by Dan Simmons
On Friday the third of December, Crozier loaded a shotgun and made the long solo walk through the cold darkness between Terror and Erebus. If the thing on the ice wanted to take him, Crozier thought, a few more men with guns would make little difference in the outcome. It hadn’t for Sir John.
Crozier arrived safely. He and Fitzjames discussed the situation — the men’s morale, the requests for a religious service, the situation with the food tins, and the need to enforce strict rationing soon after Christmas — and they agreed that a combined Divine Service on the following Sunday might be a good idea. Since there were no chaplains or self-appointed ministers aboard — Sir John had filled both those roles until the previous June — both captains would give a sermon. Crozier hated this task more than dockside dentistry but realized that it had to be done.
The men’s moods were in a dangerous state. Lieutenant Edward Little, Crozier’s executive officer, reported that men on Terror had begun to fashion necklaces and other fetishes from the claws and teeth of some of the white bears they had shot during the summer season. Lieutenant Irving reported weeks ago that Lady Silence had gone into hiding in the forward cable locker and the men had started leaving portions of their rum and food rations down there in the hold as if making offerings to a witch or saint in hopes of intercession.
“I’ve been thinking about your ball,” said Fitzjames as Crozier began bundling up to leave.
“My ball?”
“The Grand Venetian Carnivale that Hoppner set up when you wintered over with Parry,” continued Fitzjames. “When you went as a black footman.”
“What about it?” asked Crozier as he bound his comforter around his neck and face.
“Sir John had three large trunks of masks, clothing, and costumes,” said Fitzjames. “I found them among his personal stores.”
“He did?” Crozier was surprised. The aging windbag who would have held Divine Service six times a week if he had been allowed and who, despite his frequent laughter, never seemed to understand anyone else’s jokes, seemed like the last sort of expedition commander to load trunks of frivolous costumes the way the stagestruck Parry had.
“They’re old,” confirmed Fitzjames. “Some of them may have belonged to Parry and Hoppner — may have been the same costumes you chose from while frozen in Baffin Bay twenty-four years ago — but there are over a hundred tattered rags in there.”
Crozier stood bundled in the doorway of Sir John’s former cabin where the two captains had held their sotto voce meeting. He wished Fitzjames would get to the point.
“I thought we might hold a masque for the men soon,” said Fitzjames. “Nothing as fancy as your Grand Venetian Carnivale, of course, not with the … unpleasantness … out on the ice, but a diversion nonetheless.”
“Perhaps,” said Crozier, allowing his tone to convey his lack of enthusiasm at the idea. “We shall discuss it after this accursed Divine Service on Sunday.”
“Yes, of course,” Fitzjames said hurriedly. His slight lisp became more pronounced when he was nervous. “Shall I send some men to escort you back to Terror, Captain Crozier?”
“No. And turn in early tonight, James. You look fagged out. We’ll both need our energy if we’re to properly sermonize the assembled crew on Sunday.”
Fitzjames smiled dutifully. Crozier thought it a wan and strangely disturbing expression.
On Sunday the fifth of December, 1847, Crozier left behind a skeleton crew of six men commanded by First Lieutenant Edward Little — who, like Crozier, would rather have his kidney stones removed with a spoon than be forced to suffer sermons — as well as his assistant surgeon, McDonald, and the engineer, James Thompson. The other fifty-some surviving crewmen and officers trooped off across the ice following their captain, Second Lieutenant Hodgson, Third Lieutenant Irving, First Mate Hornby, and the other masters, clerks, and warrant officers. It was almost 10:00 a.m. but would have been absolutely dark under the shivering stars except for the return of the aurora which pulsed, danced, and shifted above them, throwing a long line of their shadows onto the fractured ice. Sergeant Soloman Tozer — the shocking birthmark on his face especially noticeable in the coloured light from the aurora — headed up the guard of Royal Marines with muskets marching points, flank, and behind the column, but the white thing in the ice left the men alone this Sabbath morning.
The last full gathering of both crews for Divine Service — presided over by Sir John shortly before the creature carried their devout leader down into the darkness under the ice — had been on the open deck under cold June sunlight, but since it was now at least 50 degrees below zero outside, when the wind was not blowing, Fitzjames had arranged the lower deck for the service. The huge cookstove could not be moved, but the men had cranked up the seamen’s dining tables to their maximum height, taken down the removable bulkhead partitions that had delineated the forward sick bay, and removed other partitions that had created the warrant officers’ sleeping area, the subordinate officers’ stewards’ cubicle, and the first and second mates’ and second master’s berths. They also removed the walls of the warrant officers’ mess room and assistant surgeon’s sleeping room. The space would be crowded still, but adequate.
