Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Crozier

Seventy degrees five minutes north latitude, ninety-eight degrees twenty-three minutes west longitude October 1847 Captain Crozier descended the short ladder to the main cabin, pushed open the double sealed doors, staggering from the heat blowing against him.Although the heating system that relies on hot water circulation has been shut down for several hours, the body temperature of the fifty-odd people and the residual heat from the baked food still make the temperature in the main cabin quite high. Although it is slightly below freezing point, it is eight times higher than outside. Ten degrees.For a person who has been on deck for half an hour, it is equivalent to taking a steam bath with all clothes on.

Because he will continue to go down to the unheated lower cabin and bilge later, Crozier didn't take off his winter coat.Because of this, he couldn't stay in the warm main cabin for too long.But he stopped for a moment, as every captain does, and looked around to make sure that during the half hour he had been on deck everything had remained the same. Although this is the only cabin on the ship where you can sleep, eat and live, it is as dark as the wells mines being mined. The small skylight on the roof of the cabin is covered with snow during the day and the now twenty-two-hour night.Whale oil lamps, lanterns, and candles here and there, illuminating a small conical area, but most people are dimming from memory ###, remember how to avoid the numerous, looming, piled on the ground or Suspended food, clothing, sails and people sleeping in their own hammocks.When all the hammocks were up—fourteen inches wide each—there was absolutely no room to walk in the cabin except for the two eighteen-inch walkways that ran along the sides of the boat.Only a few hammocks were hung up now, though, and the guards on the big night shift had to catch up on some sleep before going on sentry duty.The sounds of talking, laughing, cursing, coughing, etc., as well as the shoveling and rough invective in response to the irritated Mr. Digger, were so loud that they could cover the squeezing and whimpering of the ice.

The ship's plans show a seven-foot ceiling, but in reality, there are heavy beams overhead, and shelves under the feet hang from the beams, and tons of sundries and extra timber are stored on them. , the main cabin is less than six feet high for the crew.As a result, the few exceptionally tall men on the Terror, such as Munsen who was hiding in the lower cabin, had to keep their hunched postures at all times.Francis Crozier was not that tall, and even though he was wearing a hat and a warm towel, he didn't have to bow his head when he walked around. On his right, the passage leading from where he stood to the stern looked like a low, dark, narrow tunnel, but it was actually the cabin to the quarters.The officer quarters consisted of sixteen small berths with compartments and two narrow officers' dining rooms, a crowded space for officers and master chiefs.Crozier's room was the same size as the others', six feet by five feet.The hatchway was dark and only two feet wide, allowing only one person to walk at a time. He had to lower his head to avoid hitting the overhanging shelves, and even a stout person had to turn sideways to advance in the narrow passageway.

The officers' quarters occupied sixty of the ninety-six feet in length.Furthermore, since the Terror's main cabin was only twenty-eight feet wide, the narrow passage was the only straight line of access to the stern. Crozier could see the overflowing light of the conference room at the stern.Although it was cold and dark as hell, some of his officers who were still alive were smoking pipes at the long conference table or reading books from the shelf with twelve hundred volumes.The captain heard the sound of music being played: an accordion on metal discs was playing a melody that had been quite popular in London music halls five years earlier.Crozier knew it was Hudgison playing the music, his favorite piece, and it always annoyed Lieutenant Edward Liddell, Crozier's executive and classical music fan, almost to the point go Ape.

The officer quarters looked fine, and Crozier turned to look at this side.The general crew quarters occupied the remaining third of the ship's length—thirty-six feet—but were crammed with forty-one crew members and cadets, the surviving of the forty-four originally on the roster. There are no classes scheduled for today, and in less than an hour they'll be unpacking their hammocks and crawling in, so most are sitting in their seaman's boxes, or piles of stored stuff, in the dim light. Stop smoking or talking.In the center is Fizzle's patented stove, where Mr. Digger bakes his biscuit (Note: biscuit, American term, refers to small bread, soft cake).To Crozier, Digger was the best cook in the fleet, and a trophy, for Crozier stole the unruly cook from Captain Sir John Franklin's flagship just before the expedition set sail. come over.He's always grilling something, usually a biscuit, while cursing, slapping, kicking, and berating his assistants.When the crew approached the super-large stove, they always quickened their pace, and disappeared directly from a nearby hatch to the lower cabin to bring up the inventory, and they had to move very fast to avoid being swept away by Mr. Digger's anger.

