The Terror

by Dan Simmons

  “Amen,” croaked the sixty-two men still able to stand at muster stations.

  “Amen,” came a few voices from the other twelve lying in tents.

  Crozier did not dismiss the assembled men.

  “Men of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, members of the John Franklin Discovery Service Expedition, shipmates,” he rasped loudly. “Today we have to decide which way our paths shall carry us. You all remain — under both the Ship’s Articles and the Articles of the Royal Discovery Service which you signed with your oaths of honour — under my command and will continue to be so until you are released by me. You’ve followed Sir John, Captain Fitzjames, and me this far, and you have done well. Many of our friends and shipmates have gone home to Christ, but seventy-four of us have persevered. I am resolved in my heart that every man of you here at Rescue Camp today should survive to see England, home, and your families again, and God shall be my witness that I have done my best to make sure that this shall be the outcome of our efforts. But today I release you to decide your own path by which to reach that goal.”

  The men murmured to one another. Crozier let that go on for a few seconds and then continued. “You’ve heard what we are doing — Dr. Goodsir to remain here with those too ill to travel, the healthier men to continue toward Back’s River. Are there any among you who still wish to attempt to find some other way to rescue?”

  There was a silence as men looked down and scuffled their booted feet on the gravel, but then George Hodgson hobbled forward.

  “Sir, some of us do, sir. Want to head back that is, Captain Crozier.”

  The captain just looked at the young officer for a long moment. He knew that Hodgson was a stalking horse for Hickey, Aylmore, and a few of the more rebellious sea lawyers who had been stirring up the men with resentment for so many months, but he wondered if young Hodgson knew it.

  “Back to where, Lieutenant?” Crozier asked at last.

  “To the ship, sir.”

  “Do you think Terror is still there, Lieutenant?” As if to punctuate his query, the sea ice south of them exploded in a series of shotgun blasts and earthquake rumbles. An iceberg hundreds of yards from shore crumbled and fell.

  Hodgson shrugged like a boy. “Terror Camp will be, Captain, whether the ship still is or not. We left food and coal and boats at Terror Camp.”

  “Aye,” said Crozier, “so we did. And we’d all welcome some of that food now — even some of the tinned food that killed some of us so terribly. But, Lieutenant, that was some eighty or ninety miles and almost one hundred days ago when we left Terror Camp. Do you and the others really think you can walk or haul your way back there into the teeth of winter? It would be late November by the time you made your way even to the camp. Total darkness. And you remember the temperatures and storms of last November.”

  Hodgson nodded and said nothing.

  “We ain’t going to walk ’til no late November,” said Cornelius Hickey, stepping out of the ranks to stand next to the slumped young lieutenant. “We think the ice is open along the shore back the way we come. We’ll sail and row around that fuckin’ cape we hauled five boats over like ’Gyptian slaves and be home in Terror Camp in a month.”

  The assembled men mumured furtively among themselves.

  Crozier nodded. “It may indeed open for you, Mr. Hickey. Or it may not. But even if it does, it’s more than a hundred miles back to a ship that may well be crushed and most certainly will be frozen fast by the time you get there. It’s at least thirty miles closer to the mouth of Back River from here and the odds of the inlet being free of ice south of here, near the river, are much greater.”

  “You ain’t talking us out of this, Captain,” Hickey said firmly. “We talked it over ’mongst ourselves, and we’re going.”

  Crozier stared at the caulker’s mate. The captain’s usual instinct to put down any insubordination immediately and with great strength and decisiveness rose in him, but he reminded himself that this was what he wanted. It was past time to get rid of the malcontents and to save those others who trusted his judgement. Besides, this late in the summer and in their escape attempt, Hickey’s plan might even be workable. It all depended upon where the ice broke up — if it broke up anywhere before the winter set in. The men deserved to choose their own last, best chance.

  “How many are going with you, Lieutenant?” asked Crozier, speaking to Hodgson as if he would actually be the commander of the group.

  “Well … ,” began the young man.

  “Magnus is going,” said Hickey, gesturing the giant forward. “And Mr. Aylmore.”

