The Terror

¹⁷ IRVING

Silence was missing, and it was Third Lieutenant John Irving’s job to find her.

The captain hadn’t ordered him to do so… not exactly. But Captain Crozier had told Irving to watch over the Esquimaux woman when the captains decided to keep her aboard HMS Terror six months earlier in June and Captain Crozier never rescinded that order, so Irving felt responsible for her. Besides, the young man was in love with her. He knew it was foolish — insane even — to have fallen in love with a savage, a woman who was not even a Christian, and an uneducated native who couldn’t speak a word of English, or any language for that matter with her tongue torn out as it was, but Irving was still in love with her. Something about her made the tall, strong John Irving weak in his knees.

And now she was gone.

They first noticed she wasn’t in her assigned berth — that little den set back amid the crates in the cluttered part of the lower deck just forward of the sick bay — on Thursday, two days earlier, but the men were used to Lady Silence’s odd comings and goings. She was off the ship as much as she was on it, even at night. Irving reported to Captain Crozier on Thursday afternoon, the eleventh of November, that Silence had gone missing, but the captain, Irving, and the others had seen her out on the ice two nights before. Then, after the remains of Strong and Evans had been found, she’d gone missing again. The captain said not to worry, that she’d show up.

But she hadn’t.

The storm had blown in that Thursday morning, bringing heavy snow and high winds. Work teams labouring by lantern light to repair the trail cairns between Terror and Erebus — four-foot-high tapered columns of ice bricks every thirty paces — had been forced to return to the ships that afternoon and hadn’t been able to work out on the ice since. The last messenger from Erebus, who had arrived late Thursday and been forced to stay on Terror because of the storm, confirmed that Silence was not aboard Commander Fitzjames’s ship. By this Saturday morning, watch was being changed on deck every hour and the men still came below crusted with ice and shaking with cold. Work parties had to be sent topside into the gale with axes every three hours to hack the ice off the remaining spars and lines so that the ship would not tip over from the weight. Also, the falling ice was a hazard to those on watch and did damage to the deck itself. More men struggled to shovel snow off the icy deck of the forward-listing Terror before it built up to a depth where they couldn’t get the hatches open.

When Lieutenant Irving reported again to Captain Crozier on this Saturday night after supper that Silence was still missing, the captain said, “If she’s out in this, she may not be coming back, John. But you have permission to search the entire ship tonight after most of the men are in their hammocks, if only to make sure she’s gone.”

Even though Irving’s officer-on-deck watch had ended hours earlier this evening, the lieutenant now got back into his cold-weather slops, lit an oil lantern, and climbed the ladderway to the deck again.

Conditions had not improved. If anything they were worse than when Irving had gone below for supper five hours earlier. The wind howled in from the northwest, blowing snow before it and reducing visibility to ten feet or less. Ice had recoated everything even though there was a five-man axe party hacking and shouting somewhere forward of the snow-laden canvas sagging above the hatchway. Irving struggled out through a foot of new spindrift under the canvas pyramid, lantern blowing back toward his face, as he searched for one of the men not swinging an axe in the darkness.

Reuben Male, captain of the fo’c’sle, had watch and work-party officer duty, and Irving found him by following the faint glow to the other man’s lantern on the port side.

Male was a snow-encrusted mound of wool. Even his face was hidden under a makeshift hood wrapped about by layers of heavy wool comforters. The shotgun in the crook of his bulky arm was sheathed in ice. Both men had to shout to be heard.

“See anything, Mr. Male?” shouted Lieutenant Irving, leaning close to the thick turban of wool that was the fo’c’sle captain’s head.

The shorter man tugged down the scarf a bit. His nose was icicle white. “You mean the ice parties, sir? I can’t see ’em once they get above the first spars. I just listen, sir, while I fill in for young Kinnaird’s port watch duty. He was on the third watch shoveling party, sir, and still ain’t thawed out.”

“No, I mean on the ice!” shouted Irving.

Male laughed. It was, quite literally, a muffled sound. “None of us have seen as far as the ice for forty-eight hours, Lieutenant. You know that, sir. You was out here earlier.”

Irving nodded and wrapped his own comforter tighter around his forehead and lower face. “No one’s seen Silence… Lady Silence?”

“What, sir?” Mr. Male leaned closer, the shotgun a column of ice-rimmed metal and wood between them.

“Lady Silence?” shouted Irving.

“No, sir. I understand that no one’s seen the Esquimaux woman for days. She must be gone, Lieutenant. Dead out there somewhere, and good riddance, I say.”

