“Perce?” He didn't answer. Billy peeled back the soggy flap. “I have some water for you.”
“I'm not thirsty.”
“It's specially flavored with three kinds of gravel.”
“I'm tired. I just want to sleep.”
Perce pulled the flap back up over his head. This time, writing in his journal hadn't made him feel better but much worse. He was afraid he might start crying.
The sea is an enemy without malice. The waves don't care what they smash about. A bit of driftwood is the same as a boat, a man no more or less important than a moth. Human enemies will tire, but the sea is inexhaustible. For the men aboard the James Caird, every minute of every day was so beyond endurance that it all became a blur. Every peril of the first voyage hit them ten times over. For those on watch, the four hours were an endless torture of cold. For the men trying to sleep below, it was not much better. At the change of the watch, they had to creep out one by one as the others crawled in. The reindeer skin sleeping bags were slimy with rot. Clumps of hair stuck to their clothes and skin. When Tim did manage to fall asleep in the tiny space, he often woke terrified, thinking he was buried alive. The boat pitched violently day and night.
“I'd be bruised considerable if I had any flesh left to bruise,” Crean remarked.
They were wet all the time. McNeish took off his boots one day, and his feet were white and swollen, pasty and soft as bread dough. Shackleton had everyone check their feet, and all were the same. The flesh was not quite frozen, but it had a creepy, half-dead feel to it. The worst blow came when Crean opened the second keg of water. It had cracked and let in salt water. Now it was brackish, hardly better than drinking straight from the sea. Alone in the vast Southern Ocean, the men's hope grew fainter every day.
“Well, Tim,” Shackleton said as they huddled in the cockpit. “If you knew what we were in for, would you still have volunteered to come?”
“Especially if I knew,” Tim laughed. “You see, I can't think of anyone I hate enough to wish this on instead.”
On Elephant Island, sleep was the only escape, but few slept solidly. They were so crowded that any man's movement could wake his neighbor. Orde Lees snored so loudly, the ground shook. Wild came up with the idea to rig a line all along the side of the hut, like the line you pull to signal a bus to stop. At night, they tied a piece of string to Orde Lees's hand and tied the other end to the line. Whoever was awakened by his snoring could pull the line and jiggle his hand. It usually did make him stop, but soon enough he rolled over and the rumbling would start up again. Perce never pulled the line. Partly he didn't care about the snoring since he couldn't sleep anyway, partly it was more interesting to listen and guess which of the others would be first that night to complain. Perce had many night games by now.
The best, and one everyone else surreptitiously shared, was listening to the piss can.
Since it was usually below zero with howling winds, going outside at night was a disagreeable task. This problem was solved by placing a two-gallon can by the entryway. The only condition was that whoever filled the can to within two inches of the top had to take it outside and empty it. This was even worse than just pissing outside. Soon enough, everyone learned to recognize the sound as the level rose in the can. When a man woke up and felt he had to go, he would lie in his sleeping bag, waiting for someone else to go first. If the can sounded too full, he would try to hold on until morning. There were other tricks as well. Some men could aim skillfully against the side of the can and make no noise. A man would get up and find the container too full even though he never heard anyone use it. This usually resulted in both cursing and laughter. It was annoying for the one stuck but generally respected by all as a good trick.
Perce had an old saucepan for his own use. After a couple of weeks, he was almost used to the embarrassment of being an invalid. But he would never get used to the smell of his own flesh rotting. The toes on his left foot were black and shriveled. Both feet were swollen and dark purple. Blisters had broken open and oozed pus. Awful as the thought was, Perce was starting to wish Doc would go ahead and amputate and get it over with.
Tim lay in his wet sleeping bag on the bed of stones in the hull and tried to stop shaking. Worsley had just fallen asleep beside him, the first time in two days, and he didn't want to wake him. A gale roared on. The sound of the waves pounding the hull was like a drum inside his brain. For two days, they had sailed blindly through sleet and snow, steering only by the feel of the wind on their faces. It was mostly just four of them working now. Vincent had all but given up and lay belowdecks most of the time, crouched on his side, one arm over his head. McNeish's strength was crumbling, and he was barely able to move.