  The sullen gunroom steward swaggered forward, his face filled with defiance and visible contempt toward Crozier.

  “And George Thompson … ,” continued the caulker’s mate.

  Crozier was not surprised that Thompson would be part of Hickey’s cabal. The seaman had always been insolent and lazy and — as long as the rum lasted — drunk whenever possible.

  “I’m going along, too, … sir,” said John Morfin, stepping up with the others.

  William Orren, just turned 26, stepped forward without a word and stood with Hickey’s group.

  Then James Brown and Francis Dunn — Erebus’s caulker and caulker’s mate — joined the group. “We think it’s our best chance, Captain,” said Dunn and looked down.

  Waiting for Reuben Male and Robert Sinclair to declare their intentions — realizing that if the majority of men standing at muster joined this group that all of his own plans for flight south were gone for good — Crozier was surprised when William Gibson, Terror’s subordinate officers’ steward, and Stoker Luke Smith walked slowly forward. They’d been good men aboard ship and stalwart haulers.

  Charles Best — a reliable Erebus seaman who had always been loyal to Lt. Gore — stepped forward with four other seamen in tow: William Jerry, Thomas Work, who had been sorely injured at Carnivale, young John Strickland, and Abraham Seeley.

  The sixteen men stood there.

  “Is that it then?” asked Crozier, feeling a hollow sense of relief that gnawed at his belly like the hunger that was always with him now. Sixteen men were standing there; they would need one boat, but they were leaving behind enough loyal men to head for Back River with him while also leaving enough to take care of the ill here at Rescue Camp. “I’ll give you the pinnace,” he said to Hodgson.

  The lieutenant nodded gratefully.

  “The pinnace is all busted up and rigged for river work and the sledge is a pain in the arse to drag,” said Hickey. “We’ll take a whaleboat.”

  “You’ll get the pinnace,” said Crozier.

  “We want George Chambers and Davey Leys, too,” said the caulker’s mate, folding his arms and standing legs-apart in front of his men like a Cockney Napoleon.

  “The hell you say,” said Crozier. “Why would you want to bring two men who can’t take care of themselves?”

  “George can haul,” said Hickey. “And we been takin’ care of Davey and want to keep doin’ so.”

  “No,” said Dr. Goodsir, stepping forward into the tense space between Crozier and Hickey’s men, “you haven’t been taking care of Mr. Leys and you don’t want George Chambers and him as fellow travelers. You want them as food.”

  Lieutenant Hodgson blinked in disbelief, but Hickey balled up his fists and gestured to Magnus Manson. The little man and huge man took a step forward.

  “Stop exactly where you are,” bellowed Crozier. Behind him, the three surviving Marines — Corporal Pearson, Private Hopcraft, and Private Healey — while visibly ill and shaky on their feet, had lifted and aimed their long muskets.

  More to the point, First Mate Des Voeux, Mate Edward Couch, Bosun John Lane, and Bosun’s Mate Tom Johnson were aiming shotguns.

  Cornelius Hickey actually snarled. “We got guns, too.”

  “No,” said Captain Crozier, “you do not. While you were at muster, First Mate Des Voeux rounded up all weapons. If you leave peaceably tomorrow, you’ll get one shotgun and some c
artridges. If you take another step right now, you’ll all get bird shot in your faces.”

  “You are all going to die,” said Cornelius Hickey, pointing his bony finger at the men standing silently in muster formations while swinging his arm in a half circle like a scrawny weather vane. “You’re going to follow Crozier and these other fools and you’re going to die.”

  The caulker’s mate wheeled toward the surgeon. “Dr. Goodsir, we forgive you for what you said about why we want to save George Chambers and Davey Leys. Come with us. You can’t save these men here.”

  Hickey gestured contemptuously toward the sagging wet tents where the sick men lay.

  “They’re dead already, just don’t know it,” continued Hickey, his voice very large and loud coming from such a small frame. “We’re going to live. Come with us and see your family again, Dr. Goodsir. If you stay here — or even follow Crozier — you’re a dead man. Come with us.”

