Shackleton's Stowaway

by Victoria McKernan

  The horrible job, as most horrible jobs did, fell to Frank Wild. He and Doc Macklin took the dogs one by one some distance from the camp, behind a large hummock of ice. It was downwind so the waiting dogs would not smell the blood in the air. Even though they had to conserve ammunition, the bullets would not be spared for the animals that had worked so hard and become such friends. Crean and some of the other officers dug a pit. One by one the trusting dogs were led behind the screen of ice. Doc gave each one a little piece of seal meat. Then Wild put the pistol to its head. Thirty shots cracked in the cold air. It was an awful day. Perce tried to read Nicholas Nickleby but couldn't concentrate. He was always waiting for the next shot. Finally he gave up and put the book down. He went to the edge of the floe and just walked around, watching the killer whales spout in the open leads.

  There, after a while, Perce came upon Wild sitting by himself, behind a hummock of ice. He was smoking his pipe and staring out at the sky. Perce turned to go back, thinking Wild wanted to be alone. But Wild heard him.

  “It's all right, Blackie. I'm done weeping like a little girl. Come and sit if you like.”

  Perce sat down next to him.

  “You were good to do it, Mr. Wild. We were all afraid we'd be asked to help.”

  “Stinking old dogs, weren't they?” Wild said. “Always fighting. And such a racket they'd make.”

  “Aye.”

  “Glad to be done shoveling the mess up after them every day, eh?”

  “Won't miss that.”

  “Aye. Won't miss that.”

  Perce was pretty sure Doc had given Wild a medicinal dose of brandy. They were quiet for a bit, then Wild sighed.

  “All the same, I've known many men I would rather shoot than the worst of the dogs.”

  The next day, a strange blizzard hit. The wind howled low over the ice, spinning around the tents and pushing under the flaps. Tufts of black clouds tumbled across the horizon. There was a weird electrical pinch to the air. Perce felt the hairs on his arms prickle.

  “It's the dogs,” McNeish said solemnly. “All their poor souls come to haunt us.” All night, the blowing snow sounded like the scratch of a thousand paws against the canvas tents. Sometimes the ice trembled beneath them. There were few religious men in the crew, but many prayers were whispered during those terrible three days. The wind never stopped, and the temperature never went above zero.

  January 17, 1916

  Third day of blizzard. Blows so we can't go out of the tent. Just stay in bag. Bag frozen solid. Like sleeping in a coffin. Bucket by the door for a toilet. At least that freezes too, so the smell isn't much. Charlie out cooking, though. But simple fare. Plain hunks of seal in the pot to cook fast as possible. Peggy goes out on a rope so he can find his way back. Was me yesterday. Snow like a sandstorm on my face. Food is the best part of the day, and it isn't all that good. But it's all we have to look forward to.

  Every ordinary day I ever lived now seems exotic and wonderful. What a faraway world that is now. A world of carpets and sofas and curtains. A world where you can have a drink of water whenever you want, a world of chocolate bars and toffees. When I have children, I will buy them candy every day, as much as they want. Just to sit on the stoop on a summer evening when every kid is out playing in the lanes. Mothers drag chairs outside and sit in little circles, some mending the clothes. Dads sit on benches outside the pub, talking football with a pint. And girls, their heads bent so close talking that from behind, their hair all comes together. I like that, all different colors of it, shining like a striped blanket of hair down their backs. Day before I joined my first ship, I saw Anna again. A fair in the town and she in a dress blue the shade of the sea at dusk and her hair with a gold ribbon. She looked at me and smiled and looked at the grass by her where there was room for me. I went and sat there and we listened to the band. Still some red paint around her fingernails.

  When the blizzard finally did stop, the men crawled out of the tents, squinting at the sun. They were weak from lying around. They stumbled through the new snowdrifts and fell with jellied knees. The sky was perfectly blue, and the temperature went up to thirty-two degrees. They dragged damp, half-frozen sleeping bags outside to dry in the sun. They rigged lines between oars and hung clothes to dry. Everything was so tattered and gray, it looked like a beggars' carnival.

