Work Text:
One couldn’t spend as long as Thomas Jopson had around Captain Francis Crozier without learning a thing or two about the principles of magnetism. The man lived and breathed it; the devotion he showed to his dip circle felt almost sacrilegious sometimes, in the way it stood to rival his love for Terror herself.
Jopson had not grown up with ever a thought to the magnetic fields of England, let alone those of the far Southern Ocean or the Arctic Circle. The closest he’d come was playing with metal shavings behind the machine shop down the alley, dragging them around with a scrap of iron until it was time for supper.
But then he’d come aboard Terror and learned of the secret knots that bound the world: Humboldt’s dream of the magnetic planet, all its intricacies understood, and his Captain’s vital role in uncovering these mysteries.
It was rather curious, he reflected, that the Captain was so inhospitable to the idea of sharing his magnetic responsibilities with Commander Fitzjames, given how easily he’d offered his own lowly steward the occasional opportunity to learn.
But Jopson certainly did not take it for granted. Oh, the things the Captain showed him! The way he relaxed into himself, comfortably seated at his instruments; the way he could expound on the reason behind the endless shifting of the poles, or the properties of ferrous stone.
And in the records of inclination the Captain kept, Jopson had discovered something familiar. He’d thought himself ignorant of magnetism entirely, before: but it turned out he’d known it all his life, in a way.
Because Jopson had never needed an instrument to mark the fluctuations in the great map of men that made up the Terror. It unfurled in his head without effort, overlaid itself on the comings and goings of officers and ABs, mates and boys.
There were the steady blue streams of loyalty from the sailors on the quarterdeck as the captain paced up and down, knitting together into a strong, solid weave. There was the pulsing red line of adoration that ran to Billy Gibson from that wiry caulker’s mate, Hickey, and its thready, roseate reciprocation, of a much weaker quality.
And then there was the one that ran, golden and tentative, from handsome Lieutenant Little all the way to himself.
At first Jopson had thought himself mistaken. A trick of the mind, an error in the instrument? Surely, his sight failed him now.
Yet the vision persisted, through command meetings and brushes in the passageway and not only did it persist but it grew, evermore brighter.
He couldn’t even be sure that Little himself knew it was there. He thought perhaps that he didn’t: it wasn’t the sort of thing that fit neatly into the view of the world a man like that kept in his head, ordered as any of Jopson’s carefully arranged pantry shelves.
Perhaps he needed to be shown, then. A delicate operation: but of course, those were Jopson’s favorites.
**