Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

HMS EDINBURGH:
Vesuvius-class Bomb Vessel
Built in 1814 by Robert Davy in Topsham, Devon, the same as HMS Terror, HMS Edinburgh is a Vesuvius-class Bomb Vessel. It is the youngest of this class. Built with an installed steam engine as well as sails, it operates on both. Its beams are 28 feet, its length is 103 feet, and it can carry 330 tons. Its normal complement of men is 68, but it set off with 64 due to time constraints. Its cannons have been removed other than the swivel guns, and its complement of marines is seven.

The provisions of HMS Edinburgh allow for a non-stop expedition of three years on full rations. On half rations, this can be increased to five years.

Provisions include preserved tins (red-colored, like Franklin’s men) with different meals in them, including tomato soup, veal cutlet with gravy, and other meals. For regular rations, which Captain Anderson encourages, they include some portions of chocolate, ship’s biscuits, tea, flatbread, and salt meats. Typically a dessert of some sort, sometimes a pudding, is included. Tobacco from Captain Anderson’s stores is provided, with a clay pipe issued to each of the men to smoke it.

The HMS Edinburgh carries eight boats: two being jolly boats, four being cutters, and two being whaleboats. This allows for the entire ship’s company to board, with 68 men in total being able to fit into the boats. Thankfully, the ship only carries 64 at the time of the mission, so every man can squeeze in quite comfortably, with every other boat having one less man.

SHIP'S MUSTER:

Nautical Officers:

Henry Godfred Philip Anderson, Captain, Commanding the Expedition, age 60

George Deanshire, Commander, age 40

Carson E. Fells, First Lieutenant, age 29

Arthur Jameson, Second Lieutenant, age 38

Oliver Smith, Third Lieutenant, age 26

Mates:

Oscar “Archie” Baynes, First Mate, age 20

Thomas Cartridge, Second Mate, age 19

Edward Wilson, Third Mate, age 22

Officers:

James Curry, Surgeon, age 34

Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon, age 30

William Hammond, Purser, age 38

John Burt, Ice Master, age 50

Warrant/Civilian Officers:

David Andrews, Engineer, age 43

Robert Jenkins, Carpenter, age 39

John Henry, Boatswain, age 35

Petty Officers (non-coms):

Alfred Back, Boatswain’s Mate, age 28

Simeon Fitzgerald, Carpenter’s Mate, age 27

Simon Hoar, Captain’s Steward, age 28

Patrick Ellis, Ship’s Cook, age 40

Ludwig Rouse, Subordinate Officer’s Steward, age 26

Darius Poole, Gunroom Steward, age 25

Montgomery Philips, Captain of the Forecastle, age 34

Solomon Gardener, Captain of the Hold, age 36

Reid Fraser, Captain of the Foretop, age 31

Charles West, Captain of the Maintop, age 33

Thomas Williamson, Caulker, age 38

Magnus May, Caulker’s Mate, age 23

Daniel Andrews, Quartermaster, age 27

Abraham Young, Quartermaster, age 34

Henry Butler, Quartermaster, age 31

Jonathan Foster, Blacksmith, age 29

George Perry, Sailmaker, age 32

Arthur Francis, Captain’s Coxswain, age 38

Alexander Hill, Leading Stoker, age 34

Charles Fletcher, Stoker, age 27

Joseph Smith, Stoker, age 26

Joseph Tilking, Armorer, age 35

Able Seamen:

Edward Smith, age 18

Edward Rudolph, age 19

John Bolton, age 17

Marshal Credge, age 18

John Coleman, age 16

John Maynard, age 17

Robert Teague, age 19

Robert Marcus, age 17

Robert Tarisovna, age 16

Thomas Ulbricht, age 17

Thomas Wentworth, age 17

Thomas Wallows, age 17

William Wallace, age 18

William Smith, age 19

Newton Mills, age 17

Frederick Fischer, age 19

Henry Thompson, age 20

Alexander Mason, age 17

Royal Marines:

John Rouger, Sergeant, age 28

William Keller, Corporal, age 30

James Norris, Private, age 19

Edward Devon, Private, age 22

Robert Levine, Private, age 19

Robert MacMillan, Private, age 19

John Farrows, Private, age 21

Ship's Boys:

William Wilson, age 17

Mason Smith, age 15

ORDERS FOR THE COMMANDING OFFICER OF H.M.SHIP EDINBURGH

HER MAJESTY’S SHIP “EDINBURGH”, carrying sixty-four souls under the command of Captain Henry G. P. Anderson, is under orders to find the men under the command of Sir John Franklin, having passed into Lancaster Sound in July 1845 and presumably proceeded South; and, upon completion of the aforesaid mission, if possible, to force the North-West passage.

We, the Admiralty, have the utmost confidence in the men crewing H.M.Ship Edinburgh and expect you to return in two years with either Franklin's men or knowledge of his fate.

Dated February 10th, 1848

Chapter Text

Henry Anderson was somewhere else. He was dreaming, but he knew he was dreaming. It was more of the same. He was in his great-cabin, already furnished, and his sons were begging him.

“Father, won’t you let us come with you?” Charles, his younger son, begged. “As your lieutenants? I will take a demotion to come aboard with you. Or just Richard here, then, as a third lieutenant. Mother is worried about you. Please.”

He knew the next words to a rhythm; he had dreamt the conversation for years afterward.

“Worried? Whatever for? Your mother is the worrying sort, son, I wouldn’t keep your mind on it.”

His other son, the taller one, Richard, so tall and broad like Henry’s own father, said,
“She worries for a good reason, father. If Sir John hasn’t come back, what about you?”

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard H.M.Ship Edinburgh.

20 July 1848

I shall begin this little book by engaging in a hobby that is most enjoyable to me, painting. And the ice is wonderful to paint. It requires broad strokes, but those strokes can achieve an effect that is unparalleled in other nature paintings. Everything is simpler in these arctic regions, Lieut. Smith assures me, but that does not mean that it is not beautiful.

Of course, we aren’t even in the Arctic yet. We just left Godthaab, a sort of chief trading post in Greenland. In a few days or so we will reach the Arctic Circle, at which time I will note it down in this book.

I am not quite sure who I am writing this for. Perhaps I will publish it after the expedition concludes. But first I suppose I shall regale you of our departure, the affairs aboard the ship, and the fine characters who inhabit it.
I was recommended to this expedition by brother James, of course, to whom I am apprenticed as assistant surgeon. I was also christened as the unofficial naturalist since James has no interest in Arctic creatures, soon after departure from Greenhithe on May 20th, 1848.

James is well. There are few injuries recently, excepting of course the horrible accident with Quartermaster Abraham Young and the consumption-ridden stoker Joseph Smith. The accident happened like this: A petty officer, Reid Fraser, dangled from the mast by a rope. Brave soul that Young is, he rushed up to assist him, but fell to the deck in his stead. His left arm was smashed. James is confident that there was no need to amputate, but it would likely remain useless or on half-function for the rest of his life.

As a result of this, Captain Anderson had a solution to his dilemma. Young, in perfect health aside from his arm, was ordered to head ashore with the ship’s mail, correspondence, and the dying stoker Smith. He died before we left them there and the last we saw of Abraham Young he had buried Smith and was heading south for Godthaab

Two men shorter, we have also picked up two Greenlandic guides. Their names are Heneezeepook and Qaktilab (to my understanding, I am sure they have a more refined spelling from where they come from). We have decided to call them George and John respectively, after our commander and ice-master, both of whom speak the Greenlandic dialect of Inuktitut.
But enough about dead men and native guides. The true characters of this expedition revealed themselves to me shortly after our departure. I shall begin with the enlisted-men and the marines.

Sergeant Rouger is a man of the finest quality; patriotic and brave, with fine whiskers and a calm demeanor. Everything you would expect a career marine to be. His men, on the other hand, are mostly of ill-repute. His corporal, William Keller, is of the worst disposition. He spits tobacco onto the deck quite often, his voice is a grawl, and he is constantly unpleasant. The privates are mostly fine, but I have reason to suspect that at least two of them are sodomites. I will not state their names here for anonymity in-case I am wrong.

The enlisted-men are of fine quality. One of them, the American-born Marshal Credge, delights us with his anecdotes about Philadelphia and his father’s recounts of the American Revolution. A few of the men were whalers before, most of them are career Royal Navy sailors. I have taken John Bolton on as my assistant. His father was a surgical aide in Westminster, and he had quite a privileged upbringing, so he knows his potions and his words, to which I am eternally grateful.
Edward Rudolph, another Able Seaman, is almost certainly an anti-theist. He does not partake in our optional Bible studies and croaks during mandatory Sunday service. John Maynard was born in Bermuda so he often suffers from this Arctic weather. Robert Tarisovna is from a Russian family, but he was born in Middlesex. Thomas Wentworth was flogged in Greenland for insubordination and croaks that he was forced onto this expedition by his parents. He is the only friend of Thomas Wallows, the son of an executioner, who is the most lonely of characters. I suspect the crew knows of some bad quality of his that I have not discerned yet.

Alexander Mason is a Welshman who barely anyone understands, while Frederick Fischer is a German immigrant who still reads the few German books aboard the ship, however much he insists he is not a German. Finally, the Ship’s Boys, consisting of William Wilson, 17, and Mason Smith, 15, are good people, in a rush to be called men.

William Wilson is also of an upbringing on the Isle, like myself and James, while Mason Smith was born in Greenhithe and saw the Franklin expedition depart Greenhithe three years ago. That is all I will say of the main crew now, I shall continue later on. For now, the intermittency of the rest of the voyage between Greenhithe and Godthaab.

We stopped to hunt fish and whale a few times (being unsuccessful in the latter), then slaughtering our cows for beefsteak as soon as Captain Anderson thought he could get away with it. This afforded him much good will, and everyone enjoys the Captain’s presence on deck. We met a few Danish whalers, and even a Scottish barge, on our way to Greenhithe. The officers made the decision to not stop at Iceland, for fear of the expiring of our provisions sooner than they planned. Other than the stop in Godthaab, we made no landfall.

Captain Anderson has not sent out any messages so far, despite the fact that we are sailing for Lancaster Sound as I write this. Estimates by Lieutenant Smith indicate that we will enter the Sound in perhaps a week. I am optimistic for our chances at finding Franklin; after all, how can the Arctic hide over one hundred men? We ourselves have over sixty, more than enough to navigate the landmasses and ice pools.
The last white people on our journey that we expect to meet will be whalers at the entrance of Lancaster Sound. Currently there is a bet in the wardroom on what nationality they will be; I have put in a guinea that they will be Scottish. The Captain believes they will be Danish, while Lieutenant Smith prefers Norway or Sweden. Nobody seems willing to bet that they will be English, to our amusement.

And now to my personal engagements. I have collected no samples yet, except for my dissection of a seal that we caught in Greenland. There was nothing abnormal about it, as I suspected, but it was good to have a scalpel in my hand again. I have made several friends aboard. Mr. Henry the Boatswain seems to be a stern man but he is, in reality, a kind gentleman who enjoys music.

The ship’s boy Wilson enjoys anatomy and I loaned him one of my books on the subject. Lieutenant Smith seems to be my greatest friend, other than my brother. We read together, he showed me the intricacies of sailing in the Royal Navy (noting my having been a civilian before this voyage) and the Mates are really the finest characters. I think I like Mr. Cartridge the best, he is a Catholic as our family was; indeed the highest ranking Catholic aboard. Mr. Baynes is loud and outspoken but typically has nothing to say, while the Third Mate Mr. Wilson is a quiet individual whose only friend seems to be the purser, William Hammond. They do everything together and he acts as a sort of clerk sometimes. I can always see them discussing provisions with either each other or my brother James, who still refuses to let me into the conversation. It is infuriating, but I shall some day gain knowledge of what they are speaking about. This is all that I will write today, but I will continue tomorrow.

21 July 1848
I spoke to the Captain today! I expected that social barriers would be too large, and that he would confer all matters of importance upon my brother, but I assumed wrong. He is quite a fine man. Of course, I already suspected that, from his generosity with the beefsteaks a few weeks ago, but now it is confirmed in my mind. He began to speak to me about the ice and the birds, and asked whether I’d met an Esquimaux. I told him Yes. I met an Esquimaux, back in London. He admitted that he had never met a native nor been to the Arctic before. I asked, Have any of your officers? He laughed and said that yes, some of his men had been to the Arctic, and could even speak the local language, which people have called Inuktitut or ‘Speech of the Inuk.’
I will provide the list of full Arctic veterans below:

George Deanshire, the Commander, had served with John Ross in 1829. Through this, he knows Terror ice-master Thomas Blanky. He speaks this native language which I have previously mentioned.
Carson Edward Fells, First Lieutenant, had served with Francis Crozier aboard HMS Terror for the James Clark Ross Antarctic expedition in 1839. He was promoted to First Lieutenant for this voyage. He knows Crozier personally, so this might help us in finding him. He speaks only a few sentences of Inuktitut by his own volition, but he can understand most of the language.
John Burt went on the Ross expedition with Thomas Blanky and George Deanshire, with whom he formed close friendships. He also speaks Inuktitut, perhaps the second most fluent, behind the Commander and ahead of the First Lieutenant.
A side note: William Hammond, our purser, would’ve been on the Franklin expedition, but he was supplemented with Charles Osmer since he was on vacation in France at the time.

We are having a grand time, getting closer to our goal of Lancaster Sound day by day.
I had my first invitation to an officer’s dinner today. There are only eight spots at the table, but thankfully (or perhaps sadly) Mr. Hammond was out sick again, with Mr. Wilson the Third Mate tending him.
Previously I only had a glimpse of officer’s dinners: I mostly converse with Mr. Darius Poole, the gunroom steward, who serves the meals to the warrant officers and civilian officers.
I have been classified as a civilian officer; and although I am not a warrant, I still dine with them for lack of space in the officer cabins. Before I regale the reader with tales from the officer’s dining room, I shall do the same for the warrant officer’s table.

There are six seats in the warrant officer’s dining room, which doubles as a meeting room. Adorning the room are several paintings; one of Captain Cook, another of the ships Astrolabe and Boussole steaming on to Australia, and another of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Clearly, the man responsible for dressing this room is an enjoyer of naval events. Another painting was the death of Nelson, put there by Captain Anderson himself, who witnessed the event aboard HMS Victory. The final painting, above the door’s entrance, is a painting of the bombardment of Copenhagen during the wars against the French. This was put there at the suggestion of Lieutenant Fells, whose older brother served with James Gambier at the battle and secured his position as a midshipman.

The warrant officers are as follows: Mr. John Henry, the Boatswain, who is regarded as the unofficial head of the warrant officers, I have deducted. The next is Mr. Robert Jenkins, the Carpenter, who sits closest to Andrews at his right. Mr. David Andrews, the engineer, sits at the other head of the table facing the Boatswain. I sat next to Mr. Jenkins, closest to the engineer.
Now, you may be asking, who are the other two seats for? Are they left unoccupied? And the answer is ‘no’. Despite not technically being a warrant officer, the Caulker, Thomas Williamson, is always invited. He has a Caulker’s Mate, so it only seems fit to involve him at the table. He is a friendly and mild-mannered gentleman who seems to be perpetually ill with a minor illness. The final seat is occupied by Daniel Andrews, the oldest and senior quartermaster, who was invited to the table because of his seniority and because he is the engineer’s son.

Theirs is the only father-son relationship aboard Edinburgh, and they get along very well. The group discussed the ice, the likelihood of where Franklin’s men were, and the provisions that they purchased on their own for the journey. I had no idea such things existed; having money to buy stores which are yours, that nobody else can touch unless you permit them. Even the Captain. It is a wonderful thing and I am saddened that I was not informed earlier, for I would have participated.
After the dinner, I completed my report on the stoker Joseph Smith. He seemed to have contracted tuberculosis from his workplace before the voyage - a factory in Plymouth which made metals - or coal, I cannot quite remember. He hid his symptoms from his family and only told his doctor, who assuredly told him that a voyage at sea would improve his health. How ironic.

James and I had a meeting today. We anticipated more sickness, and decided to take Able Seaman John Bolton on as an assistant. I believe his reward will be exemption from arctic watches, which are terribly cold, I am told, and can destroy a man’s fingers in a minute.

And now, the officer’s dinner. As I said earlier, the Purser, Mr. Hammond, seems perpetually ill. I feel for the poor fellow; his tongue is too large for his mouth, so he often blabbers on in the most egregious use of the English language I have ever heard. It might’ve been better if he was mute. He and Mr. Wilson take their meals together, anyway; he seems to be the only man who can stomach Mr. Hammond’s speech. The Mates do not have a specific dining room, they eat at the Warrant Officer’s dining room whenever it isn’t being used.

I took Mr. Hammond’s spot at the dining table. Quickly, the fellows filed in. James was the first in, of course, then myself, followed by the Third Lieutenant, then the First, the Second, the Commander, the Captain, and then myself. We began talking while we patiently awaited Mr. Burt, the Ice Master, who was late. He stumbled in a minute later and apologized. The Captain forgave him. Mr. Ellis (the ship’s cook) brought in the food; a splendid concoction of beef, potatoes, and lettuce. Brandy was provided but since James and I are teetotalers, we simply drank coffee. The Captain laughed and remarked that it was ‘probably for the good’ that his surgeons had sworn off drink.

I will regale the conversation to the best of my memory.

Capt. Anderson asked Mr. Burt, On which ship did you sail at Trafalgar? Mr. Burt responded with HMS Belleisle, sir. The Captain smiled and, upon request, began to tell us of his adventure aboard HMS Victory.

He told us of how he had counted the gunpowder and organized its distribution along with the ship’s purser, and then rushed up to tell his Captain, the famous Hardy, about the amount of ammunition they still had left. This was in the heat of battle with the Redoutable, and as soon as he had scrambled up the hatch, he saw Lord Nelson fall. He wanted to rush to him but Hardy did so first.

It was quite a depressing story, most of us knew the circumstances, even landlubbers like myself and James. Regardless, it was a welcome change that I should be involved in these dinners. Commander Deanshire led the conversation after that, and I told him that I had made John Bolton my assistant, in return for him being exempt from ice watches. Anderson agreed.

Then Commander Deanshire began to tell us of his life; his father was a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, his mother was a socialite. He seems to despise Catholics, so I left that part out of my monologue. Now is not the time to make enemies, after all. James was delighted in his new friendship with the Commander; the other week, before we began the passage to Lancaster Sound, I saw them fishing and smoking.

The odd thing is, James hates smoking.

Chapter Text

In the belly of HMS Edinburgh, Hamlet and Claudius were dueling.

Captain Anderson originally had the idea of putting on a play, to continue raising morale ever since the highly successful hunting expedition. It had been four days since then, and a few of the men were feeling slightly sickly. Anderson knew just what would help them, he reasoned, grog.

So Commander Deanshire had opened the grog valves and allowed the men their fill, just for the night, while a fourth of the ship abstained on watch. In return, they got chocolate and a promise of more pay back in England.

Banners and stripes had been decorated across the interior of the ship, put up by the carpenter and his mate. The whole ship was now to take sides, a villainous side that stood for Claudius, the villain in Hamlet, and the victorious side, who stood for Hamlet. Anderson had, jokingly, volunteered himself to command the villains, who cheered for Claudius every time he went on stage.

Nobody could quite remember the exact circumstances of the play (even though they had a playbook somewhere in Anderson’s cabin) so they simply dueled it out with play-swords and saying awfully 16th-century lines such as ‘thou’ ‘dost’ and ‘indubitably’ whenever they had to make a speech. Anderson cheered with the rest, and booed when Hamlet eventually won out over Claudius, the king of Denmark. At that moment, Henry Anderson announced that half of his crew would be going to visit the location of the Franklin ships, a fact which he had known since Lieutenant Fells had ventured forth from Expedition Camp (thereby saving himself and dooming First Mate Baynes) and discovered the Victory Point note. Anderson had stalled in the wake of the massacre at Expedition Camp, but no more. He knew time was of the essence.

Morale was at its highest. Men were well fed, having fun, and cheering. They had seen desperate little cheering following the Expedition Camp’s slaughter. Henry was glad to know that his men were well again, after all that had befell them.

And then the sickness started.

What began as a prick in the stomach soon turned grave. The root cause was immediately identified. The surviving liver of the older bear had caused a sickness in whomever ate it, Surgeon Curry surmised. He quickly drew up a list of all the men feeling ill, all men who had eaten from the liver. Surgeon Curry himself, Third Lieutenant Oliver Smith, Third Mate Edward Wilson, and Purser William Hammond. Edward Smith, the man who had lost his foot, also ate from the liver (having been given Anderson’s portion) but he was spared for some unknown reason.

Henry Anderson counted himself fortunate for every near-death scrape of his (that was, two). So it was that on the morning of the 25th, with the sick confined to quarters, Henry visited the Purser.

He knocked on the door first. It was only polite, right? When he heard a small mumble, he opened the sliding door. “Mr. Hammond, I am… glad to see you, sir.” Anderson cursed himself internally. Ever since he was apprenticing to the purser on HMS Victory as a young midshipman, he had never stopped calling pursers of his ‘sir.’

“Ahh.. good morning, William. How - how are you?”

“Ffffeehling, not the best, sir.” The purser’s humongous tongue spat out the word, and Anderson nodded. He knew of nothing else to say. The purser did not seem to be completely there. As he contemplated his next word, the purser murmured,

“Edward…”

The word was without slobbering. It seemed odd to hear the man start a sentence without it. Anderson looked up in surprise.

“The - the third mate? I can have you two move together, if you like?” When the purser gave a miniscule nod, Henry stood up.

“I’ll get that done for you, William. I promise. Just… live.” he stood up, and walked out. He felt himself sweating, despite the cold. He did not enjoy talking to dying men. His mother had been like this. Never concerned for herself, only for others, mostly her son. His father never noticed that he had no friends at the naval school, and he had never told his mother, but she knew. He felt like a child. A sad, lonely child. He wiped his hand over his face.

He went back into his cabin. He called for his steward, who appeared moments later, quick as you could want.

“Yes, sir?”

“Ah, Simon. I’d like… if you could move Mr. Wilson and his bed to Mr. Hammond’s room. They seem very close, and he asked for him. They-”

Hoar had an extremely guilty look on his face the entire time that Anderson was speaking. He frowned and said, “What?”

“Sir, Mr. Wilson died. Ten minutes ago.”

Within the day, Mr. Wilson was put in the dead room. The carpenter had, grimly, constructed several additional coffins as soon as the men had gotten sick. Before they could secure the coffin, Mr. Hammond was dead, too. Henry ordered the coffins put next to each other in that infernal dead room, which he refused to enter.

Henry had visited the other dying men, despite the fact that he desperately did not want to. This was his duty to shoulder, after all. Third Lieutenant Smith, who had seemed so healthy and erect four days ago, was a shell. He could not speak. He only looked at Anderson beneath his sweating face, and blinked. It disturbed Henry so much that he left, after only a few short moments. The surgeon was another story.

Before he had even closed the door, James Curry had spoken.

“Sir, I have something to ask of you.”

“Err - yes?”

“My brother will be sad, and alone. I ask that you and the officers help him in any way -” Curry coughed, and bit of blood went on his sleeve. Anderson felt disgusted.

“Yes, we will do that. He’s got that assistant of his, Mr. Bolton, I believe. He’ll help sort him out. You’re certain, then?”

He didn’t ask Curry what he was certain of, but he knew the man understood.

“Yes. I’m a corpse. Nothing to be-” he coughed. “-done. How many others have died?”

Henry hesitated for a moment, wanting to tell the man none, and that he should get better instead. “Everyone except Mr. Smith.”

Curry sighed and nodded. Anderson stood up, feeling he had nothing more to say, but Curry grabbed his hand.

“This was - this was the greatest honor of my life, sir. Keep me in the dead room. When you cross for the Passage, I want to be aboard.”

Anderson nodded, swallowing tears, and shook his hand. He left not a moment later, just as the Commander entered. He knew they were great friends, ever since departing Greenhithe. He gave a wordless nod to the Commander, and retreated back to his cabin.

For the first time in a long time, he left his meal alone. It sat at the end of the long leaning table. Henry took off his hat and smoothed his balding hair. Only a few fringes clung to the sides of his head, but it was a habit he had kept up since his lieutenant days. In these depressing circumstances, he sat on the bench and looked at the ice expanding out of the window. His ship was quite caught, he knew. But he did not lose hope. He could not. He would not. Imagine what The Commodore would think of him. He had despised the man who called himself his father. Commodore Richard Anderson had come within a hair’s breadth of being knighted, and had gone all across the globe for the Empire. Though he was thirty years dead, his anecdotes about the Revolutionary War continued to intrigue and inspire hatred in his son.

Every son wants to be greater than their father, he thought. Even more so when your father was so sparingly in his praise, was always away on assignment, or was confined to his study when he was home. The man who had left his mother to her wasting illness and a doctor while he went off on Royal Navy assignment. His father had been well built, Henry had become fat. His father had won naval victories, he had not a single combat victory to his name. He had spent his entire Captaincy in port at Spithead. Fucking Spithead. As he became a Commander, his sons became Captains, and served in the Opium Wars in China. He was eventually promoted to Captain after several petitionings by his own sons, and given HMS Edinburgh.

He knew he was not chosen for this voyage on competency alone. He had been the closest, the most convenient, the most well stocked ship. He had never given a single thought to the deadly consequences of Arctic exploration. If this was the achievement that would allow him to retire gracefully, maybe with a knighthood, a governorship, and a promotion, he would have cut off his foot for the assignment.

But the greatest thing would be to overcome his father’s career. Oh, how that would be sweet. He laughed aloud, in the empty room, thinking of it.

Henry Anderson was so immersed in this pleasureful delusion that he did not notice when Steward Hoar emerged to inform him that Third Lieutenant Oliver Smith and Surgeon James Curry had both passed away in the night. He thanked the man, and blinked. He checked the time. It was nearly 3:00 AM, and he had spent hours thinking of the circumstances which led him here.

He took another glance at the ice. He knew he would not live for long if they stayed here. His gout had been flaring up recently, and he struggled to walk some days. They would leave, find Franklin’s men (now under the command of Crozier) and walk out. Yes, he would tell them in the morning. But for now, he could immerse himself in cold food.

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon and Naturalist aboard H.M.Ship Edinburgh.

30 August 1848
Dear readers, I enclose several drawings which I managed to find the time to make (and some Daguerreotypes).

And now, onto the updates. The date is August 30th, a month and ten days from my last addition, although I’ve added several addendums since then, of course. We entered the Arctic (and Lancaster Sound) on July 27th. It was smooth sailing until then, with the men who voted for a Norwegian whaler being the last white men we would see winning the bet I had mentioned previously. The Oslo was the final ship that we met, and Captain Anderson had dinner with their captain before we left. I can only speculate on the language issues.

We sailed through easily, with the men fishing the icy water all the time. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hammond caught another seal for me, and I had seal meat for the first time in my life. It isn’t as bad as someone in London might suggest. It is quite rubbery, but the taste is rather good for what the texture lacks. I cut it open again, and found that its organs have a queer look, as the last one did.

There has been little sickness, thus I have all the time in the world to work on my sea portraits and my diary. Two unfortunate deaths which this expedition has suffered have been our two Inuit guides, who perished from similar European illnesses, to which they had no immunity. Or at least, that is brother James’s theory. Qaktilab and Heeneezeepook were buried on Beechey Island as soon as we came upon it, next to the Franklin graves (of Mr. Torrington, Braine, and Hartnell respectively), with all honor. We felt it prudent to bury them instead of keeping them in the dead room, since they are not from our country. This lowers our roster to sixty men.

While I am on the topic of the Franklin graves, I shall tell you of their discovery. Mr. Butler, a quartermaster, made the initial sighting. Men under Mr. Smith and brother James went ashore in a cutter and discovered them. The graves were of a fine making, and we decided they were a fine spot to put our dead guides. They contain the mortal remains of:

William Braine, a Private Marine, aboard Erebus.

John Torrington, the Leading Stoker aboard Erebus.

John Hartnell, an Able Seaman aboard HMS Erebus.

We brought them out for a momentary inspection, and were astonished at the quality of the corpses. They were of such fine quality that you could say they died yesterday, and we would have believed it. There was no smell in the coffins, as is usual with corpses, but we felt no need to completely dissect them. We put them back in their coffins as soon as we had looked for outer problems, and found none. Brother James and I concur in the fact that some or all died of consumption, that most wretched of diseases among seafaring men, along with scurvy.

Below, I drew a sketch of the five graves shortly after their burial.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.9e501f77f850702fb837b0a916cbe9c5?rik=v0JfRSpWsT4eIg&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ric.edu%2ffaculty%2frpotter%2fgraves1875_sm.jpg&ehk=l0FO0YMUsgEUSaaGxIF6j75aaYFLBdwCdITymcSRW6s%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0

Sadly, we have also been trapped by the ice in Beechey, since August 14th. The ice-master, a short man by the name of John Burt, is an Arctic veteran and one of the finest characters aboard our ship. He assures me and the Captain that the ice will melt sometime in February or March of next year, and we will be on our way again in early 1849. Thus, all we can do is wait and enjoy ourselves. Captain Anderson ordered Lieutenant Smith and Mate Cartridge to lead a work party in constructing a cairn to house our first official expedition message in the Arctic, which will be deposited at the end of our little winter here.

Now on to recent developments. I am almost done with my portrait of the five graves at Beechey, and I have decided to begin another one: HMS Edinburgh. There was no photo taken of the ship before we departed, unfortunately, so I asked the Captain for permission to travel to Beechey in order to paint Edinburgh in all its glory. He granted me this boon, and I set out on the ice with two marines guarding me. We layered up in various items; me in my gold-clothed cap, the marines in their black caps, with all of us putting on heavy grey wool coats and thick ice boots. They are tremendously uncomfortable, but I am assured that it is better than slipping on the ice.

We also put on these little peculiar snow goggles, even though visibility is fine. Apparently, a condition called ‘snow blind’ can render someone completely blind for a period of time because of the snow. I had not heard of this before, we don’t see much snow on the Isle of Mann, after all, but it is an important distinction which I felt I must include.

The journey was hard and rough. Though we could see the shore, it took the better part of an hour to reach it. Corporal Keller slipped once, and me and Private Farrows had to help him up. My opinion of Keller has only grown lower. Private Farrows, on the other hand, is the kindest of men - always joking and ready to offer an anecdote about the time he did this with whom. Thus, we made it across the ice in good spirits. Mate Cartridge was there to welcome us and pull us onto the stone, his party was still hard at work. I drew up my sketching paper and drew Edinburgh, which from this distance appeared sleepy as a babe. It had a few lights glimmering, but otherwise was relatively dark. It was the height of daytime, though, so I did not lack light.

While we were there, Captain Anderson drew up a tent over the quarter and main decks, leaving the foredeck open for marine patrols. Apparently, we completely wintered while I was gone. I added the tents to my sketch and included a little dot for Mr. Wentworth, on the mast, when he waved at me. I waved back, of course. I did not know it was him at the time, but he later told me that it was.

I introduced myself to the rest of the work detail once I was done sketching. I’d known them and their names from the start, of course, I memorized the muster, but I wanted to know them personally.

Lieutenant Fells is a tall man, with a great black mustache which makes him look twenty years older than he is. He’s actually twenty-nine. Mate Cartridge is a pious Catholic, as well as an Irishman. He is barely understood by many of the work detail, to our amusement and his great frustration. He is a small man, perhaps 5’7, and very clearly grew up in a life of privilege. He speaks well, dresses better, and we got along rather well. He believes in strict discipline, floggings and the like for mistakes, which appall Captain Anderson but make him more sympathetic in the eyes of some of the warrant officers and marines. Mr. Wallows, strangely, seems to enjoy whenever a punishment is delegated. Wallows was also part of this group, and I will delegate a section to him. There is no danger of him reading this, for he cannot read.

Mr. Thomas Wallows, from the muster records, is only seventeen years old. He is clean-shaven and pale faced, lean and of average height. He is also Irish but is a Protestant. The most striking green eyes seem to poke out of his face whenever he looks at someone. He has not done a single thing to specifically bring displeasure, but it is the feeling I get, and I cannot help ill humors.

William Wallace was born on the streets, to hear him tell it, and brought to a Scottish orphanage. They called him William Wallace, after the hero, and he lived there until he was sixteen. From there, he joined the navy and is now nineteen. He is a handsome, tall lad, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He heartily enjoys food, so we supped together after his work was done.

Henry Thompson is a Scotsman, born in the Highlands (if I am a good judge of accents) who is again a pious Catholic. He was taken on the expedition despite his relative lack of experience because he and his father were personal friends of Mr. Reid, Erebus’s Ice-Master, before he left for the voyage.

Alexander Mason is a rude sot, who almost came to blows with Lieutenant Fells over who had to place a large stone. He has duty in the log more often than not, and I’ve had to treat several cuts from what I can only assume are fights below decks. When I asked him how he sustained these injuries, he shrugged and said, “I fell.”

Finally, John Maynard is an English seaman, born in Bermuda to an American mother and an English father. He was brought over the pond in swaddling clothes, for this he likes to joke that he has more sailing experience than half of this misbegotten crew.

We went into camp late in the day, where two tents had been set up. One for me and the marines, and another for the work detail. We had supper before turning in, veal cutlet and gravy. Our tents are sturdy, dyed such a stale white that they appear almost gray. Private Farrows keeps to himself, but is a good lad, while you know my opinion of Mr. Keller. It was hard to sleep, but I achieved it sometime around 3 AM.

In the morning, I supper on leftover gravy and beans, and left the work detail to their construction. The cairn was almost done, to my knowledge, and it is of a handsome construction. It will surely be found by expeditions after us, who will recount this as the stepping stone for the voyage that traversed the last link of the world, the North-West Passage. Below is a drawing I made of it, later.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/ba/81/f7ba81d17b7c5b999eb4bd962024becb--mountain-sketch-sketch-a-day.jpg

The journey back to Edinburgh was harder than before, with the ice piling up further. While Edinburgh does not have a tilt that I could discern (yet) the ice has begun to pile up on the hull, which means that the ladder required an extension. We had to wait at the bottom of the vessel, in the freezing cold, for ten minutes while the carpenter and his mate worked on the ladder. My teeth were slamming together by the time I entered my quarters in officer’s country.

I have to admit, this weather is more than I could have expected. I sought out brother James to make sure I had not gotten frostbite (even though my moleskin gloves) and he turned me pale when he suggested we cut off my little finger. I punched his chest when he told me he was joking, and we had a laugh about it.

The next day was filled with very little; I conversed with Mr. Wentworth to confirm that it was him who waved to me on the mast. I supped with brother James. In the evening, though, I had a private dinner with the Captain, to my glee. I shall recount it to the best of my ability, for these anecdotes will soon be treasured, to have known the conqueror of the North-West Passage.

I was there first, of course (you must not keep a Captain waiting, in any circumstance) at which point the Captain apologized profusely for having kept me waiting. We sat, and he took off his cap. I took in his appearance, he has thinned somewhat since I met him on the docks of Greenhithe, but there was still a prominent weight to him. I’ve heard it said that he was the spitting image of Sir John Franklin, with less hair, and I can confirm this.

The Captain spoke of the ice and told me that we’d be out early next year by most estimates.

I asked him if they were confident of that, he smiled and asked, “Why wouldn’t we be?”

The conversation moved to our childhoods. He had grown up in a manor, like I had, but his was relatively empty, for he nor his parents had siblings. His mother had consumption (which led him to despise sickness, I surmise) and this may have played a part in his putting off the stoker, Joseph Smith, when it became apparent that the man had the disease. He attended Eton, to the greatest of my astonishment. He did not seem that well-bred of a fellow. His father was a Commodore, to hear him tell it, though he did not accomplish much during the American Rebellion, for the Americans had very little of a navy.

Anderson seemed interested in my naturalist discoveries. I told him of the seals we dissected, though he balked a little at how I explained the cutting, he was interested enough in the anatomies. He seemed most interested in polar bears, but seeing as I had not yet dissected any, he had to be disappointed. I promised him that if the marines ever killed one, I would tell him of its internal organs as soon as I had finished. He bowed me out of the greatcabin, and I went to write this.

The winter on Beechey is progressing well enough. There are few complications, and no casualties, to my immense gratitude. The only thing filling my day is immense boredom. The cairn is set to be finished soon enough, and after that, all we need to do is wait out God’s hand to lift up the ice and set us free to go on our great quest.

Chapter Text

HMS Edinburgh yawned in the early morning hours of May 26th, 1850.

Of course, it wasn’t the ship itself that yawned. The ice that crackled distantly below and beside the ship was a constant annoyance to the crew. They would be glad to leave it behind, in just a few hours. All preparations had been made over the past week, under the supervision of the Commander and First Lieutenant.

