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One was never truly alone on a ship—Gibson knew that well enough—but nobody really went down into the hold unless to retrieve supplies or, he supposed, practice sodomy with one’s crewmates, so it was the closest thing they had to solitude. It was cold and dark and a bit damp, and outside the pancake ice scraped and bobbed and bumped against the hull.
They’d been doing this for a while now, stealing moments in between their respective duties, and Gibson made immediately for their usual spot—a discreet, shadowed space between the crates at the back—but Hickey wandered around, peering at the supplies in the hold as if he’d never been here before. All but clasping his hands behind his back and whistling a little tune. The show was unnecessary. Nobody else was down here, or so Gibson bloody well hoped. All was silent but for Hickey’s light footsteps and what might be rats skittering around.
“What are you doing?” Gibson said impatiently.
Hickey clucked his tongue, ignoring him. “That doesn’t look right,” he said with mild curiosity, like a child watching a spider consume a fly. “Does it?” He held up a metal object—one of the Goldner’s tins, Gibson recognized. It did seem mishappen, the metal walls buckling out.
“Jesus Christ, shut up,” Gibson said.
Hickey set the tin back in its crate and finally approached. Odd, insufferable little man. His eyes gleamed in the dark before Gibson tugged him forward.
The men had tracked in a mess of snow and ice traipsing across the foc’sle. Someone’s going to have to mop that up, Diggle thought idly from the galley. He’d been busy as a bee all afternoon fixing up a hot supper for Sir John and the men at the hunting blind, so when a tall shadow fell across his stove he soured—what now? When he saw it was Richard Wall he soured further.
Diggle knew, alright, he knew he’d been more than usually irritable since Add salt. It was their standard banter—it was funny, even. The men seemed amused. But it had left a bad taste—ha—in Diggle’s mouth. The more tins that came up spoiled the more he grew actually worried. The ships had been provisioned for five years. It was becoming increasingly clear that this would not be the case.
Still Wall lingered by the galley, peering at the pots on the stove. “You know Sir John likes the calf’s head without capers,” he said.
“Of course I bloody well know,” Diggle snapped. He was going to cook the damn calf’s head, wasn’t he? The bloody nerve, to come tramping into his kitchen and preaching the intricacies of good English food that Diggle wagered he knew better than the back of his own hand. “Don’t you have something to be doing? Men to feed on your own ship?”
“Right,” said Wall, seeming to sober. “It’s about the tins. Don’t look at me like that.” He sighed. “I know the bloody things are rotten. But—God, some of them—you wouldn’t even know. We’ve had men fall ill out of the blue, ‘n Dr Stanley said it was something they ate. There was nothing wrong with the tins I used. Nothing.”
Diggle believed him. Wall wasn’t a particularly tidy cook, not by Diggle's standards, but the man could tell when something had gone bad. “We should bring it to the officers,” he said finally. “They ought to know, if something else is wrong with the tinned provisions.”
“Right,” Wall said again. “That’s an idea. I’ll discuss it with Lieutenant Fairholme. See if we can set something up.” He nodded, suddenly looking very tired.
Diggle could understand. “You go along now,” he said. “Out of my kitchen. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you something warm.”
“Oh,” said Wall. A crooked smile split across his craggy face. “That’s nice of you, Mr Diggle. Aren’t you going to show me the recipe?”
“Not bloody likely,” Diggle muttered.
“It’s like Mr Blanky told me,” Evans was saying. “The distance stays relative, even if we were on a moving ship. You measure that distance and it'll tell you exactly where you are in the world.”
"So what's the use of it now?" Golding said, through a mouthful of cold peas. "'S not like we're going anywhere."
"Well—" Evans deflated slightly. "Well, it's still good to know."
"Tell us about the dip circle, Tommy," Strong prompted. It had been a long winter already. Listening to Tommy Evans drone on about the magnetic equipment he'd had to polish was better than listening to the ice slowly crush the ship.
Such conditions weighed on the nerves, but, alright, Strong would be lying if he said he wasn't happy enough here with Evans and Golding and Manson. They were a good lot. Tight-knit. Sometimes Mr Hickey, the caulkers mate, would slip over to their table and share some amusing anecdote or clever observation. Sometimes a bit too clever. He seemed a pleasant fellow, but Strong didn't want his lads worrying. The captain would see them sure enough through the Passage once the ice had thawed, and they'd sail away for warmer climes. What else was there to do in the meantime but live through this?
