The Terror

by Dan Simmons

  “Quite the contrary,” said Bridgens. “I find myself wondering if we might have encountered one of the last members of some ancient species — something larger, smarter, faster, and infinitely more violent than its descendant, the smaller north polar bear we see in such abundance.”

  Peglar thought about this. “Something from an antediluvian age,” he said at last.

  Bridgens chuckled. “In a metaphorical sense, at least, Harry. You may remember that I was no advocate of any literal belief in the Flood.”

  Peglar smiled. “You were dangerous to be around, John.” He stood in the cold thinking for another few minutes. The light was fading. The stars were filling in the southern sky once again. “Do you think this … thing … this last of its breed … walked the earth when the huge lizards were around? If so, why haven’t we found fossils of it?”

  Bridgens chuckled again. “No, somehow I do not believe our predator on the ice contested with the giant lizards. Perhaps mammals such as Ursus maritimus did not coexist with the giant reptiles at all. As Lyell showed and our Mr. Darwin seems to understand, Time … with a capital T, Harry … may be much vaster than we have the ability to comprehend.”

  The two men were silent for a few moments. The wind had started up a little and Peglar realized that it was too cold to stay out here like this much longer. He could see the older man shivering slightly. “John,” he said. “Do you think that understanding the origin of the beast … or thing, it sometimes seems too intelligent to be a beast … will help us kill it?”

  Bridgens laughed aloud this time. “Not in the least, Harry. Just between you and me, dear friend, I think the creature already has the better of us. I think our bones will be fossils before its will … although, when one thinks about it, a huge creature which lives almost completely on the polar ice, not breeding or living on dry land as the more common white bears evidently do, perhaps even preying on the more common polar bear as its primary source of food, may well leave no bones, no trace, no fossils … at least ones we are able to find beneath the frozen polar seas at our current state of scientific technology.”

  They began walking back toward Erebus.

  “Tell me, Harry, what is happening on Terror?”

  “You heard about the near mutiny three days ago?” asked Peglar.

  “Was it really so close a thing?”

  Peglar shrugged. “It was ugly. Any officer’s nightmare. The caulker’s mate, Hickey, and two or three other agitators, had the men all worked up. It was a mob mentality. Crozier defused it brilliantly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a captain handle a mob with more finesse and certainty than Crozier did on Wednesday.”

  “And it was all over the Esquimaux woman?”

  Peglar nodded, then pulled his Welsh wig and comforter tighter. The wind was very biting now. “Hickey and a majority of the men had learned that the wench had tunneled a way out through the hull before Christmas. Until the day of Carnivale, she’d been coming and going at will from her den in the forward cable locker. Mr. Honey and his carpenter mates had fixed the breech in the hull, and Mr. Irving had collapsed the outside tunnel route the day after the Carnivale fire — and word leaked out.”

  “And Hickey and the others thought that she had something to do with the fire?”

  Peglar shrugged again. If nothing else, the motion helped keep him warm. “For all I know, they thought she was the thing on the ice. Or at least its consort. Most of the men have been convinced for months that she’s a heathen witch.”

  “Most of the crew on Erebus agree,” said Bridgens. His teeth were chattering. The two men picked up their pace back toward the canting ship.

  “Hickey’s mob had made plans to waylay the girl when she came up for her evening biscuit and cod,” said Peglar. “And to cut her throat. Perhaps with some formal ceremony.”

  “Why didn’t it happen that way, Harry?”

  “There’s always someone who informs,” said Peglar. “When Captain Crozier got wind of it — possibly only hours before the murder was supposed to happen — he dragged the girl up to the lower deck and called a meeting of all officers and men. He even called the watch below, which is unheard of.”

  Bridgens turned his pale square of a face toward Peglar as they walked. It was getting darker quickly now and the wind was holding out of the nor’west.

