‘I had a pain in my leg. It’s better now.’
Mary said softly: ‘She had some cramp.’
Annabel snuggled back into her previous position.
‘Listen to the wind!’ she said.
It was wild and high-pitched; there was an impression of fury, hysteria almost.
Mary asked: ‘What time is it?’
Josef’s voice answered: ‘Soon after six o’clock.’
‘Then mine has stopped,’ Nadya said. ‘It says half past four.’
It was apparent that most, if not all, were awake; there was a general shifting and stirring. Olsen said:
‘Niels, before breakfast I think we will see if the tent is properly secured. If this wind gets underneath it, maybe we lose the tent altogether.’
Mouritzen said: ‘Right. I am dressing now.’
He had trouble with one of the insoles; it kept rucking up when he put his foot into the boot. Olsen was ready before he was. He flashed a torch and then bent to open the flap at his side.
‘Snow!’ His voice was muffled by the canvas. ‘And falling fast.’
Mouritzen at last made his own exit. He crawled into snow two or three inches deep. The snow was falling in big, whirling flakes, carried on a north-westerly wind. He walked round to the seaward side of the tent and came into its full blast. Putting his head down against it, he pushed forward towards the already snowy figure of Olsen.
‘Not good,’ he said. ‘We cannot travel in this.’
‘We need not fear for the tent, at least,’ Olsen said. He pointed with the torch and Mouritzen saw that snow had already drifted up against the side of the tent, anchoring it. ‘We will keep a roof over our heads.’
Mouritzen flashed his own torch around. The large, bright flakes drove through the beam, coming out of blackness and going into a blackness equally deep.
‘Save the battery,’ Olsen ordered him. ‘The spares were on the other sledge.’
He switched the torch off. ‘What do we do?’
‘What can we do? Wait till the blizzard stops.’
‘How long will that be?’
‘I brought no barometer,’ Olsen said, ‘and I had my corn plucked before the last voyage. For guessing, you are as well equipped as I.’
Inside the tent the news was received with considerable gloom. They did not, Olsen realized, share his own apprehensions: of a delay that could wipe out the already dubious margin between the time their food supplies would last and the time it must take them to reach Scoresby. They were depressed merely by the prospect of having to stay cramped up together in the tent. And that was enough in itself. It was virtually impossible for one person to move without disturbing three or four others. Generally the readjustment affected the whole tent.
They had a meagre and unsatisfying snack for breakfast, chiefly consisting of oats with milk and sugar and water from the melted snow. Sheila could not eat any; she had a little piece of chocolate and drank some water, but otherwise nothing. The others helped to make her as comfortable as possible, but there was not much that could be done. She lay there quietly, and Jones held her hand.
The actual physical gloom was as hard to bear as the cramp and confinement. Even though the blackness outside moderated as a meagre daylight filtered through the blizzard, it remained as pitch dark in the tent. The torches, clearly, could only be used in moments of actual need, such as during the preparation and distribution of food rations. For the rest there was continuous darkness, unbroken even by the glow of a cigarette. The smokers had stocked up with cigarettes and tobacco before leaving the Kreya, but Olsen ruled against any smoking inside the tent.
When noon passed with no slackening in the storm, hope of getting away that day was finally abandoned. Somewhat later paths were cut through the drifts that now packed on either end of the tent, to enable people to go outside for the requirements of elimination. After that there was nothing to do but lie in the dark, waiting for an inadequate supper, and for the long night which would be no different from the day.
‘In the night,’ Josef said, ‘it must snow itself out. Tomorrow we find all clear. For now, I have heard sleep is as good as food. We must try it.’
* * *
But in the morning, although the wind was less strong, it was still snowing. It snowed all that day, and all the next. They kept the paths from the tent clear, and by the evening of the third day the snow was packed higher than Olsen’s head on either side. The tent itself was covered with snow. It had a fairly steep pitch, but Olsen wondered how long it would be before it collapsed under the growing weight.
