The Terror

¹⁵ FRANKLIN

By the day that he was to die, Sir John had almost recovered from the shock of seeing the Esquimaux wench naked.

It was the same young woman, the same teenaged harlot Copper squaw whom the Devil had sent to tempt him during his first ill-fated expedition in 1819, the wanton Robert Hood’s fifteen-year-old bedmate named Greenstockings. Sir John was sure of that. This temptress had the same coffee-brown skin that seemed to glow even in the dark, the same high, round girl’s breasts, the same brown areolae, and the same raven-feather slash of dark escutcheon above her sex.

It was the same succubus.

The shock to Captain Sir John Franklin of seeing her naked on surgeon McDonald’s table in the sick bay — on his ship—had been profound, but Sir John was sure that he had been able to hide his reaction from the surgeons and from the other captains during the rest of that endless, disconcerting day.

Lieutenant Gore’s burial service took place late on Friday, the fourth of June. It had taken a large work party more than twenty-four hours to get through the ice to allow for the burial at sea, and before they were done they had to use black powder to blow away the top ten feet of rock-hard ice, then use picks and shovels to excavate a broad crater to open the last five feet or so. When they were finished around midday, Mr. Weekes, the carpenter from Erebus, and Mr. Honey, the carpenter from Terror, had constructed a clever and elegant wooden scaffolding over the ten-foot-long and five-foot-wide opening into the dark sea. Work parties with long pikes were stationed at the crater to keep the ice from congealing beneath the platform.

Lieutenant Gore’s body had begun to decay quickly in the relative heat of the ship, so the carpenters first constructed a most solid coffin of mahogany lined with an inner box of sweet-smelling cedar. Between the two enclosures of wood was set a layer of lead in lieu of the traditional two rounds of shot set in the usual canvas burial bag to ensure that the body would sink. Mr. Smith, the blacksmith, had forged, hammered, and engraved a beautiful memorial plate in copper, which was affixed to the top of the mahogany coffin by screws. Because the burial service was a mixture of shoreside burial and the more common burial at sea, Sir John had specified that the coffin be made heavy enough to sink at once.

At eight bells at the beginning of the first dogwatch — 4:00 p.m. — the two ships’ companies assembled at the burial site a quarter of a mile across the ice from Erebus. Sir John had ordered everyone except the smallest possible ship’s watches to be present for the service and furthermore had ordered them to wear no layer over their dress uniforms, so at the appointed time more than one hundred shivering but formally dressed officers and men had gathered on the ice.

Lieutenant Gore’s coffin was lowered over the side of Erebus and lashed to an oversized sledge reinforced for this day’s sad purpose. Sir John’s own Union Jack was draped over the coffin. Then thirtytwo seamen, twenty from Erebus and a dozen from Terror, slowly pulled the coffins-ledge the quarter mile to the burial site, while four of the youngest seamen, still on the roster as ship’s boys — George Chambers and David Young from Erebus, Robert Golding and Thomas Evans from Terror — beat a slow march on drums muffled in black cloth. The solemn procession was escorted by twenty men, including Captain Sir John Franklin, Commander Fitzjames, Captain Crozier, and the majority of all the other officers and mates in full dress, excluding only those left in command in each near-vacant ship.

At the burial site, a firing party of red-coated Royal Marines stood waiting at attention. Led by Erebus’s thirty-three-year-old sergeant, David Bryant, the party consisted of Corporal Pearson, Private Hopcraft, Private Pilkington, Private Healey, and Private Reed from Erebus — only Private Braine was missing from the flagship’s contingent of Marines, since the man had died last winter and been buried on Beechey Island — as well as Sergeant Tozer, Corporal Hedges, Private Wilkes, Private Hammond, Private Heather, and Private Daly from HMS Terror.

Lieutenant Gore’s cocked hat and sword were carried behind the burial sledge by Lieutenant H. T. D. Le Vesconte, who had assumed Gore’s command duties. Alongside Le Vesconte walked Lieutenant James W. Fairholme, carrying a blue velvet cushion on which were displayed the six medals young Gore had earned during his years in the Royal Navy.

