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
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.