The Terror

by Dan Simmons

Crozier hurts to the cavity in the center of his self where he is sure his soul had resided until it floated away on a sea of whiskey over the decades.

A strange little fellow by the name of Poe, if memory serves. Very melancholy and morbid stuff with a touch of the truly unhealthy macabre. Not very good, overall, but very American in some undefinable sense.

“I find myself wondering if we might have encountered one of the last members of some ancient species—something larger, smarter, faster, and infinitely more violent than its descendant, the smaller north polar bear we see in such abundance.”

“But I am surprised that it worked to deter the men’s bloodthirst. A mob is a brainless thing.”

As a young man in love, Irving was ready to step forward and save her even if it cost him his own life.

The strip of blubber filled his mouth. He chewed, trying to idiot-mime and nod his appreciation toward the woman from behind his upraised strip of blubber and poised knife. It tasted like a ten-week-dead carp dredged from the floor of the Thames beneath the Woolwich sewer outlets.

“The ice may be considerably less than in 1846,” said Sinclair. “Angels may fly out my arse,” said Thomas Blanky.

The right side of the man’s face was almost gone—not burned but clawed away, the skin and eye hanging loose—and

For the next hour, Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir was so busy that the sick bay could have caught fire and he would not have noticed except to be glad for the extra light.

He took shears out of Lloyd’s shaking hands and cut away the retinal nerve, throwing the eye into the bucket already filled with bloody rags and shreds of Collins’s flesh.

Ewww

by the week before Erebus was crushed, I could push deep into Edmund Hoar’s flesh and the dimple would stay there permanently, the new Bruise spreading and spilling into a patchwork of earlier Hemorrhages.

I would not only have a good Chance of saving these men, possibly even Mr. Hoar, but would run an excellent Chance of being Knighted when we are rescued or reach safe harbour by ourselves.

that's what you're thinking about loll??

Captain Fitzjames’s hand fell on my shoulder, stopping me. Should that be the case, he said, his voice fierce, we’ll just have to bloody well walk home, shan’t we?

It was as if someone or something had taken a gigantic ice saw of the sort both ships packed and cut a perfectly round hole through the ice. But the ships’ ice saws would not cut so cleanly through ten feet of ice. “We could take our dinner here,” said Thomas Blanky. “Enjoy our victuals by the seaside, as it were.” The men shook their heads.

Except for the fact that John Irving was sick and half-starving and his gums were bleeding and he feared that two of his side teeth were loose and he was so tired that he was afraid he would collapse in his tracks at any moment, this was one of the happiest days of his life.

Irving had half a mind to name the interior Irving Land. Why not? The point not far from Terror Camp was named after Sir John’s wife, Lady Jane Franklin, and what had she ever done to deserve the honour except marry an old, fat, bald man?

As hungry as he was, Irving had little appetite these days.

His mind was sodden much of the time. He was a smart man whose mind was stupid with the chemical by-products of constant fatigue.

“Sled,” he said again. The six men in front looked at one another. Finally, Irving’s interlocutor to this point said, “Kamatik? ” Irving nodded happily even though he had no idea if they had really begun communicating. For all he knew, the man had just asked him if he wanted to be harpooned.

At that moment he would have laid fifty quid that Amooq was the Esquimaux language equivalent of “Big Tits.”

A tiny man was dancing naked except for his boots around a tall heap of discarded clothing on a boulder. Leprechaun, thought Irving, remembering some of Captain Crozier’s tales.

The caulker’s mate swung up and around so quickly with his arm fully extended that for a second or two Irving thought he was resuming his dance. But there had been a sharp boat knife in that extended hand.

nooooooo i hate this little gremlin

“Caulker’s Mate Hickey asked if he could sleep until it was his time to report.” “Caulker’s Mate Hickey can fucking well stay awake like the rest of us,” said Crozier.

We come walking down that big hill, sir, muskets and rifles and shotguns lowered as if we had no harsh feelings in the world, sir, and them savages watched us come. We opened fire at less than twenty yards and raised pure holy Cain amongst their motley God-be-damned ranks, sir, that I can tell you.

dumbasses omg

While the testes are absent, remnants of the vas deferens and the urethra and major portions of connecting tissue from the base of the penis into the body cavity remain.

Captain Crozier knew that there was one other item sewn into the sail-shroud with Irving, one that no one else knew about. It lay under his head like a pillow. It was a gold, green, red, and blue silk Oriental handkerchief,

Omggg

“You are my loved one, Harry,” said Bridgens. “The only man or woman or child left in the world who cares whether I am alive or dead, much less what I may have thought before I fell or where my bones will lie.”

