November 21, 1915
I was just drifting off when I heard Shackleton shout. Everyone woke up, some yelling, for they didn't know what was happening. Then we heard: “She's going, boys!” We all piled out of the tent. Boss said he was walking around when he just had a feeling. He went up the tower and saw the ship starting to go down. We all crowded up on the platform; some hung off the ladder to watch. After so long and so much pressure, our gallant little ship was finally surrendering. Only ten minutes and she was gone. Nothing left at all, no bit of mast, no scrap of sail. Like she never existed. All were silent as we watched the last of our broken ship disappear below the ice. No one talked much after. Everyone is depressed, and not even Shackleton tries to pretend we shouldn't be.
chapter twenty-two
By early December, they could see from the tower that the ice was breaking up in places, but it still wasn't open enough to launch the boats. The warmer summer weather made a mess of the camp. The black ash from the blubber stove coated the ice and absorbed the sun, making it melt. Their boots were soaked most of the time. At night, steam from their warm bodies and breath would stick to the inside of the tent, then freeze when the temperature dropped. If any man touched the side of the tent, they were all covered in a shower of frost.
The food supply was holding up, but some of the men were pessimistic. Orde Lees was the worst. He spent hours writing up ration lists and keeping a hawk eye on the supplies. He would stand beside Charlie when he made the hoosh, watching him measure out the dried peas, ready to snatch the bag out of his hand if he added even one ounce extra. The men had dozens of nicknames for Orde Lees now. “Old Lady” and “The Belly Burglar” were some of the nicer ones.
Outside of the routine camp chores, the men worked with renewed energy to prepare for the boat journey. McNeish built up the sides of the three lifeboats with salvaged planks from the Endurance. He filled the new seams with yarn unwound from a scarf and caulked this with a paste of flour mixed with seal blood. The three boats were named after the three biggest donors to the expedition. The largest boat was the James Caird, after a Scottish businessman. The two others were the Stancomb Wills, after an elderly heiress, and the Dudley Docker, after a Birmingham merchant. Crean organized the men into boat crews and drilled them until they could break camp, load the boats, and launch in ten minutes. Shackleton and Worsley had plotted courses to all the nearby islands. The actual destination would depend on the wind and currents.
Hurley built a portable blubber stove. In the most optimistic plan, if everything went perfectly and the weather was good and they hit the nearest island, they would still be in the boats for five days. They could get along without cooking hot food, for they had the dry sledging rations, but they would still have to melt ice for water. They had three little Primus stoves, marvelously compact camp stoves designed for the sledging journey, but there was limited fuel, and Shackleton wanted to save what there was. Even though they all knew an open boat journey would be difficult, they were excited to start. The worst part was just sitting around waiting.
But December wore on, and they were still trapped. The ice would break up a little, then refreeze the next day. Leads would open to tempt them, then close again. They had to ration the ammunition now, so whenever possible, they killed seals with a club to the head and a slit to the throat. It was ugly business. The hot blood poured out of the neck and melted a big puddle in the ice. Perce knew that a good knock on the head was as painless as a bullet, but it was still awful.
“I don't think I'd mind so much if they weren't just lying there peacefully,” he said. “It's like punching a little girl in the nose.”
The one seal they would never try to club was the ferocious, enormous sea leopard. They preyed on penguins and the other seals and seemed eager to have a taste of man as well. Even with eight hundred pounds of blubber and only flippers to “run” with, the sea leopard could outrun a man. One day, on the way back from a hunting trip, Orde Lees was skiing by himself away from the others. An enormous sea leopard leapt out of a crack and started chasing him. Orde Lees skied as fast as he could, shouting for help. The beast chased him along the edge of the floe, then suddenly, just as fast as it had appeared, it slid back in a pool of water. Orde Lees thought he was safe. But then the same ferocious head poked out of the water in front of him. The seal had been tracking him! It opened its huge mouth and roared, showing long, jagged yellow teeth.
