Suddenly, just as most of the men had finished the steaks and were drinking down their ale before the alcohol-rich liquid froze solid, a Persian king near the entrance to the violet room began cranking the musical disk player.

The applause – thick mittens pounding thunderously – began almost as soon as the first notes tinkled and thunked out of the crude machine. Many of the musical men aboard both ships had complained about the mechanical music player – its range of sounds emanating from the turning metal disks was almost precisely that of a corner organ grinder’s instrument – but these notes were unmistakable. Dozens of men rose to their feet. Others began singing at once, the vapour from their breaths rising in the torchlight shining through the white canvas walls. Even Crozier had to grin like an idiot as the familiar words of the first stanza echoed off the iceberg towering above them in the freezing night.

When Britain first at Heav’n’s command, Arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sang this strain;

Captains Crozier and Fitzjames rose to their feet and joined in the first bellowing chorus.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never shall be slaves!

Young Hodgson’s pure tenor led the men in six of the seven coloured compartments as they sang the second stanza.

The nations not so blest as thee, Shall in their turns to tyrants fall;

While thou shalt flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all.

Vaguely aware that there was a commotion two rooms to the east, in the entrance to the blue room, Crozier threw his head back and, warm with whiskey and bear steak, bellowed with his men:

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never, never shall be slaves!

The men in the outer rooms of the seven compartments were singing, but they were also laughing now. The commotion grew. The mechanical music player cranked louder. The men sang louder still. Even while standing and singing the third stanza between Fitzjames and Little, Crozier stared in shock as a procession entered the white room.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke;

As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak.

Someone led the procession in the theatrical costume version of an admiral’s uniform. The epaulettes were so absurdly broad that they hung out eight inches beyond the little man’s shoulders. He was very fat. The gold buttons on his old-fashioned Naval jacket would never have buttoned. He was also headless. The figure carried its papier-mâché head under the crook of his left arm, his moldering plumed admiral’s hat under his right.

Crozier quit singing. The other men did not.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!

Behind the headless admiral, who obviously was meant to be the late Sir John Franklin even though it had not been Sir John decapitated that day at the bear blind, ambled a monster ten or twelve feet tall.

It had the body and fur and black paws and long claws and triangular head and black eyes of a white arctic bear, but it was walking on its hind legs and was twice the height of a bear and with twice the arms’ length. It walked stiffly, almost blindly, swinging its upper body to and fro, the small black eyes staring at each man it approached. The swinging paws – the arms hanging loose as bell pulls – were larger than the costumed crewmen’s heads.

“That’s your giant, Manson, on the bottom,” laughed Erebus’s second mate, Charles Frederick Des Voeux, next to Crozier, raising his voice to be heard over the next stanza. “It’s your little caulker’s mate – Hickey? – riding on his shoulders. It took the men all night to sew up the two hides into a single costume.”

Thee haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame, All their attempts to bend thee down

Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe, and thy renown.

As the giant bear ambled past, dozens of men from the blue, green, and orange rooms followed it in procession through the white room and into the violet room. Crozier stood as if literally frozen to his spot near the white banquet table. Finally he turned his head to look at Fitzjames.

“I swear I did not know, Francis,” said Fitzjames. The other captain’s lips were pale and very thin.

The white room began emptying of costumed figures as the scores there followed the headless admiral and the swinging, towering, slowly ambling bipedal bear-giant into and through the relative gloom of the long violet room. The drunken singing roared around Crozier.

RULE, BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA, RULE THE WAVES!

BRITONS NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER

SHALL BE SLAVES!

Crozier began following the procession into the violet chamber and Fitzjames followed him. The captain of HMS Terror had never felt this way in all of his years of command; he knew that he had to stop this travesty of a lampoon – no Naval discipline could tolerate a farce in which the death of the expedition’s former commander became a source of humour. But at the same time he knew that it had already proceeded to a point where simply shouting down the singing, ordering Manson and Hickey out of their obscene monster suit, ordering everyone out of their costumes and back to their berths on the ships would be almost as absurd and useless as the pagan ritual Crozier was watching with growing anger.

TO THEE BELONGS THE RURAL REIGN, THY CITIES SHALL WITH COMMERCE SHINE;

ALL THINE SHALL BE THE SUBJECT MAIN, AND EVERY SHORE IT CIRCLES THINE!

The headless admiral, ambling bear-thing, and the following procession of a hundred costumed men or more had not paused long in the violet room. As Crozier entered the violet-coloured space – the torches and outside tripod fires were whipping on the north side of the violet-dyed canvas wall and the sails themselves were rippling and cracking in the rising wind – he arrived just in time to see Manson and Hickey and their singing mob pause at the entrance to the ebony room.

Crozier resisted the impulse to shout out “No!” It was an obscenity for the effigy of Sir John and the towering bear-thing to play this out in any forum, but unthinkably vile in that black, oppressive ebony room with its polar bear head and ticking clock. Whatever final dumb show the men had in mind, at least it would soon be finished. This had to be the finale of this ill-thought-out mistake of a Second Grand Venetian Carnivale. He would let the singing end of its own, the pagan mime close to drunken cheers from the men, and then he would order the mobs out of their costumes, send the frozen and drunken seamen back to their ships, but order the riggers and orga-nizers to strike the canvas and rigging immediately – tonight – whether that meant frostbite or no. He would then deal with Hickey, Manson, Aylmore, and his officers.

The swaying, much-cheered headless admiral and swaying bear-monster entered the ebony compartment.

Sir John’s black clock within began striking midnight.

The mob of bizarrely costumed sailors at the rear of the procession began pressing forward, the rear ranks eager to get into the ebony compartment to see the fun, even while the ragmen, rats, unicorns, dustmen, one-legged pirates, Arab princes and Egyptian princesses, gladiators, faeries, and other creatures at the front of the mob, already making the turn and crossing the threshold into the black room, began resisting the advance, pushing back, no longer sure they wanted to be in that soot-floored and black-walled darkness.