It starts out small – a seam on his tunic rips, he loses his snow knife somewhere outside of town, an animal gets into one of his traps and leaves behind massive-looking prints in the snow. It gets worse as the daylight starts to make a slow reappearance, a pathetic, little cold leaves him coughing and sniffling, he falls on the ice like an amateur after ice fishing, and he forgets where he’d found a plentiful stash of mushrooms.

But the worst of it comes on a particularly windy night. He'd been strategic when he’d picked the spot for the ice-house, far enough from the houses and roads, tucked up along a hill but not too close to the trees, hidden away to avoid predators. But even with all his precautions and care, in the middle of this windy night a wayward tree branch snaps off from his trunk and finds its way right on top of his igloo’s domed roof.

The impact is enough to destabilize the roof, and down comes the blocks of ice on top of the slumbering Francis Crozier.