Orde Lees screamed. Wild shouted and waved his arms to distract the beast. When the sea leopard saw Wild, it turned and charged him instead. Wild dropped to one knee and aimed. He was perfectly still as the huge beast charged, waiting for a good shot. When it was only about fifty feet away, Wild fired. Perce saw the bullet hit square in the middle of its chest, but the sea leopard didn't stop. Wild fired again. Again the animal recoiled but didn't stop. Wild never flinched or even moved. He took a breath and slowly let it out. He held steady until the beast was barely twenty feet away, then drilled it with one final shot to the head. It dropped to the ice at last. Wild stood up. He didn't seem the least bit ruffled. He just shouldered the rifle and walked over to the dead sea leopard. It was twelve feet long and had to weigh over a thousand pounds.
“Going to be tough eating that one,” Wild said. “Full of lead too. But might as well haul it back. Heavy bugger.”
Orde Lees skied over, gasping for breath, looking a shade pale.
“Why, thank you, Frank,” he said in a shaky voice, staring at the monster that had almost killed him.
“You're quite welcome.” Wild took out his pipe as if nothing much had happened. It took two dog teams to drag the carcass back to camp. When they butchered it, they found hair and bones in its stomach from two other seals it had recently devoured. The jawbone was nine inches across, and Charlie gave it to Orde Lees for a souvenir.
December 10, 1915
Never in my whole life would I have expected my favorite food to be seal liver and seal brains. But it is the truth. They are especially tasty and Doc says most nutritious. Sometimes we find fresh fish in a seal's stomach, and some eat these too. I can't get my mind around eating something that's already been eaten once. Doc still checks us for scurvy every week. Looks at our teeth and bruises. Everyone's healthy, mostly. Some have cuts infected, though, and some dog bites. Cuts don't heal so well out here.
Yesterday I was helping McNeish work on the lifeboats. He has done a knock-up job. He made masts out of scrap wood from the Endurance, and I was holding one steady while he nailed it into place. I didn't have to pay much attention, just be steady, so I was looking around at the camp and the dogs. Most were curled up and sleeping, but Crean's pups were chasing each other around and rolling in the snow. They go free most of the time, because they were raised gentle. They are full grown now and good strong sledding dogs but also the most like pets too.
All of a sudden I knew something awful. I looked down at the small boat. Maybe I knew it all along but just wouldn't think about it. Probably all the men know and no one talks about it. But what I thought was, no matter how we eventually get out of here, the dogs will not be coming. I am low now and sick inside to think of it.
chapter twenty-three
By the middle of December, life in Ocean Camp had become pretty dismal. Some days there was open water all around their floe and they thought they would get in the boats the next day. Then the wind would come up and push new ice in, and the escape route would close. Ocean Camp was like a very small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. Men started petty arguments over how loud somebody snored or the way someone chewed. Shackleton had a way of smoothing everything out.
December 17, 1915
I see how life here could fall apart anytime without the Boss. He makes it seem so easy and talks us into thinking his way. Not like hypnotizing, but like when you're a kid and bash yourself up and your mum says it's okay, so you believe her. You don't even have to think about it anymore. I wonder about the men of the Aurora on the oth
er side. Hope it is better for them and no trouble, for they don't have Shackleton with them.
It didn't help that Ocean Camp was a slushy, stinking mess. There wasn't much work to do anymore either. The boats were ready, the provisions were all packed, there was just this infernal waiting. Perce was reading Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens. It was a good story about a young man with endless adventures and predicaments. Mostly it was good because it took him far away from the snow and ice. And compared to what old Dickens could come up with, Antarctica sometimes didn't seem so bad.
“Can you imagine his uncle being so mean?” Perce asked Billy. “He wouldn't help him out at all!”
“Nope.” Billy was in the encyclopedia, deep into Mesopotamia.
“Which do you think is worse, Billy—stuck here or stuck in the workhouses they had back then?”
“Workhouse.”
“Why?”
“You never got out of them workhouses.”
