The Terror

I'll trade my salt pork for another watch if we don't see it.

Henry Lloyd saw it by those hummocks at four bells.

What told him it was Lieutenant Gore's bear, not another?

It wore the lieutenant's medals.

I'll ask Lieutenant Le Vesconte for hunting blind duty, once it's built.

I'd like another shot at it.

Robert Ferrier says you didn't see it at all. Only Mr. Goodsir saw it.

That Mary Ann doesn't know what he saw.

We thought it was the bear in front of us.

It's the ice, Georgie.

It's only the ice.

What's it like to shoot a man?

Shooting a man's more fun when you mean to do it. I'll tell you that.

- You have a gift for that. - My mum was a dressmaker.

Cage crinoline, arse-torn knickerbocker suits.

But she never taught me to tailor for no dead Esquimuck.

This all of it, then?

The girl, she's shoving off. They want her to take everything.

A girl on a boat.

Here, that's spooky.

Call him back.

There's something more in here.

Snip it out.

Check for more.

Suppose it's ivory.

There's another one here.

Man's got charms falling off him like a plum tree, Mr. Goodsir.

Put them back inside.

How will he fit in his coffin like that?

I have the... her father's personals, sir.

She'll be happy to be on her way now.

They say she talked up a storm until her father died.

Now she's all silence.

I'm sorry. That...

That's... all there is.

I put supper in there for you, though.

Condolences... Lady Silence.

Weight him and get on with it.

I don't understand this.

This is something Sir John approved?

Aye, Mr. Goodsir.

Little lad, he was.

He shouldn't plug it up.

I mean to suggest, might it be more appropriate

to cut the man his own hole?

A more appropriate hole?

With respect to Esquimaux custom.

It's a native belief the body retains sensation

even after the soul departs,

according to Dr. MacDonald's account.

Having handled his corpse, is it your opinion he retains sensation?

In your prior engagements with the Esquimaux,

did you find them at all unforgiving

when those they love are wronged?

Vengeful, even?

Having never wronged them, I couldn't testify.

Are we not concerned

that if that girl can make it all the way back to her people on her own,

she may call on them for revenge?

Were we to put her down the fire hole as well?

She wasn't our prisoner, Edward.

The Esquimaux man's tongue was hacked off.

We don't know why. Punishment?

If that's how they punish one of their own, what must they...

Breakfast is ready.

Jopson, my coat. I'm leaving for Erebus.

No escort is necessary.

You have nothing to fear, Lieutenant.

The girl's people are too busy staying alive to wage a war.

What plans have you made, Sir John?

All kinds of plans, of course.

In case the ships are ice-locked.

Oh, we are amply provisioned for three years,

and up to five with strict rationing.

Your rescue plan.

What is your rescue plan?

Better John Ross blame an unyielding North

than own up to his poor captaining.

If the Arctic bedeviled him,

why should it open to you - that's his thinking.

Come over here, darling.

What is it?

- Does it sing? - Chatters.

Meet Jacko!

Darling, that monkey is female.

Oh, is it?

I have followed every Admiralty protocol.

There will be nothing.

You hear?

Nothing lives there.

Nothing grows.

You'll eat your shoes again.

You'll eat worse.

We've been misunderstood, darling.

John Ross isn't the only one.

Van Diemen's Land was a horrible blow.

I won't allow another man to play politics against me ever again.

- I was a good governor, Janey. - You were an excellent governor.

It's just that history was given a different story.

Death is slow in the Great White Nothing,

and 134 starved men will turn devil against you,

starting with the ones you hold closest.

But in two years, when you return from the Passage,

no one will misunderstand us, John.

You will have bested them all.

I'll be giving a Divine Service tomorrow.

Mandatory for both ships. Tell the men, will you?

Oh, except for the men in the blind.

They're to keep their focus on hunting the bear.

May I come in, sir?

I wouldn't presume to ask if it weren't important.

If you must.

"And in Jacob's dream he saw the invisible world,

so immense it would have to..."

Yes?

"...who cleaved from the frame that carried them, yet live.

The newest to their ranks,

our bright brother,

Lieutenant Graham Gore."

My condolences, Sir John.

Amongst everything else, I know you mourn a friend.

Thank you.

I apologize for the timing of this request,

but its virtue is in its speed.

I'd like permission to send a sledge party out.

South. Not for leads this time.

For rescue.

Where?

The Hudson's Bay Company outpost on Great Slave Lake.

If the party leaves now, they have three months to get there

before winter comes in force.

That is 800 miles, Francis. No.

I do not grant permission.

At least tell me you understand why I'm suggesting it.

You are suggesting it because you are a man

who is happiest with a glass of knock-me-down in one hand

and an alarm bell in the other.

I'm suggesting it because if this cold continues

and we find ourselves over-wintering again in this ice,

help must already be on its way come spring if we are to survive.

I'd rather send out eight men now for a long, unnecessary walk

than risk a necessary one for all of us in a year.

I will not allow it.

What signal would that send to the men?

It's not the men I'm concerned about signaling.

No one knows where we are.

That is how you already see us -

in need of saving.

I do.

Yet your prediction last year

about the terrifying winter we would spend in the pack did not come true.

Not to the degree I feared, but that will change

should there again be no thaw.

It is a captain's duty, after all, to mind for the worst case,

not for the one he hopes for.

So now I must hear you instruct me in a captain's duties?

It is only eight men, Sir John.

And there is just enough time.

I have lost six men on this expedition to date.

Six.

And you ask me to risk more than doubling that number,

trekking over distant ground

where you know I have lost men in years past.

I will hear no more of this. I will not lose another man, Francis.

We may lose all our men.

That is what my alarm is ringing now, Sir John.

And I... I'm at a loss why yours is not.

You are the worst kind of second, Francis.

You abuse your freedoms.

You complain in the safety of speculation,

you claim foresight in disasters that never happen,

and you are weak in your vices

because your rank affords you privacy and deference.

You've made yourself miserable

and distant and hard to love,

and you blame the world for it.

I'm not the sailor you are, Francis -

I will never be - but you will never be fit for command.

And as your captain, I take some responsibility for that.

For the vanity of your outlook.

I should have curbed these tendencies, not sympathized,

because you seem to have confused my sympathy with tolerance.

But there is a limit to how much I can tolerate,

and that is where we are presently standing.

There are some things we were never meant to be to one another.

I see that now.

Friends on my side...

relations on yours.

So let us turn our energies back to being what the Admiralty,

and life, have seen fit to make us.

We should give that our best.

There can be no argument between us there.

You must excuse me.

I have a service to finish writing for tomorrow.

It will have to act as the only eulogy

our boy Graham will be given out here...

and I intend it to sing.

Put together a list of our eight most able men.

Sir John heard reason, then?

I'll make certain the blame falls only on my shoulders.