"Oh! Right. The dip circle," Evans began, "has a needle in the middle like a compass, only turned on its side, 'n the angle of it shows where we are in relation to the Magnetic Poles. Here it's almost pointing straight up."
"I'll show you a needle pointing straight up," Golding muttered. Manson snorted quietly.
"Gosh, Bobby, what devilish wit," Evans said. He paused, grimacing, and fished something out of his teeth.
“Make a wish,” Strong said teasingly. The little pellets of metal came in the food often enough that it had become a bit of a joke among Terror’s crew. Whatever else, there weren’t any ladybirds to wish on out here. They had to have something.
“Well? What’d you wish for?” Manson asked. His face was wide and earnest.
For a moment something serious passed over young Evan’s face. Then he said, “More bloody ice,” and the table laughed.
Silna’s existence here was a strange and not entirely pleasant one, but it was—safer, she felt. How she resented that. Resented herself for feeling it. The Englishmen were unpredictable, and weird, and carelessly violent, but where else was she to go? The ice that had always been her home had become uncertain, suddenly.
She couldn’t face Tuunbaq. Not yet. It terrified her still, perhaps would always terrify her, and she couldn't help but feel a helpless rage that she had to do this. Alone. It wasn’t supposed to be now. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Sometimes she looked at the men and saw only her father’s blood on their hands. The feel of it, sliding across the ice.
Each day Goodsir would come in and set down her meal, and they would talk quietly for a while. Leg. Man. Woman. What he brought—it didn’t look like anything that should be consumed. Any vestige of living animal had been rendered near unrecognizable. A trace of gristle. A lump of flesh. Occasionally there’d be tiny bits of metal.
She set these aside, amassing a little pile in the gap by her head. They were smooth, like pebbles, and soft enough to leave silvery trails when she dragged them across the wood surface. This was how she passed her time, drawing, having no bone to carve.
Goodsir looked at her drawings when he came to bring her to the other ship. Terror. He studied them for a long moment. Silna didn’t say anything. What was there to say, that he’d understand? Hand. Arm. Foot. They had told each other so much, and so little. She wished—
On the way to Terror she thought she heard something—the suggestion of a whuffing breath. She stood there for a long moment, paralysed, waiting.
“What is it?” Goodsir asked, catching up to her.
Silna shook her head. “Nothing.” The wind whistled overhead through the ice ridges. Silna kept walking.
It was Georgie Chambers who noticed it first. They were all sitting around with their grog and biscuits, Des Voeux with his mark book on hand to call out the men on watch. He’d never hang out with this lot, usually, but he needed to be here anyway and it turned out Mr Hoar could play a mean game of jack rummy.
“Jacko seems sick,” Chambers said. “Don’t she?”
Des Voeux whistled and snapped his fingers near Jacko’s head. The monkey turned her head sluggishly, snarling. Her eyes were glassy, fur matted. Shit, maybe Chambers did have a point.
“What d’you think, John?” said Charles Best, slinging a leg up to swivel on the bench.
Morfin shrugged from where he sat by the wall, looking more pained than usual.
“She’ll be fine,” said Hoar. “Here, girl—" He held out his biscuit, somewhat cautiously. Unsure, now, of how to react to the little monkey’s erratic behaviour.
“Don’t give her that,” Mr Goodsir said sharply, appearing at the edge of the fo’c’sle. He flushed, realizing he’d spoken more curtly than he’d meant to. “I mean—I’ll feed her. Biscuits will upset her stomach.”
Des Voeux didn’t make much effort to hide the disdain on his face. Word was the girl had fled, in all the commotion aboard Terror, and the assistant surgeon had come slinking back alone. It was good while it lasted, he thought mournfully, though it really hadn’t been—he’d needed his little toe amputated.
Goodsir approached, gently lifting Jacko up. “And you really shouldn’t let her on the table while you’re eating,” he added, half-heartedly. The ship was filthy enough anyway. They were all filthy. Captain Fitzjames could mark them up for their nails and the state of their clothes—and Des Voeux’s nails were always clean—but sickness spread like… well, like the plague, he supposed. They’d all had each other's coughs and ails at some point. Nobody was the worse off for it, in the end.
“Fucking nancy,” Des Voeux muttered, though there wasn’t much bite to it.
“I hope she’s alright,” Chambers said. His worried eyes tracked Goodsir as he carried Jacko into the adjoining sick bay.
“She’ll be fine,” Hoar said again. “Look, weren’t you going to win your tobacco back?”