Lighter stoves were taken down to the ice, boats had been dragged down below. Coal and guns and bullets were taken out of storage. Forty-six men remained on the roster of HMS Edinburgh, but only forty would be leaving. Three days earlier, a list had been drawn up regarding who would stay on the vessel:

John Henry, Boatswain, commissioned Third Mate for ease of command, Simeon Fitzgerald the Carpenter’s Mate, Able Seamen Henry Thompson and Edward Rudolph, and both Ship’s Boys, William Wilson and Mason Smith.

Six men, including both Ship’s Boys, under the command of an experienced seaman. Anderson regarded that as more than enough to crew Edinburgh, provided they suffered no casualties. A single boat would be left to them, as well as the normal 3/4ths provisions of six men for two years. They were also left with the ship’s cat, Alexander (the dog being called Porus) and several guns.

The unloading itself had taken enormous effort, Anderson knew, but it was likely to get better. Some of the older men, like Ice-Master Burt, had been excluded from heaving, but Anderson knew that was likely to change as men died on the march. And men will die, to be sure, he thought.

His Ice-Master had been reasonably sure when he said that the ice showed no signs of lifting.

The ice could lift tomorrow, though, he thought despairingly. It was just that hard to tell in this weather, colder than he’d ever seen, but it was the month of May. There were no leads, but they could easily appear tomorrow. He supposed that was why they were leaving a garrison.

He had decided to take the Ship’s Log for that year with him. What is a ship without its men? He would record the march every night after supper, sitting in his jolly boat.

One boat had been converted into a mobile Sick Bay for any men with ailments. This was also where the injured would sit. They had left the garrison of Edinburgh a single jolly boat. The other jolly boat was where Captain Henry Anderson would command the march, sitting to relieve his gout-ridden feet.

His steward knocked, and then opened the door. Anderson checked his watch, and then looked up. 2:00 PM.

“Sir, the men are ready. We’ve gotten into our slops. I assume you’d like to as well, sir?”

“No. I have to look sharp in front of the men. The epaulets remind them that I’m their Captain, not just an old fool.” His steward didn’t seem to have a response to that, so he nodded and left the room. Anderson stood up, and took a final glance at the greatcabin. It looked incredibly bare, although all his fine things like his books and music player had been left behind. His drink had been brought along, and his gun and sword, so he supposed that was it.

“Goodbye,” he muttered to nobody, and stepped out.

The air was crisp and, as usual, cold. He pulled his gloves on and made sure his hat covered his ears. The bosun was piping for the men to stand at attention, and the six marines shouldered behind Anderson. Six marines where there had once been seven. Expedition Camp had been a disaster. A marine, the sailmaker, the Captain of the Foretop, four Able Seamen, and Mr. Baynes. But they had recovered. Here, on this freezing day in May, forty men were about to entrust their lives to Captain Henry Anderson.

From HMS Edinburgh to a jolly boat. Anderson chuckled.

The men had assembled now. Officers and marines behind Anderson, enlisted men and petty officers in front. The Bosun stood to the side, with his mate, Alfred Back, who was coming with them on the march. Back was hated by the able seamen, because he was the one who delivered punishments, and several gave him dark looks.

“What you do in the next year will determine the rest of everyone’s lives.” he began, simply. “We will live or we will die, and this does not depend on me, it depends on all of you. Your conduct, your hauling, your drive to live. This must not be forty separate men running for their lives, for that is most assuredly what we are, this must be one single ship, a solid oak trireme, rushing for’ard to grasp life with two hands. I ask you, DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?”

A resounding cry of “YES!” was taken up by the ship’s company.

“Good. Mr. Henry, dismiss the men.”

The Bosun piped, and the men dismissed below to gather up their last things. Anderson caught him by the arm as he was putting up his whistle.

“You have an additional whistle, yes? Mr. Back will require it on the march.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve already bequeathed it to him.”

Anderson paused for a moment. “I cannot say anything more without looking an utter fool, but - the sacrifice you’re making…”

The Bosun smiled, thinly. “No apology is necessary, sir. We’ll make our own way out. Ice-Master Burt assures me that there is a fair chance of the ship being released from this icy grip.”

The Captain was sharply reminded of his talk with the dying Surgeon Curry. He nodded, smiled even thinner than the Bosun had, and stepped away.

The men were descending the ladders, now. Only a few marines remained on the bow, still patrolling, while the stewards were gathering up the last of the important documents. Hoar, he saw, had the Ship’s Log cradled in his hands. Two men waited at the bottom of the ladder. Anderson tried not to scoff. I can climb down a ladder, he thought miserably. But when he did so, he realized that he couldn’t. He pressed his toes, now inflamed, onto the next ring of the ladder, only to have a searing pain shoot through his feet and up to his legs. He groaned, and his legs began shaking.

He focused on the men helping him down. A marine and a petty officer, he saw, from their uniforms. But who? He did not particularly care, but it was a nice distraction exercise. At the bottom of the ladder, salvation awaited. He used the middle and back of his feet to bear his weight, and it became easier and easier to walk. Eventually, he was able to hobble. He made the climb down the ice hill which had piled up beneath HMS Edinburgh, assisted by the two men once again. His steward had gone ahead to the boats, assembled outside.

The ship seemed even sturdier as he walked away from it. A momentary, wild thought came to him, to put his men back on the ship. But it flew away just as soon as it had arrived. The climb was finished. “There.” he muttered, to nobody.

The men were all in slops, he saw. For hauling. If he’d been a younger man, he gladly would have participated. Indeed, he had ordered his officers to join in, though none had requested to be left out. Commander Deanshire seemed to be leading the hauling effort. Large sails were attached to every one of the boats, but to Anderson’s own, in place of a sail, two giant flags flew. The naval ensign of the Royal Navy, and the Union Jack. Men gave a cheer when they were hoisted onto the top of the boat’s small mast. Supplies and books were clustered around Anderson, while the larger boats held the provisions. The six men pulling his jolly boat were Hoar, Cartridge, Sergeant Rouger, and three other able seamen. They got into their harnesses, as did the other men in all the other boats. Forty men held their breath for a command only Henry Anderson could give. He was reminded suddenly of Lieutenant Bligh, and his fateful journey with eighteen other men to Coupang, a distance of 3,600 miles. He had chosen the painting for the room himself, after that miraculous navigational achievement. He had double the men, threescore the provisions, and 1/7th of the distance to traverse. That was a comforting thought, but…

He looked back at HMS Edinburgh. Six men were standing on the main deck, watching them prepare. One had a cloth-of-gold hat, which had once belonged to First Mate Baynes. And now he’s been replaced, thought Anderson. And the ship. His first ship, likely his last, if he even survived this. His miracle, his disaster. They should’ve been in Hong Kong by now. He would’ve been a conqueror. Just like Lord Nelson, that fateful day… The taste of glory… His mouth suddenly felt bitter, and he realized he had bitten his tongue. He shook his head, and turned back to his men, sitting in the boat, who were all watching him now. A clarity came to his mind now. After years of indecision, he knew the one command that was required of him now.

“FORWARD, MEN!”

Chapter Text

“Sir, are we going to die?”

The Ice-Master did not know what to say to that. He had known men who were stuck for four winters in ice and lived, but it had not been as cold as it was now, in the middle of summer.

If it does not melt now, Burt thought, it never would.

But he would never tell the Boatswain that. He was still waiting for an answer. “Yes, you will. The ice will melt before your provisions end, I have no doubt.” The Boatswain seemed reassured at that, but he still looked skeptical. Regardless, he did not press the point. He simply nodded, and stepped away, leaving Burt to his own thoughts.

And now John Burt, Ice-Master of HMS Edinburgh, was sitting in a tent on King William Island with the Assistant Surgeon, a fellow called Curry, and the Boatswain, John Henry, was sitting in the Captain’s quarters.

The camp that Captain Anderson had put up was a small one, and compacted, for they would only be staying there one night. They needed time to bring lagging supplies to the shore. The march the night previously was the hardest he had ever marched, hauling under ropes on slippery ice. He had cursed every God he had ever heard of that night, and would likely do so in a few hours, when they would leave this camp.

He looked up. The Surgeon was paying all his attention to a book he cradled in both hands. He knew the book that the Assistant Surgeon was reading wasn’t an academic text. For one, it had a shooting star on the front.

“What are you reading?” he asked, looking down at his own feet. They had closed blisters, from his boots. The bottom layer of his sock was also red, but it had dried, so it was nothing more than an accessory. He moved up to brush his hair, forgetting that he’d lost most of it within the last few years, advanced by his service on the second Ross Expedition and this one.

The man did not deign to respond. He kept looking down at his book. Burt didn’t think that he had seen more blank and empty eyes ever in his life. It disturbed him down to his core. They were the eyes of an old man who had seen much war - why, this man couldn’t be more than thirty, and surely had never seen a battle. He left the tent not a moment later. The first streams of light were fluttering through the sky, but it was still largely dark. A few lanterns were lit in some tents, others were still dark - a few marines patrolled the tents. Burt said hello to Private Levine, a tall Welshman, on patrol near the Captain’s tent.

Further on, on the outskirts of camp, the marine tent was asleep and snoring. Five men were abed. Another seaman’s tent was full to the brim, with men inside, even though it was not yet four in the morning. He frowned. They should have been sleeping, but they weren’t. But he made no move to chastise grown men. He moved further, to the very outskirts of camp, where nobody was patrolling. What he was about to do would’ve been unwise, if the bears hadn’t already been killed and eaten. Burt brought a loaded pistol, though, just in case.

The camp was hardly a camp anymore. A few scraps, remnants of a campfire, a fork here and there. The bodies had been taken out, as were the crates and supplies that the men had used to fortify themselves inside. They had been driven out of the outer area first, he knew, and then put to the defensive in the inner wall, near the officer’s tent. Baynes himself was still warm when Burt took him in his arms to carry him with the others.

He looked very peaceful and beautiful in that state. The only one who had truly been hard to look upon was Private Farrows. Clearly, he was responsible for the injuries that the older bear had suffered, because the majority of the blood near his body was not his own. He remembered the incident where Private Farrows lost a hand, and would until the day he died.

When Expedition Camp was set up permanently, Lieutenant Fells had sent Able Seaman Newton Mills along with a lantern and a message for the Captain. The camps were remarkably close, so much so that you could hear rifle firing if it was fired near the ship. The only thing obscuring them was a large hill, piled up ice, and a rolling fog. Accompanying Seaman Mills was Private John Farrows with his shotgun and both the ship’s animals, the dog Porus and the cat Alexander.

When the dog and cat returned to Edinburgh, but not Mills or Farrows, Anderson sent a rude message to Fells asking why he had allowed the ship’s animals to run away from his camp. Fells sent a confused reply, stating that two men and a message had accompanied the animals, and this message got through. At that point, Anderson realized the problem.

He sent the four marines of HMS Edinburgh and Burt himself (the other three being at Expedition Camp) to look for the missing men. A bloody lit lantern and a single hand on the ice, still clutching the lantern, were all that was discovered. Half a mile inland, to the west of the camp, they found a spent shotgun. A close inspection of a ditch nearby would reveal the corpse of Newton Mills, Able Seaman, only identified by the cloth on his neck. His face and chest had been ripped up, Sergeant Rouger later reported, but Burt would’ve said savaged would be a better word for it.

A quarter-mile away, they found the gasping Private Farrows. Other than a missing hand, he was fine, and the surgeons cut away potential rot when they got him back to the ship. He was taught to use the rest of his stump to help prime his gun (though he could no longer reload) and continued his duties, mostly as a sentry. Anderson then decided to send the Assistant Surgeon, Curry, to the camp, so he could treat any wounded at the time of injury. Private Farrows was sent back with him, despite his protests.

Burt came upon the grave of Newton Mills now. He had been one of the few men they interred, before Anderson realized that too many supplies were wasted burying men who couldn’t tell them thank you. A few men had left musket caps on the grave, but otherwise it was as it had been when he was interred.

Later on, Captain Anderson decided to send several lifeboats over to Expedition Camp in order to help them fortify in-case of an attack by bears or natives. Fells employed these boats, and finally felt safe enough to launch his own expedition across King William Island. He took nine men and left eight under the command of Baynes, taking only a single boat for his own provisions.

Burt had returned to the ship after that, but he had heard tell of Fells expedition. He knew it was where they had found the Victory Point note, but not much else. The carpenter’s mate had caught a sickness and nearly died. When they returned they found the entire camp dead. Private Farrows’ efforts had bought him a week or so more of life.

That was a sobering thought. The sun was really streaming through the sky now. He supposed he should return before they declared him missing and hauled without him, which he knew they would. He had one more errand to make.

Near the edge of the island, Oscar Baynes had been interred. It was only a small area from the ice hole where the other seven of his men had been dumped, ceremoniously, with the Captain muttering things like ‘when the sea shall give up her dead’ and ‘commit these bodies to the deep.’ He could still see the faint outline of the hole.

This grave had been visited by the officers, to be sure. On it, he found no coins (no officer was fool enough to leave what men were likely to steal) but he found a scarf, a bullet, and a gold coat button. That was unwise, it was likely to be stolen as well. To the left of the well-constructed grave, a small cairn lay. It was dug by Lieutenant Fells, partly for his experience in digging cairns (tested on Beechey Island) and his own personal affection for the First Mate.

But nothing like his own.

Baynes had been a star in the night sky. Always smiling, offering an anecdote. He had no wife or children, like Burt, but he did have a large array of siblings, of whom he was constantly speaking of. Burt felt himself oddly jealous. He even smiled at the memory, now. He had the queerest sensation, then, to take up the grave and look at the man one last time, which was assuredly not rotten yet. The graves at Beechey had proven that. This unnatural land could sustain a body for years. There probably wouldn’t even have been a smell.

But, no. He pushed that away. He remembered the note in the cairn, which he had helped write, very well. It was the first left on King William Island.

H.M.Ship Edinburgh’s crew set up Expedition Camp on the Northeast peak of King William Island. The majority of Expedition Camp departed on a successful exploration mission, the remaining men of the camp (one officer, seven enlisted) were killed in an attack by white bears after a valiant defense of Her Majesty’s camp. The enlisted were interred in an ice hole one mile to the north of this grave. Here lies Oscar John Baynes, at rest.

P.S Expedition Camp returning to H.M.Ship Edinburgh.

1st Lieut. Carson E. Fells
Ice-Master J. Burt

The deceased are as follows.

OSCAR BAYNES, FIRST MATE
JOHN FARROWS, PRIVATE MARINE
REID FRASER, CAPTAIN OF THE FORETOP
GEORGE PERRY, SAILMAKER
WILLIAM SMITH, ABLE SEAMAN
THOMAS WENTWORTH, ABLE SEAMAN
THOMAS ULBRICHT, ABLE SEAMAN
ROBERT TEAGUE, ABLE SEAMAN

It had been Burt’s suggestion to add the names of the deceased. Likely they would write about it in their journals, later, but men had to know that these people were not a statistic. To Burt, Baynes was not a statistic. He never would be, not even when he was rotting in the ground like his First Mate was.

He felt foolish. Of course he would never be a statistic. He would be survived by his four siblings, and his parents, who to the best of Burt’s knowledge still lived. He had only spoken a few times to Burt, not that he would pay attention to him normally, but that didn’t matter. When Burt died, nobody would remember him. Perhaps a few of the men who had once served under him, on those whalers, but no family to speak of. It was fitting, he thought, that Baynes should be remembered, and Burt forgotten.

He made his way back to camp, now. They would surely be looking for him. If not for him, for his rank and station. He was an officer now, he liked to remind himself. Even as a civilian officer, he still ate dinner with the Captain and conversed with members of high society. That, along with getting the company of men like Baynes, was one of the few comforts of the Discovery Service.

He re-entered the barrier which marked the outskirts of the camp. A marine raised his eyebrow. Robert MacMillan, he distantly remembered. “‘Twas visiting the graves.” he said, gruffly, and that was all it took for MacMillan to nod and sidestep to let him into camp. Men were already packing; some tents had been taken up, but every tent had a light blazing. It seemed he took a lot longer than he thought. He returned to his cabin to find his French New Testament on his bed, with everything else packed up. He wanted to thank Curry Jr, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. He found himself, almost out of habit, flipping through the old pages. He had learned French from his mother, a French seamstress on the Channel Islands. He had been born and lived in Dover, though, so he knew nothing of the French. He spoke their language, though, which had to count for something. He supposed he would settle in Quebec if he survived this.

Private Farrows had also been born to a French mother and also spoke French - something he and Burt had bonded over, before Farrows’ injury. They attended Mate Cartridge’s Mass every Sunday, and sat in the same pew. After Farrows lost his hand, he had physically recovered, but he had never been.. well. Never quite there, in a mental sense. He stopped going to Mass. It was hard to keep up a friendship with a man like that. He felt a prick of guilt that he hadn’t given a damn about Farrows’ body, when he had been so focused on Baynes.

Thank God I didn’t drop him, he thought. That was the least he could do for him.

I could’ve done so much more, though, he thought.

No, no. He pushed those thoughts away. He moved to busywork. His tent was more or less scalped by now - it was an excellent job. He reminded himself to thank whoever did it, and Mr. Curry Jr when he came by. All he had to do was put his holy book in his pack. He put his pistol in the pack as well, no use carrying a loaded weapon now.

A few men were loitering by the boats now, waiting to sit. Private MacMillan was speaking with Corporal Keller next to the kitchen, or what used to be the kitchen, while Patrick Ellis, the Edinburgh’s famously fat cook, was bellowing orders at Able Seaman given messmate duties. He smiled. Some things never changed.

One of the few tents that hadn’t been taken up was the officer’s tent. A tall thing, it was not very wide, no more wide than a normal tent. It fit the Captain’s Bed and a large fold-up table. The officers were congregating inside, while two marines went to the sentry. He nodded to John Rouger, who let him through, calling to the Captain inside, “Sir, Ice-Master Burt has arrived.”

The Captain smiled at him from his chair. The Commander was saying something to him, and he was laughing. He had never seen the Captain smiling so widely.

Perhaps he’s regained his hope, Burt thought. He soon became even more confident of that thought. He’d regained his purpose, now that he had an objective, not just waiting for supernatural circumstances. That was a good sign.

“Ah, John! Come, sit down. We were just about to start. I forgot to ask for you. Funniest thing, don’t you think? Sorry.”

He waved off the apology and took a seat next to Mate Cartridge. The one surviving Mate, two surviving Lieutenants, the Assistant Surgeon, Captain, and Commander were also seated. It hit him that these men were all the survivors among the officers of HMS Edinburgh. They seemed so numerous in Greenhithe. They had a purser, surgeon, three mates, and three lieutenants then. Before the melancholy descended upon him, he turned his attention to the Captain.

“Right, well. John! Come in here! I’d like your discussion too.” The Captain bellowed, seemingly to the outside, because he was not looking at Burt when he said it. John Rouger shuffled in, and took a seat at the end of the table. Steward Hoar was standing behind Captain Anderson. Ludwig Rouse, the Subordinate Officer’s Steward, stood behind the Commander. He noted the absence of Mr. Poole, the gun-room steward, who remained with the other two warrant officers, as their servant.

“We’re all here? Good. Well, as you all know, my orders are to find Sir John Franklin and his men first and foremost.” The Captain grew solemn now, even sullen, and Burt saw a change in his face.

“The Passage is beyond us now. That, no one can dispute. But… to find Franklin, that would be accomplishing my orders. So we will still follow them, before we attempt to get ourselves out. We know the location of the ships. I’ve discussed this with the Commander, who will lead the potential sallying expedition from a new Expedition Camp. We intend to go south, and set up our camp at the southeastern point of the island. From there, we will sally our supplies slowly across the straits, until we are all through, and able to make it to Repulse Bay, marked here.” Anderson crudely pointed to a map, nailed to the table.

“From there, we will be taken up by whalers, I have no doubt. If we arrive during winter when the ice is unmelted, for unknown reasons, Mr. Curry assures me that we do not have enough provisions to last out a winter in that bay. We will spend most of our provisions just making it there. So if we do not arrive in time, we will.. Need to haul ourselves out. Quebec’s waters rarely freeze up completely. If we march across Southampton Island, we can reach those waters, and sail from there into Hudson Strait, where whalers are found year-round.”

The men nodded. One gulped. Rouger seemed to be steeling himself for the march, gritting his teeth together. Anderson winced.

“When we establish Expedition Camp in that previously mentioned location, we will send Mr. Deanshire here across the southern portion of King William Island, to discover Franklin’s men, if they are there. After that, he will march to the location marked for Erebus and Terror, and have their men join ours, along with all their arms and provisions. Once that is done, he will head south again, and make for our camp, where we will begin moving our supplies over. From there, the march for our lives.” He finished, breathing deeply, and looking around nervously for the reaction of his officers.

Darius Poole brought in tea. Anderson took a gulp, and then blanched from the heat.

“I don’t like it, sir. But it’s a chance. To find Franklin and live. I’ll take it.”

Rouger had spoken up, looking at Anderson with an appreciation that he had never seen in the man before. Anderson smiled, and his nervousness was sent away. He began to speak, standing up for what seemed like the first time since he had left Edinburgh, despite the fact that it gave him considerable pain.

“Lieutenant Jameson, begin the march.”

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

March 24th, 1849

On March 14th, ten days ago, our winter on Beechey ended. Able Seaman Robert Marcus almost died of the frost, but otherwise our casualties have been negligible. Thus, the Ice-Master’s prediction has been proven correct. We count ourselves extremely fortunate to not have lost a single White man ever since we left Greenland. Our roster still sits at 62 men and officers. The only significant losses that we sustained on Beechey were the last of our live animals (chickens) and our two Esquimaux guides whom I previously mentioned to have died following complications with European diseases.

We really have the most jolly of feelings as we leave this misbegotten island. Before I venture to our sailing thus far, I shall recount the last days on Beechey.

They were filled with immense boredom. This was alleviated when Ice-Master Burt (humorously rumored to have been urinating at the time) noticed that the ice was thinner than the week before. He stepped onto the ice and brought two Able Seamen and an ice pick, and confirmed the rumor. Captain Anderson, thus influenced, used some of the ship’s explosives again, and we were free.

Lieutenant Smith was dispatched with several men, including Mate Cartridge, to leave our official message on Beechey Island. They made a short, brutal trip inland and cut across rock and stone over several hours. They made camp beneath the cairn and laid the following message into the base of the rocks, in Captain Anderson’s hand:

“HMShip Edinburgh entered Lancaster Sound 27th July 1848 and proceeded to the north of Beechey Isle where officers and men wintered from August 14th 1848 to March 14th 1849. 4 Enlisted are discharged as of writing, 2 on Greenland (1 Deceas.) 2 buried on Beechey, both of our Esquimaux guides. Roster as of March 18th 1849 is 62 officers and men. Captain H. Anderson commanding. The Expedition will proceed south as soon as this message is deposited.

Cairn built and message buried by Lt. Oliver Smith, Mate Thom. Cartridge March 18th 1849. Party of 6 men and 2 officers departed the ship March 14th and reached the graves dug by Private J. Norris on Feb. 10 1849 where the cairn was erected.
Lt. Oliver Smith
Mate Thomas Cartridge

With the message thus deposited and the party having made its way back to HMS Edinburgh, the ship is steaming south. Captain Anderson expects, because the ship is rather heavy and lagging, that it will take us five or six months to reach King William Island and the passage. He refuses to use coal, since Commander Deanshire advised him that the hardest part of the journey was the last stretch, in those narrow straits. We only have about four days of coal left for sailing time. We have to use some of that for heating, as well.

I shall take the time to discuss more of the characters of this expedition with you.

I had supper with Mr. Williamson today, the Caulker. He is a very interesting individual, an Englishman, thank God. He and his Mate, Magnus May, are related by some distant blood, and are the greatest of friends. He is a humble man, with smile lines on his face. He must be forty, or almost, but he looks almost sixty - he is not a very healthy man, if truth be told, pale and clammy, but I regard him with the highest of affections so I shall not dwell on that. He served on the Euphrates expedition, where he met James Fitzjames, and has served the navy for twenty-two years in all. He has three daughters and a wife in London, one of whom is betrothed to May for him to marry when he returns.

Magnus May, his Mate, is some cousin or other, and is of a different character, though not a bad one. He has the same light brown or blonde full hair, but is taller and has a more healthy complexion. He is also an Englishman. I’ve heard it said of Mr. May that if he were starving to death, he would praise the water quality. When I remarked to him that the officers were considering stepping down the heating plans, he said, and I quote, “Thank God that we have blankets.”

Henry Butler is a quartermaster. Not the most senior, that title belongs to the son of the engineer, but an experienced one nonetheless. He is Irish but does not have much of an accent. I can tell when someone is an only child, even if they do not tell me - they have a certain way of carrying themselves, and Mr. Butler certainly is one. Drunkenly, he confided in his shipmates that he boasts descent from St. Patrick. He is a good sailor: calm, strong, and hardworking, but he enjoys grog too much and often gets into a row with officers, especially over religious matters. Sometimes HMS Edinburgh seems like the Holy Land, with the way our men battle over Papism versus Anglicanism. It is a plague on all our houses, sadly. I only hope Franklin doesn’t have to suffer the same, wherever he is.

Mr. Jonathan Foster, the Blacksmith, was the sixth son of a merchant in Strathclyde. He claims descent from the old line of Kings, who established a petty kingdom in Strathclyde before the Norsemen came. He was sent off as an apprentice at the age of twelve, and has honed his craft since. He was rejected from the Franklin Expedition due to his lack of experience, though. He must be around thirty. He was made a Petty Officer when he enlisted with Captain Anderson, who was more desperate for men. You see, Anderson needed to prove that he had a full complement of men before the Admiralty would accept him to command this expedition. You can see why he’d be in a hurry. According to his own claims, he has fathered three children out of wedlock.

George Perry, our elderly sailmaker, could perhaps be my grandfather. His age was switched on the muster, funnily enough. He is older than Captain Anderson, by several years. He has a hacking cough, but rarely ever comes into our Sick Bay, claiming that he’s had it all his life. Captain Anderson seriously considered putting him off on Greenland, but thought that the long journey south on that island would kill him. Thus, he remains with us. He is a kind man, I hate to explain these truths about him, but they must be said. He enjoys poker and is often found gambling with the Able Seamen.

Overall, I am in the company of fine men. I shall now finish this entry by regaling the readers on the happenings of the sailing so far.

No major injuries to ship or men have been reported, although a few men have come to me to lose toes from the frost. The most prominent of these is Lieutenant Smith, who because of a hole in his glove that he did not notice had to lose two fingers. My supply of laudanum and morphine has been dented, to be true, but there is still plenty more for two years or more.

I see the most beautiful of things now. I used to think that the goal of the nature scene was to depict animals in their habitats - I have been proven quite wrong, evidently. We hardly see animals here, mostly birds or seals, but I cannot help falling in love with this environment. I will say, however, I do not miss the ice crackling that we used to be plagued with while on Beechey. Thank God there will not be another winter trapped in the ice, the Ice-Master assures me.

Oh! We saw our first sighting of Esquimaux since Beechey today. We did not speak words, or trade, but a few men did wave from our deck. After this exciting event, I have asked Ice-Master Burt to give me some lessons in the language. Because it is only third-hand, though, I have only gotten a few words, which I shall give to you here.

Kabluna, their word for the white man.

Aklak, their term for a bear. I am not sure if it is specific to white bear or all bears.

A few other basic words have been transcribed, but those are so basic that the only people who will read this must already have known them.

Though illness has been mercifully small, there have been exceptions. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Carpenter’s Mate, came to me with drops of blood forming on his scalp. I shiver to think of the implications of this. How many men are hiding symptoms of this? Does our lemon juice not work?

Brother James assured me that it would continue to work for at least a few years, but it is still only 1849. I asked him about it last night, but he did not give me a response, and so we did not speak of it for the rest of the night. I have charged Mr. Bolton to not tell a soul about Mr. Fitzgerald’s affliction.

I myself have suffered no symptoms, other than a natural puffing of the gums.

Captain Anderson complains of his gout more and more. At the beginning of this expedition, when I first stepped onto HMS Edinburgh, he strolled across the deck and welcomed me aboard his ship, and loudly proclaimed that we would be good friends if I was anything like my brother. He can still walk, of course, but I very much doubt he can run. He seems to be gaining some weight, as well, but I loathe to tell him this. I suppose I shall ask his steward to remark on it. In some subtle way, like asking the Captain if he should ask Mr. Perry the sailmaker to hem larger pants. Such things are trivial to more serious illnesses, however, of which I believe we are on the brink of experiencing.

If we can continue the passage as planned with no interruptions, these illnesses can easily be treated with modern medicine in China or Manila. If we must have another winter, or God forbid two, these illnesses will mount to more than myself, brother James, and Mr. Bolton can handle it.

I suppose, since there is no point in prediction, that there is only one thing that can be said in these precarious weeks of sailing.

Into thy hands, o Lord.

Chapter Text

“Rise, Rise, Lowland and Highland man;
Bald sire and beardless sons; each come and early,
Rise, Rise, Mainland and Island man;
Belt on your broadsword, fight for Prince Charlie!”

Captain Anderson’s men were singing mutiny. They were singing rebellion, and he could do nothing about it, for the very men singing were those tasked with upholding his authority on HMS Edinburgh.

We aren’t on HMS Edinburgh, though, he thought.

Previously it had been something about “Coming ye by Atholl,” then “Welcome Royal Charlie,” and finally this one.

It was really only the Scottish sailors singing these songs, prompted by the Sergeant of Marines, who led the hauling of one of the boats. At one point, he spoke in Gaelic, which made Captain Anderson suspicious. He didn’t like being unable to understand something, even if it was just a language. He wished he could tell Sergeant Rouger to cut it out, and perhaps sing “God Save the Queen” instead, but he could not find the words. The men hauling him across hundreds of miles perhaps deserved to sing, well, whatever they wanted.

He knew he looked a bit of an odd duckling. Splendid in his full finery uniform (wrapped in a coat, of course) with thick gloves and a gold pocket watch dangling from his coat pocket. A blanket was spread over his legs to hide the swelling, prompted by the Assistant Surgeon. He had not glanced at them for several days - ever since June 2nd, when the week anniversary of the beginning of their march had passed. He knew by the look from the Assistant Surgeon (and the bulge in the blanket) that they looked more like grapefruit than healthy, white-pink skin, but he did not want to dwell on that.

They had basins, of course, and men to run the water parties when they stopped for camp, but the men could not seem to get clean. There was not a single death, though, which Henry Anderson regarded as extremely fortunate. He was not a godly man, despite being obligated to lead the men in the monthly reading of the Articles of War and the weekly Sunday Sermon. Perhaps that doomed him to some hell. Oddly enough, though he was terrified of death, the state which he would be in after did not trouble him.

He thought of death often enough, he supposed, even more now that the men had marched out. It was hard to escape. He thought of it every time he ate, wondering which meal would be the last of that specific item.

He took a book from the selection next to his seat in the jolly boat. The Vicar of Wakefield, it was called, reportedly a classic of the English language. Charles had recommended it to him to read, but he had never gotten around to it. He started to flip through the pages, but one line reminded him of the message he had left at Expedition Camp. They had packed it in a small cairn, but still able to be seen by miles:

Officers & Crew of H.M.Ship Edinburgh abandoned ship May 26th, 1850, after additional officer deaths. Lieut Oliver Smith and the Surgeon among them. After the fate of Franklin’s men is discerned we will proceed to Repulse Bay with the full complement of the Expedition and any survivors of the former. 6 Men were left on-ship commanded by the Boatswain.

Captain Anderson commanding.

The songs had stopped now. A gunshot rang out, then two, breaking the fragile air, and then they ceased. One boat was being held up, and then all of the ones accompanying it stopped. A few men were shouting. Anderson, forgetting his condition, ripped off the blanket and climbed off his boat to the rocky ground.

As soon as his full weight (less by the day) was on his own two legs, he collapsed to his knees, which on the rocky ground was extremely painful. He groaned. Two of his men, Hoar and Cartridge, hauled him up by the arms and pulled him to the scene of the commotion. He wanted to thank them, but no words would come out. He allowed himself to be wordlessly pulled along, his toes scraping against the edge of his boots. Utter pain, of course, but he said nothing.

Once they were there, he found enough strength to lean on a whaleboat without help. He looked at the scene of the fight.

Two men were bloody. Once Anderson’s eyes adjusted, he noticed that they were both Able Seamen. William Wallace and Alexander Mason, the sot always getting himself into a row with the officers.

“Seaman Mason, Seaman Wallace, what is the meaning of this? You’re holding up my march, man. Who-”

Wallace spoke first. “Sir, I shot it. He took it!” For that, Mason attempted to get off a spare punch at Wallace, but he was held back by a grimacing Corporal Keller.

“Shot? Shot what?” Anderson was confused. No man appeared to be shot. One man snickered. He looked in the direction of the noise, but Deanshire pointed to the ground near both the quarreling seamen.

“Sir, one of them shot a bird. They were fighting over it.” Deanshire noted quietly, barely heard by a few people around Anderson.

“Over - over a damn squall? You beat each other bloody over a damn squall?”

Both the men looked down now. Wallace had the decency to appear regretful, but Mason stood defiantly. Anderson wanted to punish them, he did, but - again, he hesitated. These men were responsible for hauling. How would lashes heal? Would they have to get in the sick boat with him? Would they, then, have an opportunity to stove his head in while everyone slept?

“The bird.. Will be forfeit to Master Burt and Doctor Curry,” Anderson said finally, and then nodded as if to confirm his own order. “Your wounds will be dressed and you will be permanently on sixwater grog. Whose decision was it to arm the seamen? I gave no such order.”

Second Mate Cartridge spoke up. “Sir, I did. We need every able gun in case we see a bird or a seal. We can’t wait for one of the six marines to come up and fire, or an officer. We’re all in harnesses anyway.”

Anderson looked at him. “I am disappointed in you, Thomas.” Cartridge had the decency to redden, and flicked his eyes down in shame.

“We still have years of rations, man. Bird might taste better, but.. It’s not worth..” he looked at the seamen, a few of them shouldering guns, and grimaced. He would not say the word. Finally, he said, “Disarm the seamen. Marines and officers hold the weapons, no more, we do not need birds for the foreseeable future. They only waste our ammunition.”

Men scrambled to obey the order. At that moment, Captain Anderson’s strength failed him, and he had to be helped back to the boat’s cover. He put the blanket over himself and shouted for the march to continue, with the men back in slops and the wounds on his two fighting seamen healed. The sun was beginning to dip, so Anderson expected they had a few more good hours of marching time.

Calm descended over the expedition again. Night could not come sooner, Anderson thought, as he picked at his teeth. A few of them were turning brown. That was bad, he knew. He also knew that many of his men’s mouths had begun to blacken. That was worse. He had seen his fair share of scurvy while serving with Captain Hardy, even in the Atlantic, and he did not want to know how badly it could get among an Arctic expedition, when no fruit was available.

He made the decision that night, as they had set up camp, to double the men’s lemon juice ration. Before it lost its potency completely, he reasoned. Better to squeeze the last of the good elements out of it before they leave of their own accord.

As the officer’s tent had been pitched, Anderson found himself reading The Vicar of Wakefield again. It had ended up belonging to Master Burt, so he had asked him if he might read it while they rested. Anderson had few personal possessions other than his uniform and things he carried on his person. He had eaten most of the plentiful provisions he had brought on at Greenhithe, back when he was fat and could walk it off.

That was a remarkable contradiction, Anderson thought, chuckling. A fat man who could walk, and a less large man (he did not count himself ‘average’ but he was certainly less of weight) who couldn’t? Who had ever heard of that, in the history of the world? He did not know.

Still chuckling, Henry Anderson turned and tossed in his blankets until the first rays of sunlight began to shine over the horizon. On the morning of June 5th, 1850, with grey shadows under his eyes, he awoke to begin the march again.

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

September 30th, 1849
We froze up a week ago. Despite our foremost efforts with explosives and gunpowder, the ship remains trapped, and ice piles up every day. As I mentioned months ago in another entry, this means that many men will likely die of their illnesses with no modern medicine for them. The officers have shut themselves in their cabins, only half-hearted watches go out.

Our position is, to the best of my knowledge, right off (several miles) of the tip of Cape Felix, the tip of King William Island. We are somewhat westward of the Clarence Islands, a small uninhabited island chain resting at the northeastern edge of this titanic island.

