The men murmured to one another. Crozier let that go on for a few seconds and then continued. “You’ve heard what we are doing – Dr. Goodsir to remain here with those too ill to travel, the healthier men to continue toward Back’s River. Are there any among you who still wish to attempt to find some other way to rescue?”
There was a silence as men looked down and scuffled their booted feet on the gravel, but then George Hodgson hobbled forward.
“Sir, some of us do, sir. Want to head back that is, Captain Crozier.”
The captain just looked at the young officer for a long moment. He knew that Hodgson was a stalking horse for Hickey, Aylmore, and a few of the more rebellious sea lawyers who had been stirring up the men with resentment for so many months, but he wondered if young Hodgson knew it.
“Back to where, Lieutenant?” Crozier asked at last.
“To the ship, sir.”
“Do you think Terror is still there, Lieutenant?” As if to punctuate his query, the sea ice south of them exploded in a series of shotgun blasts and earthquake rumbles. An iceberg hundreds of yards from shore crumbled and fell.
Hodgson shrugged like a boy. “Terror Camp will be, Captain, whether the ship still is or not. We left food and coal and boats at Terror Camp.”
“Aye,” said Crozier, “so we did. And we’d all welcome some of that food now – even some of the tinned food that killed some of us so terribly. But, Lieutenant, that was some eighty or ninety miles and almost one hundred days ago when we left Terror Camp. Do you and the others really think you can walk or haul your way back there into the teeth of winter? It would be late November by the time you made your way even to the camp. Total darkness. And you remember the temperatures and storms of last November.”
Hodgson nodded and said nothing.
“We ain’t going to walk ’til no late November,” said Cornelius Hickey, stepping out of the ranks to stand next to the slumped young lieutenant. “We think the ice is open along the shore back the way we come. We’ll sail and row around that fuckin’ cape we hauled five boats over like ’Gyptian slaves and be home in Terror Camp in a month.”
The assembled men mumured furtively among themselves.
Crozier nodded. “It may indeed open for you, Mr. Hickey. Or it may not. But even if it does, it’s more than a hundred miles back to a ship that may well be crushed and most certainly will be frozen fast by the time you get there. It’s at least thirty miles closer to the mouth of Back River from here and the odds of the inlet being free of ice south of here, near the river, are much greater.”
“You ain’t talking us out of this, Captain,” Hickey said firmly. “We talked it over ’mongst ourselves, and we’re going.”
Crozier stared at the caulker’s mate. The captain’s usual instinct to put down any insubordination immediately and with great strength and decisiveness rose in him, but he reminded himself that this was what he wanted. It was past time to get rid of the malcontents and to save those others who trusted his judgement. Besides, this late in the summer and in their escape attempt, Hickey’s plan might even be workable. It all depended upon where the ice broke up – if it broke up anywhere before the winter set in. The men deserved to choose their own last, best chance.
“How many are going with you, Lieutenant?” asked Crozier, speaking to Hodgson as if he would actually be the commander of the group.
“Well…,” began the young man.
“Magnus is going,” said Hickey, gesturing the giant forward. “And Mr. Aylmore.”
The sullen gunroom steward swaggered forward, his face filled with defiance and visible contempt toward Crozier.
“And George Thompson…,” continued the caulker’s mate.
Crozier was not surprised that Thompson would be part of Hickey’s cabal. The seaman had always been insolent and lazy and – as long as the rum lasted – drunk whenever possible.
“I’m going along, too,… sir,” said John Morfin, stepping up with the others.
William Orren, just turned 26, stepped forward without a word and stood with Hickey’s group.
Then James Brown and Francis Dunn – Erebus’s caulker and caulker’s mate – joined the group. “We think it’s our best chance, Captain,” said Dunn and looked down.
Waiting for Reuben Male and Robert Sinclair to declare their intentions – realizing that if the majority of men standing at muster joined this group that all of his own plans for flight south were gone for good – Crozier was surprised when William Gibson, Terror’s subordinate officers’ steward, and Stoker Luke Smith walked slowly forward. They’d been good men aboard ship and stalwart haulers.
Charles Best – a reliable Erebus seaman who had always been loyal to Lt. Gore – stepped forward with four other seamen in tow: William Jerry, Thomas Work, who had been sorely injured at Carnivale, young John Strickland, and Abraham Seeley.
The sixteen men stood there.
“Is that it then?” asked Crozier, feeling a hollow sense of relief that gnawed at his belly like the hunger that was always with him now. Sixteen men were standing there; they would need one boat, but they were leaving behind enough loyal men to head for Back River with him while also leaving enough to take care of the ill here at Rescue Camp. “I’ll give you the pinnace,” he said to Hodgson.
The lieutenant nodded gratefully.
“The pinnace is all busted up and rigged for river work and the sledge is a pain in the arse to drag,” said Hickey. “We’ll take a whaleboat.”
“You’ll get the pinnace,” said Crozier.
“We want George Chambers and Davey Leys, too,” said the caulker’s mate, folding his arms and standing legs-apart in front of his men like a Cockney Napoleon.
“The hell you say,” said Crozier. “Why would you want to bring two men who can’t take care of themselves?”
“George can haul,” said Hickey. “And we been takin’ care of Davey and want to keep doin’ so.”
“No,” said Dr. Goodsir, stepping forward into the tense space between Crozier and Hickey’s men, “you haven’t been taking care of Mr. Leys and you don’t want George Chambers and him as fellow travelers. You want them as food.”
Lieutenant Hodgson blinked in disbelief, but Hickey balled up his fists and gestured to Magnus Manson. The little man and huge man took a step forward.
“Stop exactly where you are,” bellowed Crozier. Behind him, the three surviving Marines – Corporal Pearson, Private Hopcraft, and Private Healey – while visibly ill and shaky on their feet, had lifted and aimed their long muskets.
More to the point, First Mate Des Voeux, Mate Edward Couch, Bosun John Lane, and Bosun’s Mate Tom Johnson were aiming shotguns.
Cornelius Hickey actually snarled. “We got guns, too.”
“No,” said Captain Crozier, “you do not. While you were at muster, First Mate Des Voeux rounded up all weapons. If you leave peaceably tomorrow, you’ll get one shotgun and some cartridges. If you take another step right now, you’ll all get bird shot in your faces.”
“You are all going to die,” said Cornelius Hickey, pointing his bony finger at the men standing silently in muster formations while swinging his arm in a half circle like a scrawny weather vane. “You’re going to follow Crozier and these other fools and you’re going to die.”
The caulker’s mate wheeled toward the surgeon. “Dr. Goodsir, we forgive you for what you said about why we want to save George Chambers and Davey Leys. Come with us. You can’t save these men here.”
Hickey gestured contemptuously toward the sagging wet tents where the sick men lay.
“They’re dead already, just don’t know it,” continued Hickey, his voice very large and loud coming from such a small frame. “We’re going to live. Come with us and see your family again, Dr. Goodsir. If you stay here – or even follow Crozier – you’re a dead man. Come with us.”