As the sledge party approached the burial crater, the line of twelve Royal Marines parted, opening to form a lane. The Marines turned inward and stood at reverse arms as the procession of sledge-pullers, funeral sledge, honor guard, and other mourners passed between their ranks.

As the hundred and ten men shuffled to their places amid the mass of officers’ uniforms around the crater — some seamen standing on pressure ridges to get a better look — Sir John led the captains to their place on a temporary scaffolding at the east end of the crater in the ice. Slowly, carefully, the thirty-two sledge-pullers worked together to unlash the heavy coffin and lower it down precisely angled boards to its temporary resting place on the wooden superstructure just above the rectangle of black water. When the coffin was in place, it rested not only on the final planks but on three sturdy hawsers now manned on either side by the same men who had been chosen to pull the sledge.

When the muffled drums quit beating, all hats came off. The cold wind ruffled the men’s long hair, all washed, parted, and tied back with ribbons for this service. The day was chilly — no more than five degrees at the last measuring at six bells — but the arctic sky, filled with ice crystals, was a solid dome of golden light. As if in honour of Lieutenant Gore, the single circle of the ice-occluded sun had been joined by three more suns — sun dogs floating above and to either side of the south-hanging true sun — all connected by a halo-band of rainbow-prismed light. Many men present bowed their heads at the aptness of the sight.

Sir John conducted the Service for the Dead, his strong voice easily audible to the hundred and ten men gathered round. The ritual was familiar to all there. The words were reassuring. The responses were known. By the end, the cold wind was ignored by most as the familiar phrases echoed across the ice.

“We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

“Amen,” said the assembled men.

The twelve men of the Royal Marine firing party raised their muskets and fired three volleys, the last one having only three shots rather than the four in the two volleys that had preceded it.

At the sound of the first volley, Lieutenant Le Vesconte nodded and Samuel Brown, John Weekes, and James Rigden slid the planks out from under the heavy casket, which now hung suspended only by the three hawsers. At the sound of the second volley, the coffin was lowered until it touched the black water. At the sound of the final volley, the hawsers were slowly let slip until the heavy casket with its copper plaque — Lieutenant Gore’s medals and sword also now perched atop the mahogany — disappeared beneath the water’s surface.

There was a slight roiling of icy water, the hawsers were pulled up and tossed aside, and the rectangle of black water was empty. To the south, the sun dogs and halo had disappeared and only a sullen red sun glowed under the dome of sky.

The men dispersed silently to their ships. It was only two bells into the first dogwatch. For most of the men it was time for their evening meal and their second portion of grog.

The next day, Saturday the fifth of June, saw both crews huddling in the lower decks of their ships as another arctic summer lightning storm exploded above them. Lookouts were called down from the topmains and those few who kept watch on deck kept away from all metal and masts as lightning crashed through fog, thunder rolled, great bolts of electricity struck and then restruck the lightning rods set on the masts and cabin roofs, and blue fingers of Saint Elmo’s fire crept along the spars and slithered through the rigging. Haggard lookouts coming below after their watch told their wide-eyed mates of spheres of ball-lightning rolling and leaping across the ice. Later in the day — with the lightning and airborne electrical displays growing even more violent — the dogwatch lookouts reported something large, much too large to be a mere white bear, prowling and pacing along the ridges in the fog, now concealed, now made visible by lightning flash for only a second or two. Sometimes, they said, the shape walked on four legs like a bear. Other times, they swore, it walked easily on two legs, like a man. The thing, they said, was circling the ship.

Although the mercury was falling, Sunday dawned clear and thirty degrees colder — the temperature at noon was nine below zero — and Sir John sent out word that Divine Service would be compulsory that day on Erebus.

Divine Service was compulsory each week for the men and officers of Sir John’s ship — he held it on the lower deck all during the dark winter months — but only the most devout Terrors made the ice crossing to join in the service. Since it was mandatory in the Royal Navy, by tradition as much as by regulation, Captain Crozier also held Divine Service on Sunday, but with no chaplain aboard it was an abbreviated effort — sometimes amounting to little more than reading the Ship’s Articles — and ran twenty minutes of a morning rather than Sir John’s enthusiastic ninety minutes or two hours.

