by Cormac James
Why don’t I be the judge of that?
They ate in silence. Outside, the world was changing shape.
I hope I didn’t interrupt anything, she said.
Mr MacDonald is a little worried about the weather, Brooks told her.
We are in the Arctic, Mr MacDonald, at the tail-end of winter, Morgan said. It is a storm. That is generally how it goes in the Arctic, at the tail-end of winter. He had not even looked up from his plate. If you don’t like it, he said, there’s the door.
They came flailing out of the ship as from a house in flames. Some men leaping straight over the gunwale onto the ice. Roaring like drunkards. It sounded like a full-blown revolt. Here at last was the chance they’d been longing for. Every timber was whimpering. It was the end. They had already decided, she would be crushed. With a proud, ponderous groan, she was heeling over. As perfect a heeling over as I ever saw, Morgan said afterwards.
From a safe distance they watched a lump of ice the size of a billiard table topple over the gunwale, slide across the deck, bounce out onto the floe again. Humbled, they watched the main crack ploughing for the bow. A gang was already shovelling it full of snow, hoping the thing might somehow freeze again into a solid block. Any other time, Morgan would have laughed at it as a practical joke, and a shrewd one. Now it dismayed him, the effort wasted, but he did not call them off. It would be a wonderful example to cite, of their own stupidity.
She was standing up against him, in her bearskin boots and her bearskin coat. He opened his own, tried to stretch it around her. The boy was underneath, pressed between them, screaming as loudly as he possibly could. The physical power of the thing was impressive. The depth of the outrage. Simultaneously hopeless and insistent, every lungful milked to the full. He’d not let up since they’d grabbed him from his cot.
Daly and his party were hauling crates across the ice, away from the listing ship. MacDonald was lowering the boats. Cabot was counting the bread bags, over and over, and Morgan wondered was the man drunk again. All set, Brooks came to say. Morgan held her a little tighter. He did not know where to go.
Careful, she ordered. You’re crushing him.
They stood face to face by the coal-house, listening to the war. Before, the collisions had always been deep and dull, like distant artillery. This was new. This was clean and brittle, like breaking glass. It was the extreme cold. The vast, mechanical rattling all around. This is what it had sounded like, he reminded himself, before Ghazni. The awkward hundreds on horseback. The thousands in restless gear. The nagging of stirrups, sabres, spurs. It brought him right back. For just an instant, for no good reason, he wanted the thrill of seeing the Impetus destroyed.
Half an hour had passed. Where there had been screams, now there were whimpers. To comfort himself, Morgan held the small, warm body against his own, as gently as he could. More than ever, he felt the original, sickening need. It was half-sleep drifting into a well-tailored dream. It felt, at times, like he was falling in love.
By now the moon had come out to watch. Overhead, the spars were etched into a gunmetal sky. Out in the desert, the men were playing at ghosts. The ice had the cold conscience of pearl.
Then the spell was broken. Suddenly Morgan was roaring, ordering the boats hauled back aboard, and ordering everyone off the ice. From every crack now came a cloud of steam. Whatever was beneath the ice had started to simmer. Now it was starting to boil. The world entire was breaking up. Not one square yard was sure, no two in agreement. A boat would have been bucked in seconds. In a minute, it would have been kindling.
They stood by the gangway in their furs, bundles at their feet, looking over the wastes. Out there, somewhere, was their island. On clear days, even in the very best light, it was never more than a sketch. Only six or seven miles off, he goaded himself now. It did not matter. Over such terrain, in such turmoil, they might as well have tried for Peru.
They watched the coal-house, intact, sliding towards the edge of the floe. Afterwards there was only a long black streak, like a lone slur of charcoal on a clean page. They watched the main crack close up again, squeezing its filling like cream from a cake. About eleven o’clock, inexplicably, the pressure eased off. By midnight the ship had begun to right herself, bit by bit. Each concession seemed begrudging, but one followed the other, in fits and starts, and that is how they were reprieved.
21st February
Breakfast was quiet. The faces were grey. Some of the men had slept in their clothes. Some had not slept at all. He had Banes and Leask scrape off the deck to proof the seams. He sent Cabot down into the crawling space, to proof the Samson posts.
Nowhere, strangely, was there any sign of play.
Some of the men seemed relieved. As after every crisis, they seemed to think they had seen something like the worst. To Morgan, the ice had merely been toying with them, and he could not esteem men so fond of hope. But that evening, from his private supply, every man had half a gill of brandy to toast McIntosh & Sons, Shipmakers, of Inverness. It would restore a little swagger, after this latest crush. It would oblige them to absorb a little more the next time, to have boasted how well their ship was built.
Alone in his cabin, he took a book from the shelf, opened a marked page. Mount Raleigh, he read. First charted by John Davis himself. A brave mount, the cliffes whereof are orient as golde. The words had been written over two hundred and fifty years before. To Morgan the man was a friend and neighbour. Now they too had their own lump of rock.