The melancholy was amplified when Captain Anderson ordered a halt to the attempts to free HMS Edinburgh from the ice, not only because we were running dangerously low on explosives, but also because Able Seaman Edward Smith lost his foot in one of these attempts. He is stable now, thanks to a night’s work with no sleep, but he will need a peg foot. I believe the Carpenter is working on one now as I write this.

Regardless, there is still hope. We arrived just before the hard winter, yes, but the ice might melt in spring or summer. As I write this, I can hear the men singing ‘Roll the old Chariot along’ an American sea song if I’m not mistaken, led on by the American, Marshal Credge.

There will doubtless be death during this winter. This will be the true test of my mettle as a physician. I tell you, it will be a miracle if there is not one death on this ship by the end of winter.

Sunday Service was held earlier today. I will write again if there are any new developments.

January 1st, 1850

The new year is being celebrated below-decks. The men are celebrating the birthday of the armorer, Joseph Tilking, by giving him a haircut and singing ‘The Silver Swan.’ I can hear it from the sick bay, even over the moans of the wounded.

February 8th, 1850

Able Seaman Robert Marcus has died of the frost. As a result of his earlier injuries, he fell asleep on watch, or fainted, and was found an hour later frozen to the bone. Commander Deanshire has ordered every man to have a partner while on watch from here on out. We had to break his permanently stiffened arms and legs to fit him in the coffin. The Captain, witnessing the encounter, vomited.

February 18th, 1850

Rations have turned putrid. Myself, Third Lieutenant Smith, Purser Hammond and Ship’s Cook Patrick Ellis ventured down into the hold to look at stores, prompted by a single rotted can in a stack of good ones found by Mr. Ellis. In 2/5ths of the boxes, two or three cans were found to be putrid. It is clear now why Stephan Goldner was the lowest bidder. God damn the Admiralty. God damn them to hell. The total loss is a week of provisions.

February 27th, 1850

The Captain sulks. I have not seen him in days. The only men allowed access to him are the high officers, my brother, and his steward. Men circulate the rumor that the Captain is ill. I do not know whether it is true, but I wish he would emerge to dispel the rumor. Commander Deanshire is ruling as his proxy. A great depression has taken over him. For the first time since I put my pen to the roster, I am regretting joining this expedition.

February 28th, 1850

Captain Anderson, from his cabin, has ordered 3/4ths provisions for all the men. This afforded him much ill will, and he remains in his cabin. Our provisions should last a significantly longer time because of this measure, however, so I approve. These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine said.

March 1st, 1850

Good news. Commander Deanshire, with the Captain’s blessing, has ordered a camp set up on King William Island, since it seems likely that we will not be freed from the ice for several months at least. He called us to a solemn meeting to announce it to the officers first, and gave the command to First Lieutenant Fells, at his insistence. As his second, First Mate Baynes will be dispatched. Three marines will accompany them, as well as many seamen and several petty officers, chief among them the carpenter’s mate, Captain of the Foretop, and the elderly sailmaker George Perry. No surgeon will accompany them, but Mr. Bolton, my assistant, will be one of the Able Seamen. He knows my potions and a good deal of surgery, so he will be a well enough replacement.

March 8th, 1850

It has been a week since I last wrote. The camp has been established. I write because the oddest thing has happened today. The ship’s animals, both sent to Expedition Camp (the large black dog Porus, and the tabby cat Alexander) have returned to the ship without owners or leashes. It’s as if the men supposed to be leading them vanished, but there are no predators here, nor did I hear any shots. Perhaps someone did. The Captain is mustering men to send a message to the Commander, asking him why he’d allowed the animals to leave his camp. I know this because I was the one to write the message. My handwriting is superior to Anderson’s, which I quietly consider a scrawl.

I will write more when I have Deanshire’s response. The men to deliver the message are getting into slops now.

Chapter Text

On the cold evening of June 10th, 1850, Ice-Master John Burt was very pleased. The march had stopped at its destination, the southeastern peak of King William Island, which Captain Anderson had taken to calling ‘Barrow Peak’ after the expedition’s benefactor. From his tent, as he was pulling off his painfully hard boots, he heard a fiddle. He supposed the tune, which he had heard on one of his whaling vessels, to be ‘Hail Columbia’ an American song. With a start, he realized it was very close to the 75th anniversary of their declaration of independence. That was why a party was going on.

He heard the baritone voice of Marshal Credge belting out “Hail Columbia, happy land, hail ye heroes, heav’n born band!” A few men were banging on pots to increase the rhythm, while Ship’s Cook Patrick Ellis cried “Give those back, you blackguards, you swine, you thieves, you horse maggots!” Burt had wanted to laugh, but he remembered that he was an officer now, and he did anyway.

Anticipating that this would be the last good night’s sleep he got in several weeks, he tried to toss and turn for several hours. He had been put with the surgeon again, Mr. Curry, who seemed to have regained some of his livelihood after the end of the march. This camp would be permanent while the men under Commander Deanshire traversed King William Island to go search for the Franklin ships.

Over the weeks of marching, Burt had decided that he disliked Deanshire’s rescue plan. It gave away too much time, for a non-guarantee of men and supplies. Useful summer marching time. He had taken a look at the map of their planned route - it had been a miracle that they lost no men on the trek across King William Island, surely they might lose more men on this endeavour.

It was for the purpose of saving some of Deanshire’s men that Burt found himself venturing to the Captain’s tent in the early morning of June 11th. It was a very tall thing, and narrow, perfect for meetings and a bed and a table, but not much else. His steward Hoar opened the flap for him. Hoar was holding a paper with some words on it that Burt didn’t focus on. When he went in, Anderson was having a drink by his writing desk. It was nearly empty, the bottle sat beside it. Anderson, wordlessly, motioned for him to sit.

“Sir, I’d like to discuss Deanshire’s expedition. I don’t think-”

“I llllost one of my t-teeth today.”

“Sir?”

“Lost one of my teeth. Sssurgeon expects I’ll lose two more in a month or ssso. I read somewhere that Gggeorge Washh-ington had only one tooth in his mouth when he dd-died. Do you know if that’s true?”

With a new sense of clarity, Burt realized that Anderson was quite drunk.

“Err, no, sir. I don’t. Sir, there could be many deaths if Deanshire’s expedition proceeds. Don’t you think we should make a try for the mainland ourselves, right now, in summer? Even if we know where the ships are, they might have drifted or been sailed, there’s no guarantee the Franklin men haven’t already left the island-”

“Some deaths?” Anderson laughed, interrupting his speech several seconds too late, as if he had just comprehended the previous sentence. This part, Burt noticed, he wasn’t slurring. “Mmy God, man. Don’t you see? All of us, or mmmost of us on this godforsss-aken expedition, are going to die.”

“Sir! You can’t just - say that. We haven’t lost anybody after we left the ships yet. There’s no way you can-”

“Say what?” Anderson furrowed his brow. His scalp looked especially pasty. He had many smile lines on his face, which made him look less handsome than he ought to. Burt realized that Anderson had already forgotten what he had said. He gave a heavy sigh.

“Nevermind, sir. Good night. I’ll speak to you in the morning, if it pleases you.”

“Oh, alright. Tell Pierre to meet me in the parlour.”

He’s drunk out of his mind, Burt thought. They were never this drunk even when they caught a big sperm whale, back when he was in that profession. Burt very much doubted Anderson would remember the conversation, or even that Burt visited. He wondered if conscious Anderson had even dared to think what drunk Anderson was now stating aloud. Burt had just begun to consider it himself. He considered it every time he looked at the blood in his socks, every time a man coughed, or a squall brought down looked too thin. He considered it when he looked in the eyes of Thomas Curry Jr. If ever there was a death on this expedition, Burt thought, it would be him.

When even the birds are dying, how can men live?

An hour later, around 5 AM, Burt resolved to meet with Commander Deanshire. He had spoken to the man during the days of Anderson’s depressive episode after the beginning of the first winter, but not much else. He knew the man to be strong in character, easily capable of leading. Even more so, though it was treasonous to say on a Royal Navy ship, than the Captain.

He found Deanshire taking his meal at one of the common tables, out of a red Goldner can. He was eating with the rest of the men who were supposed to go on the overland expedition with him. Deanshire had his slops on, as did all the others, so Burt looked out of place in his dark-blue coat and gold buttons. Deanshire looked up, and Burt cleared his throat.

“Sir, I’d like to address this expedition. Men are getting sicker. If we wait for you to return, even if you bring Franklin men, it would only delay our march to Repulse Bay. And we’d have to feed any additional Franklin men you bring with you. It’s not wise. Sir, please. We should all go, now, across the strait.”

Deanshire gave him a serious look, and nodded.

“Aye, your concern is noted. It may be that you are right. I have my reservations myself, but I support this. If we do not do this, we will be ostracized - we literally have the location of the ships, and if we do not inspect for clues or a single Franklin man’s presence, who will we be?”

“We will be alive, sir. Able to answer those allegations with words, instead of death rattles.”

Deanshire huffed. “We will live nonetheless, Ice Master. It will be dangerous, but we will live.”

“Then let me come with you.”

“What?”

“I need practice for the march. Let me see the ice again. I want to know if it will lift soon, and seeing the waters near the ships will give me an estimation of Edinburgh's waters. The strait between the island and the mainland has many differences to the ice above King William Island. If it shows signs of a thaw, we need not march south either way.”

Burt knew he had him by the glimmer in his eye. “Is it possible? A thaw?” One man asked over on the side, one of the men who had been watching this encounter.

“Yes. It is the height of summer. We could sail the Erebus or Terror, or both, up north, take Edinburgh if it is not already sailing, and bring them down south to take Captain Anderson. Then we could make the passage. It would be a thin window, but the ice would be open for several months, at least.”

Deanshire nodded. “I don’t know a bloody thing about the ice, though I’ve been on it before. If you are willing to haul, eat, shit, and sleep in misery, which is all I promise you, you are welcome.” Commander George Deanshire offered a hand.

With a smile on his lips and a lurch in his stomach, Burt shook his hand.

Chapter Text

Bosun - no, Third Mate John Henry was not a Captain. That, he was sure of. But he did sit in a Captain’s cabin, on a Captain’s ship, drinking a Captain’s whiskey.

There was little else to do but piss and listen to the same damn songs for hours, read the same god-damned books. He thought he’d have been afraid of the death from starvation that almost certainly awaited him and his skeleton crew - right now, he was afraid of boredom.

Each night, his six lads would draw straws for the watch, each hour. One man on the bow, and one on the quarterdeck. If they stayed out longer than that, he would have to cleave off some of their fingers or toes. They had to keep some protocol up, after all. He didn’t know what he was watching for - but that didn’t matter. Royal Navy protocol triumphed all.

The Captain had taken most of the coal, so when they were not on watch the men of the HMS Edinburgh would sit in the extensive great-cabin, which covered the entire stern, and drink. One thing they had a lot of was rum.

They even berthed in the greatcabin. There was still, just barely, enough coal to heat one room on the ship. He supposed there was six months left, if they cut out the heating for everything else. They’d piled all the food in the Mate cabins, the guns and ammunition in the commander’s cabin, and the bags of coal in the surgeon’s cabin.

He supposed he ought to call the men on watch. He hadn’t seen the carpenter’s mate in at least an hour and thirty minutes. His watch ought to have been over by now. He opened the valve to the pipe, which the Carpenter’s Mate had installed during their first week alone here. He called through it.

“Mr. Smith, have you seen Mr. Fitzgerald?”

The young and tiny ship’s boy, the youngest man on the expedition, now not such a boy, shuffled over to the pipe. He heard the creaking of the deck as he moved along it.

“No, sir. Should I have? Isn’t he below decks?” Again, Henry was shocked by how adult-like he sounded. When he had climbed the gangplank of Edinburgh, Mason Smith had been a pimply-faced fifteen year old. Now he was seventeen or eighteen, at the least.

“No, you shouldn’t have. Alert Mr. Thompson and find him above deck. Check the railings. Myself, Mr. Rudolph, and Mr. Wilson will look below.” He heard Smith attempting a reply, but he shut the valve so suddenly that it made an irritating clanging noise. The air had just begun to get to his nose, and he rubbed it fiercely like a leg that had gone horny.

Looking at the other two in the room, sleeping soundly, he almost regretted doing this. But he couldn’t search a ship by himself. He decided to wake both.

If they lost another man, there would be no chance of sailing Edinburgh.

“Wilson, Rudolph. Get up. We need to find Fitzgerald. None of us have seen him.” He kicked them gently with his boots, laced up for walking on a slicked deck. It was Fitzgerald’s duty to make sure the decks were walkable.

Rudolph and Wilson were quick to stir. Within five minutes, he had them ready to start looking. He lit an oil lantern and gave it to Wilson, and pulled his muffler up. Rudolph, an experienced able seaman from the Highlands who had known Erebus’s ice master, could be relied upon to look well. Wilson was a nineteen or twenty year old ship’s boy. A man, yes, but still not an able seaman.

The temperature dropped drastically as they left the coal-heated stern. He had to bang his teeth together to keep the cold at bay. Rudolph put a welsh wig over his thinning brown hair. Wilson, with the lantern, fared a little better - but he still thought he heard the man’s teeth clatter.

“Fitzgerald! Carpenter’s Mate!” He began, the voice booming through the decks. The empty rooms gave no reply except for the constant crackling of ice. The empty hammocks were frozen in place, he saw. The entire midsection of Edinburgh was drowned in black, and he had Wilson take to the front to pave a lit path for all three of them.

They moved to the bow. The ladder there had been completely encrusted in ice, unlike the stern, which was regularly maintained. He was about to give up and head back inside, surrendering to the cold, when he heard a faint shout. Running above the deck made faint ice particles, trying to form on the roof, fall to the ground. He sent Rudolph back to the stern to climb that hatch.

John Henry was about to slam the butt of his gun at the ice on the lock, when he heard another shout. So he took his shotgun, primed the cocker, aimed at the lock, and fired.

The boom resonated throughout the ship. He heard ringing in his ears. But the ice had clattered away, and the lock was blown open. He forced the hatch aside and climbed the slicked ladder.

“Smith! Smith!”

He knew it could not be the bears. They had shot and eaten them. He had eaten a piece of leg himself. Fried it over the grill and eaten it.

(but what if it was, oh God oh God what if it was)

He moved to where he heard the shout. A warmth filled his heart, despite the temperature being perhaps negative thirty. Mr. Smith was standing - no, laying, on the deck, pulling a man up by his arms.

“Mr. Smith? What-“

“Sir! Help. Help. He’s slipping. It’s Fitzgerald. He fell. Oh God, he fell.”

For a moment, John Henry was too stunned to move. Fell? How could that have happened? He told them to stay away from the railings. Fitzgerald was his second. He should’ve known!

But then Mr. Wilson shoved the oil lantern into his other hand, and ran to grab Mr. Smith’s back. Spurred into action, John Henry moved to light the encounter with the lantern. He dropped the gun to the deck, forgotten, and helped to pull.

With three men pulling with all their might, Simeon Fitzgerald slid onto the icy deck of HMS Edinburgh, moaning. Panting for a moment, Henry marshalled himself. Rudolph arrived from the stern hatch just in time.

“Mr. Rudolph, take this man below. Dismiss all watches. Where is Mr. Thompson?”

“Still on the bow, sir. I found Fitzgerald before I could alert him.”

Fumbling into his thick coat pocket, Henry took the cold metal bosun’s whistle of his former profession and blew into it. It was louder, somehow, than the shotgun blast - and Mr. Thompson came running. Through the whistle, which had tightened around his soft lips, he told him to get below. He ripped the whistle from his lips. A small amount of blood spurted onto the deck, and Henry whimpered.

With the men heading below via the stern hatch, Henry moved over to the bow hatch. He climbed back inside, through the ladder, taking care not to trip. He went into the sail room, next to it, and took a large piece of spare canvas from the still-plentiful stores. He climbed back up, panting now, and draped it over the bow entrance to cover any holes that might’ve been made by his shot.

Going to the stern entrance now, he locked it behind him, and went back to the stern. Pulling off his muffler, gloves, and extinguishing the oil lamp, he moved to a chair and sighed. He poured a glass of whiskey as he sat, thinking of how many toes Fitzgerald would need to lose. The whiskey tasted like blood. He screwed up his face and put the glass down.

Wilson and Thompson had put Fitzgerald on his bed, and lit a lantern.

“How bad is it, do you think?” None of them were surgeons, they had to estimate the injuries.

“I think he’ll need to lose three fingers, all on his left hand. That was the one that was on the ice. He has a broken big toe, but none need to be taken off. Perhaps a bit of his nose, too. It’s a bloody god-damn miracle, in my opinion.” Thompson replied.

He was astounded. That few, for such a long time on the ice?

“Best get to it then. We don’t want to throw away a miracle, eh?”

Nodding, Mr. Thompson took a meat cleaver and began to clean it. He also heated it over the lantern fire. Mr. Wilson shoved a rag in Fitzgerald’s mouth.

“It’ll be over in a moment. Here, uh, drink.”

Taking the rag out of his mouth, Wilson grabbed a nearby bottle of gin and gave him a few sips. The excess ran down his frozen mouth, rapidly heating up again. The rag was put back in.

Henry took his leave of the room, and made for the ration room.

Selecting a can of veal and a hard-tack biscuit, he moved to the commander’s cabin. He did all his writing in here now. Because it was adjacent to the stern, it was warm enough, and very quiet. He didn’t feel that he had the right to write in the captain’s log in the captain’s cabin. That right belonged to Captain Anderson, half a world away, or dead.

He moved to a clean page and scribbled in the date, heating up the ink over an orange-red glow. He ate as he wrote. He had to do this every day, at about this time, in order to write his log.

The Captain had taken the main log along with him, of course, but there were plenty of empty-parchment books for the enjoyment of the crew that had been left behind, and he repurposed a thick-binded black book for his own purposes.

He muttered aloud the words as he wrote them.

“Carpenter’s Mate Fitzgerald injured in a fall off the ship on watch. Ship’s Boys Wilson and Smith did the most to help them. Recommend them for promotion to Able Seamen upon return to England. Signed Third Mate John Henry formerly Bo’sun of H.M.Ship Edinburgh.”

He thought that aloud for a moment. What were the chances any of them would ever make it home? At most, 50%? He knew that it was the greatest ambition of any boy to be called a man. After all, he had once been one. And the rank of Ordinary Seaman certainly implied a man of the Royal Navy, in service to Queen and Country.

As he was contemplating this, Mr. Thompson emerged to tell him that they were done with surgery. It had been successful, and Fitzgerald was resting. Letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, he sat back in his chair.

Thirty minutes later, when Fitzgerald was well enough to rise from his bed, John Henry called the ship’s company to the dining room.

What was formerly the officer’s meeting and lounging room had turned into the lounge for the entire crew - that was, six people.

Henry sat at the head of the table. At his left and right were the two able seamen, and at the other end of the table sat Simeon Fitzgerald, nursing a bottle of whiskey, still rolling his eyes back and forth.

He took a glance at the two sheets of paper he held in his hand. The words “in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria” stood out at the top. He looked up at the two men standing at attention in front of their dining table.

“Ship’s Boys Smith and Wilson. You are boys no longer, men grown. For your service to the Navy in saving the Carpenter’s Mate, Simeon Fitzgerald, I hereby award you, by the unanimous consent of the ship’s company, the rank of Ordinary Seaman. There must be some protocol to this, after all… but I daresay that upon our return you shall be granted the rank of Able Seaman. Congratulations.”

Smiling for the first time in months, John Henry stood up to shake his men’s hands.

Chapter Text

They left four hours later, as the sun crested over the horizon. Captain Anderson and his men staying in camp waved them goodbye, firing a gun salute with the remaining marines. It felt like a funeral procession. They sledged two boats with them, cutters, enough for their provisions and some heat stoves. They also brought a cache of what the men called ‘fuel bottles’ which powered the small stoves aboard the ship’s boats. The bulk of the guns and ammunition that remained to the crew of HMS Edinburgh was on these boats, and the Commander kept a constant watch on the gun locker.

Before they left, Captain Anderson and his second-in-command had an explosive departure. Burt had heard fragments of the conversation himself. He had never had a chance to confirm his appointment to the expedition with Anderson, as Deanshire had ventured into the man’s tent several hours before their departure. Eventually, it had dissolved into a screaming match, and half the expedition was leaning over their tables to get a listen. Since the officer’s table was closest to the Captain’s tent, and Burt was the only one having an early breakfast, he alone had heard the fragments.

“-dead, Henry!” The Commander had said, rising in volume at every word.

“I can’t believe that. I won’t.” The Captain had responded, voice already billowing. Clearly he was going through the usual withdrawals of alcohol.

“Richard and Charles would believe it.” The Commander said, quieter this time.

“Oh, damn you to hell, sir. Don’t you mention my children to me. Not you. Damn you, I say. I will be following my orders, and you will damn well do as you are told. I fought at Trafalgar. Trafalgar, man! You can’t talk to me like this.”

“-leave us vulnerable!” The Commander had replied.

He had not heard anything further for several minutes, but he thought he had heard mention of Fletcher Christian and William Bligh, the two central men from the Bounty mutiny.

At that point, Burt had taken leave of his breakfast to go and suit up into his slops. The Captain would not take kindly to eavesdropping. The only other man in the world who knew what they had said was Hoar, the Captain’s steward. But as Burt was going back to his tent to collect his French New Testament, he had seen Hoar and several other men conversing in a tent. Oddly, he remembered the same event from when they had first set foot on King William Island. Who were the other men? He thought he had heard the voice of Edward Smith, the cripple, but he couldn’t be sure. It was likely nothing, after all, and he paid no more mind to it. On to the task at hand.

It had been three days of on-and-off marching since then. Despite the fact that it was July 8th, almost the middle of summer, their mufflers were still pulled tight over their faces. When they scarfed down their food, it was barely tepid - they could not afford to waste the fuel bottles for the boat stoves, which could not be replaced. When they ran out, they would have to go the old-fashioned way - kindling and fire, of which they had a limited amount of wood. Burt wondered how long it would take them before they started burning their boats for warmth.

It was his ‘off’ period, where he got to enjoy a break from hauling and took a musket instead, walking along the rocky marching path. A marine shuffled into his place. Burt found himself thinking of all the events that had transpired over the expedition thus far.

Two days earlier, the men had hooted and hollered at discovering the southern side of King William Island. In tribute, Sergeant Rouger commissioned the icy channel “Franklin Strait” and moved on.

Now, they were coming up on a bay. Deanshire had plans to name the bay ‘Anderson Bay’ to apologize for his argument with the captain previously. He supposed it was a good decision. At that moment, looking out at the environment, the advance party of marines and himself came upon a large crested rocky hill. Burt shouldered his musket and dashed back to the command boat, which had both the Sergeant of Marines and Commander Deanshire hauling.

“Sir. Sergeant. The hill up ahead, I believe it’s the entrance to that bay we saw with your glass.”

Deanshire, panting, nodded. He tapped Rouger’s shoulder, and Rouger pulled out a tiny thin metal whistle. Mr. Back, the Boatswain’s Mate, did not accompany them, so it fell to the Sergeant to order the halt of hauling for the day.

When the thin whistle trilled, and the Commander called them to attention, an audible sigh could be heard. Faint groans came from the men as they shuffled off their harnesses and made their way to the boat. Deanshire grabbed a large box and stood on it, making him able to be seen by all of the fourteen men under his command.

“Boys.. we’ve done it!”

Cheers erupted from the ship’s company, quieted by the Bosun’s whistle in the hand of the Sergeant.

“We’ve made our crusade across this island.. But this is just the first of our endeavors. There is a greater bay, to the west, which we must cross - and then to the ships!” Faint cheers erupted at the mention of Franklin’s ships, despite the fact that they knew he was dead - and Deanshire cleared his throat.

“Patrols of five, three in total. One party commanded by myself, the other two by Sergeant Rouger and the Ice Master. Get to it, then. Dismissed!”

Deanshire stepped off his box and called for volunteers. The cream of the crop went to him first - Mr. Bolton, Frederick Fischer, Ludwig Rouse, and Darius Poole. All the ship’s marines went with the Sergeant as well as an able seaman or two, which left Burt with the rest of the paltry few.

Charles West, the good-natured and experienced flag operator and Captain of the Maintop, became Burt’s second. West immediately sent Magnus May, Caulker’s Mate, to guard the boats from any animals or natives who might encroach, giving him the group’s only other shotgun. And so they set off into the bay.

Anderson Bay was not a comely place. The large hill that Burt had first spotted was rough and rocky, and it was everywhere. It was not a consistent mountain range, but the gravel around the bay seemed to rise and fall like a heartbeat every thirty meters. They crossed into the inside of the bay, making their way to the edge of the water and the very southern point of the island. Several men ran ahead in their fervor and reached the shoreline hooting. A small flock of birds dashed away after Mr. Bolton accidentally let off a shot from his gun, which resounded over the rocky hills and plains. It was quickly snatched away from him for such recklessness.

On the shore, Burt could see several small islands sitting out in the bay. On the largest one, and the closest, Burt could see shiny things on the beach. He flagged down Commander Deanshire, and he was allowed to cross the ice to go look at them.

Despite not having ice boots on, the distance was not bad, and the ice was not as slippery as would be expected. It took them only five or six minutes to cross the white boundaries, and upon affixing his eyes specifically to the bleached objects, he knew at once what they were.

Skulls.

Seven human skulls, without anything accompanying them, were found within ten feet of each other. Burt’s little group of five quieted up, and Burt picked up one. There was flesh remaining around the lips, he saw, although the eye sockets were completely gone. Jet-black hair was still pasted onto the scalp, flowing freely in the wind currently taking up the island. He put the skull back where he found it, and turned to the Captain of the Maintop.

“West, fire a shot. Get them over here.”

Within ten minutes, the other two groups had congregated on the little beach that their men had already dubbed ‘Skull Island.’ After a thorough search lasting the better part of the hour, they found and catalogued a total of fourteen Franklin items:

Seven human skulls. Three with black hair, two with brown, one with blonde, and one with red.
Three small pieces of wood.
A nail implanted into one of the pieces of wood.
Some dark pine shavings, as would have been done by a carpenter.
Two tent rings, so as to fasten a tent to the ground.

They had made more contact with Sir John Franklin’s expedition, at long last.

Deanshire decided to camp on the island for the night. The marines, under Sergeant Rouger, were tasked with building a small and sturdy stone cairn to enclose a message, the skulls and the Franklin artifacts in a small black box. By 10:00 PM, it was done, and the men brought the boats to the shore before turning in.

All except for John Burt.

How in all of God’s green earth, would there only be heads? How did something, or someone more like, detach seven bodies from seven heads? And if so, for what purpose?

He did not want to know the answer, but he did.

And by God, though he never said it aloud, he had seen cut marks.

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

March 12th, 1850

The answer to the Captain’s query came on the 9th around nine o’clock in the morning. The Captain’s men had the entire day to traverse several miles of ice and snow, but the usual snow blockaded them in for the night and the early morning, and they could not reach the ship until the morning of the 9th was well underway.

“We did not send them alone,” read the message. “We sent them with two men. Private Farrows and Seaman Mills.”

The Captain realized the problem. The marines of HMS Edinburgh departed not quite an hour later, accompanied by the ship’s Ice Master, Mr Burt, who recounted the events to me.

The animals had scattered when the attack began. Two bears, white and quiet as night, came upon them. Newton Mills was savaged and murdered, and Private Farrows’s hand was taken off by a swipe, but he had managed to throw himself into a ditch and the animals lost interest in him.

Both men were brought back to the ship. Mills was interred, and after half a day of work me and my brother managed to stabilize the condition of Private Farrows. He cannot reload worth a damn, but if he presses his gun against something else he can certainly fire. And he is an excellent shot, I am told. There is no chance of infection, thankfully, a wound like this would’ve most likely killed a sailor if it came from a cannon-ball.

Both the Captain and the Commander are convinced that what the expedition needs now is action. Thus, I have been dispatched to Expedition Camp, along with Private Farrows since he has recovered, and I was privy to the early knowledge of an expedition.

Our expedition, led by First Lieutenant Fells, will explore the northern side of this great land which might be an island. It is too small to be a major expedition, so if we find anything interesting, we are to immediately bring it back to the ship.

Half of the camp will be left, while we drag one whaleboat for our provisions and tent storage. It will last a couple weeks, we expect, as we will be thoroughly combing the land. The Captain has long suspected that HMships Terror & Erebus are icelocked near ours, but circumstances have prevented him from dispatching anything: before now.

As I write this, the men are preparing a major dinner. In the morning, we will depart - leaving the camp under the command of First Mate Baynes, a heartily good man who can be trusted to keep the camp in a good status while we are away. Mr. Bolton my assistant will be following me to assist with any potential injuries, as well as Simeon Fitzgerald, the Carpenter’s Mate, to help with any boat troubles. As I am the only other officer in the party of nine men, civilian or otherwise, I am to be second in command. This thrills me to no end, I will admit, and I hope that I shall conduct myself well.

I do not think I will write any during the march itself - it is to be extremely strenuous, so I expect that my next entry will be when we return.

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

March 26th, 1850

It has been two weeks since my last journal entry. We have returned to Expedition Camp and found it slaughtered, to say the least. A blizzard rages, and the Captain had no contact with the camp for a week. All of my friends at camp - the grandfatherly George Perry, the lazy but good natured Reid Fraser, the indefatigable First Mate Baynes, the crack-shot John Farrows who I labored for hours to save, are dead. Dead and savaged and eaten.

But I will regale the reader with our expedition first. For it was an extreme success.

On the second day of the march, Simeon Fitzgerald caught an illness. Myself and Mr. Bolton tended him as best we could. Someone muttered that it was God punishing him for his Jewry. I did not remark back. How could a man help his race?

In the week next, we made wonderful progress. Our tents were rarely out and pitched, even if it was extremely cold - the sailmaker Mr. Perry had used a massive amount of extra sail, cloth and straw to make us warm bedrolls and pillows. We all got several hours of sleep each night. Eventually, Mr. Fitzgerald recovered after being exempted from hauling and placed in warm blankets and spooned a full portion of food every day.

At the end of the first week, We reached a place called Victory Point, a very northern portion of King William Land. It was then that we recovered, in a brass cylinder, the most important Arctic discovery of the century.

The men are calling it the ‘Victory Point Note’ and so it is. We left the original note there, but took detailed copies and writings. Lieutenant Fells read it aloud to the men as Fitzgerald copied the words.

Sir John Franklin is dead. He died June 11th, 1847, most probably of a sudden illness or injury, because the first section of the note states “Sir John Franklin commanding the Expedition, All Well” and the note was only deposited a short time before Franklin’s death.

The crews have abandoned their ships, of which we know the locations, finally. 105 men were alive when they did so, a year ago. We were stuck in the ice at Beechey when they did, if I remember correctly. Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames assumed command of the expedition and amended the note, originally left in that spot by Lieutenant Gore, who is now considered deceased by the words “the late Commander Gore” in the second notation, indicating that Gore survived Franklin but died shortly after. Another man noted to be alive at the time of writing is Lieutenant Irving, who found the cairn.

We inscribed the message and returned. It took us five days, and two to get back to the ship. A blizzard raged.

This was the condition of the camp.

The gun locker was still fastened shut. When questioned why the key was not there, reluctantly, Corporal Keller pulled the keys from his pocket. In his rage for the deaths of eight men, mostly due to his incompetence, Keller was shackled to the whaleboat, with promises of lashing.

The remaining men were gathered up and dumped in an ice hole, to be released into the sea when the ice does eventually thaw. Mate Baynes was buried in a deep grave not too far from Newton Mills, off the shore of the land.

We saw a large white bear straggling away, but in our shock, we did not pursue.

A message in a metal tin inside his grave read:

“H.M.Ship Edinburgh’s crew set up Expedition Camp on the Northeast Peak of King William Island. The majority of Expedition Camp departed on a successful exploration mission, the remaining men of the camp (one officer, seven enlisted) were killed in an attack by white bears. The enlisted were interred in an ice hole five miles to the north of this grave. Here lies Oscar John Baynes, at rest.

P.S Expedition Camp returning to H.M.Ship Edinburgh.

1st Lieut. Carson E. Fells
Ice-Master J. Burt

The deceased were as follows.

OSCAR BAYNES, FIRST MATE
JOHN FARROWS, PRIVATE MARINE
REID FRASER, CAPTAIN OF THE FORETOP
GEORGE PERRY, SAILMAKER
WILLIAM SMITH, ABLE SEAMAN
THOMAS WENTWORTH, ABLE SEAMAN
THOMAS ULBRICHT, ABLE SEAMAN
ROBERT TEAGUE, ABLE SEAMAN”

We then pitched the camp and marched to the ship.

Earlier today, we arrived. Captain Anderson had tears in his eyes, but he did not deter himself from hearing the full report that myself and Lieutenant Fells made to the ship’s officers. After that, I was allowed to rest my aching feet and sleep for as long as I wished. I nearly cried with relief, I am unashamed to say.

The Captain has sunk into his previously deep melancholy, but it is somewhat alleviated by these news of the ships.

He plans on having petty officers write six messages, one for the ship and five for land areas nearby, for future explorers to find.

The expedition is in a state of shock, I suppose, and now it is time to tend to my increasing number of patients.

Chapter Text

The massive tent, a combination of three Holland tents, was completely upright, somehow, despite the ferocious wind at the very southern part of King William Island. There was nothing much outside of it - a few poles, a corporal’s chevron, red bits of wool, tobacco pouches. But inside was another story.

Inside the tent, which Commander Deanshire and his group had first sighted at six in the morning on the 15th of July, were the collected mortal remains of around thirty men.

In some parts of the tent, the bones were piled as high as two men’s height. In other places, they lay on their back, undisturbed. Though the weather had gotten to them, many of the men still had hair and pasty skin. The eye sockets, which Burt knew were some of the first body parts to rot, were absent.

After making a rough count of the bodies, they spent the remainder of the 15th collecting and cataloguing all the items they found there. They included:
Bedding, two fowling pieces, lightning rods, three shotguns with ammunition, two unopened casks of Indian rum (which were drunk, not hauled), several knives, and a detached boat stove that Deanshire decided came from a pinnace, much the same boats that they were now hauling across the island.

Following the collection of these items, Deanshire and Burt retired to their command tent to scratch out a note and leave among the corpses, which read as follows:
“This Site was Discovered by Commander Deanshire of the H.M.Ship Edinburgh. Fifteen men commanded by the latter and Marine Sgt Rouger discovered the bones of more than thirty individuals at a tent atop a sandy hill. Beddings, silverware, two shotguns, a pistol, and other assortments were taken for our own use. Franklin died June 11 1847 and this tent appears to be the remains of many of the men who attempted to leave the island under the command of F.R.M Crozier. Heading up to the ships.”

Publicly, to the men, George Deanshire declared the discovery of almost a quarter of Franklin’s men’s remains to be a ‘great victory.’ Privately, he proclaimed it a disaster to the only two men with command authority on his expedition - Ice Master Burt, and Marine Sergeant Rouger.

The prevailing theory in his mind, he stated, was that the Franklin camp had been established as a sort of Sick Bay, where the 30 or so sickest sailors and officers out of the survivors of Crozier’s original 105 men would be left to perish. The existence of this tent, in all likelihood, meant that the survivors of the Sir John Franklin Expedition had crossed over to Adelaide Peninsula.

Which meant, in effect, that they would never be found, at least alive, by Anderson’s men.

“We waited too long,” Deanshire declared to his officers. “If we had made a start months earlier, we could have caught them, and sledged south, to rescue and safety.”

There was nothing else to say. The very-much drunken men of the Deanshire Expedition made a start from the Tent Place in the early morning hours of the 16th of July, discarding several useless items that they had picked up on the way in order to make room for their new things.

A thick fog blanketed the Bay, making it impossible to see ten feet in front of them. Thus, Ice Master Burt was dispatched with three men and a marine to light a path for the two pinnaces. They eventually succeeded in starting on their path, and the hauling continued. They did not bother to pitch camp - it took double the time that it used to, and the boats - when draped with their heavy tarps, were often warmer than their tents. They could eat, sleep, haul (but not shit) in the same place, with no additional movement required.

While on the march, Burt and Deanshire made a habit of discussing who the bodies were.

“The oldest men, surely,” said Deanshire. “Men like Old Murray, the Sailmaker, or Charles Osmer, Erebus’s purser. I reckon most of them are older petty officers, wardroom or warrant officers who were severely stricken with scurvy and pneumonia.”

Burt nodded. “One of the dead, especially by now, has to be Crozier. Perhaps even Fitzjames. Wasn’t he shot, before, in China? Shot wounds reopen when scurvy gets a hold of you. And that invites infection.”

“Perhaps they are both dead, but not buried there. I don’t think Franklin’s men, despite how sick they are, would have put either of their captains in a mass grave. No, Crozier or Fitzjames’s graves are somewhere on this island - but not here,” Deanshire decided.