To Crozier, the Fizzle patent stove looked as big as the steam engine in the bilge.In addition to having an oversized oven and six large fire seats, this massive iron contraption also has a built-in desalination machine and a huge hand-pumped water pump, which can be pumped directly from the sea or from a row of large storage tanks in the bilge. Any one of them draws water up.However, the sea outside and the water in the bilge are all frozen now, so the several bubbling cauldrons on Mr. Digger's stove must be busy melting the large ice cubes that were cut from the bilge tank and brought over. , to supply the water needed on board.

A little beyond Mr. Digger's shelves and closets (where the forward bulwark had been) the captain saw the forward cabin sickbed area.There has been no hospital bed area on board for two years.The area was filled with crates and barrels from floor to ceiling, and crew members who needed to see the doctor or assistant doctor had to go to Mr. Digger's stove at seven-thirty in the morning on board.Now that the inventory on the ship is running low, and the number of people who are sick or injured is increasing, the carpenter cuts off a separate space in the bow cabin to serve as a hospital bed area.Still, the captain could see the tunnel-like passage through the crate, the space inside where they had reserved the Lady of Silence to sleep.

They spent some time discussing it one day in June. Franklin insisted that the Eskimo woman not be on board. Crozier accepted her, but he and his executive officer, Lt. There was some ridiculous discussion there.They knew that even an Eskimo witch would freeze to death if she lived on deck or in the cabins on the bottom two floors, so they had only the main cabin as an option.She couldn't live in the crew quarters, of course, although thanks to that thing on the ice, there were some empty hammocks there. Before Crozier became a crew member in his teens, and later when he was an intern on the ship as a warrant officer, the women who stole onto the ship were sent to the anchor cable storage room at the bottom and the front of the ship.There was no light, almost no fresh air, and it stank, not far from the forecastle where the lucky guy who stowed her aboard lived.But even in June, when the silence sets in, the temperature in HMS Terror's mooring cable room was sub-zero.

No, letting her live in the same area as the crew cannot be considered. officer quarters?May be!There were empty rooms, because several officers were dead and even torn apart.But Lieutenant Liddell and his captain soon decided that it was unhealthy for a man to sleep with a woman outside the thin compartment and the sliding door. So what to do?They couldn't have specially arranged a place for her to sleep and then sent an armed guard to protect her at all times. The final idea was conceived by Edward Liddell: some storage boxes in the bow of the ship where the hospital bed area should have been, to create a small cave where she could sleep.The only person on board who was awake all night and every night was Mr. Digger, who was always dutifully baking his biscuits and frying meat for breakfast.Even if Mr. Digger had ever been interested in women, at least it was a long time ago.In addition, Lieutenant Liddell and Captain Crozier also considered that living near Fizzle's patent stove would make the guests feel warm.

The arrangement was a success, yes.But Lady Silence couldn't bear the heat, and when she slept in the little cave hidden among the crates and barrels, she had to lie naked on the furs.The captain discovered it by accident, and the image stayed in his mind. Before he could melt like the big ice on the stove, Crozier quickly took a lantern from the hook to light it, opened the hatch, and climbed the ladder to the lower cabin. To say the lower deck was "cold" would be an understatement.Crozier knew he used to describe it that way before he sailed to the poles.In fact, just climbing the six-foot ladder down from the main cabin dropped the temperature by at least sixty degrees.It's absolute darkness here.

