Steward Bridgens had been about eight years older then than Peglar was now – in his late forties – but already known as the wisest and most widely read warrant officer in the fleet. He was also known as a sodomite, a fact that hadn’t bothered twenty-five-year-old Peglar much at the time. There were two types of sodomites in the Royal Navy: those who sought their satisfaction only on shore and never brought their activities to sea, and those who continued their habits at sea, often by seducing the young boys almost always present on Royal Navy ships. Bridgens, everyone in the Beagle fo’c’sle and in the Navy knew, was the former – a man who liked men when ashore but who never bragged of it nor brought his inclinations to sea. And, unlike the caulker’s mate on Peglar’s current ship, Bridgens was no pederast. Most of his crewmates thought that a boy at sea was safer with subordinate officers’ steward John Bridgens than he would have been with his village vicar at home.
Besides that, Harry Peglar was living with Rose Murray when he sailed in 1831. Although never formally married – she was a Catholic and would not marry Harry unless he converted, which he could not bring himself to do – they were a happy couple when Peglar was ashore, although Rose’s own illiteracy and lack of curiosity about the world reflected the younger Peglar’s life and not the man he would later become. Perhaps they would have married if Rose could have had children, but she could not – a condition she referred to as “God’s punishment.” Rose died while Peglar was at sea on the long Beagle voyage. He had loved her, in his way.
But he had also loved John Bridgens.
Before the five-year mission of the survey ship HMS Beagle had ended, Bridgens – at first accepting his role of mentor with reluctance but finally bending under the young topsail midshipman’s eager insistence – had taught Harry to read and write not only in English but also in Greek and Latin and German. He had taught him philosophy and history and natural history. More than that, Bridgens had taught the intelligent young man to think.
It had been two years after that voyage that Peglar had looked up the older man in London – Bridgens had been on extended shore leave with most of the rest of the fleet in 1838 – and requested more tutoring. By then, Peglar was already captain of the foretop on the HMS Wanderer.
It was during those months of shorebound discussion and further tutoring that the close friendship between the two men had moved into something more resembling lovers’ interactions. The revelation that he was capable of doing such a thing astounded Peglar – dismaying him at first but then causing him to reconsider every aspect of his life, morals, faith, and sense of self. What he discovered confused him but, to his astonishment, did not change his basic sense of who Harry Peglar was. What was even more astounding to him was that he had been the one to instigate intimate physical contact – not the older man.
The intimate aspect of their friendship lasted only a few months and ended by mutual choice as much as by Peglar’s long absences at sea on Wanderer until 1844. Their friendship survived intact. Peglar began writing long philosophical letters to the former steward and would spell all words backward, the last letter of the last word in each sentence now first and capitalized. Mostly because the formerly illiterate foretop captain’s spelling was so atrocious, Bridgens suggested in one responding letter that “your childlike idea of Leonardo’s backward-writing encryption, Harry, is almost unbreakable.” Peglar now kept his journals in the same crude code.
Neither man had told the other that he was applying for Discovery Service duty on Sir John Franklin’s North-West Passage expedition. Both were astonished a few weeks before sailing time when they saw the other’s name on the official roster. Peglar, who had not been in communication with Bridgens for more than a year, traveled from the Woolwich barracks up to the steward’s North London rooms to ask if he should drop out of the expedition. Bridgens insisted that he should be the one to remove his name from the list. In the end, they agreed that neither of them should lose the opportunity for such adventure – certainly Bridgens’ last opportunity because of his advanced age (Erebus’s purser, Charles Hamilton Osmer, had been a longtime friend of Bridgens and had smoothed his enlistment with Sir John and the officers, even going so far as to hide the subordinate officers’ steward’s real age by being the one to write it as “ 26” on the official rolls). Neither Peglar nor Bridgens said it aloud, but both knew that the older man’s long-standing vow never to bring his sexual desires to sea would be honoured by both of them. That part of their history, they both knew, was closed.
As it turned out, Peglar had seen almost nothing of his old friend during the voyage, and in three and a half years, they rarely had a minute alone.
It was still dark, of course, when Peglar arrived at Erebus sometime around eleven on this Saturday morning two days before the end of January, but there was a glow in the south that promised to be, for the first time in more than eighty days, a predawn glow. The slight glow did not dispel the bite from the −65-degree temperatures, so he did not dawdle as the lanterns of the ship came into sight.
The view of Erebus’s truncated masts would have dismayed any topman, but it hurt Harry Peglar more than most since he had, with his Erebus captain of the foretop counterpart, Robert Sinclair, helped supervise the dismantling and storage of both ships’ upper masts for the endless winters. It was an ugly sight at any time and was made no prettier by Erebus’s bizarre stern-down, bow-up posture in the encroaching ice.
Peglar was hailed by the watch, invited aboard, and he carried his message from Captain Crozier down to Captain Fitzjames, who was sitting and smoking his pipe in the aft officers’ mess since the Great Cabin was still being used as an ad hoc sick bay.
The captains had begun using the brass canisters meant for cached reports to send their written messages back and forth – the couriers hated this change since the cold metal burned fingers even through heavy gloves – and Fitzjames had to order Peglar to open the canister with his mittens, since the tube was still too cold for the captain to touch. Fitzjames did not dismiss him, so Peglar stood in the doorway to the officers’ mess while the captain read the note from Crozier.
“No return message, Mr. Peglar,” said Fitzjames.
The foretop captain knuckled his forehead and went up onto the deck again. About a dozen Erebuses had come up to watch the sunrise and more had been getting into their slops below to do so. Peglar had noticed that the Great Cabin sick bay had about a dozen men in it on cots – about the same number as Terror. Scurvy was setting in on both ships.
Peglar saw the small, familiar figure of John Bridgens standing at the rail on the stern’s port side. He came up behind him and tapped the man on the shoulder.
“Ah, a little touch of Harry in the night,” said Bridgens even before he turned.
“Not night for long,” said Peglar. “And how did you know it was me, John?”
Bridgens had no comforter over his face, and Peglar could see his smile and watery blue eyes. “Word of visitors travels quickly on a small ship frozen in the ice. Do you have to hurry back to Terror?”
“No. Captain Fitzjames had no response.”
“Would you care to take a stroll?”
“By all means,” said Peglar.
They went down the starboard side ice ramp and walked toward the iceberg and high pressure ridge to the southeast so as to get a better view of the glowing south. For the first time in months, HMS Erebus was backlit by something other than the aurora or lantern or torchlight.