Burt shrugged, too tired to argue the point.

“I saw a marine uniform on one of the corpses. A private. And a steward’s neckerchief on another. It could’ve been Hoar. How many stewards did they have?”

“Two gunroom stewards, two officer’s stewards, two captain’s stewards. Six in total. Hoar, Jopson, Armitage, Gibson, and… I can’t remember.” Deanshire admitted bashfully, blinking and furrowing his brow.

Captain Anderson, as they sailed to Greenland, had made all his officers memorize the names and ranks of Franklin’s men, should that information prove useful later. Burt knew that those instructions had been a good idea, but not very well executed. He couldn’t recall the names of anyone past the officers.

The topic moved to who they believed was currently in command of the expedition.

“It has to be an Erebus man,” insisted Deanshire. “A first mate aboard the flagship has command over a first mate from the secondary ship. Even if the other man has seniority.”

“But if Crozier was in command, he could have done away with that. Gore, Franklin, and likely Crozier and Fitzjames are dead. That leaves the contenders First Lieutenant Little and Second Lieutenant Le Vesconte.” Burt pointed out.

“If the officers are severely reduced, the men could be following a senior lower officer with Arctic experience. Take for example the Ice Masters, Reid and Blanky. Blanky had been with Ross in the Arctic before, and Reid was a whaler.”

“If all the Lieutenants are dead, I am inclined to believe you. The Mates just wouldn’t have the same command authority. But they probably aren’t. Most of the lieutenants were healthy as horses.” Burt said.

“So was Gore,” said Deanshire.

“Point,” admitted Burt, “but my choice, at least for now, is First Lieutenant Little in overall command, as the last of the very senior officers, with either Hodgson or Le Vesconte as his executive officer. Probably Le Vesconte, given his assignment to the flagship.”

Deanshire nodded. “My choice is Le Vesconte, with either Little as his second or third lieutenant Fairholme. Even though he’s only a third lieutenant, he’s an imposing character. I met him once. Upwards of six feet two inches, by my count. A massive man, and very competent - he’s not like to be dead, and certainly has a more imposing figure than Hodgson or someone else.”

Burt shrugged, and sighed. By now he needed to piss, but shuffling off the harness while they were hauling was painful. He would wait until they bunkered down late that night. The hauling continued, silently, as the wind was whipping them too hard for singing. Thankfully, it blew to their back, and someone joked about a fan being left running. The men kept having to pull up their mufflers as they slipped from the wind.

They repeated that process for eight god-damned days, as they headed up towards the ships.

If it weren’t for Ludwig Rouse’s keen eyes, they would’ve missed it.

Sitting in the snow, a battered and bruised pinnace containing two corpses - one upright and clutching a shotgun, and another headless inside the boat, lay almost invisible.

On the evening of the 28th, Commander Deanshire ordered a halt, and for the first time in eight days the men set up camp. Hauling tarps over the boats and bringing out the tents, they nestled into their covers and grabbed a few hours sleep shivering next to their mates while Sergeant Rouger, Private Edward Devon, Ice Master Burt, and Commander Deanshire took the watch.

Private Devon, the man most likely to be made Corporal if anything happened to Keller, prodded the upright corpse with his musket.

“Did he blow his friend’s head off? Why’s his head gone?” Devon asked, puzzled.

“Probably snatched by a bear, or something, Edward,” said Rouger dismissively, himself peering inside the pinnace to gauge its contents.

“Well, take the shotgun. Find out for yourself.” Said Deanshire. Devon obeyed, and freed the gun from the dead man’s frozen fingers. He cracked open the barrel.

“Fully loaded, both shells.” He reported, and put the gun back where he found it.

As they were stewing over this, Sergeant Rouger let out a breathless, barely audible over the screeching wind, “What the fuck?”

Deanshire turned. Rouger turned red. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. It’s just… there’s almost fifty pounds of chocolate here. Unmelted.”

“How do you starve to death with fifty pounds of chocolate?” Burt asked.

“Maybe he didn’t like the taste,” said Devon, chuckling. Burt smiled.

Deanshire pondered for a moment, not saying anything. He looked disturbed. Burt poked various items also strewn about in the heavy snow - a few books, a copy of the Vicar of Wakefield, a French New Testament - not much.

But Deanshire said only, “Rouger and Devon, you have the watch. Wake MacMillan in a few hours. Burt, go to bed.”

Shivering, Burt obeyed - but he could not banish the thought from his mind, and he got no sleep. What happened to the two men? Were they abandoned by their fellows, or did they want to stay behind?

As he was pondering this, he heard the voice of Deanshire, ever so soft, barely audible, say,

“One thing I noticed, Ice Master? The pinnace was turned towards the ships.”

“They came back,” said Burt, breathlessly.

“For the first time since we left,” said Deanshire, “I think we should’ve stayed on Edinburgh.”

Sleep did not come for John Burt that night.

Chapter Text

From the diary of Thomas Curry Jr, Assistant Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

April 20th, 1850

On March 29th, the whole of the ship’s company turned out to witness the lashing of Corporal William Keller. For once, the despised Alfred Back was wished well - as he was lashing the only man more despised than him. Keller had no friends among the crew. Even the loner Wallows had an occult gathering of seamen to him, while Keller had none.

The reason for Mr. Keller’s punishment was clear, but it was read out by Captain Anderson, standing wobbly inside, for those who hadn’t known it.

“For Gross Negligence which resulted in the deaths of six of his crew mates, including a fellow Marine and an Officer of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy,” spake Anderson, “Corporal William Keller is condemned to thirty lashes with the Cat.”

I had heard tales of the Cat before, of course, from seamen who had been punished with it before. They often spoke of it in the Sick Bay, or while they were digesting their daily lemon juice ration. Captain Anderson abhors punishment, of course, so it had not occurred yet - but several captains who were less inclined to be generous had dealt it out with a much less restrictive hand.

I confess, I had not thought anything but negative thoughts for Mr. Keller before, but after hearing rumors of his story from his marines - including the Welshman with the Scottish name, Private MacMillan (who I wrongly initially thought to be a sodomite) I am inclined to be slightly more sympathetic.

According to MacMillan, who told me the tale as I was cutting off a few toes on his left foot due to a hole in his sock - Corporal Keller had come home from three or four year deployment on various ships coasting South America, where he received his promotion due to sheer longevity, to find that his wife thought him dead due to a mistake with the navy’s pay allotment (they had ceased paying his wages while he was away, thinking him dead) and found that his wife was raising three children that were not his own, with a local shopkeep from their city (Leeds, I believe).

To hear MacMillan tell it, Keller needed the additional money that the Discovery Service offers (along with the already generous full pay of a Marine Corporal) to cover the costs of his separation. I abhor divorce, I suppose it is a lingering relic of my time as a Papist, so I shall call it an annulment.

Of course, there is no way for me to know the truth of this - MacMillan could be gossiping - but I have never seen Keller smile, and this is certainly an adequate reason.

Back to the present.

An hour earlier, a seaman had tied the Cat (it would have been the elderly sailmaker, Mr. Perry, but he was a casualty of the attack on Expedition Camp) and Keller was brought forth. Anderson read the initial charges that I mentioned earlier and Deanshire read the Articles of War, relating to Punishment.

Once that was done, the harrying began.

Stripes were quick to appear on his naked back, as red as his uniform. From one to five, there was little blood, but when he reached ten, I saw several of the seamen standing closer to them were covered with drops of blood. I made to leave, but Anderson raised a hand, and I stood back in line. A drop of blood splattered on my jacket around the fifteenth lash, and on the 20th one got in my eye. It stung very badly, but I could not rub it because I was standing at attention.

To his credit, Keller never screamed. I am told that tears ran down his cheeks, but I could not see anything from where I was standing.

On the 28th lash, the Corporal passed out, and Captain Anderson declared the punishment carried out, and ceremonially restored to Keller his gun and uniform (put in his cabin). I dressed his wounds well, they did not fester. That is a rare blessing of this Arctic environment. Men stationed in the Caribbean, I am told, have to hurry to dress wounds if they do not want their patient to contract some fever or infection- but here, the rot of the body seems suspended.

Shortly afterward, Captain Anderson dispatched five parties (commanded by our three Mates and the second and third lieutenants) to leave his notes on various islands near our ship, to provide communication to the Admiralty and future explorers. The message they bore in their brass cylinders was this:

“NOTE FOUND AT N.W SIDE OF K.W.LAND
FRANKLIN DEAD JUNE 11 1847, GORE DEAD LATER
SHIPS ABANDONED APRIL 28 1848
FRM CROZIER IN COMMAND
105 MEN REMAINING AS OF APRIL 1848
LIKELY DESTINATION REPULSE BAY
H.M.SHIP EDINBURGH SAFE
FIFTY MEN STILL ON THE ROSTER, THIRTEEN DEAD, 1 DISCH.
WINTERING NEAR NORTHEAST TIP OF K.W.LAND
ANDERSON COMMANDING.
APRIL 10TH, 1850”

In the following days, the parties returned unmolested, their expeditions a great success. The farthest note was placed on the Clarence Islands, a tiny rocky island chain to the northeast of King William Island. The Captain feasted them on on a very rare seal that a few marines had shot and some of the last bottles of Madeira, a great merriment for all involved.

The only disconcerting news I have to state is that, although we have stemmed the limited rot of our tinned provisions, I have confirmed with James that our lemon juice ration is decreasing in efficiency. Some men have lost teeth, others have reported blackening gums. This is only limited to the most unhealthy of our company, for now, but I fear for the future.

A new watch is being called up. I expect I will have to amputate more fingers soon, from the watch that just went below. I will update again if I can.

Chapter Text

The men had lost hope, John Burt included. On the morning of the 22nd of July, after a week of marching, buried in the snow, they discovered a pinnace, with corpses and supplies piled around it. There were many corpses, although not quite as many as at Tent Place in the large bay to the south, perhaps fifteen.

Burt wrote down a full list of items found at the place.

Six paddles.
Three table knives with white handles.
A pocket watch with gold covering.
A spyglass.
Wet and flaky tobacco pieces.
A compass.
Many tin dishes.
A complete skeleton with its clothes still on as well as dried flesh.
A pile of bones.
Three skulls piled on top of each other.
Many bones and skulls alongside the boat, as well as a fireplace nearby.

Inside the fireplace, two boots with cooked flesh inside sat cold and waiting. Sergeant Rouger smelled the flesh inside, determined it to be pork, and left it at that. But later on, as they were about to harness up, Burt saw Rouger dry heaving. He knew what was in those boots as well as any man, but nobody said a word.

The men gathered up a few chosen items, mostly knives or tobacco cases, while the officers took the pocketwatch, spyglass, and compass for their own uses. Burt himself was able to take the spyglass. As he prepared to leave, for they would not even stop to camp at this accursed place, Burt rubbed the spyglass with a cleaning wipe so vigorously that he did not notice Sergeant Rouger approaching him.

“Mr. Burt, sir,” the man began. “Commander Deanshire’s told us to leave a note among the bodies. He told me to find you, sir. What should we do?”

Burt thought for a moment, looking at the note. He read it over aloud.

“The crew of H.M.Ship Edinburgh abandoned ship earlier this year and established camp on the southeastern point of K.W.I. An expedition of 15 men with two boats left the camp to discover the fate of Franklin, the mission of this expedition. We still look for the man’s grave and have only found corpses as of yet. Our search for the ships continues.

It seems apparent that, due to the evidence found here, that the crews of H.M.Ship Erebus and Terror committed a great error, consuming their fellow man. Boots with cooked flesh were found, as well as skulls, a fully clothed skeleton, and assorted supplies spread around the area. It might be a sick-place or simply a place to deposit the dying.

This expedition shall move on to the more northern parts of King William Island.

Commander George Deanshire, July 22nd 1850.”

Burt looked around to see if anybody was watching. It was only Rouger. He saw the man’s thinning frame begin to shake, and Burt shook his head.

“The note is… appropriate, I suppose. Nobody else will read it but future explorers, anyway. No need to shy away from the.. Other parts.”

They finally elected on a decision for what to do with the note. Rouger gathered an array of blankets, food tins, and tobacco pouches (Burt saw Rouger looking into the pouches for any spare material) and piled them onto the whaleboat sitting in the middle of the camp. Deep inside the makeshift cairn, Burt employed a small metal box which had once contained an ammunition pouch to put the note inside. A light snow had begun to dust the skeletons again, covering yet more of them up, and Burt and Rouger could hear hauling in the distance. They shoved the box into the cairn and departed in a haste, not looking back on the scene until they were many miles away.

It was completely invisible to the naked eye, just another one of King William Island’s mountains, and the Earth had swallowed it whole as the fish had swallowed Jonah.

After a hard force-march, to get away from that accursed place, some said, or to end the expedition quicker, they reached the ice-site where the ships were supposed to be anchored in ice off King William Island’s western shore. The ships were far, but close enough to be sighted with a telescope. Burt pulled out the telescope from the Boat Place, and shared it with Rouger, affixing his eye to the exact spot on the coordinates where the ships were anchored.

Except, they weren’t.

After scanning the area for a good ten minutes, looking into every nook and cranny of the ice, even looking into the sky to see if he saw a mast or a bird or fucking God, they had to acknowledge the fact that the ships were gone.

But where?

“Sailed ‘em up back to Baffin Bay,” said Cyprus-born Captain of the Hold Solomon Gardener.

“Gone through the Passage,” said Magnus May, the diminutive caulker’s mate.

Either could be correct. Burt had no clue. After another five minutes of searching from shore (no one wanted to go out onto the ice) Commander Deanshire brought out his customary large box, stood atop it, and began his speech.

“Gentlemen… there is one thing to conclude from this. The Franklin men have returned to their ships, and sailed them. Now.. either we find them south, or we do not find them at all. We cannot go with them. We can only do one thing: return to our crewmates at Rescue Camp. We will… proceed from there, across the Simpson Strait, and from thence to the Bay of Repulse.”

A chorus of muttering ensued, followed by a quiet assent. Deanshire stepped off his box and turned to the Captain of the Hold.

“Mr. Gardener, help me turn the boats about.”

A week later, as the month of July came to its waning phase, the sailors of the Deanshire Expedition had reached the sea. Four men were hauled in the expedition’s whaleboat, two were sick from pneumonia and two from scurvy. As no surgeon had accompanied them, their condition could only be tended by Mr. Bolton, the son of the doctor’s assistant, and he was breathless from work. John Burt figured he was angry at the Commander having reneged on his promise of no hauling or winter watches for Mr. Bolton, in return for his full-time assistance helping the surgeon tend to the increasing numbers of wounded. But as more men fell sick, Deanshire had decided that all healthy men were needed to haul the harnesses, and Mr. Bolton had the workload of three men.

John Burt was the one who heard it.

As they crossed into that great bay where they had found Tent Place (but not found the actual site, to the increasing confusion of the commander) a deep fog had rolled over the land, and now they could only seen ten feet in front of them. The two boats kept together like men hugging, and the sick in both boats had conversations. The marines, split between the jolly boat and the whaleboat, talked about the certain kinds of caribou they might find on the island and on Adelaide Peninsula, near the great Back’s Fish River. John Burt had half a mind to tell them that by the time the next summer came around, they would hopefully be in Repulse Bay, and miss the caribou entirely - but he had watch, and he needed to concentrate on that, should some curious specimen of Ursus Maritimus try to paw its way into their provisions.

And then he heard the most peculiar sound that he hadn’t heard for several months now.

Clutching a shotgun beneath his mittens and standing off to the side of the whaleboat while Deanshire’s men prepped the jolly boat for increasing rockiness on the southern shore, John Burt heard a bell.

Specifically, a ship’s bell. They were all manufactured in the same method, or near enough as to make no matter, so that sleeping seamen would hear the change of watch.

But it couldn’t be a ship’s bell… could it?

Burt flagged down Magnus May and told him to tell the commander and Sergeant Rouger that he was stepping off for a small moment, to investigate a sound. Clutching his welsh wig, and half-cocking his shotgun, he crept towards the shore. He employed the gun strap to fasten the gun to his back, and pulled out his Franklin telescope.

Sitting there, with the most peculiar stillness, was a ship.

John Burt had pored over the designs of HMS Terror and Erebus many times. He knew that both ships were extremely similar in design and fashion - both were black, meant as gun ships at their original making, and the only meaningful dissimilarity between them was that John Burt preferred the Greek ‘Erebus’ (although he did not know the translation) to the stupidly prophetic ‘Terror.’

He could not tell which ship it was. But it was a Franklin ship, that he knew.

Running back as fast as he could, to the point where he was panting on his hands and knees, he fell before the hauling men and called out, “A ship, sir. Commander Deanshire, Sergeant… A ship.”

Eight men were chosen to stay behind at the boats, four fit men to guard the four sick men. Ten of the healthiest, most able men of HMS Edinburgh marched the half-mile to the shore of the bay, clutching poles or shotguns, although none suspected that they would need them - it was good to hold the things and be assured of your own defense.

As they approached the ice, they were so anxious to get there that Commander Deanshire took out his telescope and did not even stop to look, he simply walked on as he looked through the glass, leading to several almost-stumblings. After a while, the commander proclaimed the vessel “HMS Terror, without a doubt.” He folded up his glass and clutched two lanterns in both of his hands, paving a lit path for the men holding the guns.

As they got closer, they could see details of the ship. It hardly looked like a ship belonging to the Royal Navy, more like some whaler. A ripped tent apparatus was loosely clinging to its sides, the remnants of preparation for an arctic winter most like, and its ice anchor was up. Several seal spears sat on an overturned rack. No lanterns were lit, but it was the height of the day, and it could be seen clearly. Not a single man was patrolling the decks, and there were no signs of life.

“Looks abandoned,” said one seaman.

“It’s in perfect condition. They’d be mad to leave it abandoned. Leave a small garrison, or something,” pitched in Private Devon, still rubbing his eyes. He and several of the men had developed the habit of being able to sleep while in the harness, hauling without knowing it. The unlucky ones, Burt and Deanshire and Rouger included, were not possessed with this ability, and operated on three or four hours of sleep every night.

Leaving two men below to guard their point of exit, Deanshire and seven other men, including Burt, Sergeant Rouger, and Private Devon, climbed aboard, clutching the ladder hard to avoid slipping on the ice buildup. The ladder had not been maintained, a bad sign of its likelihood for occupancy.

“Now, Edward, I want you to climb to the quarterdeck and look through the glass there-”

The rear hatch swung open, and a shotgun barrel protruded.

“Who are you? Who are you? Le Vesconte or Little? LE VESCONTE OR LITTLE, MAN!” The man cried, spittle flying from his mouth.

“Neither,” said Commander Deanshire. “We are the officers, crew, and marines of Her Majesty’s Ship Edinburgh, commanded by Captain Henry Godfred Philip Anderson, and you are ordered, seaman, to put down your fucking god-damned gun before I hang you from the yardarm bare-fucking naked as your birth.”

The seaman muttered something to a man below.

“You.. you aren’t with Little?”

“Is that not what I just fucking said?”

The gun was ponderously withdrawn from view. Burt saw Deanshire give an audible sigh of relief.

“Step away from the hatch and let us come down. Light a lantern.” said Deanshire, walking forward.

“Ain’t got no more fuel for oil, sir. We had the last two weeks ago.”

Deanshire gripped the handle for the hatch, and climbed down, beckoning his men to follow. He handed one of the lanterns to the Franklin seaman. Behind him stood another man. The Commander took off his outer mittens and looked around, frowning. “You keep an odd ship, seaman. Why are your ladders not paved, and your tent taken up?”

“Too god-damn fucking cold for us, sir.. Your pardons, sir. We’ve only four of us left, sir.. Mr. Hornby said for us not to waste energy on it.”

“Only four? For the entire ship?”

“Well.. we started out with ten, sir. But they all died.”

Deanshire sighed. He saw a few men in their hammocks, and went to rouse them from their slumber. “Get up, you lazy fucking-”

The cry of “Don’t!” came too late for the Commander. When he rustled the hammock, a corpse, frozen-solid but still well maintained, fell to the floor. His limbs and feet did not move an inch, the only thing to give way was his head, which snapped a little at the neckline and bobbed a little like a cork. He was huddled together with his arms around himself, like a hug, and his teeth were gnawed down to the bone.

“Jesus Christ God Almighty.” said Deanshire, stepping away from the men and stumbling over nothing.

“We put the men in theys hammocks, sir… That’s Billy Orren. The scurvy got to him, sir. Figured it would be where they wanted to be when they.. Um..”

“You don’t have to continue. Take me to your lieutenant.”

“He’s a mate, sir. The lieutenants is all dead, sir.” Burt thought that the man, despite his grammatical errors, was excellent at distracting the commander from the six corpses in this room, because the party proceeded into the greatcabin immediately.

Two men stood up. One leaned on a musket, a man dressed in a marine uniform. One had an officer’s uniform with gold buttons on. The first thing that Burt noticed was how gaunt both men were. The officer looked starved, the private looked dead. But they managed to stand and walk over to their two fellow men, and joined them. The party of four and the party of eight stared at each other. Finally, Commander Deanshire spoke first.

“Hornby, I assume? What is your full name and rank?”

“Frederick John Hornby, First Mate, garrison commander of HMS Terror. And you are?”

“George Deanshire, Commander of HMS Edinburgh. Why don’t you introduce me to the rest of your men before I explain what we are doing here?”

“Aye.. sir.” Hornby turned.

“Private William Heather.” he pointed to the marine at his side, nervously clutching his musket.

“William Johnson, stoker.” he pointed to the man who had initially spoken with and pointed a gun at Deanshire and his party. He nervously waved.

“John Lane, Boatswain of HMS Terror and second in command.” he pointed to the man who Heather had been speaking to earlier, who was wearing a warrant officer’s uniform.

“You haven’t any able seamen with you?” said Burt, having finally spoken up, perplexed.

“We had six of them. They’re all in their hammocks, just yonder of this room. The scurvy or the ice got to them. This is an accursed place.” said Hornby, spitting on the floor.

“Well.. Mr. Hornby, this works out well. We lost our First Mate too, and a stoker, and our Boatswain is on our ship with a five man garrison where we left him. We also lost a private marine. You will all fit nicely.”

“You.. you will take us?” said Hornby. He looked like he was about to cry.

“We have enough provisions for several years. You will eat well again, finally, and gather your strength on the march back to our camp, on the southeastern side of King William Island. When you are able, you will give your report to Captain Anderson on what has happened to the Sir John Franklin Expedition - for we have not encountered any others - and then you will come with us to rescue. Get whatever you need from here, I do not want to stay a moment longer.”

Hornby did not cry, but Stoker Johnson did. He fell to the ground and put his head in his knees and wept like a child, muttering “Oh, Thank you God, Merciful God, Oh Lord…”

John Lane managed a smile and sauntered over to shake John Burt’s hand. Private Heather stumbled over to Sergeant Rouger and saluted, offering him his service - and First Mate Hornby did the one thing that John Burt did not expect him to do - he hugged the Commander, and then he took up the ship’s log in a large bag, and put on his gold-banded officer’s cap, and clutched his musket.

Solomon Gardener spoke up next, over the stillness of HMS Terror’s greatcabin.

“Now, uh, how about dinner?”

Chapter Text

May 26th, 1850
From the diary of the only Surgeon aboard HMS Edinburgh.

Yesterday, in the early morning hours of the 25th of May, James Curry, of Douglas upon the Isle of Mann, son of Thomas and Meredith Curry, brother of Thomas Curry Jr, beloved of God, passed into the hands of the Lord whom he Loved.

I wish that I could say his death had been peaceful.

I must admit that for the first time in my life, I have disobeyed my oath as a practitioner of medicine.

And I have committed Murder.

The purser with the huge tongue and the Third Mate, Edward Wilson, passed easily in the late hours of the 24th, within ten minutes of each other. But my brother and Lieutenant Smith lingered. I could hear the moans of Lieutenant Smith, holed up in his spacious officer’s cabin instead of the crowded sick bay. The subordinate officer’s steward, a man whose name I cannot recall, tended Lieutenant Smith during the duration of his illness, as he did for the purser and third mate. My brother was the sole source of my focus during this time - and, with only one qualified surgeon to tend two surviving patients, this was a violation of my oath to care for the sick and wounded.

James was coherent to the end, I must say with much regret, while I do not believe Third Lieutenant Smith understood much after 1:00 AM on the morning of the 25th. Around 3:00 AM, after I had been away to cry and look into more of my useless books of medicine for ways to cure this godforsaken plague and Captain Anderson had come in to see him, my brother’s light heat across his brow grew into a grievous fever, and he thrashed across the bed. Mr. Bolton tied him down across the legs and arms, but there was no reason to chain his mouth, and I heard him speak.

“God end this,” he spake, “God end this.” He said this a multitude of times, telling no one in particular, except perhaps for God. I filled a canteen with tincture of opium (for one spoonful would only put him to fitful sleep) and massaged it down his throat, which had begun to fail. It streamed down the sides of his mouth even then, and he could not speak. He gurgled for quite a while and then expired at 3:11 AM. I had dismissed Mr. Bolton ten minutes prior so I was the only witness to this event. I put the remaining tincture back in its box and hid the canteen.

Mr. Smith survived him by 47 minutes, thrashing and wailing in his cabin, but I did not go to him, to offer him the same. I sat in the ship’s bay and thought of our life, what it had been, and what it could have been. All boys in Douglas are told the story of the most famous Manx of all, Fletcher Christian, and we fought the Mutiny aboard that ship what must have been ten or twelve times, all with local boys from our school. Father did not discourage this, in fact, he said himself that as a boy, he and his mates had terrorized Edward Christian, brother of Fletcher and a local magistrate, over details about the event. Edward had none, of course, he was not there, but that did not deter them.

I think, in a sense, that James and I still thought those heroic visions for adventure and native consorts and tattoos in exotic foreign islands were possible. We would have been in Russia, or perhaps Japan, if we were not stopped by ice, on our way to China perhaps. We would have visited the lands of the eastern peoples past China but before India, and taken ship from there to home.

I do not think we will survive five years into the future, perhaps not even three.

The men only have one surgeon now, and while I am qualified, there are more than fifty patients I will need to tend, all the while keeping my usual duties to the ship. I expect I will be swamped. But that doesn't matter. Last evening I oversaw James’ deposition into the Dead Room of HMS Edinburgh. I hear the men saying that rats enjoy digging into the corpses after they chew through the many layers of ship’s canvas - made harder by the fact that our sailmaker, the elderly gentleman George Perry, oldest man on the expedition to my knowledge, is dead, killed in the bear attack on King William.

We will not bury them, for fear of the bears. I will never eat bear meat for the rest of my life, I have vowed to God, liver or otherwise. Captain Anderson looked positively sick yesterday, like he doesn’t already. Before I end this rather bleak segment of my personal diary, since this will never be published except perhaps by my children because of my admittance to murder and violation of all sacred oaths that bind me to my life, I will give a report on the Captain that is perhaps of interest to my nonexistent readers.

The Captain is going to die.

Not tomorrow, perhaps not in a year, but he is going to die, either on this expedition or on this very ship.

His feet swell, his toes get larger after every monthly inspection. Soon enough, he will only be able to walk with a cane - and later, he will not be able to walk at all. He will need to be carried around in a litter, like an Arabian king of old. That is not a problem to his overall health in and of itself, if that was the only issue.

It isn’t.

The Captain suffers from scurvy. His teeth are stable, for now, but his gums blacken. Blood forms on his scalp, he tells me, and he wipes it off with every shower in the basin that he takes. It is not particularly advanced, but it is one of the first cases among the crew I have ever seen - which means that he is likely to perish within months, if not for one thing that we lack:

Fresh meat. If we can find fresh meat on this damnable vessel, the Captain could perhaps live another twenty years, despite how naturally inclined to sickness he is. He could go on to become an incompetent commodore, or perhaps an admiral, for surviving a trip to the Arctic darkness. There was talk of making Franklin a Rear Admiral when we left England. I believe George Back was promoted when he returned as well.

He could go on to bemoan about how his sons received commission to captaincy before he did (a common statement at officer dinners) or talk about the one time he saw Admiral Lord Nelson, as if seeing him was becoming him.

Of course, I shall not tell the Captain that he has scurvy - not until it becomes a significant problem to the Crew, or himself. If it does, Commander Deanshire would take over completely, and, dare I say, we would all be better off for it in the realm of competence. The captain’s idea of leadership, right now, would have us sit on our asses for three years as our provisions expire and we keel over with blood pouring out of our eyes and hair and genitals.

Then, when we are finally inevitably freed from the ice, the few survivors, himself not among them, will hail him a hero and his sons will commission a very fine gravestone for him and the Queen will name for him ships and volcanoes and bare Arctic islands where Esquimaux dare not even shit, and where a white man will not visit for two hundred more years except on an expedition to find some other white man’s corpse.

Yes, this is our expedition commander.

I will write more if I have time. Or perhaps not, because I will have none.

Chapter Text

Henry Anderson, in truth, though he led an expedition to look for the men of Sir John Franklin’s Expedition, did not expect to find any of them alive.

So when four men, each thinner than the last, had staggered into his Holland tent along with his own Marine Sergeant, Commander, and Ice Master, he had several questions.

The first of which was:

“Where are the rest of you.. your men?”

The First Mate snapped into a salute, and his men followed, after finally seeing a Captain for years. “They’ve all died, or gone off to the mainland, sir. To find rescue.”

Deanshire nodded thoughtfully. “They had ten men to garrison Terror originally, but they, uh, perished.”

Anderson nodded. “Get these men fed. Don’t eat too much. If you do, you’ll die. I know this for a fact. When your strength is gathered, we will leave this infernal island.”

The men saluted again and left the tent. Anderson looked at Deanshire and Burt and motioned for them to sit down. Hoar provided them with drinks. The Commander spoke up.

“We began by moving to a large bay.”

———————————————————-

The call for the muster came at 7:00 PM, when it was completely dark out. The moon illuminated the proceedings, and the rest was done by light poles dug into the ground. Lanterns were placed atop them.

The remaining crew of the HMS Edinburgh lined up in their Welsh wigs and thick coats and gloves. It was impossible to tell who was who under all the layers, so Captain Anderson, held up by his steward, Hoar, would take a muster roll of the men. It was more of a formal occasion, of course, because Anderson knew down to the lowliest seaman who was still alive among his crew. But it had to be done, especially with an additional task to be completed tonight.

The men formed a square of sorts. The officers stood behind Captain Anderson, the seamen to the left, petty officers to the right (led by the remaining warrant officers) and the marines in front of Anderson. In front of him, directly, stood the four known surviving men of the Sir John Franklin Expedition.

“Crewmates,” began Anderson. “You have survived, in your majority, the greatest march to the sea since the March of the Ten Thousand. I remind you that those heroes returned home, almost completely intact. And so shall we. We must now cross an even longer journey - vaulting mountains and storms unlike anything you have ever seen, through Boothia Peninsula and incredibly barren lands. But you will persevere. You serve the greatest nation to ever grace the Earth.”

Anderson ended his speech, and the Commander, still gaunt and shivering from his cross-island trip, led a ragged cheer of the men. Even a few Franklin sailors joined in. The marines lifted their hats on their guns until the sounds naturally died down.

Anderson began the roll call.

“Deanshire, George!”

“Fells, Carson!”

And so on. Of the five nautical officers who set off on HMS Edinburgh, four were alive, the only casualty being Third Lieutenant Oliver Smith, who died whimpering after eating a bear liver.

They moved on to the mates. Of the three mates who set out on HMS Edinburgh in 1848, only one was alive, Second Mate Thomas Cartridge. He stood as the only man not shivering in the group - he wore his massive bear pelt like a coat, and it went down far below his feet. He screamed “Present!” over the ferocious wind when his name was called.

Of the remaining officers of HMS Edinburgh, supposed to have been the purser, chief and assistant surgeons, and ice master, only two were alive: the assistant surgeon, Thomas Curry Jr, and ice master, John Burt. Curry hardly looked alive, though, he simply stared into the ground behind Anderson. He wasn’t shivering either.

Then came the warrant officers. Boatswain Henry, though he was still alive, was listed as ‘absent.’ Of the two remaining warrant officers, the carpenter and the engineer, both were alive, although the carpenter looked half dead from his work: his mate, Simeon Fitzgerald, had been left with Edinburgh’s garrison to repair any structural damage to the ship or its boat. He handled all lumber matters on the expedition now.

After the officers, came the marines. Of the seven marines who set off in 1848 on HMS Edinburgh, six were alive, although Robert MacMillan looked positively dead from the affair on Deanshire’s Expedition. He was the most seriously ill, and the assistant surgeon gave him a roughly 50 percent chance of living. The only death was Private John Farrows, slaughtered at Expedition Camp. The indefatigable Sergeant Rouger and Private Edward Devon were the healthiest among them.

Then came the petty officers. Captain Anderson decided to sort them out into rough categories. Of the 22 petty officers who set off with Captain Anderson, one was ‘absent’, Carpenter’s Mate Fitzgerald, while Quartermaster Abraham Young was listed as ‘discharged.’ Of the 20 remaining, seventeen lived. The casualties were Captain of the Foretop Reid Fraser, of the bear attack, Stoker Joseph Smith, of tuberculosis, and the most important petty officer who was deceased, the elderly Sailmaker George Perry, who was also killed in the bear attack.

All the other petty officers, in various states of living, survived.

Anderson moved on to Ship’s Boys. Both were listed as ‘absent.’

Finally, the Able Seamen were called up. Of the 18 who had traveled in 1848, two were listed as ‘absent’ and sixteen remained. Of those sixteen, six were dead, leaving ten. Smith, Wentworth, Ulbricht, and Teague were all dead from the attack on Expedition Camp, Mills had been savaged and killed by the same bear, and Marcus had fainted or fallen asleep on watch and frozen down to the bone. Anderson could still remember watching his men have to break his legs to fit him inside his coffin. Of the roster of 64 men on HMS Edinburgh, by this autumn evening in 1850, 15 were dead, by his count. Their two Esquimaux guides were not counted, so the roster stood at 49 men still under the command of Captain Henry Godfred Philip Anderson. On this specific expedition, however, that number was 43, accounting for all those absent and discharged.

Once the muster call was finished, Anderson read out a formal document to the men.

“As we have lost our boatswain, a stoker, our first mate, and a private marine, I hereby enlist, with the powers granted to me by the Admiralty of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, John Lane as our boatswain, William Johnson as a stoker, William Heather as a private of marines, and Frederick John Hornby as our first mate.”

The cheers were much more noisy than the cheer for Deanshire’s return, as the Franklin men had proven that the expedition was not useless. For now, the mutterings of Thomas Wallows and his cronies had been silenced by a greater force than fear - hope. When the men stopped cheering, and the pats on the back had all been given to the Franklin men, Anderson continued.

“Furthermore,” he said, “the remaining crew of the Sir John Franklin Expedition have left this island. Thus, for our lives and theirs, we must do the same. Within two weeks, we will be off this island, and crossing Adelaide Peninsula. We will not find food there. It will be late autumn when we reach and cross there. But by the time we make it to Repulse Bay, the survivors, - for there will be deaths, will have enough food to wait the few months until summer, and flag down whaling ships who hunt in the bay. That is the situation, gentlemen, and if you would like to propose an alternative, please state it.”

Henry Butler, cautiously, stepped out.

“Sir.. me and some of the boys have it in us to go back to the ship. We think the ice’ll warm up this year, Captain, and we can blow it up or cut it and free Edinburgh. Go out the way we came.” He looked down after he said it, and Anderson looked confused.

“We just made our march across the island, Quartermaster. You would not live if you marched up there. Your food would run out, and there’s not even a guarantee that the ice would melt. No, we shall not do that, and I will not be dividing my command.” Timidly, Butler stepped back into the line. Wallows bore into Anderson’s skull, thinning his eyes, but Anderson did not return the look.

“Well, are there any more objections?”

There were none. In the morning, Anderson saw off a team of sledge parties led by the first lieutenant, to carry dried foods and canned goods to the shore, a party of 15 men to proceed the main party.

In two weeks, he would join them.

Chapter Text

August 20th, 1850

Shotgun blasts no longer roared in Edward Devon’s ears.

During his time on King William Island, the crackling and explosions of faraway ice blockades were a constant annoyance to the crew, especially those with scurvy, and they had shattered eardrums. Devon had heard from his mate Bob Levine that in advanced stages of scurvy, loud noises at close range could kill a man. He was glad he didn’t have it. He seemed the healthiest of the marines after his return from the Deanshire expedition.

