#daily occurrence in the terror wardroom

[henrycollins]

edward little bats his eyelashes and he sends irving and hodgson flying back into the wall.

[franklins-leg]

Forward though I cannot see, I guess and fear

Hey! I guess I’m writing Bridglar stuff now!  But AO3 won’t give me an account for another four days or some such nonsense. So here, have a chapter of ..... something.

John Bridgens paused in the wardroom’s entry, ensuring the Terror’s officers were out of view, then leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Irving, Hodgson, and Doctor MacDonald were suited up for the trek back to their ship - the pile of coats, mufflers, mittens, and snow gaiters, only half-thawed by the wardroom stove, assigned back to their owners with Bridgens’s assistance - yet Blanky remained in the Great Cabin, in hushed and apparently earnest conversation with Captain Fitzjames.

Well. When he’d dismissed the lieutenants, the captain had said they would not be much longer in their business. Then John could clear away the tea, and hopefully retire to his own cabin for a few rare moments of peace.

Three weeks since Terror’s men had begun removing to Erebus, and John wanted little more than a few minutes of quiet. Each day additional crew arrived to crowd the decks, and with command meetings grown to a near-daily occurrence, even the officers who remained berthed on Terror were present and requiring a steward’s attention more often than not. He’d worked out weeks ago exactly why it was that Captain Crozier and his own steward remained hidden away, why command meetings could not be held on Terror - Captain Fitzjames was, after all, hardly difficult to read in his frustration, and the men did talk. Not to mention the number of nervous, whispered, and otherwise ill-disguised conversations Fitzjames had taken to conducting with those closest to Crozier, such as that in which he was now engaged with the ice master. John knew the gravity of the situation. And for the most part, he went about his duties with practiced and patient reserve.

But the fact remained that although Henry had arrived on Erebus days ago, all John had seen of him was his infectiously joyful smile, as he caught his eye across the crowd. Henry laughing at some story an Erebite was relating to the newly united crews, but the light in his eyes as he looked at John... at least, John hoped, that was for another reason altogether.

They hadn’t meant to be on separate ships. Both had intended to sign on with Erebus, but  Henry’s years of experience saw him promoted to a captain of the foretop, and as the opportunity arose to sign on to Terror in a higher position... John was desperately proud of him, and wouldn’t hear of him turning the chance down. It was a year, maybe two, in the Arctic, they had thought. With opportunity to see each other when they were docked in Greenland, and if the ships were forced to overwinter. And Henry could take extra duty manning the boats to bring officers between ships, some days. An inconvenience, but worth the extra pay and higher rating.

And yet here they were, spending a third winter in the ice, both of them lucky not to have lost any parts of themselves to the cold and the wind. These were the blessings they counted now. Henry had indeed made the journey between the ships when the occasion arose, but God damn if John would ask Henry to risk any bit of himself in that icy hell just for the chance that they might catch sight of each other, or brush hands in passing as John went about his duties. And so they’d spent the last three years communicating mostly through notes smuggled to each other in books borrowed and returned. Always tucked in with the thirty-second page; thirty-two for the year they had met aboard the Beagle. John noted that Henry’s letters on the goings-on aboard Terror, while still charmingly untidy, had improved greatly in spelling over the last winters, and wondered (not without a slight amount of jealousy) with whom he might have been spending his unoccupied hours studying. He made a point to tease Henry about that when they finally had a chance to speak. Just that morning, John had scratched ”find me - J” onto the thirty-second page of Candide, and hastily handed the book off to Mr. Hoar with instructions to deliver it to “his old friend Mr. Peglar.” Now he would just have to wait for Henry to follow through.

John sighed and pushed himself off from the wall, screwing his face into its usual unreadable expression. It would never do for the captain to see him scowling in a corner, nor had he time to wallow in lost possibilities and vanished plans, should he chance to see Henry that evening. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, he thought to himself, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!....

Far better to return to his work than brood and have his brain recite poetry at him, he thought. Mr. Blanky and the captain were yet occupied in the Great Cabin. Perhaps the tea needed refreshing; at the very least he should inform Captain Fitzjames that the Terrors were readying to set off. Crossing to where Great Cabin, he raised a hand to knock - but stopped, frowning, at the sound of Blanky’s voice through the half-closed door. Something in the severity of his tone... he liked it not at all. And he heard:

“If we’re going to walk out of here ourselves, and nearly three times as far, you need to understand that it wasn’t sickness or hunger that most mattered to our chances. It was what went on up here. Notions. A darkness.”

The voices, and the room around him, and the creak of the ship in the ice, and the cold… it all fell away. The ice fields became desert, and then ice again. A ragged band of figures straggling through a void of white. 

It was an ancient story, one he knew from his childhood. When he had been inclined to see it as a tale of glory. The triumph of civilization over the forces of nature, and of enmity. The adventure of a lifetime. 

The March of the Ten Thousand. 

No. That wasn’t the correct translation.

The Retreat. 

The Anabasis.