Each piece, each aspect of this scarcely believable news dismayed Fitzjames further, and he could not accept that the outlook had become suddenly so dark after all they had achieved during the previous year.
The two men were distracted by several gunshots fired in rapid succession.
“Hunting?” Fitzjames said.
“Possibly.”
Fitzjames knew from Goodsir’s continued evasiveness that something else was being kept from him, and he demanded to be told.
“Tozer and his marines have already abandoned their damaged quarters on the
Terror
and built themselves a shelter on the ice. They were asleep aboard when the ice started to squeeze. One man was nearly killed, several others injured by sprung planking. The chain store was crushed and half her cables lost.”
“And Crozier hasn’t yet commanded them to return to the ship?”
“I think he fears the confrontation. Their sleeping-quarters were damaged beyond repair. Where would they go?”
“Six men?”
“I believe a dozen others followed them. They took the two waist boats. In view of the damage to the
Terror
, it might—”
“And they take their orders from whom?”
Again Goodsir shrugged, unwilling to answer.
“And they provision themselves from the stores already out on the ice?”
Goodsir nodded. “A great deal more has been taken out since the
Terror
was damaged. All her coals are offloaded and her engine dismantled.”
It occurred to Fitzjames that Crozier might transfer his command to the
Erebus
, supplanting his own, and that if the
Terror
was found to be damaged beyond repair then she might eventually be abandoned to the ice when the time came.
“What others are with Tozer?” he asked.
“Seamen, mostly. Two stokers, hold captain Goddard and foretop captain Peglar.” Having become the bearer of so much bad news, Goodsir was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“And Joseph Healey?” Fitzjames said absently as their conversation lulled and he felt himself suddenly weaken.
“To be buried alongside Edward Little tomorrow or the day after.” Goodsir pushed himself upright on his crutches and then left before anything further could be asked of him.
Stanley woke Fitzjames with the news that Crozier would shortly be paying him a visit.
“Is he already aboard?”
“For the past few hours.” Stanley glanced at the door as he spoke.
“Is there something else?”
“He’s in Sir John’s cabin, going through his papers. It is my opinion that certain proprieties ought to be observed.”
“Respect for the dead,” Fitzjames said.
At the sound of footsteps outside, Stanley said, “Mr. Reid shows considerable improvement, and Lieutenant Fairholme regained consciousness less than an hour ago.”
Crozier entered as he finished speaking and stood in the doorway watching the two men.
“I was passing on to Mr. Fitzjames the news of his party,” Stanley said.
“Is that so?”
Stanley rose and Crozier immediately took his seat.
“And no doubt of my ransacking of Sir John’s cabin. Your loyalty does you credit.”
Unwilling to tolerate this provocation, Fitzjames said, “I hear you have some damage and a small mutiny on your hands, Mr. Crozier.”
Crozier looked at him hard and considered his reply before he spoke. “Tozer and his band?” he said with disdain. “I keep a close enough watch on them. Everything they do has my sanction and they are no drain on our stores other than those to which they are entitled. Please, don’t concern yourself. It is a problem easily enough solved should the need arise. From what I hear, you put your own
sergeant through some pretty severe paces. A man can ill afford to lose two toes.”
For the first time Fitzjames felt the absence of Franklin’s mediating presence.
Dismissing Stanley, Crozier took a sheaf of papers from the satchel he held. Fitzjames recognized them immediately by their ribbons. “I want to talk to you about my own proposals for the expedition’s advancement in the event of the ice not releasing us this season.”
As he spoke Fitzjames guessed that the damage to the
Terror
was greater than Goodsir had suspected, and became aware too that Tozer and the men on the ice posed a far greater threat to Crozier’s authority than he was prepared to admit.
“Your own loyalty, of course, is not in doubt. But Sir John is dead.”
“And dead men’s wishes spear no fishes,” Fitzjames said, remembering the whalers’ rhyme.
Crozier hesitated, uncertain if the remark was intended to mock him. He would make no allowance for Fitzjames’ weakened condition, and the tone of his voice as he went on indicated that he would tolerate neither challenge nor interruption.
“If the ice shows no sign of freeing us, then overland is our only way.”
“Over thawing ice and into uncharted terrain?”
“If necessary, yes. This may be
your
first experience of any such adventure, but I personally am no stranger to uncrossed boundaries.”
Disregarding this, Fitzjames said, “And if the ice does free us?”
“Then a crew will remain aboard one of the ships to take advantage of the opportunities offered.”
“You intend dividing us?”
“I intend obeying the dictates of the ice and the season. Any man who cannot see the importance of communicating our position to someone on the mainland who might in turn get word to the Admiralty, is a fool.”
The ease and speed with which Crozier clearly believed this might
now be accomplished put Fitzjames on his guard, and despite his own misgivings he was careful not to contradict him.
“I am as saddened as any of us by Sir John’s death,” Crozier said, recovering his papers before Fitzjames asked to see them. “He and I were old comrades. What I do now, I do for him. As far as I am concerned, it is still his expedition.”
“And one you consider close to success,” Fitzjames said.
Crozier rose and walked to the door. “Recover, rest, wait until you are stronger, and we’ll talk again.”
He left before Fitzjames could ask him if there would be any point, slamming the door to emphasize the anger he felt at not receiving the full support of his second in command.