He had the watch that night, almost two weeks after leaving the island. He didn’t know what he was watching for, because there weren’t any enemies within a thousand miles except for bears, but marines were still expected to perform the customary watches without any additional back-pay. They protected the captain’s command from mutiny.

Edward Devon loved the Captain, of course. He was an excellent man and a good leader, for getting them this far without significant casualties. But he would’ve liked that extra pay, considering the circumstances.

He sighed and stomped his feet, shuffling around like a circus performer every minute or so. As of this freezing late-summer morning, Edward Devon had all of his toes - a bloody miracle, if you asked him, but only eight fingers.

While he was standing there, he heard men talking by lantern light. He knew the Captain had sent the more unsavory sorts of men to be the advance party - men like Charles West, One-Foot Smith, and, of course, Mr. Thomas Wallows, controlled by a fine officer, Mr. Fells, and most of the marines. Deanshire was originally planned to lead the party, but he had not recovered from the expedition across the island. Devon, personally, had thought he was walking into Dante’s Ninth Circle, but he had turned out no worse for wear, at least physically.

He heard them conversing in their tent now. But it was too far away for him to hear without shuffling out of his watch position, which, despite how useless it was, could get him whipped if he left it.

As his watch finally ended, Devon strolled over to the tent, making it look like he was going back to his own, and finally heard a fragment of their conversation. He could not loiter, so he walked at a normal pace as he went by the tent.

“Edinburgh would be-“

“Anderson-“

He frowned. Devon thought they wanted to return to the ships, he knew, but how would they do so? They were on the continent now. It was suicidal even before they left the island. He shrugged internally. If men wanted to desert, that meant more food for the men who stayed.

Still thinking about food, he lined up in the meal line. Bob Levine was already there. The American, Marshal Credge, had taken over mess duties for the fifteen men while Patrick Ellis was still on the island.

“Morning, Marshal,” muttered Devon, as Levine went to sit in the marine tent. Devon grabbed a plate.

“Morning, Eddy. Here’s your slop.” The queer Pennsylvania accent grated on Devon, and he sighed.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, trying to hide a smile, as he put Poor John on his plate. A ship’s biscuit with bacon and a dollop of sugar, that was his breakfast for the most backbreaking work in the Queen’s Navy.

He really, really wanted James here. He thought about him as he ate his food with Robert. His fellow private had not gone on the Deanshire expedition, but he was recovering from a bout of pneumonia and could not make the strenuous trip. Damn that silly man and his habits. He smiled. He had told him a thousand times to dry thoroughly after a wash in the basin, but he had kept part of his hair wet, and the next morning he awoke shivering. Devon had been so sick with fright he thought he might have hit the surgeon. Curry was apathetic, but eventually useful.

He didn’t want to leave James while he was still sick, but he equally didn’t want to leave Forward Camp, as it was called, in the hands of potential mutineers, so he had agreed to go.

As he finished his breakfast, Bob Levine said, “Our chore today is to escort the men bringing the two boats to the land. They’re still on the ice. Once we do that, we’ll be ready for Anderson.”

Devon nodded, bringing his mind away from James. They both suited up, putting on their welsh wigs and caps and distinctive red uniforms. Devon longed for the day that he had a chevron to add to that uniform, but today was not that day. Levine handed Devon his musket and they both ventured out of camp, toward the general direction of the ice.

When they arrived there, no worse for wear, a few men were already loitering. William Keller was spitting tobacco on the ice. Henry Butler, his red hair and beard poking out of his many layers, was laughing at a joke Ed Smith had told him. Smith was even more well-fitted for the ice than most of the rest of them - his peg-foot, made by the carpenter, had hooked nails on the bottom, and he was able to smoothly retract it from the ice after each step, only making a minuscule hole in the frozen ground. The others had to use hobnail boots, which were painful to put on and take off.

Lieutenant Fells approached, followed by Mate Cartridge and Alexander Hill, a foul-mouthed petty officer who was somehow friends with the officers. They suited up in hobnail boots, the officers in the front, and pulled.

Levine was on the left of the two boats, Devon on the right. All were having difficulty, except for Ed Smith and, apparently, Thomas Wallows. They let out a grunted chorus of “Roll the old Chariot along” led by Marshal Credge, who had taught the American whaling song to all of the ship’s company during the long months stranded in ice.

It took them the better part of the day, as they grunted and took breaks often. Lieutenant Fells employed a partner system, any man who needed to step away must be accompanied by another armed man. Thus, for all their piss breaks, Corporal Keller and his two privates tagged along, awkwardly looking around at the ice.

The oddest thing for Edward Devon was the fact that, when he accidentally glanced that way, some of the streams were bright red. He had never seen such a thing, the only one in those parts that he had ever heard of were kidney stones, which his father got often back in Marylebone. But he had never seen blood come out of those areas.

They had finally succeeded in pulling the boats to the center of camp. He ate his hard-tack and salted beef and collapsed in the tent, too tired to sleep. He listened to the groaning of the men who had hauled for a third of the day.

He was eternally glad, at that moment, that he had become a marine, bugger the advance pay. He heard a thin whistle break the air, and he immediately sprung up.

“Coming into camp!” Yelled a man, who Devon knew immediately to be Alfred Back. He was even more dour than usual now that he had been replaced as the de-facto bosun.

He climbed out of his tent and stumbled the quarter-mile to the shore. He saluted the Captain and Sergeant Rouger, moving past the collection of boats to the whaleboat where the sick were housed.

James Norris looked up and smiled. Devon was drawn to the difference between their characters. He was six foot, an unnatural height, all agreed, and Norris was five foot eight, but he looked even smaller with his shrunken-in cheeks, sitting in the huge whaleboat, with piles of blankets over him.

“Hey, fool. Why’d you go and get yourself sick? I could’ve used your help supervising the piss patrols.” Devon said, grinning and adjusting the blankets.

“Piss patrols?” Asked Norris, smiling just a little in the way he often did. His yellow hair illuminated in the moonlight, and his blue eyes seemed black.

“Yup. Fells had us accompanying the haulers while they were on their breaks.” He leaned on the whaleboat to look over Norris. “Are these enough blankets, James? You look thin.”

“That was probably the year of half-rations, Edward.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, you wouldn’t envy me. Anderson talked about Trafalgar again.”

Devon groaned and chuckled. “More torture than the pneumonia, I’d bet.”

Norris nodded. “How have the men here fared?”

Devon gave a sardonic smile. “Well, nobody’s died.” James drew himself out of the boat and looked at him. He folded a blanket over his marine’s uniform. Devon was surprised that he was still wearing it.

“Edward, do you notice anything different about the boats?”

Devon focused his eyes on them. There were seven in total, the exact amount that they had brought, except one was larger than normal.

“Wait, don’t the sick normally stay in a jolly boat?”

Norris smiled. “What you failed to realize, dear, was that Deanshire swapped his jolly boat for Terror’s whaleboat that they left aboard the ship. It’s longer, lighter, and able to carry more men. We also left a jolly boat aboard Edinburgh. This means that we have three massive lifeboats which are capable of carrying our sick and supplies on a scale that our jollys could never account for.”

Devon didn’t understand technical things like this. He was bright, but not bright in the numbers department. “What are you telling me, James?” He asked, taking his hand beneath the blanket as he guided them to their tent.

“It means, Edward,” said James softly, smiling at his partner, “that Commander Deanshire, by replacing his boat, has possibly saved all our lives.”

They hiked the quarter-mile to camp, hand in hand, and slept. All across camp, men were putting up tents, striking improvised ones, and lighting torches with their limited oil.

In the morning, Edward Devon went out early to count the boats. HMS Edinburgh had started out with eight. Four jolly boats, two whaleboats, two pincers. Pincers were large and thick, but heavy, and jolly boats were light but small. Whaleboats were, Devon knew, the golden child of ship’s boats, except for perhaps a Ship’s Launch, a boat which could carry up to 25 men and their supplies, and had famously carried Captain Bligh and his loyalists to safety. They had left one jolly boat with the skeleton crew of Edinburgh, left another with the abandoned Terror, and collected a whaleboat from that same vessel, bringing them back up to seven.

Three whaleboats, two pincers, and two jolly boats.

Devon knew a different tale about whaleboats. He had read testimonials of the sinking of the Essex, an old whaler from Nantucket which was stove in by a bull whale. The three whale-boats of Essex, carrying six or seven men each (along with a huge amount of supplies) carried a few choice survivors to rescue. Only a few had survived, of course, but the moral was that some had lived, including all three officers and some seamen. James would like that story.

And now they had the same amount of whaleboats, plus four additional ones, that the Essex’s crew did.

He smiled.

Chapter Text

August 23rd, 1800

Henry Anderson was running, running up the Roman steps. The street was a dead end, he knew, so as he ran, he formulated a plan.

His father would’ve called it cowardice. He agreed with him, but it was the only way to get out of this without at least a busted up face.

As soon as he turned the corner to the next street, he leapt for the old stone wall, using one of the extended stones he had noticed earlier as a literal stepping stone. He kicked away the loose rock so the schoolboys chasing him could not employ the same method.

Panting, he looked down. Some tried to scale the rock, but most just glowered up at him. One said, “Come on down here. Your words won’t help you out of this.”

One of the boys started to make his way the long way around, bypassing the wall altogether, but that would take several minutes. Henry Anderson turned and ran.

As he kept going, he thought about how he would tell mother about this. His mother didn’t talk anymore, mostly, because that would produce coughing fits which extorted blood from her mouth. That frightened him, he despised sickness, and he would always leave the room when her coughs began.

Still, he would tell her. He would frame it as a great escape. Bears chasing a deer, and him the deer. Maybe she’d say “Well done,” after, in that weasel voice of hers. She didn’t say it often, but he liked hearing it. But the person who he really wanted to tell was Pierre. He had been getting on well with his French lessons - secretly, of course, Richard Anderson would not permit his son to learn the language of his country’s enemy, even though he employed a Frenchman in his estate and Richard Anderson was half a world away.

Truthfully, Henry did not care much for the French language. He was not very good at it unless he pressed himself very hard. But afterwards, when he’d done very well, Pierre would always tell him that he had done a very good job, and that he was very intelligent, and that he was proud.

For Henry Anderson, that was just about the greatest thing that someone could tell him, because he knew it wasn’t true.

The gate approached rapidly in his vision now, and he pulled it open. The lock had never worked anyway. He jumped the steps two at a time, lumbering into the house and slamming the door. He looked for them everywhere. Eventually, he made his way to his mother’s bedroom, clicking open the door and stepping inside excitedly.

A woman that he vaguely recognized as his mother was laying on the bed. Her mouth was outstretched but her eyes were rolled back, and she was slightly angled in such a way that one side of her mouth streamed blood down her cheeks. It had pooled on the wooden floorboards beneath the bed and he saw chunks of discolored things in the pool that he later recognized as pieces of his mother's lungs.

He went over to the bed to hold her hand.

——————————————————

On August 23rd, 1850, as his expedition ventured through the looming frozen pools and uneven ground of Adelaide Peninsula, Henry Anderson wrote a letter to his expedition’s sponsor.

“My baron Barrow, now that I have collected the Franklin survivors that I mentioned in my previous correspondence, I shall now inform you of the happenings of that Expedition, and their best known whereabouts according to First Mate Hornby. Having proceeded from Beechey Isle (where he wintered from 1845 to 1846) his ships became trapped in the ice during September of 1846. With the deaths of more than two dozen men, and the expedition’s leader, Captain Crozier decided to abandon the ships with 105 men in April of 1848. We later found four of these men, commanded by Terror’s First Mate (who I invested as First Mate to replace my own) on the ship. Crozier’s men had decided to return, leaving behind corpses on King William Island, and sailed Terror into a sheltered harbor, where we found a large tent filled with thirty bodies worth of bones. These must have been the men too sick to continue. We also found additional sites with boats - both had multiple bodies and supplies. HMS Terror is in good condition, it is still in its bay as far as I know, but it has been abandoned. I expect the Esquimaux will scavenge it after we are gone.

In any case, I know not where Erebus has gone. Hornby said that it sailed south, but he is not sure. Perhaps it continued through the channel, ice-free. Perhaps you are hosting its officers for dinner in London right now. But I have ascertained Franklin’s fate, as well as the fate of roughly fifty of his men, constituting most of the complement of a single of his ships. The rest of them, likely south, are where I proceed now. I have left detailed notes on King William Island through my proxy, Commander Deanshire, and expect future explorers will find them as well should I not return.

Now back to almost fifty men, we are really in the highest of spirits. From my cabin (a large tent with wood furnishings) I can hear “The Minstrel Boy” being bellowed by several of my Irish seamen. We have packed, and are proceeding to the bay of Repulse, as planned. My baron Barrow, I wish you the finest health until I can do it in person.

P.S another detail I have not revealed is that we found the grave of Lieutenant John Irving, identified by his mathematics medal which we left on the spot, near where Crozier departed this island. I felt it would be too much for the men to hear of the death of another Lieutenant.

Yours,

Henry G. P. Anderson”

As he finished the letter, he put it back with his previous correspondence on the jolly boat. To avoid the interference with supplies or the sick, Anderson had placed his moving command post aboard one of the jolly boats. He had taken all the expedition’s letters, his nautical navigation equipment, the ship’s log, and all the expedition’s guns and powder except for that which belonged to the marines and other officers.

“Commander Deanshire,” he called cheerfully. “I have completed my orders.”

The Commander gave a rare grin, at his position leading one of the whaleboats, and for once in a very long time, Henry Anderson felt like he had completed something, well and truly.

As they had started off out of Adelaide Peninsula, the men had taken to naming the boats which they were hauling halfway across the world. Anderson eagerly embraced the tradition, and had the Carpenter carve the new names into each boat following a public vote. He thought it was an excellent sign that the traditional British spirit of Royal Navy sailors was not yet lost.

The three whaleboats were called Curry, Baynes, and Smith, after his ship’s slain officers. He would not permit one to be named after himself, which was the original idea.

The pincers were named Perry, after the sailmaker and oldest man on the expedition, and Speedy, after Lord Cochrane’s famed schooner, in the hope that, as he had been told, “It would speedily deliver them to rescue.”

One jolly boat was also called Smith, after the third mate, and the other was called Hammond, after his purser. He knew this was half out of affection for the pair and half because the jolly boat called Hammond, his command boat, had a massive rudder, much larger than usual, which he suspected was because of his purser’s massive tongue. Secretly, he was thrilled with the joke.

After three days of marching, his officers told him that they were coming up on the end of Adelaide Peninsula, as they had landed to the right of it in the first place. Despite his speech, Captain Anderson had every intention of marching another hundred miles if Boothia Peninsula could be avoided. He had heard stories that shocked him, of constantly crumbling and rebuilding mountains of ice which could come down in an instant and smash a whaleboat. He would not subject his men to that, even if that meant passing through some of the most barren lands in the world.

Anderson heard barking. Not from Porus, laying in the boat with him, it was louder and came from multiple voices.

“Halt the march,” called Anderson softly to his bosun, at the head of his command boat. He blew on his thin whistle and all across the rocky plain men stopped hauling and looked toward Anderson. He looked around again and eventually other men heard it too.

“Dogs?” a few whispered, looking at Porus to confirm it wasn’t him. Eventually, the dog, sleeping, woke up and heard it too. He climbed out of the boat and ran across the ground toward the noise.

“Shit.” Anderson muttered. “Rouger! Take two men and go find him!” he called to his sergeant of marines, who unharnessed and chose Levine and Devon to accompany him. Norris still sat in the ship’s boat, covered by blankets, but recovered every day.

They waited around, talking amongst each other. Deanshire came up to ask Anderson why he had stopped the march, and then he heard it too. Hornby came up to tell them that he smelled something, and the lieutenants and mates mustered around the sitting Anderson. They heard it too.

Several minutes later, Anderson spied with his glass his three men running down a substantial rocky hill that they had crested. When they got close enough, Levine fell to his feet with exhaustion but Rouger approached Anderson and began spouting out his report, spittle flying from his mouth and drenching the sideboards of the jolly boat.

“Esquimaux, sir… just beyond the ridge.. Twelve of them. Six men, four women, and two little boys. Or girls. I’m not sure. With a pack of dogs. Dogs, sir! This could save us weeks of hauling time. Months.”

“I- I want to go see them. I want to.”

Simon Hoar, in the boat with him, objected. “Sir - you cannot -”

Anderson looked over, sharply. “I can’t what? Can’t attend the first fucking native encounter on my expedition?”

With a breath, he looked over at Cartridge. “I want the least amount of men possible. We can’t appear… threatening. Our three speakers of the Esquimaux language, and then Sergeant Rouger, Second Mate Cartridge, Hoar, and myself.”

Cartridge spoke up. “Sir, they could kill you. Rouger said they’re a hunting party. They would have spears.”

Anderson folded his hands in his lap and allowed his steward to haul him out, unsteadily, onto the rocks below. He groaned, but held his weight. “And we have guns. It is the natural risk facing any officer of the Royal Navy. Prepare a sledge. Bring metal items. I’ll strap myself to that, and Hoar can haul me.”

“Metal items, sir?” asked Rouger.

“For trading, Sergeant? We want those dogs. Unless you planned to shoot them, of course.”

Rouger went away and prepared a sled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Half an hour later, the party of seven men had crested the hill, Hoar with much difficulty, and made their way down the sloping backside to reach the Esquimaux, who had sat down after Rouger’s marines had motioned for them to sit. Now, the party came up to each other, cautiously. Rouger and Cartridge gripped their shotguns and the Esquimaux prepared their seal spears.

The strongest native man, perhaps almost Anderson’s age, approached the group.

“Doktook?” he said.

“What is he saying, Commander?” asked Anderson, turning to his second. Deanshire shrugged.

“I thought you knew the language, man!” he said, frustrated.

First Lieutenant Fells looked over at Anderson. “Sir, that is not a word in the vocabulary of these natives.”

“Oh.” said Anderson. He motioned for Hoar to haul him up, undoing the straps. He had lost most of his weight, yes, but he was still significant, and he gripped a thin cane fashioned from one of the ship’s muskets. He motioned for Hoar and Cartridge to stay there, and precariously made his way closer to the Esquimaux main party with his three Inuktitut speakers.

“Speak. Tell them we mean no harm, or… something.” said Anderson, clueless, still gripping the stick like his life depended on it.

Deanshire began speaking.

“Aanniqtuqajjaanngittuq ilingnut. Niqitaarumajugut. Niqiit. Umiarjuaminngaaqsimajugut.”

The Esquimaux party all grinned, and both of the children said “Eeee!” and talked amongst themselves.

“What the fuck are you saying, George?” asked Anderson, still standing and gritting his teeth.

“I told them that we come in peace.”

“Oh. Right. Yes.”

The Esquimaux man approached. He said something that made no sense to Anderson, but Deanshire nodded. The man looked at Fells, frowned, and said,

“Irvunk?”

“Another word I don’t know, Captain,” said Fells. After a while, the Esquimaux man who had been looking at Fells frowned again and looked away, shaking his head.

The Inuit then asked a question about their story to Fells. He responded in Inuktitut, and translated to English.

“We seek the men who came in two boats, who look like us,” they said. “But we have many dead, so we make for the South. We have four of them among us. We once numbered many, but now we are few.”

“What happened to the men who came before us?” asked Deanshire.

“They are now so few. They are in the South. They sledge boats behind them. Some of our number, including my friend Kokleeargnun, hunted caribou with these men at the large bay on the island. It was very successful. Then they moved south. One of their ships is near the mainland.”

When this was translated, Anderson seemed to spring up. “Does he mean Erebus? Ask him. Does he mean HMS Erebus?”

Deanshire, after asking, responded, “He says: ‘The Ship at Utjulik.’”

“What the fuck does ‘Utjulik’ mean?” asked Anderson. “Does it mean near some coast or mainland?”

“I haven’t a clue, sir.”

Anderson sighed.

Even though Deanshire and Fells could make a decent conversation with them, they did not speak much. Finally, Anderson looked at Burt and said, “Get out the metal items. Offer them. Deanshire, make the offer. Dogs for all these metal items.”

Deanshire approached and made the offer. “Qimmiq savirajannut. Tauqsiiniq.”

The native man shook his head. “Qimmiqariaqaratta ingirranittinnut. Taakkua tauqsiijjutigilugit, niqiqaqtittiniaqpugut. Tamanna piujummariuvuq.”

“What’s he saying, George?” asked Anderson, looking between Deanshire and Fells.

“He says he can’t trade the dogs. He needs them to travel. But he’ll give us food for some of the items.”

Anderson thought for a moment, then nodded.

They gave them several items. Knives, forks, metal tins, razors, but no guns or bullets. As a final gift, Anderson drew out his telescope, a gift from his sons, and gave it to the leader. He handed it back to his youngest daughter, who squealed in excitement when she realized what it could do. Anderson made a flipping motion with the one hand not gripping his cane, and she turned it around and saw that she was able to make people small, as well.

She squealed again, and Anderson looked at the telescope longingly.

Eventually, after they were done inspecting their items, two of the men ventured to the back of their sled, and Anderson moved his hand to his waist where his four-shooter lay, tucked into his pants, but they had only brought out a heavy sack. It was the size of a small boy, and took both of the men to bring it to their position. They dropped it at the Captain’s feet.

He reached down to unfold the opening, when he fell. His knees hit the rocks and he eventually slid onto his butt, groaning. Cartridge and Hoar ran forward from where they were waiting behind the main group, and Deanshire helped the Captain to his feet. Fells opened the bag.

“It’s meat.. It’s all meat.. I don’t believe it..”

Burt looked inside, and gasped. Finally, Anderson limped over, and he saw that the entire bag was filled with succulent meats of all kinds - caribou, seal, the whiter parts must be bird.. He saw some larger pieces that Burt determined to be bear. He frowned, but did not let it rest on his face for too long.

Hoar and Cartridge, seeing what was in the bag, began to laugh. And soon the officers joined in, and the Esquimaux, and the children.

“We could -” said Cartridge, through breaths of laughter, “Feed all of Expedition Camp with this meat. For two days, or three.”

Anderson concurred. His mouth began to water. “George, ask them if they have any more. I’ll give them anything. Anything.” Then he sat in breathless chuckling again until he received a response.

“No, sir. The rest on that sled is for them, enough to get back to their village with these items. But they said that if we encountered them again, they would trade more. Happily, sir. God damn. This has saved us.” Deanshire, never one for cursing or smiling, did both.

Anderson limped forward to meet the head man. He took off his gold-banded officer’s cap and put it in the hand that he held his cane with. “Henry Anderson.” He outstretched a hand.

The Esquimaux hesitated for a moment, and then gripped it. Anderson shook it. “Captain of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy vessel Edinburgh. Tell him, George.”

Deanshire repeated the statement. An old man inquisitively stood up from their sled. He had previously been petting the dogs and looking at the weapons of the group. He looked at Anderson. “Aglukark?” he said, his eyes thinning. “Aglooka?”

Fells looked at Anderson. “That means ‘long strider.’”

Anderson let go of the man’s hand and looked at the old man. “Are you insulting me, man?” he said, frowning. “If you’re joking, it’s not very good.”

Deanshire quickly approached Anderson. “Sir, he’s not.. I think it’s also a title of authority. Like a leader.” He put his hand on Anderson’s shoulder and directed him toward the meat.

“Fine, fine. I apologize.” he said, and Deanshire relayed the message.

Burt looked at the meat. “Sir, the men have been sitting there for hours. I think we ought to go.”

Anderson nodded. “Let’s introduce ourselves. For the future.” Anderson pointed at himself. “Anderson. Captain.”

He pointed at Fells. “Fells. Lieutenant,” and repeated the process for all the members of his party.

When introductions were done, Anderson watched them sledge off with their dogs. Despite the sled looking rickety and useless, it went away with ten times the speed of their boats, and it carried more men than any of them. “God damn, what I would have done to get even two of those dogs,” said Anderson, sighing. “I miss my telescope.”

“This meat ought to be a good consolation, sir. It will last us until we leave Adelaide Peninsula, and if we catch caribou there or even interact with the Esquimaux another couple times, our provisions will last us enough to get to Repulse Bay before winter.” They crested the hill with the bag of meat in Cartridge and Burt’s hands, with Hoar pulling Anderson on his sledge.

That night, they had a feast, and all was well.

Chapter Text

September 6th, 1850

Two weeks of marching had found the Anderson Expedition’s remaining 47 men (accounting for the four men inducted into the expedition at the muster call) huddling at the mouth of Back’s Fish River. The men sullenly stared at this great object, this waterway which had caused the deaths of hundreds of their countrymen, and did not speak. If George Back had been here at this very moment, or even a single party of rescuers, they would have been saved.

They were not. The river was frozen solid. Captain Anderson directed the mates to lead two able seamen each (the remaining six, despite living, were boat-ridden with scurvy) to dig fishing holes and the men who had grown up near the shores of England who were not sick were called up. John Lane taught the men a form of ice fishing which required extreme patience, but they were rewarded with salmon, and eventually, even a seal.

The meat was rubbery and slime-like, and Anderson broke two of the twelve teeth remaining in his mouth trying to eat his portion that the men had given him, and blood spilt all over his mouth. It was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted, but before long that was gone too.

There was another thing they could celebrate, too. Though they would later reenter it, as Repulse Bay is on the very edge of it, they had left the Arctic Circle.

For two weeks they remained at Back’s Fish River, telling themselves that they were waiting for a thaw that would not occur, but mostly they were gathering and salting fish for the final leg to Repulse Bay. Their scurvy-ridden recovered, some for a second time, and soon they were walking again, and smoking with their mates, and laughing. James Norris had gone back to his tent instead of camping in the boat, and was almost over with his bout of pneumonia.

Ironically, as it got warmer down south, Surgeon Curry and his assistant Bolton, freed from his bedridden boat prison (who had begun to be called ‘Doc’ by the men) had to treat more frostbite wounds than ever. Sweating under their many layers, men took off too much - including Anderson - and lost digits for it. The butcher’s bill for Anderson personally were both of his big toes, sticking out of thin socks.

On the 20th of September, as fall prepared to come upon them, the Anderson expedition hauled their boats off the bank of Back’s Fish River and left the vicinity. By the time they left the sight of the river, it was the 22nd, and their long summer of success was over.

It felt like an omen.

On the 23rd, as if to mark the coming of winter, Stoker William Johnson, of late belonging to HMS Terror, stepped into a small ice pool, believing it solid, and his foot became stuck between two rocks. When he was finally pulled out, Surgeon Curry determined that the foot required amputation due to severe frostbite. The amputation was performed successfully, but Johnson bled out an hour after its conclusion, whimpering in the tent. The Franklin men held a small private burial and left his corpse to the crows, lacking the strength or will even to pile rocks on his body.

On the 26th, Montgomery Philips, the able and experienced Captain of the Forecastle, a veteran of the Royal Navy for eighteen years, received frostbite on his arm. It was Surgeon Curry’s professional opinion once again that his arm required amputation or else there was a fair chance it would turn into gangrene. Philips gave his assent, and died of sheer blood loss four hours later, screaming despite the tincture of opium spooned into his mouth.

The rest of the men, more or less, persisted.

Patrick Ellis, the once fat, flamboyant, and gregarious Ship’s Cook had come down with consumption. He was no longer any of those three things. Marshal Credge, the American, took over his cooking duties permanently. Anderson ordered an immediate disinfection of all the surfaces which Mr. Ellis had touched, off a simple primal fear, and he was seen looking at Ellis from his jolly boat.

On the 30th, they ran out of coal.

All of the coal, other than the coal dust (gathered in a small bag, which the men were saving for Guy Fawkes Night on November 5th and maybe even plays for Christmas in which some people would be made to play blacks) had been spent. Commander Deanshire estimated that it would be a month until their ether bottles ran out, after which they would have no way to heat their food except by burning flammable things.

No one needed to mention, of course, that just about the only flammable things nearby were their sleeping tents, uniforms, and ship’s boats.

After hearing this report, Captain Anderson called a meeting of his officers. The men brought out their great Holland tent, and the remaining leaders and men of interest on the Anderson Expedition gathered around the fold-out table. Anderson made a mental note that if anything needed to be burnt, that would be the first - they could always hold these meetings in boats, after all.

Captain Anderson sat at the head of the table, which had ten seats. Commander Deanshire sat at the other end. Lieutenants Fells and Jameson (who had lost all of the teeth in his mouth and had an abominable grin) sat closest to Deanshire, as Mates Hornby and Cartridge sat together closest to the Captain. Surgeon Curry and Ice Master Burt sat together. Finally, Boatswain John Lane and the exhausted-looking Carpenter Jenkins sat leaning in their wooden chairs. Father-and-son pair David and Daniel Andrews stood in the back of the room, smoking little cigars.

As a courtesy, since he was practically a doctor, even performing surgery, Able Seaman John Bolton was allowed into the tent. Sergeant Rouger stood behind Deanshire while his most trusted subordinate, Private Devon, guarded the proceedings.

All of these men were offered tobacco from the Commander’s private stores. They had just enough to keep their clay pipes going, so the room soon filled with bluish-grey haze. Captain Anderson and some of the officers smoked out of finer mahogany pipes, which allowed for more tobacco in the cavity..

“Gentlemen, I have called this meeting today to discuss our remaining stores of coal and provisions. Back’s River provided us with a great many provisions which, as we have noted, are lighter than our cans. The men do not know this, of course, but they grow putrid. Mr. Ellis, if he were not boat-bound, would attest to this. More of our men continue to die, and every day, it becomes harder to haul these provisions and more things across the barren land here. Do you have any suggestions?”

The indefatigable Second Mate Cartridge, the only man among the entire company, it was told, who had survived the march across King William Island without a single lost digit - spoke up. He clammed his full teeth over his pipe.

“Sir, we ought to go for broke. Bury our extra provisions. Bugger those cans, pardon my language. If we need, we can go back and get them, but we don’t need to haul them right now. That way, we can get to Repulse Bay quickly.”

Anderson nodded. “Any other suggestions?”

Lieutenant Jameson spoke up, awkwardly. “Sir, there are many of our number in the camp who cannot walk. Or haul. If we were to abandon our spare provisions ahead of us and leave tents with the sick there, they could eat those, and we would return once we had established camp at Repulse Bay.”

Deanshire spoke up first, noticing Anderson’s astonishment. “Lieutenant, have you considered that our Expedition Commander is one of those in the camp who cannot walk or haul? Would you leave him, consign him as dead weight?”

Jameson looked down. Anderson flushed. Anderson was at a loss of what to do - should he reprimand the man? The room sat in awkward silence until one man spoke up.

“I’ve a solution for our fuel problems.” said the Engineer, prompted by his son. Anderson turned to look at them, grateful for the distraction, and he began speaking.

“The way I see it, if we reach this Bay in Winter, then we will only have to hunker for several months there. We will have no need for our boats. We can keep the whale-boats for emergencies, but we wouldn’t need the pincers or jolly boats or any of the spare rudders we bring along. Burn them, a piece at a time, and there’s your fuel. That will last us a couple of months.”

“We can burn most of the muskets, too,” said Rouger. “Corporal Keller says we’re almost out of ammunition. Shotguns are the only things with which we have significant ammunition anymore. Keep maybe fifteen and burn the rest.”

“But we will likely be staying there for four or five months, until the height of summer,” said Anderson. “That’s still not enough.”

Daniel Andrews spoke up over his blustering father. “Pa made a good suggestion to me earlier, but he don’t want to suggest it in yer presence, sir. We could burn the tents.”

“The tents?”

“Yes, sir. The small ones first, so we can huddle up in the big ones if there’s an emergency - but we don’t really need a cooking tent or an ammunition storage tent or a provisions tent. That can all be grouped together, lashed to the boats, or in the big tents. Those tents ought to have soaked up half of the moisture in the fucking Arctic by now, sir, pardon my language.”

“Fine, but how would you suggest we find shelter?”

“Build snow houses, sir,” said Andrews, looking entirely too proud of himself. His father stood behind him. “Me and the boys seem to think that if we could meet any more Eskis, we could trade with ‘em to learn how they build their snow houses, sir.”

“And if you don’t meet any, and all our tents are burnt, what then?”

“Well, it shouldn’t be too hard, sir. Pack it together and lump it to another piece.” Andrews shrugs, and lights his pipe again.

Anderson sighed.

“Thank you for that suggestion, both Mr. Andrews. Does anybody have anything else to say before I end this little cajole?”

The Carpenter, a small, tired man, raises his hand.

“Sir, I would like to report that, other than the boats, sails, and uniforms, there is one other piece of material that might burn, if we try hard enough.”

“What is it, then?”

“Our boots, sir.” says the Carpenter, looking out of breath even though he hadn’t done anything but smoke a pipe for the last hour. He thinned his eyes.

“What do you mean? We need those to walk.” says Anderson, clueless.

“Spread across all the boats, sir, are many extra pairs of thick boots. More than we’d ever need to walk in, even though they’re horrible footwear in general.”

“What? Then who is the incompetent who had us drag them half across the world?”

Lieutenant Fells coughed and raised his hand.

All heads turned to the Lieutenant. Anderson only had to move his eyes.

“Sir… I thought I wouldn’t have to say this, yet, but.. There’s another reason I brought all those boots along. More than anything else.”

“What?”

“Well.. as you know, sir, Sir John Franklin himself was called -”

With a sudden clarity, Anderson understood. He held up a hand. “I get your meaning.” A silence fell over the meeting again, and men smoked.

“So.. in conclusion.. We have virtually no wood or coal or oil in our stores, but we will have hundreds of pairs of boots to eat, vital sailing boats to burn, and the tents which we sleep in to cast on the fire?” asked First Mate Hornby.

Everyone began laughing. Anderson laughed until his mouth hurt, until he couldn’t breathe. He quieted the men down and then, as he started to talk again, they laughed some more. Finally, when it came to a natural conclusion, he spoke.

“I.. I want to reach Repulse Bay before the onslaught of winter. Disassemble whatever wooden things we have - bedframes, writing desks, and put them on the pincers as kindling. We’ll burn them before our boats when our oil runs out. We’ll leave things we absolutely don’t need… pocketwatches, swords, cutlery.. By the end of it, I want hundreds of pounds of useless things gone from our stores. Aye?”

A chorus of “Aye, sir,” came up from the crowd. Sergeant Rouger was assigned to lead the dumping at the very place they camped now, with Lieutenant Jameson overseeing, so nobody stole things that they couldn’t carry from the pile. The meeting concluded, and the officers went about to their watches.

Anderson brought out a chair, and watched. Like slaves from Egypt carrying gold to the altar of a long-dead Pharoah, petty officers and able seamen of HMS Edinburgh dropped pens, swords, tins, pipes, cigars, chairs, and various glass items at the feet of Second Lieutenant Jameson. In six hours, all the dumping was finished, and Anderson had yet one last object to give to the offering. He placed his own sword atop it, watched by four or five idling seamen. He hoped they would take it well, as a sign that he was willing to give up just what they were - useless and ceremonial things, which were only dead weight. When everything useless had been dismantled and either packed away or dumped into the frozen ditch, the expedition left the area.

Not thirty minutes after they had departed the wretched area, the well-loved steward of the wardroom officers, Darius Poole, complained of an aching in his head as he hauled in his slops. And then he collapsed to the gravel, never to rise again. The men crowded around him and whispered to each other and touched their heads and frowned.

On a bright and clear autumn day just south of Boothia Peninsula, a storm was brewing.

Chapter Text

September 10th, 1850

On the 6th of September, Darius Poole was buried with his steward’s handkerchief and the few things remaining to his person; a comb, a knife, and his clothes. Though those were flammable, he was permitted the dignity of retaining them even in death, although his cap was taken. His diary was not given to him, and provided to the kindling. The men dug a small, rocky hole, stuffed his body in head-first and, already exhausted, poured rocks and small tokens of their thanks upon his corpse, such as musket caps and pinches of tobacco. And then the expedition departed.

After four days of marching with no deaths, the company proceeded into a wet and flat land that they called The Basin. They found the one solitary hill within thirty miles, and the Captain decreed that a hunting blind was to be set up there, staffed by the marines and skilled officers with the remaining arms and ammunition.

They remained there for two weeks.

In those two weeks, the hunting was wildly successful, three caribou were shot and eaten, with pelts provided to the marines, who soon shed them because of the excessive heat. They provided useful kindling.

Most of the meat recovered from the caribou was devoured by the starving men and marines almost immediately after arriving at camp, a place the men were calling Boothia Camp, from its position directly south of the peninsula.

They had re-entered the Arctic Circle in order to hunt for these caribou, but never strayed more than thirty miles from its ending. Thus, the men still considered themselves ‘out of the Arctic’ and rejoiced in that manner.

A problem was becoming apparent, however.