  Hurley got the blubber stove going, and everyone collected ice to melt, eager to drink their fill. They were terribly thirsty. Water had been severely rationed during the blizzard, since it was too hard to melt. Some of the men filled little tobacco tins with ice at night and slept with them, melting the ice with their body heat. In the morning, they would have an ounce of water.

  The only good thing about the blizzard was that the winds had blown them seventy-three miles north. When Worsley took the sighting, everyone cheered.

  “And look at that!” Hurley stood on top of a lifeboat, looking through the binoculars. “The storm blew the old camp up closer. I can see the Stancomb Wills! We can go get it!”

  Ocean Camp, with the third lifeboat, was now only five or six miles away. To have all three lifeboats instead of two felt as good as getting rescued. It was a long day of tough work to drag the boat over the bad ice, but no one complained.

  “Can't fuss when the weight you're dragging is going to save your life,” Crean said philosophically.

  chapter twenty-five

  Day after grim day passed, and still the ice would not open. The three lifeboats sat ready but idle. Shackleton remained optimistic. He visited the tents and taught the men how to play new card games. One day he dressed up like an admiral, with a shovel for a sword and epaulets made out of sardine cans on his shoulders, and inspected the camp. He demoted Frank Wild for not having proper creases in his trousers and awarded Charlie Green a medal for being the filthiest cook in the Southern Hemisphere.

  It was a good bit of fun, but week after week of misery was starting to wear them all down. The killer whales were always prowling. The men could hear them blowing and knocking against the edge of the floe. The wind was always blowing. Sometimes Perce thought that was enough to drive a man out of his mind.

  They rationed carefully, but by late January, nearly all the stores they had retrieved from the ship were gone. Shackleton talked with Charlie each day about how to stretch out what was left. He wanted to keep some variety in the meals. Maybe a little curry in the seal today or a few dried peas in the stewed penguin. A bit of cheese or a teaspoon of raisins was a special treat. Once Tim dropped a piece of cheese in the snow. It was no bigger than a button, but he spent an hour looking for it. To make sure the portions were fair, they were always handed out blindly. The day's Peggy sat with his back to the others while he dished out the food. Another man was chosen to call names. The Peggy held up a pannikin and said, “Whose is this?” Then the caller named a man, and the food went to that man. All agreed it was the fairest way to do it, but it was still hard sometimes not to look at the man beside you and imagine his piece was bigger or a more tender cut.

  The all-meat diet was causing the men trouble. They called it “squeaky gut.” Some were constipated; some had diarrhea. Neither was much fun when your latrine was a hole in the ice and your toilet paper a handful of snow.

  February 10, 1916

  Patience Camp is wet, ugly, dirty, and cold. And boring. No place much to walk. No more jokes that haven't been told. No more stories—even from Billy, who had years' and years' worth. I know the name of every town he ever stayed, every horse he ever rode, every bar he ever got into a fight in. Same with everybody. Even tired of Hussey's banjo. Seems like every song is the same one. We all miss the phonograph. I liked hearing the orchestra songs. I'd never heard that kind of music before. Hurley says when we get back to London, he'll take me to a real orchestra. They have fifty people or more onstage playing all at once. Imagine that. Hardly any books left and no room to play football, even if we had the energy. Nothing to eat but seal and penguin, and they are growing scarce
, migrating, we think. Wish it were so easy for us.

  “They'll come back,” Shackleton reassured the men. “After all, if everything is migrating, something or other is bound to migrate our way.” Orde Lees predicted doom and gloom and starvation. Many of the men grew obsessed with food. The seal blubber that some had first refused to eat was now eagerly devoured. They ate it boiled; they chewed it raw. They drank it melted, even though it looked like engine oil and tasted about the same. Their bodies craved the calories. A scrap of blubber that fell in the ashes would be carefully wiped off and eaten. No one was starving, but they were always hungry. They were also thirsty all the time. They were burning penguin skins in the blubber stove now and needed twenty a day just to melt ice for water.

