Upon hearing of what had happened, Crozier came to see for himself, and Irving and Hodgson stepped outside to make room for him in Peddie’s surgery. Expecting him to repeat their own reassurances, they were surprised when he became critical of Little and accused him of endangering the men under his command by his inability to respond to any unexpected emergency. Little, too, was surprised by the harshness of this, but said nothing in his own defense.
“What is it, a break, a fracture, what?” Crozier asked Peddie.
Peddie, unhappy at his role of mediator, said that it was unlikely to be either. Even the smallest fracture and the leg would tolerate no weight whatsoever upon it. So far during his examination he had administered no pain-reliever, and Little’s face was bathed in sweat.
Peddie finally conceded that a bone may have been cracked and that it had not mended because it had not been immediately bound and rested. He cleaned the swelling with iodine and bandaged it. Until this was fully healed, Little would have to walk with a stick.
When Fitzjames heard of these developments he asked John Weekes, the
Erebus’
carpenter, to make a stick, the head of which was to resemble the head of the monkey, which now spent most of its time in Little’s cabin, and which he cared for and fed.
Crozier complained to Franklin about Little’s deceit in not informing him of the injury sooner, and Franklin could do no more than repeat Peddie’s reassurances that the otherwise healthy young lieutenant would be fully recovered by the time they were ready to prise themselves free and sail into the disintegrating ice to the south. He invited him to remain on board the
Erebus
for dinner, but Crozier declined. He apologized for being poor company. He seemed to Franklin to be distracted, unable to focus on the matter at hand.
They parted out on the ice, where a flock of raucous ravens hopped over the frozen surface around them, some of the birds following Crozier on his way back to the
Terror
, as though believing he might at any moment pluck a handful of food from his pocket and throw it down for them.
T
heir first storm of the new year arrived at the end of March, a month after the reappearance of the sun. On the day it came, the Devon watch, including Fitzjames and Vesconte, was descending in single file to the bay below when the wind overtook them from the north and a curtain of snow drove into them from behind, engulfing them completely and making it impossible to see more than a few paces ahead. Fitzjames called for them to gather together, knowing that they were in danger of losing their path back to the ships. There were no precipices, but the slope was steep, and anyone who fell and was afterward unable to call out for help might be quickly and irretrievably lost to them. They covered their faces and put on their goggles. A rope was tied to the waist of each man, leaving only an arm’s length between them.
They descended further and the slope became firmer and less steep. Dropping into a sheltered hollow, they met a party led by John Irving. The lights of the ships were pointed out to them, and Fitzjames was surprised to see how far away these were, and not directly ahead of them as he had supposed. They had turned from their path in the storm and were walking downhill on a slope parallel to the shore. They had been spotted by men on the ice below and this rescue party had been sent to guide them down.
Within a quarter of an hour they were back on the frozen sea and crossing it to the ships.
All around them, men carrying and hauling provisions ran across
the ice shouting to each other. Their smaller boats were hoisted back on board, and the larger ones secured more firmly where they sat in the open.
Only two days earlier, the lookouts over Wellington had for the first time reported movement in the winter ice, raising hopes for an early release. Unnavigable leads had opened in the pack and then closed again, and slabs of ice had risen almost vertically from the water and been neatly stacked ashore like so many paving slabs waiting to be laid.
Upon receiving these reports, Fitzjames and Vesconte had returned to the observation post with the new watch and witnessed for themselves these first, premature signs of the new season.
It seemed improbable to them that such a depth of ice—calculated by Vesconte to be between forty and fifty feet thick in places—could be so suddenly or so easily released, split and cast aside as though it were only inches deep. In some places the open water ran directly upon the shore. Geysers of foam rose where the blocks of ice collided, and the air, calm before the approaching storm, was filled with the hollow booming of countless unseen fractures and collisions.
Now Fitzjames and Vesconte met Franklin and Gore on the ice, inspecting the iron staves to which the
Erebus’
mooring ropes were attached. Gore believed that somewhere in the shallow bay, water was already moving beneath the ice, threatening to fracture it and add to the confusion and danger. Only inches apart, the four men were forced to shout to one another to make themselves heard as the snow now drove around them as fiercely as it had blasted the exposed hillside.
