The men roared “Amen” and shuffled their warming feet in appreciation.
It was Francis Crozier’s turn.
The men were hushed, as much out of curiosity as respect. The Terrors in the assembled mass knew that their captain’s idea of a reading for Divine Service was a solemn recitation of the Ship’s Articles — “If a man refuses to obey orders from an officer, that man shall be flogged or put to death, punishment to be determined by the captain. If a man commits sodomy with another member of the crew or a member of the ship’s livestock, that man shall be put to death…” and so forth. The Articles had the proper biblical weight and resonance and served Crozier’s purpose.
But not today. Crozier reached to the shelf under the pulpit and pulled out a heavy leatherbound book. He set it down with a reassuring thud of authority.
“Today,” he intoned, “I shall read from the Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve.”
There was a murmuring in the crowd of seamen. Crozier heard a toothless Erebus in the third row mutter, “I know the fucking Bible, and there ain’t no fucking Book of Leviathan.”
Crozier waited for silence and began.
“‘And for that part of Religion, which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of Powers Invisible…”
Crozier’s voice and Old Testament cadence left no doubt as to which words were celebrated with capital letters.
“‘…there is almost nothing that has a name, that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles, in one place or another, a God, or Divell; or by their Poets feigned to be inanimated, inhabited, or possessed by some Spirit or other.
“‘The unformed matter of the World, was a God, by the name of Chaos.
“‘The Heaven, the Ocean, the Planets, the Fire, the Earth, the Winds, were so many Gods.
“‘Men, Women, a Bird, a Crocodile, a Calf, a Dogge, a Snake, an Onion, a Leeke, Deified. Besides, that they filled almost all places, with spirits called Daemons: the plains, with Pan, and Panises, or Satyres; the Woods, with Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other Nymphs; every River and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house with its Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, Peace, Concord, Love, Contention, Vertue, Honour, Health, Rust, Fever, and the like; which when they are prayed for, or against, they prayed to, as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall, or withholding that Good, or Evill, for, or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own Wit, by the name of Muses; their own Ignorance, by the name of Fortune; their own Lust, by the name of Cupid; their own Rage, by the name of Furies; their own privy members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions, to Incubi and Succubae: insomuch as there was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem, which they did not make either a God or a Divel.’”
Crozier paused and looked out at the staring white faces.
“And thus endeth Part One, Chapter Twelve, of the Book of Leviathan,” he said and closed the heavy tome.
“Amen,” chorused the happy seamen.
The men ate hot biscuits and full rations of their beloved salt pork at dinner that afternoon, the extra forty-some Terrors crowding around the lowered tables forward or using casks for surfaces and extra sea chests for chairs. The din was reassuring. All of the officers from both ships ate aft, sitting around the long table in Sir John’s former cabin. Besides their required antiscorbutic lemon juice that day — Dr. McDonald was now fretting that the five-gallon kegs were losing their potency — the seamen each received an extra gill of grog before dinner. Captain Fitzjames had dipped into his reserve ship’s stores and provided the officers and warrant officers with three fine bottles of Madeira and two of brandy.
At about 3:00 p.m. civilian time, the Terrors bundled up, wished their Erebus counterparts good-bye, and went up the main ladder, out under the frozen canvas, and then down the snow and ice embankment onto the dark ice for the long walk home under the still-shimmering aurora. There were whispers and muted comments in the ranks about the Leviathan sermon. The majority of men were certain that it was in the Bible somewhere, but wherever it had come from, no one was quite sure what their captain had been getting at, although opinions ran strong after the double ration of rum. Many of the men still fingered their goodluck fetishes of white-bear teeth, claws, and paws.
Crozier, who headed up the column, felt half certain that they would return to find Edward Little and the watch murdered, Dr. McDonald in pieces, and Mr. Thompson, the engineer, dismembered and strewn about the pipes and valves of his useless steam engine.
All was well. Lieutenants Hodgson and Irving handed out the parcels of biscuits and meat that had been warm when they’d left Erebus the better part of an hour earlier. The men who had remained on watch in the cold took their extra rations of grog first.
Although he was chilled through — the relative heat of Erebus’s crowded lower deck had made the outside cold worse somehow — Crozier stayed on deck until the watch was relieved. The officer on duty was now Thomas Blanky, the Ice Master. Crozier knew that the men below would be doing Sunday make-and-mend, many already looking forward to afternoon tea and then supper with its sad fare of Poor John — salted and boiled codfish with a biscuit — with the hopes that there might be an ounce of cheese to go with their half pint of Burton’s ale.
The wind was coming up, blowing snow across the serac-strewn ice fields on this side of the huge berg blocking the view of Erebus to the northeast. Clouds were hiding the aurora and stars. The afternoon night became much darker. Eventually, thinking of the whiskey in his cabin, Crozier went below.
20
BLANKY
Half an hour after the captain and the other men returning from the Divine Service party on Erebus went below, Tom Blanky couldn’t see the watch lanterns or the mainmast for all the blowing snow. The Ice Master was glad the blow had come up when it had; an hour earlier and their group trek back from Erebus would have been a buggering bitch.
On port watch under Mr. Blanky’s command this black evening were thirty-five-year-old Alexander Berry — not an especially intelligent man, Blanky knew, but dependable and good in the rigging — as well as John Handford and David Leys. This last man, Leys, now on bow watch, had just turned forty in late November and the men had thrown quite a fo’c’sle party for him. But Leys wasn’t the same man who had signed up for the Discovery Service two and a half years ago. Back in early November, just a few days before Marine Private Heather had his brains dashed out while on starboard watch and young Bill Strong and Tom Evans had disappeared, Davey Leys had simply gone to his hammock and quit talking. For almost three weeks Leys had simply left — his eyes stayed open, staring at nothing, but he hadn’t responded to voice, flame, shaking, shouts, or pinching. For most of that time he was in the sick bay, lying next to poor Private Heather, who somehow drew breaths even with his skull scooped open and some of his brains missing. While Heather lay there gasping, Davey continued to lie there in silence, staring unblinkingly at the overhead as if already dead himself.