When asked to calculate the depth of the thickening ice beneath them, both Reid and Blanky were confident that it extended to at least forty feet. Vesconte silently added a further ten to that, disappointed that he did not possess sufficient bits and drilling rods to find out for certain. All three men were united in their belief that there was moving water far beneath this, and that these submerged currents would remain flowing through the winter, exerting their pull, however slight, on the ice above.
On that final day of warping there was an accident when one of the
Erebus’
winching ropes parted, frayed by the strain imposed upon it during the previous two weeks.
The six men hauling on the rope were thrown to the ice, and one of them, seaman William Orren, hit his head on the claw and knocked himself out. He also gashed his cheek and forehead and bled badly until Stanley and Goodsir were able to reach him and stem the flow. Reid inspected the broken rope and found it to be useless, angry with himself that he had not spotted the wear on it sooner.
Sawing parties worked for a week after the
Erebus
had stopped moving, chopping out the ice in ton blocks, until it was sufficiently weakened and opened up for the
Terror
to continue pushing forward behind her. So rapidly was the water refreezing now, that the men on the ice had also to cut it free of the
Terror’s
stern, where it clung to her timbers and worked against them as they pulled her forward.
The blocks they sawed free were dragged away over the lubricated surface and positioned around both ships to act as supports when they rose in the ice. A lift of six to eight feet would prove sufficient, and to assist in this the bulk of their stores were unloaded and stacked out on the stable ice.
The
Terror
began to rise only four days after coming to rest, slowly at first, and controllably, but then with a succession of tremors which shook her along her full length and damaged both her fore- and main-royals. This damage was not serious, but the show of destructive strength acted as a warning to everyone who congregated out on the ice to watch. She was lifted six feet clear of her unloaded waterline, her stern at first staying down until it too eased itself up and she came level. When she had finally settled into this new position her supporting blocks were wedged more firmly against her until she was sitting as tight as a hen on a nest.
The
Erebus
was lifted where she sat two days later, and to assist in this she was pumped dry of all the water she had shipped. In a single day they cleared thirty-six tons from her bilges, pumping this overboard, where it froze in an icy talus over their own supporting blocks, sealing her tight.
Having been heavily sedated, William Orren did not regain consciousness until the next day after his accident. He studied his bandaged face in a mirror and asked Goodsir about his chances of
making a full recovery. Goodsir expressed his surprise at the man’s cultivated accent, and by the informed nature of the questions he asked. Taking him into his confidence, Orren confessed that he was an Oxford graduate and that he held a degree in Law. He had practiced for two years and had failed, after which he had enlisted as a seaman. His father was an acquaintance of George Back’s and he himself had sailed with Back on the
Terror
as a boy ten years earlier before entering university. Of all the others, only Graham Gore, Back’s mate, was aware of his background and he too had been sworn to secrecy.
A week after both ships had settled in their cradles and been tented, Franklin outlined his plans for the winter ahead.
There was little alternative now than to remain anchored to the ice and take their chances with it. He estimated their present position to be somewhat less than a hundred miles north-northeast of Point Victory, James Ross’ Farthest West on King William Land, and with any luck they would come within sight of that same place early the following summer. Prior to that, when spring signaled its approach, he intended to dispatch a number of expeditions to explore to the south and the southwest of where they were now beset. They were all encouraged by this plan, by its simplicity and the momentum it sustained, and they toasted it and themselves before communicating it to the lower ranks, leavened as it passed from man to man by their enthusiasm and determination, and by the knowledge that they had already achieved so much where many before them had failed, that they had come farther along the true course of the Passage in a single season than anyone before them. They were convinced they had not driven themselves into the blind alleys of Frobisher and Hudson and Parry and Ross, forced only to endure and then retreat in the new season. And nor did the unknown stretch so far ahead of them as it had during their previous wintering. It was even possible, Crozier suggested, that next year they might meet men coming toward them from Bering, unhindered by the open coastal waters they themselves had yet to enjoy in completing their dash to the west.
F
ollowing a month of calm, their days were again disturbed by upheavals in the surrounding ice.
“The Day of Creation,” Goodsir said absently, watching a particularly violent eruption far to the north of them.
They felt nothing of this, but heard the noise it made, like that of an avalanche. They saw too the flashes of light as pieces of shattered ice were thrown up into the low and concentrated rays of the sun, rising like disembodied flames against the dull horizon all around them.
An hour earlier, Franklin had led them in their first church service out on the ice, officers and men congregating between the two ships to take advantage of the protection they offered, and where an altar of ice had been built, upon which was fixed a wooden cross. “The Day of Creation indeed, Mr. Goodsir,” Franklin said aloud, walking ahead of the small party of officers as they came out from the shadow of the ships and stretched their legs on the ice.
Goodsir’s instinct was to apologize in case Franklin had misinterpreted his remark as blasphemous. He waited to see what Franklin might say next, expecting him to turn and confront him.
