Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven Crozier

(front missing) "No, no, of course not, I was too stupid. I'm going to punish John for the next two weeks and keep him from drinking rum. I apologize again." Crozier sighed. "Come on. If you want to punish him, dig him an extra asshole, but don't take his rum. The atmosphere on this ship is bad enough. Lady Silence was with me just now, wearing her Goddamn furry coat. Chance probably saw her. If he does blow my head off, it's because I wasn't alert enough." "Silence is with you?" Fitzjian raised his eyebrows. "I don't know what the hell she's doing on the ice," Crozier said gruffly.His throat was sore after a day of freezing cold and shouting. "She stalked me about a quarter of a mile from where you were when I nearly shot her too. We're talking here now, and young Irwin is probably turning Terror all over Looking for her. I sent this kid to keep an eye on this Eskimo slut, and it was a bad decision in the first place."

"The crew thought she would bring bad luck." Fitzgerald's voice was very, very soft.In the cramped main cabin, sound can easily pass through the compartments. "Well, it's strange that they don't think so!" Crozier felt the effect of alcohol.He hadn't had a drink since the night before.Alcohol comforted his stomach and tired brain now. "This woman was present with her wizard father or husband the day the horrors began. Something had bitten her tongue off at the root. Shouldn't the crew see her as the culprit?" "But you kept her on the Terror for more than five months?" Fitzjian said.The young captain didn't mean to blame, he was just curious.

Crozier shrugged. "I don't believe in witchcraft, James, or anyone who brings bad luck. But I believe that if we put her on the ice, the guy will eat her insides, like it's eating now. Eat the guts of Evans and Strong, and maybe your private Jedd. Is he Billy Jedd, the red-haired Luke who always talks about that author—Dickens?— Soldier?" "William Zed, yes," said Fitzgerald. "During the crew race at Disko Island two years ago, he ran very fast. I thought maybe send someone with speed..." He paused. Come down, bit your lip. "I should have waited until daylight to let him go."

"Why?" Crozier asked. "It's not very bright during the day. In fact, even in the middle of the day, the sky is not very bright. It doesn't make any difference whether it's day or night, and it won't be the same for another four months." That thing out there doesn't only hunt at night, or only attack in the dark. Maybe your jide will show up soon. The messenger we sent was lost in the ice field outside before, and after five years Six hours before I got back to the boat, trembling and cursing." "Perhaps." Fitzjian's tone revealed his doubts. "I'll send a search party to find him during the day."

"That's what the thing wants." Crozier's voice was weary. "Perhaps," Fitzjian replied, "but didn't you just tell me that you sent people to find Strong and Evans in the ice field last night and all day today?" "If I hadn't taken Evans out to Strong in the first place, the boy would still be alive now." "Thomas Evans," said Fitzjian. "I remember him. He was very big. He couldn't be a boy, Francis? He should... have... How should I say? Twenty-two or twenty Are you three years old?" "Tommy turns 20 this past May," Crozier said. "His first birthday on board happened to be the day after we set sail. The crew were in a good mood and shaved his head to celebrate. His eighteenth birthday. He doesn't seem to care. People who know him say he looks older than he is. He served on the HMS Lynx and before that on an East India Company merchant ship .He sailed at sea when he was thirteen."

"If I remember correctly, it's just as you said." Crozier smiled sadly. "Same as me. Look at the benefits this has done me." Fitzjian put the brandy back in the closet and locked it, and returned to the long table. "Tell me, Francis, did you really pretend to be the negro servant of the dame old Hoppner when... was it 1824?... while you were frozen here?" Crozier laughed again, but more easily this time. "That's right. In 1824 Perry's Hecrat sailed north with Hoppner's Fury to find the damned Northwest Passage, and I was only a warrant officer on board the Hecrat." Perry's plan was to have two ships cross Lancaster Sound and down Prince Regent Sound. But we didn't know Busia was a peninsula until 1833, when John and James Ross didn't understand until after that expedition. Perry thought he could sail south, round Busia, and make his way straight to the coast that Franklin had explored by land six or seven years ago. But Perry was too late Why do these stupid expedition commanders always start too late? Fortunately, we were lucky to reach Lancaster Sound on September 10th, which is a month later. But the ice started to make trouble on September 13th We had absolutely no chance of crossing the strait, so Perry of the Black Carat and Lieutenant Hoppner of the Fury had to tell us to flee south with our tails between our legs.

