“Why the doctor?” said Crozier. “Are some of our people hurt?”
“I think so, Captain. I’m not sure. They’re still out at the… the hole in the ice, sir. Pocock and Greater went on back south with Mr. Des Voeux and Fat Alex Wilson like Mr. D. V. said for them to, but he sent me back here and said to bring just you and the doctor, no one else. And not to tell no one else neither. Not yet. Oh… and for the surgeon to bring his kit with knives and such and maybe some larger knives for carvin’ up the thing’s carcass. Did you hear the shotgun blasts this evenin’, Captain? Pocock and Greater and me heard ’em, and we was a mile away from the polyp at least.”
“No. We wouldn’t make out shotgun reports from two miles away over the damnable constant cracking and breaking of the ice here,” said Crozier. “Think hard, Golding. Why exactly did Mr. Des Voeux say it should just be Dr. Goodsir and myself that come out to see… whatever it is?”
“He said he’s fairly sure the thing’s dead, but Mr. Des Voeux said it ain’t what we thought it was, Captain. He said it’s… I forget the words he used. But Mr. Des Voeux says it changes everything, sir. He wants you and the doctor to see it and know what happened there before anyone in the camp hears about it.”
“What did happen out there?” pressed Crozier.
Golding shook his head. “I don’t know, Captain. Pocock and Greater and me was hunting seals, sir… we shot one, Captain, but it slipped through its hole in the ice and we couldn’t get to it. I’m sorry, sir. Then we heard the shotguns to the south. And a little later, an hour maybe, Mr. Des Voeux shows up with George Cann, who was bleeding on his face, and Fat Wilson, and Wilson was pulling Silence’s body on a blanket he was draggin’ and she was all torn to pieces, only… we’re supposed to hurry back, Captain. While the moon’s up.”
Indeed, it was a rare, clear night after a rare, clear, red sunset — Crozier had been taking his sextant out of its box to get a star fix when he’d heard the commotion — and a huge, full, blue-white moon had just risen over the icebergs and ice jumble to the southeast.
“Why tonight?” asked Crozier. “Can’t this wait for morning?”
“Mr. Des Voeux said it can’t, Captain. He said to give you his compliments and would you be so kind as to bring Dr. Goodsir and come out about two miles — it ain’t longer than two hours’ walk, sir, even with the ice walls — to see what’s there by the polyanna.”
“All right,” said Crozier. “You go tell Dr. Goodsir I want him and for him to bring his medical kit and to dress warmly. I’ll meet the two of you at the boats.”
Golding led the four men out onto the ice — Crozier ignored the message from Des Voeux to come just with the surgeon and had ordered Bosun John Lane and Captain of the Hold William Goddard to come along with their shotguns — and then into the jumble of bergs and ice boulders, then over three high pressure ridges, and finally through serac forests where Golding’s earlier path back to the camp was marked not only by his boot prints in the blowing snow but also by the bamboo wands they’d hauled with them all the way from Terror. Des Voeux’s group had carried the wands with them two days earlier to mark their way back and to show the best pathway through the ice should they find open water and want the others to follow them with the boats. The moonlight was so bright that it threw shadows. Even the narrow bamboo wands were like moon dials throwing slashes of shadow lines onto the white-blue ice.
For the first hour there was only the sound of the laboured breathing, their boots crunching on snow and ice, and the cracking and groans all around them. Then Crozier said, “Are you sure she’s dead, Golding?”
“Who, sir?”
The captain’s frustrated exhalation became a small cloud of ice crystals gleaming in the moonlight. “How many ‘she’s’ are there around here, God-damn it? Lady Silence.”
“Oh, yes, sir.” The boy snickered. “She’s dead all right. Her titties was all tore off.”
The captain glared at the boy as they climbed another low pressure ridge and passed into the shadow of a tall blue-glowing iceberg. “But are you sure it’s Silence? Could it be another native woman?”
Golding seemed stumped by that question. “Is there more Esquimaux women out here, Captain?”
Crozier shook his head and gestured for the boy to continue leading.
They reached the “polyanna,” as Golding continued calling it, about an hour and a half after leaving camp.
“I thought you said it was farther out,” said Crozier.
“I ain’t never been even this far before,” said Golding. “I was back there hunting seals when Mr. Des Voeux found the thing.” He gestured vaguely behind and to the left of where they now stood by the opening in the ice.
“You said some of our people were injured?” asked Dr. Goodsir.
“Yes, sir. Fat Alex Wilson had blood on his face.”
“I thought you said it was George Cann who had a bloody face,” said Crozier.
Golding shook his head emphatically. “Uh-uh, Captain. It was Fat Alex who were bloody.”
“Was it his own blood or someone or something else’s?” asked Goodsir.
“I don’t know,” Golding replied, his voice almost sullen-sounding. “Mr. Des Voeux just told me to have you bring your surgeon’s things. I figured someone had to be hurt, if Mr. Des Voeux needed you to fix ’im.”
“Well, there’s no one around here,” said the bosun, John Lane, walking carefully around the ice edge of the polynya — which was no more than twenty-five feet across — and staring first down into the dark water eight feet lower than the ice and then back at the forest of seracs on all sides. “Where are they? Mr. Des Voeux had eight other men besides you with him when he left, Golding.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Lane. This is where he told me to bring you.”
Captain of the Hold Goddard cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Halloooo? Mr. Des Voeux? Hallooo?”
There came an answering shout from their right. The voice was indistinct, muffled, but sounded excited.
Motioning Golding back, Crozier led the way through the forest of twelve-foot-high ice seracs. The wind through the sculpted towers made a moaning, crooning sound, and they all knew that the serac edges were as sharp as knife blades and stronger than most ship knives.
Ahead of them in the moonlight, in the center of a small, flat ice clearing amid the seracs, the dark form of one man stood alone.
“If that’s Des Voeux,” Lane whispered to his captain, “he’s got eight men missing.”
Crozier nodded. “John, William, you two go ahead — slowly — keep your shotguns ready and on half-cock. Dr. Goodsir, please be so kind as to stay back with me. Golding, you wait here.”
“Aye, sir,” whispered William Goddard. He and John Lane tugged off their mittens with their teeth so they could use their gloved fingers, raised their weapons, half-cocked one of the heavy hammers on their double-barreled guns, and moved forward cautiously toward the moonlit clearing beyond the edge of the serac forest.
A huge shadow came out from behind the last serac and slammed Lane’s and Goddard’s skulls together. The two men went down like cattle beneath a slaughterhouse sledgehammer.
Another shadowy figure struck Crozier in the back of the head, pinned his arms behind his back when he tried to rise, and held a knife to his neck.
Robert Golding grabbed Goodsir and set a long blade alongside his throat. “Don’t move, Doctor,” whispered the boy, “or I’ll do my own bit o’ surgery on you.”