Franklin, however, continued walking. It had been a week since he had left the
Erebus,
having complained of feeling unwell, a pain in his chest and a cold in his head, which Stanley had diagnosed as a recurrence of his previous year’s influenza. It was against his surgeon’s
advice that Franklin had left his cabin that morning to conduct his service.
“Or perhaps not the Day of Creation; perhaps we are now looking out upon the landscape of the Day of Judgment,” he called back, pausing for those following to gather around him. His sermon earlier had concerned the duties of Man to God and the acceptance of God’s trials. “What do you say, Mr. Crozier?”
Crozier, who had been walking at a tangent from the main party called out that he believed Franklin was right.
“I once spoke to a missionary,” he said, coming forward. “An American in Reykjavik, who warned me never to communicate the true nature of Hell to any Eskimo.”
“And why was that?” Fitzjames asked him, entering into the discussion with some enthusiasm, invigorated by the cold air after five days of overheated confinement.
“Because, Mr. Fitzjames, sir, Hell to an Eskimo might appear less than totally repulsive, consisting as it does, as we are all agreed, of eternal fire and damnation. These people care nothing for damnation, and eternal fire cannot appear so repellent to them, debased as they already undoubtedly are by the animal nature of their existence.” Crozier spoke as though he were answering the naive and unwelcome questioning of a child.
Goodsir prevented Fitzjames from responding to this, and Fitzjames remembered the similar remark made by Reid as they had waited to row ashore at Whalefish.
“So you believe that all this, all we see around us, that this is Hell on earth?” Goodsir asked Crozier.
“I believe it is the closest we shall come to that condition without the fire,” Crozier said seriously.
“But surely, each man’s Hell is a different thing entirely. How can you suggest that this is Hell to the people who live here? To many of them it must surely be a paradise.”
Crozier was reluctant to be drawn any further into the argument, and felt undermined by Franklin, who called, “Mr. Crozier?” to him in the hope of encouraging an answer.
“Sir John,” Crozier began, pausing before he went on. “You and
I have both sailed to other so-called paradises. We were both young men then, and so that might have had some bearing on our thoughts. We are older now. I cannot change my mind upon the matter and must be given leave to disagree with Mr. Goodsir, who is clearly so much better educated than I am. I bow to his superior knowledge of these things.”
A moment of silence followed, and Franklin regretted having encouraged the discussion to this tense and inconclusive impasse.
Sensing this, Goodsir ran across the ice to Crozier and declared loudly that, on the contrary,
he
bowed to his superior experience. He held out his hand and Crozier took it. Harmony was restored and the party resumed their walking.
To the east was a vast area of rippled, barely broken surface where it looked as though the sea had frozen in an instant, the peak and trough of each wave solidifying as it rolled toward some distant shore.
To the north lay the sea of ice through which they had already come. This was no longer flat. Bergs formed the centers of frozen tors, upon which new ice had formed, and against which boulders and slabs had built up and spilled outward in exact replicas of those other land-locked features.
To the west the high, peaked ridge had continued to rise and to build ever since they had come to their anchorage. In the early sun it caught the light and looked sharp and clean, but when the sun went from it, it became dark and forbidding, looking more like rock and earth than ice and snow. Lately it had acquired the sheen of tarnished silver. It cut off their wider view in that direction and cast its own long shadows like loose scree toward them.
It was from this mountainous range, which they were all agreed might persist for fifty years after their departure, that the loudest and most vigorous disturbances reached them. Even fixed as solidly as they were to the ice beneath them, both vessels were occasionally shaken by the upheavals in this direction. Some of those aboard were even tempted to believe that what they were witnessing was not merely the gathering together of the ice, but the upheaval of submerged land, the birthing of another volcano perhaps, pushing
into existence and ready to declare its arrival with a fountain of flame and pillar of smoke. Even those whose imaginations did not stretch this far believed that with the onset of the thaw they would see dark rock showing through the surface as the ice fell from it in patches like the winter coat of a moulting fox.
It was to the southwest, however, that their greatest attention was directed. Here there lay an endless mass of fractured ice so confused and disjointed that all who looked out upon it doubted if it could ever be penetrated to discover what lay beyond. In places this was broken by long straight avenues along which a coach might be driven, but elsewhere a man would exhaust himself in a day’s journey of 200 yards.
“How does it suit you, Mr. Fitzjames?” Crozier asked unexpectedly, indicating the view ahead of them.
Caught unaware, and unwilling to voice his true thoughts on the overland expedition he was to lead the following spring, Fitzjames could only gesture dismissively, hoping to suggest that he was little concerned by the terrain he might be forced to cross.
“Mr. Fitzjames?” Franklin said, having overheard Crozier’s remark, and wanting to hear Fitzjames’ answer for himself.
“Your own Farthest East,” Fitzjames said, turning to acknowledge his captain. “I’ll do Back’s work for him. It can surely be no more than two hundred miles to the mainland coast.” Franklin was gratified and encouraged by the remark.
Crozier left them to return to the
Terror
in the company of his own lieutenants.