As to the members of the party, the second day saw a time of savage irritability, and a number of explosions into anger. Stefan and Thorsen quarrelled furiously when Thorsen claimed that Stefan, moving about restlessly, had kicked him. There was trouble of a less precise kind between Thorsen and Jones, and at one point, after he had been singing tunelessly in Polish for some time, both Stefan and Nadya rounded on their father. Olsen himself felt irritation grow in him like lust, with the same drive towards dissipation in some grand orgasmic outburst; but he fought it and controlled it. That the others should so signally fail to do the same was cause for the irritation to rise again out of its damped ashes; he took refuge at last in the cold haven of contempt.
By evening they had grown calmer; during that night and the succeeding day, tension turned into apathy. There was less talk. Blind and helpless, they withdrew into their separate cocoons of memory and desire.
Throughout, Sheila showed little change. She ate practically nothing, but did not complain. There was a period when Jones talked wildly of going out on his own to find help for her, but the obvious impossibility of travelling more than ten yards without getting lost hardly needed pointing out. Sheila quietened him. She asked him to talk to her because it soothed her. He talked of their life together; but always of the future, Olsen noticed, not the past.
It was snowing on the fourth day, too, but the impetus seemed to have declined; the flakes were much smaller and came in gusts. In the early afternoon, the snowfall stopped. Except for Jones and Sheila, they went outside to stretch their legs. They had to break a way up through the drift to the surface.
Olsen and Mouritzen talked together, away from the others. Mouritzen said: ‘My legs feel weak. I had almost forgotten what it is like to walk – or to breathe fresh air.’
Olsen gestured towards the grey sky lying over the white world.
‘It still does not look good,’ he said.
‘Do we break camp? Even if we only travel a kilometre, it would be something to do. We all need that.’
Olsen pointed at the frozen waters of the fjord. Snow lay thick on them, too, rounding and planing the angularities of the ice. Visibility was about a mile.
‘That is our direction,’ he said. ‘Five kilometres will not see us on dry land again if we set out. The risk is too great.’
‘So we stay here?’
‘We have almost no food,’ Olsen said. ‘If the blizzard returns, we may have none. If we can find it, I think it is time to kill the bear.’
Mouritzen shook his head. ‘The bear has gone. Did you expect it would stay, without food, for nearly four days? I saw Nadya searching for it. I think she was glad not to find it.’
Olsen gazed around at the unbroken surface of the snow, as though expecting to see the bear’s head sticking out. His gaze travelled on to the fjord.
‘Get the spears,’ he said. ‘We will go on a hunt. If we cannot have bear, maybe we will eat seal.’
He took all the men except Jones; Nadya, on her insistence, provided the replacement. They scrambled down through the snow to the fjord. The surface had been frozen completely by the blizzard; there was no sound or sight of running water anywhere.
After they had been ten minutes or so on the ice, Josef called:
‘Hi, Captain! Maybe the seals have gone south for the winter? Maybe they are sitting on the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea?’
&nbs
p; ‘Maybe,’ Olsen said. ‘Keep looking, all the same.’
Stefan said in a puzzled voice: ‘What is this thing?’
He was looking at an opening in the snow. Just below there was a hole ringed with ice. Olsen came over and began to brush the snow away with his gauntlet. He revealed a flat-topped, hollow dome. It rose about six inches from the surface of the ice and was some two feet in diameter.
‘They have not gone to Cannes after all,’ Olsen said. ‘This is a breathing hole. The seal keeps this open all winter, breaking the ice as he comes up for air.’
‘So we wait for him,’ Josef said, ‘and stick him with the spear when he comes up?’
‘There will be several holes round here,’ Olsen said. ‘If we search we will find them. Then one of us stands at each of the holes round about, stamping, making noises; and one stands quietly at the middle hole, with a spear. A score of years ago I was told of this, at Scoresby, by an Eskimo. I think he knew his business. I bought a pair of seal-skin trousers from him, and they are still good.’
It took them half an hour to locate another four holes. Olsen gave Josef the spear and the central position. The others stood by their holes and made as much noise as they could by stamping and kicking the ice.
