Or rather, a few men may well have the energy to haul sledges and boats in a bid for rescue or to reach civilization, but they will have to leave the vast majority of others behind to starve.”
“The strong could go for help to bring rescue parties back to the ships,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte.
It was Ice Master Thomas Blanky who spoke up. “Anyone heading south – say by hauling our boats south to the mouth of the Great Fish River and then upstream 850 miles farther south to Great Slave Lake where there’s an outpost – wouldn’t get there until late autumn or winter at the best and couldn’t return with an overland rescue party until late summer of 1849. Everyone left behind on the ships would be dead of scurvy and starvation by then.”
“We could load sledges and all head east to Baffin Bay,” said First Mate Des Voeux. “There might be whalers there. Or even rescue ships and sledge parties already searching for us.”
“Aye,” said Blanky. “That’s a possibility. But we’d have to man-haul sledges across hundreds of miles of open ice, what with all its pressure ridges and maybe open leads. Or follow the coast – and that would be more than twelve hundred miles. And then we’d have to cross the whole Boothia Peninsula with all its mountains and obstacles to get to the east coast where the whalers might be. We could haul the boats with us to cross leads, but that would triple our effort. One thing is sure – if the ice ain’t opening here, it won’t be open if we head northeast toward Baffin Bay.”
“There would be far less weight if we only take sledges with provisions and tents to the northeast across Boothia,” said Lieutenant Hodgson from the Terror side of the table. “One of the pinnaces must weigh at least six hundred pounds.”
“More like eight hundred pounds,” Captain Crozier said softly. “Without stores in it.”
“Add to that more than six hundred pounds for a sledge that could carry a boat,” said Thomas Blanky, “and we’d be man-hauling between fourteen and fifteen hundred pounds for each party – just the weight of the boat and sledge – not counting food, tents, weapons, clothes, and other things we’d have to haul with us. No one has ever man-hauled that much weight for more than a thousand miles – and much of it would be across open sea ice if we head for Baffin Bay.”
“But a sledge with runners on the ice and possibly a sail – especially if we leave in March or April before the ice gets runny and sticky – would be easier going than man-hauling gear overland or through summer slush,” said Lieutenant Le Vesconte.
“I say we leave the boats behind and travel light to Baffin Bay with just sledges and survival stores,” said Charles Des Voeux. “If we arrive on the east coast of Somerset Island to the north before the whaling season ends, we’re bound to be picked up by a ship. And I would wager that there will be Navy rescue ships and sledge parties there looking for us.”
“If we leave the boats behind,” said Ice Master Blanky, “one open stretch of water will stop us for good. We die out there on the ice.”
“Why would rescuers be on the east side of Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula in the first place?” asked Lieutenant Little. “If they’re searching for us, won’t they follow our path through Lancaster Sound to Devon and Beechey and Cornwallis Islands? They know Sir John’s sailing orders. They will presume we made it through Lancaster Sound since it’s open most summers. There’s no chance at all of any of us making it that far north.”
“Perhaps the ice is as bad up at Lancaster Sound this year as it is down here,” said Ice Master Reid. “That would keep the search parties farther south, out on the east side of Somerset Island and the Boothia.”
“Maybe they’ll find the messages what we left in the cairns way up at Beechey if they do get through,” said Sergeant Tozer. “And send sledges or ships south the way we come.”
Silence descended like a shroud.
“There were no messages left at Beechey,” Captain Fitzjames said into that silence.
In the embarrassed vacuum that followed this statement, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier found a strange, hot, pure flame burning in his chest. It was a sensation rather like a first sip of whiskey after days without it, but also nothing at all like that.
Crozier wanted to live. It was that simple. He was determined to live. He was going to survive this bad patch in the face of all odds and gods dictating that he would not and could not. This fire in his chest had been there even in the shaky, sick hours and painful days after he had emerged from the pit of his malaria-and-withdrawal brush with death in early January. The flame grew stronger every day.
Perhaps more than any other man around the long table in the Great Cabin this day, Francis Crozier understood the near impossibility of the courses of action being discussed. It was folly to head south across the ice toward Great Fish River. Folly to head for Somerset Island across twelve hundred miles of coastal ice, pressure ridges, open leads, and an unknown peninsula. Folly to think that the ice would open up this summer and allow Terror – overcrowded with two crews and almost empty of provisions – to sail out of the hopeless trap that Sir John had led them into.
Nonetheless, Francis Crozier was determined to live. The flame burned in him like strong Irish whiskey.