In addition, Fitzjames’s carpenter, Mr. Weekes, had created a low pulpit and platform. It was raised only six inches because of the lack of headroom under the beams, hanging tables, and stored lumber, but it would allow Crozier and Fitzjames to be seen by the men in the back of the jam of bundled bodies.
“At least we’ll be warm,” Crozier whispered to Fitzjames as Charles Hamilton Osmer, Erebus’s bald purser, led the men in opening hymns.
Indeed, the packed bodies had raised the temperature on the lower deck here higher than it had been since Erebus had been burning great heaps of coal and forcing hot water through its heating pipes six months earlier. Fitzjames had also tried to lighten up the usually dark and smoky place by burning ship’s oil at a furious rate in no fewer than ten hanging lamps that lit the space more brightly than at any time since sunlight had poured through the overhead Preston Patent Illuminators more than two years earlier.
The crewmen rocked the dark oak beams with their singing. Sailors, Crozier knew from his forty-plus years of experience, loved to sing under almost any circumstance. Even, if all else failed, during Divine Service. Crozier could see the top of caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey’s head in the crowd, while next to him, hunched over so that his head and shoulders would not hit the overhead beams, stood the idiot giant Magnus Manson, who bellowed out the hymn in a boom so off-key that it made the grinding of the ice outside sound like close harmony. The two were sharing one of the tattered hymnals that Purser Osmer had handed out.
Finally the hymns were finished and there came a low din of shuffling, coughing, and clearing of throats. The air smelled of fresh-baked bread since Mr. Diggle had come over hours earlier to aid Erebus’s cook, Richard Wall, in the baking of biscuits. Crozier and Fitzjames had decided that the extra coal, flour, and lamp oil were worth expending this special day if it helped the men’s morale. The darkest two months of the arctic winter were still ahead.
Now it was time for the two sermons. Fitzjames had shaved and powdered carefully and allowed his personal steward, Mr. Hoar, to take in his baggy waistcoat, trousers, and jacket, so he looked calm and handsome in his uniform and shining epaulettes. Only Crozier, standing behind him, could see Fitzjames’s pale hands clenching and unclenching as he set his personal Bible on the pulpit and opened it to Psalms.
“The reading today shall be from Pthalm Forty-six,” said Captain Fitzjames. Crozier winced slightly at the upper-class lisp that had become more pronounced with tension.
God is our refuge and strength,
and ever-prethent help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountainth fall into the heart
of the sea,
though its waterth roar and foam
and the mountains quake w
ith their
thurging.
There is a river whose streams make glad
the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwellth.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdomth fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortreth.
Come and see the workth of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the endth of the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be
exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
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 leather-bound 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 good-luck 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
Lat. 70°-05′ N., Long. 98°-23′ W.
5 December, 1847
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.
Then, as soon as the fit had come on, it was over, and Davey was his old self again. Or almost his old self again. His appetite had come back — he’d lost almost twenty pounds during his time away from his own body — but the old Davey Leys’s sense of humour was gone, as was his easy, boyish smile and his willingness to enter into fo’c’sle conversations during make-and-mend or supper. Also, Davey’s hair, which had been a rich reddish brown the first week in November, was pure white when he came out of his funk. Some of the men said that Lady Silence had put a hex on Leys.
Thomas Blanky, Ice Master for more than thirty years, did not believe in hexes. He was ashamed of the men who were wearing polar bear claws, paws, teeth, and tails as some sort of anti-hex amulets. He knew that some of the less-educated men — centered around the caulker’s mate, Cornelius Hickey, whom Blanky had never liked nor respected — were spreading the word that the Thing on the Ice was some sort of demon or devil — or Daemon or Divell as their captain had later said the spelling ran in his odd Book of Leviathan — and some around Hickey were already making sacrifices to the monster, setting them outside the forward cable locker in the hold where everyone now knew Lady Silence, obviously an Esquimaux witch, was hiding. Hickey and his giant idiot friend, Magnus Manson, seemed to be the high priests of this cult — or rather, Hickey was the priest and Manson the acolyte who did whatever Hickey said — and they appeared to be the only ones allowed to bring the various offerings down to the hold. Blanky had gone down there into the sulfurous dark and stench and cold recently and was disgusted to see little pewter plates of food, burned-down candles, tiny tots of rum.