Irving nodded, patted Male on his bulky shoulder with his own bulky mitten, and made his way around by the stern — staying away from the mainmast, where giant chunks of ice were falling out of the blowing snow and crashing like artillery shells onto the deck — to speak to John Bates where the man stood watch on the starboard side.

Bates had seen nothing. He hadn’t even been able to see the five men of the axe party as they set to work.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I don’t have no watch and I’m afraid I won’t hear the bell what with all this choppin’ and fallin’ and the wind blowin’ and crashin’ of ice, sir. Is there much time left on this watch?”

“You’ll hear the bell when Mr. Male rings it,” shouted Irving, leaning close to the iceshrouded globe of wool that was the twenty-six-year-old’s head. “And he’ll come around to check on you before going below. As you were, Bates.”

“Aye, sir.”

The wind tried to knock Irving off his feet as he went around to the front of the canvas cover, waited for a break in the falling ice — hearing the men curse and shout in the maintrees and thrumming rigging above — and then he hurried as quickly as he could through the two feet of new snow on deck, ducked under the frozen canvas, and clambered through the hatch and down the ladderway.

He’d searched the lower decks multiple times, of course — especially behind the remaining crates forward of the sick bay where the woman had previously had her little den — but now Irving walked aft. The ship was quiet this late at night except for the stamping and crash of ice on the deck above, the snores from the exhausted men in their hammocks forward, Mr. Diggle’s usual bangs and curses from the direction of the stove, and the ever-present howl of wind and grind of ice.

Irving felt his way along the dark and narrow companionway. Except for Mr. Male’s room, none of the sleeping cubicles here in officers” country were empty. HMS Terror had been lucky in that respect. While Erebus had lost several officers to that thing on the ice, including Sir John and Lieutenant Gore, none of Terror’s officers, warrant officers, or petty officers had died yet except for young John Torrington, the lead stoker, who’d died of natural causes a year and a half earlier back at Beechey Island.

No one was in the Great Cabin. It was rarely warm enough to tarry long there now and even the leatherbound books looked cold on their shelves; the wooden instrument that played metal musical disks when cranked was silent these days. Irving had time to notice that Captain Crozier’s lamp was still lit behind his partition before the lieutenant pushed forward through the officers’ and mates’ empty mess rooms and back to the ladderway.

The orlop deck below was, as it always was, very cold and very dark. With fewer provision-carrying parties coming down here because of the severe rationing due to the many spoiled cans of food the surgeons had discovered, and with fewer coal-sack hauling parties because of the dwindling coal supplies and reduced hours of heating for the ship, Irving found himself alone in the frigid space. The black wood beams and frost-covered metal brackets groaned around him as he made his way forward before working his way back toward the stern. The lamplight seemed to be swallowed up by the thick darkness, and Irving had trouble seeing the faint glow through the fog of ice crystals created by his own breathing.

Lady Silence was not in the bow area — not in the carpenter’s storeroom or the bosun’s storeroom nor in the almost-empty Bread Room aft of these closed compartments. The midship section of the orlop deck had been crammed deck to ceiling with crates, barrels, and other packages of supplies when Terror had sailed, but now much of the deck-space was clear. Lady Silence was nowhere amidships.

Lieutenant Irving let himself into the Spirit Room, using the key Captain Crozier had loaned him. There were brandy and wine bottles left, he could see by the glow of the dimming lantern, but he knew that the level of rum was low in the huge main cask. When the rum ran out — when the men’s daily noon supply of grog disappeared — then, Lieutenant Irving knew, as all officers in the Royal Navy knew, mutiny would become a much more serious concern. Mr. Helpman, the captain’s clerk, and Mr. Goddard, the captain of the hold, had reported recently that they estimated another six weeks or so of rum remained, and that much only if the standard one-fourth pint of rum in the gill, diluted with three-fourths pint of water, was reduced by half. The men would grumble even then.

Irving did not think Lady Silence could have sneaked into the locked Spirit Room despite all the whispering of the men about her witch-like powers, but he searched the space carefully, peering under tabletops and counters. The row upon row of cutlasses, sword bayonets, and muskets on the shelves above him glittered coldly in the lantern light.

