The Crew of the HMS Terror

Distant figures
Eight or nine out on the ice
Drawing nearer
Ghostly thin and deathly white

Not a glimmer
In their gaunt and haunted eyes
Dead men walking or spirits

What choice have we but to retreat and to hide
And wait inside and hope they'll go
Yet hear their footsteps in the snow
Come louder, louder, loud and close

Then a braver
Man than I stepped out to find
Wraith-like creatures
Cold of skin and dead of mind

Food we offered
Would not eat and would not trade
Would not speak a word
On their grim death march into the waste

So we made an igloo for them all to sleep
And left for them three seals to eat
And silently, silently fled when night came

Seasons came and went
We returned one day to search
Objects we had left
In our haste to flee the curse

Why had they arrived?
Would their coming spell our doom?
Captured in the ice
We found that the igloo we built had provided their tomb
And they had left the seals alone
But they had feasted on their own
With human teeth marks on human bone

What line divides survival and sin?
What point does life depart and death creep in?
What line between a man and a beast?
Starving in the land on which we feast
Starving in the land on which we feast