This Sunday there was no option.

Captain Crozier led his officers, mates, and men across the ice for the second time in three days, this time with their greatcoats and mufflers over any dress uniforms, and they were surprised upon their arrival at Erebus to see that the service was to take place on deck, with Sir John preaching from the quarterdeck. Despite the pale blue sky above — no gold dome of ice crystals or symbolic sun dogs this day — the wind was very cold, and the mass of seamen huddled together for at least the illusion of warmth in the area below the quarterdeck, while the officers from both ships stood behind Sir John on the weather side of the deck like a solid mass of greatcoated acolytes. Once again, the twelve Marines were drawn up in rank, this time on the lee side of the main deck with Sergeant Bryant in front, while the petty officers massed before the mainmast.

Sir John stood at the binnacle, which had been covered with the same Union Jack that had been draped over Gore’s casket “to answer the purpose of a pulpit,” as per regulation.

He preached for only about an hour and no toes or fingers were lost as a result.

Being an Old Testament man by nature and inclination, Sir John led the way through several of the prophets, focusing awhile on Isaiah’s judgement upon the earth — “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof ”—and slowly through the barrage of words, it became apparent to even the most dimwitted seaman in the mass of greatcoats, mufflers, and mittens on the main deck that their commander was really talking about their expedition to find the North-West Passage and their current condition frozen in the icy wastes at latitude 70°–05′ N., longitude 98°–23′ W.

“The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word,” continued Sir John. “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth… And it shall come to pass that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake… The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. They shall reel to and fro like a drunkard…”

As if in proof of this dire prophecy, a great groaning came up from the ice all around HMS Erebus and the deck shifted under the standing men. The ice-rimmed masts and spars above them seemed to vibrate and then make small circles against the weak blue sky. No man broke formation or made a noise.

Sir John shifted from Isaiah to Revelation and gave them even more dire images of what awaited those who abandoned their Lord.

“But of what of he… of we… who do not break covenant with our Lord?” asked Sir John. “I commend you to JONAH.”

Some of the seamen sighed in relief. They were familiar with Jonah.

“Jonah was given a commission by God to go to Nineveh and to cry against it because of its wickedness,” cried Sir John, his often weak voice now rising in volume as strongly and well as any inspired Anglican preacher’s, “but Jonah — you all know this, shipmates — Jonah fled from his commission and from the presence of the Lord, going down to Joppa there to take a berth on the first ship leaving, which happened to be destined for Tarshish — a city beyond the edge of the world then. Jonah foolishly thought that he could sail beyond the limits of the Kingdom of the Lord.

“‘But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.’ And you know the rest… you know how the sailors cried out asking why this evil had fallen upon them, and they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. ‘And they said unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? And he said unto them, Take me up and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.’

“But at first the sailors did not cast Jonah overboard, did they, shipmates? No — they were brave men and good sailors and professionals and rowed hard to bring their foundering ship to land. But finally they weakened, cried unto the Lord, and then did make a sacrifice of Jonah, casting him overboard.

“And the Bible says — ‘Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’

“Notice, shipmates, that the Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. No! This was no beluga nor right nor baleen nor sperm nor killer nor fin such as we would see in these high waters or in Baffin Bay on a normal arctic summer. No, Jonah was swallowed up by a ‘great fish’ which the Lord had prepared for him — which means a monster of the deep that Lord God Jehovah had made at the Creation for just this purpose, to swallow Jonah someday, and in the Bible this monster of a great fish is sometimes called Leviathan.

“And just so have we been sent on our mission beyond the farthest known edge of the world, shipmates, farther than the Tarshish — which was only in Spain, after all — we have been sent out to where the elements themselves seem to rebel, where lightning crashes from frozen skies, where the cold never relents, where white beasts walk the frozen surface of the sea, and where no man, civilized or otherwise, could ever call such a place home.

“But we are not beyond the Kingdom of God, shipmates! As Jonah did not protest his fate nor curse his punishment but rather prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly for three days and three nights, so we must not protest, but accept God’s will of this exile of three long nights of winter in the belly of this ice, and like Jonah we must pray unto the Lord, saying, “I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains: the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.”