"A strong wind blew us back to Baffin Bay, and we were lucky enough to find a very small anchorage near Prince Regent Sound, where we spent ten months freezing our nipples off." "But," Fitzjian showed a slight smile, "You are pretending to be a little black boy?" Crozier nodded and took a sip of his wine. "While wintering in the ice, Perry and Hoppner were fanatics who called everyone to dress up in fancy costumes and throw a masquerade ball. It was Hoppner's idea to have a masquerade, which he called the 'Grand Venice Carnival,' and it was eleven On the 1st of the month, just when the sun will disappear for the next few months and the morale of the ship is starting to low. When Perry stepped off the Hekra wearing a large cloak, everyone had already assembled, most of them changed because there was a big box of clothes on both ships. He never took off his cape, and when he finally did, we saw Perry dressed up as the old crewman. You remember around Chatten, for The guy with the fake foot who played the violin for half a penny? Oh, of course you don't remember, you're too young.

"I think Perry, an old guy, wants to be an actor more than a captain, and he's learned everything alike. He plays the violin, hops around on one foot on his prosthetic leg, and yells: 'Grandpa, here's A penny for poor Joe, who has lost his means of livelihood in defense of his king and country!' "The crew were laughing all over the place. Hoppner, who was more enthusiastic about making fakes come true than Perry, came to the masquerade ball dressed as a lady, wearing the most fashionable Parisian styles at the time, with a low bust line and a The large pleated skirt held up by the stiff interlining was higher than his ass. As for me, because I was too energetic at the time, let alone stupid enough to understand many things, that is to say, I was only in my twenties. I Dressed as Hoppner's servant, Henry Parken Hoppner, an old man who had bought an orthodox servant's dress in some London dresser's favorite of the well-dressed, brought it to the North Pole, Just for me to wear it once."

"Did the crew laugh?" Fitzjian asked. "Oh, the crew was laughing again and again, and now less attention was paid to Perry and his prosthetics, and everyone was watching old Henry walk in slowly, and I followed him to lift his silk hem. How could they not laugh? The chimney sweep and the girl in the ribbon dress, the scavenger and the hawk-nosed Jew, the bricklayer and the Scottish Highland warrior, the Turkish dancer and the London match girl? Look! This It was the young Crozier, the older warrant officer who thought he would become an admiral in the future, but he hadn't even been promoted to a lieutenant yet. He probably forgot that he was just another dark-skinned Irish nigger."

Fitzjian did not speak for a minute.Crozier could hear the snoring and farting from the creaking hammock over the dark bow.Somewhere on the deck just overhead, a guard was stomping to keep his feet from freezing.Crozier was a little embarrassed that he ended his story like this.When he was sober, he would never talk to anyone like this, but on the other hand, he still hoped that Fitzgerald would bring out brandy or whiskey again. "When will Fury and Hekra be freed from the ice?" Fitzjian asked. "The twentieth of July next summer," said Crozier, "but you probably know what happened after that."