Crozier took a minute to look around, following the captain's usual work.The light from the lantern was so weak that it could only illuminate the mist he exhaled.All around him was a maze of crates, vats, tin cans, wine casks, casks, coal sacks, and canvas-covered heaps, the last of the ship's supplies, from which The floor piled up to the roof of the cabin. Even without a lantern, Crozier could move about in this dark, screaming rat place, and he knew every inch of the boat.Sometimes, especially late at night, when the ice was whimpering, Crozier would realize that the Terror was his wife, mother, bride, and whore.To know so intimately a woman of oak and iron, of linen and ballast, of canvas and brass, would be the only marriage experience he could ever have and would have.Could he have thought otherwise of Sophie? Later in the night, when the whine of the ice turned to a scream, Crozier would even think the ship had become his body and mind.Outside, beyond decks and cabins, death awaits, eternal cold.But here, though frozen in ice, the heartbeat with warmth, talk, movement, and sanity continued, even if it was very weak. Crozier understands that when he enters the deeper part of the boat, it is like walking into the deeper part of a person's body or soul, and everything he encounters there may not be good.The lower deck is the belly, where food and necessities of life are stored, and everything is stored according to the urgency of its needs, so that those whom Mr. Digger sends with shouting and beating can quickly get to them. something you want.The next layer is the bottom layer he is going to now, which is the deeper internal organs and kidneys.Several large water tanks, most of the coal, and more supplies are placed on this level.But it was the contrast between the three-story cabin and the state of mind that bothered Crozier the most. Melancholy had haunted him like a ghost or plague for the better part of his life.He knew that the twelve winters of adulthood spent in polar darkness had made his secret weakness worse.He felt, too, that his inner pain had been aggravated lately because of Sophie Creek's rejection of him.Crozier believes that the main cabin, which is slightly bright and occasionally too warm but still inhabitable, corresponds to the waking part of his mind; as for the corresponding lower cabin, it is the spiritual world shrouded in gloom.These days he often dwells here listening to the scream of ice, waiting for the metal bolts and wooden beam fixing frames to explode due to overcooling; finally, the bottom hold, with the terrible smell and the room of the dead, corresponds to crazy. Crozier shook his head to shake off his thoughts.Between the mountains of barrels and crates, he looked down a lower walkway leading to the bow of the ship.The dim light of the lantern was blocked by the bulkhead of the grain room ahead, and the aisles to the sides became narrower than the passage from the main cabin to the officer's quarters.Two narrow passages had to be squeezed between the provisions shed and the storage area where the Terror's last remaining bags of coal were kept.The carpenter's storeroom is forward to the starboard side, and the bosun's storeroom is on the port side. Crozier turned and shone his lantern aft.A few rats fled lazily from where the lights fell, disappearing among the barrels of salted food and the crates of canned food. Even by the dim light of his lantern the captain could see that the padlock in the liquor room was still locked.The officers under Crozier would come here every day to fetch rum, and add water to adjust the drinking quota for the crew at noon that day-a quarter pint of 140-proof rum, paired with three-quarters pint of water.The liquor room also contained wine and brandy for the officers, as well as two hundred muskets, table knives and sabers.The practice of the Royal Navy has always been to open a cabin window from the officer's area and conference room in the main cabin, directly leading to the spirits room directly below.Once there is a mutiny, the officers can also get the weapons first. Behind the liquor room is the ammunition storage room, which contains barrels of gunpowder and bullets.On either side of the spirits room are various storerooms and storerooms, including some chainrooms; the sailroom, where a pile of cold canvas is kept; Warm coats are distributed to the crew from here. Behind the spirits room and the ammunition storage room is the captain's storage room, where the captain's personal ham, cheese and other luxuries are placed at his own expense.The captain occasionally has the habit of setting a table to entertain the officers.Although the collections in Crozier's pantry are inconspicuous compared with the high-end food stuffed in the late Captain Franklin's pantry on the Erebus, Crozier's now almost empty food pantry has at least maintained the ice and snow. Two summers and two winters.Besides—he smiled at the thought—there was a fine wine