A couple of weeks after the shooting incident, Graham Gore leads a small party from the ice-bound ship across sixteen miles of pack ice to Cape Felix, where a magnetic observatory and hunting base is being established. Hunting has been poor, and all meat is surrendered to the common table under strict custom; Gore shares his first caribou heart with Harry Goodsir, who responds with a brisk lecture on parasites, underscoring how thin morale has become.

Cape Felix is meant to reduce exhausting daily trips from the ships, but the conditions punish everyone: faces are frost-disfigured, sleeping bags freeze solid overnight, and damp wool cannot be dried. Gore notes that Lieutenant Hodgson of Terror has been appointed chief magnetic officer despite being young and not a scientist, which worries Gore; it suggests Francis Crozier does not value the work, or does not expect any field results to ever reach England.

As months pass without any reconnoiter—no one dares say “rescue”—and as Gore’s earlier message left at John Ross’s cairn goes unanswered, hunger and lethargy settle over the camp. Gore keeps order through cheer, charisma, and the implied threat of discipline, but the men grow weaker as fuel runs low and even water must be melted.

Mealtimes become torment: cold rations sit like ice in the belly, thirst rises, and Gore has to stop men eating snow. Des Voeux and Marine Sergeant Bryant shoot a hare and drink its blood for warmth and liquid. Worst of all, the local Inuit trading partners who came last year have vanished, leaving the camp isolated and without the help Gore expected.

Gore’s own body begins to fail—his trigger fingers swell and whiten—yet he pushes himself, wanting at least one more week and dreaming of taking an ox. Then, without warning, the horizon splits: Gore sees what looks like a flash of lightning resolve into a doorway of blue light. He instinctively raises his gun, and later he will wonder what might have changed if he had met what came through the door another way.