He had sighted it a week before. The date was marked forever in the log. It had been the quietest day in months, with a noon sky very like the colour of mud. He would hardly have called it brighter, but to his eyes it was decidedly less dark, and he could not resist going out for a walk. An hour later, a full moon in a clear sky suddenly showed him a spectral coastline to the southeast, about four miles off. He should have jumped up and roared Land! but did not dare. He was terrified such presumption might make the thing disappear. He wanted to rush towards it, to touch and grip the thing, to hold it in place. He merely shuffled a few feet closer and stood in silence, as though expecting someone to appear and wave to him from the shore. Even as he stood watching it, the weather was worsening again. Snow of the finest grain now hung in the air. Between him and the island, already, it was someone’s breath on the window pane.
Since then – a week ago – no one had gone up but the watch, and even they stayed mostly under the housing, that the latest storms had now set hard as board. Below, lying on his bed, Morgan dreamed of sleeping for months on end, to wake in blatant sunshine, like a bear. More and more, he admired the animal world. He had almost entirely ceased to think of returning home. His mind could not reach further now than the island, the return of the sun. The sun, he knew, was daily closer to the horizon. He read it and repeated it. At noon every day, he went up expecting some sudden break in the weather, some little hint of pink glass, and always found everything the colour of steel.
25th February
The men’s natural vigour must be properly husbanded, Morgan said. October twenty-eighth.
Natural vigour, Kitty said. What a wonderful man he was.
They were drinking tea. It was late afternoon. Morgan was reading aloud from Myer’s journal again, the best parts. The watch was shuffling back and fo
rth. DeHaven lifted his head. He was next on the roster.
God forbid, he said, that our island should drift away with no one there to wave it goodbye.
The exercise will do you good, Kitty said. You said so yourself. Want of exercise, Morgan read. Want of light. Salt meat. He flapped over another page. Simple problems with simple solutions, he said. He was very fond of them. Our late, much lamented Captain Gordon Myer.
There was no miracle remedy, he knew. Some men were more susceptible than others, was the useless truth. Maintain their diet, the daily exercise, was DeHaven’s own advice. And perhaps a bath per man per week, with a rough towelling afterwards, to get the blood flowing again.
Lemon juice, Morgan said. Correction, fresh lemon juice. Cabot! he shouted at the ceiling. Go pick me a dozen!
They say if sorrel doesn’t altogether cure, it certainly calms, MacDonald said.
Small beer, said Brooks.
You can’t say it has Cabot in the best of health. For all the gallons he’s drinking.
I don’t mean that dross he concocts for himself, Brooks said.
The yeast might in fact do the gut some good, DeHaven said.
I’ve heard it said there is nothing more effective than a cheerful outlook, said Kitty.
All nonsense. The only thing we need is patience, Morgan said. It had become almost the chief virtue in his mind, because he was so much better at it than most other men.
Does chewing tobacco have anything to recommend it?
A wise choice of race, MacDonald said. Did you ever hear of an Eskimo going down with it?
It hasn’t done Petersen much good, has it? Have you been to see him lately?
Pure-blood I mean.
The list went on, suggestions from all sides, and nothing in it untainted by mockery or despair.
The only guaranteed remedy I ever heard of, DeHaven told them, is to take an apartment in London for the summer and take a stroll in St James’s Park every afternoon, if the sun is out.
They smiled bitterly. Outside the world was still raging, worse than a sandstorm, and as cold as it was ever likely to be. For months now, they’d lived like monks of a lax but enclosed order, undisturbed by the prospect of change. They spoke to God, and spoke to each other. They wrote and read, and followed the trump. They had nowhere else to go.
They talked of the island, and what they would find there, with the return of the light. But above all they spoke of the release summer should bring. Morgan did not contradict them, but knew they were wrong. It was his own fault, perhaps. All winter the living had been so much better regulated, for the sake of the boy. Below, there were no more gloves, no hats. Even a topcoat often was too much swaddling. They were too snug and too easy, and liked to forget what exactly was on the other side of the wall.
But he himself had not forgotten. He knew well what was going on. As from a great distance overhead, he saw the prodigious cold clotting and closing every lead, every last crack – everything loose, soft, wet – like so many wounds staunched and healed. He tried to sell it to himself. It would stop the drift. It would be easier to traverse, if the ship were crushed. His mind was searching for an exit, something to force his hand. This last crush had squeezed her farther than ever out of the ice, and she now stood lurching a little to port, timbers propping her up, very like a boat beached at high tide. As such, she was now unlikely ever to be destroyed. She was just as unlikely, he thought, ever to sail again.
