ourselves

Captain Crozier’s eyelids are a little more reddened, his cheeks a little more thin now. A poorly stomach takes it out of you, even in the Arctic. The sickness isn’t in his stomach, you can be damned sure of that — there’s nothing meaner than an old soak drying out against his will. There’s a sickly unshaven patch of bristles near the corner of his jaw, and a dim slick of sweat upon his collar — if he turned up for inspection like that he’d get a drubbing. Here he stands like a prince in his palace, like God in his heaven, and they are alone.

Who else knows this? Jopson must — and Irving, Little, Hodgson, Fitzjames the Erebite. This explains some of the strange comings and goings. Anyone with eyes to see it. Crozier is a drunk and holding off has only made him weaker and weirder. Hickey can’t rely on this man for anything. He never could — none of them can. Crozier is a man like any other — a weak, brutal, useless man. He wears his self-pity like a coat. This man has carried them all far from home, and abandoned them there for drink. Now the drink’s drying up, and he’s turned pure coward.

“I was minding my business, sir, when the thing came aboard.” Hickey’s eyes are lowered. He studies a stray thread in the sleeve of his shirt.

“It wouldn’t have had the chance, if you’d done your duty in the first place.”

“Am I free to go, Captain Crozier? Shall I wake the lieutenant?”

“Look at me now, Hickey. I’ll have none of your jawing.”

“I’m wanted on my watch,” Hickey says, and he shuffles back on his heels, bootsoles snagging on the boards. Crozier presses a thumb into his cheek, like a man examining a horse.

“Not long ago you had insolence going spare. Your face was blazing, like a whipped schoolboy’s. And you grinned at me.”

“Did I, sir?” Hickey wants to grin at him now, to show all his teeth. The man is mad. The insult of it has set his guts roiling like snakes.

“You press men to your purposes. Lieutenant Irving was very clear about that. He described you as unrepenting of it. Did you press Manson? That great idiot? Or Hartnell. Tell me now.”

Or he’ll be telling him later, strung up by his wrists in front of the sail bins with the crew to watch. It’s a bullying farce, a foolish exercise. Hickey’s cheeks are burning now despite himself. Gibson had come to him greedily, he’d stoked the whole affair from the start, he’d wanted every moment of it, and if he hadn’t there were others, like the captain of the foretop with his sad hound’s eyes and clever fingers, a pleasant harmless sort of fellow who would have made a friendly overture sooner or later. He’s never had to slip a man anything he didn’t want. He’s never had to. But what does Crozier know of what men do? Hard-pressed to find a man who’d have him willing, or they wouldn’t be here.

“How could I, sir? Manson’s a giant. You’d be hard-pressed to force him to do anything.”

Perverse amusement creases Crozier’s forehead. “And yourself a little craven. But your type of man has ways. That tongue in your cheek.”

“You detect a way in that, sir?”

Out of all things to remember about having three men dragged before his desk to account for their actions, he remembers a single saucy gesture. Hickey sees the skull beneath Crozier’s cheeks, the gapping teeth of a skull. A way. Filthy-minded sod, with his quirking eyebrow and his dimpling chin, looking about ready to be seduced and led astray by anything in a skirt, or out of one. Hickey’s tongue flickers across his crooked front teeth. Crozier sees it, detects it.

“You’ve eaten a few pricks in your time, I’ve no doubt of it.” Control is what he wants, and he will have it. “Are you a changed man? Do you come before me now with a contrite heart?”

One of Irving’s peevish petty phrases. Crozier is mocking him in return, with his hollow pink cheeks and his merry blue eyes. Like the ruddy painted face at the bottom of a punchbowl. How handsome he looks in gilt and blue.

“As contrite as I ought to be, Captain Crozier.”

“It’s a fine way you have of showing it.” Feigned indifference, heavy lids and lazy loutish eyes. Crozier presses against him, over him, He wants him to cringe and quail. He wants him to bend and break, or to press back with eagerness.

They were countrymen once.

