“But at first the sailors did not cast Jonah overboard, did they, shipmates? No – they were brave men and good sailors and professionals and rowed hard to bring their foundering ship to land. But finally they weakened, cried unto the Lord, and then did make a sacrifice of Jonah, casting him overboard.

“And the Bible says – ‘Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’

“Notice, shipmates, that the Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. No! This was no beluga nor right nor baleen nor sperm nor killer nor fin such as we would see in these high waters or in Baffin Bay on a normal arctic summer. No, Jonah was swallowed up by a ‘great fish’ which the Lord had prepared for him – which means a monster of the deep that Lord God Jehovah had made at the Creation for just this purpose, to swallow Jonah someday, and in the Bible this monster of a great fish is sometimes called Leviathan.

“And just so have we been sent on our mission beyond the farthest known edge of the world, shipmates, farther than the Tarshish – which was only in Spain, after all – we have been sent out to where the elements themselves seem to rebel, where lightning crashes from frozen skies, where the cold never relents, where white beasts walk the frozen surface of the sea, and where no man, civilized or otherwise, could ever call such a place home.

“But we are not beyond the Kingdom of God, shipmates! As Jonah did not protest his fate nor curse his punishment but rather prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly for three days and three nights, so we must not protest, but accept God’s will of this exile of three long nights of winter in the belly of this ice, and like Jonah we must pray unto the Lord, saying, ‘I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains: the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.’

“ ‘When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities foresake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

“ ‘And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.’

“And, beloved shipmates, know in your hearts that we have given and must continue giving sacrifice unto the Lord with the voice of thanksgiving. We must pay that that we have vowed to pay. Our friend and brother in Christ, Lieutenant Graham Gore, may he sleep in the bosom of the Lord, saw that there would be no release from this belly of the Leviathan winter this summer. No escape from the cold belly of this ice this year. And this is the message he would have brought back had he survived.

“But we have our ships intact, shipmates. We have food for this winter and longer if need be… much longer. We have coal to burn for warmth and the deeper warmth of our companionship and the deepest warmth of knowing that our Lord has not abandoned us.

“One more summer and then winter here in the belly of this Leviathan, shipmates, and I swear to you that God’s divine mercy shall see us out of this terrible place. The North-West Passage is real; it is only miles over that horizon to the southwest – Lieutenant Gore could almost see it with his own eyes a mere week ago – and we shall sail out to it and through it and out of it and away from it in a very few months, when this uncommon extended winter ends, for we shall cry by reason of our affliction unto the Lord, and he shall hear us out of the belly of Hell itself, for he has heardest my voice and yours.

“In the meantime, shipmates, we are afflicted by the dark spirit of that Leviathan in the form of some malevolent white bear – but only a bear, only a dumb beast, however the thing seeks to serve the Enemy, but like Jonah we shall pray unto the Lord that this terror too shall pass from us. And in the certainty that the Lord shall hear our voices.

“Kill this mere animal, shipmates, and on the day we do, by the hand of whichever man among us, I vow to pay each and every one of you ten gold sovereigns out of my own purse.”

There came a murmuring among the men crowded into the waist of the ship.

“Ten gold sovereigns a man,” repeated Sir John. “Not merely a bounty to the man who slays this beast the way David slew Goliath, but a bonus for everyone – share and share alike. And on top of that, you will continue to receive your Discovery Service pay and the equal of your advance pay in bonuses I promise this day – in exchange only for another winter spent eating good food, staying warm, and waiting for the thaw!”

If laughter had been thinkable during Divine Service, there would have been laughter then. Instead, the men stared at one another with pale, near-frostbitten faces. Ten gold sovereigns a man. And Sir John had promised a bonus equal to the advance pay that had persuaded so many of these seamen to enlist in the first place – twenty-three pounds for most of them! At a time when a man could purchase lodgings for sixty pence a week… twelve pounds for a whole year. And this on top of the common seaman’s Discovery Service pay of sixty pounds per year – more than three times what any labourer ashore could earn! Seventy-five pounds for the carpenters, seventy for the boatswains, a full eighty-four pounds for the engineers.

The men were smiling even as they surreptitiously stamped their boots on the deck to keep from losing toes.

“I have ordered Mr. Diggle on Terror and Mr. Wall here on Erebus to make us a holiday dinner today in anticipation of our triumph over this temporary adversity and the sure certainty of the success of our mission of exploration,” called down Sir John from his place at the flag-bedecked binnacle. “On both ships, I have allowed extra rations of rum for this day.”

The Erebuses could only stare slack-jawed at one another. Sir John Franklin allowing grog to be served on Sunday – and extra rations of it at that?

“Join me in this prayer, shipmates,” said Sir John. “Dear God, turn thy face in our direction again, O Lord, and be gracious unto thy servants. O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon: so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our lives.

“Comfort us again now after the time that thou has plagued us: and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.

“Shew thy servants thy work: and their children thy glory.

“And the glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon us: prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handy-work.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.”

“Amen,” came back a hundred and fifteen voices.

For four days and nights after Sir John’s sermon, despite a June snowstorm that blew in from the northwest and made visibility poor and life miserable, the frozen sea echoed day and night to the blast of shotguns and the rattle of musketry. Every man who could find any reason to be out on the ice – a hunting party, the fire-hole party, messengers passing between the ships, carpenters testing their new sledges, seamen given permission to walk Neptune the dog – brought a weapon and fired at anything that moved or gave the impression through blowing snow or fog that it might be capable of movement. No men were killed, but three had to report to Dr. McDonald or Dr. Goodsir to have shotgun pellets removed from their thighs, calves, and buttocks.