Because the men ate an abundance of fresh meat every single time they caught caribou, but never for the days after, the wounds and sores of the scurvy-ridden men continued to be exacerbated, like a leg smashed by a cannonball and infected with gangrene that was treated by every kind of poultice before the surgeon thought of amputation. Every time they ate all their fresh meat, the scurvy regressed, then healed once they found more, and then regressed again. Some of the men had, by now, contracted scurvy five or more times before it was healed by intermittent injections of fresh meat.

To solve this problem, and to get to the Bay of Repulse before winter, Captain Anderson eventually decreed on the 24th that the expedition was to depart, making no more permanent stops until they reached their goal.

That night, as Edward Devon had the watch guarding the Captain’s tent, an altercation occurred.

The Captain, much aggrieved these days, sat in some rare and peaceful slumber. Devon knew the nature of their commanding officer. He knew, just like every other man knew, that he was incompetent. Indecisive during key actions. The men knew that many more men might perhaps still be alive if Commander Deanshire were in command.

But Devon could not help but feel a queer sympathy for the man. He could not walk in the most dangerous land in the world. He used to be quite obese, Devon knew, but now he looked a normal man, if pale. The top of his balding head shined in the pale moonlight and an ever-present sweat crowned his brow.

The man did not know how to command a vessel, or lead men into or out of the Arctic, but he was trying. He was trying so hard that it would likely kill him.

And Edward Devon loved him for it.

The camp’s oil would no longer be wasted on lamps, they had decreed as soon as they stepped foot in The Basin. The boats had already been tied up and harnessed for tomorrow’s haul, so all Devon had to do was make sure nobody tried to knife the Captain in his sleep or steal food from the mess tent, even though Marshal Credge already slept in it with a loaded pistol. That was the state of their provisions on the Anderson expedition.

He yawned. He missed James, even though he’d seen him an hour ago. He had been so grateful to Mr Curry that he had saved up a minuscule amount of tobacco - he was already going through torturous withdrawals - to give to him on Christmas Day, as a present, once they reached Repulse Bay. Maybe that would bring a smile to the brooding man’s face. It had been James’s idea, of course, but Edward had loved it. James himself had saved a fine pocket watch that he planned to give to the Captain.

He heard a rustling in the tent next to him.

“Mr Jenkins, is that you?”

There was no response. Eventually, despite knowing that he should not, he took a lantern from the captain’s tent and lit it with a pair of matches he had found in the same pile.

Seven men illuminated the proceedings. Fischer, Tarisovna, Smith, West, and Fletcher all stood there, empty handed, while Thomas Wallows smiled several feet in front of him. Henry Butler, the red-haired quartermaster, stood off to the side and looked down.

“What the fuck are you doing? You gave me a fright.” said Devon, sighing. He felt relieved. Even so, he fingered his musket.

“We wanted to voice our opinions to the Captain.” Said Fischer, in that gravelly German-ish voice of his. The others nodded along.

“…and you decided to wait until the middle of the night to approach the sentry, in the dark, to discuss it?”

There was no response. Eventually, the light had men being drawn from their tents - the carpenter and engineer and boatswain, whose tent was the closest, all watched the proceedings. The Captain himself stirred moments later, rubbing his eyes and sitting on his bed.

“Sir, Mr Wallows and Mr Butler beg entry.”

“At three in the fucking morning? Whatever for? Have the tribulations started?” Asked Anderson, seemingly baffled, rubbing his eyes. But as Wallows approached without leave, Anderson began to realize something. He thinned his eyes and reached under his bed.

Devon held out his musket and blocked Wallows’s path. “The Captain has not bade you entry into his cabin.” As Wallows stared daggers into Devon, Anderson found what he was looking for. He pulled it out and cocked it and held it in both hands.

“Devon, step aside. Closer to me.” He ordered, and Devon obeyed, moving to the left of Anderson’s aimed pistol.

“Now listen here, you rabble. You thought you could pull a Captain Bligh on me, eh? Wake me in my sleep and bring me to the deck? Or maybe you wanted to jump on me in my tent, as happened to Hudson? Which is it, Mr Wallows, you thrice-damned troglodyte?” Anderson gritted his teeth and sat up on the bed, grinning madly.

Wallows thinned his eyes and said nothing. His pale head shone like an image of the moon. His hands balled into fists.

“Private Devon, if you would be so good as to rouse the camp. I think I would like to march early.” He said, nodding to Devon.

“I cannot do anything to you now, Mr Wallows, as you have not technically done anything - but I will be waiting for you when you try. You want to wrest control of this kingdom. I am Artaxerxes, and you’re Cyrus the Younger, and these are your Ten Thousand.” He waved his gun around at the seamen who had massed behind him.

“And there,” he pointed with the gun at Henry Butler, “is your Ariaeus.”

In the very early morning, the march began, with many of the men not even having three hours of sleep to work on after the short night. Word of the event passed around camp but Anderson himself did not speak of it. Devon was silently assigned to watch the seamen who had joined the nightly engagement. With the exception of the pegfoot Smith, who, under the assumption that Wallows would never permit him in his mutiny because he would be less useful than other men, was not watched.

That, in hindsight, was a dooming mistake.

They had not yet marched for five days when, on the morning of the 28th, the camp erupted.

Patrick Ellis, the consumption ridden shell of a man, was the man who grew cold feet. Someone always does, in a conspiracy.

He had told the Captain everything - which boats Wallows wanted to steal, which men would join. The Captain finally had the evidence he needed to convict his mutineers. He would inform his men in the morning, hang Wallows and Butler, and continue on to Repulse Bay, he had told Ellis before dismissing him.

They never got to that morning.

In the middle of the night, as Private Heather was on duty, perhaps around 1:00 AM, Edward Smith knocked out Surgeon Curry, held a knife to the throat of Mr Burt, and drew him into the middle of camp, next to the packed whaleboats. The commotion quickly drew all of the men awake, and surrounded Smith, but he kept them back by threatening to cut the terrified Ice Master’s throat.

As planned, the marines, including Devon, took their arms and a few ammunition pouches and mustered near the whaleboats, aiming their weapons at Mr. Smith. Anderson himself attended, propped up on a jolly boat, because Hoar could not be found anywhere.

“I am an aggrieved man!” Said Smith. “Your orders, you damned lame bastard, made me a cripple.” He said, shouting at Anderson. He told the marines to hold, frantically.

With perhaps the entire ship’s company proceeding to watch the engagement, a handful of men swept through the enamored crowd and tapped on shoulders, shook legs, and whispered into ears. Patrick Ellis was led to the two pincers, on the far edge of camp, and supplies were loaded into them.

But in the middle of the camp, something more sinister was occurring.

Thomas Wallows and two of his men, Tarisovna and Fischer, broke into the armory tent as the men were distracted and made off with at least half of the expedition’s remaining guns, and a fourth of its ammunition. The armorer, Jonathan Foster, was knocked out.

And then they made for the communal petty officer tent.

The only man inside was Alfred Back, the veteran Boatswain’s Mate, prostrated by scurvy once more. As the tale had later been relayed, Wallows gripped Back by his hair, dragged him out to the area where the pincers were, and made loud noises. This allowed Ed Smith to limp over, still carefully holding Burt, to the pincers. At that moment, Alfred Back was forced to his knees, and Henry Butler climbed atop Perry the Pincer.

“Men of the Edinburgh,” he called. “You all know me. I am your quartermaster. A fine sailor, perhaps the finest among you, save for Mr. Francis the Coxswain.”

The remaining able seamen slipped from the crowd and crawled over to the pincers before Anderson had a chance to say a thing.

“You all know the man before you. Mister Alfred Back, cousin of the hero George Back, whose river we caught fish from just a month ago! But you know him for something else, don’t you?”

The seamen below Butler nodded quiet assent.

“Yes, you know him for CRUELTY. Plain malice, that is clear.”

Back began speaking. “I ain’t- it’s the job of the Bosun’s Mate- hear me, Butler-“

Wallows clobbered him on the head so hard that a gush of blood came streaming down from his hair. He whimpered and fell back into the gravel.

“It seems to me that evil men such as this do not deserve a place in our company,” said Butler.

Anderson found his voice. “Now, you wait just one second, Mr Butler - you don’t need two hostages - let Mr Burt go -“

“Oh, we won’t be doing that, Captain. Your marines could shoot me down, yes, but we’d take more of your men with us. I advise telling them to hold.”

At that moment, Devon knew, Robert MacMillan was standing by the armory, making sure that it was not looted a second time by greedy seamen. In the distance, MacMillan saw a seaman approaching, and began to call out, when he saw that the man, Seaman John Bolton, was holding two chronometers, the last on the expedition. He was lugging them through camp, toward the pincers, and he was alone.

Robert MacMillan lifted his musket and shot him in the head.

The shot rang out and carried over to the proceedings. Anderson, confusingly, said, “Halt that fire!”

But soon another kind of fire was erupting. Charles West and Corporal William Keller were both drunk, lighting torches and beginning to set tents on fire.

“Devon, Norris, go after them!”

The patrol of marines made their way through camp, unhindered by Butler and Wallows despite their screaming to remain in their posts. Robert MacMillan, having rejoined the main patrol of marines, asked the Captain for permission to shoot down Ed Smith and free Mr Burt. He was denied.

Eventually, as Devon and Norris reached the fired tents with their loaded guns, West and Keller ran off. West caught his bearings and luckily ran into the main mustering mutiny group, climbing atop the pincer called Speedy.

Keller was not so lucky.

Unarmed and slurring, he was taken to Captain Anderson by Norris and Devon. He had started into drunken pleading.

“Now look, Mr Butler, I am willing to exchange Corporal Keller for both of your hostages -“

“Both of my hostages? I only have one hostage, sir.” Said Wallows, interrupting Butler, who seemed like he was about to agree. Butler frowned.

“The one hostage is held there by Ed Smith. I am holding a corpse.” Said Wallows. And then he seized the hair of Alfred Back and, without a single moment’s hesitation, scalped the Bosun’s Mate, running his knife through the screaming man’s head and bringing a portion of his head off with just a few saws.

Bloodcurtling screams came from Mr Back, which were still present but faded when Wallows dropped him to the ground. He stood gasping and clawing at the gravel for the remainder of the engagement. Mr Wallows threw the scalp into one of the pincers and clutched a shotgun.

“You evil goddamn devil,” growled Anderson. “I will never give you one of your own.”

Keller, who up until that point had remained confident that he would be traded, began screaming and crawling. With a great struggle, he was taken behind the battle line by Norris and Devon, who knocked him out and left him tied up in the marine tent and rejoined the main group.

Mr Butler said, gulping, “Captain Anderson, if you do not give us these two pincers and let us leave of our own volition, we will do the same to Mr Burt, and then use our guns to become the sole expedition on this continent. Perhaps you would win. But most of us would be dead, including you and I.”

Anderson growled, “Leave. All of you. Goddamn miscreants. You will all DIE. You hear me? You are all going to DIE. I will forgive any one of you, but Wallows and this fucking Irishman.”

At that moment, Anderson saw Mr Hoar among the mutineers. He was already harnessing up. He seemed stunned into silence at that, and with all the anger disappearing from his face, said, “What were your thirty pieces of silver, Simon?”

Hoar gulped and looked right at the Captain. “I came here to get Edmund home. For Henry and myself. Hornby said the Erebus crew had gone somewhere else. I figured they ought to have gone the way we here are planning. Back up where we came. So that’s what I’m doing.”

Anderson sighed. Hornby, still training his musket on Butler, said, “They’re either dead or out of the passage, Hoar. It’s not too late. Come back over, and we’ll do something.”

Hoar shook his head, and got into harness.

At that moment, as the mutineers were saddling up in their heavily laden boats, another shot rang out.

A man crouching behind a barrel perhaps ten feet to the left of the loyalists dropped his musket and fell to the ground. He was aiming at the mutineers. With a start, somebody said, “Marshal!”

Deanshire looked with wide eyes at the man, who soon became a corpse. He muttered to himself.

“My God, I’m a murderer, My God. My God.”

With the threat of the mutineers still present, he drew himself together, tears in his eyes, and once again trained his gun at the men. The corpse of Marshal Credge, the last Able Seaman loyal to the Captain, was taken behind the line.

As the boats pulled away, and the fires were slowly stopped in the tents, the night would yet yield one more man to hell.

Daniel Andrews, the senior quartermaster, looked back at the expedition for a moment, as he was one of the men not leading the two pincers away, and paused. His gun was still in his hands, and one of the men still in formation fired off at the loose end.

A whoop came from the loyalists. The mutineers pushed on hard, hard through the horizon and past the flat ground, and the loyalists came up to see who they had hit.

David Andrews fell to the ground before the corpse of Daniel Andrews, and wept like a child. Not a thing was done to lift him from that site until morning, at which point he was found sitting, staring at the sky.

Alfred Back was, miraculously, still alive. He drew short, rapid breaths, and the worst thing was that he was conscious of all of it. His brain was visible for hours, but he did not die of it. They pulled him into the surgeon’s tent and fashioned him a new head topper from a piece of jagged metal, and put him in the sick boat.

For the rest of the day a mindless cleanup began. The men stared at the corpses and the corpses stared back at the men, until they were all too bone-tired to do a god-damned thing about them. The corpse of John Bolton was left there until the morning of the 29th, when the camp seemed to stir to light and the stunning evening dew of death melted away in the face of determination to live.

Over the horizon, a pale sun was rising.

Chapter Text

They made the trek back the way they came for several miles and dug up the corpse of Darius Poole.

Burt had been a friend of the steward. He was practically a warrant officer himself, having never served as anything more - and half a hundred times Mr Poole had offered him a biscuit or tea while in that warrant officer’s dining room.

All Mr Poole had to offer him and the traitors who accompanied him now were strips off the buttocks, legs, cheeks, and arms. Burt liked to think, before it happened, that he would have been one of the good Christians who abstained in the camp. Notably among them were Patrick Ellis, who continued to get sicker, Simon Hoar, Charles Fletcher, and William Wallace. Charles West took the second best option: he refused to take portions from Poole’s face.

He was so tired of eating these Goldner tins, but that was all they had. He ate.

He was ashamed to admit, in his mind, that he always preferred pork to fish.

An hour later, after he was long done, Burt could hear a fire being started by men in the middle of their tent encampment. He heard them slowly shuffling out of their tents, healthy for now but ragged, and throwing tiny pieces of kindling or even the outer parts of their clothing on the small pyre. As he watched them build this temple to their pitiful existences, he pondered.

He decided, soon, that Butler and Wallows had miscalculated.

They had initially enlisted 17 men to this mutiny - a large amount, but adequate if they took both pinnaces, which they did. But three were gone: Keller, Andrews, and Bolton. That left seven men to haul each boat, six when you take into account that Patrick Ellis could barely stand, let alone haul.

With Andrews went a phenomenal hauler.

With Keller went the only experienced gun, besides Wallows, in the mutiny.

The most serious loss was Mr Bolton, however, conscripted because of his skills at surgery and potions. Only Steward Hoar had an inkling of what to do with those, what limited items they did have. Soon, they would have losses, and no way to treat them. They would have to abandon a boat. With too few men for two boats and too many for one, they would have to reduce rations dramatically. It all relied on fresh meat, however. If they found that, perhaps another body or two or some caribou, all 14 of them could survive. If the water wasn’t open, they’d all die, but they knew that from the beginning.

By the time they arrived at HMS Edinburgh, they would be tired and starving, with their ammunition wasted from frivolous attempts to hunt bird or seal, but some would be alive. And the garrison of HMS Edinburgh, with a full complement of guns and ammunition, would easily kill them all once informed of what they had done.

All except for John Burt, of course, because Burt intended clearly to tell the Bosun what they had done. And seven men, with an experienced navigator at the helm and a man used to the rigging in command, could sail up to Beechey easily. Perhaps he’d even take Mr Ellis and Mr Hoar. Ellis was a good man, and Hoar only wanted to reach HMS Erebus. Maybe he and Hoar would take Ellis along as food, because Ellis was dying of consumption. He’d need one more man, maybe, to sledge Ellis. Wallace? He’d think about it.

It had been long months since John Burt had started salivating at the smell of fellow man’s flesh. He was far past the point of shame. He smelled it again now - there was little ration control on this expedition, aside from the Goldner tins - and many were eating their rations intended for tomorrow, today.

His thoughts were interrupted by Ellis himself, covering his mouth with a rag as he sat at the entrance of the tent.

“Sir, I’ve been thinking - do we really have a chance to make it to Edinburgh?” The ship cook’s once booming voice was now a whisper.

Burt nodded. “Some do, Mr Ellis. But not us. I think there are three men in this camp who will not live to see Christmas.”

“Who, sir? Please, who.” Ellis, by the look of him, already knew one of them - but his blue eyes shined and held out one last pitiful hope as he coughed into his rag.

“Myself,” began Burt. “I am over fifty, most of the toes on one of my feet have been amputated, and I can no longer run. Most of these boys are in the prime of their lives, some younger than twenty. Mr Wallows is 19.”

“Oh.” Said Ellis. He did not want to look relieved that Burt did not proclaim him, and he looked quite guilty, but the relief was evident. “If I hadn’t informed on Wallows - could they have escaped without any deaths?”

“You were the one who informed on them?” Said Burt, shocked. He figured it would’ve been Hoar or Keller. Ellis nodded, and Burt realized he was still waiting for an answer.

“..Perhaps. More likely, the loyal men would’ve been massacred.”

Ellis nodded, reassured. “Who were the other two men?” He was almost smiling now.

“Yourself,” said Burt, crushing that hope like a beetle under a boot. “Consumption is nigh on unsurvivable, Mr Ellis, even in England. You know that. When Surgeon Curry said that you had it, you should have put a bullet in your brain before dinner, save us all the rations spent on a dying man.”

Burt no longer cared for weak-willed men, even if they were repentant. Ellis’s face looked like a collapsing dam as his face fell into the gravel like a Muhammadan praying his evening prayer and he sobbed and sobbed until he could no more.

“Who,” asked Ellis, still shaking, “is the third man?”

“Mr Butler, Patrick. Mr Wallows has a higher mortality rate than consumption, I guarantee you.” Ellis didn’t seem to know what to think about that. He stood up and, after a long pause, said,

“Thank you, Mr Burt. For the advice, sir. But I won’t be taking you up on it. I mean to live, sir. I’ll see England again, by Jove, just you wait and see.” And then he stepped out of the tent, smiling a stupid and determined and utterly admirable smile, and Burt saw no more of him.

Burt left too. He wanted to see if there was anything in the distance with his glass. Mr Bolton had stolen Surgeon Curry’s glass and given it to Butler, so they had no need for a second, and he had been allowed to keep it.

Nothing, as usual. In a few hours they would pack up the pinnaces and head for -

A gun cocked behind him. Burt turned around. Ed Smith was holding a shotgun, his pegfoot stamping the ground as he fought to keep balance.

“Simon told me you can’t even speak the fucking savage language,” said Smith.

Burt gulped. “I- I can, I just need some practice.” Smith smiled and lifted the gun again.

“We need less men. Tom said.” Smith said simply, closing one eye as if to aim.

Damn Simon Hoar. Damn him to Hell, thought Burt.

And then a desperate thought came over him. He yelled it out before Smith could squeeze the trigger.

“Ellis told Anderson about your plan!” He said, completely desperate. Ed Smith furrowed his brows. A few of the men who had been watching looked over at Ellis’s tent.

The king, Thomas Wallows, stepped out of his tent. He did not hold a shotgun, that was held by Butler. He began to scrounge through the items in the camp. Finally, he took a hammer from one of the pinnaces and flipped it around in his hand so the flat part faces outward.

“Treason ought to be punished. Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November.” Said Wallows, approaching. Ellis was shoved to the ground by Ed Smith and he outstretched his hands as if to put a buffer between him and the king.

Wallows looked at Butler, who was furrowing his brow and looking away. He gave a small nod and walked back to his tent.

“Ain’t that what you did, Thomas? Huh? Almost killed the Captain? Ain’t that treason?”

“It ain’t treason when you’re saving men. All these men, ‘part from you, are gonna live long lives.”

Wallows turned to look at Burt. The ice master flinched. “I forgive you for the language deception, John,” said Wallows. He patted him on the shoulder and went back over to where Ellis was on the ground. The man had begun to plead, but not for long, as Wallows brought the hammer down on his skull over and over and over again, cracking it to the very bone and spilling brain and blood everywhere, most of all him. The man was still alive.

“Just shoot him, for fuck’s sake, shoot him…” murmured Burt, miserable. He felt evil. He was evil. “Ruins the meat,” answered Ed Smith.

The moaning of the corpse had ceased. John Burt walked back to his tent in a buzz as Ed Smith directed Frederick Fischer to drag it back to their tent to hack away at its useful parts.

Burt did not emerge until the evening meal, consisting the ship’s cook and whatever the ship’s cook had heated that morning. When he finally did emerge, it was dusk, and he lit his clay pipe watching the idle camp.

Wallows, who must be considered amongst the greatest evils of the world, sat at the head of an improvised table in the middle of the camp. With the dried blood of Alfred Back still crusted on his fingers, for he could not waste water to clean it off, he combed back his light blonde hair, which appeared almost white. His grey eyes contracted when he saw Burt stumbling out of his tent, and he smiled.

Burt sat on a crate, which functioned as the other end of the table. By now those who had taken nourishment from Patrick Ellis had slinked back into the tents in utter shame and were busy spitting out their tent holes, hoping to extract whatever consumption they thought they might have contracted. All over and around was the sound of furious spitting on gravel.

“Good afternoon, John,” said Wallows. He kept his hands beneath the table. “Well, not a very good one, I grant you, but it’s a better one than your mate Patrick had.”

“Damn you,” snarled John Burt.

“Oh, yes, I am.” He said, still smiling, looking around at the various tents where men were still hawking.

“Why’d you do it, John?” Asked Wallows. He wasn’t smiling.

“Do what?” Asked Burt.

“Tell on your friend like that.”

“.. he was going to die anyway, and I wasn’t. I don’t want to die, Thomas.”

“You’re getting closer to us common men every day. You’re almost there, but not quite.” Wallows chuckled.

“In truth, I already knew that Pat Ellis was the one who informed. Nobody watches Ed Smith because they figured he was a cripple. He is, of course, and I’m going to shoot him eventually, but he’s a useful cripple.”

“If- if you already knew-“

“Why’d I let him live? Or come along? Well.. dinner, John. I thought I’d let him recover a bit whenever we found caribou, but we haven’t, and if that god damned steward went around telling everybody that I knew who was my betrayer and I did nothing, I would no longer be leader of this camp.”

“You aren’t,” said Burt. “Butler is.”

Wallows smiled. “Aye, But-“

Suddenly, as sudden as the blink of an eye, gravel churned and a man came running into camp. In his hand was clasped a monocular, which he turned and frantically pointed. It was Frederick Fischer, sent on watch after he was done carving up Ellis.

“Sir! Sir!” Fischer called, pounding the Holland tent in which sat Quartermaster Butler. Emerging from his tent with grease on his lips, which he wiped off on his trousers, Butler frowned up at Fischer. Burt took notice of his appearance. The captain of the camp was not a very tall man. His red beard had grown in slightly grey on the edges, and his short but sturdy frame had become rickety. His blue eyes had turned sad, and Burt was struck with a profound sense of melancholy when he remembered that just six months earlier, Henry Butler had been pirouetting all over the ship and playing Claudius and drinking all the grog he could find.

Now, he was a turtle, his old self closing behind an unopenable shell.

“What, man? What?” He spat, rubbing his eyes.

“Esquimaux, sir! Not two miles from here. Ten men and six women and a little boy or girl. Coming up to the camp!”

Men scrambled to their weapons. They had three hunting rifles and three shotguns, so those were parceled out without impunity. Butler, however much he remained a haunted shell of his former self, seemed to grow by two feet when confronted with imminent danger.

“Burt, follow. Wallows, Fischer, Tarisovna, with me. The rest of you fortify the camp. Smith, you’re in charge.” Butler spat out orders rapidly and fingered his shotgun.

With the sun finally rising around noon, Henry Butler and his gang of miscreants left so-called Rescue Camp and ventured out several miles to the south. Wallows brought a large bag which he slung over his shoulder, smelling of pork. When they saw parkas and dogs, Butler kept his shotgun close but did not aim. Fischer was quite correct in his assessment - the little child was, at closer distance, a girl. An old man muttered quite loudly to his group.

Burt’s keen ears heard it, but he wasn’t sure if the others did either.

“Aanniqtauvuq inuk nangminiq inuqutiminik niqimik nirijuq! Saataanasi!”

A little girl ran up to the group. Smiling broadly and unafraid, she presented an item to Robert Tarisovna, who took it hesitantly.

“What is it, Robert?” Muttered Butler.

“A cloth. Fine linen. Like… like it’s from China. Stitching says G. H. H.”

“How’d they get that?”

“Off one of ours, I reckon. Or Franklin.”

Wallows muttered something to Butler, and then Butler pushed Burt forward.

“Tell them that we mean no harm. That we come to trade.”

“I- I haven’t spoken it in years- I’ll try, but-“

“You mean that you can’t speak it? I thought you said you could? This is the whole god damn reason-“ Wallows shushed Butler, and Burt made his hesitant approach. He began speaking with his delicate skills in the tongue of the savages.

“John Burt. Burt. Sikumi ilisaijimmarik.”

He knew how silly he must seem, declaring himself the lord of all the ice, so he spoke further.

“Umiarjuakkuurujjauniaqtut. Ukiuqtaqtumi.”

Someone asked what he was saying. Burt responded that he was telling them where they were going.

The Esquimaux man seemed confused at that. Burt shrugged, and then said, “Qaujimavit unatarnirmik? Unatarniq? Ungasiktumi?”

The Esquimaux man, a forty-something short man who seemed to be the leader, nodded. They were getting somewhere.

“Niqitaarumavit? Niqiqaratta.” He asked if they wanted food.

Burt declined to mention what type of food it was, but they needed the seal meat now sitting on the sledge of the Esquimaux.

The men looked inside. Wallows opened the flap, and smiled at the natives.

Beginning to get excited, the little girl fingered some of the meat and lifted it out of the bag. As it had been heated and carved only that morning, it still seemed tepid. Until she brought out something else.

Two fingers, connected by the smallest joint of pale skin and flapping around like a necklace, were brought out by the little girl. Her eyes thinned for a moment, and as her companions watched, she screamed.

Dropping it immediately to the floor, John Burt ran for cover behind their own fighters. One Esquimaux man managed to wrench free a seal spear and throw it at them, but it only scattered harmlessly on the rock beside them. In response, Thomas Wallows lifted his gun and fired.

The Esquimaux chief was shredded to death immediately, parts of his left ear separating from his face, and pellets of ammunition embedding in his skull. He collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, and the party scattered.

The old man who had been muttering things hid behind a sled as the murdering began. Robert Tarisovna brought him out and shot him in the face, his blood splattering on the sled and the seal meat. Henry Butler killed five men, each of them trying to wrench free their spears, with double-time reloading.

Thomas Wallows focused on the women, who also hid behind the sled, and soon they were dead too. Then, still smiling, he brought his attention to the hauling dogs, bringing them to a calm during the fight with gentle shushing and petting their matted fur.

Robert Tarisovna seemed to miss all his shots, and three uninjured men ran off into the hills. Wallows, infuriated, let off a few shots which did not hit anything but gravel.

The last survivor of the massacre still at the site was the little girl, trying to grab a spear from one of the dead warriors who had it tightly clasped in his clammy hand. Her effort was clear and she struggled with all her might, but there was not enough strength in her muscles to succeed.

Burt came out of his hiding place and ventured another look at the hills. To be sure, three men had gotten away. He gave a small smile.

Taking up the bloodstained bag of seal meat, as the others shouldered their guns, Thomas Wallows bent down to the little girl’s height and smiled at her. Ruffling through the bag, he handed her a finger.

Chapter Text

Alfred Back died of infection in his open head at 11:15 on the morning of the 29th of September, despite the best efforts of Surgeon Curry. Incredibly, he had survived well over a day after being scalped. He was added to the communal hole of corpses which already held in occupancy Daniel Andrews, senior quartermaster, Able Seaman John Bolton, and Able Seaman Marshal Credge. They did not fill in the hole yet, however, for one more man was about to be sent to hell.

The remaining twenty-five men under the Captain’s command, even the sickest among them, turned out to watch the hanging of William Keller, imprisoned in the now-empty quartermaster’s tent, where a couple days ago it would have had two occupants. The gallows were a pitiful thing, constructed by the already half-dead Carpenter Jenkins, but they were functional. The marines flanked their former corporal and brought him to the gallows. The man was stony-faced and somber. He allowed the rope to be put over his neck without any complications.

“For crimes which led to the deaths of four in the captain’s command, and the detachment of fourteen others, and for the violation of the Articles of War pertaining to mutiny, William Keller, a Corporal no longer, is sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. In his place, the officers have seen fit to elect Private Edward Devon to the corporalship of HMS Edinburgh’s marines.” said Anderson. He looked around for a moment with tired, sagging eyes, as if to gauge their reaction, and then said, “Do you have any final words?”

“Before you go to Hell,” said Jonathan Foster from the crowd.

Keller frowned and stopped looking at his feet. He looked at the lieutenants, to the side, and then at the men. “I would like to say that all I ever did, I did for all of you. This fool is leading you to your deaths. The ice will melt. The ship will sail again, and you won’t be on it. Godspeed to Butler and his mates. That’s about it. Get on with it.” He spat on the gravel.

George Deanshire said, “Commence the punishment.”

Bosun John Lane kicked the box out from under William Keller’s feet with several savage blows. The rope was too short, not by design, but because there was just not enough rope in Expedition Camp to make a proper gallows. Keller fell, strangled for half a minute, turning as red as his uniform (stripped of its chevron), before he finally died. Anderson looked uncomfortable, and rubbed his sweating head with a rag.

The body was taken down from the gallows and thrown into the communal hole, which was buried by a work detail headed up by Lieutenant Jameson. All useful items were stripped from the pile and those who had joined the mutineers were denied the dignity of retaining their clothes while in the grave.

Before the camp was pitched, Anderson made a muster call of the men. In truth, though 17 were intended to go, 14 had gone. The remaining three were dead. He wrote them all down in his logbook. Henry Butler, Quartermaster Alexander Mason, AB Frederick Fischer, AB William Wallace, AB Thomas Wallows, AB Robert Tarisovna, AB John Maynard, AB John Coleman, AB Edward Smith, AB Charles West, Captain of the Maintop Simon Hoar, Captain’s Steward Patrick Ellis, Ship’s Cook Charles Fletcher, Stoker John Burt, Ice Master, taken along unwillingly.

Expedition Camp pitched in the afternoon of the 29th and soon they were on the way again, passing through an extremely rough area. The sick, at least those who could walk, were forced to leave their whaleboats and do just that. It was still not enough. Less people were available to haul by the day. Private James Norris came down with scurvy again as well as another serious bout of pneumonia, and Surgeon Curry needed his feet amputated but would not agree to the surgery because there was no one qualified but himself to do it, with Mr Bolton dead.

On the evening of the 30th, with the men sleeping in their tents and the sick in their whaleboat, Captain Anderson and Surgeon Curry consulted about the state of the men.

“And our sick? How will they fare, once we reach Repulse Bay, Doctor?” asked Anderson, apprehensive.

“Mr Norris is going to die. He has scurvy and is once again dealing with his pneumonia. The terminally sick who will most likely die are Mr Tilking, Mr Jenkins, and Mr Francis.”

“Francis? My coxswain? Why? What does he have?” asked Anderson, bewildered.

“Scurvy, sir,” said Surgeon Curry, as if he was talking to a child, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Although, most of us have scurvy. Myself included. I am not terminally ill, sir, I will likely see Repulse Bay - but I will not be leaving that bay, I tell you now. Nor will I walk again.”

Anderson gulped. “Are you - are you certain?”

“Yes. I suppose I’ve made my peace with it. I have to say that you don’t have a very good chance of returning to England either, sir. Tell me of your symptoms. No - don't start with that, sir - I know you have them.”

Anderson looked at the floor of the whaleboat. He furrowed his brow. “I retch blood, sometimes, after a meal. It comes out of my hair, but that’s not new - err, and my stool. That’s maroon, usually.”

“I- I suppose I always thought that some wasting illness would be my fate. Like a healthy man who grows up around only lepers. I found my mother dead, did you know that? Of course you didn’t. Well, she had the consumption for most of my life - I can’t remember a time she wasn’t sick - and my father died of yellow fever, in Haiti. I suppose I’ve been frightened of it… well… all my life, doctor. Frightened to death of it, ashamedly.”

Anderson looked up again. He breathed in deep, and coughed, and looked down again, waiting for Curry’s response.

“I do not know why God has chosen to spare you, sir,” he told Anderson. “You are sixty-two, not an especially healthy man, and men who had not even turned twenty have died on this expedition of illnesses that you should have caught. Should have, sir. But you haven’t.”

“Why?”

“I do not know, sir.”

Anderson sighed. “Thank you, doctor. What do I need to do to get better? To stop the blood, I mean? And for the other men, too?”

Curry shrugged. “Pray?”

------------------------------------------------------

There was another problem. All of the spare wood and flammable materials they had collected weeks ago were on the pinnaces (called ‘pincers’), and both of those were held by the mutineers.

To solve this, they hobbled over to a place they called Boat Camp, which was deemed optimal for hunting.

There, both jolly boats were destroyed by the men, overseen by the Carpenter and Boatswain. They were broken up into fire-sized pieces, and parts of them were used to make multiple spare rudders or repair parts for the three whaleboats, enough to last twenty years of boat repairs. The sails were taken down from the jolly boats and added to the existing ones atop the whaleboats, increasing the formidable nature of the existing sails there. By the time this was all done, it was October 1st.

Anderson, watching the boats be destroyed, remarked to Commander Deanshire that, “If we lose another man, George, we’ll have exactly the amount of men and exactly the amount and type of boats that Essex’s crew survived on.”

“I would give anything to be in the Pacific right now, sir.” said Deanshire, and Anderson chuckled grimly.

Hope in the Captain was still dwindling rapidly. He was determined that one more measure was needed to restore morale before the men reached Repulse Bay - with still-plentiful provisions, of course, due to the fish. The men needed to shoot something.

The Second Great Caribou Hunt thus occurred. Sergeant Rouger as well as a few of the petty officers he had been teaching, notably Caulker Williamson, his mate, and Solomon Gardener, went out to shoot some animals for a week.

During the middle of the Second Great Caribou Hunt, as all of the marines were off hunting and the remaining officers were too busy to mind their watches, it was easy enough for David Andrews, the perfectly healthy engineer, to slip through the perimeter and go off to the hills.

They found him four hours later, searching ever since the explosion broke the dawn. The rescue party who found him took his pipe, tobacco and gun and left the rest on his bleaching body atop the hill. They would no longer bury their dead where energy could be spared.

On the 15th of October, with the days growing colder, the expedition abandoned their failed attempt at hunting. They had not caught a single caribou, and only a few birds, which were immediately devoured by the marines. The men packed up the boats and marched on. While no new men sickened, men who were already sick continued to decline. The one notable exception turned out to be James Norris, who was miraculously recovering from his second bout of fatal pneumonia. On the 16th, a situation was brought to Anderson’s attention.

They temporarily paused the march to have a meeting among the men. The ship’s dog, Porus, had gone missing. The Captain announced to the men hauling the three boats that “The dog will come back when he is hungry. He’s most likely ran off somewhere.”

This was accepted by the men and the march continued. But then Cartridge approached him, privately. He wringed his hands and glanced at the gravel as he walked along where the captain sat in the sick boat.

“Captain, sir - uh - about the dog- “ he began.

“You ate him, didn’t you?” Asked Anderson, who had no idea why he asked it.

Cartridge gulped, reddened, and nodded. Anderson pulled back.

“With whom?” He finally asked.

“Not saying, sir. Respectfully, sir. The men deserve to eat something fresh, sir, since you won’t let us into that fish. He was eating as much as a man and not doing shit to earn it. Pardon my language, I like dogs; sir, I do, but-“

Cartridge stopped talking. Anderson watched the boat lug its way through the gravel. He then looked at his second mate and sighed.

“I forgive you, Mr Cartridge. We had no more need for the dog. He might as well have been put back in Dump Place. Sentimentality is a concept for the well fed.”

Cartridge nodded. “Aye, sir. I agree, sir. Thank you, sir.” The man was practically bowing as low and deep as a Chinese man bows to his Emperor. Anderson watched in dazed amusement as he went back to rejoin his place at the head of a boat, but he did not smile.

“Fucking Christ,” said Anderson, as soon as nobody was around to hear him. He had liked that dog. But he wouldn’t begrudge his men fresh meat, no matter what animal it came from. As long as it wasn’t human.

