Back in the Arctic aboard the Erebus, a cold, overcast day replaces the occasional bright weather that brings both laundry lines in the rigging and the danger of snow blindness and hallucination across the blank, ice-locked seascape.

Graham Gore walks alone over the frozen sea toward King William Land, preferring solitary hunting because it lets him dissolve into pure physical endurance and focus, without having to think of himself as a social, inhabited person. He recalls an earlier expedition in 1836 when obsessive time on the ice left him snow-blind, and he notes how age, past illness, and pain now pull him back to the ship sooner.

On land, Gore shoots two brace of partridges but finds no larger game. He pushes on despite numb feet and the knowledge he will pay later with frostnip; thirst finally forces him to turn back. Crossing pressure ridges and drifts, he sees a storm coming and accepts the risk with his usual refusal to catastrophize, remembering a conversation in which Fitzjames challenged his mildness about danger and hope.

As wind rises and light stings his eyes, Gore narrows his mind to nothing but movement—until he spots a dark shape by a black disk in the ice, a seal hole. He raises his gun and fires almost automatically; a cry carries across the ice, unmistakably human.