The Terror

As such, we can expect to finish our full supply of coal by November next,

unless we begin stepping down the ships' heating plans now.

And that's without any future days making way under steam factored in.

Of salt beef we have a combined total of 750lbs.

Of salt pork, 210.

Flour, 902.

Cheese, 87. Dried fruits, 9lbs.

Only after making the men Lady Jane's Christmas pudding last week.

Hear, hear.

Of lemon juice...

not quite 200 gallons remain.

Although Dr. MacDonald suspects it's lost

most of its anti-scurvy properties by now.

As for the tins, we've now inspected every one and tossed out the putrid.

It's clear now

why the Stephan Goldner Tinned Foods Company was the low bidder.

I'd like to run that man through.

What's left number 1,402 tins preserved meats,

1,163 preserved vegetables,

911 preserved soup,

1,182 potatoes.

And when is the point of no return?

If we reduce to three-quarter rations,

we'll reach the end of our provisions mid-winter next year...

if we're stuck in again with no game.

That, with our current roster of 116 men.

Why mention the number of men, Lieutenant?

We've not seen hide nor even a hair of Mr. Teeth-and-Claws.

We can be confident that Mr. Blanky along with Mr. Hodgson killed it,

or ran it off for good.

No, the men will notice that large a reduction in what they eat,

so begin with four-fifth rations,

and we will discuss how to reduce further in a month's time.

And finally, advise Mr. Wall and Mr. Diggle

that they should emphasize salt meats in their menus now, not the tins.

We must...

We must start to preserve all things portable now.

And not a word of this yet to anyone who is not around this table,

excepting the captain, of course.

I pray he is with us again soon.

Thank you, gentlemen. That completes our business for today.

Mr. Blanky, a word in private.

The rest of you, you Terrors, can suit up. We won't be long.

Gentlemen.

We always feel worse in the darker months, don't we?

First sunrise is just a week away now.

Try to encourage the men with that.

Please, sit down.

You make that contraption work like a ballet.

If this is about Captain Crozier, sir, Jopson's a regular mongoose -

keeps us all out most of the day.

No, it's not that.

You said to Francis, the night of your attack,

what happened to John Ross at Fury Beach could happen to him, too.

I've had a chance to read Ross's memoir

and I found nothing self-critical there.

Do you...

refute the truth of his account?

Someone's going to have to think of a new kind of memoir, sir,

if truth is what you're after.

I'm interested in what actually happened, Mr. Blanky.

In... In your words.

You read the book...

so you know we spent three winters on the Victory.

Yes. Nearly the same as we.

Captain would have tried for a fourth if we hadn't run out of food.

We shouldn't have waited to start walking.

By the time we got to it, scurvy was in us.

And Captain Ross, he had no sympathy for illness.

What do you mean?

We sledged the boats with us.

We were carrying half a load a day's march,

then doubling back for the other half.

I finally begged Ross to drop the boats altogether,

but he replied he'd rather leave our sick to die.

This from his position riding atop one of the sledges.

It was 300 miles to Fury Beach.

We were barely standing.

What little love we had amongst us the only thing keeping us civil.

We had one day's provisions left.

One.

Were it not for the cache of stores left there

from the wreck of the Fury...

we would still be on that beach,

bleaching in the wind.

We tried to... row out to the whaling channels,

but the ice kept us back.

This is where you built Somerset House?

Aye.

Somerset House.

Even there, Ross kept rank.

The officers kept their stewards and their wolf blankets,

and what salmon we could catch.

The rest of us just slept in ice ditches

and fought over year-old biscuits.

And once it's past all hope,

the mind goes...

unnatural with thoughts.

What kind of thoughts?

Like splitting open Sir John Ross's head with a boat axe.

You said you wanted the truth, sir, in my own words.

I trust you won't court martial me for them now.

Would you have done it?

Leads opened up in the August. We got picked up by the Isabella.

We'd been taken for dead for two years.

Mr. Blanky...

most of the men survived.

If that's the point you want me to get to, sir, then, yes, we survived.

But if we're going to walk out of here ourselves,

and almost three times as far,

you need to understand it wasn't sickness or hunger

that most mattered to our chances.

It's what went on up here.

Notions.

A darkness...

with no firm hand to stem it.

I know many were thinking what I was.

Sir John Ross, he never knew how close he came.

This kind of darkness...

do you see it among us here?

I don't need to see it to know it's here.

You have time enough to vent it.

How?

First, if you're going to keep things from the men,

give them something in return.

Now.

Something to keep their minds on...

other than what lies ahead.

There will be a tally for it later when things get hard.

There always is.

Leave it to you, Sir John.

Why are you doing that?

Dr. MacDonald will be here soon.

Dr. MacDonald won't mind if I have hair astray.

Turmoil on the inside needn't show on the out, sir.

You forget,

I've gotten turmoil all over you,

and the bed, in the last hour alone.

Just let me lie in it.

It will teach me.

It is you, sir, who is teaching the rest of us.

Jopson...

yours is the only company that I don't completely hate right now.

Now, don't push it.

How do you feel?

Like Christ, but with more nails.

Sir.

Here.

Only sips, sir.

- More. - No.

The doctor is the captain in this matter, sir.

Full stop.

You've done this before.

Who was it?

Every word I say hurts.

Don't get mysterious, Jopson.

It was my mother, sir.

Your mother?

Yeah.

She...

She took my brother to a circus in Marylebone.

The crowd was seated up on risers.

You know how they pack them in to sell more seats.

My brother dropped his shoe beneath him.

But they were low enough that my mother could reach and get it.

And that's when the whole contraption collapsed.

Her hand was smashed.

She kept it, but it was too maimed to ever use again.

And the only thing that would take away the pain was laudanum.

You were a boy?

No. No, this was just before we set sail to the Antarctic in '39.

She wanted me to go.

She didn't want me to miss the opportunity.

But she was a different woman by the time we got back.

Pardon me, sir.

No, go on.

Well, the problem was...

it made her happy.

She would stop breathing in the night.

She would soil herself.

She would get mesmerized to the point

where she would forget to feed my brother or herself for days.

But it took away her pain and it made her laugh.

I don't like to hear a woman laughing now, sir.

Our neighbor was a nursemaid from the workhouse,

and she helped me taper mother off it for three weeks.

How did she fair...

when she was through it?

Hello.

Shooting the cuff, eh, sir? You look ready to dance a polonaise.

Thomas.

I got you, Captain.

You can count on that, sir.

Lieutenant Irving seems busy since he got back.

With the purser.

The usual accounting, I'd imagine.

Aye, they've done that.

Now they're moving the canned food to the back of the storeroom. Why?

I've not heard a reason.

But I did see an odd list on Lieutenant Hodgson's desk.