If someone had told Hickey that three years on he'd be crossing an icy Arctic plain with freezing winds darting under his woolen comforter and piercing like pins through the knitted loops of his Welsh wig, just for a chance at horizontal refreshment -- more horizontal than anything you could manage bent over a pallet, down in the dead-room with the ship's cat twining itself between your ankles and the creak of the ice sounding out like cannon-fire -- if someone had told Hickey that, he'd have dabbed him in the neck. Mr. Dunn had taken ill, and the Erebites were sorely in need of a replacement -- could Terror spare a caulker's mate, just for two days? Never mind that the only holes that needed stuffing were to be found in Commander Fitzjames' person.

Frostbitten fingers and cheeks mean little, with such fine hospitality on offer. Commander Fitzjames had a cabin of his own, spacious in comparison to a hammock slung from the rafters alongside three dozen other men, and tobacco to spare. His disposition in the right mood could be called welcoming; catching him in the right mood was the trick of it, catching him in a moment of triumph or boredom. They'd met during one of those upper-deck entertainments the damned fools on Erebus were so fond of -- men mingling across all distinctions of rank and station, rotten verses and rat-bitten crinolines, not a one of them remembering their lines, and Fitzjames in the thick of it all in immaculate uniform with the whiff of orange-flowers on him. Hickey had resisted the desire to fire off some smart remark, and he'd been rewarded with applause for his performance as a shortarsed nymph in unconvincing drapery. Fitzjames had stolen a plum part out from under the icemaster of Terror and played Jove. He'd found him in the hold afterward and left Hickey with spunk-stains in his smallclothes and a false beard in his hand, strung on wires.

After that, they've had few occasions to exchange more than glances, but when they have -- Hickey's a simple man. If he has to walk a quarter-mile across the ice for a crumb of privacy and a warm tight welcoming body, he'll take it.

Commander Fitzjames, best walker in the service. Billy had let that one drop after another interminably long supper on Terror and Hickey could make no sense of it until seeing the gallant commander with his trousers off and all the sinews in his legs quivering -- he didn't boast so much when he was on his back with his legs crooked over Hickey's shoulders and the back of his fist thrust in his mouth to keep from breathing out obscenities loud enough for the men to hear. Hickey plays with Fitzjames' tool against his belly, resting inside him as his erection slackens -- the wetness of his own seed going cool and sticky. Fitzjames' horsey face is flushed in two red patches, and blurred with sweat. They've got hours to spend like this.