  “It was just at supper time,” continued Peglar, “but the captain had all the men’s tables winched up again and made the men sit on the deck. No casks or chests — just on the bare deck — and had the officers, armed with sidearms, stand behind him. He held the Esquimaux girl by the arm, as if she was an offering he was going to throw to the men. Like a piece of meat to jackals. In a sense that’s what he did.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He told the crew that if they were going to do murder, that they had to do it right then … at that moment. With their boat knives. Right there on the lower deck where they ate and slept. Captain Crozier said that they would all have to do it together — seamen and officers alike — because murder on a ship is like a canker and spreads unless everyone is already inoculated by being an accomplice.”

  “Very strange,” said Bridgens. “But I am surprised that it worked to deter the men’s bloodthirst. A mob is a brainless thing.”

  Peglar nodded again. “Then Crozier called Mr. Diggle forward from his place by the stove.”

  “The cook?” said Bridgens.

  “The cook. Crozier asked Mr. Diggle what was for supper that night … and for every night in the coming month. ‘Poor John,’ said Diggle. ‘Plus whatever canned things haven’t gone rotten or poisonous.’ ”

  “Interesting,” said Bridgens.

  “Crozier then asked Dr. Goodsir — who happened to be on Terror that day — how many men had shown up for sick call in the last three days. ‘Twenty-one,’ says Goodsir. ‘With fourteen sleeping nights in sick bay until you called them forward for this meeting, sir.’ ”

  It was Bridgens’ turn to nod now, as if he could see where Crozier had been headed.

  “And then the captain said, ‘It’s scurvy, boys.’ The first time any officer — surgeon, captain, even mates — had said the word aloud to the crew in three years,” continued Peglar. ‘We’re coming down with scurvy, Terrors,’ the captain said. ‘And you know the symptoms. Or if you don’t … or if you don’t have the balls to think about it … you need to listen.’ And then Crozier called Dr. Goodsir up front, next to the girl, and made him list the symptoms of scurvy.

  “ ‘Ulcers,’ said Goodsir,” continued Peglar as they approached Erebus. “ ‘Ulcers and haemorrhages everywhere on your body. That’s pools of blood,’ he said, ‘under the skin. Flowing from the skin. Flowing from every orifice before the disease runs it course — your mouth, your ears, your eyes, your arse. Rictus of limbs,’ he said, ‘which means first your arms and legs hurt, then they become stiff. They won’t work. You’ll be clumsy as a blind ox. Then your teeth will fall out,’ said Goodsir and paused. It was so silent, John, that you couldn’t even hear the fifty men breathing, only the creaking and groaning of the ship in the ice. ‘And while your teeth are falling out,’ the surgeon went on, ‘your lips will turn black and pull back from any remaining teeth you might have. Like a dead man’s lips,’ he said. ‘And your gum tissue will bloom … that means swell. And stink. That’s the source of the terrible stench that comes from scurvy,’ he said, ‘your gums rotting and festering from the inside out.’

  “‘But that’s not all,’ Goodsir went on,” continued Peglar. “ ‘Your vision and hearing will be impaired … compromised … as will your judgement. You’ll suddenly see no problem walking out in fifty-below-zero weather with no gloves and no hat. You’ll forget which way is north or how to drive a nail. And your senses will not only fail, they’ll turn on you,’ he says. ‘If we had a fresh orange to give you, when you have scurvy, the smell of the orange might make you writhe in agony or literally drive you mad. The sound of a sledge’s runner on ice mi
ght drop you to your knees in pain; the report of a musket could be fatal.’

  “‘’Ere now!’ shouts one of Hickey’s legion into the silence,” continued Peglar. “‘We got our lemon juice!’

  “Goodsir just shook his head sadly. ‘We won’t have it for much longer,’ he said, ‘and what we have is not worth much. For some reason no one understands, the simple antiscorbutics like the lemon juice lose their potency after months. It’s almost gone now after more than three years.’

  “There was this second terrible silence then, John. You could hear the breathing then, and it was ragged. And there was a smell rising from the mob — fear and something worse. Most of the men there, including a majority of the officers, had seen Dr. Goodsir in the past two weeks with early symptoms of scurvy. Suddenly one of Hickey’s compatriots shouts out, ‘What’s all this got to do with getting rid of a Jonah of a witch?’

