from behind a pressure ridge, torn off the seaman’s arm, and smashed his ribs to splinters in an instant, disappearing before the armed guards on deck could raise their shotguns.
“Walker told you ghost stories?” says Crozier.
“Yes, Cap’n. No, Cap’n. What Jimmy did was, ’e tells me the night before the
thing
killed ’im, ’e says, ‘Magnus, should that ’ellspawn out on the ice get me someday,’ ’e says, ‘I’ll come back in me white shroud to whisper in your ear how cold ’ell is.’ So help me God, Cap’n, that’s what Jimmy said to me. Now I ’ear ’im tryin’ to get out.”
As if on cue, the hull groans, the frigid deck moans under their feet, metal brackets on the beams groan back in sympathy, and there is a scraping, clawing noise in the dark around them that seems to run the length of the ship. The ice is restless.
“Is that the sound you hear, Manson?”
“Yes, Cap’n. No, sir.”
The Dead Room is thirty feet aft on the starboard side, just beyond the last metal-moaning iron water tank, but when the outside ice stops its noise, Crozier can hear only the muffled scrape and push of the shovels in the boiler room farther aft.
Crozier’s had enough of this nonsense. “You know your friend’s not coming back, Magnus. He’s there in the extra sail storage room securely sewn into his own hammock with the other dead men, frozen solid, with three layers of our heaviest sail canvas tied around them. If you hear anything from in there, it’s the damned rats trying to get at them. You
know
this, Magnus Manson.”
“Yes, Cap’n.”
“There will be no disobeying orders on this ship, Seaman Manson. You have to make up your mind now. Carry the coal when Mr. Thompson tells you to. Fetch the food stores when Mr. Diggle sends you down here. Obey all orders promptly and politely. Or face the court… face
me
… and the possibility that you’ll spend a cold, lanternless night in the Dead Room yourself.”
Without another word, Manson knuckles his forehead in salute, lifts a huge sack of coal from where he’s stowed it on the ladder, and hauls it aft into the darkness.
The engineer himself is stripped to his long-sleeved undershirt and corduroy trousers, shoveling coal alongside the ancient 47-year-old stoker named Bill Johnson. The other stoker, Luke Smith, is on the lower deck sleeping between his shoveling hours.
Terror
’s lead stoker, young John Torrington, was the first man of the expedition to die, on New Year’s Day 1846. But that had been from natural causes. It seems Torrington’s doctor had urged the 19-year-old to go to sea to cure his consumption, and he’d succumbed after two months of being an invalid while the ships were frozen in the harbour at Beechey Island that first winter. Doctors Peddie and McDonald had told Crozier that the boy’s lungs were as solidly packed with coal dust as a chimney sweep’s pockets.
“Thank you, Captain,” says the young engineer between heaves of the shovel. Seaman Manson has just dropped off a second sack of coal and gone back for a third.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Thompson.” Crozier glances at Stoker Johnson. The man is four years younger than the captain but looks thirty years older. Every seam and wrinkle on his age-molded face is outlined in coal black and grime. Even his toothless gums are soot grey. Crozier doesn’t want to reprimand his engineer — and thus an officer, although civilian — in front of the stoker, but he says, “I presume we’ll dispense with using Marines as messengers, should there be another such instance in the future, which I very much doubt.”
Thompson nods, uses the shovel to clang shut the iron grate on the boiler, leans on the tool, and tells Johnson to go above to get him some coffee from Mr. Diggle. Crozier’s glad the stoker is gone but even happier that the grate is closed; the heat in here makes him slightly nauseated after the cold everywhere else.
The captain has to wonder at the
“Walker told you ghost stories?” says Crozier.
“Yes, Cap’n. No, Cap’n. What Jimmy did was, ’e tells me the night before the
thing
killed ’im, ’e says, ‘Magnus, should that ’ellspawn out on the ice get me someday,’ ’e says, ‘I’ll come back in me white shroud to whisper in your ear how cold ’ell is.’ So help me God, Cap’n, that’s what Jimmy said to me. Now I ’ear ’im tryin’ to get out.”
As if on cue, the hull groans, the frigid deck moans under their feet, metal brackets on the beams groan back in sympathy, and there is a scraping, clawing noise in the dark around them that seems to run the length of the ship. The ice is restless.
“Is that the sound you hear, Manson?”
“Yes, Cap’n. No, sir.”
The Dead Room is thirty feet aft on the starboard side, just beyond the last metal-moaning iron water tank, but when the outside ice stops its noise, Crozier can hear only the muffled scrape and push of the shovels in the boiler room farther aft.
Crozier’s had enough of this nonsense. “You know your friend’s not coming back, Magnus. He’s there in the extra sail storage room securely sewn into his own hammock with the other dead men, frozen solid, with three layers of our heaviest sail canvas tied around them. If you hear anything from in there, it’s the damned rats trying to get at them. You
know
this, Magnus Manson.”
“Yes, Cap’n.”
“There will be no disobeying orders on this ship, Seaman Manson. You have to make up your mind now. Carry the coal when Mr. Thompson tells you to. Fetch the food stores when Mr. Diggle sends you down here. Obey all orders promptly and politely. Or face the court… face
me
… and the possibility that you’ll spend a cold, lanternless night in the Dead Room yourself.”
Without another word, Manson knuckles his forehead in salute, lifts a huge sack of coal from where he’s stowed it on the ladder, and hauls it aft into the darkness.
The engineer himself is stripped to his long-sleeved undershirt and corduroy trousers, shoveling coal alongside the ancient 47-year-old stoker named Bill Johnson. The other stoker, Luke Smith, is on the lower deck sleeping between his shoveling hours.
Terror
’s lead stoker, young John Torrington, was the first man of the expedition to die, on New Year’s Day 1846. But that had been from natural causes. It seems Torrington’s doctor had urged the 19-year-old to go to sea to cure his consumption, and he’d succumbed after two months of being an invalid while the ships were frozen in the harbour at Beechey Island that first winter. Doctors Peddie and McDonald had told Crozier that the boy’s lungs were as solidly packed with coal dust as a chimney sweep’s pockets.
“Thank you, Captain,” says the young engineer between heaves of the shovel. Seaman Manson has just dropped off a second sack of coal and gone back for a third.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Thompson.” Crozier glances at Stoker Johnson. The man is four years younger than the captain but looks thirty years older. Every seam and wrinkle on his age-molded face is outlined in coal black and grime. Even his toothless gums are soot grey. Crozier doesn’t want to reprimand his engineer — and thus an officer, although civilian — in front of the stoker, but he says, “I presume we’ll dispense with using Marines as messengers, should there be another such instance in the future, which I very much doubt.”
Thompson nods, uses the shovel to clang shut the iron grate on the boiler, leans on the tool, and tells Johnson to go above to get him some coffee from Mr. Diggle. Crozier’s glad the stoker is gone but even happier that the grate is closed; the heat in here makes him slightly nauseated after the cold everywhere else.
The captain has to wonder at the
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