The door shut behind his assistant with a click and Stanley was left alone in his cabin, staring down a rough drawing and a whale-oil lantern. Worse and worse. Christ. None of them were making it out of this place. Goodsir’s words had just confirmed that—the final piece to a conclusion that had been brewing in his mind for some time now. Since Beechey, perhaps. What was the point in drawing it out any longer? In waiting for their minds and bodies to wear away?
Numbly, mechanically, he made the walk across the ice to where Carnivale lay between the ships, light and sound spilling out. He’d even found the time to don a ruffled collar, paint on the white face of a circus clown. Alexander’s idea. He’d insisted that they all match, and Stanley couldn’t find it in himself to begrudge him this. It would all be over soon anyway—and it was hardly the most extravagant disguise. Moving within the tent: a bee, a lion, a whore. Whatever else, the Captain made a fine Britannia.
With steady hands Stanley laced shut the exit flaps of the tent. Cursed any poor bastard who managed to make it out. Now he knew what he had to do, and from this moment on it all seemed very simple. It was the easiest thing in the world.
Now into the maze room. The kitchen tent. The whale oil clung to the canvas and fabric, near invisible but for where it glistened in the light. He emptied the bucket, set it aside, started on the rum.
Now the captain, shouting. Now the ripple of the men, moving too slow, too clumsy, not sure of what’s happening. Just the drink, or the slow-moving poison? Did it matter, now?
Nowhere else to go from here. Nothing else to be done. Once more unto the breach. God, he hated Shakespeare.
Stanley lit the match.
The sunlight was impossibly bright, and Morfin thought he could see fractals in the pulsing, sharp spikes of it, where it split into pieces off the jagged edges of the ice. It was painful, but God knew Morfin didn’t miss the months of darkness. To be out breathing the fresh, cold air—
Pilkington was saying something to him—something about wives and sweethearts. It was a Saturday, Morfin remembered. God, he wished Pilkington would shut up. The thought of family, now, of England, was no longer comforting to Morfin. He felt only a sick sort of despair, and guilt: for leaving them, for leaving and not coming back. Worst of all, for letting them fade in his memory. The first night of the walk out he’d prayed—actually prayed, muttering in his tent as the dog barked somewhere across camp—and it took him a good few moments to remember his sister’s name.
Thirty-two more miles to Terror Camp. Hundreds more to the Hudson Bay outpost. The captain had said there’d be game when they reached King William Land. Caribou, like. Musk-ox. Or seabirds. Morfin bloody hoped so.
These days it felt like he was moving through molasses, sluggish and always struggling to catch up. The bear could be right behind him and he didn’t think he’d notice. Or particularly care. He thought he understood it now—what the doctor had done. He was cold all the time. And his head hurt.
“Ach, I haven’t got the voice for it,” Pilkington was saying. He nudged Morfin gently. “Gi’zza song, John.”
Right. Morfin cleared his throat and sang.
Diggle found Mr Goodsir sitting down on one of the Goldner’s crates, staring blankly into the horizon. His shirt and waistcoat were stained with blood; it was unclear how much of it was his own. The scurvy had them all bleeding right through their layers. Nowadays Diggle’s hands were always red and raw and bloody, a million little burns and cuts reopening.
“You know why they’ve got us here,” Goodsir said.
“Yes.” An anatomist and a cook. Diggle wasn’t stupid. He’d heard about Captain Pollard and his lot in 1820. He knew what happened in these situations. Meat was meat—wasn't that the crux of it?
Mr Hickey wandered up to them, grinning amicably, pale eyes narrowed against the Arctic sun. Diggle wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Hickey wear a different expression, save perhaps for the anger and pain that had twisted his features during the lashing on Terror all those months ago.
“Dr Goodsir,” Hickey said, “Mr Diggle. We appreciate you coming with us.”
Diggle stayed silent. What was there to say? Obviously he’d never fucking meant to end up here. It had all been so mixed up in the fog, the creature chasing them, Wall being ripped apart on the other side of the tent. And he’d never expected Billy Gibson of all people to execute a mutiny.
He’d grown to like Gibson. Terror’s petty officers all had a sort of quiet camaraderie, except maybe Mr Hickey who mostly hung around with the ABs. Well, Hickey seemed to have gotten close with all sorts, looking around the camp—but anyway, it was in the well-worn grooves of familiarity that Diggle knew Gibson. Each day he would finish plating a dish just as Gibson arrived to take it to the officers. Later they’d hang around in the relative peace of the pantry, eating straight out of a tin, just as they would do now.