"I know the Rage was later wrecked." "That's right," said Crozier, "five days after the ice started to soften. We had been walking slowly along the shore of Somerset, hoping not to come into direct contact with the ice, and to avoid the constant Limestone from coastal cliffs. There was a strong wind that blew the Fury onto a gravel-filled sandbar. We were pulled by manpower and traded ice drills and sweat for freedom. But then both ships froze, and one damned An iceberg as big as the bitch squatting between the Erebus and the Terror, pushing the Fury to crash into the ice on the shore, tearing off the rudder, smashing the bones to pieces, and bending the planks It was broken, so the crew could only use four pumps to pump water overboard day and night, so that the boat barely floated on the water." "And you really held on for quite a while." Fitzjian replied quickly. "It lasted two weeks. We even tied the ship to an iceberg with a cable, but the goddamn cable snapped. Then Hoppner tried to raise the ship to fix the keel, like Sir John did to the Ere but the blizzard spoiled the idea, and both boats were in danger of being pushed to the lee of the headland. The crew finally collapsed in pumping, too tired to understand our orders, and at eight On the 21st of the month, Perry ordered everyone to come aboard the Hecra, and untied the ship's cables so that the ship would not be pushed ashore, while the poor Fury was pushed ashore by an iceberg blocking her way, and went straight to the shore. Pushed onto the beach. We didn't even have a chance to haul it off the shore, watching the ice smash it to pieces. Finally we finally got the Hekra out of the woods in a thrill, everyone worked day and night The water was pumped out of the boat, and the carpenters rushed to repair the hull around the clock. "So we never approached the Northwest Passage, found no new land, and lost a ship. Hoppner was court-martialed, and Perry took that as his case, because Hoppner Always under his command." "Everyone was acquitted," Fitzjian said, "and even applauded by the public, I remember." "There's only praise, no promotion," Crozier said. "But you all survived." "yes." "I want to survive this expedition, Francis." Fitzjian's tone was soft but firm. Crozier nodded. "We should have followed Perry's practice a year ago and put all the crew members of the two ships on the Terror and headed east around the King William Landmass," Fitzjian said. This time it was Crozier's turn to raise his eyebrows.Not because Fitz insisted that the King William Landmass was an island, as the sleigh scouting party they sent out late this summer had already established, but because he would actually agree that they should have abandoned Sir John's ship late last autumn, with all their might. run away.Crozier knew that the hardest thing for any captain in any navy, especially the Royal Navy, was to abandon his ship.Although Sir John Franklin was in command of the Erebus, it was James Fitzgerald who was the real captain. "It's too late now." Crozier felt a little unwell.The lounge had bulkheads close to the hull and above it were three Preston patent deluxe skylights, and although it was freezing inside, it was still sixty or seventy degrees hotter than on the ice sheet, and two people could see them exhaling. angry.Crozier's feet, especially the toes, were thawing, and it felt like jagged pins and hot needles were stabbing at him. "Yes," Fitzgerald agreed, "but you're smart enough to sled some equipment and provisions to King William Land in August." "That's just a small amount of supplies. If we really decide to use it as our survival base, there will be a lot more things that need to be transported." Croz said in a rough voice.He had previously ordered two tons of clothing, tents, survival gear, and canned food to be removed from the boat and stored on the island's northwest shore if they had to abandon both boats soon after winter.But the delivery was not only exaggeratedly slow, but also dangerous.Weeks of grueling sleigh hauling brought only a ton or so of supplies—tents, extra warm clothing, tools, and a few weeks' worth of canned food.Nothing else. "That thing won't keep us there," he murmured. "We could all move into tents as early as September, and I've got the land cleared, and we can put up a dozen tents, You remember! But a tented camp doesn't protect us as much as a boat." "It's not comparable." Fitzjian said. "If the two ships can survive the winter." "Right," Fitzjian said. "Francis, have you ever heard that some of the crew called that creature 'The Terror'? It's the same on both ships." "No!" Crozier felt offended.He didn't want his ship's name used for something evil, even if it was just a joke among the crew.But he looked into James Fitz's brown-green eyes and found that the captain was serious, so the crew must be serious too. "Frightened?" Crozier swallowed his anger. "They don't think it's an animal," Fitzjian said. "They think its cunning comes from somewhere else, it's not natural...it's supernatural...they think it's a demon out there in the dark ice." Crozier almost spat in disapproval. "Demons?" he said contemptuously. "This crew also believes in