Up on deck, Shackleton's fur mitt was frozen to the tiller. Crean was sitting hunched beside him, the two trying in vain to shelter each other from the relentless wind, when Shackleton heard a strange sound behind him. He turned to look and saw a broad line of white across the horizon.
“Tom.” He shook Crean and shouted in his ear. “Look there, the sky is clearing!”
Crean looked up and turned. Shackleton saw his face change rapidly from puzzlement to horror.
“No, Boss,” Crean croaked. “That isn't a clearing at all.”
“What do you mean?” The two men stared at the horizon. Then Shackleton realized the white line wasn't clear sky, but the foaming white crest of a gigantic wave. Not even a wave, but a giant wall of water, wide as the earth, high as Jupiter, rushing straight toward them. There was not a thing in the world they could do to escape it.
“For God's sake, hold on!” Shackleton shouted. “It's got us!”
The wave slammed into them. It lifted the boat up so violently, Shackleton was thrown into the cockpit. Crean grabbed the tiller and hung on for his life. The giant wave caught the little boat, surged completely over it, and tossed it like a cork.
Belowdecks, Tim was half asleep when the world crashed in around him. First he was thrown in the air, then slammed down hard on the rocks. Something smacked his head. His ribs crunched against the rocks; then his face was mashed against the canvas decking. He couldn't tell up from down. Rocks, boxes, and equipment flew everywhere. Then the water poured in. The boat was filling, and he was trapped! A body slammed into him. Tim grabbed for it. A hand grabbed back. It was Worsley. The water swirled over their heads. Something hit him hard in the ribs. Tim lost his breath and started to choke. Then hands caught hold of his jacket. He felt himself hauled up. Up into air. Shackleton dragged him out of the flooded hold.
Crean pulled Worsley free. Vincent lay dazed on the deck. Tim coughed and struggled for breath. The boom swung wildly, inches from his head. Something strangely warm ran down his face. He thought, quite absurdly, that it must be melted blubber. He saw Crean's face inches from his own, saw his lips moving but couldn't hear what he was saying. The warm drip ran down his face and into his eyes, and Tim realized it was blood. Then with a sudden rush, sound returned.
“Bail!” Crean shouted, and thrust a bucket into his hands. “Bail for your life!” Tim dragged himself to his knees. The cockpit was full of water. More water poured over the gunwales. The James Caird was flooded and sinking fast.
chapter thirty-five
May 8, 1916
I feel lucky in one way. I don't have to worry about how I might be—would I be slack and lazy or mope around like some. As bad as I feel, all I really have to do is keep quiet. Sometimes I feel like I'm invisible. I like that. I do long to go outside, though. I forget what fresh air is even like. This is like being in a dungeon. Back on the ship, I read a book called The Count of Monte Cristo. Cracking good book. The count was in a dungeon for years. I think I don't have it so bad as that.
Greenstreet's foot is getting better and probably will come through whole. But the frostbite on his face won't heal. A lot of men have sores that won't heal. On wrists where the cuff rubs or elbows, hips, knees. Anywhere that rubs against cloth. Because of lacking in our diet, says Doc
. It isn't the scurvy, thank God. Just being weak. I have sores from lying the same way all day. Now Doc makes me turn different ways for a while.
The days passed slowly. It was dark by six now, so supper was at four-thirty. After that, the men unrolled their sleeping bags and settled in for the long night. A few blubber lamps were lit, but no one read much anymore. There was nothing new to read. Besides the encyclopedias, which were growing thinner every day, there was only a penny cookbook and a copy of a Shakespeare play called Henry the Fifth. Sometimes Hussey played his banjo. Sometimes they recited poems. Sometimes Wild held debates. He usually chose ridiculous topics so no one could get into a real argument. If a man who was proportionally strong as an ant (which was, according to their biologist, Clark, very strong) was in a fight with a gorilla, who would win? What about a tiger? But sometimes the topic did get serious. They talked and wondered about the war. Who had won? What would Europe be like when they got home? Some thought the war could still be going on. Most thought that was ridiculous. It was almost two years.
