The captain — his own clever captain — is wholly altogether impotent. He possesses the desire but not the capacity. He wants Hickey, but he cannot act on that wanting the way all men who want him eventually do. Crozier's prick is soft as sand; he may try to jolly it about with his fingers, but he's pushing rope regardless and they both know it.

"You're a good lad," Crozier says, "but you are too forward. You have notions that exceed your station. That will only end in heartache for you."

"Yes sir," Hickey says, with an air of exasperation that the tension of the situation cannot extinguish. He does not know whether he is assenting to being good, or to being forward. The pressing of Crozier's limp prick excites him and disgusts him. Hickey must restrain himself from making a joke, for the time for jests has passed and another man has him by the scruff of his neck.

Crozier cannot have known heartache, not keenly anyway — he is well-padded from the misfortunes of the world by title and habit, he has a good soft belly that presses against Hickey's back, no doubt hot with hair beneath its fine waistcoat and buttons. The captain gives him a hard jostle, hard enough to strike his cheek on the polished wood and to make his eyes smart; that limp prick is still thrust against his backside, but he has ceased to try to thread it in

There is a fine polished case on the desk, with brass-reinforced corners — a heavy-looking thing fitted for a lock. Hickey had noticed it first of all, even before the empty bottle or the half-burned papers spread out where he is now braced by Crozier's body. Now he hears it open, he hears quite distinctly the sound of that lock rattling at the touch of Crozier's inept fingertips.

Hickey straightens up at the sound, only for Crozier to thrust him down again and send him sprawling out with bruised ribs. The weight of the pistol sinks against his back for a moment, hard and ready.

Crozier's voice is silken. "There's powder and shot there. I made sure of that before you came here tonight. You can smell the grease, can't you?"

"I don't know much about guns, sir. Shall I go and fetch one of the Marines?"

Let one of them catch hell, instead, and let Hickey go free. Has Crozier brought him here tonight to kill him? Or to kill himself? The captain is holding the weapon level on him now; Hickey must twist to get a clear look at it. The polar winter would be enough to make any man contemplate self-murder, but it is not quite this that the captain has in mind. He can indeed smell the grease and a dull bitter tang that can only be the powder. It will be just like being stuffed by a soldier. There is a dull twinge in his stomach, a kind of low pricking that with effort he can recognize as fear.

"These things are prone to misfire," Crozier says. The barrel of the pistol nudges one of the braces from his shoulder, to dangle loose. "Trousers down, now. Go slowly."

He is unveiled for the captain's eye, as for the surgeon's when his wounds are due to be sponged again with salted water — is it less degrading to comply with his own hands, or to have his clothes stripped from him by force? The captain has seen his backside already, throbbing with hurt and beaten bloody; being fucked can't be any worse than being stripped and spread-eagled before every man he knows in this wooden world.

Crozier caresses him with the pistol. The hard metal tracks down the lowest part of his spine; it presses between his welted buttocks, lingers against his balls. The still air of the captain's cabin is a damn sight warmer than anywhere else, except perhaps for the inside of the greasy cook's stove, but that piece of metal is so terribly cold that his balls hitch up.

"There'll be no need of that, sir." Fear has entered his voice, and he hates the sound of it. Hickey forces his mouth into a vulgar grin and braces his knees to keep them from buckling.

"I'll tell you what I have need of," Crozier says. His hand is on the pistol's grip.

There are many ways to die aboard a ship; Gibson told him that once, long ago, telling him off for careless conduct. Who would miss him? Billy wouldn't miss him. There is only one way to have this scene over with, and that is to surrender to it — not to struggle but to surrender perfectly, and to make it easy. He will not be ashamed of surviving this.

"Do it, then," Hickey says.

Hickey will not beg him, nor will he call any man sir who fucks him. If Crozier pulls the trigger, the bullet will transfix his guts perfectly, and he will die. His blood will run down over the captain's boots and stain his cuffs, and drain into the gaps between the boards.

Hickey will not cry out. He will not flinch, nor squirm.

Crozier fucks into him with the gun, with savage clumsiness — it is one thing to make oneself easy for a man to put his prick inside, to breathe deep easy breaths and open up one's passages, but the blunt press of metal is cruel and strange. He has never known the awful sensation of being stretched by something more unyielding than flesh, and the passages of his body seem to shape themselves to the weapon only to be torn away again with every withdrawal —. Hickey wants to close his knees and to clench all his muscles, but the impulse must be fought — experience has taught him that this is the difference between a sore arse and sixpence or a really sore arse and a kicking after.

The tears prick at his eyes.

"Where's your God-damned cheek now? Talk, damn you," Crozier says, sounding petulant in all his broken throatiness. The real Cornelius Hickey had never sounded like that, shattered out of all propriety by fury and desire — he had spoken only of the shipyard, and of the great dullness of his own hometown, and how he longed to go to see. It could be that blessed innocent here instead of the man who now bears his name, spread out on his captain's desk to be split in two like ripe fruit. It should have been him instead.

Crozier gives the barrel of the pistol a sharp twist, and the bitter wrench of pain makes Hickey sob. Once his throat is opened, it's no use — the sound has issued forth and Crozier has entered him more thoroughly than even an article of steel and wood. He has gouged deeper into him than an achy wrist and an old pistol can reach, all the way to his heart.

Talk, then: Hickey tells him the worst things he can think of — he calls him a filthy Irish pig and a gutless codless bastard, while Crozier pants and spits and fucks him raw. Go on and shoot me, Hickey thinks, it will only be more trouble for you. Good luck to the man who must dispose of a body in such a climate — will the captain drag him out to the hole in the ice where Franklin's corpse lies, and stuff him down under the ice without so much as a fare-thee-well?

Just as he is thinking of the great fool Franklin, Crozier spills his seed against Hickey's shirt in one awful pressurized jet — he can feel the filthy weight of it sticking to his back, in the moment before Crozier wipes the gun barrel on his shirttails. Hickey's obscene invective is interrupted by a breathless cry of disgust.

"Turn over," Crozier says, choked.

The captain slumps against the desk, for all the world like a beaten man; the limp prick hangs from his flies like a laughable instrument, red and wet. Hickey can raise his face only with difficulty, sucking breaths to fill his lungs with hollow air and watching his own sweat-slick chest rising. Those reddened eyes are fixed on him still. He has not escaped Crozier's notice now, not this man with his prick in his hand and the fury of Captain Bligh in his face.

"Now frig yourself," Crozier says. "I want to see it."

His arms ache, and his hands have gone numb from their positioning, but he can still find his cock and balls and bring himself to attention. Hickey finishes himself off with no more pleasure and no more passion than he would polish a scuff from the toe of a boot — he shuts his eyes and thinks of warm welcoming holes and not the blood creeping down his legs, rolling down the polished wooden table. When he comes it is with the smell of gunpowder and grease in his nose.