“‘When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities foresake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

“‘And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.’

“And, beloved shipmates, know in your hearts that we have given and must continue giving sacrifice unto the Lord with the voice of thanksgiving. We must pay that that we have vowed to pay. Our friend and brother in Christ, Lieutenant Graham Gore, may he sleep in the bosom of the Lord, saw that there would be no release from this belly of the Leviathan winter this summer. No escape from the cold belly of this ice this year. And this is the message he would have brought back had he survived.

“But we have our ships intact, shipmates. We have food for this winter and longer if need be… much longer. We have coal to burn for warmth and the deeper warmth of our companionship and the deepest warmth of knowing that our Lord has not abandoned us.

“One more summer and then winter here in the belly of this Leviathan, shipmates, and I swear to you that God’s divine mercy shall see us out of this terrible place. The North-West Passage is real; it is only miles over that horizon to the southwest — Lieutenant Gore could almost see it with his own eyes a mere week ago — and we shall sail out to it and through it and out of it and away from it in a very few months, when this uncommon extended winter ends, for we shall cry by reason of our affliction unto the Lord, and he shall hear us out of the belly of Hell itself, for he has heardest my voice and yours.

“In the meantime, shipmates, we are afflicted by the dark spirit of that Leviathan in the form of some malevolent white bear — but only a bear, only a dumb beast, however the thing seeks to serve the Enemy, but like Jonah we shall pray unto the Lord that this terror too shall pass from us. And in the certainty that the Lord shall hear our voices.

“Kill this mere animal, shipmates, and on the day we do, by the hand of whichever man among us, I vow to pay each and every one of you ten gold sovereigns out of my own purse.”

There came a murmuring among the men crowded into the waist of the ship.

“Ten gold sovereigns a man,” repeated Sir John. “Not merely a bounty to the man who slays this beast the way David slew Goliath, but a bonus for everyone — share and share alike. And on top of that, you will continue to receive your Discovery Service pay and the equal of your advance pay in bonuses I promise this day — in exchange only for another winter spent eating good food, staying warm, and waiting for the thaw!”

If laughter had been thinkable during Divine Service, there would have been laughter then. Instead, the men stared at one another with pale, near-frost-bitten faces. Ten gold sovereigns a man. And Sir John had promised a bonus equal to the advance pay that had persuaded so many of these seamen to enlist in the first place — twenty-three pounds for most of them! At a time when a man could purchase lodgings for sixty pence a week… twelve pounds for a whole year. And this on top of the common seaman’s Discovery Service pay of sixty pounds per year — more than three times what any labourer ashore could earn! Seventy-five pounds for the carpenters, seventy for the boatswains, a full eighty-four pounds for the engineers.

The men were smiling even as they surreptitiously stamped their boots on the deck to keep from losing toes.

“I have ordered Mr. Diggle on Terror and Mr. Wall here on Erebus to make us a holiday dinner today in anticipation of our triumph over this temporary adversity and the sure certainty of the success of our mission of exploration,” called down Sir John from his place at the flag-bedecked binnacle. “On both ships, I have allowed extra rations of rum for this day.”

The Erebuses could only stare slackjawed at one another. Sir John Franklin allowing grog to be served on Sunday — and extra rations of it at that?

“Join me in this prayer, shipmates,” said Sir John. “Dear God, turn thy face in our direction again, O Lord, and be gracious unto thy servants. O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon: so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our lives.

“Comfort us again now after the time that thou has plagued us: and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.

“Shew thy servants thy work: and their children thy glory.

“And the glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon us: prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handy-work.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.”

“Amen,” came back a hundred and fifteen voices.

For four days and nights after Sir John’s sermon, despite a June snowstorm that blew in from the northwest and made visibility poor and life miserable, the frozen sea echoed day and night to the blast of shotguns and the rattle of musketry. Every man who could find any reason to be out on the ice — a hunting party, the firehole party, messengers passing between the ships, carpenters testing their new sledges, seamen given permission to walk Neptune the dog — brought a weapon and fired at anything that moved or gave the impression through blowing snow or fog that it might be capable of movement. No men were killed, but three had to report to Dr. McDonald or Dr. Goodsir to have shotgun pellets removed from their thighs, calves, and buttocks.

