by Cormac James
The house itself was empty. Austin had taken everything, left only a few lumps of coal in one corner, a few broken staves, two split tins of hotch-potch. If they did not want to freeze or starve, they had to return to the ship.
In the mute panic of his mind, Morgan struggled to understand. He had imagined how easy it would be not to go back, if the ships were gone. Lancaster House would have food and fuel enough for six months, he’d told the men. If the expedition ships were gone, they could stay all through the winter, in relative comfort. Next summer, a ship would pick them up. They had pushed on to find the missing man, they could say. It would be true. It would be almost the entire truth. They could say they had been trapped. A storm, an accident. The long hard winter would be testimony in their favour, against almost any charge.
All his life, he sometimes thought, he had deliberately courted shame. That was why he had accepted this particular commission, that men ten years younger had turned down. That was why he had accepted command of the sledge. Perhaps, as usual, he had been punishing himself for other failures, or other flaws, or testing for them. It was a young man’s vanity that he clung to, or that clung to him – the thought that he could still redeem himself. From what, he didn’t know. He presumed it didn’t much matter by now. But time and again, year after year, he put himself farther, longer, deeper. So far, he had always managed to come back. And even that, in his ruthless logic, was a mark against him. This time, he’d gone farther than ever before. Coming down the coast, he was putting himself beyond danger, he thought. Every extra step, he thought, was more room for manoeuvre. In any great space, he now saw, the room for manoeuvre was minuscule.
He stepped into the lee of the gable, out of the rising breeze. His face inches from the frozen wall. He closed his eyes, felt himself swaying gently, let himself lean forward until his head touched the stone. Through his head-furs, the thing felt as cold and solid as steel. Arms by his side, body stiff, he leaned into his forehead, confided it all his weight. The pressure grew. His body was trembling. He clenched his teeth, and clenched his throat. Let his head drop back, his mouth open to the sky. Emerged a pitiful sound. It felt as though something was physically draining out of him, something he’d been trying desperately to contain. He had thought it a reserve of strength, but it felt more like a weight, a burden, that he was now being relieved of. He had arrived, he knew, at a very particular moment, a very particular spot. Whether it was a moment of great weakness or of great strength, he could not say. He could not now tell the difference. It was the courage to surrender, perhaps.
Afterwards, as he turned to go back inside, he saw a head at the door, instantly withdrawn. It was Cabot, he thought. It did not trouble him, the discovery. It would do him no harm, he guessed, to be thought a little queer in the head.
6th November
The next morning they had a good breakfast of pork and chocolate, with a double dose of spirits, and at eight o’clock they started for home. They did not look any more to the south. Whatever calamity or miracle each man had secretly hoped to find at Beechey, that was all behind them now.
Until yesterday, every step had been a step farther out, that would have to be paid for a second time, on the way back. He had thought of it bravely, the volte-face, the first unimpeachable step towards home. From then on, he was sure, the steps would be easier to make, as you counted them down. He was wrong. The road was as heavy as ever, the day was calm, and he was soon dripping with sweat. The beach was covered with snow, and they advanced pedantically, step by stupid step. They were heading back to their last campsite, where they’d left the sledge. They were taking the long way round. If DeHaven was still alive, there was still a chance they might meet him, Morgan said. More than once he looked out over the bay. The floe had been shattered by the gale, and every crack stuffed to the brim with snow. In his mind, he saw a lone figure leaping grandly across the cracks. Or scraping his feet along the ground, feeling his way in the dark, blind. No matter how careful you were, every so often you would sink to your knees, or your waist. Sooner or later, you would simply disappear.
At their last campsite, the sledge was still there, but the oilskin cover was badly torn. Each man gave it a shameful glance. The snow roundabout had been trampled flat, and soiled.
It is a bear, Morgan said. It was an official announcement. He was furious at the doubt, the hope. Look at the dung, he said.
On all sides were familiar horizons. From hereon out, whatever he did would not be enough. Whatever they suffered, it would be deserved. He was coming back at least one man short. Already he heard the insinuations, in the captain’s cabin, and traded freely amongst the men.
DeHaven had made a kind of burrow for himself, a hundred yards north of the camp. He heard the voices, crawled out, managed a single, strangled cry. His feet were in a bad way. He looked and sounded like a man catatonically drunk. He had lost his goggles and was totally blind.
They set up the tent around him, stripped him naked, began to rub him all over, all five of them, as hard as they could. Every now and then they dribbled a little rum or hot tea into his mouth. They kept at it all evening and much of the night.
The next morning they carried him out in his bag and laid him on top of the sledge, and tied him down. He was mumbling something, Morgan saw. He put his ear right up against the lips.
Of course I will, Morgan answered him, in a knowing voice. That’s exactly what I’ll do. Good and tight, he told Banes. We don’t want him falling off.
Cabot and Banes laid the buffalo skin over him.