cellar, which the officers still benefited from, and which contained countless bottles of his indispensable whiskey.The poor captain, lieutenant, and non-military crew on the Erebus had been without spirits for two years.Sir John Franklin himself was a teetotaler, so while he was alive, his officers did not touch alcohol with their meals. At this time, in the narrow passage that passed backwards from the bow, a lantern floated towards Crozier.Crozier turned around immediately, and saw a furry thing like a black bear, its huge body was squeezed between the coal storage area and the bulkhead of the grain room. "Mr. Wilson?" Crozier asked.From his chubby figure and the sealskin gloves and buckskin trousers he wore--issued to every crew member before sailing, but rarely worn over flannel and woolen uniforms--Crow I recognized the carpenter's assistant.While they were still out at sea, the lieutenant sewed a loose coat, which he insisted was warm, from wolf skins they had obtained at the Danes' whaling station in Disco Bay. "Captain." Wilson was one of the fattest men on board, with a lantern in one hand and several boxes of carpenter's tools under the other. "Mr. Wilson, give my regards to Mr. Harney, can you ask him to come down with me?" "Yes, sir. Where's in the hold, sir?" "The chamber of the dead, Mr. Wilson." "Yes, sir." Wilson's curious eyes only paused for a second, and the light of the lantern immediately reflected in his eyes. "And ask Mr. Harney to bring a pry bar, Mr. Wilson." "Yes, sir." Crozier stepped aside, squeezed between two small barrels so that the fatter man could pass him, and climbed the ladder to the main cabin.The captain knew that he might be bothering his carpenter for no reason-he asked the gentleman to put on all the warm clothes before the lights in the bedroom were about to go out, but he didn't give him a good reason.But he had an intuition that he would rather bother him now than later. After Wilson's fat body squeezed through the hatch leading to the main cabin, Captain Crozier also opened the hatch below and went down into the hold. The entire hold was lower than the ice level outside the ship, so it was almost as cold as the outside world outside the ship, and darker, with no northern lights, starlight, or moonlight to soften the darkness.The air was filled with a heavy smell of coal dust and soot, mixed with the smell of dirt and sewage, and Crozier could see black coal particles flying around the hissing lantern.There was a scraping, sliding, scuttling sound from the darkness behind, and Crozier knew it was just someone shoveling coal in the boiler room.The residual heat of the boiler was enough to keep the three inches of dirty water that occasionally splashed up from the bottom of the ladder from freezing. Farther ahead, where the bow was buried deep in the ice, was nearly a foot of icy water, although the crew spent six hours or more each day pumping it away.The Terror, like any living thing, exhaled moisture through some life support, including Mr. Digger's never-sleeping furnace.While the main cabin has been kept damp and filled with ice frames, and the lower cabin remains frozen, the bilge is like a dungeon, with icicles hanging from every beam and melted water falling onto the floor , splashed higher than the ankle.Twenty-one iron water storage tanks are neatly arranged along the sides of the hull, and their flat black surfaces add a bit of chill to the bilge.When the expedition set sail, the water storage tank was filled with thirty-eight tons of clean water, but now it has become an iceberg in armor, and if you touch its iron skin, you will lose your skin. Magna Munson was waiting at the bottom of the ladder, as Private Weggis had said, but the big corporal was standing instead of sitting on his ass.Here the beams were not high, and the head and shoulders of the big man were forced to bend.His pale, bumpy face and stubbled jaw made Crozier look like a peeled white potato stuffed in Wells' wig.Under the harsh lantern light, his eyes did not meet the captain's stare. "What's the matter, Mensen?" Crozier's voice did not contain the rebuke to the guards and the lieutenant just now.His tone was even, cool, and sure, but behind every syllable was the force of a lesson and a scolding. "It's the ghosts, Captain." Although the man was very tall, Magna Mensen's voice was like a child's, high-pitched and weak. In July 1845, when the Terror and the Erebus stopped at Disco Bay on the west coast of Greenland, Captain Sir John Franklin already felt that he should expel two members of the expedition. Soldiers and the sailmaker of the Terror.Crozier suggested that sailor John Brown and Private Aitken be fired along with his ship, who were of little use and should never have been included in the voyage in the first place.After that, though, Crozier occasionally wished he'd sent Mensen home with the four.Even if the big guy wasn't an imbecile, it wasn't so far off that one couldn't tell