He went aft to the Gunner’s Storeroom, with its adequate remaining supplies of powder and shot, peered into the captain’s private storeroom — only Crozier’s few remaining whiskey bottles sat on the shelves, the food having been parceled out to the other officers in recent weeks. Then he searched the Sail Room, Slop Room, aft cable lockers, and mate’s storeroom. If Lieutenant John Irving had been an Esquimaux woman attempting to hide aboard the ship, he thought he might have chosen the Sail Room, with its mostly untouched heaps and rolls of spare canvas, sheets, and long-unused sailing gear.

But she was not there. Irving had a start in the Slop Room when his lantern showed a tall, silent figure standing in the rear of the room, shoulders looming against a dark bulkhead, but it turned out to be only some wool greatcoats and a Welsh wig hanging on a peg.

Locking doors behind him, the lieutenant went down the ladder to the hold.

Third Lieutenant John Irving, although appearing younger than his years because of his boyish blond looks and quick blush, was not in love with the Esquimaux woman because he was a lovesick virgin. Actually, Irving had had more experience with the fairer sex than many of those braggarts on the ship who filled the fo’c’sle with tales of their sexual conquests. Irving’s uncle had brought him down to the Bristol docks when the boy turned fourteen, introduced him to a clean and pleasant dockside whore named Mol, and paid for the experience — not merely a quick back-alley knee-wobbler, but a proper evening and night and morning in a clean room under the eaves of an old inn overlooking the quay. It had given young John Irving a taste for the physical which he had indulged many times since.

Nor had Irving had less luck with the ladies in polite society. He had courted the youngest daughter of Bristol’s third most important family, the Dunwitt-Harrisons, and that lass, Emily, had allowed, even initiated, personal intimacies most young men would have sold their left bollock to have experienced at such an age. Upon arriving in London to complete his Naval education in artillery on the gunnery training vessel HMS Excellent, Irving had spent his weekends meeting, courting, and enjoying the company of several attractive upper-class young ladies, including the obliging Miss Sarah, the shy but ultimately surprising Miss Linda, and the truly shocking — in private — Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie, with whom the fresh-faced third lieutenant soon found himself engaged to be married.

John Irving had no intention of being married. At least not while he was in his twenties — his father and uncle had both taught him that these were the years in which he should see the world and sow wild oats — and most probably not when he was in his thirties. He saw no compelling reason to marry while he would be in his forties. So although Irving had never once considered the Discovery Service — he had never enjoyed cold weather, and the thought of being frozen in at either of the poles was both absurd and appalling to him — the week after he awoke to find himself engaged, the third lieutenant followed the promptings of his older chums George Hodgson and Fred Hornby and went along to an interview on HMS Terror to apply for transfer.

Captain Crozier, obviously in foul spirits and hungover that beautiful spring Saturday morning, had glowered, harrumphed, scowled, and quizzed them carefully. He laughed at their gunnery training on a mastless ship and demanded to know just how they could be of service on an expedition sailing ship which carried only small arms. Then he asked them pointedly if they would “do their duty as Englishmen” (whatever on earth that meant, Irving remembered thinking, when said Englishmen were locked into a frozen sea a thousand miles from home) and promptly assured them of berths.

Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie was distraught, of course, and shocked that their engagement should be extended over months or actual years, but Lieutenant Irving consoled her first with assurances that the extra money from the Discovery Service duty would be an absolute necessity for them, and then by explaining his need for the adventure and then fame and glory that might well come from writing a book upon his return. Her family understood these priorities even if Miss Abigail did not. Then, when they were alone, he coaxed her out of her tears and anger with hugs, kisses, and expert caresses. The consolation grew to interesting heights — Lieutenant Irving knew that he might well be a father by now, two and a half years after the consoling. But he had not been unhappy to wave goodbye to Miss Abigail some weeks later as Terror slipped her moorings and was pushed away by two steam tugs. The disconsolate young lady stood on the docks at Greenhithe in her green-and-pink silk dress under a pink parasol and waved her matching silk pink handkerchief, using another less-expensive cotton handkerchief to dry her copious tears.

He knew that Sir John fully expected to stop in both Russia and China after negotiating the North-West Passage, so Lieutenant Irving had already made plans to transfer to a Royal Navy ship assigned to one of those waters, or perhaps even resign from the Navy, write his adventure book, and look after his uncle’s silk and millinery interests in Shanghai.

The hold was darker and colder than the orlop deck.

Irving hated the hold. It reminded him, even more than did his freezing berth or the dimly lit, freezing lower deck, of a grave. He only came down here when he had to, mostly to supervise the stowing of shrouded dead bodies — or the parts of dead bodies — in the locked Dead Room. Each time he wondered if someone soon would be supervising the stowing of his corpse down here. He lifted his lantern and headed aft through the slushmelt and thick air.

