Irving felt his way along the dark and narrow companionway. Except for Mr. Male’s room, none of the sleeping cubicles here in officers’ country were empty. HMS Terror had been lucky in that respect. While Erebus had lost several officers to that thing on the ice, including Sir John and Lieutenant Gore, none of Terror’s officers, warrant officers, or petty officers had died yet except for young John Torrington, the lead stoker, who’d died of natural causes a year and a half earlier back at Beechey Island.
No one was in the Great Cabin. It was rarely warm enough to tarry long there now and even the leatherbound books looked cold on their shelves; the wooden instrument that played metal musical disks when cranked was silent these days. Irving had time to notice that Captain Crozier’s lamp was still lit behind his partition before the lieutenant pushed forward through the officers’ and mates’ empty mess rooms and back to the ladderway.
The orlop deck below was, as it always was, very cold and very dark. With fewer provision-carrying parties coming down here because of the severe rationing due to the many spoiled cans of food the surgeons had discovered, and with fewer coal-sack hauling parties because of the dwindling coal supplies and reduced hours of heating for the ship, Irving found himself alone in the frigid space. The black wood beams and frost-covered metal brackets groaned around him as he made his way forward before working his way back toward the stern. The lamplight seemed to be swallowed up by the thick darkness, and Irving had trouble seeing the faint glow through the fog of ice crystals created by his own breathing.
Lady Silence was not in the bow area – not in the carpenter’s storeroom or the bosun’s storeroom nor in the almost-empty Bread Room aft of these closed compartments. The midship section of the orlop deck had been crammed deck to ceiling with crates, barrels, and other packages of supplies when Terror had sailed, but now much of the deck-space was clear. Lady Silence was nowhere amidships.
Lieutenant Irving let himself into the Spirit Room, using the key Captain Crozier had loaned him. There were brandy and wine bottles left, he could see by the glow of the dimming lantern, but he knew that the level of rum was low in the huge main cask. When the rum ran out – when the men’s daily noon supply of grog disappeared – then, Lieutenant Irving knew, as all officers in the Royal Navy knew, mutiny would become a much more serious concern. Mr. Helpman, the captain’s clerk, and Mr. Goddard, the captain of the hold, had reported recently that they estimated another six weeks or so of rum remained, and that much only if the standard one-fourth pint of rum in the gill, diluted with three-fourths pint of water, was reduced by half. The men would grumble even then.
Irving did not think Lady Silence could have sneaked into the locked Spirit Room despite all the whispering of the men about her witchlike powers, but he searched the space carefully, peering under tabletops and counters. The row upon row of cutlasses, sword bayonets, and muskets on the shelves above him glittered coldly in the lantern light.
He went aft to the Gunner’s Storeroom, with its adequate remaining supplies of powder and shot, peered into the captain’s private storeroom – only Crozier’s few remaining whiskey bottles sat on the shelves, the food having been parceled out to the other officers in recent weeks. Then he searched the Sail Room, Slop Room, aft cable lockers, and mate’s storeroom. If Lieutenant John Irving had been an Esquimaux woman attempting to hide aboard the ship, he thought he might have chosen the Sail Room, with its mostly untouched heaps and rolls of spare canvas, sheets, and long-unused sailing gear.
But she was not there. Irving had a start in the Slop Room when his lantern showed a tall, silent figure standing in the rear of the room, shoulders looming against a dark bulkhead, but it turned out to be only some wool greatcoats and a Welsh wig hanging on a peg.
Locking doors behind him, the lieutenant went down the ladder to the hold.
Third Lieutenant John Irving, although appearing younger than his years because of his boyish blond looks and quick blush, was not in love with the Esquimaux woman because he was a lovesick virgin. Actually, Irving had had more experience with the fairer sex than many of those braggarts on the ship who filled the fo’c’sle with tales of their sexual conquests. Irving’s uncle had brought him down to the Bristol docks when the boy turned fourteen, introduced him to a clean and pleasant dockside whore named Mol, and paid for the experience – not merely a quick back-alley knee-wobbler, but a proper evening and night and morning in a clean room under the eaves of an old inn overlooking the quay. It had given young John Irving a taste for the physical which he had indulged many times since.
Nor had Irving had less luck with the ladies in polite society. He had courted the youngest daughter of Bristol ’s third most important family, the Dunwitt-Harrisons, and that lass, Emily, had allowed, even initiated, personal intimacies most young men would have sold their left bollock to have experienced at such an age. Upon arriving in London to complete his Naval education in artillery on the gunnery training vessel HMS Excellent, Irving had spent his weekends meeting, courting, and enjoying the company of several attractive upper-class young ladies, including the obliging Miss Sarah, the shy but ultimately surprising Miss Linda, and the truly shocking – in private – Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie, with whom the fresh-faced third lieutenant soon found himself engaged to be married.
John Irving had no intention of being married. At least not while he was in his twenties – his father and uncle had both taught him that these were the years in which he should see the world and sow wild oats – and most probably not when he was in his thirties. He saw no compelling reason to marry while he would be in his forties. So although Irving had never once considered the Discovery Service – he had never enjoyed cold weather, and the thought of being frozen in at either of the poles was both absurd and appalling to him – the week after he awoke to find himself engaged, the third lieutenant followed the promptings of his older chums George Hodgson and Fred Hornby and went along to an interview on HMS Terror to apply for transfer.
Captain Crozier, obviously in foul spirits and hungover that beautiful spring Saturday morning, had glowered, harrumphed, scowled, and quizzed them carefully. He laughed at their gunnery training on a mastless ship and demanded to know just how they could be of service on an expedition sailing ship which carried only small arms. Then he asked them pointedly if they would “do their duty as Englishmen” (whatever on earth that meant, Irving remembered thinking, when said Englishmen were locked into a frozen sea a thousand miles from home) and promptly assured them of berths.
Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindstrom Hyde-Berrie was distraught, of course, and shocked that their engagement should be extended over months or actual years, but Lieutenant Irving consoled her first with assurances that the extra money from the Discovery Service duty would be an absolute necessity for them, and then by explaining his need for the adventure and then fame and glory that might well come from writing a book upon his return. Her family understood these priorities even if Miss Abigail did not. Then, when they were alone, he coaxed her out of her tears and anger with hugs, kisses, and expert caresses. The consolation grew to interesting heights – Lieutenant Irving knew that he might well be a father by now, two and a half years after the consoling. But he had not been unhappy to wave good-bye to Miss Abigail some weeks later as Terror slipped her moorings and was pushed away by two steam tugs. The disconsolate young lady stood on the docks at Greenhithe in her green-and-pink silk dress under a pink parasol and waved her matching silk pink handkerchief, using another less-expensive cotton handkerchief to dry her copious tears.