On Wednesday a hunting party who had failed to find seals did bring in — strapped across two connected sledges — the carcass of a white bear and a living white bear cub about the size of a small calf.

There was some hue and cry for the ten gold sovereigns to be paid to each man, but even the men who had killed the beast a mile north of the ship — it had taken more than twelve shots from two muskets and three shotguns to bring the bear down — had to admit that it was too small, less than eight feet long when stretched out on the bloody ice, and too thin and female. They had killed the bear sow but left the mewling cub alive and dragged it back behind the sledge with them.

Sir John came down to inspect the dead animal, praised the men for finding meat — although everyone hated boiled bear meat and this thin animal looked more stringy and tough than most — but pointed out that it was not the monster of the Leviathan that had killed Lieutenant Gore. All the witnesses to the lieutenant’s death were sure, Sir John explained, that even as he died, the brave officer had fired his pistol into the breast of the true beast. This bear sow had been riddled with shot, but there was no old pistol wound in her breast, nor pistol ball to be found. Thus, said Sir John, would the real white bear monster be identified.

Some of the men wanted to make a pet of the cub since the thing had been weaned and would eat thawed beef, while others wanted to butcher it then and there on the ice. On the advice of Marine Sergeant Bryant, Sir John ordered that the animal be kept alive, attached by collar and chain to a stake in the ice. It was that Wednesday evening, the ninth of June, that Sergeants Bryant and Tozer, along with the mate Edward Couch and old John Murray, the only sailmaker left on the voyage, asked to speak to Sir John in his cabin.

“We are going at this the wrong way, Sir John,” said Sergeant Bryant, spokesman for the little group. “The hunting of the beast, I mean.”

“How so?” asked Sir John.

Bryant gestured as if referring to the dead bear sow now being butchered out on the bloody ice. “Our men aren’t hunters, Sir John. There’s not a serious hunter aboard either ship. Those of us who do hunt shoot birds in our life ashore, not large game. Oh, a deer we could bring down, or an arctic caribou should we ever see one again, but this white bear is a formidable foe, Sir John. Those we’ve killed in the past we’ve killed more by luck than by skill. Its skull is thick enough to stop a musket ball. Its body has so much fat and muscle ringed about it that it might as well be armoured like some ancient knight. It’s such a powerful animal, even the smaller bears — well, you have seen them, Sir John — even a shotgun blast to the belly or a rifle shot to the lungs does not bring them down. Their hearts seem hard to find. This scrawny female required a dozen shots by both shotgun and musket, all at short range, and even then she would have escaped had she not stayed behind to protect her cub.”

“What are you suggesting, Sergeant?”

“A blind, Sir John.”

“A blind?”

“As if we were hunting ducks, Sir John,” said Sergeant Tozer, a Marine with a purple birthmark across his pale face. “Mr. Murray has an idea how to make it.”

Sir John turned toward Erebus’s old sailmaker.

“We use extra iron rods meant for shaft replacements, Sir John, and bend them into the support shapes we want,” said Murray. “That gives us a light frame for the blind, which’ll be like a tent, you see.

“Only not a pyramid like our tents,” continued John Murray, “but long and low with an overhanging awning, almost like a canvas booth at a country fair, m’lord.”

Sir John smiled. “Wouldn’t our bear notice a country fair canvas booth out there on the ice, gentlemen?”

“Nay, sir,” said the sailmaker. “I’ll have the canvas cut and sewn and painted snow white before nightfall — or this gloom we call night up here. We’ll set the blind against a low pressure ridge where it will blend in. Only the slightest long firing slit will be visible. Mr. Weekes will use the wood from the burial service scaffolding to set benches inside so the shooters will be warm and snug up off the ice.”

“How many shooters do you envision in this… bear blind?” asked Sir John.

“Six, sir,” answered Sergeant Bryant. “It’s volley fire that will bring this beast down, sir. Just as it brought down Napoleon’s minions by the thousands at Waterloo.”

