[Fitzjames asks Blanky about "what happened to John Ross on Fury Beach"]
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, the 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'd 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? [Blanky just smiles knowingly]
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. [taps the side of his head] 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. We've time enough to vent it.
How?
Well, first of all, you're gonna keep things from the men, you better give them something in return. Now. Something to keep their minds on, no matter what lies ahead. There'll be a tally for it, later, when things get hard. There always is.
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