The boiler room appeared to be empty, but then Lieutenant Irving saw the body on the cot near the starboard bulkhead. No lantern glowed, only the low red flicker through the grate of one of the four closed boiler doors, and in the dim light, the long body stretched out on the cot looked dead. The man’s open eyes stared up at the low ceiling and he did not blink. Nor did he turn his head when Irving came into the room and hung his lantern on a hook near the coal scuttle.

“What brings you down here, Lieutenant?” asked James Thompson. The engineer still neither moved his head nor blinked. Sometime in the past month he had quit shaving, and whiskers now sprouted everywhere on his thin, white face. The man’s eyes lay deep in dark sockets. His hair was wild and spiky with soot and sweat. It was near freezing even here in the boiler room with the fires damped so low, but Thompson was lying only in his trousers, undershirt, and suspenders.

“I’m looking for Silence,” said Irving.

The man on the cot continued to stare at the deck above him.

“Lady Silence,” clarified the young lieutenant.

“The Esquimaux witch,” said the engineer.

Irving cleared his throat. The coal dust was so thick here that it was hard to breathe. “Have you seen her, Mr. Thompson? Or heard anything unusual?”

Thompson, who still had not blinked or turned his head, laughed softly. The sound was disturbing — a rattle of small stones in a jar — and it ended in a cough. “Listen,” said the engineer.

Irving turned his head. There were only the usual noises, although louder down here in the dark hold: the slow moan of ice pressing in, the louder groaning of the iron tanks and structural reinforcements fore and aft of the boiler room, the more distant moan of the blizzard winds far above, the crash of falling ice carried down as vibration through the ship’s timbers, the thrum of the masts being shaken in their sockets, random scratching noises from the hull, and a constant hiss, screech, and claw-sliding noise from the boiler and pipes all around.

“There’s someone or something else breathing on this deck,” continued Thompson. “Do you hear it?”

Irving strained but heard no breathing, although the boiler sounded like something large panting hard. “Where are Smith and Johnson?” asked the lieutenant. These were the two stokers who worked round-the-clock here with Thompson.

The supine engineer shrugged. “With so little coal to shovel these days, I need them only a few hours a day. I spend most of my time alone, crawling among the pipes and valves, Lieutenant. Patching. Taping. Replacing. Trying to keep this… thing… working, moving hot water through the lower deck for a few hours each day. In two months, three at the most, it will all be academic. We already have no coal to steam. We’ll soon have no coal to heat.”

Irving had heard these reports in the officers” mess but had little interest in the subject. Three months seemed a lifetime away. Right now he had to make sure Silence was not on board and report to the captain. Then he had to try to find her if she was not aboard Terror. Then he had to survive another three months. He would worry about shortages of coal later.

“Have you heard the rumors, Lieutenant?” asked the engineer. The long form on the couch still had neither blinked nor turned his head to look at Irving.

“No, Mr. Thompson, which rumor?”

“That the… thing on the ice, the apparition, the Devil… comes into the ship whenever it wants to and walks the hold deck late at night,” said Thompson.

“No,” said Lieutenant Irving. “I’ve not heard that.”

“Stay down here alone on the hold deck through enough watches,” said the man on the cot, “and you’ll hear and see everything.”

“Good night, Mr. Thompson.” Irving took his sputtering lantern and went back out into the companionway and forward.

There were few places left to search on the hold deck and Irving had every intention of making a fast job of it. The Dead Room was locked; the lieutenant had not asked his captain for the key, and after inspecting that the heavy lock was solid and secured, he moved on. He didn’t want to see what was causing the scrabbling and chewing sounds he could hear through the thick oak door.

The twenty-one huge iron water tanks along the hull offered no place for an Esquimaux to hide, so Irving went into the coal bunkers, his lantern dimming in the thick, coal-dust-blackened air. The remaining sacks of coal, once filling each bin and stacked from hull bottom to the deck beams above, merely lined the edge of each sooty room like low barriers of sandbags now. He couldn’t imagine Lady Silence making a new shelter in one of these lightless, reeking, pestilential hellholes — the decks were awash in sewage and rats scuttled everywhere — but he had to look.