It was an hour before they abandoned the task as hopeless. Dusk was deepening; it would soon be night.
Josef said: ‘I was right at the start. They are sitting on the beaches, taking buns from the Princess of Monaco.’
‘They had been there,’ Olsen said, ‘today. Otherwise the domes would have frozen over.’
‘They are not here now,’ Mouritzen said.
With barely restrained anger, Olsen said: ‘It was worth trying. Did you have a better suggestion?’
Mouritzen said: ‘Even an Olsen must fail sometimes. You are offended too easily, Erik.’
They plodded in silence back to the tent. It began snowing when they were half-way there – powder-fine, drifting snow. It was less palpable than the earlier snow, and more penetrating. It seemed to sift right through their clothes to lie, cold and wet and uncomfortable, against the skin. They struggled back into the tent and took their outer garments off, feeling miserable and depressed. Olsen turned on his side away from the others and lay in silence. Even at supper time, his speech was curt and monosyllabic. When Josef spoke to him, he ignored him.
Chapter Twelve
All night and all the next day the snow drifted down. During the day, in addition to maintaining the paths, they cleared most of the snow off the tent itself, packing it high on either side so that the tent lay between tall, white walls. It gave their position a gloomy air of permanence which was in grim contrast with their dwindling supplies of food. The meat and chocolate had long been eaten. They were living chiefly on biscuits and oats, and the store of these was almost gone. They also cut steps leading up to the top surface of the snow.
In the early morning of the following day, Olsen went outside to inspect. The snow was still coming down, and he thought the wind was higher again. There was no prospect of improvement, and unless some improvement did come soon their position was likely to be desperate. The weather would clear in time, but by then few or none of them might be strong enough to continue the trek towards Scoresby.
Yet there was nothing else to do but wait. Olsen crawled back into the tent. ‘Not yet,’ he said, when someone put the usual question, ‘maybe it will clear later.’ He made little attempt to put conviction into his voice; for all of them, hope had become a nebulous, far-off thing.
It was close on ten when Stefan needed to go out; he had to climb over his father and Olsen to get to the nearest exit point. When he opened up the flap, he said: ‘It is more light.’ He put his head outside and then pulled it in again.
‘The snow has stopped!’
The others wasted no time in getting their boots on and following him. Olsen saw Stefan’s figure on the upper level, outlined against a sky that was grey-blue and powdered with stars. He climbed the steps to join him.
The view was impressive, and heartening. In the south-east, the last of the clouds lay above the peaks of the Stauning Alps, their undersides flushed salmon red from the sun that had not yet risen. The rest of the sky was clear, with a pale full moon and stars that faded and began to flicker towards extinction as the light slowly advanced. To the south, across the mouth of the fjord, there were hills with the dawn glow over them. The air was very clear and, despite the wind that still howled over the snowy crest behind them, there was a feeling of stillness everywhere.
Mouritzen, joining Olsen, said:
‘That looks good.’
‘Three days ago it would have looked better.’ Mouritzen glanced at him. ‘It is easier to lie still and starve,’ Olsen said, ‘than to march and starve.’
Josef, standing some yards from them, called:
‘Captain, you have the glasses? What is that – across the ice, at the foot of the hills?’ Olsen put up his binoculars and swung them in a small arc in the direction of Josef’s pointing. Josef said: ‘I am silly, maybe, yet it looks like smoke.’
Olsen took the glasses away. His face was controlled apart from a twitching at the corner of his mouth.
‘Smoke,’ he said. The word was non-committal; it could have indicated a despairing and contemptuous denial. Then he gave the glasses to Mouritzen. ‘The most easterly point of land,’ he said. ‘By the first dip.’
The scene came in focus. Folds and slopes of snow, all white, blank, and there, at one point, a smudge of brown that curled against it, and thinned out and was lost.
Mouritzen said foolishly: ‘It is smoke. Then someone has lit a fire there?’
‘A hunting hut,’ Olsen said. ‘They are placed at intervals along the trail. Someone – a scout or a trapper – has been snowed up there, as we have been.’
