Dr. McDonald, assistant surgeon aboard HMS Terror — my counterpart there as it were — has theories that heavily salted food is not as efficient and antiscorbutic as fresh or nonsalted Victuals, and since the regular seamen aboard both ships prefer their Salted Pork to all other meals, Dr. McDonald worries that the heavily salted birds will add little to our Defenses against Scurvy. However, Stephen Stanley, our Surgeon aboard Erebus, dismisses these worries. He points out that besides the 10,000 cases of preserved cooked meats aboard Erebus, our tinned rations alone include boiled and roast mutton, veal, all forms of vegetables including potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and mixed vegetables, wide varieties of Soups, and 9,450 pounds of Chocolate. An equal weight — 9,300 pounds — of lemon juice has also been brought as our primary antiscorbutic measure. Stanley informs me that even when the juice is sweetened with liberal dollops of sugar, the common men hate their daily ration and that one of our Primary Jobs as surgeons on the Expedition is to ensure that they swallow the stuff.
It was interesting to me that almost all of the hunting by the officers and men of both our ships is done almost exclusively with Shotguns. Lieutenant Gore assures me that each ship carries a full arsenal of Muskets. Of course, it only makes sense to use Shotguns to hunt birds such as those killed by the hundreds today, but even back at Disko Bay, when small parties went out hunting Caribou and Arctic Fox, the men — even the Marines obviously trained in the use of Muskets — preferred to take along Shotguns. This, of course, must be the result of Habit as much as Preference — the officers tend to be English Gentlemen who have never used muskets or Rifles in their hunting, and except for the use of singleshot weapons in Close Quarters Naval Combat, even the Marines have used Shotguns almost exclusively in their past hunting experience.
Will Shotguns be enough to bag the Great White Bear? We’ve not seen one of those Wondrous creatures yet, although every Experienced Officer and Hand reassures me that we shall encounter them as soon as we enter the Pack Ice, and if not then, certainly when we Winter Over — should we be compelled to do so. Truly the tales the whalers here tell me of the elusive White Bears are Wonderful and Terrifying.
As I write these words, I am informed that current or wind or perhaps the necessities of the whaling business itself have carried both whalers, Prince of Wales and Enterprise, away from our moorings here at our Ice Mountain. Captain Sir John shall not be dining with one of the whaling captains — Captain Martin of Enterprise, I believe — as had been planned for this evening.
Perhaps more Pertinent, Mate Robert Sergeant has just informed me that our men are bringing down the astronomical and meteorological instruments, striking the tent, and reeling in the hundreds of yards of fixed rope — line — which allowed my Ascent earlier today.
Evidently the Ice Masters, Captain Sir John, Commander Fitzjames, Captain Crozier, and the other Officers have determined our Most Promising Path through the ever-shifting pack ice.
We are to cast off from our little Iceberg Home within minutes, sailing Northwest as long as the seemingly endless Arctic Twilight allows us to.
We shall be beyond the reach of even the Hardy Whalers from this point on. As far as the World Beyond our intrepid Expedition is concerned, as Hamlet said, The rest is silence.
5
CROZIER
Crozier is dreaming about the picnic to the Platypus Pond and of Sophia stroking him underwater when he hears the sound of a shot and comes crashing awake.
He sits up in his bunk not knowing what time it is, not knowing if it is day or night, although there is no line between day and night any longer since the sun has disappeared this very day, not to reappear until February. But even before he lights the small lantern in his berth to check his watch, he knows that it is late. The ship is as quiet as it ever gets; silent except for the creak of tortured wood and frozen metal within; silent except for the snores, the mumbles, and the farts from the sleeping men, and curses from Mr. Diggle the cook; silent save for the incessant groaning, banging, cracking, and surging of the ice outside; and, added to those exceptions to silence this night, silent but for the banshee screech of a high wind.
But this is no sound of ice or wind that wakes Crozier. It is a gunshot. A shotgun — muffled through the layers of oak planks and overlaying snow and ice, but a shotgun blast without doubt.
Crozier was sleeping with most of his clothes on and now has pulled on most of the other layers and is ready for his cold-weather slops when Thomas Jopson, his steward, knocks on the door with his distinctive soft triple rap. The captain slides it open.
“Trouble on deck, sir.”
Crozier nods. “Who’s on watch tonight, Thomas?” His pocket watch shows him that it is almost 3:00 a.m., civilian time. His memory of the month’s and day’s watch schedule gives him the names an instant before Jopson speaks them aloud.
“Billy Strong and Private Heather, sir.”
Crozier nods again, lifts a pistol from his cupboard, checks the priming, sets it in his belt, and squeezes past the steward, out through the officers’ dining cubicle that borders the captain’s tiny cabin on the starboard side, and then quickly forward through another door to the main ladderway. The lower deck is mostly dark at this time in the morning — the glow around Mr. Diggle’s stove the primary exception — but lamps are being lit in several of the officers’, mates’, and stewards’ quarters as Crozier pauses at the base of the ladder to pull his heavy slops from the hook and struggle into them.
Doors slide open. First Mate Hornby walks aft to stand next to Crozier by the ladder. First Lieutenant Little hurries forward down the companionway, carrying three muskets and a saber. He’s followed by Lieutenants Hodgson and Irving, who are also carrying weapons.
Forward of the ladder, seamen are grumbling from deep in their hammocks, but a second mate is already turning out a work party — literally tumbling sleeping men from their hammocks and shoving them aft toward their slops and the waiting weapons.
“Has anyone been up top yet to check out the shot?” Crozier asks his first mate.
“Mr. Male had the duty, sir,” says Hornby. “He went up as soon as he sent your steward to fetch you.”
Reuben Male is captain of the fo’c’sle. A steady man. Billy Strong, the seaman on port watch up there, has been to sea before, Crozier knows, on HMS Belvidera. He wouldn’t have shot at phantoms. The other man on watch was the oldest — and in Crozier’s estimation, the stupidest — of the surviving Marines, William Heather. At age 35 and still a private, frequently sick, too often drunk, and most frequently useless, Heather had almost been sent home from Disko Island two years before when his best friend Billy Aitken was discharged and sent back on HMS Rattler.