Franklin gave the order to his mates and quartermasters to call a halt to the gathering of stores and for everyone to return aboard. He left his officers to supervise the tightening of the guy ropes over their tented roof, calling for a stowing detail to clear the decks of all their detritus of the previous few weeks.
Fitzjames, Vesconte and Gore assisted in the collecting of the last of their provisions from the Beechey shore. Several of the redundant storehouses had already been dismantled, and the casks and cases
now scattered on the beach were in danger of being buried and lost.
A crate containing the last of their live geese was dropped on the ice, breaking and releasing its captives. Two were recaptured immediately, but the rest were plucked away by the strong wind and lost.
Marker lanterns were torn from their posts, spilled their fuel and erupted in brief gaseous flames before being extinguished. There was some panic as men ashore were cut off from their companions and their calls for help were lost on the wind. Many abandoned their loads and raced unencumbered back to the safety of the ships.
Fitzjames and Gore encountered Reid and Blanky returning from their own watch over Barrow Strait. The ice here had not yet started to break, but that moving out of the west and the north was already piling up along the precipitous southern shore.
Gore expressed his concern about the movement of water beneath the ice in the bay and the two ice-masters went with him on to the sea and knelt to listen to it. Reid retrieved a crowbar from an abandoned sledge and struck the surface in several places, and both he and Blanky listened intently to the notes this produced.
Around them the running and shouting men quickly decreased in number. Chains were formed to take aboard the provisions which had so far been collected. By now conversation had become impossible, and the wind could be felt through even the thickest clothing. Vesconte tried to ask Reid what he had discovered about the ice, but Reid signaled with a hand over his mouth that he could not speak. Ice had already collected on the faces of all five men.
They were among the last back aboard, climbing with what little they had managed to retrieve. They brushed the snow from each other’s backs and shoulders.
The canvas roof had so far held fast, and beneath it they no longer had to shout so loudly. The tenting was pulled taut, occasionally released to hang slack for a few seconds, and then sucked suddenly back out again with an alarming crack.
Further preparations continued into the night. Their bunkers were filled and their condensers and filters cleaned in readiness for their prolonged confinement.
Outside, after a month during which the noon temperature had rarely fallen below minus 30, figures of minus 50 were recorded on both ships. The mercury froze in their thermometers.
For six days there was no communication between the
Erebus
and the
Terror
. On the seventh, even though the storm still blew, a party of four men, comprising Fitzjames, Reid, Sergeant Bryant and Corporal Paterson, made the hazardous journey over the buried ice to the
Terror.
The new surface accumulations lay ten feet deep in places, blown and collected in disorientating drifts over the ice beneath. One of the last tasks accomplished before the two ships had been shut down was the connection of a single hawser between them. This was still attached to the rail of the
Erebus
, and Fitzjames sought for it as he waded through the snow, eventually locating it and lifting it free.
It took them an hour to complete the short journey, and upon reaching the
Terror
they communicated their arrival by banging on the hull until ladders were lowered for them.
Once aboard, Fitzjames reported to Crozier, delivering a message from Franklin and explaining how they were coping aboard the
Erebus.
Crozier compiled a list of damage and injuries for him to take back to the ship.
They were joined by Peddie and Macdonald. The surgeon expressed his concern over four men who had been taken ill with influenza, and showed no sign of improvement since their confinement. He asked about William Braine, and Fitzjames told him that both Stanley and Goodsir now agreed that the marine would shortly die of the same ailment which had taken Torrington and Hartnell.
Crozier asked Fitzjames to convey his compliments to Franklin, and his hopes that the imprisoning storm would blow itself out in time for himself and his officers to make the journey to the
Erebus
in a week’s time to celebrate Sir John’s sixtieth birthday.
Fitzjames and his party left and made their return journey along the hawser. From a distance both ships were reduced to hummocks of snow, distinguishable only in outline, and by their masts. Neither showed any lights in the strong wind, and it would not, Fitzjames believed, have been difficult to convince himself that they were already
empty hulks which had drifted abandoned and unnoticed into this desolate backwater so far from the eyes and concerns of the world.