“Nicholas Nickleby did.”
“Well, that's why the story's about him and not all the ten thousand other fellows died there. Not much of a story otherwise,” Billy snapped. Even he was getting to be in a grumbly mood.
The loudest grumbling, however, was in their tent every night. Some of the sailors were starting to talk against Shackleton. John Vincent was always stirring up trouble. He insisted the other tents got more food than they did. He complained the sailors always had the worst jobs around camp. Mostly the others just ignored him, but as the tension of waiting continued, some began to join in. They dragged up old slights. They went on and on about how Shackleton should have turned around. How they'd be nice and warm and eating roast beef and custard pudding right now if he had. Old McNeish, always outspoken, was one of the most critical.
“You know Boss is thinking about another march,” McNeish said one morning. “You see him and his cronies out every day, looking around. I'll be damned if I'm going to pull those boats any farther.”
“Too right. They can't get anywhere without us pulling the load,” Vincent said.
“We can't get anywhere without the rest of them either, so why don't you just shut your trap,” Tim sighed.
“And what about pay?” Vincent pressed. “Tell them, McNeish, how once a ship sinks, the crew doesn't get paid. We're stuck here, having to drag his expedition out of bloody hell and not a dime to any one of us.”
“ 'Tis true,” McNeish said. “I know the law as it comes for the sailor. A sunken ship has no master. We can't be made to work. Boss can't really make us do anything.”
“No, but he could leave you on your arse out here to starve, now couldn't he?” Perce pointed out. He desperately wanted to go off away from them. Just to go for a walk, but there was no place to walk to these days. In a way it was just talk. But in a way, too, such talk could be considered mutiny. Mutiny was the most serious crime aboard a ship. Mutineers could be shot.
“Vincent's just blowing off,” Billy said the next day. He and Perce were on cleanup duty, shoveling up after the dogs. “And poor old McNeish is feeling his age. Still hasn't got over Mrs. Chippy either.”
“But what if the Boss thinks we're in with them?”
“Boss is smarter than that. And what if he does think that? What's he going to do? Fire us?”
Perce wasn't reassured. He felt like a dumb schoolchild. Not wanting to rat someone out, not wanting to make a big deal out of something that probably wasn't, but not wanting the teacher to think badly of him either.
“Look, Perce,” Billy dropped his voice even lower. In the cold air, sound carried far. “The Boss is smart. He knows from looking around what's going on. He comes around to the tents every day like he's just visiting, but you know he's checking on all of us. He knows who's feeling up and who's down. Who's strong and who's getting shaky. We don't spend time with Vincent and McNeish except for meals, sleeping, and blizzards. Boss sees that.”
“But if they're planning something and we don't tell—”
“If they're really planning something, we will tell,” Billy promised. “But right now, they're just moaning and groaning. It would be different if there was something they could really do. Take over the ship or something. But, well, there sure isn't any danger of that now, is there!” Billy laughed. “The Boss has done right by us so far, and everyone knows it.”
“I know, Billy. But don't you think—just, I thought if we could make it smoother for the Boss, you know? He isn't looking so good.”
“Nobody's looking so good.”
“That's true. But he's got so much on his mind. Don't you hear him shouting at night in his sleep?”
“There isn't much we can do, really,” Billy said. “Keep our own heads together, I guess. About all we can do.”
That same afternoon, just after lunch, Shackleton called them all together for a meeting.
“I know you've all been keeping a careful eye on our progress out here,” he said. “So it won't be too much of a surprise when I tell you that Mr. Worsley's latest sightings haven't put us exactly where we hoped to be. Unfortunately, we're drifting too far to the east. Even if the ice breaks out tomorrow, we'll never make it to Snow Hill or Paulet Island.” Some murmuring broke out, but Shackleton went on, ignoring it. “We might beat either the wind or the current, but not both. So I've decided to march west. If we can walk even fifty or sixty miles, we'll be in much better position to drift into the peninsula once we do get into the boats.”