Franklin and Fitzjames walked back together, Franklin pausing frequently to cough and then to regain his breath. Stanley and Goodsir walked ahead of them, and Franklin pointed the two men out to Fitzjames, conscious of why they were remaining so close to him. At one point the spasm of coughing which racked Franklin was so violent that he stumbled and almost fell, afterward standing for five minutes until he felt sufficiently composed to continue.
They reached the
Erebus
half an hour later. There were fifty men still out on the ice, singly and in small parties. Gunshots indicated where some were hunting, outbreaks of cheering and applause
where others were engaged in some sport. Their two dogs barked incessantly and ran from one man to the next. Gore had set up his camera, and earlier, while the brighter light had lasted, he had taken a picture of both ships’ marines in full dress uniform against a backdrop of freshly cut ice, carved and stacked to look like distant mountains, and fooling no one but the camera.
At three in the afternoon a maroon was fired to call everyone back to the ships. It rose weakly and exploded prematurely low, leaving the imprint of its small black moon floating above the converging men.
The first dark day of their second Arctic night came with the unexpected death of Edward Little on Christmas Eve.
He was discovered by Thomas Jopson, Crozier’s steward, who arrived to wake him at seven in the morning, and found him, as he at first believed, unconscious. Securing Little’s cabin, Jopson went immediately to fetch Crozier, speaking to no one he encountered on his short journey.
The two men returned fifteen minutes later. Peddie and Macdonald were sent for, and Little’s cabin remained locked until they arrived. Macbean was told to clear the corridor and secure the door at its far end, allowing entry to no one except George Hodgson, who had also been sent for.
There was barely room in the confined space of the cabin for Crozier and his two surgeons, and Crozier reluctantly stepped back outside to join Irving while the two medical men examined Little. It was still not apparent to Crozier that Little was in fact dead.
The young lieutenant had not been out of his cabin for the previous four days, confessing to his fellow officers and the stewards who attended to him that the problem was not only the continuing cramps in his leg, but also the violent cold he had contracted. Only Peddie was not deceived, but this had not prevented him from prescribing solutions of laudanum in increasingly potent doses.
Little’s cabin was spartan. His clothes lay packed in his chest, his instruments in their cases, his books on their shelf. A tin and a box on his bedside cabinet were opened to reveal his more personal
belongings and a collection of letters awaiting their eventual delivery.
Dropping his stethoscope, Peddie stooped to retrieve it, and saw in the darkness beneath Little’s narrow bunk the glint of glass, knowing what he would find before he slid his hand across the polished boards. He collected nine empty vials and held them in the dim glow of the lantern for Macdonald to see. Both men understood immediately what had happened. The revelation shocked them, and for a moment neither could speak. Peddie moved to stand against the door, preventing anyone from entering. The voices of Crozier, Irving and Hodgson could be heard outside.
“His leg,” Peddie said, indicating the soiled sheet covering Little. Macdonald lifted this to reveal that beneath it Little was naked, his bandages loosely coiled around his feet. The bruising on his thigh was more prominent than ever, infected and yellow and swollen with pus. They also saw that Little had emptied both his bowels and bladder into his mattress.
Both men started at a sudden rapping on the door, and as Crozier called to be let in, Macdonald looked to Peddie, who rubbed a hand across his face and nodded once. He gathered up the empty vials and pulled the sheet back over Little’s legs.
Crozier knew the instant he saw the look on Macdonald’s face that Little was dead, and he came into the cabin as though in a trance, standing beside the thin pale body and looking hard into the corpse’s closed eyes. For several minutes no one spoke.
“Do you know how?” Crozier asked.
Peddie and Macdonald exchanged a glance. Crozier saw this and grabbed Peddie’s bag from him, pulling it open and tipping its contents on to the bed, where they fell and settled around Little’s sheeted legs.
“He took his own life,” Macdonald said quietly, indicating the closed door. “His pain became too great for him to bear and he took his own life.” He spoke mechanically.
“He would not have wanted to become a burden,” Peddie added.
Crozier shouted, “No!” This response shocked the two surgeons. “But how great can his pain have been? He was in bed with a cold.
His leg was healing every day. Was he lying to us?”
Macdonald nodded, and then stood aside as both Irving and Hodgson appeared in the doorway anxious to learn what had happened. A glance at the bed told them everything they had feared.
Little’s mouth was open, his jaw pulled tight and jutting slightly, pushing his bottom lip away from his teeth, as though he were straining for a drink he could not quite reach.
“My God,” Hodgson said. He had visited Little shortly before eleven the previous night. He pushed closer to the bed and saw the empty vials.
Peddie drew back the sheet so that they might all look at Little’s wound, and so they might all smell the faint but distinct aroma of his tainted urine. Crozier, being the closest, took out a handkerchief and held it to his mouth.
At the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, Irving called for the door to be shut and barred.
“What do we do?” Hodgson said after they had all silently given the matter some thought.
It was Irving who reached down and for the first time pulled up the sheet to cover Little’s face.
“First we have a duty to inform Sir John,” Crozier said.
The real question, they knew, was what the crew of the
Terror
would be told regarding the death.