29th February
It was the last day of February. He was in the washroom, in the bath, in an inch of lukewarm water. There was a scratching on the door, exactly like the scratching of the cat. Calling for an answer, an acknowledgement, from whoever was inside. Morgan’s heart was tightening, readying itself for the first blow. He could not even see the door for steam. He did not know what to do.
He put a knuckle to the panel, tapped twice. Wondering would the boy understand what it was, who, how to respond. He sat naked and perfectly still, waiting for the reply. The silence was terrible.
Finally the boy struck again, with all his force and all his weight. Three slow, deliberate blows, and with each blow Morgan felt something cede. The fear told the true story, as usual. It was a summons he had been waiting for, and dreading, all his life. He touched his hand flat to his chest. There was an animal knot under the ribcage, a muscle tight as a fist. This must be how it felt, he thought – the first great valve faltering, the first trickle of death. In his mouth, this was the taste.
Dadda! the boy shouted.
It was a sharp breath on slumbering coals. Something within him was burning, mortified. There was suddenly life again – glory – in a place that had been iron, grey.
Again he tapped a knuckle against the door, and in answer the boy began to pound. Morgan reached for the walls on either side of the tub, as though to brace himself against another shock. He could feel the whole of the ship, every nerve, trembling in his hands. She was about to be crushed, to fall apart. There was nothing to keep her joints, to stop the planks from clattering loosely onto the floe. But he was not strong enough. The crack between door and jamb began to breathe. The boy was trying to push it open, to get in.
Oh God, he choked. He could not stand this devastating happiness, this pitiless game. His arms were pressing stupidly against the thin walls. He felt faint. He was falling. He was holding himself in place. With short, shallow breaths he was keeping himself alive.
He could not say what the boy wanted or what he wanted himself. He only knew it was painful pleasure, this call and response. There was no way to receive or cheat it. He had been lured and trapped. Somehow he had to get out of this iron-plated room. He had to get into the open air, free, out of range.
1st March
DeHaven made sure now to knock on the cabin door every morning, before he began his hospital round. Morgan was never eager to go. He knew all too well the state of their decline. More than once, coming in from the cold, he himself had fainted dead away. So far, he had always managed to reach his cabin, where the thing could be concealed. He told DeHaven they needed more exercise. DeHaven said they needed fresh meat. At last count, five men had the flux.
It’s Petersen now, DeHaven said. He can’t even move his legs.
In the forecastle it smelled worse than a stable. They pulled back the hospital curtain and stepped inside.
How do you feel? DeHaven said. Describe it, he said. He was taking notes.
Like I been at the wrong end of a good hiding, the man said.
Open up, DeHaven said. Let’s have a look.
The man’s tongue looked like he’d been eating blackberries.
DeHaven rolled down the blanket, told the man to undo his johns. Much like a bruised apple, the skin near the armpit was stiff and wrinkled, the flesh beneath dark and soft. DeHaven touched it with his fingertip. Morgan himself had something similar at the top of his thigh, just where he’d caught an arrow, coming into Kandahar. The thing followed no logic that he could see.
They moved along. The next man was Petersen.
It is what? Petersen said.
From a small blue bottle, DeHaven poured a measure onto a soup spoon.
Open wide, he said.
Come on now, be good, Morgan said. All the other boys have taken theirs.
The mouth remained shut, obstinately.
You think we’re trying to poison you? Morgan said. Carefully he took the spoon, and threw it back in a go. He held the stare a moment, then poured another dose.
In the half-light, the other men lay watching. In the end, Petersen did as his captain had done. Even as he swallowed his face crumpled, and they all began to laugh. Morgan too gave a smile, but kept his lips closed. He did not want to admit it, but his own gums were blistered and raw. He felt like he was teething again, decades on. It was a less a moulting than a revival, of all the old woes.
We need fresh meat, DeHaven said. Not just for the hospital, but for the boy.
Morgan said nothing. There was nothing to say. Day and night he had the memory – the foretaste – of it in his mouth. He’d already been to see the hunters. Blacker, Banes, Jones. It was pointless. There was nothing to aim at.
The estate seems hopelessly short of game, DeHaven said. Quite shot out. Present company excepted, of course.
We’re not quite come to that, Morgan said. Not yet.
15th March
Kitty was sitting at his desk, writing on an orange slip. The latitude and longitude, the date, the name of the ship. Done, she dropped it in the basket, and took another from the stack of blanks. Five hundred, she announced. Beside her, Morgan didn’t answer. He’d done as many himself, as had every man aboard with a legible hand.
During their first winter’s drift, on Myer’s orders, once a month he’d thrown overboard a special tin with a similar slip inside. He’d done it once a week last summer, as long as the ice was still loose and there was a chance of the tin drifting away. But he’d been wary of it from the off, as he was wary now of launching their last balloon. It was too perfect a picture of futility, the commander who placed his only hope in these useless appeals.