“But what if the bear has a better sense of smell than Napoleon did at Waterloo?” asked Sir John.

The men chuckled but Sergeant Tozer said, “We thought of that, Sir John. Mostly these days the wind is out of the nor’-nor’-west. If we built the blind against the low pressure ridge near where poor Lieutenant Gore was laid to rest, sir, well, we’d have that nice great expanse of open ice to the nor’west as a killing zone. Almost a hunded yards of open space. Odds are great that it would come down off the higher ridges from upwind, Sir John. And when it gets where we want it, quick volleys of Minié balls into its heart and lungs, sir.”

Sir John thought about this.

“But we’ll have to call off the men, sir,” said Edward Couch, the mate. “With all the men crashing around out there on the ice, them and lookouts firing off their shotguns at every ice serac and gust of wind, no self-respecting bear would come within five miles o’ the ship, sir.”

Sir John nodded. “And what is going to lure our bear into this killing zone, gentlemen? Have you thought about bait?”

“Aye, sir,” said Sergeant Bryant, smiling now. “It’s fresh meat that draws these killers in.”

“We have no fresh meat,” said Sir John. “Not so much as a ring seal.”

“No, sir,” said the craggy Marine sergeant. “But we have that little bear. Once the blind is built and set in place, we’ll butcher that little thing, not sparing the blood, sir, and leave the meat out there on the ice not twenty-five yards from our shooting position.”

Sir John said, “So you think our animal is a cannibal?”

“Oh, aye, sir,” said Sergeant Tozer, his face flushing under the purple birthmark. “We think this thing will eat anything that bleeds or smells of meat. And when it does, we’ll pour the volleys of fire into it, sir, and then it’s ten sovereigns per man and then winter and then triumph and then home.”

Sir John nodded judiciously. “Make it so,” he said.

On Friday afternoon, the eleventh of June, Sir John went out with Lieutenant Le Vesconte to inspect the bear blind.

The two officers had to admit that even from thirty feet away the blind was all but invisible, its floor and back built into the low ridge of snow and ice where Sir John had given the eulogy. The white sails blended almost perfectly and the firing slit had tatters of canvas hanging at irregular intervals to break up the solid horizontal line. The sailmaker and armourer had attached the canvas so cleverly to the iron rods and ribs that even in the rising wind now blowing snow across the open ice, there was not the slightest flap of canvas.

Le Vesconte led Sir John down the icy path behind the pressure ridge — out of sight of the shooting zone — and then over the low wall of ice and in through a slit at the back of the tent. Sergeant Bryant was there with the Erebus Marines — Corporal Pearson and Privates Healey, Reed, Hopcraft, and Pilkington — and the men started to rise as their expedition commander entered.

“Oh, no, no, gentlemen, keep your seats,” whispered Sir John. Aromatic wooden planks had been set in high iron stirrups curled into the iron support bars at either side of the long, narrow tent, allowing the Marines to sit at shooting height when not standing by the narrow firing slit. Another layer of planking kept their feet off the ice. Their muskets were at the ready in front of them. The crowded space smelled of fresh wood, wet wool, and gun oil.

“How long have you been waiting?” whispered Sir John.

“Not quite five hours, Sir John,” whispered Sergeant Bryant.

“You must be cold.”

“Not a bit, sir,” said Bryant in low tones. “The blind is large enough to allow us to move around from time to time and the planks keep our feet from freezing. The Terror Marines under Sergeant Tozer will relieve us at two bells.”

“Have you seen anything?” whispered Lieutenant Le Vesconte.

“Not yet, sir,” answered Bryant. The sergeant and the two officers leaned forward until their faces were in the cold air of the firing slit.

Sir John could see the carcass of the bear cub, its muscles a shocking red against the ice. They had skinned everything except the small white head, bled it out, captured the blood in pails, and spread the blood all around the carcass. The wind was blowing snow across the wide expanse of ice, and the red blood against all the white, grey, and pale blue was disconcerting.

“We have still to see whether our foe is a cannibal,” whispered Sir John.

“Aye, sir,” said Sergeant Bryant. “Would Sir John join us on the bench, sir? There’s ample room.”