‘And by the time we can reach it, he is likely to be gone. Should we send up a flare?’
Olsen shook his head. ‘We are over thirty kilometres away. And there are only two flares left.’
‘Then if we reach the hut,’ Mouritzen said slowly, ‘we only profit by having better shelter than the tent.’
‘The huts have stores of food,’ Olsen said, ‘and fuel. Some have wireless transmitters.’ He studied the distant view through the field-glasses again, as though reluctant to believe what he had seen. He was smiling when he turned back to Mouritzen. ‘Our luck turns with the weather.’
‘Over thirty kilometres – we cannot do that in one day.’
‘With the sledge, not even twenty – we must go slowly with the sick woman. But a couple, travelling light, can reach the hut by nightfall. If there is a transmitter, they can call Scoresby for help – perhaps get a nurse for Mrs Jones. In any case they can bring food back to us along the trail – if we walk today we will be in poor shape tomorrow.’
‘A couple? Who?’
‘You and Thorsen.’
‘I would rather stay with the main party.’
‘We will look after Mary and Annabel. The child is hungry. Bring food to her.’
* * *
Preparations for departure were undertaken in a cheerful mood, although most of them were surprised at the physical weakness revealed by their exertions. Packing, as a result of this, took longer than had been expected. Olsen said:
‘It is better for you two to start at once. You will not have much time to spare in reaching the hut.’
Thorsen had roped round the typewriter case. He put it on the sledge. He grinned at Jones, who was standing near him. In a low voice, he said:
‘Look after our typewriter, Mr Jones. It would be a pity to lose it now.’
There was a tremor in the snow, a few yards from the spot where the sledge stood; it was not strong, but they all felt it.
‘What is that?’ Stefan asked uneasily.
The tremor was repeated, more positively. The snow heaved volcanically, and split. A furry brown head lifted, and a large brown body unwound after it. Nadya ran across, slip
ping and plunging in the loose snow.
‘Katerina! So you are a faithful bear still – you found another bed but you did not go far.’ She put her arms round the bear’s neck. ‘You do not desert me.’
Olsen eyed the bear speculatively while the others crowded round. Nadya caught his eye. She hesitated for a moment and then went to him.
‘We will also go on the advance party, Katerina and I.’
Olsen said: ‘They cannot be delayed.’
‘We will not delay them,’ Nadya said. ‘We are ready now. She does not have her harness to put on since we have stolen her rations. There may be food for her at the hut. And you will not be tempted to go bear-hunting if you are hungry tonight.’
‘Two are enough in the advance party,’ Olsen said. ‘We need you to help with the sledge.’
‘Then let Niels or Jorgen stay behind. We are going.’
Olsen shrugged. ‘As you please.’
‘Shall I stay?’ Mouritzen asked.
‘No, you go. You can leave Jorgen, if you want to.’
Mouritzen glanced from Nadya to Mary. ‘I need Jorgen.’
Nadya said: ‘Then we go à trois – à quatre, with Katerina. That makes two couples.’ She grinned. ‘Katerina and I will chaperone each other.’
They carried no food and no blankets. Reaching the hut that day was vitally essential; it was only when they were well out on the ice that it occurred to Mouritzen that they had only Olsen’s word for it that the plume of smoke necessarily implied a cabin. It might come from a fire laid in the open. If there were trappers who had been snowed up like them, they also might have been in a tent. When they reached the spot there might be nothing but cold ashes and a depression in the snow.
Whether his doubts were reasonable or not, there was no point in dwelling on them. They were committed to the enterprise, and it had to be carried through with the minimum of delay. He set a fast pace. He had thought he might have to chivvy Nadya on or, in extremity, to abandon her to be picked up by the main party, but she kept up with him cheerfully and, it seemed, almost effortlessly. It was Thorsen who had to be bullied and who, even so, tended to fall behind. The bear followed Nadya, keeping three or four paces behind her, as though on a lead.
The White Voyage Page 19