Though, he thought, they weren't far off from that.

On the 19th, they reached a long oval lake where the men stopped to fish. They brought out long fishing poles and dug in their tents and had Poor John as they looked out at the open lake water. Just to say they had done it, after dinner, the men took the time out of their day to haul the whaleboats onto the open boat water. They cheered when it hit the water, the first open water under the boats in years. Anderson, though he had only a general idea of where they were, declared Repulse Bay to be “No more than fifty miles out.”

Commander Deanshire, during lunch, asked the Captain for a private meeting with Lieutenant Fells later in the day.

An hour later, the three commanding officers of the expedition took to the least damaged whaleboat, and Lieutenant Fells rowed them out to the middle of the open lake. A command meeting on the water, where no one could hear them.

Fells spoke first.

“Captain, the men have reached a consensus.. We think that we’d be better off going to Repulse Bay in three separate groups. Less men to share whatever food we find along the way. And we want to eat our fish that we caught.”

The Captain was astonished. “You want? Want? Surely the three or four birds or caribou you might catch won’t be enough for more than one good meal.”

“It would be better than if it were split among twenty men, sir.” Fells looked at the Captain. Deanshire slowly nodded.

“Sir, I think we ought to do this. We’ll meet back up at Repulse Bay, but for now…”

“You - you agree with him, George? This is practically mutiny, man - think -..” Anderson stuttered.

“We have thought, sir. Quite a lot. We’d have been in Repulse Bay by now if you hadn’t had us go on that second hunt. The water is open now, most likely. But because of you, by the time we get there, it won’t be. The whaleships will have left.”

“There could be some wintering -”

“Yes, but with our luck, there won’t be.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Deanshire lit a pipe. Anderson intertwined his hands and put them behind his head and looked down at the whaleboat.

“Be it on your head. I’ll give Deanshire my other chronometer. We have.. Uh.. how many guns are left, George?”

“Six muskets and four shotguns, three pistols. Mine, yours, and Jameson’s. Oh, and your four-shooter.” answered Deanshire, puffing on his clay pipe.

“I’ll give you a musket and a shotgun,” he told Fells. “I’ll give you Heather, Lane, Hill, hm..”

“Foster?” suggested Deanshire.

“Aye, Foster. And Tom Cartridge as your second. Will that be enough?” asked Anderson.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. We won’t need a chronometer. We can make it our own way.”

Anderson sighed. “I’ll figure out the other groups in the morning. I think we’re done here. Go tell your assigned sledge group about the change in plans, and pick your whaleboat. I’ll go tell the expedition.”

Chapter Text

October 14th, 1850

Four bloody coats had been salvaged from the bodies of the Esquimaux. All those of the women could not be worn, they were impossibly small, and the fabric was too heavily damaged anyway. Wallows had been at them.

The leader’s coat was undamaged, and so it was given to Wallows. Butler took another, and the last two belonged to Robert Tarisovna and Frederick Fischer. Their old coats were given to the men, for extra warmth. The food they brought back was worth many weeks of hunting, and all rejoiced. They had a communal freezing cold bath to wash off the stink and the blood and the shame.

The sled they had taken from the Esquimaux, their coats, food, and dogs (eight in total, all well muscled and fed) - had sustained them all the way to Adelaide Peninsula. They made record-breaking time, and were by Back’s Fish River in two weeks.
Only one man had sickened in that time - Steward Hoar, the once indefatigable caretaker of Captain Anderson, had contracted pneumonia from their ice bath. None of the others seemed to be affected, although they all continued to grow thinner despite the seal meat.

On a night that Burt no longer knew the date for, Quartermaster Butler shuffled into Burt’s ragged tent. Burt, well-hidden in his sleeping bag, did not turn to look at the newcomer.

“Mister Burt. I must talk to you, Sir.”

It was impossibly quiet in the tent, despite the wind roaring outside. Burt turned to look at the quartermaster, who was still clad in his native garb. The only think to distance himself from a native was his gold-banded officer cap, taken from Burt’s own head on the night of the mutiny, and perhaps his red beard.

“I must make confession, Sir. If not to God, then to you.”

“If you want me to forgive you for killing those natives - it will not happen. You may leave my tent. I am not your priest.”

In a voice that was impossibly quiet, Butler replied, “No, sir. Not for that. Couldn’t be.. helped. For something worse.”

He waited for Burt to turn around, which he did. After he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he continued.

“I have divested a third of the men on the expedition from the Captain’s command. I have killed five people with my hands and countless with my actions. But that is nothing.”

Frowning, Burt looked into his eyes. “What could be worse than that, Quartermaster?”

“Allowing that… man, if he is a man, which I doubt, loose. I am dying, Sir. I know it. Either I die on the ice or I am killed by him when we go to the ship. When the ice thaws, I suspect he will kill more. Because of the rations. We haven’t enough. He only needs ten to crew her, and six are already there. He’ll shoot the ship’s boys, I think, and leave six of us. His favorites.” Said Butler, nodding his head as if to convince himself.

“Then it is your own fault. You brought him with us. And me with you. Why would you do that?” Asked Burt, incredulously.

“He convinced me. He convinces everyone.” he said, putting shaky emphasis on the last word. “He said you spoke the language of the savages. To do that, and… this entire thing. It seemed like an idea, a good one. He told me that there was no way the Captain could march to Repulse Bay. He said, ‘Let us get ourselves out.’ And I listened. I killed those natives, who had not harmed me in the slightest - at his calling. I sat by as he murdered a man - my friend - in order to eat him. Eat him, sir. My God.”

“Kill him, then. Shoot him while he sleeps.”

Butler murmured for a moment. “I’ve never seen him sleep,” he admitted. “Only his cronies have that privilege. Ed Smith and Fred Fischer and Bob Maynard sometimes. He claims to act for the good of the group… but did you notice who he favors? He killed the cook, even though he still had some meager strength. But Ed Smith limps on his peg-foot, and he lives. I wanted to spare Alfred Back. I did, sir. It didn’t seem like it, but - I only wanted to scare him - I- even if I killed him, I would’ve shot him in the head, not god-damned fucking scalp him like a red Indian… Jesus Christ…”

Butler stopped for a moment, like he wanted to say more, and then looked down, muttering,
“No doubt he would’ve found someone else. The crucifixion needed to happen. If Judas hadn’t done it…”

“Are you comparing Wallows to God now? He’s just a man. Stop acting like he’s your excuse for every horrible thing you do.” Said Burt, finally tired of the man’s riddles. He realized with a start that it was the first time either of them had said his name in the entire conversation.

“I know. I know. Oh, Oh, but I just can’t.." And suddenly the Quartermaster was crying, and then sobbing, and then shaking. Burt did not move to console him.

“I just can’t help it. And I’m going to die. Die, sir. And they’ll torment me in the next life. Wallows will, and Captain Anderson, and Will Keller who I left to die. He’ll follow me with that god-damned shotgun and kill me again, and carve me up. I swear it. Ohh..” and he was crying again, and standing up, and John Burt saw no more of the man that night.

When he came out for breakfast, at the base of the tent sat his gold-banded officer’s cap.

In the morning, they readied the boats and began again. Butler took his place at his hauling group, not even glancing at Burt. To their surprise, they learned that the Esquimaux dogs were muscled enough to pull an entire ship’s boat - allowing several men, including Wallows and Burt - free walking time. The thirteen men pulled the heavily laden pinnaces like they were wishbones.

The dogs were given the honor of hauling the pinnace containing the corpses of their former masters. After they had returned to camp with the meat and the bodies and the coats, Henry Butler had made it official expedition policy that they not interact with the Esquimaux - on the assumption that all the savages would attack them in revenge for their kinsmen. They had seen several Esquimaux bands since then, and always been tense, but their interactions never progressed further than a wave or a look.

John Burt, as a child, pondered what his feet would look like without toes, the curiosity that every child was known for. Well, he knew now. His feet had never been flat - if they were, he’d have much more trouble walking than he already did, but really there was no problem in day to day hauling life, especially only on his left foot. He still found ground in the gravel to maintain his balance, and the hauling ropes kept him to the boat. The only problem was that he required a specially prepared boot by Carpenter Jenkins that allowed for the best balance on his maladied foot.

They weren’t even out of the bags of meat when they had ventured into the deep sunken pools of Adelaide Peninsula. Wallows and Bob Tarisovna had gone into the stores, cut up the useful parts from the bodies, and put the pieces of meat among the seal and blubber and bear. Burt could tell the difference, he had been wealthy enough as a child in Plymouth and eventually a midshipman on HMS Belleisle to eat both pork and beef on the daily, but most of the common seamen and petty officers could not. This was done to allow the men to say that they had eaten meat, not knowing if they had truly eaten human flesh (conveniently disregarding the fact that most of them had eaten from Patrick Ellis).

On the morning of the 15th, the corpses of the Esquimaux were dumped into an ice pool. There was no ceremony. The expedition kept on.

Without a chronometer, they only had a general idea of where they were going. John Burt knew they were likely far off from their goal - they had been on Adelaide Peninsula for too long, and still hadn’t found the coastline. The dogs were becoming thin, despite having full rations - they did not know how savage dogs kept their weight up under their former owners, but whatever technique it was, these white men could not replicate it. They grew weaker, gradually. Butler announced that they would shoot the dogs as soon as they came upon the open coastline, which would give them enough meat to reach the ships, in an ideal scenario.

On the 16th, their food began to run low. Butler had to slash rations, making him even more unpopular than he already was. Able Seaman Alexander Mason, the unruly sot who had never truly been on anyone’s side, sickened.

On the night of the 16th, with Burt prostrated in the boat and Alexander Mason sickening, Mason began to talk to him. The first real conversation he’d had since Patrick Ellis’s pulverizing.

“Mr Burt, sir? Are you awake?” he whispered. He shook Burt’s shoulder and coughed.

“No.” he turned over and adjusted his blanket.

“I just wanted to say that I am sorry. For being a drunken bastard. For the lashings.”

“I forgive you, Mr Mason. Let me sleep.” He turned over again.

“Why am I sick, sir? I ate all them meats - and the Captain said that fresh meat would help with the scurvy. I been eating all that. So I shouldn’t have scurvy. Right?”

“You don’t have scurvy, Mr Mason. At least advanced-stage.” Burt replied, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Mason grinned.

“You do, though, have pneumonia. You were one of the men to bury those Esquimaux, weren’t you?” Burt looked at the man clearly, and noticed the seaman fiddling with his thumbs.

“Oh. No. I mean - yes, sir, I was. I put ‘em in the hole. But.. I thought that was only if you fell in water? That’s how Mr Norris got it. And he recovered.” At that remembrance, Mason grinned again. He lit his clay pipe.

“No, it’s not just from the water. It’s if you are in the cold for too long. Aye, in normal circumstances, you could probably recover. But I assure you, Mr Butler or Mr Wallows is going to cut down those chances. And soon. We need to drastically reduce our complement if we do not want a massacre at the ship. Butler intends to tell Mr Henry that we are the survivors of the entire ship’s company, not mutineers from the main group.”

The smile vanished from Mason’s lips. He looked away, and reddened, which Burt could tell even in the dark of night.

“Butler ain’t gonna-”

“Pat Ellis said the same thing, you know. You can’t haul, which was truly your only use, and you’re a drain on provisions. Hoar’s recovered, somehow, so the weak link is you.” said Burt casually, lighting his own pipe. He puffed on it and looked as the realization hit his face. He almost grinned. Mason huddled into the blankets and turned over and did not speak to Burt for the rest of the night, a frown clearly visible on his face.

In the middle of the night, as all the men slept, Henry Butler approached a sleeping Alexander Mason. Burt saw him come up, and glanced at the man. In his hand, Henry Butler held a hammer.

“If you’re going to kill him, please, for the love of God, do it away from here,” muttered Burt. He wondered if Henry Butler even loved God.

“I have to do this, you know,” muttered Butler. His beard was even more scraggly than usual. “Wallows will kill me if someone doesn’t die soon. I’ve seen the way he looks at me. He wants to do the same.”

“Your reasons are your reasons, Henry. We are all sinners.” Burt said, and turned over. He heard Butler take a great gulp of air before grabbing Alexander Mason by the hair. Waking with a start from complete sleep, he was pulled out of his blankets and dragged to the middle of the camp, between the two boats. Men slowly awakened to the commotion of Alexander Mason screaming.

Without pause, Henry Butler began to commit murder.

He lined up the hammer with Mason’s skull, and began bashing. It took three tries, with Butler’s weakened and shaking hands, before the man stopped screaming. Six, before he stopped moving. Ten, before he was done. He dropped the hammer at his feet and fell to his knees.

The man’s head, Burt noticed, looked like Christmas pudding. Butler took out a knife and began to saw into Mason’s throat. He took the head off the corpse and, grasping it by the hair, threw it several feet from the camp. Then he tossed the knife away, and wiped his hands, and walked back to his position at the head of one of the boats. Then he sat down against the pinnace, and with much shuddering and an attempt at hiding it, he cried.

A few of the men looked at each other, and shook their heads.

Chapter Text

The Great Dividing, as it became known, was personally celebrated by the men. Each man was prompted to bring a bag of their personal belongings, leaving all else behind. Surgeon Curry joined the many men languishing in the sick boat as he was still unable to stand.

The first thing to be divided up, of course, were the men.

Nobody wanted the sick, so Anderson took on Surgeon Curry and most of the rest. Carpenter Jenkins, after months of backbreaking work along with hauling duties, finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion. The Captain’s Coxswain, Arthur Francis, perhaps one of Anderson’s last friends, was also waylaid, and went with the Captain. The armorer, Mr Tilking, had a bad case of scurvy and could not stand, so went with the Commander. Finally, James Norris, his James, was suffering from another bout of pneumonia. He went with the Commander, as did Devon himself.

He finally wore a chevron on his uniform, but he wished that it was under different circumstances.

Mate Cartridge was assigned to draw up a rudimentary list of the remaining men and on which boats they would be proceeding to Repulse Bay on. Devon had himself requested, over the moaning of the sick, chief among them the carpenter, to be assigned to the same boat as Bob Levine and James.

H.M.B. Baynes (Anderson):

Captain Henry Anderson
Second Lieutenant Arthur Jameson
Arthur Francis, Captain’s Coxswain
Assistant Surgeon Thomas Curry Jr
Sergeant John Rouger
Caulker’s Mate Magnus May
Caulker Thomas Williamson
Subordinate Officer’s Steward Ludwig Rouse

H.M.B. Curry (Deanshire)

Commander George Deanshire
First Mate Frederick Hornby
Captain of the Hold Solomon Gardener
Private Robert Levine
Private Robert MacMillan
Corporal Edward Devon
Private James Norris
Carpenter Robert Jenkins

H.M.B. Smith (Fells):

First Lieutenant Carson Fells
Second Mate Thomas Cartridge
Boatswain John Lane
Blacksmith Jonathan Foster
Leading Stoker Alexander Hill
Private William Heather

The list, which highlighted just how few men remained under Anderson’s command, was a stark reminder of how necessary it was to reach Repulse Bay, and soon, before winter struck them in force. Ludwig Rouse was assigned the Captain’s new steward, as the last steward on the entire expedition.

They divided up all the provisions - the fish, the firewood from the jolly boats (still plentiful, and the main source of their heat after most of their ether bottles and coal ran out) and the remaining tins of food. Each group took a shotgun (Deanshire’s group took the extra), three muskets were given to both Anderson and Deanshire’s groups, and one to Fells’, to Heather. They had Jameson’s percussion cap pistol as well, and his was the only group with no sick men, so it was assumed that they would make excellent time to Repulse Bay and beat both of the larger groups there.

With their instruments, Anderson and Deanshire determined that they had three distinct paths to take. One, which would pass by a large lake, was given to Anderson, in the middle. Deanshire took the south, and Fells took the north. It was the longest route, but also the easiest to traverse, so it was balanced out.

With everything divided up more or less equally, the expedition split into three parts on the evening of the 20th of October, and the men pulled their boats in different directions. Because the land was rather flat, for most hours of the day each boat could see its neighbor, despite the significant distance.

It didn’t help Devon’s spirits that James had contracted pneumonia - again - and though he was confident that with enough rest and heat he could beat it, James had privately said to him that Anderson’s men were within months, perhaps weeks, of eating their first corpses. And if no body presented itself, there would need to be one. He did not need to be told what that would mean. If there were no sick, they would draw lots - but if there were, well…

He moved his mind from it. The only sound that he could hear were the grunting of the men who hauled - each boat was required to keep one lantern burning at all hours of the night, so each boat could see each other. But Deanshire had quietly decided, he knew, to not stop for anything. They were so very close - perhaps within 40 miles - a week's march if they were strenuous - to the goal they had been striving towards for so long.

Only it wasn’t very long. They had left in May, and it was October. That was only five months, nearly six - but it felt like half a decade. Five months ago, all of Edward Devon’s friends had been alive, except for John Farrows. Five months ago, he had been completely certain that he and James had a future. After the easy march across King William Island, he had been sure that the rest of the journey would be the same.

He wasn’t so sure of anything anymore.

Deanshire’s group made excellent time - they were ahead of the other two boats, of which Fells’ seemed to be lagging behind the most.

Already, as they took a merciful break from hauling, Devon could hear Deanshire and Hornby discussing something about provisions having to do with Mr Francis, the Captain’s Coxswain.

On one of Devon’s patrols, Carpenter Jenkins had, in a brief moment of lucidity, gotten out of the whaleboat, astoundingly on his own two feet without assistance, to go talk to him.

“Hello, corporal. I had to get away from it all for a moment.”

“Away from what? You should really be sitting, sir, you’re sick -” Devon emphasized the last word, trying to get the poor man to go lay back down.

“I think I’d improve if I did not hear Hornby and the Commander talking about which one of us to eat first. That doesn’t bode well for your health, eh?” He gave a spiteful chuckle. “I was included in that conversation, you know. You’ll be pleased to find that I didn’t hear anything about James Norris - yet - but he will be the next course, I guarantee you.”

Devon fumed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? I did so much for Captain Anderson - stretched thin the few planks of wood we had - I made him a gallows in the middle of the Arctic, for Christ’s sake. And now his men are talking about shooting and eating me.” The carpenter rubbed a hand over his face. Devon could practically see the bones in his cheeks, and his eyes moved in hollow sockets.

“They wouldn’t shoot you. They’d wait for you to pass. I have no doubt about that. We have some honor left. Hm?”

“Perhaps. But what if I said that I did not want to be eaten at all? That I wish to be buried with all the honors that accompany a warrant officer of the Royal Navy?”

“...Hard times call for hard measures, Mr Jenkins.”

“Spoken like a true marine. Well, I won’t trouble you any longer. Alas, it seems that I must die quicker, if I don’t want to be eaten. Before the provisions run out. Which they will, Edward. And soon.”

“Let us now relieve the Romans of their fears by the death of a feeble old man.” said Jenkins. He slumped back to the whaleboat and climbed in beside James Norris.

Devon gripped his musket ever tighter, and turned back to watch the sun dip below the horizon.

Chapter Text

In the early morning hours of the 17th of October, not yet ten hours after Alexander Mason’s head had been pulped, another day where the coastline of Adelaide Peninsula was not yet in sight, a second mutiny commenced in camp.

As he slept in the harness, too tired to get into bedrags and comfortable enough (which was, not at all) in his heavy slops, Burt was not witness to the actual event. But he had been told, later on, what had occurred.

The ringleader, William Wallace, a seaman who was still well muscled despite the ration cuts and furious marching, led two of his compatriots over to Henry Butler and brought him a demand.

“We want a pinnace. We don’t like how you killed Alex Mason. Or that you did it at all. He ain’t done anything,” he said. “We don’t think the ice’ll melt anymore, neither. We want a pinnace and a musket so we can sail down Back’s River and hunt for food.”

“How will three men pull a pinnace to a river more than a hundred miles away, Mr Wallace?” asked Butler, feigning calm as he rubbed his eyes from the attempt at sleep.

“A lightly loaded pinnace, Henry. We could take only the most necessary provisions, and maybe a few more men, like John Coleman or Tom-”

“You aren’t having anymore of my men. If you want to go off on your own, go, but you won’t have a pinnace nor any of my men.”

Wallace sighed. “Fuck you, Butler.”

“Aye, I imagine-”

He did not get to finish the sentence. Charles West, the drunk who had become infernal in his company ever since being deprived of his pleasures, drew a knife. Before Butler had time to jerk back, he had put the knife fully in the man’s shoulder. It came out on the other side clean. Butler screamed. Someone drew a shotgun. By now, Burt had woken up.

He wanted to help them. He truly, truly did - but it would mean his death too, and he was not that brave of a man. He watched the proceedings from his place in the hauling line.

Thomas Wallows blasted William Wallace in the chest with both barrels, killing him before he hit the ground and ripping up his organs enough that they were unconsumable. Charles West and Stoker Charles Fletcher, the other mutineer, ran off into the elements, but Ed Smith managed to hit Fletcher in the chest with one of his long muskets. All their shots managed to miss Charles West, and he was not seen again by any of the mutineers, though not for lack of effort. Ed Smith finished Fletcher off with a shot to the head, and the two corpses were dragged onto one of the pinnaces by Maynard and Coleman.

The recovered steward, Hoar, carefully drew the knife out of Butler’s shoulder, giving him the camp’s remaining laudanum, but it was still extremely painful.

Burt himself was assigned to cutting up the bodies, as Wallows, Smith, Fischer, and John Maynard went off to hunt for West. It was not so much a capture-and-execute mission, but a mission to recapture missing cattle, or dray animals. Even so, West would have been better off if he was caught immediately, thought Burt, to spare him the horror of dying of sheer thirst or starvation or cold out in the bare white nothing.

It was no longer his problem. He had long since been past the point of vomiting at every little thing - but this was not every little thing. He had eaten from a friend and one of his acquaintances, yes, but actually cutting up their corpses as their eyes bared into you was a task like no other.

He completed it. He had no other option. Butler was not the king of this camp, even de jure anymore. He floated in and out of consciousness as a result of the laudanum, and half the time he was awake he was moaning and groaning and cursing William Wallace for his predicament. As Burt was assigned to nurse him, during midday on one of their more frequent halts to marching, Butler had told him something.

“Fletcher.. before he died.. I..” he coughed and spat. His red beard continued to recede.

Burt frowned. “Before he died, what? Pleaded for a reprieve?”

“He said that Wallows had told him and Will Wallace and Charlie West to mutiny.” he spat. “ That he’d gotten fed up with Butler. That the ice wouldn’t… wouldn’t melt, like he had said to me. He wanted to go south. To the river. Christ. But then Wallows was the first one to raise a gun. Did you notice that Wallace was saying ‘Tom’, before Wallows shot him?”

“Oh,” said Burt. He didn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t think he even genuinely cares about getting anyone out anymore. Maybe not even himself. He just wants chaos. War in Heaven. Between men who have nothing against each other.”

“Hell,” remarked Burt. “War in Hell.”
“Aye,” said Henry Butler.

Hours after Butler’s wounds were stitched by Hoar, the remaining eight men of the company (nine in total, but Butler could not haul) pulled the pinnaces, four men and dogs to a boat, to the base of a large crested hill. Butler eventually decided that if they did not see the coastline from that hill, they would turn about and head in another direction to seek the coastline of Adelaide Peninsula.

The three men with telescopes scaled the mountain in an hour. Butler could not climb it, so he gave his telescope to John Coleman and the three of them, Coleman and Burt and Wallows, made their way to the top. Burt slipped several times on the uneven ground, and Coleman pulled him up. It was an extremely clear day, and they could see miles in any direction.

They could see the coastline, and the strait. Aside from the edges, where bergy bits floated in the stream of the Simpson Strait, the way was wide open. It would close up in November, yes, but that would be enough time to at least get three fourths of the way to their destination. Coleman and Burt began to laugh, and even embraced, but not Wallows, who stood solitarily to the side. He affixed his scope to the left, down some, and then said aloud,

“Ship ahead. The sails are taken up, the anchor is down. The way is free, but they aren’t moving. We can take it up to Edinburgh.” he said, voice in complete monotony.

Burt and Coleman affixed their spyglasses frantically to the position he had pointed out, and grinned.

“Erebus, I make it.” said Coleman.

“Aye, probably. Unless the Terror men took it down here, for some reason. That Esquimaux man… at the meeting with Anderson… he said, ‘The ship at Utjulik.’ This must be Utjulik, whatever that means.”

“Can nine men sail HMS Erebus?” asked Coleman.

“Probably, plus whoever is aboard that we find,” said Burt. “We can take them along with us, if this fellow here doesn’t kill them.” he pointed his spyglass at Wallows.

Wallows only smiled.

After Burt and Coleman embraced and laughed some more, they turned to start down the mountain.

With a groaning Butler in the rear, guarded by John Coleman, the other six men of the camp were informed of the developments. They began to start up a cheer, and four men were assigned to ready the salt-stained sails which, although extremely stiff, were still functional. Additional lumber was dumped off the pinnaces to lighten the load, as they figured they would be able to hunker down in the ship.

With only nine men remaining, and one of them boat-bound, a hastily-called meeting led by Butler decided their next actions.

“We could abandon one pinnace here, along with supplies we don’t need. Nine men is more than enough for one boat. Attach all the dogs to one boat and have two or three of our healthiest direct them to the correct place.” announced Butler.

Although Butler tried to frame it as an order, it was not approved until the majority of the mutiny voiced their support. The only men to disagree were Burt and Steward Hoar, who wanted to take them both up onto HMS Erebus. The weight that would be lost by abandoning an entire boat won out, however, and the remaining seven men agreed to drop it. They only kept Speedy, the boat named after Lord Cochrane’s ship,

They piled most of their lumber aboard it, their spent shells, the corpse of Alexander Mason, and the bones of the animals they’d hunted. The pinnace they kept was filled to the brim with canned goods, their remaining Esquimaux items, and their guns.

Steward Hoar passed out the remaining Esquimaux meat as they approached, and they ate cold seal and bear and whatever else was in the bag. Then they pulled the pinnace from the base of the mountain, attached all eight dogs to their harnesses, and hauled.

They found that two men and eight dogs were more than enough to pull their reduced weight. They slid across the gravel like butter on a knife, and seven men sat in the boat and had conversations and laughed, even Henry Butler, for the first time since the mutiny.

Chapter Text

The first thing they did when they reached the shore was shoot the hauling dogs.

They could have butchered them to save ammunition, yes, but there was likely a full stock of guns and ammunition aboard Erebus - and they no longer needed to conserve it. Plus, they had recently given them names - and when you put a name to an animal, it makes it much harder to kill it. He remembered a ship’s pig that he had named Queen Elizabeth when he was a nine year old midshipman, this was after Trafalgar, and he had almost cried through a dinner with the ship’s officers as he was served.

They let out a rowdy cheer when the pinnace hit the water - the first time they’d had open water under their boats in years. The wooden paddles, which they had kept for this specific instance, were brought out and employed.

As the men carefully climbed onto the pinnace, careful not to touch the water, Henry Butler started toward it, walking with the help of Hoar, whose arm he held on too. They made their way almost to the base of the water, and Butler seemed tempted to put his foot in it, freezing or not, probably just to have liquid water under his feet again - when they were stopped in their tracks.

“Hoar, get on.” said Thomas Wallows. Burt himself had just vaulted over the gravel and onto the heavily laden boat. He watched with weary eyes, knowing what was about to happen.

“I will, I’m just helping him first. He can’t stand.” He began the motions of preparing to lift him onto the boat.

“He won’t be joining us,” said Wallows. “Drop him and get on.”

Hoar did not. Butler paled. “Now hold on just one moment, Mr Wallows - the ship is right there - we’ve made it-”

“No, I’ve made it. They’ve made it. We’ve made it. You haven’t. You’re a walking corpse, a corpse who needs to be fed.” he said, referring to his arm.

“This can be reversed. There’s boiling wine and disinfectant aboard Edinburgh, and probably Erebus -”

“I’ve made my decision. The boys have too. Eh, boys?” He looked back at the men on the pinnace already.

A ragged chorus of men responded, men who did not look at Butler as they murmured in the affirmative. They looked at the ground or at the water. HMS Erebus loomed in the distance, even though it was only a dot on the edge of their vision, and all men’s eyes seemed to gravitate towards it.

“You want to see your cousin again, don’t you, Hoar? Erebus is right there. There’s as good a chance as any in the world that he’s on that ship. Him, or his things. Come on and join us. Live with us.”

Hoar, much-stricken, lifted a protesting Butler to the gravel.

“Simon, no. Simon, help. Help me. Please…”

Not looking at either man, Hoar climbed into the pinnace, sat down, and put his head in his hands.

Butler turned onto his chest, heaving with exertion, and put his hands in front of him, and began to crawl, raking his hands across the gravel. His callouses split open and he made a bloody path to where Thomas Wallows was standing.

“Come on, Thomas,” Butler pleaded. “We made it. I can walk. I can. I’ll be a help with the helm when we go to Edinburgh. You don’t have another quartermaster. I’m the last. In the entire expedition. The whole god damned thing. Please.”

“You’d be dead when we reached Edinburgh, anyway.” He shrugged and put his hands at his side and walked into the pinnace. Butler started off to the shore to follow him, weakly hollering after them.

Ignoring him, Wallows took one of the oars from the boat and began to push her off. Some of the men helped at the front. After a moment of effort, the boat was freed from the coastline, and Wallows jumped in. Butler’s screaming slowed, but nobody dared to look at the shore. They could still hear a faint “Wait, wait,” coming from the land.

Finally, when they were a quarter mile out, Burt looked back. The screaming had stopped. Butler had put his head in his hands and laid down on his side, and was still quivering.

Burt looked back at Erebus, and never saw Henry Butler again.

“God damn you,” said Hoar, finally. Wallows did not respond. The melancholy company proceeded to row their way through the ice leads and break the ice toward the anchored ship.

“We could’ve brought his body along. I think he’d be glad to not have the treatment he gave Alex,” said Ed Smith, spitting off the side into the open water.

“You know, between us, Smith,” retorted Burt, “You’re of less use to this expedition than a man with a fatal infection. You’d be a beggar in England. You might as well kill yourself now, save you the hanging you’ll get when-“

Smith lunged forward and he was only stopped by the furious efforts of Fred Fischer and John Coleman. They calmed him down and sat him back in his place at the bow of the pinnace.

“Some day, old man, I am going to shoot you. Some day.”

“Some day you will be shot, Mr Smith.” Burt checked his watch and looked at the ever-closer ship. The crew idly waited, some pushing the oars forward and shoving off pockets of ice when they got too close. It reminded Burt of paintings of the men of the Atlantic Fleet, sailing out in little jolly boats to carry messages from ship to ship. He smiled at the thought.

“So I suppose I’m in charge?” Asked Tom Wallows, who wasn’t really asking.

“I suppose you are.” said Tarisovna.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

When they came up to HMS Erebus, they once again affirmed that the anchor was down and the sails were taken up and furled. No sound came from inside the ship. Wallows directed Ed Smith to fire his long musket in the air, to see if anybody stirred. No one did.

The pinnace bumped against the starboard side of Erebus.

“She’s ripped up,” said Robert Tarisovna.

She indeed was. The wood on her hull, that which they could see, was completely twisted and bent. At closer inspection, the ship had the slightest list to port.

Unable to deny his enthusiasm, the others let Simon Hoar go first. He clutched the ladder and put his feet on the steps and climbed. Then he shouted, “Edmund!”

There was no response. He shouted again, and again nothing came. The rest of the men scrambled up, Burt last. John Coleman tied the pinnace to the ship. Thomas Wallows brandished a shotgun, and the company of men proceeded down.

The entrance was iced, and the lock was securely fastened from the bottom. Thomas Wallows had to blast the lock off with his shotgun, which made the entire party wince. Burt saw that Maynard’s ears spewed blood, which he soaked up with his headrag. Wallows flung the hatch aside and climbed down.

No other door was locked. They made their way to the stern where the Captain’s Cabin, where once sat Sir John Franklin himself, was located. Wallows entered first, twisting the doorknob. Simon Hoar went off into the steward’s pantry to go look for his cousin’s items.

Inside the greatcabin, sat a man.

“Franklin?” asked the stupid Maynard, still bleeding. The man was sitting, seemingly asleep, in a chair at the Captain’s desk. Plates of food and Goldner’s red cans were stacked on the ship, and some were at the floor and had rolled into the corners of the room.

“No, fool, he’s younger.” Ed Smith limped forward and used the butt of his rifle to push the man.

He jerked awake. He had startlingly blue eyes. His mouth opened, and revealed long teeth canals - his gums had receded to the point that he could no longer see pink in the man’s mouth. Most of his teeth were black.

The man was perhaps six foot four, an enormous height, with large hands. Several years earlier, Burt imagined that the man would have had many muscles across his arms. Now, he had none. He looked to be in his thirties, but his starvation had aged him prematurely. He was dressed only in a frock coat which, by its size, Burt guessed to have belonged to Sir John Franklin, and an officer’s cap. Below it, which was revealed as he stirred, he was naked. Burt reddened and a few of the men chuckled, despite themselves.

“Who.. who..”

With a start, John Burt realized that he knew this man.

“James?”

Third Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme turned his head towards him.

“Reid? Is that you?” he blinked.

“No. It’s John. I met you at that society ball in Edinburgh. John Burt. Burt. You called me, ‘old man.’ Don’t you remember, James? Your brother has a home in Greenknowe.”

The man blinked again, seemingly looking right through him.

“Edinburgh? Reed went to Edinburgh…” he said. He fell forward and slumped his head on the desk, keeling over. Ed Smith tried to push the man awake again, but he only slept. After a while, they realized he was dead, or so close to it that it was impossible to distinguish.

“Well he’s no fucking use. Where did Hoar go?” Wallows spat on the floor. “Someone go find Hoar. Maynard, you go to the bread room, see if they have any flour left. Burt, you look around for a compass or a chronometer. The rest of you, go look for food or other men. We’ll meet back here in an hour.” He shouldered his shotgun, and Ed Smith did the same for his musket. “I’m going to the armory.”

Burt gave a last, sad glance at Lieutenant Fairholme. He left him in the chair. In the corner, he saw the Captain’s log perched on a side desk, and walked over to it with a brisk start.

He was almost at the book when the commotion began.

Running out of the greatcabin, he saw that John Coleman and Bob Maynard and Tarisovna were standing around Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s cabin. Inside, another man with an unfamiliar voice was talking loudly.

“I ought to stay with the Lieutenant - don’t matter -”

Burt entered. He was still wearing his officer’s cap, which made the petty officer think twice. He saluted. Burt almost wanted to laugh. He hadn’t been saluted since the night of the mutiny. The closest thing to confirming his role as an officer was when Henry Butler called him ‘sir.’

“Who are you?” Burt demanded.

“Male, sir. Reuben. Captain of the Fo’c’sle.”

“I don’t want to hear anything about you staying here, Mr Male. Are there any others here?”

Male shook his head. Bob Maynard snickered and whispered to Tarisovna, “What kind of name is Reuben?” Apparently, Mr Male didn’t hear them, so he kept looking at Burt.

“Right. This ship is about a week from collapsing in on itself. I am frankly surprised that it has lasted this long. Where did the rest of your ship’s complement go?” Burt questioned.

“We had three others, sir. Georgie Kinnaird and Bobby Golding and Will Sait. But they all died before the ice thawed, and we dropped ‘em off. Me and the Lieutenant, sir. Of the scurvy, sir. It’s in the lieutenant now. Deep in, sir. But I ain’t been affected yet. Dunno why. Me ma always said I had me a good composition.”

“I mean.. Where did the rest of your complement go?”

“Oh. Well.. Lieutenant Le Vesconte and Sar’nt Tozer and about 10 others went south, sir. To the river. We sailed the ships from the north, put Erebus here and Terror up in that big bay back on King William Island, sir. Then the Terrors went across the island again, hunted with some Esquimaux and met a few, under Lieutenant Little, this was after all 3 Cap’ns had died, sir, Crozier died as we sailed south. Most of the Terrors died in the bay. They put up a big tent for them, I think Lieutenant Hodgson was the highest dead man there. The rest of them went east. I think about forty of us all got off the island in total, sir. Most of us died in that blasted first attempt, Cap’n Fitzjames as well.”

“So ten Erebuses led by Le Vesconte and Sergeant Tozer went south, while thirty or so Terrors went east?”

“I think so, sir. They told us of the plan to do that, Lieutenant Little I mean. But I think only about twenty managed to get a go at it. They had ten who were seriously sick when they got to Adelaide Peninsula. I think they left them there and continued on with a couple boats.”