  Just when they were down to a single day's supply of skins, Perce woke one morning to a tremendous noise: squawking, screeching, clattering all around. When he poked his head outside the tent, he could hardly believe his eyes. The entire camp was full of penguins. They chattered and preened and waved their flippers. There must have been a thousand of them. These were Adélie penguins, small, playful birds. They tottled among the tents and practically between the men's legs. Some seemed curious; others ignored them completely. The men came out of the tents and stood around for a couple of minutes just marveling at the sight, then they picked up their clubs. Marvelous or not, the penguins were food.

  “All right, men,” Wild called. “Let's get to work.” He picked up a club. “This is going to get messy.”

  The slaughter went on all day. After the first hundred or so penguins were killed, they set up an assembly line to clean them. Two men gutted the birds, then tossed the carcasses to others, who skinned them. Charlie sharpened knives and supervised the butchering. If a man left too much meat on the bone, he was banished to the skinning crew. They would eat everything: heart, brains, tongue, liver, and kidney; everything but the beaks and eyeballs. It took about ten minutes to dress each penguin.

  “Watch the mess!” Doc Macklin kept reminding. “We have to keep the meat clean.” With a thousand penguins waddling everywhere, it was hard to find a bit of ice that was free of penguin droppings. He had them dig a hole to reach clean ice. The men took turns guarding the pit, shooing the penguins away. That was a comical sight. The penguins were curious, so the more the men waved and chased, the more penguins came to investigate.

  They packed the meat in empty crates, layered with the clean ice, then buried the crates to keep them frozen. They worked on the edge of the floe, as far away from camp as they could. The killer whales were also taking advantage of the migration. Huge shiny heads lunged out of the water and crunched the penguins. All day the floe was noisy with the sounds of death. A thousand penguins squawking, a dozen killer whales blowing. Men shouting, dogs barking, and always, the soft, dull thud of clubs against small penguin heads. Some of the men seemed almost crazy with the slaughter, swinging wildly and racing after the startled birds. Perce mostly felt sick.

  “God—for once I just want to see an animal and not have to kill it!”

  “Aye.” Crean nodded. “And they just stand there looking at us like we might be friends.” He swung his club at the head of another penguin and knocked it dead. The air smelled of blood. Their boots and pants were spattered with it. They worked bare-handed as long as they could bear the cold so as to keep their mittens clean.

  Perce clubbed two more penguins with little effort. The feathers shone glossy and bright in the sunlight.

  “When I get home, I'll happily live on bread and butter.”

  “Ach—I'm missing potatoes. Imagine that—an Irishman longing for potatoes.” Crean stretched his back and looked out over the carnage. “My grandparents lived through the famine, you know. They ate grass. Dirt sometimes; anything to fill their bellies. I guess I can't complain too hard.”

  He smacked another penguin and watched it until the last twitches faded away. By the end of the day, they had killed over three hundred penguins. That made six or seven hundred pounds of meat. It was a month's supply of food. Famine was, for now at least, put off. The next day, the enormous flock was gone.

  chapter twenty-six

  Summer had come and gone, it was autumn now, and the ice had not opened up. The floe that held their camp had melted away to half its size. Every day, gigantic floes drifted by. Sometimes they crashed into each other and crumbled to pieces. Icebergs toppled over as their bases were worn away. By the end of March, food was scarce again. They shot the last of the dogs. They had grown so thin, it was mercy. This time there were few tears shed. The animals that had offered affection now offered meat. With grim humor, some of the dog drivers even stood by while Charlie cooked their teams. It was all so awful, they had to make jokes.

  “Be sure to keep Nellie away from Sadie,” Crean said. “They never did get along.”

  Macklin insisted that his own dog would be the most tender. Truth was, only little Gruss, who had been born just two months before, was really tender. The others were as tough and skinny as the men.

  Perce took his portion with little emotion.

  April 2, 1916

  I thought I should feel sad but didn't. Don't really feel hunger either, though. Not regular hunger anyway, like coming home from a long day out fishing and knowing there will be a good soup and fresh bread for tea with the fish just caught frying in the pan. Now it is like I am a machine and the food is a chunk of coal. What does dog meat taste like? I can't really say. Only that it is not seal or penguin. A little bitter. And very tough.