When he was finished searching the coal storage lockers and the stores amidships, Lieutenant Irving moved out into the remaining crates and barrels in the forepeak, directly below the crew’s berthing area and Mr. Diggle’s huge stove two decks above. A narrower ladder came down through the orlop deck to this stores area and tons of lumber were hanging from the heavy beams overhead, turning the space into a maze and requiring the lieutenant to proceed in a half crouch, but there were far fewer crates, barrels, and heaps of goods than there had been two and a half years earlier.

But more rats. Many more.

Searching between and in some of the larger crates, glancing to make sure that the barrels awash in the slush were either empty or sealed, Irving had just stepped around the vertical forward ladder when he saw a flash of white and heard harsh breathing, gasps and caught a rustle of frenzied movement just beyond the dim circle of the lantern light. It was large, moving, and was not the woman.

Irving had no weapon. For the briefest instant he considered dropping the lantern and running back through the darkness toward the midship ladderway. He did not, of course, and the thought was gone almost before it was formed. He took a step forward and, in a voice stronger and more authoritative than he thought he might be capable of right then, shouted, “Who goes there? Identify yourself!”

Then he saw them in the lantern light. The idiot, Magnus Manson, the largest man on the expedition, struggling back into his trousers, his huge, grimy fingers fumbling with buttons. A few feet away Cornelius Hickey, the caulker’s mate, barely five feet tall, beady-eyed and ferret-faced, was pulling his suspenders into place.

John Irving’s mouth hung open. It took several seconds for the reality of what he was looking at to filter through his mind toward acceptance — sodomites. He had heard of such goings-on, of course, had joked with his mates about such things, had once witnessed a flogging around the fleet when an ensign on the Excellent had confessed to such doings, but Irving had never thought that he would be on a ship where… to serve with men who…

Manson, the giant, was taking an ominous step toward him. The man was so large that everywhere below-decks he had to walk in a stooped crouch to avoid the beams, giving him an habitual hunchbacked shuffle that he used even in the open air. Now, his huge hands glowing in the lamplight, he looked like an executioner advancing on a condemned man.

“Magnus,” said Hickey. “No.”

Irving’s jaw dropped farther. Were these… sodomites… threatening him? The prescribed sentence for sodomy on a ship of Her Majesty’s Navy was hanging, with two hundred lashes from the cat while being flogged around the fleet — literally from ship to ship in harbour — being considered great leniency.

“How dare you?” said Irving, although whether he was talking about Manson’s threatening attitude or their unnatural act, even he did not know.

“Lieutenant,” said Hickey, words rushing in that flute-high rush of the caulker’s mate’s Liverpool accent, “begging your pardon, sir, Mr. Diggle sent us down for some flour, sir. One of them damn rats rushed up Seaman Manson’s trouser leg, sir, and we was trying to set it right. Filthy buggers, them rats.”

Irving knew that Mr. Diggle had not yet started the latenight baking of biscuits and that there was ample flour in the cook’s stores up on the lower deck. Hickey was not even trying to make his lie convincing. The little man’s beady, evaluating eyes reminded Irving of the rats scurrying in the darkness around them.

“We’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell no one, sir,” continued the caulker’s mate. “Magnus here would hate to be made fun of for bein’ afraid of a little rat runnin’ up his leg.”

The words were a challenge and a defiance. Almost a command. Insolence came off the little man in waves while Manson stood there empty-eyed, as dumb as a beast of burden, huge hands still flexed, passively awaiting the next command from his diminutive lover.

The silence between the men stretched. Ice moaned against the ship. Timbers creaked. Rats scurried close by.

“Get out of here,” Irving said at last. “Now.”

“Aye, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Hickey. He unshielded a small lantern that had been on the deck near him. “Come, Magnus.”

The two men scrambled up the narrow forward ladder into the darkness of the orlop deck.

Lieutenant Irving stood where he was for several long minutes, listening to but not hearing the groans and snaps of the ship. The blizzard howl was like a distant dirge.

If he reported this to Captain Crozier, there would be a trial. Manson, the village idiot of this expedition, was well liked by the crew, however much they teased him about his fear of ghosts and goblins. The man did the heavy work of any three of his comrades. Hickey, while not especially liked by any of the other warrant or regular officers, was respected by the regular seamen for his abilities to get his friends extra tobacco, an extra gill of rum, or an article of needed clothing.

Crozier wouldn’t hang either man, thought John Irving, but the captain had been in an especially foul mood in recent weeks and the punishments could be dramatic. Everyone on the ship knew that just weeks ago the captain threatened to lock Manson into the Dead Room with his chum Walker’s rat-chewed corpse if the huge idiot ever again refused an order to carry coal on the hold deck. No one would be surprised if he carried out that sentence now.