  “Crozier stepped forward then, still holding the girl like a captive, still seeming to offer her to the mob. ‘Different captains and surgeons try different things to ward off or cure scurvy,’ Crozier said to the men. ‘Violent exercise. Prayer. Canned foods. But none of these things work in the long run. What is the only thing that works, Dr. Goodsir?’

  “Every head on the lower deck turned to look at Goodsir then, John. Even the Esquimaux girl’s.

  “‘Fresh food,’ said the surgeon. ‘Especially fresh meat. Whatever deficiency in our food brings on scurvy, only fresh meat can cure it.’

  “Everyone looked back at Crozier,” said Peglar. “The captain all but thrust the girl at them. ‘There’s one person on these two dying ships who has been able to find fresh meat this autumn and winter,’ he says. ‘And she’s standing right in front of you. This Esquimaux girl … merely a girl … but one who somehow knows how to find and trap and kill seals and walruses and foxes when the rest of us can’t even find a track in the ice. What will it be like if we have to abandon ship … once we’re out on the ice with no food stores left? There is one person out of the hundred and nine of us remaining alive who knows how to get us fresh meat to survive … and you want to kill her.’ ”

  Bridgens showed bleeding gums of his own when he smiled. They were at the ice ramp to Erebus. “Our successor to Sir John may be a common man,” he said softly, “with little formal education, but no one ever accused Captain Crozier — within my earshot at least — of being a stupid man. And I understand he has changed since his serious illness a few weeks ago.”

  “A sea change,” said Peglar, enjoying both the pun and using a phrase Bridgens had introduced him to sixteen years earlier.

  “How so?”

  Peglar scratched his frozen cheek above the comforter. The mitten rasped on his stubble. “It’s hard to describe. My own guess is that Captain Crozier is completely sober now for the first time in thirty years or more. The whiskey never seemed to compromise the man’s competence — he’s a fine sailor and officer — but it put a … buffer … a barrier … between him and the world. Now he’s there more. Missing nothing. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  Bridgens nodded. “I presume there’s been no more talk of killing the witch.”

  “None,” said Peglar. “The men gave her extra biscuits for a while, but then she left — moved out onto the ice somewhere.”

  Bridgens started up the ramp and then turned back. When he spoke, his voice was very low so that none of the men on watch above could hear. “What do you think of Cornelius Hickey, Harry?”

  “I think he’s a treacherous little shit,” said Peglar, not caring who heard him.

  Bridgens nodded again. “He is that. I’ve known of him for years before I sailed on this expedition with him. He used to prey on boys during long voyages — turning them into little more than slaves for his needs. In recent years, I’ve heard, he’s chosen to bend older men to his service, like the idiot …”

  “Magnus Manson,” said Peglar.

  “Yes, like Manson,” said Bridgens. “If it were just for Hickey’s pleasure, we need not worry. But the little homunculus is worse than that, Harry … worse than your average would-be mutineer or conniving sea lawyer. Be careful of him. Watch him, Harry. I fear he could do great harm to us all.” Bridgens laughed then. “Listen to me. ‘Do great harm.’ As if we weren’t all doomed anyway. When I see you next, we may all be abandoning the ships and taking to the ice on our last long, cold walk. Take care of yourself, Harry Peglar.”

  Peglar did not speak. The captain of the foretop took off his mitten and then his glove, and lifted his frozen fingers until they touched the frozen cheek and brow of subordinate officers’ steward John Bridgens. The touch was very light and neither man could feel it through the incipient frostbite, but it would have to serve.

  Bridgens went back up the ramp. Without looking back, Peglar tugged on his glove and started the cold walk back through the rising dark to HMS Terror.

  29

  IRVING

  Lat. 70°-05′ N., Long. 98°-23′ W.

