The Broken Lands

by Robert Edric

  On the fourth day of crossing the ice, the horizon ahead of them rose in a succession of low ridges, and they convinced themselves that this was an extension of the range through which they had come on their outward journey.

  They were possibly twelve days distant from the ships, and after a week of two-thirds, and then five days of half-rations they had all continued to weaken, and were now resting for as long as they walked. Where previously they had made ten, twelve or even fifteen miles a day on their outward march, they were now achieving as little as four or five, and this only through the greatest of efforts.

  Camping in the shelter of a ridge they lit a fire and cooked on this the two geese the marines had brought down during their crossing. Their spirits were sufficiently raised by the meal for them to discuss what the coming season held in store once they were back on board the ships. This forced optimism did not last long, however, for upon opening a case marked canned vegetables they discovered instead only rolled strips of lead sheathing, intended for making repairs to their boats. The case weighed sixty pounds and they had been hauling and carrying it for fifty-one days. At the sight of this, one of the seamen threw himself down beside the lead and started trying to tear it apart as though it were card, weeping and beating on the ground, and then throwing each piece of sheathing as far as his strength allowed, until finally he knelt exhausted and silent, the dark lumps strewn around him in an almost perfect circle like the numbers on a clock face. No one approached the man. The frustration and anger he was releasing was the frustration and anger of them all.

  Fitzjames and Goodsir left the others and walked to where they were able to mount a block of ice and look out over the darkness below.

  “Even on these reduced rations we have less than half of what we need,” Goodsir said, his voice low.

  Fitzjames knew this, and felt angry at the useless reminder.

  “What do you suggest?”

  Goodsir paused before answering. “That the strongest of us continue due east until we find the ships and then return with help.”

  Fitzjames shook his head before he had finished speaking. He had considered a similar plan the previous sleepless night.

  Goodsir pressed him, listing those of them he believed were still capable of making the journey, and those who had long since become weak and a hindrance.

  “And what if those who set out to reach the ships don’t find them?” Fitzjames said, knowing that this was unlikely to happen, but being something else he had considered as they covered shorter and shorter distances each day and with no exact idea of either their true course or position.

  Goodsir abandoned his plea. The two men continued walking away from the others, pausing occasionally to turn and look at one another, silently sharing their fears.

  They finally agreed that if they left the easy ground and turned directly over the low ridges then they might at least come within sight of the parallel channel upon which the ships sat, that they might even see the ships themselves, no more than specks in the distance perhaps, but nevertheless within sight and reach and a boost to their failing spirits. Then, Fitzjames conceded, they might split into two parties, the strongest of them going on ahead to send back help.

  They returned to the others and told Reid and Reddington of their decision.

  Not until three days later did the uneven land begin to level out and then stretch ahead of them in a long downhill slope to the eastern horizon.

  They drank the last of their lemon juice and vinegar, all of them by then showing signs of scurvy, all of them enervated and sore, and some bleeding and bruised and vomiting and wanting only to stay where they were in the hope of being rescued without any further effort being wrung from them. But this too was out of the question: their return to the ships was not yet overdue, and even when this point was reached a further week or more might be allowed to pass before any attempt was made to find and assist them. Fitzjames pointed this out, but only to those who would not be alarmed by the news.

  The next day they traveled three miles over easy ground, and at the end of it they were all too exhausted to pitch their tents or stake out their groundsheets. They slept where they sat or fell, some pressed face to face in twos and threes, and others wherever they could find any shelter.

  There was a light fall of snow during the night, and Fitzjames woke to see that the wind had blown it in among them, icing their faces and hoods, and already frozen hard where it collected in their exposed hair and beards.

  He tried to climb free of his sleeping-bag and push himself up, but the numbness and then the pain in his legs caused him to fall back down. He rubbed his thighs and calves and slowly felt his circulation return. Brushing the ice from his own face he saw on his gloves the slivers of frozen blood from his lips and from where new sores had opened on his cheeks and neck. He felt too where his callused knuckles had finally ruptured, and he dare not uncover his hands for fear of what might be exposed.

  Beside him, Reid stirred, and he too forced himself upright. He began to cough, shaking violently at each exertion. He had difficulty opening his eyes and turned to Fitzjames for help. Reid’s face was by then gaunt, the skin of his cheeks tight with hunger, his own eyes and mouth blemished with liquid sores.

  Eventually the two men rose together and woke the others, scraping away the snow and ice from among the stiff and swaddled bodies.

  An hour later they had all assembled and were ready to resume their downhill march. They had with them now only flour, beans, four pounds of cocoa powder and nine pounds of boiled sweets, which they crushed and dissolved in hot water before starting out. A final package of pemmican was opened and found to be rotten, but they warmed and ate this too, all of them complaining at the way even the softened pieces of pounded meat hurt their weakened gums and loose teeth.

  Fairholme at last showed some signs of recovery. He was still unable to walk unaided, but he no longer needed to be carried.