the difference. "You know there are no ghosts on the Terror, Mensen." "Yes, Captain." "look at me." Mensen raised his face, but did not meet Crozier's gaze.The captain was quite surprised. On the huge face, Mensen's dim eyes turned out to be very small. "Did you disobey Mr. Thompson's order to move the coal into the boiler room, Sailor Monson?" "No, sir. Yes, sir." "Do you know the consequences of disobeying any order on a ship?" Crozier felt like he was talking to a child, although Mensen should be at least thirty years old. The Big Sailor's face suddenly lit up, for he knew the right answer to the question. "Oh, yes, Captain. Twenty lashes, sir. If I disobey more than once, it's a hundred. If I disobey a real officer and not just Mr. Thompson, I'll be hanged." die." "You're right," said Crozier, "but do you know that the captain can punish disobedience all he wants as he sees fit?" Mensen looked down at him, dark and confused.He couldn't understand the question. "I mean, I can punish you as I see fit, Sailor Monson," said the captain. The perplexed expression on that pockmarked face gradually eased. "Oh, yes, of course, Captain." "Instead of giving you twenty lashes," said Francis Crozier, "I could choose to lock you up for twenty hours in the dark of the dead man's chamber." Mensen's already frozen, bloodless facial features lost more blood now, and Crozier was ready to step aside before he passed out. "You...wouldn't..." The boyish voice seemed to be shaking. It was cold all around, only the hissing of the lantern, and it felt like Crozier had been silent for a long time.He let the sailor feel his expression.Finally he said, "What do you think you heard, Mensen? Did someone tell you ghost stories?" Mensen opened his mouth, seemingly having difficulty deciding which question to answer first.His fat lower lip was frozen over. "Walker," he said at last. "Are you afraid of Walker?" James Walker was a friend of Menson's, about the same age as the idiot, and not much smarter than him.He had only recently died on the ice, only a week now.The ship's policy was that the crew was to dig a hole in the ice near the ship, even if the ice was ten or fifteen feet thick like it is now.In this way, if there is a fire on board, they will have water to put out the fire.Walker and his two partners had previously been sent out into the dark ice to perform tunneling missions.They have to dig through the holes they dug earlier. If they don't hit with big iron nails, the holes will be frozen again in less than an hour.That's when the white Terror appeared suddenly behind a ridge of ice, tore off one of the sailor's hands, and smashed his ribs to pieces in one fell swoop.It disappeared without a trace before the armed guards on the ship had time to raise their guns to take aim. "Does Walker scare you with ghost stories?" Crozier asked. "Yes, Captain. No, Captain. It's what he said. The day before that thing killed him, he said to me, 'Magna, if someday that hellish thing on the ice catches Let me go,' he said, 'and I'll come back in my white shroud and whisper in your ear how cold hell is.' So, God, help me, Captain, James told me this. Now I hear He was trying to get out of the chamber of the dead." As if prearranged, there was a sudden creak of the hull, a groan from the cold deck beneath their feet, and a groan from the metal brackets on the transom, and there was a scraping and scratching sound in the surrounding darkness, as if Passed from stern to bow.The ice outside the ship was still not safe. "Is that what you heard, Mensen?" "Yes, Captain. No, sir." The dead man's chamber was on the starboard side toward the stern, about thirty feet from them, just beyond the last whimpering iron trough.But when the ice outside the ship stopped making noise, Crozier could only vaguely hear the sound of shovel pushing and scraping coming from the boiler room further back. Crozier had had enough of Mensen's nonsense. "You know your friend won't come back, Magna. He's sewn tight in his hammock, with some frozen dead, wrapped in three layers of the heaviest canvas, In the extra sail storage room. If you hear anything in there, it's the idea of ​​the damned rats beating their dead bodies. You know it, Magna Munsen." "Yes, Captain." "There will be no disobedience on board this ship, Sailor Monson. You must choose now. Mr. Thompson wants you to carry coal, so you carry coal. Mr. Digger wants you to come down for stores, and you come for stores. Immediately." And obey orders politely, or face judgment...face me...and be prepared to spend the night alone in the cold, unlit chamber of the dead." Mensen didn't say another word, just saluted with his fingers touching his forehead, then picked up the large bag of coal that had been placed on the ladder before, and carried it to the dark place at the stern. The engineer, wearing only a long-sleeve sweater and corduroy trousers, was shoveling coal with forty-seven-year-old furnaceman Bill Johnson.Another