Aylmore looked surprised and alarmed. “Do you really think he could be strong enough to do that? With three bullets and all those shotgun pellets in him, I mean? Without his coat, he’d freeze to death in a few minutes anyway. It’s getting much colder and the wind’s getting stronger. Do you really think he’s lying in wait for us, Cornelius?”

Hickey smiled and nodded toward the black pool. “No. I think he’s dead and drowned and down there. But we’re going to make fuckin’ sure. We’re not leaving here until we’re sure, even if we got to search until the God-poxed sun comes up.”

In the end, they searched for three hours under the light of the rising and then descending moon. There were no signs at all near the polynya nor amid the seracs nor on the open ice fields beyond the seracs in all directions nor on the high pressure ridges to the north and south and east: no blood trails, no footprints, no drag marks.

It took Robert Golding the full three hours to hack John Lane and William Goddard into the size pieces that Hickey had asked for, and even then the boy made a dreadful mess of it. Ribs, heads, hands, feet, and sections of spinal cord lay around him on all sides as if there had been an explosion in an abattoir. And young Golding himself was so covered with blood that he looked like a player in a minstrel show by the time Hickey and the others got back. Aylmore, Thompson, and even Magnus Manson were taken aback by their young apprentice’s appearance, but Hickey laughed long and hard.

The gunnysacks and burlap bags were filled with meat wrapped in oilcloths they’d brought. Yet still the bags leaked.

They untied Goodsir, who was shaking from the cold or shock.

“Time to go, Surgeon,” said Hickey. “The other chaps are waiting ten miles west of here on the ice to welcome you home.”

Goodsir said, “Mr. Des Voeux and the others will come after you.”

“No,” said Cornelius Hickey, his voice showing his absolute certainty, “they won’t. Not with them knowing that now we got at least three shotguns and a pistol. And that’s if they ever find out we was here, which I think they won’t.” To Golding, he said, “Give our new crewmate a sack of meat to carry, Bobby.”

When Goodsir refused to accept the bulging sack from Golding, Magnus Manson knocked him down, almost breaking the surgeon’s ribs. On the fourth attempt to hand him the dripping bag, after two more serious cuffings, the surgeon took it.

“Let’s go,” said Hickey. “We’re done here.”

54 DES VOEUX

First Mate Charles Des Voeux could not restrain himself from grinning as he and his eight men returned to Rescue Camp on the morning of Saturday, 19 August. For a change, he had nothing but good news to deliver to his captain and the men.

The ice pack had opened to floes and navigable leads only four miles out, and Des Voeux and his men had spent another day following the leads south until the strait became open water all the way to the Adelaide Peninsula and almost certainly to the inlet to Back River farther east around that peninsula. Des Voeux had seen the low hills of the Adelaide Peninsula less than twelve open-water miles away from an iceberg they’d climbed at their farthest-south extension of the ice pack. They could go no farther without a boat, which had made First Mate Des Voeux grin broadly then and which made him grin again now.

Everyone could leave Rescue Camp. Everyone there now had a chance at survival.

Almost better news to bring home was the fact that they had spent two days shooting seals on the floes at the edge of the new open sea out there on the strait. For two days and nights, Des Voeux and his men had gorged themselves on seal meat and blubber, their bodies craving the fat so much that even though the rich food made then sick – after weeks of only ship’s biscuit and slivers of old salt pork – vomiting just made them hungrier, and they laughed and began gorging again almost immediately.

Each of his eight men was dragging a carcass of a seal behind him now as they followed the bamboo wands across the last mile of coastal ice to the camp. The forty-six men in Rescue Camp would eat well tonight, as would again the eight triumphant explorers.

All in all, Des Voeux thought as they came up the shingle past the boats, hallooing and hurrahing to get the camp’s attention, other than the young squirt Golding turning back on his own that first day because of a belly ache, it had been almost a perfect expedition. For the first time in months – in years – Captain Crozier and the others would have news to celebrate.

They were all going home. If they left today, the healthy among them man-hauling the ill in the boats only the four miles on the winding trail through pressure ridges that Des Voeux had carefully charted, they would be afloat within three or four days, to the mouth of Back’s Great Fish River within the week. And it was probable that the opening leads had advanced even closer to shore by now!

Filthy, ragged, slumped creatures emerged from their tents and left their desultory camp chores to come out to stare at Des Voeux’s party.

The cheering of Des Voeux’s men – Fat Alex Wilson, Francis Pocock, Josephus Greater, George Cann, Robert Johns, Thomas Tadman, Thomas McConvey, and William Mark – died as they looked at the dour, immobile, haunted-eyed faces of the men facing them. The men from the camp could see the seals being dragged, but they seemed to have no reaction.

Mates Couch and Thomas came out of their tents and down the shingle to stand in front of the line of Rescue Camp spectres.

“Did someone die?” asked Charles Frederick Des Voeux.

Second Mate Edward Couch, First Mate Robert Thomas, First Mate Charles Des Voeux, Erebus Captain of the Hold Joseph Andrews, and Terror Captain of the Maintop Thomas Farr were crowded into the oversized tent that had been used as Dr. Goodsir’s hospital. The amputees, Des Voeux had learned, had either died in the four days he was gone or been moved back to smaller tents shared with the other sick men.

These five in this tent this morning were the last officers with any command authority left alive – or at least at Rescue Camp and well enough to walk – from the entire John Franklin Expedition. They had just enough tobacco left for four of the five – Farr did not smoke – to have their pipes going. The interior of the tent was filled with blue smoke.

“Are you sure it wasn’t the thing from the ice that committed the carnage you found out there?” asked Des Voeux.

Couch shook his head. “We thought that might be the case at first – in fact, that was our assumption – but the bones and heads and remaining pieces of flesh we found…” He stopped and bit down hard on the stem of pipe.

“Had knife marks on them,” finished Robert Thomas. “Lane and Goddard were butchered by a human being.”

“Not a human being,” said Thomas Farr. “But some vile thing in the shape of a man.”

“Hickey,” said Des Voeux.

The others nodded.

“We have to go after him and the murderers with him,” said Des Voeux.

No one spoke for a moment. Then Robert Thomas said, “Why?”

“To bring them to justice.”

Four of the five men looked at one another. “They have three shotguns now,” said Couch. “And almost certainly the captain’s percussion-cap pistol.”

“We have more men… guns… powder, shot, cartridges,” said Des Voeux.

“Aye,” said Thomas Farr. “And how many of them would die in a battle with Hickey and his fifteen cannibals? Thomas Johnson ne’er came back, y’know. His job was just to track Hickey’s band, make sure they was leaving like they said they was.”