I don't know what's happening here. I truly don't. This is not how Englishmen act. I, I don't recognize this behavior.
All S1
S1 E15Unfinished Business
Captain's leaving the decision to you, in case I'd be too missed.
SSStephan S. Stanley
I really wouldn't worry yourself there. Fine. Go with the girl. And don't forget to invite us all to the wedding.
Has anyone ever invited you to a wedding, Dr. Stanley?
ELEdward Little
[about Tuunbaq] Do you know the word, Mr. Blanky?
It's similar to a Yupik word I know from Russian America. "Tuunraq." A spirit.
ELEdward Little
Spirit?
That may not be her meaning.
A spirit that dresses as an animal.
Help us stop it or you leave!
SLady Silence
[Inuktitut] And who is going to stop you? You use the wind to carry you here. You use the forest to hide inside. You use all this and don't even want to be here. You don't want to live. Look at you. Even if I could help, you don't want it. Why do you want to die?
Francis -
Don't ever call me Francis again. You'll call me what I'm due to be called.
You stole 16 bottles of spirits from my ship. I don't know what you're due. I do know there hasn't been a single meal we've shared, a conversation when you weren't morbing on about what you're due. Your luck has changed, Francis. No one has you in harness any longer. You are commanding this expedition entire. So damn your eyes. What else do you require? Respect? Well, earn it. Or are you determined to be the worst kind of first as well?
I'm afraid I need to ask the four of you for a favor that will likely be a great imposition. And... There couldn't be worse timing, I understand. But there also couldn't be a greater need. I'm going to be unwell, gentlemen. Quite unwell, I expect. And I don't know for how long. A week? No. Two. Perhaps... Perhaps more. And not only must you draw the tightest possible curtain around what is happening, but you must also care for me as well, as I will not be able to care for myself.
You needn't worry for a thing, sir.
I will be in no position to command. That will be for Captain Fitzjames, for all things. And you must be my proxy here, Edward.
Francis -
No. I'm sorry, but we mustn't stop until it is finished. I mustn't stop, and you mustn't let me. I may, I may beg you. Take this out to the spot where the thing's blood is and pour it out there.
[January 1848: With Crozier detoxing from alcohol addiction, Fitzjames heads a meeting of the expedition officers]
JIJohn Irving
As such, we can expect to finish our full supply of coal by November next, unless we start stepping down the ships' heating plan now, and that's without any future days making way under steam being factored in. Of salt beef, we have a combined total of 750 pounds. Salt pork, 210. Flour, 902. Cheese, 87. Dried fruits, nine pounds, only after making the men Lady Jane's Christmas pudding last week.
Hear, hear.
JIJohn Irving
Of lemon juice... not quite 200 gallons remain, though Dr. McDonald suspects it's lost most of its anti-scurvy properties by now. As for the tins, we've now inspected every one and tossed out the putrid. It's clear now why the Stephan Goldner Tinned Foods Company was the low bidder.
AMAlexander McDonald
I'd like to run that man through.
JIJohn Irving
What's left number 1,402 tins preserved meats, 1,163 preserved vegetables, 911 preserved soup, 1,182 potatoes.
And when is the point of no return?
JIJohn Irving
If we reduce to three-quarter rations, we'll reach the end of our provisions mid-winter next year, if we're stuck in again with no game. That with our current roster of 116 men.
Why mention the number of men, Lieutenant? [clears his throat] We've not seen hide nor even a hair of Mr. Teeth-and-Claws. We can be confident that Mr. Blanky here along with Mr. Hodgson killed it or ran it off for good. No, the men will notice that large a reduction in what they eat. They'll begin with four-fifths rations, and we will discuss how to reduce further in a month's time. And finally, advise Mr. Wall and Mr. Diggle that they should emphasize salt meats in their menus now, not the tins. We must... we must start to preserve all things portable now.
[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.
How do you feel?
Like Christ, but with more nails.
[April 22, 1848: Crozier gives the order to abandon the ships, and tours Terror for the last time with Blanky]
Friend, mother, lover, all the things they say a ship is to a captain, and they miss the only thing that matters: Confessor. This ship knows everything about me, Thomas.
In '37, when George Back wrecked it, tugged it home across the Atlantic, she was barely afloat. No one could believe she kept herself up. She may well triumph.
Because it is needed, and because it is deserved, I am making a promotion this morning. An emergency measure, if you will. But one that is wholly sincere. To my knowledge, this has never been done. But then much of what we are now doing has never been done, so I don't want there to be any confusion over this. Someone on this expedition has earned our trust, respect and confidence in a way that merits absolute a place at this table. Well, gentlemen, we have a new lieutenant to welcome this morning. James.
[Fitzjames leaves the table with the promotion order, then pauses, and hands it to Jopson]
Let me clarify, Jopson. I mean a third lieutenant. There is some modicum of protocol that must be observed, even here.
Look at your face. Congratulations, Jopson.
I'm not a captain. I'm not made of that.
You can be whatever you need to be now. Survival is a nasty piece of business. But we do what we have to do. We reconfigure. We reinvent. We rearrange.
Do you know, after the war, I asked permission to walk home to London from Nanking, through Tibet and Russia. I wanted to try my hand at being an overland spy. I was the best walker in the Service. I told Sir John Barrow that once without blushing. I was quick to want the world rid of its fools an hour ago. I forget sometimes how much an exemplar I am among them.
That's not how I see you.
Francis, do you know how I was appointed to this expedition? I saved Sir John Barrow's son from a scandal. By chance, in Singapore. I paid to have a very base matter settled that would have blackened the Barrows' name, and the Admiralty's by association. As soon as I returned to London, I was promoted to commander. When the Admiralty announced there would be another attempt at the Passage, well, I only had to say the word.
That only makes you a man.
Does it?
What you describe is a surplus of political luck. Not a dearth of courage.
I am a fake, brother.
I challenge any biographer to tally up your acts of valor and then call you a fake.
Francis, a man like me will do amazing things to be seen. My... My father... My father was a ridiculous man. Ruined himself with debts. He was a consul general in Brazil, and he and his wife would mix with the wealthy Portuguese families in exile there. My mother was probably from one of those families. I was never told more. I was born out of an affair. And my father's cousins had to find people to raise me. My name... Even my name was made up, for my baptism. "James Fitzjames." Like a bad pun. I'm not even fully English.
I didn't know any of that.
I've never said it out loud before now. I always felt I deserved more. So I went to sea aged 12, and I began to build myself a great gilded life that didn't humiliate me to live. And so all of those stories that you would have my biographer tally as courage? It's all vanity. It always has been. And we are at the end of vanity.
Then you are free. Mine your courage from a different lode now. Friendship. Brotherhood.
Are we brothers, Francis? I would like that very much.
You're lucky you weren't just shot back there, Mr. Hickey.
Do you have a sudden gift for aim, Jopson?
Everything we ate growing up started with a gun. My aim's fine, Mr. Hickey. I've shot smaller hawks than you.
I've let the captain speak now long enough. Telling every manner of falsehood against me. Proving only every man lies. Even this man, your captain. But I must pierce this thing he calls "truth" with another of his own recent deceptions. June 11th, last year, the day Sir John was killed something else transpired. Crozier made a plan. In secret. To get himself out without you. "There are many feats that preoccupy a captain's imagination. But abandoning his ship and his men should not be among them. Yet I hereby tender my..." Oh, go on, Captain, you finish it.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The Terror pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.