furnaceman, Luke Smith, was sleeping in the main cabin between two shifts.Terror's foreman, young John Torrunton, was the first member of the expedition to die, on New Year's Day 1846, but he died of natural causes.The nineteen-year-old boy, probably on the advice of his doctors, went to sea to treat tuberculosis.But he surrendered to death after two months of illness when the ship became ice-bound in the harbor on Beach Island that first winter.Drs. Petty and Macdonald told Crozier that the boy's lungs were as tightly packed with coal dust as a chimney sweep's pockets. "Thank you, Captain." The young engineer paused for a moment between shoveling coal.Sailor Monson had just put down the second bag of coal, and went back to carry the third bag. "You're welcome, Mr. Thompson." Crozier looked at Johnson, the furnace worker.He was four years younger than the captain and looked thirty years older.On his face sculpted by the years, every wrinkle of different shades is more clearly decorated by black coal and dirt.Even his gums, which lacked half a tooth, were blackened by soot.Crozier didn't want to blame the engineer in front of the furnace worker—he is also an officer, although he is not a member of the military, but he said: "I hope that if similar incidents happen in the future, we will not call Lu Xun again." Soldiers of the clan go to deliver the message." Thompson nodded, clanged the iron grate of the boiler with the shovel, and leaning on the shovel, told Johnson to go up there and ask Mr. Digger for some coffee.Crozier was glad the furnaceman was gone, but he was even happier that the grate was closed, the temperature of which made him a little sick after walking through the freezing cold. The captain must be sorry for the engineer's fate.Master Chief James Thompson is a first-class engineer who graduated from the Naval Steam Engine Factory in Wowich, the best institution in the world for training a new generation of steam power engineers.But here, in a boat frozen in ice and not moving half an inch on his own for more than a year, he was shoveling coal in nothing but a dirty singlet with the average furnaceman. "Mr. Thompson," Crozier said, "I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to speak to you since you returned from the Erebus today. Have you had a chance to speak to Mr. Gregg?" John Gregor is an engineer on the flagship Erebus. "Yes, Captain. Mr. Gregg thinks they won't be able to repair the damaged drive shaft until the real winter comes. Even if they can drill a channel under the ice and replace the last propeller As the one that came out of a temporary rush, the Nether still can't go anywhere under steam power, because the newly replaced drive shaft itself is also bent badly." Crozier nodded.More than a year ago, the Nereus bent its second drive shaft while trying to make its way through the ice.That summer, the flagship, with its heavier tonnage and more powerful engines, led the way through the ice, allowing the two ships to navigate.But the last piece of ice they encountered before they were later trapped in ice for thirteen months turned out to be harder than the iron on the untested propeller and drive shaft.All the crew members who dived into the water that summer were frostbitten, and they walked once before the gate of hell.According to them, not only was the propeller cracked, but the drive shaft was also bent and broken. "Where's the coal?" asked the captain. "The Erebus has enough coal to provide heating for...probably...four months, with hot water circulating in the main cabin for only an hour a day, Captain. There will be no coal at all to run the steam engines next summer." If we can get out of trouble next summer, Crozier thought.With this summer's experience (the ice isn't showing any signs of melting any day), he's now a pessimist.During the last few weeks of their freedom of movement in the summer of 1846, Franklin consumed the Erebus's coal stock at such an alarming rate that he was sure that if only he could smash up the last few miles of ice, the expedition would be on the mend. can reach the Northwest Passage along Canada's North Shore, and in late autumn they can drink tea in China. "And what about our own coal use?" Crozier asked. "Probably enough heat for six months," Thompson said, "but only if we get down to one hour of hot water from two hours a day, and I'd suggest doing that as soon as possible, before November." That's less than two weeks left. "Where's the steam engine?" Crozier asked. If the ice shows signs of softening next summer, Crozier plans to squeeze all the survivors on the Nether to the Terror, and then desperately retreat along the route he came from, along the Busia Peninsula and the Prince of Wales. The unnamed strait in the middle of the island goes up.They sailed hastily down from there two years ago, then past Walker Point and Portobello Strait, then exited Lancaster Sound like a cork out of a bottle, then loaded all sails and burned