There wasn’t ample room, especially with Sir John’s broad beam added to those beefy posteriors already lined up along the plank. But with Lieutenant Le Vesconte remaining standing and all the Marines scooted down as far as they could go, it was just manageable to have the seven men crowded onto the piece of timber. Sir John realized that he could see out onto the ice quite well from this raised position.

At this moment, Captain Sir John Franklin was as happy as he had ever been in the company of other men. It had taken Sir John years to realize that he was far more comfortable in the presence of women — including artistic, highstrung women such as his first wife, Eleanor, and powerful, indomitable women such as his current wife, Jane — than in the company of men. But since his Divine Service the previous Sunday, he had received more smiles, nods, and sincere looks of approbation from his officers and seamen than at any time in his forty-year career.

It was true that the promise of ten gold sovereigns per man — not to mention the doubling of the advance pay, equal to five months’ regular salary for a sailor — had been made in a most unusual burst of good feeling and improvisation. But Sir John had ample financial resources, and should those suffer during his three years and more away, he was quite certain that Lady Jane’s private fortune would be available to cover these new debts of honor.

All in all, Sir John reasoned, the financial offers and his surprise allowance of grog rations aboard his teetotaling ship had been strokes of brilliance. Like all others, Sir John had been deeply cast down by the sudden death of Graham Gore, one of the most promising young officers in the fleet. The bad news of no open ways in the ice and the terrible certainty of another dark winter here had weighed heavily upon everyone, but with a promise of ten gold sovereigns per man and a single feast day aboard two ships, he had surmounted that problem for the time being.

Of course, there was the other problem, brought to him by the four medicos only last week: the fact that more and more of the canned foodstuffs were being found to be putrid, possibly as a result of improper soldering of the cans. But Sir John had set that aside for now.

The wind blew snow across the wide expanse of ice, obscuring then revealing the tiny carcass in its congealing and freezing X of blood on the blue ice. Nothing moved from the surrounding pressure ridges and ice pinnacles. The men to Sir John’s right sat easily, one chewing tobacco, the others resting their mittened hands on the upraised muzzles of their muskets. Sir John knew that those mittens would be off in a flash should their nemesis appear on the ice.

He smiled to himself as he realized that he was memorizing this scene, this moment, as a future anecdote for Jane and his daughter, Eleanor, and his lovely niece Sophia. He did that a lot these days, observing their predicament on the ice as a series of anecdotes and even setting them into words — not too many words, just enough to hold rapt attention — for future use with his lovely ladies and during evenings dining out. This day — the absurd shooting blind, the men crowded in, the good feeling, the smell of gun oil and wool and tobacco, even the lowering grey clouds and blowing snow and mild tension as they awaited their prey — should stand him in good stead in the years to come.

Suddenly Sir John’s gaze turned far to the left, past Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s shoulder, to the burial pit not twenty feet from the south end of the blind. The opening to the black sea had long frozen over and much of the crater itself had filled with blowing snow since the burial day, but even the sight of the depression in the ice made Sir John’s nowsentimental heart hurt in memory of young Gore. But it had been a fine burial service. He had conducted it with dignity and proud military bearing.

Sir John noticed two black objects lying close together in the lowest part of the icy depression — dark stones perhaps? Buttons or coins left behind as remembrance of Lieutenant Gore by some seaman filing by the burial site precisely a week ago? And in the dim, shifting light of the snowstorm the tiny black circles, all but invisible unless one knew exactly where to look, seemed to stare back at Sir John with something like sad reproach. He wondered if by some fluke of climate two tiny openings to the sea itself had remained open during all the intervening freeze and snow, thus revealing these two tiny circles of black water against the grey ice.

The black circles blinked.

“Ah… Sergeant…,” began Sir John.

The entire floor of the burial crater seemed to erupt into motion. Something huge, white and grey and powerful exploded toward them, rising and rushing at the blind and then disappearing on the south side of the canvas, out of sight of the firing slit.

The Marines, obviously not sure of what they had just seen, had no time to react.

A powerful force struck the south side of the blind not three feet from Le Vesconte and Sir John, collapsing the iron and rending the canvas.

