Franklin’s Library

The waves are the same and different from each other, and at night that thick smudge of orange on the horizon could be the figure of a man lying down on his side. A man weary of battle. Sorrowful.

It is not that cold yet. For the sailor this voyage does not yet feel different from other voyages he has made. The pitch of the ship is familiar. The ocean looks the same. It is only the thought of what is coming that makes the difference. And even that wouldn’t be so bad if he knew what to expect, if he could imagine all that ice and snow and cold.

The sailor has joined this expedition because men on discovery voyages are paid twice as much as those on ordinary passage, and his family can live for a year alone on the advance he received before sailing.

The most snow the sailor has ever seen are the few inches that fall every winter on his small London house. It looks pretty from the window, that snow. Snow that falls in the night and melts the following morning.

In the same moment Hyperion, the sun god, descends to earth, the fallen king and the moonlight woman arrive at the cave where the outcast Titans huddle in mournful agony. Some are wounded. All are defeated. Being sorrowful together is adding to the sorrow, not lessening it. They are accumulating woe, sitting on the cold stone of the cave floor, indulging in their despair.

The sailor stands on deck watching the hms Rattler sail away from the Erebus and Terror, back toward England. The steam frigate had been accompanying them partway across the north Atlantic.

The sailor has the poem in his hands, had meant to read up here on deck in the perpetual northern light that is so much brighter than the dim glow below decks. He had meant to read here, but he stands against the railing with the book dangling from his hand, unopened. The Rattler is a small, dark island moving slowly away from him. He watches it until it dips over the horizon and is gone.

They are sailing westward and are north of Iceland. The air is cool and dry, not unpleasant, but laced with the taste of its potential. It is cold enough now that the sailor can imagine colder. He can see the very breath that leaves his body hang in a foggy sack above the rail, and then that too is gone.

There is a part of the story where everyone talks and not much happens. The fallen king gives a speech. The god of the sea gives a speech. The king tries to rouse the Titans. The sea god wants the king to accept that the defeat has occurred. The sailor supposes this is because the sea is the same and different with every wave, that it chases itself and repeats itself, that change does not mean something unrecognizable to the sea.

The sailor watches the iceberg off the port bow. It is like a small mountain adrift in the sea. The littering of icebergs around the ship is like exactly that, a mountain range that has flooded and splintered apart into individual pieces.