the remaining Coal, advancing "like smoke and floc", rushed south into Baffin Bay, and if necessary, even the extra yards and furniture were burned, so as to obtain the steam power needed at last, and to drive the ship as far as possible around Greenland. In open water, whalers can spot them. But even if, by some miracle, they were able to escape from the ice, they would still need steam engine power against the ice flowing southwards in order to travel northward to Lancaster Sound.Crozier and James Ross commanded the Terror and the Erebus to escape from the Antarctic ice, but they were sailing with currents and icebergs.But now, in the goddamn Arctic, the two ships had to sail against the currents of ice that descended from the North Pole to reach the channel that would allow them to escape the Arctic Circle. Thompson shrugged, looking exhausted. "Six days of steam power? Or five days?" Crozier nodded again.Thompson almost gave his ship a death sentence, but that didn't mean that the people on both ships were doomed. There were voices in the dark corridor outside. "Thank you, Mr. Thompson." The captain lifted the lantern from the iron hook, left the bright boiler room, and walked forward through the stagnant water and darkness. Thomas Harney was waiting in the corridor, his candle lantern crackling and burning in the foul-smelling air.He held the iron lever in front of him like a musket, gripped it with thick gloves, and had not yet unlocked the door of the dead man's chamber. "Thank you for coming here, Mr. Harney," Crozier said to his carpenter. Without any explanation, the captain pried open the latch and entered the storage room, which was freezing cold to death. Crozier couldn't help raising the lantern to illuminate the rear bulkhead, where the six canvas-wrapped bodies were stacked. The pile of corpses was writhing.Crozier had figured it out. He expected to see rats moving under the canvas, but what he found was this: a swarm of rats on top of the canvas shroud.There was a large cube of rats above the deck, more than four feet on a side, screaming very loudly as hundreds of rats were scrambling to secure positions to eat the frozen dead.More mice were underfoot, scurrying between his and the carpenter's feet.Rush to dinner, Crozier thought.They are not at all afraid of the light of the lantern. Crozier shone the lantern back on the ship, walked on the deck that slanted with the hull to port, and began to cruise along the sloping wall. there. He brought the lantern closer. "Ah, I'll be cursed to hell and hanged as a heretic," said Harney. "I'm sorry, Captain, but I didn't expect the ice to move so fast." Crozier didn't answer him.He bent down and looked carefully at the curved and protruding planks of the hull. The planks of the hull were squeezed and bowed inward, protruding here by almost a foot more than in the graceful arcs elsewhere.The innermost planks had been split, and at least one end of at least two planks had fallen loose. "My God!" The carpenter also bent over the captain. "The ice is a bloody monster. I'm sorry, Captain." "Mr. Harney," Crozier exhaled, sprinkling more ice crystals on the plank of ice, reflecting the light of the lantern, "other than ice, what else could cause such damage?" The carpenter laughed loudly, then stopped abruptly when he realized that the captain was not joking.Haney's eyes widened, then squinted. "I'm sorry again, Captain, but if you mean . . . that's impossible." Crozier didn't speak. "I mean, Captain, the hull is made of the best English oak, up to three inches thick, sir. And for this expedition--I mean, because of the ice, sir--they also used Two plies of African oak, each one and a half inches thick, doubles its thickness, sir. And the planks of African oak are added diagonally, sir, and are stronger than just the straight strips. .” Crossing over to examine the two loose planks, Crozier tried not to notice the river of rats bubbling behind and around them, and the sound of gnawing coming from the direction of the aft bulkhead. "And, sir," continued Harney, his voice hoarse in the cold, his breath of rum freezing in the air for a moment, "in three inches of English oak and three inches of African oak added diagonally上，还补加了两层加拿大榆木板，长官，各有两英寸厚。这让船身厚度又多了四英寸，船长，而且这两层木板与非洲橡木成斜对角交叉。也就是总共有五层木板……在我们与海之间隔着十英寸厚的全世界最坚固的木材。” 木匠突然把嘴闭起来。他想起刚才说明的船体结构细节，船长其实都知道，因为在船启航前的几个月里，克罗兹就亲自在造船厂监工。 船长站着，用他戴着连指手套的手去触摸最内层木板脱落的地方。那里的间隙超过一英寸。“把提灯放低一点，哈尼先生。用你的杠杆撬开松落的地方。我要看看冰对外面那层船身橡木做了什么。” 木匠照做了。铁杆在撬开和铁一样冷的木板所发出的声音以及木匠的出力声，几乎盖过身后老鼠狂野的咬啮声有几分钟之久。弯曲的加拿大榆木被撬开、掉落，两层裂开的非洲橡木也被撬掉，只保留船身原有那层现在向内折弯的英格兰橡木。克罗兹走得更靠近一点，提着他的提灯，让两个人看得见现在的状况。 船身有个约一英尺长的裂缝，里面的冰碎片及冰柱反射出提灯的光。但是在裂缝中央，有个远比前者更令人害怕的东西――黑暗。没有东西。在冰里的一个洞，一条隧道。 哈尼把一根碎裂的橡木再向里面扳一点，让克罗兹可以用提灯把洞照亮。 “他妈的耶稣基督，他妈的老天。”木匠喘着气。这次他没跟船长说对不起了。 克罗兹很想去舔他的干嘴唇，但是他知道，在零下五十度的黑暗里会有多痛。他的心剧烈跳动着，他也很想和木匠一样，用一只手去扶船身，使自己镇定下来。 一阵能将人冻僵的空气从外面冲进来，差点将提灯吹灭。克罗兹只得用另一只手挡住风，让火苗继续抖摇，让两个人的影子在舱板、舱梁及舱壁上乱舞。 船身最外层的两片长木板已经被某种无法想象、无法抵挡的力量撞碎，而且向内折弯。透过微微抖动的提灯发出的光，他们清楚看到裂开的橡木上留有巨大的爪痕，一条条已经结冻却依然鲜艳的血迹。