Let’s try not to smother the man, Morgan said. If I can at all manage it, I intend to bring him in alive.
That first day they were twelve hours under weigh, minus two hours for stoppages, to rub the hands and feet again.
Don’t listen to him, Morgan told them. It’s for his own good.
They were twelve hours under weigh that day, and that night in the tent he could see the men were in need of consolation. He trawled his mind and found nothing. Yet often that day, even during the worst of it, he’d felt he was precisely where he ought to be. Where the beach was flat, they found the tracks they’d made coming south. It was a purpose-built road, that promised slick, easy pulling, all the way back to the ship. The deep tracks, the flat course, the obstacles nicely navigated – everything was tailor-made. All they had to do was slot themselves in.
About six in the evening on the 12th of November they made the Cape Osborn depot. Their grave had been dug out, wrecked and robbed. The barrels of bread and pork lay in splinters, teethmarks in the frozen wood. A leather glove sat stiff on a rock, a finger pointing at the sky. Nearby, the lump of a Bible was fluttering prettily. Up and down the beach, every few yards, another alien shape was growing under the snow. A tin of potatoes. A tobacco-box. One of the little rum kegs. They strolled back and forth kicking them out. A sheaf of wicks. The spare thermometer. Then a shout from Cabot – he’d found the little chess set. But not a single lump of meat. Eventually Morgan found the bottle, with only the note he himself – that other man – had left in it ten days before.
He felt no rush to indignation. In fact, some sly part of him admired the scene. He was used to being punished for what he did wrong. Justice, he called it, even when it was early or long delayed.
When they woke the next morning,
he told them to stay in their bags. He himself worried about the conjuror, the scales. By his reckoning, they had meat enough for two days. The bread might be stretched a little more.
Over and again that day the drift took them to the knees, sometimes even to the neck. Over and again the nose of the sledge took to burrowing. The crust on the new snow out in the Channel was wafer-thin. There was never anything to be done but lift DeHaven off again. So they lifted him off again, and hauled the sledge back up out of the snow. As they loaded him up, Morgan could not help but study the wilderness ahead of them, that nothing could change. His most miserable prophecies were satisfied.
That day they hauled for twelve hours straight, with never more than a few minutes’ pause. Even when the sledge was free, they were wading in water, upstream, feet sucking at the river mud. Step by step he began to forget the snow, the sledge, the other men. He was alone, leaning into the pain. Everything was taxed – every breath, every lift of the leg. There was resistance everywhere, in all directions, all the time. It knew in advance what he was going to do. Even by shifting the harness, he could not shirk it for long. It was too shrewd, and too heartless. It wanted its due. Behind his mask, he had already confessed everything – surrender, indifference, despair. But still the hurt kept burrowing, tirelessly, even when there was nothing more to find. It had reached the raw nerve, and was chewing patiently. It wanted its due.
That day they hauled for twelve hours straight, with never more than a few minutes’ pause, until finally Cabot collapsed. It was neither exaggeration nor display. Morgan himself stood clinging to the sledge, knew that without it he would fall. Daly too had let himself crumple to the ground, and Petersen was standing over them, ordering them to get up. He was roaring. He was right. It would be better, afterwards, to be able to say you had still been able to stand. Stretched out on the ice was too much of a concession. You were beaten, with no further asylum. It was your back against the wall.
Slowly, Daly rolled onto his side, onto his belly, managed to lift himself onto his hands and knees. But still Cabot lay stretched out on the snow, looking up at them. What he wanted, of course, was mercy. It was now blowing smartly, and already the snow was banking up against his leg on the windward side.
They set up the tent around him. They ate their meal without a word, scraped their fingers round the insides of their tins. 12 hours’ labour, he wrote, for 6 miles’ gain, at best. The tent was rattling in the wind. In the ancient lamplight, the faces were stupid with fatigue. Before turning out the lamp, he allowed them an extra dose of grog. It was the one thing they still had plenty of.
Exhaustion had calmed him, flushed away what was useless, cleared his head. The decisions, now, were so much simpler than before. They could not bring the sledge farther, he told them when they woke. They could not do again what they had done the previous day. They could not wait for the surface to freeze. They would have to leave everything but bags and food. How far they still had to go, he did not say. He gave them an hour to better their boots.
I can’t go, DeHaven said.
I don’t care, Morgan said. You’re coming with us.
I don’t want to.
I don’t care. You’re coming with us.
I can’t see. I can’t walk.
I don’t care, Morgan said. I’m not leaving you behind.
Why not? DeHaven said. He sounded like he was going to cry.
The whys and the wherefores are no matter now. We’re not leaving you behind. Full stop.
Is it for her? Is that it?
Morgan didn’t answer.
I refuse, said DeHaven.
You had your chance and you missed it, Morgan said. From now on, I decide.