He makes a fist in the front of Hickey’s trousers — nothing but canvas slops in his hand, but his fingertips stab like an accusation. Hickey gives him a good hard shove, and not for the first time he wishes he had something good and heavy to crack good old Captain Crozier over the head with, a paving-stone or an earthenware jug

Crozier seems to find this more exciting than anything else. There is a queer light in his eyes, and it almost makes him look intelligent.

“Would you raise a hand to an officer, then? Or will you be a good man and do as you’re told? Show me what transpired between yourself and Mr. Gibson. You’ll take his part, and I’ll take yours.”

Quite a gamble, that. What does Captain Crozier know of what two men do together? Nothing, nothing, nothing at all. Hickey twists away, longing for an escape and not finding it. The cabin is shuttered tight and locked — snug as the dead-room down below.

“Suit yourself, sir.”. His knees have turned to water, his guts have clenched like a fist.

His hands don’t shake. It’s no different than a little visit to the surgeon’s bay — trousers down, and the muscles all down your legs going tight with cold and discomfort, and then wait for the salt-water and the twist of rag, a steady hand, a clumsy grip.

His hand seizes Hickey by his scruff — a fistful of collar and neckcloth, tearing at hair. Crozier presses him over the table’s edge — spreading him out like a map, Hickey thinks, like a chart. There’s no one to hold him here, nothing to tether him in place except the strength in his fingers and the memory of worse things. Memories of some house of correction, now as muted and dull as milk in water. Look how far he’s come in life since his boyhood — he’s fallen in with an altogether better set of people. This will go easier for him if he plays a part. Not willing, but holding still.

Crozier snuffles in exasperation from somewhere behind him. He can’t get his cock to stand — the old affliction of drunks and middle-aged mary-annes. Hickey chirps with laughter, taken aback, and Crozier presses a fist into his ribs to press him in place. He can’t help but laugh, nasty amusement bubbling up inside him like puke. The brandy-faced old shitpot can’t even do what he’s brought him here to do. An arctic farce with a cast of two.

Hickey barks with laughter then, and the effect is not inconsiderable. Hickey’s bellied with his share of men, but not yet one whose cock stiffens when he’s laughed at — another great joke, though not so great as all that. Hickey twists under him, and Crozier’s hand rakes his leg, making the welts itch and flush. All his wounds have turned to scabs, and Crozier’s fingernails rake down them. Satisfied at a job well done, no doubt. Crozier’s blunt thumbnail digs into the seam of a healing stripe, and Hickey hisses with pain, scrabbling against the varnished wood.

“Keep your hands out, or I’ll have you flogged again.”

“For what?”

“For provocation.”

Crozier wants to be defied, but only so far. If he must hammer out his rages, let him do it here and not before an audience. There are a hundred ways for a man to die aboard a ship like this one — sudden falls, careless blows — and a hundred small and grinding ways for life to become intolerable. Crozier can bring all these and more to bear on Hickey now and he wants him to know it. Which is stupid, really, but that’s beside the point.

A sore ass hurts less than a flogging, so he’ll take what he’s given and stretch out his arms until the cords tremble and the muscles ache. Decay hasn’t set in on his body yet, he’s stronger and fresher than any other man in this godforsaken country. How long since he’s had the weight of a man against his back, and felt the slip of wet flesh — Crozier moves in him, stubby and insolent. Hickey folds away in his mind and waits for the finish. It will come sooner rather than later, or it will not come at all, and either way it will be withstood the same. He will not defy his captain in this, not as he is, or he will be killed. No one will miss him here, or his work. He’ll not shame himself by crying out. That’s not cowardice, it’s having brains.

What were the words? They’re burned on the insides of his eyes, graven in his memory. There are many feats that preoccupy a captain’s imagination, and on and on. A great parcel of lines written in an indifferently poor hand. Hickey will set his mind to recalling them. They will serve him later. Hickey recalls the words and all they mean.

Crozier’s work must be near done — he is breathing raw, close now, close. The awful sound of their breath is unspeakably loud in such a narrow space, pulling and jolting with every new press. Hickey’s own breaths rattle in his nose. Awful and dry and pressing as a knife, no feeling but pain and insult, no feeling at all. Salt-water prickles in his eyes.