ghosts, fairies, bringers of bad luck, mermaids, curses, and sea monsters." "I've seen you blow the sails to summon the wind." Fitzjian said with a smile. Crozier didn't speak. "You've lived long enough and traveled far enough, so you've seen things that other people didn't know existed in this world." Fitzjian added, obviously trying to ease the atmosphere. "Yes." Crozier laughed. "Penguins! I wish they were the biggest beasts here, but they're only in the south." "Are there no polar bears in Antarctica?" "We haven't seen one. No whaling party or expedition that has sailed south in seventy years has ever seen one while sailing toward or around that frozen white and volcanic land." "You and James Ross were the first to discover that continent, and those volcanoes." "Yes, we were right, and Sir James got a lot out of it. He married a beautiful woman, knighted him, was happy, and didn't have to go to the cold again, and I... I'm... still here." Fitzjian cleared his throat, as if he wanted to change the subject. "You know, Francis, before this voyage, I really believed in the existence of an unfrozen Arctic sea. I also really believed that Congress was right to listen to the predictions of the so-called 'Arctic experts'. As soon as we set off The winter before the voyage, do you remember? It was in the Times. The experts talked about the thermal barrier, about the Gulf Stream flowing under the ice and bringing the warm up to the unfrozen Arctic seas, and Convinced there is a continent somewhere here, even though we haven't seen it yet. They are so sure there is a continent that they even proposed and passed a law to send South Gate and other prison inmates to the Arctic Circle to shovel coal. They believe there is a land a few miles from here There must be incredible deposits of coal a hundred miles away on the Arctic continent." Crozier actually laughed out loud this time. "Yes, by the 1860s at the latest, steamships would regularly take passengers on a trip across the ice-free Arctic sea. At that time, the coal these people shoveled could heat the hotel and refuel the steamship. There's plenty of coal at the station. Oh dear, let me be a prisoner at Southgate Gaol! Their cells are twice as big as ours, by law, and by humanity, James. And our future is warm and secure, we just need to wait for the good news that the Arctic continent has been discovered and colonized in such a luxurious environment.” This time both of them laughed. Then there was a thumping thud on the upper deck, running feet, not just stomping.Then there were more sounds, and a gust of cold air slid past their feet.Someone opened the hatch of the main staircase deep in the cabin, and then there was the sound of several pairs of feet hurriedly climbing down the stairs. The two captains were waiting quietly when there was a soft knock on the thin door of the lounge. "Come in." Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian said. A crew of the Erebus brought in two men from the Terror: 3rd Lieutenant John Irwin and a sailor named Shanks. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Lieutenant Colonel Fitzjian, Captain Crozier." Irwin's teeth trembled slightly as he spoke, his proboscis turned white from the cold.Shanks also holds a musket. "Lieutenant Liddo sent me to report to Captain Crozier as quickly as possible." "Go on, John," Crozier said. "You're not looking for Lady Silence now, are you?" Irving was lost for a second. "When the last search party came back, we saw her still out on the ice. No, sir, Lieutenant Liddo asked me to ask you to go back right away because..." The young lieutenant paused, as if forgetting Liddo for a moment. Ask him to report. "Mr. Test District," Fitzgerald said to the mate on duty on the Erebus who led two crew members from the Terror, "please retreat to the outer cabin and close the door when you go out, thank you." Crozier also noticed the strange silence, the snoring and the creaking of the hammock seemed to stop suddenly.Too many ears were awake in the crew sleeping quarters forward to listen to their conversation. When the door closed, Irwin said, "It's William Strong and Tommy Evans, sir. They're back." Crozier blinked. "What the hell are you talking about, back? Alive?" He felt hope surge for the first time in months. "Oh, no, sir," Irwin said, "actually... just... a body. It was seen propped up against the stern railing when all the search parties were coming back to rest... about an hour ago. The guard on duty saw nothing. But it's there, sir. On Lieutenant Liddell's orders, Shanks and I ran as fast as we could across the icefield to report to you, Captain. Come on foot." "It?" Crozier raged. "A body? Back on board?" That didn't make any sense to the Terror's captain. "I remember you just said that both Strong and Evans are back." Third Lieutenant Irwin's entire face was frozen white. "They're all back, Captain. Or, at least, half of them. When we got to the stern to inspect the body that was propped there, it fell over and... well... broke in two. As far as we know See, Billy Strong from the waist up, Tommy Evans from the waist down." Crozier and Fitzjian could only look at each other without saying anything else.