For the first time, Perce thought Shackleton's confidence sounded forced.
“We only made a mile a day before,” Orde Lees spoke up. “And we know we can't haul all three lifeboats.”
“If we keep drifting in this direction, we have no hope of getting anywhere,” Shackleton said firmly. “Besides, a little march will do us all good.”
There was much talk in the tents that night. Some of the men were excited and hopeful, some thought it was stupid and dangerous. But all were going. They would leave in two days. They would travel by night when the ice would be harder. Meanwhile, since it was almost Christmas, Shackleton declared they would celebrate. Next day, most of the delicacies they had salvaged from the Endurance were laid out to eat. The jars and cans were too heavy to carry, so the men ate their fill. Pots of jam and cans of peaches, tinned sausages, anchovies, and boiled hams. Their stomachs had shrunk so much, most could only eat a little at a time. They ate, then rested, then took little walks to get ready to eat some more. Even the dogs got a few choice tidbits. While the men were gorging themselves, Shackleton and Wild went out to scout a trail.
The next morning, after almost two months in Ocean Camp, the long march began. Shackleton went first with a few men to chop out a path. The dog teams followed, then the sailors came, relaying the two boats. Once again the smallest lifeboat, the Stancomb Wills, had to be left behind.
“Devil's choice,” Crean said. “We can have three boats going nowhere or two and surely sink.”
This march was ten times harder than their first attempt. Great icebergs had plowed through the floe, pushing up hummocks ten feet high. There were open leads and dangerous patches of thin ice. Still, they went on. Day after day passed in a cold blur of pain, exhaustion, and frustration.
December 26, 1915
Didn't ever think about how there's so many different kinds of bad times. When the ship was getting crushed and we worked all out for days, it was bad, but you didn't feel it so much. Times like that, when there's a chance you might still fix it, are different. Like back home when the coal mines cave in. Men don't care how hard they work or how long. There's a feeling even if you're dead tired, you keep digging because you think it will come out good in the end. Sometimes it does.
But this kind of bad is just dull and wet and dragging. Knowing you have to do it. But knowing it won't work. But what else can you do? But no spirit to it. But you're wanting to have the spirit because the Boss does. He's working hard as any man or harder. He believes we'll make it, so you catch on to that. Or try to
anyway. Sometimes you just pretend. Sometimes, though, the pretending makes you believe again. Funny how that works.
After six horrid days of marching, they had gone only seven miles. It was to be the last triumph for a while. When Shackleton and Wild went out to scout a trail on the sixth day, they saw broken ice and patches of water, giant icebergs and impossible ridges. Willing or not, there would be no more marching west. Three days later it was New Year's Eve, the last day of 1915. Not much to celebrate. All they could do, once again, was sit and wait for the ice to break up. They called their new home Patience Camp.
Two weeks later, it was time to shoot the dogs.
chapter twenty-four
Everyone knew it was coming. There just weren't enough seals around to feed them anymore. When the ice finally did open, there might not be time enough and it would be too cruel to leave them to starve. But what an awful day. Some men went off as far away as they could. Some sat with their favorite dogs, petting and playing with them until it was time. Only twenty dogs, the two strongest teams, would be spared for now. Shackleton hoped to send them back to Ocean Camp to bring up more supplies if the ice allowed.
Perce walked up and down the rows of kennels, saying goodbye. He knew the little things each dog liked and wanted to be sure their last day on earth was a good one. He knew Lupoid hated having his paws touched and Hackenschmidt loved a scratch just above his tail. Soldier, one of the smartest dogs and usually one of the friendliest, looked up at Perce, then turned away and curled up at the back of his dogloo. It was like he knew what was coming and had decided to accept it with dignity.
Perce worked hard not to cry. He couldn't imagine these friendly faces gone. No matter how bad he was feeling, he could always count on the dogs to cheer him up. As long as they had a hunk of seal, a chance to run, and a scratch on the head, they were happy. A miserable place was going to get ten times worse without the dogs.
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