Silence. The crashing, thudding, and screams had all stopped.
Goodsir wanted to scream. He could feel the presence of something down on this dark hold deck with them. Something huge and not human. It could be twelve feet away, just beyond the puny circles of the lantern glow.
Along with the press of certainty that they were not alone came a strong copperish smell. Goodsir had smelled that many times before. Fresh blood.
“This way,” whispered the captain and led the way aft down the narrow starboard companionway.
Toward the boiler room.
The oil lamp that always burned in there had been extinguished. The only glow that came through the open door was a dim red-and-orange flickering from the few bits of coal burning in the boiler hearth.
“Mr. Gregory?” called the captain. Fitzjames’s shout was loud enough and sudden enough that Goodsir again came close to wetting himself. “Mr. Gregory?” the captain called a second time.
There was no answer. From their position in the corridor, the surgeon could see only a few square feet of the floor of the boiler room and some spilled coal. There was a smell in the air as if someone was grilling beef. Goodsir found himself salivating despite the sense of horror rising in him.
“Stay here,” Fitzjames said to Des Voeux and Goodsir. The first mate was looking first forward and then astern, swinging his lantern in a circle, keeping his knife high, obviously straining to see down the dark corridor past the narrow circle of light. Goodsir could do nothing but stand there and bunch his freezing hands into fists. His mouth filled with saliva at the almost forgotten smell of grilling meat and his belly rumbled in spite of his fear.
Fitzjames stepped around the door frame and into the boiler room, out of sight.
For an eternity of five to ten seconds there was no sound. Then the captain’s soft voice literally echoed from the metal-walled room. “Mr. Goodsir. Come in here, please.”
There were two human bodies in the room. One was recognizable as the engineer, John Gregory. He had been disemboweled. His body lay in the corner against the aft bulkhead, but grey strings and strands of his intestines had been thrown around the boiler room like party streamers. Goodsir had to watch carefully where he stepped. The other body, a thickset man in a dark blue sweater, lay on his stomach with his arms by his sides, palms upward, his head and shoulders in the boiler’s furnace.
“Help me pull him out,” said Fitzjames.
The surgeon grabbed the man’s left leg and his smoldering sweater, the captain took the other leg and right arm, and together they pulled the man back out of the flames. The man’s open mouth stuck against the lower flange of the furnace hearth’s metal grate for a second but then came free with a brittle snapping of teeth.
Goodsir rolled the corpse over while Fitzjames removed his jacket and beat out the flames rising from the dead man’s face and hair.
Harry Goodsir felt as if he were watching all this from a great distance. The professional part of his mind noticed with cool detachment that the furnace, as poorly banked as the low coal flames had been, had melted the man’s eyes, burned away his nose and ears, and turned his face into the texture of an overbaked, bubbling raspberry flan.
“Do you recognize him, Mr. Goodsir?” asked Fitzjames.
“No.”
“It’s Tommy Plater,” gasped Des Voeux from where he stood just within the doorway. “I recognize him by the sweater and by the earring melted into his jaw where his ear used to be.”
“God-damn it, Mate,” snapped Fitzjames. “Stand guard out in the corridor.”
“Aye, sir,” said Des Voeux and stepped out. Goodsir heard the sound of retching from the companionway.
“I will need you to note…,” began the captain, speaking to Goodsir.
There came a crashing, a tearing, and then a resounding thud from the direction of the bow so loud that Goodsir was sure that the ship had broken in half.
Fitzjames grabbed up his lantern and was out the door in a second, leaving his smoldering jacket behind in the boiler room. Goodsir and Des Voeux followed him as they ran forward past scattered casks and smashed crates and then squeezed between the black iron bulkheads that held what was left of Erebus’s fresh water supply and the few remaining sacks of its coal.
They passed a black opening to a coal bin and Goodsir glanced to his right and saw a shirtless human arm protruding over the iron rim of the door frame. He paused and bent to see who lay there, but the light had moved away as the captain and mate continued to run forward with the lanterns. Goodsir was left in the absolute darkness with what was almost certainly another corpse. He stood and ran to catch up.
More crashes. Shouts now from the deck above. A musket or pistol shot. Another shot. Screams. Several men screaming.
Goodsir, outside the bobbing circles of lantern light, came out of the narrow corridor into an open, dark area and ran headfirst into a thick oak post. He fell on his back into eight inches of ice and sludgy meltwater. He couldn’t focus his eyes – the lanterns above him were only swinging orange blurs as he struggled to stay conscious – and everything at that moment stank and tasted of sewage and coal dust and blood.
“The ladder’s gone!” cried Des Voeux.
Sitting arse-deep in vile slush, Goodsir could see better as the lanterns steadied. The forward ladderway, made of thick oak and easily able to support several large men hauling hundred-pound sacks of coal up and down, had been smashed into splinters. Fragments hung from the open scuttle frame above.
The screaming was coming from up on the orlop deck.
“Boost me up,” cried Fitzjames, who had tucked his pistol into his belt and set down the lantern and was now reaching up, trying to get a handhold on the splintered frame of the scuttle. He started pulling himself up. Des Voeux bent to boost him.
Flames suddenly exploded above and through the square opening.
Fitzjames cursed and fell onto his back in the icy water only a few yards from Goodsir. It looked as if the entire forward scuttle and everything above it on the orlop deck was on fire.
Fire, thought Goodsir. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils.
There’s nowhere to run. It was a hundred degrees below zero outside and a blizzard was raging. If the ship burned now, they would all die.
“The main ladderway,” said Fitzjames and got to his feet, found the lantern, and began running aft. Des Voeux followed.
Goodsir crawled on all fours through the ice and water, got to his feet, fell again, crawled, then ran after the receding lanterns.
Something on the orlop deck roared. There came a rattle of muskets and the distinct blast of shotguns.
Goodsir wanted to stop in the coal bunker to see if the man belonging to the arm was dead or alive – or even attached to the outflung arm – but there was no light when he got there. He ran on in the dark, ricocheting off the iron, coal, and water bunker bulkheads.
The lanterns were already disappearing up the ladderway to the orlop deck. Smoke billowed down.
Goodsir clambered upward, was kicked in the face by a boot belonging to the captain or mate, and then he was on the orlop deck.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. Lanterns bobbed around him but the air was so thick with smoke that there was no illumination.
Goodsir’s impulse was to find the ladderway up to the lower deck and keep climbing, then keep climbing again until he was outside into the clean air, but there were men shouting to his right – toward the bow – so he dropped to all fours. The air was breathable here. Just. Toward the bow was a bright orange glow, far too bright to be lanterns.