Worst of all — for Goodsir, at least — King William Land, or King William Island as they later learned, was the greatest disappointment of his life.
Devon Island and Beechey Island to the north had been windswept, inhospitable to life at the best of times, and barren except for lichen and low plants, but that was a veritable Garden of Eden compared to what the men now found on King William Land. Beechey had boasted bare ground, some sand and soil, imposing cliffs, and a sort of beach. None of that was to be found on King William Land.
For half an hour after crossing the iceberg barrier, Goodsir did not know if he was on solid ground or not. He had been prepared to celebrate with the others since this would be the first time any of them had set foot on terra firma in more than a year, but the sea ice gave way beyond the bergs to great tumbles of shore ice and it had been impossible to tell where the shore ice left off and the shore began. Everything was ice, dirty snow, more ice, more snow.
Finally they reached a windswept area free of snow and Goodsir and several of the seamen threw themselves forward onto the gravel, going to hands and knees on the solid ground as if in thanksgiving, but even here the small round stones were frozen solid, as firm as London cobblestones in winter and ten times as cold, and this chill traveled up through their trousers and other layers covering their knees, then into their bones and up through their mittens to their palms and fingers like a silent invitation to the frozen infernal circles of the dead far below.
It took them four more hours to find Ross’s cairn. A heap of rocks promised to be six feet high on or near Victory Point should be easy enough to find — Lieutenant Gore had said this to all of them earlier — but on this exposed point the heaps of ice were often at least six feet high and high winds had long since blown off the smaller top stones of the cairn. The late-May sky never darkened into night, but the dim, constant glow made it exceedingly difficult to see anything in three dimensions or to judge distances. The only things that stood out were the bears, and only because of their movement. Half a dozen of the hungry, curious things had been following them off and on all day. Beyond that occasional awkward waddle of movement, everything was lost in a greywhite glow. A serac that looked to be half a mile away and fifty feet high was really only twenty yards away and two feet tall. A bare patch of gravel and stone that seemed a hundred feet away turned out to be a mile away far out on the featureless wind-scoured point.
But they found the cairn finally, at almost 10:00 p.m. by Goodsir’s still-ticking watch, all of the men so exhausted that their arms were hanging like those in sailors’ tales of apes, all speech abandoned in their tiredness, the sledge left half a mile north of where they had first come ashore.
Gore retrieved the first of two messages — he had made a copy of this first one to cache somewhere farther south along the coast as per Sir John’s instructions — filled in the date, and scribbled his name. So did Second Mate Charles des Voeux. They rolled the note, slid it into one of the two airtight brass cylinders they’d hauled with them, and, after dropping the cylinder into the centre of the empty cairn, replaced the rocks they’d removed to gain access.
“Well,” said Gore. “That’s that then, isn’t it?”
The lightning storm began not long after they had trudged back to the sledge for a midnight supper.
To save weight during the iceberg crossing, they had left their heavy wolfskin blanket-robes, ground tarps, and most of the tinned food cached out on the ice. They assumed that since the food was in sealed and soldered tins, it would not attract the white bears that were always sniffing around and that even if it did the bears wouldn’t be able to get into the tins. The plan was to get along on two days’ reduced rations here on land — plus any game they might see and shoot, of course, but that dream was fading with the dismal reality of the place — and to have everyone sleep in the Holland tent.
Des Voeux supervised the preparation of dinner, removing the patented cook kit from its series of cleverly nested wicker baskets. But three of the four cans they had chosen for their first evening’s meal on land were spoiled. That left only their Wednesday half-ration portion of salt pork — always the men’s favorite since it was so rich with fat, but not nearly enough to assuage their hunger after such a day of heavy work — and the last good can, which was labeled “Superior Clear Turtle Soup,” which the men hated, knowing from experience that it was neither superior nor clear and most likely not turtle at all.
Dr. McDonald on Terror had been obsessed for the last year and a half, ever since Torrington’s death at Beechey Island, with the quality of their preserved foodstuffs and was constantly busy experimenting, with the other surgeons’ help, to find the best diet by which to avoid scurvy. Goodsir had learned from the older doctor that a certain Stephan Goldner, the expedition’s provisioner from Houndsditch who had won the contract through extraordinarily low bids, had almost certainly cheated Her Majesty’s government and Her Majesty’s Royal Navy Discovery Service by providing inadequate — and possibly frequently poisonous — victuals.
The men filled the freezing air with obscenities upon learning that the cans were filled with rotten stuff.
“Calm down, lads,” said Lieutenant Gore after allowing the barrage of best sailor obscenity for a minute or two. “What say you that we open tomorrow’s rations of cans until we find enough for a good meal and simply plan to get back to our ice cache by supper time tomorrow, even if that means midnight?”
There was a chorus of assent.
Two of the next four cans they opened were not spoiled — that included a strangely meatless “Irish Stew” that was only barely edible at the best of times and the deliciously advertised “Ox Cheeks and Vegetables.” The men had decided that the oxen parts had come from a tannery and the vegetables from an abandoned root cellar, but it was better than nothing.
No sooner was the tent up with the sleeping bags unrolled for a floor inside and the food heated on their spirit stove and the hot metal bowls and dishes distributed than the lightning began to strike.
The first blast of electricity struck less than fifty feet from them and led to every man spilling his ox cheeks and vegetables and stew. The second crash was closer.
They ran for the tent. Lightning crashed and struck around them like an artillery barrage. It wasn’t until they were quite literally piled inside the brown canvas tent — eight men in a shelter designed for four men and light gear — that Seaman Bobby Ferrier looked at the wood-and-metal poles holding the tent upright and said, “Well, fuck this,” and scrambled for the opening.
Outside, cricket-ball-sized hail was crashing down, sending splinters of ice chips thirty feet into the air. The midnight arctic twilight was being shattered by explosions of lightning so contiguous that they overlapped, setting the sky ablaze in flashes that left blinding retinal echoes.
“No, no!” cried Gore, shouting over the thunder and grabbing Ferrier back from the entrance and throwing him down into the crowded tent. “Anywhere we go on this island, we’re the tallest things around. Throw those metal-cored tent poles as far away as you can but stay under the canvas. Get in your bags and lie flat.”