He’d liked Wall as well, in the end. The man became less insufferable when they abandoned ship. More earnest. But Wall was surely dead. And Billy Gibson wasn’t looking so good either.
“We’ve begun unloading the tins from the whaleboats,” Hickey continued. “I think you’re sitting on some now. And we brought along your spirit stove, Mr Diggle.”
Diggle nodded, feeling a dull relief. If there was anything he could do here it was heat the fucking tins. Beside him, Goodsir looked so, so tired.
Unexpectedly, Hickey clapped a hand on Diggle’s shoulder. “Good man,” he said. He didn’t touch Goodsir—perhaps he knew better than to test that look. He just nodded and traipsed off, too-long coat billowing in his wake, and Diggle began to follow.
“Mr Diggle,” Goodsir said quietly.
Diggle paused. “Sir?"
Goodsir laughed and shook his head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter.”
It seemed, now, that there was nothing left for her to do. Even as the seals grew scarce and hid away, as Tuunbaq grew sicker, more violent—even as her friends died, were slaughtered—
Silna breathed in deeply through her nose. She’d tried. She’d tried.
There were some days when she thought she might just sit down and never get up, wait until she became weathered into the landscape. She never did. Something within had crystallized, hardened over, a small sharp fragment in her lungs, and she did not cry. Always, the shale stretched on and on ahead of her. Even this far avanaa there might have been caribou, lichen, small flowers beginning to creep among the rocks. But this year nothing grew, and the caribou had fled.
The Englishmen still walked, on and on along their endless march.
There are too many of them, the hunter had said. He was right. There were too many of them, too slow, too late.
They seemed to leave everything in their wake, sloughing off what was diseased, what was rotten, what was dead weight as easily as meat came off the bone. More than once Silna came across piles of scattered poles and tents, blankets, bits of wood. Boots and mittens. The odd plates, beautiful, heavy, useless. Once, Silna picked up a small bone knife, but discarded it just as they had, unable to quite articulate to herself why. Strung throughout: hundreds of the red tins, rolling and rattling gently over the grey shale.
Hauling again. Hodgson didn't mind so much now that the sun had set. Night, here, was cool and vaguely strange, uncertain, as if in a dream. Atop the boat in front of him, Hickey sat with the steward’s canvas-wrapped body, reading aloud.
“And because the condition of man is a condition of war of every one against every one. In which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies. ”
His voice carried clearly over their panting and the scrape of runners on the shale. Hauling the boat ahead, Goodsir had begun to mutter under his breath.
“It followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even one another's body. And as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. The sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.”
It was nothing like what Sir John had read for that ship’s boy, or even Crozier’s halting service for Sir John and Lieutenant Gore. A twisted perversion of it. Hodgson couldn’t help but listen anyway.
They made a brief stop; Tozer ventured on south with Armitage to see where the Captain’s party might be. God, the Captain. Hodgson wondered where he might be now, had Crozier found him before Hickey. He thought of Edward, of all of them heading on into the twilight. He wondered if they wondered about him. Hoped they'd come to the wrong, the nobler conclusion: that he was dead, or prisoner. That he'd at least put up a fight.
They’d begun to just eat the tins cold. Hickey had told Diggle to save the fuel. Presently Hodgson leaned against one of the boats and inspected the label of one, having to hold it up close in the half-light. Beef Tongue in Gravy. Pieces of horse—a street dog—
Hodgson looked up to where Hickey still perched, staring out into the horizon. By his side, his fingers twisted around a bit of curled hair that had escaped Gibson’s hasty covering.
There wasn’t much to load in the whaleboats. A couple of tents. Pots. The necessities. Little made sure to bring the remaining muskets, just in case they found game. Or the mutineers. Or the creature, though by now it was clear enough that gunfire was useless against the thing.
There are many feats that preoccupy a captain’s imagination. Abandoning his ships and his men should not be among them. Yet I hereby tender my—
Finally, he made a round of the camp, leaving a pile of tins at the mouth of each tent. He didn’t look inside to see who was in them. Felt a compulsion to get it over with as quickly as possible. If he looked inside, one of the sick men might be looking back. He’d see the disapproval and the betrayal in their bloodshot eyes, and they’d see the shame and fear in his, and they’d know exactly what he was doing. Know him for exactly what he was.
Little deposited the last tins and trudged back to the boats, panting slightly. The entire camp smelled of rot and blood and festering. God, it was awful. Awful. They would come back, he told himself. When they reached the outpost. When they flagged down a rescue ship. When—
“All ready?” Le Vesconte asked. Little pulled on the harness and did not look back.