  Goodsir had absentmindedly worn his spectacles when he’d come out from the surgical tent and now he removed them and unhurriedly wiped moisture from them, using the bloody end of his woolen waistcoat as a rag. A small man with a boy’s full lips and a receding chin only partially concealed under the hedge of curly beard that had grown down from his earlier unsuccessful side whiskers, Goodsir seemed completely at ease. He put his spectacles back on and looked at Hickey and the men behind him.

  “Mr. Hickey,” he said softly, “as grateful as I am for your boundless generosity in offering to save my life, you need to know that you do not need me along to do what you are planning to do with regards to dissecting the bodies of your shipmates in order to provide yourself with a larder of meat.”

  “I ain’t … ,” began Hickey.

  “Even an amateur can learn dissective anatomy quite quickly,” interrupted Goodsir, his voice strong enough to override the caulker’s mate’s. “When one of these other gentlemen you’re bringing along as your private food stock dies — or when you help him die — all you have to do is sharpen a ship’s knife to a scalpel’s edge and begin cutting.”

  “We ain’t going to … ,” shouted Hickey.

  “But I do strongly recommend that you bring a saw,” overrode Goodsir. “One of Mr. Honey’s carpenter saws will do nicely. While you can slice off your shipmates’ calves and fingers and thighs and belly flesh with a knife, you shall almost certainly require a good saw to get the legs and arms off.”

  “God-damn you!” screamed Hickey. He started forward with Manson but stopped when the mates and Marines raised their shotguns and muskets again.

  Unperturbed, not even looking at Hickey, the surgeon pointed toward the huge form of Magnus Manson as if the man were an anatomist’s chart hanging on a wall. “It’s not so different than carving a Christmas goose when one gets right down to it.” He slashed vertical marks in the air toward Manson’s upper torso and a horizontal one just below his waist. “Saw the arms off at the shoulder joints, of course, but you shall have to saw through each man’s pelvic bones to cut off his legs.”

  Hickey’s neck cords strained and his pale face grew red, but he did not speak again while Goodsir continued.

  “I would use my smaller metacarpal saw to cut through the legs at the knees and, of course, the arms at the elbow, and then proceed with a good scalpel to slice away the choice parts — thighs, buttocks, biceps, triceps, deltoids, the meaty part behind the shins. Only then do you start the real butchering of the pectorals — chest muscles — and to get at any fat you gentlemen may have retained near your shoulder blades or along your sides and lower back. There shan’t be much fat there, of course, nor muscle, but I’m sure Mr. Hickey wants no parts of you to go to waste.”

  One of the seamen in the back of the group behind Crozier dropped to his knees and began to dry retch into the gravel.

  “I have an instrument called a tenaculum to crack the sternum and to remove the ribs,” Goodsir said softly, “but I’m afraid I can’t let you borrow it. A good ship’s hammer and chisel — there’s one in every boat kit, you’ve noticed — should serve that purpose almost as well.

  “I do recommend you attend to rending the flesh first and set aside your friends’ heads, hands, feet, intestines — all of the contents of the soft abdominal sac — for later.

  “I warn you — it’s more difficult than you think to crack open the long bones for their marrow. You’ll need some sort of scraping tool, rather like Mr. Honey’s wood-carving gouge. And do note that the marrow will be lumpy and red when it’s forced from the center of the bones … and mixed with bone chips and fragments, so not terribly healthy to eat raw. I recommend you put each other’s bone marrow into a pot for cooking straightaway and let yourselves simmer before trying to digest your friends.”

  “Fuck you,” snarled Cornelius Hickey.

  Dr. Goodsir nodded.

  “Oh,” the surgeon added softly, “when you get around to eating one another’s brains, it will be simplicity itself. Simply saw off the lower jaw, throw it away with the lower teeth, and use any knife or spoon to gouge and hack your way up through the soft palate into the cranial vault. If you wish, you may invert the skull and sit around it, scooping out each other’s brains like so much Christmas pudding.”