When the weather finally cleared, William Braine’s body was carried ashore and buried alongside Hartnell and Torrington. The marine had died three days earlier, his corpse dressed and wrapped and taken to the
Erebus’
forward hold, where it froze within an hour of being laid out. He had been thirty-three and was the first of the expedition’s fatalities to leave behind him a widow and orphans. His belongings were auctioned, and the proceeds from the sales collected by Osmer to return to his dependents along with his back pay. A copper plaque was nailed to his coffin lid, upon which the details of his company were engraved. Chiseled upon his wooden headboard was a quote chosen by Franklin from Joshua 26.
With the return of the better weather, Franklin’s birthday was celebrated. Crozier presented him with a new looking-glass incorporating tinted glass to reduce ice-blink, commissioned by him from Selles and Walker at Sir John Barrow’s suggestion. He also handed over greetings cards entrusted to him a year previously by all the members of the Arctic Council. From Fitzjames, Franklin received a new Bible, bound in calf and embossed with gold, its pages also gold-edged, adding to its appearance of authority and solidity.
Perhaps strangest of all Franklin’s gifts was the photograph he received from Graham Gore, made the previous September when they had first gone ashore on Beechey. Still unconvinced of his expertise or of the value of his work, this portrait of Sir John was Gore’s most successful picture so far. In the glass plate, Franklin stood at the top of the beach with the imposing cliff rising sheer behind him. He held his helmet in one hand and his sword in the other. The men ashore had been cleared from the background so that he stood alone, and Gore had set up his equipment slightly below Franklin, making him appear taller and more imposing. Sir John stood turned to one side, gazing into the middle distance to where his ships lay at anchor. Afterward he had left the beach without speaking to Gore, not even expressing an interest in the finished result.
Later, looking closely at the image he had produced, Gore was surprised to see a band of white, like a roll of unwound silk between the back of Franklin’s head and the cliff face. Unable at first to explain this, it finally struck him that what he had captured on the plate was a flight of gulls passing behind Franklin, each bird following closely in the path of the one ahead, and each leaving its own fleeting and insubstantial image on the exposed plate.
He explained all this to Franklin upon presenting him with the portrait, and in turn Franklin explained the effect to everyone else who asked to see it. He now seemed pleased by the picture, as though his own solemn features had been somehow enlivened by the ghostly birds, and as though the portrait had been enhanced rather than spoiled by them.
Goodsir, upon being handed the plate for his own comments, drew his finger across the smear left by the birds, where here and there a wingtip was more distinctly visible, and half jokingly suggested to Gore that this was how an angel might eventually come to be seen.
They waited nine more weeks for the ice in the bay to break and disperse. It was by then the middle of July, and the watches posted on the outer heights reported daily that the disintegrating broader pack was already braided with channels, the widest of which might already prove navigable were they able to reach them.
On the 18th of July, the two ice-masters and a party of marines hauled a boat over the bay ice and put to sea at its rim, moved out into the flow of the Wellington Channel and there rowed and drifted among the floating ice until they were carried south with it into Barrow Strait. Here they anchored to a grounded berg and studied the movement of the breaking pack all around them. It quickly became apparent that they stood little chance of sailing south through the easterly flow without serious risk of collision. There was no safe harbor closer than Cape Walker, 100 miles to the west, or the north coast of Somerset, 50 miles south across the turbulent strait.
They stayed amid the ice for six hours, watching as it moved unceasingly past them, and only left their secure anchorage when
another large berg threatened to collide with their own and crush them. They turned north, making slow progress against the Wellington outfall, where the wider view was lost to them amid towering bergs. A close watch was kept for any submerged ice which might slide beneath them and lift them clear of the water.
Turning back into Beechey Bay they were caught in a sudden and powerful surge of water caused by the calving of a nearby berg. The small boat rocked and they were spun until a collision with the surrounding ice looked unavoidable. Reid told the marines to fix their oars and hold them out from the boat at half their length. They had already secured themselves to the benches upon which they sat. One man, William Pilkington, was slow to position his oar, and as he fumbled with it, snagging it on a rope, the boat struck the ice and he was thrown overboard, landing, to his surprise and relief, in less than a foot of water, which skimmed the surface of a submerged shelf. He scrambled to pull himself clear, fearful that he might be caught in a gap between the ice and the boat.
After this they pushed themselves into more open water. Two of the marines took off Pilkington’s boots and over-trousers. He was unhurt and the water had not penetrated to his underclothing. Composing himself after his brief ordeal, he returned to his oar.