The rest now must risk a near procession, staying close enough that they could see the others’ lanterns in the growing gloom.
Around 8:00 p.m. there did come shouts and screams from Hodgson’s lead team, but they had not fallen through. They’d found open water again more than a mile east and south of where Little had seen a lead on Wednesday.
The other teams sent men forward with lanterns, moving tentatively on what they assumed was thin ice, but the ice stayed firm and was estimated to be more than a foot thick right up to the edge of the inexplicable lead.
The cleft of black water was only about thirty feet wide, but it extended off into the fog.
“Lieutenant Hodgson,” commanded Crozier, “make room in your whaleboat for six men at oars. Put the extra supplies out on the ice for now. Lieutenant Little will then take command of the whaleboat. Mr. Reid, you will go along with Lieutenant Little. You will proceed down the lead for two hours if that is possible. Don’t raise your sail, Lieutenant. Oars only, but have the men put their backs into it. At the end of two hours – if you get that far – turn around and row back with your recommendation as to whether it’s worth our effort to launch the boats. We’ll use the four hours you are gone to unload everything here and pack the sledges into the remaining boats.”
“Aye, sir,” said Little and began barking orders. Peglar thought that young Hodgson looked as if he might weep. He knew how hard it must be to be in your twenties and know that your Naval career was over. Serves him right, thought Peglar. He’d spent decades in a navy that hanged men for mutiny and lashed them for the mere thought of mutiny, and Harry Peglar had never disagreed with either the rule or the punishment.
Crozier walked over. “Harry, do you feel well enough to go along with Lieutenant Little? I’d like you to handle the tiller. Mr. Reid and Lieutenant Little will be in the bow.”
“Oh, yes, Captain. I feel fine.” Peglar was shocked that Captain Crozier thought he looked or acted sick. Have I been malingering in any way? The very thought that he could have been made him sicker.
“I need a good man on the sweep oar and a third assessment as to whether this lead is a go,” whispered Crozier. “And I need at least one man along who knows how to swim.”
Peglar smiled at this even as his scrotum tightened at the thought of going into that black, cold water. The air temperature was below freezing, and the water, with all its salt content, would be as well.
Crozier clapped Peglar on the shoulder and moved on to talk to another “volunteer.” It was obvious to the foretop captain that Crozier was carefully picking the men he wanted along on this scouting trip while keeping others, like First Mate Des Voeux, Second Mate Robert Thomas, Bosun’s Mate and Terror’s disciplinarian Tom Johnson, and all the Marines, with him and alert.
In thirty minutes they had the boat ready to float.
It was a strangely equipped expedition within an expedition. They brought along a bag with some salt pork and biscuits, as well as some water bottles in case they became lost or otherwise extended the four-hour mission. Each of the nine men was handed an axe or pickaxe. If they should find a small berg overhanging and blocking the lead, or if a scrim of ice should block the way, they would try hacking their way through. Peglar knew that if a wider, thicker band of ice stopped them, they would portage the whaleboat to the next band of open water if they could. He hoped that he had the strength left to do his part in lifting, pulling, and shoving the heavy boat for a hundred yards or more.
Captain Crozier handed Lieutenant Little a two-barreled shotgun and a bag of cartridges. The items were stowed in the bow.
Should they somehow be stranded out there, Peglar knew, the heaps of supplies they kept onboard included a double-sized tent and a tarp for the floor. There were three three-man sleeping bags kept in the boat. But they did not plan to get lost out there.
The men crawled in and found their places as the ice fog curled around them. The previous winter, Crozier and the other officers and mates had discussed having Mr. Honey – and Mr. Weekes before his death on Erebus in March – raise the sides of all the boats. The small craft would have been better prepared for open seas that way. But in the end it was decided to keep the gunwales at their usual height to better facilitate river travel. Also to that end, Crozier had ordered all the oars cut down in length so that they might more easily be used as paddles on the river.
The remaining ton or so of bundled food and gear in the bottom of the boat made seating difficult; those six seamen at the oars had to prop their feet on the duffels and would be rowing or paddling with their knees as high as their heads, and as the man at the oar-sweep tiller, Peglar found himself sitting on a rope-wrapped bundle rather than on the stern bench – but everyone fit and there was room for Lieutenant Little and Mr. Reid to perch in the bow with their long pikes.
The men were eager to launch the boat. There was a chorus of “one, two, three” and several heave-hos, and the heavy whaleboat slid across the ice, the bow tipped and fell two feet into the black water, the oarsmen fended off nearby ice as Mr. Reid and Lieutenant Little crouched and gripped the gunwales, the men on the ice heaved again, oars found water, and they were moving away in the fog – the first boat from Erebus or Terror to feel liquid water under its hull in almost two years and eleven months.
A spontaneous cheer went up, followed by the more traditional three hip-hip-hurrahs.
Peglar steered the boat to the center of the narrow lead – never more than twenty feet across here, sometimes barely room for the shortened oars to find water on both sides – and by the time he glanced back over his shoulder, all the men on the ice were lost in the fog astern.
The next two hours were dreamlike. Peglar had steered a small boat through floe ice before – it had taken more than a week of poking into berg-ridden harbours and inlets before they’d found the right anchorage for the two ships at Beechey Island two autumns ago, and Peglar had been in command of one of those small boats for days – but that had not felt like this. The lead stayed narrow – never more than thirty feet wide and sometimes so tight they propelled the whaleboat by poling on the ice that scraped the sides rather than by rowing – and the narrow channel of open water would bend left and then right, but never quite so tightly that the boat could not make the turns. Tumbles of pressure-raised ice hid the view to either side and the fog continued to close on them, then open a bit, then close even more tightly. Sounds seemed to be muffled and amplified at the same time and the effect was unsettling; men found themselves whispering when they had to communicate.
Twice they encountered stretches where floating ice blocked the way or the lead itself was frozen over to the point that most of the men had to clamber out to shove floating ice ahead with pikes or to hack away at the frozen surface with pickaxes. Some of the men stayed on the ice on either side then, pulling at ropes tied to the bow and thwarts or grabbing the gunwales and shoving and pulling the screeching whaleboat through the narrow crevice. Each time the lead then widened enough that the men could clamber back in and shove, paddle, and row their way forward.
They had been creeping forward this way for almost their full allotment of two hours when suddenly the meandering lead narrowed. Ice scraped both sides, but they used the oars to pole as Peglar stood in the bow, his steering sweep useless. Then suddenly they popped out into what was by far the widest stretch of open water they had seen. As if confirming that all their troubles were behind them, the fog lifted so that they could see hundreds of yards.