“Thank you, Mr Male.” He offered a hand. The remarkably healthy man shook it.

The group descended. In the end, all that HMS Erebus offered the company of men were Reuben Male, the Marine Sergeant’s sword of David Bryant (given to Wallows), an old pistol that Hoar had found, and plenty of ammunition for their three hunting rifles, three shotguns, and now their pistol.

Burt had been shocked when Thomas Wallows had come out of the deck in the uniform of Sir John Franklin himself, carrying a Sergeant’s sword, and Captain Fitzjames’s pocketwatch. The man looked splendidly disgusting in his appropriation. The others chuckled. Robert Tarisovna looted the cabins, and considered wearing the epaulets of Lieutenant Fairholme, left in his cabin, but eventually decided against it. The men who did not have Esquimaux coats took heavy and thick officer greatcoats. Burt himself did not take a single thing.

When Male had been fitted for the weather, Simon Hoar came out with his pistol and cocked the hammer. “Going to kill the lieutenant?” asked Bob Maynard.

“Something like that,” answered Hoar.

When Thomas Wallows came up with Fred Fischer, after having inspected the hull, and saying something about the lower levels being damp with rot and water damage, he noticed Hoar’s grip on his pistol. He was too far away for anybody to make a grab at him without him having enough time to shoot the person who did. In an instant, everybody looked at Hoar, and realized what was about.

“God damn you, devil. I said I would kill you. I did.” He raised the pistol.

“You did,” answered Wallows. “But will you? I am the beloved of God. Well.. my God. Not yours. If yours had any power over me, that gun would fire.” He smiled. His pale eyes shined under the light of the Preston Patent Illuminator.

Hoar pulled the trigger. Before Burt could wince, the gun clicked. Hoar clicked and clicked for several more seconds as the other seamen stared at both men in stunned, astonished silence. Finally, Wallows removed something that caught the light and blinded Burt for a moment as he brought it closer to Hoar.

When Burt rubbed his eyes and his vision cleared again, Hoar was on the floor, with blood pooling from his mouth. Wallows picked up the pistol and examined it under a curious eye, before tossing it away.

“Old gun,” he said, simply. The others muttered their agreement and ventured upwards to the deck. In the end, the last time John Burt saw Simon Hoar, he was crawling towards the stern on all fours.

Wallows shut the hatch behind him, and brought a plank over to seal it shut. He gave a glance at the quarterdeck. He motioned for Fred Fischer to begin to speak as he untied the pinnace from the railing.

“Several layers of wood are ripped up. It’s a very thin hull in some places. If we sailed it, the force of moving under sail alone might crush the deck. It’s better to leave, while the water’s open.”

Wallows nodded. “There was no food to be found. Male and Fairholme were starving. We found a few odd pieces of coal, and I got some kindling. We don’t need any new weapons, and I think Fred here got some ammunition for the rifles and shotguns.” Fischer nodded. By the time Wallows was done speaking, the pinnace was untied, and Wallows was the first of the entire company, now including Male, to make their way down the ladder and into the boat.

“Shove off,” called Wallows. John Coleman and Bob Maynard used their oars to push away from the Erebus, and the rest of the crew watched as it slowly disappeared behind them.

The ice and low waters cleared, gradually, as they made their way out. In a day of hard sailing, the company of men found themselves in the Simpson Strait, rowing toward the south side of the island and where they had abandoned Expedition Camp six months earlier, and from there to round the entire island’s length and up to the ships.

The way was clear, and the way was open.

Chapter Text

The three boys liked to run around the docks and annoy the older seamen. There was one fish merchant who they loved to steal small cod from, and fry it up under a campfire using sticks that Henry collected sometimes. He always gave a great shout whenever they came up to his booth in the middle of Portsea town, but he couldn’t chase after them because he had lost his leg sometime during the wars against the French.

Edmund was usually the slowest boy in this group, which led Henry to joke many years later that he was born to be a steward. Simon, the youngest, was John Hoar’s youngest brother Edward’s son, but really he was like a brother to the two boys, since the families lived together. Sometimes, when they needed more people for the games they played, they invited Ed and Henry’s sister Harriet-Lucy, six years younger than Edmund. Ann-Marie was too young to play, but they often brought her out anyway, and sat her on an old Roman wall or a step as they played swords or guns or ships.

That had ended, at least for Edmund, when he had enlisted aged 19 in 1841 as a ‘domestic’ aboard HMS Cornwallis. There, he met and became friends with James Fitzjames, who would recommend him to be Sir John Franklin’s personal steward. Simon had never seen him again, except for a short visit before he had enlisted as an Able Seaman aboard HMS St. Vincent. Their games were over.

Before enlisting on this expedition, Henry had regretted that he could not join Simon, though he understood why he had to do this. He was a gunner in the Royal Navy, and the expedition wasn’t searching for gunners. Simon was an Able Seaman, and a friend of Lieutenant Jameson. He was brought on because of him.

Even after everything that had occurred, even though he was certain to die aboard HMS Erebus, he did not regret one thing. Because in this last day of his existence, he met his brother.

Not physically, of course. Through his book.

After that god-damned devil Wallows had left him below the deck, he had managed to stand - despite the deep gutting wound from the bastard’s caulking knife - and venture into the steward’s pantry. There, bleeding and dying, he had found the Captain’s Steward’s log, and a stamp, showing the lettering “Ed. Hoar” and the device of an anchor.

Stewards often kept books, even just books of stores left in the Captain’s private storeroom. Captain Sir John Franklin was a teetotaler, but Edmund had wrote in the margins of regular ration reports things like, “Sir John eats steaks with the Lieutenants tonight, provide brandy,” and “Mr Hickey to be given an additional tot of rum for identifying a small, possibly dangerous hole in the hull, and caulking it.”

He flipped to another random page.

“Running Games in Greenland today:

“Mr Weekes semifinalist. Eliminated. He tripped.
Mr Sait semifinalist.
Mr Collins semifinalist.
Myself semifinalist. Eliminated. John and Simon will be embarrassed of me.”

In the end, Mr Collins had won over Mr Sait at the end of that page. Simon had slumped against the stool in the steward’s pantry, grinned a salty, sad grin, and chuckled before he sobbed.

On the day he was to die, Simon Hoar climbed out of the steward’s pantry and took up several loose planks of wood and some caulk. He staunched his wound with a rag, even though it still slowly leaked, and climbed down to the very bottom of the ship, where Wallows and Fred Fischer had inspected the hull. While he worked to nail in the boards and caulk the floor, he thought.

He was now sure, though he had suspected before, that Thomas Wallows was the Devil.

How had he known that the blasted pistol would misfire? How had he known that the water would be open? Why had he told, as Burt had later confessed to him, Wallace and his two mates to mutiny against Butler? Why had Butler turned the face of Alexander Mason, his best friend, into pudding, simply just from the man’s presence?

Why had he been able to convince seventeen otherwise well-thinking and rational men, especially Henry Butler, a grizzled veteran of the Royal Navy with a decade of distinguished service, to commit to a suicidal plan to march back south where they had just come from, when the goal of Repulse Bay seemed reachable, even then?

Wallows had also been in charge of cutting up the meat from Patrick Ellis, he knew. It was no coincidence that two fingers had been left attached, at the top of the bag, for the little girl to find. He wanted them to fight. He wanted an excuse to kill them all, and us with them, so he can drag us to the deepest depth of Hell with him, where he has been destined to be bound since before he first drew breath, thought Simon Hoar.

He knew the answers to all these questions, in the deepest part of his mind.

He had finished his caulk of HMS Erebus. All the boards had been nailed to the floor, and the caulk had been applied on the most obvious holes. He was exhausted, and his vision was blurry, and he wanted to lie down. He knew, then, that Wallows had been quite wrong about one thing. HMS Erebus would stay, at least for a little longer, afloat.

Above all else, he had wished for this ship to stay afloat for the benefit of the Esquimaux. He had been a willing member of a group which had massacred men, women, and children - and for that he could never be forgiven, he knew. By God, well, that was an issue that would surely soon arise. But the artifacts that they could gain from this; guns, ammunition, wood for fires, compasses, even a few swivel cannons… perhaps they could fight the next group of overconfident bastards to come through their lands, and convince the group who inevitably comes to look for them to turn back.

Perhaps they could fight the next Thomas Wallows.

He unsteadily drew himself to his feet, and took the handrail up to the next deck. He was panting by the time he ascended the deck to the Captain’s room, exhausted and weary. But he had to see this for himself. Sir John had made the entire stern area his own personal cabin and office - Edmund would’ve had a mountain of work. That was probably why he kept the journal, thought Simon.

Fairholme was still laying where they had left him, on the Captain’s desk. He was quite sure now that Fairholme was dead, though he did not approach. He also knew that the next people to enter this cabin would be Esquimaux, without a doubt. They would find Fairholme there, and the rumors of the giant dead white man in the big ship would haunt generations of Esquimaux children. And perhaps, in some form or another, it would reach future European rescuers that another body had been found with him.

He shut the door to the captain’s cabin. He wished Reuben Male and John Burt well, at least, among that company. John Coleman wasn’t a bad man either, nor was Robert Maynard or Frederick Fischer. At some point or another, he remembered playing dice and games with them, or chuckling at a shared joke, or one of them asking kindly about the Captain’s mood during those dark hours after the slaughter of Expedition Camp. He had liked Oscar Baynes. Hell, everybody had. Burt perhaps a little too much. Simon smiled at that. Thomas Wallows had convinced good men to make the worst of decisions, out of pure desperation, but that did not mean, he thought, that they were bad men.

He could just make out the outline of the bedroom from where he was standing in the hall. The rag had fallen away now, and his shirt was red with blood. He opened the door to the third lieutenant’s cabin and pushed the epaulets that one of the men, he couldn’t quite remember who, had wanted to put them on his shoulders, to the end of the bed. He climbed into the freezing blankets, but found that he was instead rather warm. That was odd. He could not see, but he could feel. He pulled the blanket over himself and clutched the journal of his cousin who had been his brother. Henry would live, he knew now. Henry would live to have many children, and tell them of his two brothers. He could no longer read the words in the journal he held to his chest, but that did not matter. He could almost smell that cod that they stole every so often. It smelled like home.

Smiling under the blankets, Simon Hoar went to sleep.

Chapter Text

James Norris died painfully in the early morning hours of the 22nd of October.

Devon wished he could have done something.

It was the most miserable day of his life, even more so for James, he suspected, based on the moaning and the crying he uttered from the sick boat. There was no comfort to speak of, as laudanum was reserved for surgeries, and there was no cure for pneumonia and scurvy except a dry bed, little exertion, and fresh fruit. None of the three could be provided in the Arctic.

No, not the Arctic, Devon reminded himself. James had made it out of the Arctic depths, based on the strength of his body alone. He had almost made it the whole way, but the most important thing was that he had survived the Arctic entirely. When he made it to London, he promised that he would tell James’s parents that.

Secretly, though, an ounce of himself had been glad that James had died when he did. The words of the Carpenter, still dying, had been taken to heart. He was convinced that if James had died even a few weeks after he had, they would have consumed him. And Devon could not have handled that.

The Commander had wanted to continue their march, but he and Robert MacMillan and Bob Levine, bless their hearts, had threatened to stay unless enough time was provided.

Neither their Sergeant nor Mr Heather could join them in seeing off their comrade, but Edward Devon felt that three were enough. The commander and his men would be joining them, as well, and the Commander was to lead the service.

Solomon Gardener took pity and, with the Commander’s permission, wrapped the corpse in a spare sailcloth. Without much ceremony, he carried it over to a pit dug by the Commander’s men, and dropped it in. Weeping, Edward Devon led a chorus of gunfire - a single salvo of three shots for almost three year’s work. The rest of the men idly looked at the encounter. When the salute was over, the Commander stood next to the men, at a level with them, reading from a creased Bible. In his other hand, he held an old and tattered Book of Common Prayer. The men huddled around him like the four thousand. Devon thought, chuckling softly for the first time since James had died, that they didn’t have much more food than four loaves of bread and two small fish.

“I will now read from Corinthians,” he stated to the group. He stood parallel to the whaleboat.

He went on for a very long time, reading almost the entire first part of the chapter, before he came to the part that Devon had specifically requested. As Solomon Gardener filled in the hole, he spoke.

“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” He flipped the page and coughed.

“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”

He breathed in.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

“We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead. And the life of the world to come, through our Lord, Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.”

“Amen,” chorused the tired sailors.

“Amen,” chorused the crying marines.

“Amen,” whispered George Deanshire.

The grave was filled in. There was to be no headstone, nor even a wooden marker - this time, Edward Devon’s pleading did not persuade the Commander, and he ordered the continuation of the march. With no man exempted from hauling, hours after the death of the most precious person in the world to him, he was back to hauling.

Sometimes, when he slept in the harness after a day’s haul, he would dream of him. Though they had known each other since childhood, they had not become anything serious for years. But in these dreams they were - sailing with his father when he was a child, meeting forty year old Lieutenant Anderson during the wars in China, using their staggering advance pay on a good meal and a fine room somewhere - or perhaps a new uniform. Laughing all the while. Nothing else would have mattered but the present. They had not done any of these things because James had essentially ordered him to send the money to his five siblings - he would have done it anyway, but James did not need to know that.

He did not like waking up these days.

The march continued and continued. He remembered when George Deanshire had said that the march was not even a week away from reaching the Bay, but it might as well have been on the moon. More men sickened, Devon included. His feet throbbed even when he sat. He disliked, intensely, this land that was not quite Arctic but not quite Canada. Too hot for slops but too cold without them.

And that was his fatal mistake.

In order to hunt the abundant birds who now flew over these barren lands, he had taken off his outer glove on one hand and only had a thin wool glove on it as he fired. After several hours of this, not realizing when his hand had gone numb, he pulled his wool glove off to realize that three of his fingers on his good right hand were frostbitten.

Not taking any time, he ignited a fire and held a cleaver over it for a couple minutes. Because the surgeon was not with the Commander’s party, and Sergeant Rouger, the man he was training to be his replacement, was also with Anderson, Deanshire had proclaimed that until Repulse Bay, every man would handle his own amputations if he so required them.

After heating up the cleaver, he had taken it to three of those fingers in one savage, hard whack.

He had not looked away. The blade went clean through. He had thought, for a moment, that he had done it successfully. But he had not. After he had staunched the abominable bleeding, somehow, he had realized that tiny black digits of skin were forming on the remnants of the cleaved fingers. They were putrefying. He burned his hand again to hopefully burn the rot off, but it only hurt him.

There was only one option left to him if he wished to retain his life. But he would not do it.

Even when Deanshire offered to do it for him, he had denied the request. He would deny it again if it became an order. He would never become a cripple. Now, at least, with his ring finger and thumb, he can fire his weapon. A marine without an off hand is no marine at all. John Farrows had done well without it, but he had died the first second he had come into battle, and that was with savage bears who could not fire back at you. His Royal Navy pay would be all that would be afforded to him, and then he would be penniless and out of a position that he had served in for years.

Perhaps James could have convinced him. But James was no longer here.

As the miserable company of men sat next to their whaleboat, Edward Devon announced that he was out for a piss. From the provisions table set up, he took a fair chunk of the bird he had sacrificed his life for. He ought to be owed that, he thought. He left his rifle and ammunition and tobacco and wrapped his head in a bandage to soak up the blood coming from his scalp.

He found a hill that he judged to be large enough around five minutes later, although he had no watch so he did not know for sure. He could only see the faint line of fire coming from the camp, and nothing else, probably more due to his eyes’ blurriness than any great distance.

It took him everything he had to climb the hill, which was more like a small mountain. But he reached it and, scanning the very top of it, found a large rock that ought to suit his purposes. Exhausted and panting, he took greedy bites of the cold bird. It looked like a puffin, he had seen a chart of one in the older Dr Curry’s sick bay. He never imagined that a puffin would be the last thing he would ever eat. He supposed that he expected it would be pork or beef, when he was rich enough to afford those foods every day. But never a puffin. He chuckled.

The puffin was cold and odd-tasting, more fishy and gamey than bird. He had tasted many fish, mostly filthy ones from the channel, and this one had one of the richest flavors he had ever eaten. The face looked rather like a clown. He thought that he broke several teeth eating the gamey bits of it, though.

Throwing aside the remnants of the bird (including the face, which he could not bring himself to eat) he removed a comb, James’s comb, from his red jacket. He ran a thumb along the bristles and put back his greasy brown hair. Blood dribbled from the bristles and onto the rock when he removed it from his hair. Some of the redness, scraped back, pooled down the sides and rear of his neck. It felt cold, and tickled. Everything felt cold. He sighed, and put the comb back onto the rock, and moved to the edge of the little mountain.

He put one foot in front of the other, and stepped forth to die.

Chapter Text

Thomas Cartridge had not the faintest idea how to eat a man.

Sure, he could put the morsels into his mouth and pretend it was pork and not the corpse of John Lane, formerly Bosun of HMS Terror, but he did not know how to cut a man up.

Using a dinner knife, because all the cleavers were with the other two much larger parties, the three remaining men of H.M.B. Smith huddled around a campfire made from unnecessary portions of their whaleboat and watched as Thomas Cartridge sawed into the leg bones of John Lane. It took him the better part of ten minutes.

“The man’s too fucking skinny. You have to get at the shoulders and buttocks.” Said Alexander Hill, a rough mouthed petty officer.

So they turned Lane around, put a white cloth over his face, and cut thin strips of meat from the aforementioned body parts, still with a few last pounds on them.

Like Jesus’s first miracle, thought Cartridge. As he turned water into wine, we turned man into meat.
In the morning, they cracked open Lane’s leg bones and scooped out the red-white marrow with a spoon and had that for lunch with their remaining chocolate ration and a little bit of cheek. They had to boil the bone chips, and used the very last of their ether to do so.

When lunch was done, Lieutenant Fells ordered Alexander Hill to take apart their boat’s rudder for firewood. Previously, they had just been cutting off the sides, but those were exhausted. Because of the dullness of his knives, it took Hill the better part of the afternoon to finish, and by that time they were already freezing again. For supper, they used the same dinner knife to pry open Lane’s skull and dash his brains onto three china plates. Then they dragged the body to the edge of their camp and waited for the next person to die.

They had been at this for so many days.

The first man to die had been old William Heather, on his 40th birthday. They had been hauling along nicely when Lieutenant Fells had sealed their fate by ordering a two day halt to hunt bird and caribou. They found only a few stringy birds, and no caribou. They stayed there for five days, and in that time, Mr. Heather sickened beyond hauling ability. His cheeks hollowed even beyond what they had previously been, so they put him on their whaleboat and continued their march.

It was five miles later that they decided that they could not haul any longer with the current weight on their boat. To Lieutenant Fells’ fright, they could no longer see the other two boats. What followed was hours on hours of throwing out any useless items - additional clothes, swords, additional shot for the musket, silverware, pocket watches, uniform caps (they wore rags instead fashioned from their coats), extra pairs of boots, and two boxes of Lieutenant Fells’ fine cigars. Fells kept two for his own use and threw the rest out.

With this lightened load, they could now haul. With a moaning Heather behind him, they dragged their boat another miserable six miles until John Lane collapsed from exhaustion and they could no longer haul. That night, Heather celebrated his 40th birthday, and his last night on earth. A cigar was put to his lips and he died before it was half burnt, still between his teeth. In lieu of the fact that he was most probably the first Franklin man to die in a while, they interred him in the hills, using whatever miserable sailcloth they had left that wasn’t their boat sail.

In that disgusting place, which Alexander Hill had taken to calling “Shit Camp”, two men endeavoured to escape. John Lane, Boatswain, and Jonathan Foster, Blacksmith, took up their warmest clothes, Heather’s musket (the shotgun remained with Fells) and four shots. They took a pair of snow glasses to avoid snow blind, and began their march. They took no provisions, estimating that they would be able to shoot animals along the way and catch up to the much slower ship’s boats.

They were wrong. By the second day, they were too exhausted to continue. Jonathan Foster wanted to continue, while John Lane wanted to return, so Lane parted ways with that proud man who claimed descent from Kings and followed his rough footpath back to the boat. Foster kept the musket.

He never made it. John Lane collapsed about a mile away from the jolly boat, and Alexander Hill only stumbled upon him while hunting for birds, still raggedly breathing. He dragged him back to the camp, and after he told his story, he fell into an exhausted sleep. Without much pause, Alexander Hill shot him in the head and began to take out the more stomachable parts of him. Using the flimsy justification that he had abandoned them, they performed the aforementioned things to his corpse and dragged it behind the sledge.

There, they died.

Alexander Hill would clearly be the next casualty, that was clear to all, even now he was coughing. But Cartridge did not want to do the same thing again.

He approached Lieutenant Fells, who was tenderly biting into a small piece of meat. Hill sat in the boat shavings that he had been at for most of the day, and looked blankly at the ground.

“Lieutenant. I would like to ask permission to depart the boat and make for the others.”

“The other whaleboats?” He looked at Cartridge like he was mad.

“Aye, sir. They probably haven’t moved up too much by now. Chances are they aren’t even at Repulse Bay right now. I can make it.”

“You’d die, man. Even if you made it, the stress on your body…” Fells coughed.

“I don’t want to die, sir. I’m the healthiest of us three here. Maybe I’ll find Foster along the way.” Cartridge gave a small smile, like he didn’t even believe it was true.

“You really are mad if you think Foster is still alive.” Fells scrutinized him.

“Nevertheless, I want to go, sir. I’m the best chance for this party. They won’t come back for us.” He stood at attention until Fells dismissed him from it with a wave of his hand.

“Go, then. And die. They will come back for us. I know it. The Captain wouldn’t abandon me.”

Cartridge gave a look at the sad, deluded fool, sitting in his toy boat. “Thank you, sir.”

He took some cans of food that were considered too rotted for human consumption, three extra pairs of boots, and the boat stove - the rest of their food was not enough, but perhaps Fells would be alive when Cartridge returned. He strapped the boots and boat stove to himself. He put on his brilliant white bear pelt and gold-banded officer’s cap, trimmed his extended brown beard (where once he had been clean-shaven) and bid good-bye to Lieutenant Fells and Leading Stoker Alexander Hill.

He forfeited one of his cigars to Hill, and the last time he saw either of them, Hill was scrounging through a pack of matches to light his cigar and Fells was looking down at the gravel where once John Lane had lay, his mouth agape, his brow furrowed in such a way that made him look slightly confused, and his eyes, where once a young and promising nautical officer of the Royal Navy could have gazed upon you, now all that bore into the gravel were the eyes of a man who had perhaps seen too much and done too little. Though he was not old, he was only 31, Fells carried a weight in his slumped shoulders that would have beggared Atlas. In some part of himself, Thomas Cartridge knew he would never see either man again.

Yet he went on. He marched across uncounted hills of rocks and barren plains, seeing no fewer than two birds, until the blip of a brown object passed from the flat plain. He used the last of his ether bottles (concealed from the other men) to heat up the stove, eating both birds, heads and organs and bones and all, at a barely tepid temperature. The wind, when not blowing in his face, was barely enough to raise the hairs on his body, as he was under many thick natural layers, the greatest of which was Ursus Maritimus.

Perhaps Oscar had saved him, after all.

During the long march, Cartridge often felt himself going to the places that were most comforting to him. His parish, in particular. He imagined himself taking the Eucharist again. Though they had no officer for Catholic services aboard HMS Edinburgh, Cartridge had been permitted by a smiling Captain Anderson to lead Catholic services with the various seamen, the very few who optionally attended additional Sunday services, because he was the highest ranking Catholic aboard.

He had a congregation of six or seven lads, mostly micks who wished to be in better graces with the Lord. All of them were with the mutiny now, or dead. It was normally a bible reading and then a sermon, but he was no priest, so he could not give the Eucharist. He had not received it, nor went to confession, in several years. He wondered if God would begrudge him the circumstances.

Is taking the Eucharist similar to eating a man? The question often resurfaced in his mind. His priest had told him that when consecrated by a priest, the Eucharist became the literal body and blood of the Lord Jesus. What was that if not man? Fully man and fully God, they had said…

He did not linger in it. He figured he was approaching somewhere close to blasphemy. He remembered a priest in Iceland, or was it Greenland? that had edited the Lord’s Prayer to include mention of “our daily seal” in place of bread, for Esquimaux had never seen bread in their lives. Perhaps God allowed adaptation to the circumstances. Would, in that case, he allow the consumption of your fellow man? Cartridge did not know. He knew that he would never kill a man while he lived, that was one of His commandments, but what if they were already dead?

He shook his head, and pressed on.

He walked for many days, or what seemed like it. He lit his remaining tobacco on a bright and clear morning, walking absently while closing his eyes. He had finally developed the ability to sleep while walking, but he did not do so now. He would not be able to enjoy the smoke if he were asleep. He bit a rock-hard ship’s biscuit as he walked. Grimacing, he picked out the remains of half a blackened tooth, and tasted blood. He had made a small dent in the biscuit.

He heard idle sounds in the background, like booms. Ice glaciers crashing against each other. With a sigh, he cast off his boat stove - useless now that he could not heat anything, and his officer’s cap. He wrapped a rag around his head to soak up the small amounts of pooling blood that combined with his sweat. It turned the rag a brownish color by noon, and he knew he must look like a walking corpse. But he was not cold. That he was thankful to God for. When he reached rescue, he ought to cut up the pelt and give it to-

He felt an odd sensation in his gut, and then he was falling over. He cast off the cloak to look at the cause of it. His shirt rapidly darkened, and he found himself on the ground.

Thomas Cartridge’s mind swirled. The altar. Singing. Taking the Eucharist. His congregation. Oscar Baynes. The men at Shit Camp. John Lane. Bone marrow. The headless corpse Deanshire had seen in the pinnace on King William Island. Thirty rotting men in a tent, piled on top of each other, mouths agape.

A man in the distance was yelling, and he soon approached. Sitting up, with a start, Thomas Cartridge realized that he had been shot. A single entry wound, so a musket. A marine, most likely, savages did not possess muskets. He turned to look behind him.

“Oh,” he said.

Red and brown offal were scattered on the rock, no particular piece larger than his thumb, but enough to know that one of his organs had more or less been ripped apart by this marine’s crack shot.
The man yelling got close, too close, and soon Cartridge saw his face.

He had a long brown beard, a small nose, large amber eyes, and straight brown hair. He wore a dark blue officer’s greatcoat and a gold-banded officer’s cap, and fingerless gloves. He was sure he had never met the man. None of the officers on the Anderson expedition wore officer greatcoats anymore. He looked so much like…

“I’m sorry. By God, I am sorry. Christ. You - who are you? Are you with Captain Anderson?”

“Oscar…” moaned Thomas Cartridge.

The man shook his head. Soon, a red-coated marine came up, a private, noted by his lack of chevrons. He had reloaded his musket and was shouldering it.
“Reed, you’ll be flogged for this,” said the officer, growling. Reed seemed to almost whimper. He looked at Cartridge.

“I didn’t mean to, sir. I’m.. I didn’t.. you were a bear! A bear’s head! I just fired! Are you going to live, sir? Is he?”

“Of course he isn’t going to live, you goddamn- LOOK!” growled the officer, pointing to the assortment of organs behind Cartridge. Reed gulped. Cartridge thought, idly, that he was a funny little man.

“Anderson… tell them.. Shit Camp.. Fells, Hill.. they’re sitting.. I..”

The officer nodded, though his brows creased at the mention of ‘Shit Camp.’ “We’ll find them,” promised the officer, patting his shoulder. Reed shrugged him back into his bear pelt, pulling him painfully onto some sort of moving contraption, and the officer went in front of them.

The sun baked his eyes. The ride on the sled was bumpy. Cartridge extended his hands in front of him, idly grasping the empty air and muttering the name of the first mate. He had looked so much like him…

Then the cold washed over him, and he smiled.

Chapter Text

When Captain’s Coxswain Arthur Francis found Lieutenant Edward Little and his men, it was the bright and sunny morning of November 1st, 1850.

Anderson had been sleeping, while Second Lieutenant Jameson guided his whaleboat. They could almost see the bay, but his boat was faltering, and it was almost certain that without the sighting they would have faltered or not even made it to Repulse Bay at all. Surgeon Curry was still dying, and could not tend the sick.

The expeditions had soon enough noticed each other, hauling nearby, and those who could abandoned their hauling tasks and walked. To get their attention, Francis fired off a shot.

Anderson had to be helped by his steward, Rouse, but he had managed, somehow, to stand for this encounter. Second Lieutenant Jameson and Sergeant Rouger both bore guns if the fight went awry.

The other two boats were nowhere in sight. That worried Anderson. He knew Deanshire would be alright - he had many men, and he had a small amount of sick only. He was worried about Fells, but he would never admit that aloud. His Franklin men were more weakened than Anderson’s, and he had two of them.

The men who could walk stumbled over to the middle point where Arthur Francis was already conversing with a private of marines. For a moment the parties stood and watched each other, until Anderson was helped to the front of the other seven men by Ludwig Rouse and spoke to the men.

“Who is your commanding officer?”

Noting his officer’s cap and demeanor, the Franklin men snapped to salute. Anderson counted six men standing among their party before another man stepped forward. A few men coughed.

He looked just like any of his other men, except he wore a large dark blue officer’s greatcoat with gold buttons. Somehow, it was still spotless.

“Edward, Little… sir. And you are?” Little appraised Anderson, and did not look impressed, from his gaze at the cane and the way he had to be held up by his steward.

Anderson coughed. “Henry Anderson, Captain of HMS Edinburgh… well… former… We were contracted to look for you. What has happened to Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames?”

“Both dead, sir.”

Little soon introduced his men as Edward Little, Dr Alexander McDonald, Private William Reed (who had first seen Mr Francis and came up to talk to him), and Able Seamen Crispe, Strong, and Manson. The three men sick in their boat were Quartermaster William Bell, Able Seaman John Morfin, and Second Master Gillies Macbean, all dying of scurvy.

Their sick now numbered six men who could not walk, more on Deanshire’s boat. The pools of water that had frozen men to the bone had now ceased and the party joined together their two boats and passed through the land, struggling to hold up the increasing weight of their dying with the growing decrepity of their own bodies.

The day after the expeditions had joined, Lieutenant Little was commissioned third lieutenant of HMS Edinburgh, and his men officially confirmed to the roster. The two boats pulled along nicely on the flat ground and the men began talking about what they would build once they made it to Repulse Bay with four whaleboats.

Lieutenant Little and Private Reed were sent hunting, Reed with a musket and Little with a shotgun. His expedition had only had one shotgun and one musket at the end, and expected to perish - until they had found Anderson.

The hunting party encountered Second Mate Cartridge on the 3rd of November, who, having marched the entire way to Anderson’s whaleboat, was shot by Private Reed for his trouble, mistaken in a split-second for a bear, based on the pelt he wore. He did not die immediately from the shot, and muttered something about ‘Shit Camp,’ and Lieutenant Fells and Leading Stoker Alexander Hill, who were supposed to be the other survivors of his boat. Anderson promised to send a team to find them after they had reached the Bay, which made it all the more imperative to find it, and quickly.

Thomas Cartridge died before they reached camp, and was buried without ceremony in his bear pelt as they hauled in a grave. The marines took an hour to carve out the initials “TC” on one of the largest rocks, to mark his site. Anderson promised to come back for it after he had returned to England.

The hunt was not very successful, only a couple stringy birds were found for the entire group. Lieutenant Jameson estimated that the expedition had three months of provisions remaining, even on the half-fare that they were on now. They would starve to death in winter if they stayed in Repulse Bay.

Which means that they only had a month, at maximum, to stay and rest and wait for their dying to die.

And then they had to leave. Across Southampton Island - which was notably extremely rocky and uneven. Whalers avoided it, even for hunting.

On the 3rd of November, Captain Anderson and Lieutenant Little, sitting together on the whaleboat during a short rest, spotted a cookfire to the southwest.

Anderson sent Jameson, Manson, and Crispe to go bring Deanshire’s group to his own. The three boats came up, and the four officers of the expedition met in the middle.

“Captain. I am glad to see you again so soon.” Deanshire shook Anderson’s hand as he wobbled on his cane. Jameson held him up.

“Thank you, Commander. Uh, this is Lieutenant Edward Little. I don’t believe you’ve been formally introduced.” He smiled. “Lieutenant, this is my second, George Deanshire.”

They shook hands.

“This is Second Lieutenant Arthur Jameson. Lieutenant Fells is somewhere around here, he’ll find us eventually.” Anderson waved off his concern and smiled again. He tried to talk, but found that the words for what they had to discuss next would not come out.

“Our sick, sir? Is that what you wanted to discuss?” Deanshire asked the Captain. He nodded and looked down again.

“Well, sir… None of them have any hope, it’s true, but -”

“But they’re still alive,” finished Jameson. “None of them want to make it easy on us and just die.”

“Aye,” said George Deanshire. “They’re still alive. So what do we do?”

After a moment, Little lit his pipe. Jameson spoke up.

“When we reach the Bay, we could built a little thatch shelter for them, leave a few spoiled provisions. Then we would leave them alone for a week or two until they all died. And then we could… well, you know.”

“We have three months of provisions,” frowned Anderson. “And we could reduce further, to make it last perhaps half a year.”

“That would make it a quarter rations, sir. Half is barely acceptable to men doing all this strenuous labor. We would have a second mutiny on our hands. And we need that salted fish fare since we will have to march across Southampton Island. We can remain for at most two months in the Bay, and then we must leave.”

“Fine,” snapped Anderson. “What do you suggest we do? Eat our dead?”

“Yes,” said George Deanshire.

The officers did not speak for a moment.

“Alright. Uh, Arthur?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Can you make that thatch roof? I’d like it up in time to celebrate Guy Fawkes night. After that, on the morning of the sixth, they go in.”

Jameson nodded. “I’ll do my best sir, with the fittest men we have.”

“Good man,” said Anderson. “We are fortunate to have a new physician. I am told Dr McDonald is skillful at the native tongue?”

“Aye, sir.” said Lieutenant Little. “He speaks passably. And he is good with potions and surgery.”

“Excellent,” said Anderson.

“If I may, sir - should we blockade the door to the thatch house, I mean? What if they crawl out and come over to the healthy men?” asked Little.

“They won’t,” responded Deanshire, over a flustering Anderson. “They don’t have the strength. Carpenter Jenkins has been reduced to muttering. Mr Francis is the healthiest of them, and he cannot stand anymore. I doubt they could pull themselves together enough to crawl across rock.”

“Jesus Christ, George, don’t you have any empathy at all?” muttered Anderson.

“Enough to make sure that twenty men of the Queen’s Navy make it home, yes, sir.” Deanshire said, icily.

The party of officers quit their meeting and resumed the hauling, made even more grueling by the fact that they had just had enough time to sit down and rest when they had picked up again.

For one moment, at dusk, perhaps around 6:00 PM, the rock and stone seemed to extend forever, as it had for the previous half year. And then it ceased.

Repulse Bay was rather large - but it was possible to see from one end to the other, even with their weary eyes. The Franklin men were in the front, and Deanshire in the middle, with Anderson taking up the rear. The men who could see it stood up and shouted and came to the rock where the ice was revealed. A few marines fired their muskets and shotguns, despite the light scolding of their officers, which was drowned out by the renewed hollering of a few new men who had just come up. All were laughing and hugging and patting each other on the shoulders.

Henry Anderson went up with Ludwig Rouse on his cane, balancing among the rock. As he approached, he saw that some of the men were sobbing, and on their knees. None of the infirm in the party had stayed in the boats - a few of the sick, including Surgeon Curry and Arthur Francis and Robert Jenkins, had been carried out of their boats and were hoisted on the shoulders of their healthier comrades. A few of the men fell to their knees and put their heads in their hands and wept for joy. Quartermaster William Bell was lifted atop the shoulders of Lieutenant Little as Dr Alexander McDonald hugged Seaman Magnus Manson. All the while, more and more men were shouting “The Sea! The Sea!” as the entire company had come up.

As the men of the Anderson and Franklin Expeditions saw their Captain, a few of the marines under Sergeant Rouger, weeping, snapped to attention. Others looked and continued saying “The Sea, the Sea,” in an unquenchable cornucopia of joy.

Anderson himself leaned on his cane as he watched the iced waters of the bay. He was not ashamed to find that there were also tears falling from his face. I’ve done it, he thought. I did it. We did it.

“Thalatta, Thalatta,” said Anderson. He remembered the Xenophon from his youth. He looked out at the water. A few of the men came up and shook his hand. William Reed even hugged him, despite the admonishment by Lieutenant Little. It was the first time had received a hug since his sons had left for naval school. Thirty odd years ago, he thought, smiling.

For the first time in his life, Henry Anderson knew that he had accomplished something.