“With the weapons we have now, the artillery and the tanks and airplanes dropping bombs, you couldn't go on with a war this long,” Wild said. “All of Europe would be in rubble.”
Hurley argued the opposite. “It's because everybody has so much firepower now means they're going to use it. If I build a new kind of bomb or U-boat or tank, I'm sure as hell going to want to use it.” The debates went on and on. Anything to pass the time. Boredom put everyone on edge. Many just wanted to lie in their sleeping bags all day. When the weather was tolerable, Wild would drag them out, physically if he had to, and make them do something. But when everything was just too miserable to bear, he tried for some kind of relief. An extra half a nut bar, a cup of hot milk, or a lump of sugar.
Food was not yet a worry, but some of the men worried anyway. If there was bad weather or ice in the bay, penguins didn't come ashore. Orde Lees, always obsessed with the food situation, was becoming a maniac. He argued with Wild over everything. If Charlie served three penguin legs per man, Orde Lees thought there should be two. He rationed the sugar so tightly, it would have lasted until Christmas. When Wild discovered this, he changed the ration to six lumps a day and decided to put someone else in charge of storekeeping.
“Well, that's very good,” Orde Lees said. “Very nice indeed! I will be happy to give up such a huge responsibility! Now let someone else see how much work it requires to keep track of everything!” Then he went off to his corner and wrote with angry scratches in his journal for three hours. Orde Lees never ate all of his food at once but saved bits of it in a tin box to eat later. He cut his nut bar into pieces and ate one tiny piece each day. His bed was near Perce's, and Perce could hear him crunching on hoarded sugar cubes or chewing on the piece of nut bar late at night. Sometimes he just opened the tin and counted the pieces. He might do this ten times a night. It was kind of creepy, but Perce knew that every man made up his own way to deal with life out here.
“There's none of us quite right in the head by now,” Macklin pointed out with generosity. “How could we be?” Still, the Old Lady was especially annoying.
“That's good in a way, though,” Billy said. “When everybody hates one fellow, they don't go around messing with each other as much. And you know what's funny, the Old Lady doesn't seem to mind.”
“Maybe he doesn't notice,” Perce laughed. “He's too busy counting up the penguins and scheming how to trade for nut bars.”
While no one was starving, they were always hungry and sick to death of meat. They generally had half a penguin per man per day, about a pound of meat each. It would keep them alive a long time but never satisfied. They craved the precious nut bars. Even the hard biscuits were more popular than another chunk of penguin or seal. The nut bars and sugar cubes were like gold nuggets. Everyone bargained and gambled for these. They would bet on how many penguins would come ashore during the week, whether a seal would be killed on an odd or even day, or how many chunks of ice would fall off the glacier that day.
“I'll give you half my penguin steak every day this week for your nut bar on Wednesday,” Orde Lees offered Billy.
“Half my nut bar, maybe!” Billy scoffed.
“I'll let you cut the steak and choose the piece?”
“Half a bar plus two lumps of sugar,” Billy countered. Orde Lees went off huffily in search of a better bargain. Sometimes he dealt in future portions: two seal steaks and one nut bar today for one piece of sugar every day until the rescue ship came. It could get very complicated.
They traded food for chores too. The only thing Orde Lees feared more than starving was having to work. When it was his day for chores, he traded someone half a penguin steak to take his place. As the days wore on, the tensions, quarrels, and conflicts settled into a routine until they seemed normal. It was like old married couples who have the same arguments every single day for fifty years.
Fifteen days had passed since Shackleton had gone. He could already have landed or very soon. Some insisted they would see a ship any day now.
The James Caird was sinking fast. Tim felt the cold water rise up around his knees. The water crept over the cockpit and washed a pair of fur mitts off the deck. Tim didn't stop bailing long enough to grab them. They would have been nice to have because his hands were freezing cold. But if he stopped for even one second, they would all die. He saw Crean and Shackleton bailing as well, but still the boat kept sinking. Then Tim realized what was wrong. His bucket had no bottom.