“And one day before Graham himself was killed by the thing on the ice,” said Fitzjames. “‘All well.’ That seems like another lifetime, does it not, Francis? Can you remember a time when any of us could write such a thing with an easy conscience?

A Million years of Man’s Medicinal Progress will never reveal the secret Condition and sealed Compartments of the Human Soul.

“No,” continued Blanky, puffing contentedly on his pipe, “I think it’d be best if I rested here awhile on my own and just relaxed and thought some thoughts about this and that. My life has been a good one. I’d like to think about it some before the pain and stink get so bad I’m distracted.”

The only thing keeping Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier moving forward into the tenth week on the boat march was the blue flame in his chest. The more tired and empty and sick and battered his body became, the hotter and fiercer the flame burned.

He knew it was not merely some metaphor of his determination. Nor was it optimism, as such. The blue flame in his chest had burrowed toward his heart like some alien entity, lingered like a disease, and centered in him as an almost unwanted core of conviction that he would do whatever he had to do to survive. Anything.

Some men shuffled, but Magnus Manson stood like a broad dam holding the lake of their defiance in place.

“Do you see that serac or big ice boulder near the pike I left at the mouth of the lead?” said Harry. “Yes,” said Lieutenant Little. “So?” “It wasn’t there when we came out,” said Peglar. “Back oars!” ordered Little, uselessly since the men had already ceased their rowing and were backstroking briskly, but the heavy whaleboat’s momentum continued carrying it toward the ice. The ice boulder turned.

I believe that most of the Men, however desperate for Salvation or Rescue from any Source, Feared rather than Hoped for another contact with the local Native People. Revenge, Some natural philosophers suggest and Sailors endorse, is one of the most Universal of human motivations.

As important as this Sacrament is, as necessary as he knows it must be, Francis is terrified to receive the Host. He knows that his life will never be the same after receiving the Papist Eucharist. And he also knows that his life will end if he does not receive it.

oh my god if this is foreshadowing for ...

So they would eat well for many weeks if they did manage to murder their murderer.

And with every bite, Crozier knew, even eating the thing-flesh as they were the salt pork while on the march, there would be the pleasure of revenge, even if it had to be a dish best served cold.

and, most centrally, miserable that he could only think about ending his own life because the fear that thought itself might continue on the other side of this mortal veil, “perchance to dream,” kept him from acting even toward quick, decisive, cold-blooded self-murder.)

Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction—books and a sense of irony.

The endgame had always been the weakest part of John Bridgens’s chess skills. He rarely enjoyed it.

“What do you mean you’re going for a walk and might not be back by the time we leave tomorrow?” demanded Goodsir. “What kind of talk is that, Bridgens?” “I’m sorry, Doctor, I just have a strong desire to take a stroll.”

“It’s just time, Dr. Goodsir. I confess to considering trodding the boards as a thespian long ago when I was young. One of the few things I learned about that profession was that the great actors learn how to make a good exit before they wear out their welcome or overplay a scene.”

Bridgens smiled. “I would, Doctor, but you and I both know that the captain would not let me go. He is stoic, I think, but no Stoic. He might put me in chains to keep me… going on.”

“I ain’t…,” began Hickey. “Even an amateur can learn dissective anatomy quite quickly,” interrupted Goodsir, his voice strong enough to override the caulker’s mate’s. “When one of these other gentlemen you’re bringing along as your private food stock dies—or when you help him die—all you have to do is sharpen a ship’s knife to a scalpel’s edge and begin cutting.”

I recommend you put each other’s bone marrow into a pot for cooking straightaway and let yourselves simmer before trying to digest your friends.”

Goodsir could only stare. “We’ll have only one cask of water but hundreds of Royal Navy–issued boots to eat?” “Yes,” said Crozier.

“Our friend from the ice seems to have lost interest in us and wandered away,” said the still-muscular bosun. “We’ve not seen or heard him for certain since before River Camp.” All eight men, including Johnson, suddenly reached over to one of the nearby boats and rapped their knuckles on the wood.

Caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey hated kings and queens. He thought they were all bloodsucking parasites on the corpusass of the body politick. But he found that he did not at all mind being king.

“Can you remove the balls?” asked Hickey. “Cornelius,” whined Magnus. “I don’t want my balls removed.”