  It was hard now for even Shackleton to keep up morale. His face was so thin, the ready smile that had always been so reassuring now looked ghoulish. There was no chance of surviving the winter on an ice floe. The tents had been scoured by the wind, so the canvas was as thin and light as a girl's summer dress. The reindeer skin sleeping bags were always wet and beginning to shed, so there were hairs everywhere. On one freakish day, the temperature went up to forty degrees and it rained. The dripping inside the tents was almost as bad as outside.

  Several times they had to scramble to move tents and rescue crates of food when the ice cracked beneath them. The smashing, grinding, and grating of the ice got on everyone's nerves. Shackleton ordered “watch and watch,” with half the crew on and half off at all times. He also made them sleep “all standing,” which meant completely clothed with boots, hats, and gloves on. It wasn't very comfortable to sleep in boots, but since they were always wet, they would freeze solid if left outside the sleeping bags. It could take half an hour to wiggle your foot into a frozen boot.

  More weeks passed in tense fear and constant boredom. Their floe was now so small, Perce could walk all the way around in ten minutes. The tents were so close together, he could hear every man snoring, belching, farting. It was dark for twelve hours a day. Billy and Hussey, the smallest men, could not walk alone in a strong wind without being blown over. Perce's shoulder blades protruded so much, they rubbed two holes through the back of his already worn-out jacket. One day he was lifting a big block of ice onto the sled and the jacket tore.

  “You've let us down, Perce, lad,” Shackleton said, shaking his head in dismay.

  “Boss?” Perce was startled by the rebuke.

  “Why, don't you remember what I said? How if things got tough we would eat the stowaway? Well, look at you now—not enough meat on you to do us any good!”

  “I'll be glad to take a double ration, Boss,” Perce laughed. “Anything to help out, sir.”

  That night, Shackleton came to the sailors' tent with a jug of hot milk and half a nut bar for each man. The nut bar was the most delicious and filling of the precious sledging rations. He also brought a leg from an old pair of trousers to use for patching clothes. He sat with them and told stories. Nothing about Antarctica, nothing about food or home that would make them feel worse, just funny stories about all the people he had met while trying to raise money for this expedition.

  He did imitations of stuffy old businessmen aski
ng long, boring questions at his lectures and of silly young girls hanging around outside the London office, hoping to meet a dashing young explorer. He told about visiting wealthy people's houses full of paintings and gilt mirrors and fine furniture.

  “Mrs. Stancomb Wills—bless her heart—she had this very beautiful furniture, all French-style, you see, with silk upholstery. It was the slipperiest thing you ever sat on. There I am, drinking my tea, and so much tea for so long I thought I would burst, but the entire time it was all I could do not to slide off. It was like sitting on a block of ice. And she's a lovely lady, a very charming lady, but oh, I had to press my feet against the floor until my legs cramped up.”

  “Why don't ladies slide off their own furniture, then?” Perce asked.

  “Well, that's what all those skirts and petticoats are for.” Shackleton took off his coat and tied it around him in a bunch like a lady's skirt and gave a comical demonstration.

  “Now, shouldn't we have brought along some petticoats, then, Boss?” Tim laughed. “They'd make for good sitting on the ice too.”

  When Shackleton left, Perce lay down feeling almost happy. They were full of hot milk and nut bar and laughter, but most important, they were reminded that there was another world out there beyond this cold, awful place.

  April 5, 1916

  Mr. Charles Dickens would be happy here for the misery he could write a book about. No workhouses or cruel uncles but plenty of cloudy, wet, gray, and cold. Nothing and more nothing to do. Which is good, because we're too hungry to do much. I can feel all my bones. Didn't ever think Billy could get much skinnier, but he has. We only know from faces, nobody ever takes off any clothes, but faces tell a lot. Tim has the squeaky gut pretty bad. He never complains, but he's built his own seat at the latrine.

  Sometimes, though, a day comes up so beautiful. Maybe once a fortnight, but when it's there, it seems a miracle. The day sky is blue like doesn't even exist back home. The sunset is all gold and pink, dark blue shadows on the ice, fiery sparkles where it hits the frost. Then at night you can see the stars, and it's so grand, I do forget all the awfulness and being lost. You can look at stars and go to them in your mind. If a moon, even better. It's so bright and soft. Makes you think things are possible.