  For a minute there were no voices raised, only the wind and the groan, crack, and snapping of the ice.

  “Is there anyone else who wants to leave tomorrow?” called Captain Crozier.

  Reuben Male, Robert Sinclair, and Samuel Honey — Terror’s fo’c’sle captain, Erebus’s foretop captain, and Terror’s blacksmith, respectively — stepped forward.

  “You’re going with Hickey and Hodgson?” asked Crozier. He did not allow himself to show the shock he felt.

  “Nay, sir,” said Reuben Male, shaking his head. “We ain’t with them. But we want to try walking back to Terror.”

  “No boat needed, sir,” said Sinclair. “We’re going to try hiking cross-country as it were. Straight across the island. Maybe we’ll find some foxes and such inland, away from the coast.”

  “Navigation will be difficult,” said Crozier. “Compasses aren’t worth a damn here and I can’t give you one of my sextants.”

  Male shook his head. “No worries, Captain. We’ll just use dead reckoning. Most of the time, if the fuckin’ wind is in our face — pardon my language, sir — then we’re headed the right way.”

  “I was a seaman before I was a ’smith, sir,” said Samuel Honey. “We’re all sailors. If we can’t die at sea, at least this way perhaps we can die aboard our ship.”

  “All right,” said Crozier, speaking to all the men still standing there and making sure that his voice would reach to the tents. “We’re going to assemble at six bells and divide up all the remaining ship’s biscuits, spirits, tobacco, and any other victuals we still have. Every man. Even those who had their surgeries last night and today will be brought to the dividing-up. Everyone will see what we have, and every man will get an equal share. From this point on, each man — except those being fed and cared for by Dr. Goodsir — will be in charge of his own rationing.”

  Crozier looked coldly at Hickey, Hodgson, and their group. “You men will — under Mr. Des Voeux’s oversight — go ready your pinnace for your departure. You’ll leave at dawn tomorrow, and except for the divvying up of goods and food at six bells, I don’t want to see your faces before then.”

  52

  GOODSIR

  Rescue Camp

  15 August, 1848

  For the two days after the amputations and Mr. Diggle’s death and the muster of the men and the hearing of Mr. Hickey’s plans and the pathetic dividing up of the food, the surgeon had no stomach for keeping his diary. He tossed the stained leather book into his traveling medical kit and left it there.

  The Great Dividing Up, as Goodsir already thought of it, had been a sad and seemingly endless affair, extending into the shortening August arctic evening. It soon became obvious that — at least when it came to food — no one trusted anyone. Everyone
seemed to harbour some bone-deep anxiety that someone else was hiding food, hoarding food, secreting away food, denying everyone else food. It had taken hours to unpack all boats, empty all stores, search all tents, go through Mr. Diggle’s and Mr. Wall’s stores, with representatives of each class of man on the ship — officers, warrant officers, petty officers, able seamen — sharing the search and distribution chores while the other men looked on with avid eyes.

  Thomas Honey died during the night after the Dividing Up. Goodsir had Thomas Hartnell inform the captain and then he helped sew the carpenter’s body into his sleeping bag. Two sailors carried it to a snowdrift about one hundred yards from the camp where Mr. Diggle’s body already lay in cold state. The troop had begun forgoing burials and burial services, not because of an edict from the captain or some vote, but simply through silent consensus.

  Are we preserving the bodies in the snowdrift so they won’t spoil as future food? wondered the surgeon.

  He could not answer his own question. All he knew was that while he was giving Hickey — and all the other assembled men (quite deliberately since he had spoken to Captain Crozier about the tactic before the muster assembly) — the anatomical details of carving up the human body to serve as sustenance, Harry D. S. Goodsir had been horrified to find himself salivating.

  And he knew that he could not have been alone in that reaction to the thought of fresh meat … from whatever source.

  Only a handful of men had turned out at dawn the next morning, Monday 14 August, to watch Hickey and his fifteen companions leave camp with their pinnace lashed onto its battered sledge. Goodsir had come back to see them off after making sure that Mr. Honey had been secretly buried in the drift.