  They left their miserable camp and walked due east in two single-file parties a hundred yards apart. At noon it was warm enough for them to take off their jackets, and the sun warmed their arms and faces and thawed the ground ahead of them.

  During the afternoon they killed a hare, and the small strips of meat and warm internal organs were divided up and eaten raw.

  That night they camped in a sheltered cleft beneath a tent of ice formed by two plates which had been forced together and then lifted aslant before freezing in place.

  For the first time since his injury, Fairholme was able accurately to fix their position, and he returned from his observation point with the news that they were possibly only twenty miles from where they had two months ago left the Erebus and Terror. Upon hearing this they all began to speculate on their chances of reaching the ships some time in the next few days.

  At three the following morning they were woken by the sound of a distant explosion, not unlike the first thunderclap of an approaching storm, and then by the trembling which passed through the ice upon which they slept, and which continued to reverberate for several minutes afterward, going on as they woke in alarm, and as each man realized what was happening and struggled to get himself clear of their precarious shelter, the roof of which had already been shaken loose by the tremor. They were all out and gathered together in the darkness before this finally collapsed, dropping in two heavy blades upon the ground where minutes earlier they had all been asleep, the last of their meager provisions lost to them beneath the fallen slabs.

  They waited, uncertain of what had caused this destruction, and bracing themselves against any further movement, but which did not come.

  Fitzjames led them back to the rubble of their buried camp and found a new sleeping space for them clear of any other stacked ice which might yet be shaken loose. Those who had lost their bags wrapped themselves in whatever they were able to retrieve and sat pressed together for warmth.

  They slept uneasily for three more hours, waking frequently and then gathering in the pre-dawn
light, all of them eager to complete their journey, spurred on by the alarming prospect of further nights like the one they had just endured.

  They walked for two more days, during which they ate only flour mixed into a cold unleavened dough, and made hardly any more palatable by the addition of their last few ounces of cocoa and sugar.

  “The last of everything,” Fitzjames wrote in his journal after a gap of nine days.

  During those two days they covered seven miles, and on the third morning, the 3rd of July, Fitzjames announced that the time had finally come for them to split into two parties, and for the strongest of them to go on ahead and seek help. No one argued with this decision, but as the two groups were being decided upon, a distant noise was heard, which many in their desperation were convinced was a pistol shot and not merely some further echo of the cracking ice.

  David Bryant fired his rifle in reply, and a moment later a second shot was heard, followed by others fired at random. The men on the ground rose to their feet and searched around them. Those who could not rise cheered and shouted where they lay, and some prayed.

  There was now no thought of separating, and those who could not walk unaided were propped between two others or carried on the backs of those few who still had the strength to bear them.

  They went forward as fast as they could manage, firing their weapons and pausing only to listen for answering shots. There was still no sign of the ships, or the men signaling to them from the broad sweep of folded ice ahead.

  Moments later Philip Reddington called out that he could see something below. He fired his pistol and ran to a low rise. Scrambling up this on his hands and knees he shouted back to them that he could see the ships, and hearing this the others called upon the last of their strength and ran forward to join him.

  Reid and Goodsir supported Fairholme between them, and Fitzjames walked alongside. Sitting Fairholme at the base of the small rise, the three others climbed it and stood beside the men already gathered there, where they too saw the tiny dark outlines of the distant ships, and then the men beneath them, running up the slope to meet them and firing their weapons as they came.

  Rockets were fired, and looking up from where he was giving thanks for their safe deliverance, Fitzjames saw that the ice around the two ships was littered with shelters and stores and offloaded boats, and that broad circles of gray had been trodden out of the surrounding whiteness, which at that distance and from that height gave the vessels the appearance of being the burned-out hearts of two dead fires surrounded by their scattered, paler ashes.

  He closed his eyes and resumed praying as the men approaching them came closer. Then he rose, brushed the ice from his legs, and watched as those around him left their vantage point and continued down the slope, falling and sliding as often as they remained upright and running on their weakened legs.

  It was only a moment later, as he watched these two parties of men converge, that it struck Fitzjames that something was wrong. He could not explain this, but nor could he dismiss the idea, and he watched the distant figures more closely in an effort to understand why he felt this way.

  The men crossing the ice below were slowing in their approach, being restrained and then called back by those who came behind them.

  Goodsir too noticed that the excitement of this imminent reunion appeared to have been suddenly and inexplicably defused, and he asked Fitzjames if he had seen anything to account for this. Fitzjames shook his head, intent on examining the men below through his telescope.

  “Crozier,” he said eventually, pointing out the figure walking to the rear of the others, and who now passed through them as they stopped running and congregated ahead of his own descending party, most of whom were still shouting and firing their weapons long after those ahead of them had fallen silent.

  Reid and Fairholme approached.

  “You’ve seen it too,” Reid said.

  They watched Crozier approach the first man to arrive at the bottom of the slope and then hold him by the shoulders for a moment after which the man fell to his knees, as though the last of his failing energy had been suddenly and completely drained from him by the brief encounter.

