Erebus and Terror

Held fast! Ruthlessly trapped in a white sepulchred vice that slowly, inexorably, crushes all hope. Starving we wait, with lips black and caked, all frozen in a wasteland of ice and snow; revealing desolation and utter despair that relentlessly flows, to an uncertain death. We, officers and men, who’d aspired so high, had failed to spot the strange irony of our two ships’ names – ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’! Darkness and horror now stalks each soul, icily gripping us, in manacled madness. Naked we entered this imperfect world, born to long suffering and adversity. Dare we bear arms against this dread fate? Or, meekly succumb to what destiny holds, shorn now of all means, to sustain our lives? In the bleakness and sorrow of that long winter’s night, we watched the fell stars of mighty Ursa, circling, like bears, in the spangled blackness, remorselessly hunting each human soul …to a grizzled end.