  6 February, 1848

  It was Sunday, and Lieutenant Irving had served two straight watches up on deck in the cold and dark, one of them covering for his friend George Hodgson, who was ill with the symptoms of dysentery, missing his own warm supper in the officers’ mess as a consequence and having only a small ice-hard slab of salt pork and a weevil-filled biscuit instead. But now he had eight blessed straight hours off before he had to go on duty again. He could drag himself belowdecks, crawl under the frozen blankets in the cot in his berth, thaw them some with his body heat, and sleep for the full eight hours.

  Instead, Irving told Robert Thomas, the first mate who was taking his place as the officer on deck, that he was going for a walk and would be back presently.

  Then Irving went over the side and down the ice ramp and onto the dark pack ice.

  He was searching for Lady Silence.

  Irving had been shocked weeks ago when Captain Crozier had appeared to be ready to toss the woman to the mob that was building, after crewmen listening to the mutinous whispers of Caulker’s Mate Hickey and others started shouting that the woman was a Jonah and should be killed or cast out. When Crozier had stood there with Lady Silence’s arm gripped in his hand, thrusting her toward the angry men much like an ancient Roman emperor might have tossed a Christian to the lions, Lieutenant Irving had not been sure what to do. As a junior lieutenant, he could only watch his captain, even if it meant Silence’s death. As a young man in love, Irving was ready to step forward and save her even if it cost him his own life.

  When Crozier won the majority of the men over with his argument that Silence might be the only soul on board who would know how to hunt and fish on the ice should they have to abandon ship, Irving had let out a silent sigh of relief.

  But the Esquimaux woman moved off the ship completely the day after that showdown, coming back at supper time every second or third day for biscuits or the occasional gift of a candle, then disappearing back onto the dark ice. Where she was living or what she was doing out there was a mystery.

  The ice was not too dark this night; the aurora danced brightly overhead, and there was enough moonlight to throw ink-black shadows behind the seracs. Third Lieutenant John Irving was not, unlike the first time he had followed Silence, carrying out this search on his own initiative. The captain had again suggested that Irving discover — if he could do so without endangering himself too much — the Esquimaux wench’s secret hiding place on the ice.

  “I was serious when I told the men that she might have skills that would keep us alive on the ice,” Crozier had said softly in the privacy of his cabin as Irving leaned closer to hear. “But we can’t wait until we’re on the ice to find out where and how she gets the fresh meat she seems to be finding. Dr. Goodsir tells me that scurvy will take us all if we do not find some source of fresh game before summer.”

  “But unless I actually spy her hunting, sir,” Irving had whispered, “how can I get the secret from her? She cannot speak.”

/>   “Use your initiative, Lieutenant Irving,” was all that Crozier had said in response.

  This was the first opportunity that Irving had had since that conversation in which he might be able to use his initiative.

  In the leather shoulder bag, Irving carried a few enticements should he find Silence and work out a way to communicate with her. There were biscuits far fresher than the weevil-filled one he’d chewed for dinner. Those were wrapped in a napkin, but Irving had also brought a beautiful Oriental silk handkerchief that his rich London girlfriend had given to him as a present shortly before their … unpleasant parting. And his pièce de résistance was wrapped in that attractive handkerchief: a small crock of peach marmalade.

  Surgeon Goodsir was hoarding and doling out the marmalade as an antiscorbutic, but Lieutenant Irving knew that the treat was one of the few things the Esquimaux girl had ever shown enthusiasm about when accepting Mr. Diggle’s offerings of food. Irving had seen her dark eyes glint when she got a daub of marmalade on her biscuit. He’d scraped off his own jam treats a dozen times over the past month to get the precious amount he now carried in the tiny porcelain crock that had once been his mother’s.

  Irving had come completely around to the port side of the ship and now advanced from the ice plain there into a maze of seracs and minibergs that rose like an icy version of Birnam’s wood come to Dunsinane about two hundred yards south of the ship. He knew that he was running a great risk of becoming the next victim of the thing on the ice, but for the last five weeks there had been no sign of the creature, not even a clear sighting from a distance. No crewmen had been lost to it since the night of Carnivale.

  Then again, thought Irving, no one but me has come out here alone, without even a lantern, and gone wandering into the serac forest.