The Marines and Sir John leapt to their feet as the canvas ripped above them and behind them and to the side of them, black claws the length of Bowie knives tearing through thick sail. Everyone was shouting at once. There came a terrible carrion reek.

Sergeant Bryant raised his musket — the thing was inside, it was inside, with them, among them, surrounding them with the circumference of inhuman arms — but before he could fire there was a rush of air through the reek of predator breath. The sergeant’s head flew off his shoulders and out through the firing slit and skittered across the ice.

Le Vesconte screamed, someone fired a musket — the ball striking only the Marine next to him. The top of the canvas blind was gone, something huge blocked the opening where the sky should be, and just as Sir John turned to throw himself forward out of the ripping sail canvas, he was struck by a terrible pain just below both knees.

Then things became blurred and absurd. He seemed to be upside down, watching men being scattered like tenpins across the ice, men being thrown from the destroyed blind. Another musket fired but only as the Marine threw the weapon down and tried to scramble away across the ice on all fours. Sir John saw all this — impossibly, absurdly — from an inverted and swinging position. The pain in his legs grew intolerable, there came the sound of saplings snapping, and then he was thrown forward, down into the burial crater, toward the new circle of black awaiting. His head smashed through the thin scrim of ice like a cricket ball through a windowpane.

The water’s cold temporarily stopped Sir John’s wildly pumping heart. He tried to scream but inhaled salt water.

I am in the sea. For the first time in my life, I am in the sea itself. How extraordinary.

Then he was flailing, turning over and over, feeling the torn fragments and rags of his shredded greatcoat peeling away, feeling nothing from his legs now and getting no purchase against the freezing water with his feet. Sir John used his arms and hands to pull and paddle, not knowing in the terrible darkness if he was fighting toward the surface or merely propelling himself deeper into the black water.

I am drowning. Jane, I am drowning. Of all the fates I had considered these long years in the Service, never once, my darling, did I contemplate drowning.

Sir John’s head struck something solid, almost knocking him unconscious, forcing his face beneath the water again, filling his mouth and lungs with salt water again.

And then, my Dears, Providence led me to the surface — or at least to the thin inch of breathable air between the sea and fifteen feet of ice above.

Sir John’s arms flailed wildly as he rotated onto his back, his legs still not working, fingers scrabbling at ice above. He forced himself to calm his heart and limbs, forced discipline so that his nose could find that tiniest fraction of air between ice and freezing cold water. He breathed. Raising his chin, he coughed out seawater and breathed through his mouth.

Thank you, dear Jesus, Lord…

Fighting down the temptation to scream, Sir John scrabbled along the underside of the ice as if he were climbing a wall. The bottom of the pack ice here was irregular, sometimes protruding down into the water and giving him no fraction of an inch of air to breathe, sometimes rising five or six inches or more and almost allowing him to lift his full face out of the water.

Despite the fifteen feet of ice above him, there was a dim glow of light — blue light, the Lord’s light — refracted through the rough facets of ice just inches from his eyes. Some daylight was coming in via the hole — Gore’s burial hole — through which he had just been thrown.

All I had to do, my dear ladies, my darling Jane, was to find my way back to that narrow hole in the ice — get my bearings, as it were — but I knew that I had only minutes…

Not minutes, seconds. Sir John could feel the cold water freezing the life out of him. And there was something terribly wrong with his legs. Not only could he not feel them, but he could feel an absolute absence there. And the seawater tasted of his own blood.

And then, ladies, the Lord God Almighty shewed me the light…

To his left. The opening was some ten yards or less to his left. The ice was high enough above the black water here that Sir John could raise his head, set the top of his bald and freezing pate against rough ice, gasp in air, blink water and blood out of his eyes, and actually see the glow of the Saviour’s light not ten yards away…

Something huge and wet rose between him and the light. The darkness was absolute. His inches of breathable air were suddenly taken away, filled with the rankest of carrion breath against his face.

“Please…,” began Sir John, sputtering and coughing.

Then the moist reek enveloped him and huge teeth closed on either side of his face, crunching through bone and skull just forward of his ears on both sides of his head.