For the last time, he crawled out of the tent. In the green dawn, he looked back at the Devon Island coast. Day after day, north from Cape Osborn, south almost to Beechey, he had laid it all down. As best I could, he wrote afterwards, in the conditions that obtained, with the tools at my disposal.
He had them balance a tent-pole across his shoulder. Two packs were loaded, compared, corrected. One of those for a standard, until every load was identical, counterweighed. There would be no pack for DeHaven. That was the only concession made.
He had them parcel up everything else on the sledge, tight and tidy, as though they might come back to collect it at their convenience. Everything, he said. Even the buffalo skin. Even his charts and instruments, and the medicine chest, and the scales, and the lamp.
He handed DeHaven the tub of hog’s lard. Extreme unction, he said. Ears, nose, eyes, lips. What else? You’re a doctor, you should know.
DeHaven said nothing, took his scoop, handed it on.
For staffs, they gave DeHaven two tent-poles with padded feet. At first, the legs simply refused to obey. He was leaning forward, almost falling, and step after step a leg swung out to keep him up. Morgan had once seen an old sailor with two wooden legs and two canes walk in much the same way. It could be done. It would get easier, Morgan said, as the legs came back to life.
Once they had started that day, he refused to consult his watch. He pushed on without portion, as though determined to cripple them, by sheer exhaustion. All day he herded them on as best he could. Promising, or goading, or daring them to give in. There she is, he bragged – the headland directly ahead of them, still seven or eight miles off, on the Cornwallis shore. That’s the medal, he said. They could collapse when they reached it, but not before. It was not just for the men. He too fed on the fantasy. It was a screen between himself and the suffering, and the prospect of more.
They had no tent, but lay down that night in the lee of some hummocks, huddled together in the bags. He put DeHaven in the middle, two men on each side, to keep him warm. Even so, like sprinkled sugar, the frost soon covered his bag the same as the rest. They rested about four hours, without sleeping. Without eating, they set out again. They had no food to speak of. The previous day, without the sledge, they had covered some thirteen miles, he judged.
He had been tutoring himself privately with speeches on resilience, on resolve, on untouched reserves. The deep well each man had within him, and drawing the water up. But none of that could dampen the hope that a depot had been laid down for them on the Cornwallis shore. Myer might not have thought of it, but Brooks surely would. Still, he said nothing of that to the men. Already DeHaven and Cabot looked and sounded a little drunk. He knew it as sheer mortal fatigue, and was afraid of what another disappointment might do.
They reached the Cornwallis shore the next morning, staggering into a strong wind from the north, that seemed determined to hold them up. The men huddled up against the cliff face, around the conjuror. Their fuel was almost done. Only the dregs of the bear fat remained. Their boots were falling apart.
He immediately set off up the headland, ordered the others to take their meal without him, right away. Their meal he called it, afraid to call it anything less. Lukewarm tea and a double dose of spirits, that was all. No one proposed to wait for him. As they were drinking it, two hundred feet above them the wind held their commander ridiculous, lopsided, straining in mid-air – like a puppet, wilting, at the end of a string. At precisely the spot where he’d stood and watched DeHaven approach, three short weeks before.
There was no depot, of course. There was no more food. There was light snow. They were pressed up against the bare rock. They lay down on the bare ground, and closed their eyes. They were shivering mechanically. Around five o’clock, one after the other, Morgan and Petersen and Banes and Daly and Cabot got to their feet. They were within forty miles of warm soup and a warm bed, and now DeHaven announced again that he could not go on. No one showed any sign they heard. He was still lying there in his bag.
Ten feet away, around the corner, the drift was coming on so hard it seemed physically impossible they should stand to it. Morgan led the way. A few minutes later he glanced over his shoulder. It was exactly as he expected. They were all there, all five of them, following.
Before, heading down the Devon coast, the effort often seemed pointless, wasted, there was always so far still to go. It seemed to make no difference, pushing on or calling a halt. Now it was the opposite. Now he was afraid to stop. It was a full twenty-four hours since he’d eaten, and by the end of the day his mind was wandering. With his mind wandering, it was easier to go on. He had dropped back again to drive them. Ahead of him he could see the slumped shoulders, the nodding heads. They too were wilting, rehearsing, learning to give in. He was glad of the veils. Here, now, there were no faces, no silent appeals. He was waiting until weakness began to topple them. All he cared about now was that he not be the first.
Just before midnight, with the men stumbling like drunkards, he pulled them up. Cabot and Banes and DeHaven, he saw, were far more damaged than he. They were slowing him down. He wanted to abandon them, push on with Petersen, survive. By his reckoning they had covered some eighteen miles, had twenty-odd to go. They lay down on the frozen shingle, one right up on the other almost, every man. Beside him, DeHaven was whining quietly, like a dog. Worse, he had never known, and could not imagine. This is the worst moment of my life, he promised himself, counting everything to come. It would be a useful memory, he knew, if he survived.