The Terror Read Online Free PDF

Franklin that night, more like the coven of witches in
Macbeth
or like some cluster of grey ghosts than like living men. Every one of these men had preceded Franklin in searching for the Passage, and all had returned alive, yet not fully alive.
    Did anyone, Franklin wondered that evening,
really
return alive after wintering in the arctic regions?
    Sir John Ross, his Scotsman’s face showing more sharp facets than an iceberg, had eyebrows leaping out like the ruffs and feathers of those penguins his nephew Sir James Clark Ross had described after his trip to the south arctic. Ross’s voice was as rough as a holystone dragged across a splintered deck.
    Sir John Barrow, older than God and twice as powerful. The father of serious British arctic exploration. All others there that night, even the white-haired septuagenarians, were boys… Barrow’s boys.
    Sir William Parry, a gentleman above gentlemen even when among royalty, who had tried four times to force the Passage only to watch men die and his
Fury
squeezed and smashed and sunk.
    Sir James Clark Ross, newly knighted, was also newly wed to a wife who made him swear off any more expeditions. He would have had Franklin’s job of commander of this expedition if he’d wanted it, and both men knew it. Ross and Crozier stood slightly separate from the others, drinking and talking as softly as conspirators.
    That confounded Sir George Back; Franklin hated sharing sirdom with a mere midshipman who once served under him, and a womanizer at that. On this gala night, Captain Sir John Franklin almost wished that Hepburn hadn’t taken the powder and shot out of the dueling pistols twenty-five years earlier. Back was the youngest member of the Arctic Council and seemed happier and smugger than any of the others, even after suffering the battering and near-sinking of HMS
Terror.
    Captain Sir John Franklin was a teetotaler, but after three hours of champagne, wine, brandy, sherry, and whiskey, the other men began to relax, the laughter around him grew stronger and the conversation in the grand hall less formal, and Franklin began to feel calmer, realizing that all this reception, all the gold buttons, silk cravats, gleaming epaulettes, fine food, cigars, and smiles were for
him.
This time, it was all about
him.
    So it was a shock when the older Ross pulled him aside almost abruptly and began to bark questions at him through the cigar smoke and the glint of candlelight off crystal.
    “Franklin, why in hell’s name are you taking one hundred and thirty-four men?” rasped the holystone across rough wood.
    Captain Sir John Franklin blinked. “It’s a major expedition, Sir John.”
    “Too bloody major, if you ask me. It’s hard enough to get thirty men across the ice, into boats, and back to civilization when something goes wrong. A hundred thirty-four men…” The old explorer made a rude noise, clearing his throat as if he was going to spit.
    Franklin smiled and nodded, wishing the old man would leave him alone.
    “And your age,” continued Ross. “You’re sixty, for God’s sake.”
    “Fifty-nine,” Franklin said stiffly. “Sir.”
    The elder Ross smiled thinly but looked more like an iceberg than ever. “
Terror
is what? Three hundred thirty tons?
Erebus
something like three hundred seventy?”
    “Three hundred seventy-two for my flagship,” said Franklin. “Three hundred twenty-six for
Terror.
”
    “And a draft of nineteen feet each, isn’t that right?”
    “Yes, m’lord.”
    “That’s buggering insane, Franklin. Your ships will be the deepest draft vessels ever sent on an arctic expedition. Everything we know about those regions has shown us that the waters where you’re headed are shallow, filled with shoals, rocks, and hidden ice. My
Victory
only drew a fathom and a half and we couldn’t get over the bar of the harbour where we wintered. George Back all but ripped his bottom out on the ice with your
Terror.
”
    “Both ships have been strengthened, Sir