Crozier’s hand is on the nape of his neck. His legs shake, and Hickey can feel them tremble — he can’t keep the pace of his thrusts, his prying fingers lose their purchase, he’s getting in the way of himself. Crozier has no decorum at all, no sense in calling Hickey to this place at this hour under these circumstances — he has never lived in a crowded warren with secrecy as dear to him as a brother. He’s surprised at himself, surprised at his own cruelty. He doesn’t understand what it is that he wants, only that he wants it.

“You’re hurting me,” Hickey says, not meaning it — it’s true, but only a fool would say it. He makes a convulsive movement to steady himself and Crozier’s hand clamps down over his forearm — an obscene touch, an unwanted touch that makes all the soft hairs on Hickey’s body rise up in a single shudder.

There are many feats— Recall it again, the loops and scrawls, the mannered scratch and foul spellings of a career ill-spent. He can hear Crozier’s voice as loud and true as if he were speaking, and it turns his stomach.

He doesn’t know if Crozier’s finished, or simply lost his mettle. Crozier’s blubbering lips press against Hickey’s shoulder — He’s lost in their clinch, doubled over him. They are both guilty now, a couple of mutineers joined in their filth. He is the only one who knows Crozier for who he is — and Crozier does not know him at all.

Hickey turns over, twisting until they are face to face — groping at Crozier lewdly to hold himself upright, and feeling him stiffen with disgust. He’s left to cringe before him like a whipped dog — to tug up his drawers and fumble his buttons with Crozier’s fishy eyes on him. How many times had he helped Billy to do up his flies, or set right a waistcoat that had been done up crooked, to sneak in his fingers past the stitched borders and set each buttonhole to its mate?

While Crozier busies himself stuffing his sad prick back into his lovely white drawers, Hickey must school his voice into chastised earnestness.

“Take me with you. Take me with you to Back River.” Like a heartstruck lover.

This is altogether the wrong thing to say.

Crozier stares in his face, uncomprehending. Self-disgust is an ugly look for any man. “Who told you that?”

“Why, no one, sir.” Crozier needs to become a better liar. Hickey throws his head back and grins. The rawness between his legs is impossible to ignore, a needling pain.

“Don’t lie to me, you little shit. Who told you?”

“What would I do, if I were captain, sir?” He’s daring him, now, daring him to strike out — the shape of his mouth comes easily to him. “We won’t do any better staying in our places.”

Mockery makes Crozier’s face still uglier. “You know as little of command as I know about picking oakum, Mr. Hickey.”

A mister again, he’s been given back his laurels. Hickey swallows his exasperation. Crozier sees himself to be caught in a corner over this — and he’s right.

“You’re the highest ranking officer on either ship. The most experienced of all of us. The men will follow you.”

Hickey will make them follow.

“Tuck in your shirt.” Crozier exhales heavily. “Don’t fancy yourself to be my second-in-command if we go out. You’ll haul a sledge and do your bit like any other man. I need none of your advice, Mr. Hickey.”

“I am your creature, sir.” A sickening thing to say to a man, with his spunk running down the inside of your leg and his filthy fingerprints on your skin. “The men would welcome it. Tell them it was Sir John’s will at the last. No man would question it.”

“That’s enough, Mr. Hickey. Tuck in your damned shirt, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, sir.” Grinning and showing teeth. Disgust floods Hickey’s body like icewater — like that oiled-canvas diving suit sprung a leak, that greasy monster they sent Collins below in. He’ll say those words, and assent to whatever ill treatment Captain Crozier pleases to dole out. He’d kiss his boots. He’d lick the filth from the floorboards if it meant sealing this compact between them. He’ll kill this man, he’ll slit his belly — he hates him with an incoherent animal hate.

Hickey has little in this world worth hanging on to — nothing he can’t carry on his back or in his pockets, and what he lacks he’ll steal. The thing on the ice knows them, it knows their ranks and faces. What white bear ever knew one epaulet from two, or how to reckon a twist of gold braid at thirty paces? Crozier will be next, and if he wants to set out into greater exposure, let him. Cornelius Hickey is only a lowly caulker’s mate, not even a mouthful for a great white bear that walks on its hind legs. He will outlive this man. He will survive him.