The noise from the fire woke the children and the flames so heated the air out here on the ice that all of them — his wife, scowling Asiajuk, big-titted Nauja, the hunters, happily grinning Inupijuk, even Taliriktug — took off their outer parkas and piled them onto the kamatik.
When the show was over and the ship was sunk and the sun was also sinking toward the south so that their shadows leapt long across the greying ice, still they stayed to point and enjoy the steam rising and celebrate the bits of burning debris still scattered here and there on the ice.
Then the band finally turned back toward the big island and then the smaller islands, planning to cross the ice to the mainland before they would make camp for the night. The sunlight shining until after midnight helped their march. All of them wanted to be off the ice and away from this place before the few hours of dimness and full darkness came. Even the dogs quit barking and snarling and seemed to pull harder when they passed the smaller island on their way back in to the land. Asiajuk was asleep and snoring under his robes on the sledge, but both the babies were wide awake and ready to play.
Taliriktug took the squirming Kanneyuk in his left arm and put his right arm around Silna-Silence. Raven, still being carried by his mother, was petulantly trying to slap her arms away and force her to put him down so he could try to walk on his own.
Taliriktug wondered, not for the first time, how a father and mother without tongues were going to discipline a headstrong boy. Then he remembered, not for the first time, that he now belonged to one of the few cultures in the world that did not bother to discipline their headstrong boys or girls. Raven already had an inua of some worthy adult in him. His father would just have to wait to see just how worthy it was.
The Francis Crozier inua still alive and well in Taliriktug had no illusions about life being anything but poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
But perhaps it did not have to be solitary.
His arm around Silna, trying to ignore the raucous snores from the shaman and the fact that baby Kanneyuk had just pissed on her father’s best summer parka, while also ignoring the petulant swats and mewling noises from his squirming son, Taliriktug and Crozier continued walking east across the ice toward solid ground.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the following sources for providing information in my writing of The Terror:
The idea to write about this era of Arctic exploration came from a short comment, almost a footnote, about the Franklin Expedition that I encountered in Sir Ranulph Fiennes Race to the Pole: Tragedy, Heroism, and Scott’s Antarctic Quest (Hyperion, © 2004), the pole being raced to in this instance being the South Pole.
Three books that were especially important to me in the early stages of research were Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin’s Lost Polar Expedition by Scott Cookman (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., © 2000); Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie and John Geiger (Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre, © 1987); and The Arctic Graiclass="underline" The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909 by Pierre Berton (Second Lyons Press Edition, © 2000).
These books led me to some of their invaluable sources, including Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (John Murray, © 1823) and Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea (John Murray, © 1828), both by Sir John Franklin; Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition by Richard Cyriax (ASM Press, © 1939); The Bomb Vessel by Chris Ware (Naval Institute Press, © 1994); A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin by F. L. M’Clintock (John Murray, © 1859); In Quest of the Northwest Passage (Longmans, Green & Co, © 1958); Journal of a Voyage in Baffin’s Bay and Barrow Straits, in the Years 1850-51, Performed by H.M. Ships “Lady Franklin” and “Sophia” Under the Command of Mr. William Penny, in Search of the Missing Crew of H.M. Ships “Erebus” and “ Terror” by Peter Sutherland (Longman, Grown, Green, and Longmans, © 1852); and Arctic Expeditions in Search of Sir John Franklin by Elisha Kent Kane (T. Nelson & Sons, © 1898).
Other sources frequently consulted include Prisoners of the North: Portraits of Five Arctic Immortals by Pierre Berton (Carroll & Graff, © 2004); Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole by Fergus Fleming (Grove Press, © 2001); The Last Voyage of the Karluk: A Survivor’s Memoir of Arctic Disaster by William Laird McKinlay (St. Martin’s Griffin Edition, © 1976); A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales by Dean King (Henry Holt & Co., © 1995); The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk by Jennifer Niven (Hyperion, © 2000); Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic’s Edge by Jill Fredston (North Point Press, a Division of Fartar, Straus and Giroux, © 2001); Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer by Chauncey Loomis (Modern Library Paperback Edition, © 2000); The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica by David G. Campbell (Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin, © 1992); The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford (The Modern Library, © 1999); North to the Night: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic by Alvah Simon (Broadway Books, © 1998); In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Valerian Albanov (Modern Library, © 2000); End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica by Peter Matthiessen (National Geographic, © 2003); Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot by Ken McGoogan (Carrol & Graf, © 2001); The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (National Geographic, © 1992 and 2000); and Shackleton by Roland Huntford (Fawcett Columbine, © 1985).
Other sources consulted include The Inuit by Nancy Bonvillain (Chelsea House Publications, © 1995); Eskimos by Kaj BirketSmith (Crown, © 1971); The Fourth World by Sam Hall (Knopf, © 1987); Ancient Land: Sacred Whale — The Inuit Hunt and Its Rituals by Tom Lowenstein (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, © 1993); The Igloo by Charlotte and David Yue (Houghton Mifflin, © 1988); Arctic Crossing by Jonathan Waterman (Knopf, © 2001); Hunters of the Polar North — The Eskimos by Wally Herbert (Time-Life Books, © 1981); The Eskimos by Ernest S. Burch Jr. (University of Oklahoma Press, © 1988); and Inuit: When Words Take Shape by Raymond Brousseau (Editions Glénat, © 2002).
My sincere thanks to Karen Simmons for finding… and returning… many of these later sources.
Internet sources were too many to list, but they include The Aujaqsquittuq Project: Documenting Arctic Climate Change; Spiritism On Line; The Franklin Trial; Enchanted Learning: Animals — Polar Bear (Ursus martimus); Collections Canada; Digital Library Upenn; Radiworks.cbe; Wordgumbo — Canadian Inuit-English Dictionary; Alaskool English to Iñupia; Inuktitut Language Phrases; Darwin Wars; Cangeo.ca Special Feature — Sir John Franklin Expedition; and SirJohnFranklin.com.