The Terror

by Dan Simmons

Behind the headless admiral, who obviously was meant to be the late Sir John Franklin even though it had not been Sir John decapitated that day at the bear blind, ambled a monster ten or twelve feet tall. It had the body and fur and black paws and long claws and triangular head and black eyes of a white arctic bear, but it was walking on its hind legs and was twice the height of a bear and with twice the arms’ length. It walked stiffly, almost blindly, swinging its upper body to and fro, the small black eyes staring at each man it approached. The swinging paws—the arms hanging loose as bell pulls—were larger than the costumed crewmen’s heads. “That’s your giant, Manson, on the bottom,” laughed Erebus’s second mate, Charles Frederick Des Voeux, next to Crozier, raising his voice to be heard over the next stanza. “It’s your little caulker’s mate—Hickey?—riding on his shoulders. It took the men all night to sew up the two hides into a single costume.”