“Boss! Boss! The bucket!” he shouted. Shackleton was covered in ice, frozen in place like a statue. The water swirled up around Tim's neck. Then with a final creak and groan, the James Caird drifted out from under him. Her bow tipped down, and she sank out of sight. Bubbles trailed up after her like pearls from a broken necklace. Tim struggled to stay afloat, but his clothes were dragging him down. Icy water closed over his head. Then, out of the dark water, he heard Shackleton's voice.
“Tim? Tim? Come on, lad, wake up now!”
Tim bolted up. His heart pounded. His whole body was shaking. He took a deep breath. He was on the boat. The boat was still floating. They were all still alive.
“Steady now—it's a dream you're in. Only that.”
“Sweet Mary, mother of God,” Tim gasped. He sat up, then recoiled. “Could you at least comb your hair before waking a man from the dead of sleep, Boss? You look like the bloody devil.”
Shackleton ran his hand through his hair, trying to press down the oily mass that was indeed sticking up like horns.
“I'm sorry about that, Tim,” he said with a weak laugh. “But come have some milk while it's hot.”
Tim uncurled himself slowly. Since the monster wave hit, he could not sleep in the hold. Instead, he tucked himself up just inside the edge of the decking, where they did the cooking. It was much easier to escape from here. It was terribly uncomfortable, and he knew it wasn't even logical. If the boat sank, he would die just as fast, whether trapped belowdecks or free in the water. Still, he could not make himself crawl down there in the dungeon. His feet were numb, and he wiggled the toes until he felt the pins and needles that told him they weren't frostbitten. Shackleton handed him a cup of hot milk, and Tim took it gratefully.
“You were dreaming of the wave,” Shackleton said.
“Aye.”
They all had nightmares of the huge wave. They had gone through a hundred more dangers in the week since then, but none haunted them so badly. Tim took a sip of the warm, salty milk. The little bit of water they had left was so foul, they had to strain it through a piece of cloth before drinking. Even then, they were never sure if it was doing more harm than good. But the ration was only half a cup a day now, so it probably didn't matter much one way or another. Tim drank his down.
“I'll go spell Worsley,” he said as he pulled his hat down.
“He's just gone out, but Crean would do with a break,” Shackleton said. They had abandoned the structure of formal watches. With two
men down all the time, the remaining four slept only in catnaps whenever one man could be spared.
Tim crawled out and unfolded his body into the cold wind. Standing up made him dizzy. His heart was still racing from the nightmare. He closed his eyes and held on to the mast until his head stopped whirling. When he opened his eyes again, Tim thought he was not just dizzy but hallucinating. He thought he saw a mountain. He blinked a few times, squeezed his eyes tight, then opened them again. It was still there.
“Land!” Tim cried. His voice cracked in his dry throat. He swallowed, then worked up every bit of spit he could and tried again. “Land! Land!” he shouted. This time everyone heard him. No one said anything, and Tim thought for a long, dreadful minute that it was only illusion. Then a break appeared in the clouds. They all saw it now, as clear as could be. The dot in the middle of the ocean was theirs. There were no hugs or handshakes. They simply stood there, staring at the prize, swaying with the motion of the little boat.
“Well, congratulations, Mr. Worsley,” Shackleton said quietly. “That was a pretty fair bit of navigation.”
chapter thirty-six
Macklin lifted up the blanket and slid the crate back from Perce's feet. He put two sardine can lamps on the crate and held another in his hand, but the light was still too weak for much of an examination. He tapped a finger lightly along the top of Perce's foot, feeling for the change that told him where the dead tissue began. Perce stared silently up at the thwarts of the overturned boat.
“The right foot's looking a little better,” Doc Macklin said encouragingly. “How do they feel?”
“Fine.”
“Tell me honestly, Perce.”
“Honestly, Doc.” Perce managed a weak smile. “However they might feel, what could you do about it?”
Shackleton's Stowaway Page 18