  Fitzjames searched among the other figures, the running and the still, for Franklin, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Reid suggested that they ought to continue down to the frozen plain, and supporting Fairholme between them they went on.

  When they next looked, the ice around the ships grew dark as a cloud passed slowly across the face of the sun.

  They reached the man who had fallen to his knees at Crozier’s touch, and saw that it was Philip Reddington, one of the strongest of them all. Fitzjames spoke to him, and was surprised to be answered only by tears. He felt Reid’s grip tighten on his arm as Fairholme sagged between them.

  “Let him down,” Reid said, and they lowered Fairholme until he too was kneeling on the level ice, barely conscious of the sobbing man beside him. Reddington reached out and held the confused Fairholme, and his tremors shook them both.

  Fitzjames approached Crozier, taking off his gloves as the two men came close. John Irving and George Hodgson stood beside their captain, both waiting for Crozier to speak first.

  “What’s wrong?” Fitzjames asked, confused by the nature of this greeting.

  All around them the two parties came together and the strong helped the weak. Some men went on cheering and loudly praying; others met and immediately fell silent, and a few began crying as convulsively and uncontrollably as Philip Reddington.

  Hodgson was the first to come forward, his hand out, but Crozier stepped quickly between the two men.

  “Sir John,” he said, bowing his head and then raising it and breathing deeply.

  Fitzjames looked to Hodgson, and Hodgson nodded once in confirmation and bowed his own head, followed by Irving. For the first time, Fitzjames saw the black bands on their arms, and seeing these he looked all around him and saw them too on the arms of the men moving among them with food and drink, already picking up the sick and the weak and the injured and carrying them back across the ice.

  Weak and in pain himself, and with his mouth full of blood from his bleeding gums, Fitzjames was barely able to comprehend the enormity of what he believed he had just been told, and when Crozier spoke again, coming back toward him with both arms held out, he felt the words like a physical blow and his legs buckled beneath him and he fell unresisting to the hard ground, striking it full on his face.

  THE RIVER OF DREAMS

  July 1847—January 1848

  EIGHTEEN

  He came round forty-eight hours later to a warbling, near-hysterical scream—whether his own, or from close by, or from elsewhere in the otherwise silent ship, he could not tell. Nor could he even be certain that the sound had actually been made, conscious that it was just as likely to have been some unreal fragment or receding echo of one of his own nightmares carried with him into an abrupt and anxious waking.

  His body felt heavy, pressed down, and he could scarcely open his eyes to peer at the unfamiliar objects in the dimly lit room around him, aware only that he was in Stanley’s sick-bay, surrounded by pungent and reassuring odors, and that there was an empty bunk alongside his own. The effort of raising his arm or sitting upright was too much for him, and so he lay perfectly still, dulled by whatever medicines he had been given, stupefied almost, and waiting only to fall back into his drugged sleep and come round again when he was better able to attempt his recovery.

  It was then, as he felt himself falling, that he heard a scraping sound beneath him, as though a small creature, a rat most likely, were scratching at the timbers as it scrambled blind along one of the ship’s numberless buried passages and ducts. He tried to ignore the noise, but it continued and distracted him, at times penetratingly clear, and then as insubstantial as the scream which might or might not have waken him. He wanted to call out, to scare whatever it was away, but could find neither his voice to form the words nor his mouth to issue them.


  He was about to try again when the same shrill cry sounded immediately beside him, and he turned in panic to see the outline of a small, near-demonic creature sitting on the empty mattress and watching him closely. At first he believed his suspicions had been confirmed, and that it was a large and bedraggled rat, but as he watched it more closely he saw its long thick tail curl upright and then stiffen, after which it looped from side to side. It was the monkey, and realizing this, he felt himself relax. He mumbled to it and continued watching it. The animal rose on its hind legs, stood regarding him for a moment longer, and then collapsed, after which it had difficulty pushing itself back into a sitting position, scrambling and making the noise that had first alerted him to its presence. Its limbs, he saw, were stick thin, the knots of its elbows and knees bulging with edema. It continued to flail around, swinging its arms and legs as though it had no control over them, as though they were moved only by the dying momentum created by the shaking and twisting of its wasted body. Its eyes were yellow and enlarged, and a string of glistening mucus hung from its chin to the matted fur of its chest.

  He watched it for several minutes longer, until he at last understood more fully what he was seeing, and until the small creature had exhausted itself and lay on its back with its head turned to him, breathing hoarsely through chattering teeth, and staring vacantly toward him through the darkness, as though he too were not real, merely the illusory residue of some dream.

  He slept for twelve more hours, and this time was woken by the voices of men in the room around him. One of these sounded like Franklin, and the instant he heard it, still on the boundary of sleep and arousal, he called out to let whoever it was know that he was awake. For a moment he could not square what he believed he had just heard with what he had learned three days previously, and for the few seconds it took him to come round more fully, he was convinced that the news of Franklin’s death during his absence was all part of that same forgotten nightmare.