On the other hand, thought the lieutenant, what had he just seen? What could he testify to, his hand on the Holy Bible, if there were an actual court of inquiry? He hadn’t seen any unnatural act. He’d not caught the two sodomites in the act of copulation or… any other unnatural posture. Irving had heard the breathing, the gasps, something that must have been whispered alarm at the approach of his lantern, and then seen the two struggling to raise their trousers and tuck in their shirts.

That would be enough to get one or both of them hanged under normal circumstances. But here, stuck in the ice, with months or years ahead of them before any chance of rescue?

For the first time in many years, John Irving felt like sitting down and weeping. His life had just become complex beyond all his imagining. If he did report the two sodomites, none of his crewmates — officers, friends, subordinates — would ever look at him quite the same way again.

If he did not report the two men, he would open himself to endless insolence from Hickey. His cowardice in not reporting the man would expose Irving to a form of blackmail for weeks and months to come. Nor would the lieutenant ever sleep well again or feel comfortable on watch in the darkness outside or in his cubicle — as comfortable as anyone could be with that monstrous white thing killing them all one by one — waiting, as he would be now, for Manson’s white hands to close around his throat.

“Oh, bugger me,” Irving said aloud into the creaking cold of the hold. Realizing exactly what he had said, he laughed aloud — the laugh sounding stranger, weaker, yet more ominous than the words.

Having looked everywhere except a few hogshead barrels and the forward cable locker, he was ready to give up his search, but he didn’t want to go up to the lower deck until Hickey and Manson were out of sight.

Irving made his way past floating empty crates — the water was above his ankles here, this far toward the downwardtilting bow, and his soaked boots broke through the scrim of ice. Another few minutes and he’d have frostbitten toes for sure.

The cable locker was at the most forward part of the forepeak, right where the hull came together at the bow. It was not really a room — the two doors were only three feet tall and the space within not much more than four feet high — but rather a place to stow the heavy hawsers used for the bow anchors. The cable locker always stank to high heaven of river and estuary mud, even months or years after a ship’s weighing anchor from that place. It never fully lost its stench, and the massive hawsers, coiled and overlapping, left little or no free room in the low, black, evil-smelling space.

Lieutenant Irving pried open the reluctant doors to the locker and held his lantern to the opening. The grinding of the ice was especially loud here where the bow and bowsprit were pressed into the shifting pack ice itself.

Lady Silence’s head shot up and her dark eyes reflected the light like a cat’s.

She was naked except for whitebrown furs spread under her like a rug and another heavy fur — perhaps her parka — draped over her shoulders and naked body.

The floor of the cable locker was raised more than a foot above the flooded deck outside. She had moulded and shoved the massive hawsers aside until the space opened made a low, furlined cave within the overhanging tangle of huge hemp ropes. A small food can filled with oil or blubber provided light and heat from an open flame. The Esquimaux woman was in the process of eating a haunch of red, raw, bloody meat. She was slicing directly from the meat to her mouth with quick cuts from a short but obviously very sharp knife. The knife had a bone or antler handle with some sort of design on it. Lady Silence was on her knees, leaning forward over the flame and the meat, and her small breasts hung down in a way that reminded the literate Lieutenant Irving of pictures he had seen of the statue of a she-wolf nursing the infants Romulus and Remus.

“I’m terribly sorry, madam,” said Irving. He touched his cap and shut the doors.

Staggering back a few steps in the slush, sending rats scurrying, the lieutenant tried to think through shock for the second time in five minutes.

The captain had to know about Silence’s hiding place. The fire danger alone from the open flame there would have to be dealt with.

But where had she got the knife? It looked like something made by Esquimauxs, rather than a weapon or tool from the ship. Certainly they had searched her six months ago in June. Could she have hidden it all this time?

What else could she be hiding?

And the fresh meat.

There was no fresh meat on board, Irving was sure of that.

Could she have been hunting? In the winter and blizzard and dark? And hunting what?

The only things out there on the ice or under the ice were the white bears and the thing stalking the men of Erebus and Terror.

John Irving had a terrible thought. For a second he was tempted to go back and test the lock to the Dead Room.

Then he had an even more terrible thought.

Only half of William Strong and Thomas Evans had been found.

Lieutenant John Irving stumbled aft, feet sliding on the ice and slush as he fumbled and felt his way toward the central ladderway to fight his way up and out toward the light of the lower deck.