Fitzjames next went back out on the ice ten days later. He was accompanied by Graham Gore and Henry Vesconte, these two walking on either side of him ready to help him if he stumbled or fell, and both watchful for the first sign that he was over-exerting himself. He went out against the advice of Stanley and Goodsir, the former absolving himself of all responsibility for his recovery, and then afterward ensuring that his two companions would remain close to him, ready to help him back to the
Erebus
if the need arose. Goodsir, on the other hand, wished him luck, Fitzjames having confided in him his intention of visiting Tozer and the others in their separate encampment. Neither man considered there to be any real danger in the confrontation.
Since the operation on his thumb, Goodsir had continued to run a high temperature, and for the past two nights had been feverish, calling out in his sleep about the movement of the ice beneath him, as though he were still camped out on the frozen sea, and then shouting to warn of an attack by some as yet unidentified foe. Fitzjames had heard this in the adjoining room, and was careful not to remark on it during their time together.
“I’ve vowed to make myself ambidextrous,” Goodsir had said the previous evening, raising his bandaged hand.
Fitzjames could not avoid the forced nonchalance in his friend’s voice.
“How long will it take—a week, two?”
Anything other than this shared deception would have been unthinkable.
“Perhaps even a month,” Goodsir said. He paused before going on. “In fact it’s been in my mind to ask Stanley to remove the remaining joint to be certain of containing the infection. One bone or three, it will make little difference.”
Fitzjames looked at his own hand. When he was next alone, he experimented to determine for himself precisely how much of the use of his hand Goodsir had already lost.
Out on the ice, Fitzjames walked with two sticks, having chosen these from the dozen offered. The one in his left hand was a gift from Thomas Blanky; that in his right from Crozier, having been presented to him by the governor of Cape Town upon his arrival there with James Ross after their withdrawal from the Antarctic four years ago. It was made of horn, polished and light, and slightly curved with a handle carved of ebony.
Having climbed down from the
Erebus,
Fitzjames stood for a minute, breathing in the intoxicating air as deeply as he dared. He was conscious of the fact that Reid had not yet fully recovered from his own injuries, that his breathing was still painful, and that he was still forbidden to speak. During their enforced convalescence the two of them had frequently sat together, holding long, one-sided conversations composed of reminiscence and speculation. A flannel cloth and swabs of soft wool were packed into Reid’s mouth to soak up the blood from his injured gums. His hands were still bandaged, but other than the loss of four complete fingernails and the skin from one palm, he had suffered no other injury. In addition to soaking up the blood, the cloth in his mouth was also intended to encourage him to breathe through his nose, this being considered preferable by Stanley until the full extent of the damage to his lungs became clear, but which made his breathing sound labored and more of an effort than it actually was.
To begin with, Fitzjames, Gore and Vesconte avoided the upturned boats, the ice-houses and Franklin’s bleak mausoleum and walked instead among the piles of stores and coals, all neatly stacked
and marked, and each with a well-trodden track running to the main path leading back to the ships.
“What’s that?” Fitzjames asked, pointing one of his sticks at a sheeted mound close to the
Terror.
Neither Gore nor Vesconte could be certain and so they went to investigate.
The tarpaulin was frozen stiff, coming up from whatever lay beneath it like a disused trapdoor.
“Their engine,” Fitzjames said, as the pieces of dismantled machinery were revealed to them. Giant levers and stripped cogs shone silver and black in the bright sun. Elsewhere the dismantled driveshaft and casing lay coated in sculpted grease, solid and lava-like where it had bled and then cooled from the abandoned works.
Gore prised loose, a small piece of this, inspected it and then threw it with a grunt into the open space beyond them.
Sensing Fitzjames’ anger at seeing the engine so completely discarded, and knowing that there was little possibility of it ever being reassembled, Vesconte lowered the tarpaulin.
“Their orders were to take out as much of the useless weight as possible,” he said. “The smiths and stokers did most of the work. The boiler was sealed to go on producing hot water for them.” He hesitated before going on. “I believe he was right to do it. It was a dead weight and the
Terror
was suffering under the burden. There were men on board who were with Ross in the
Victory
when—”
“Then damn Ross for his example,” Fitzjames shouted, striking the ice with his stick and almost falling at the sudden exertion.
Neither Gore nor Vesconte spoke, both watching him closely.
Fitzjames composed himself. “No—praise Ross for his four winters to our two.” He lowered the scarf from his mouth, took several more deep breaths and then replaced it.
“Franklin was insistent that our own engine should remain,” Gore said to appease and reassure him. “Goodsir proposes that at the first sign of a break in the ice ahead of us, however distant or however late it comes, we should detonate a line of explosives along our path, fracture the ice more deeply and then use our screw to cannon back and forth until we are once again back out in open water.” He
seemed genuinely excited at the prospect, as though the simplicity of the plan, and the confidence of the man who had proposed it, would in some way ensure its success. Vesconte shared his enthusiasm, but not Fitzjames.
They left the dismantled engine and, avoiding Tozer’s camp, made their way toward the new ice-range which had appeared during the expedition’s absence.
The previous day, just as dusk was settling, the watches on both ships had reported a disturbance in the direction of these new peaks, and out on the ice the spreading tremor of this disturbance had been powerful enough to topple carefully balanced stacks of crates and knock men off their feet. Alerted by the commotion, they had watched as a slab of ice almost a mile distant rose vertically out of the lower slopes of the new range and then stood there aglow in the last of the sun.
This uplifted slab was calculated to be forty feet thick and twice the height of their own mainmasts. They watched it in silence, waiting to see what it might do next—whether it would continue to rise as it was forced up by further movement beneath, or whether it would become unstable and collapse, sending a further fast-moving tremor rushing toward them.