Perce slumped to the deck and buried his face in his hands. All the tears he hadn't cried for the past two years came pouring out of him. He wept and wept as the first golden edge of the sun broke out of the calm sea.
chapter forty-seven
A light snow was falling as Perce walked down the street. He did not huddle against the cold. His coat was unbuttoned, and he wore no hat. The cold felt good to Perce after riding in an overheated train from London. The street was empty, and his were the only footprints. He saw Christmas decorations hanging across windows and wreaths on some of the doors. It was strange how everything looked and felt exactly the same, as if no time had passed. He stopped outside his home. The house was dark and empty. Perce glanced up and down the street, then walked up to his own front door for the first time in three years. It squeaked as he pushed it open, just like always.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. There was no one thing that marked “home” for him, no one smell he could even identify, but it smelled exactly like home. It was just the mix of bread, soap, wet shoes, lamp oil, and the lavender water his mother put on for special occasions. There was a little extra soap smell right now, and the parlor was very tidy. He walked back toward the kitchen and saw the table full of food and laid for a party. There were meat pies and ham sandwiches under tea towels. Cups and saucers were lined up on the sideboard beside plates of cookies. Perce put his bag down and picked up a cookie. He had dreamed about his mother's cookies so many times on Elephant Island. He took a bite. The cookie was nothing like he remembered. It was tough and dry. Guess some things do change! he thought.
He went into the kitchen. Everything there was the same. Same tea cozy, same flowered curtains, same worn oilcloth. Perce pushed back a curtain and looked into the backyard. Now there was something different. Hanging on the clothesline, in his very own backyard, was a row of white cloths. Smaller than tea towels, bigger than handkerchiefs, it took a little while for him to realize what they were. Nappies! He turned away in surprise. There was a saucer of pins on the kitchen table. A teeny tiny spoon was in the dish rack and a bib hanging off the back of a chair.
Just then the front door crashed open and the house exploded with noise.
“Perce! Perce, are you here?” Five pairs of stomping feet thundered down the hall. Perce braced himself as a herd of brothers tackled him. They weren't so little anymore. Everyone was shouting and screaming and talking at once.
“Harry!” he exclaimed, pushing himself free enough to have a look.
“I'm not Harry, I'm Jack.”
“You're not!” It took Perce some time to figure them all out. Before he could begin, though, the boys were thrust aside by the more formidable force of his mother. She saw Perce and immediately burst into tears. She threw her arms around him, weeping with happiness, then just as quickly reared back, cocked her middle finger against her thumb, and thwacked his skull just above the ear.
“Ow!” Perce laughed.
“What do you mean by sneaking out the back of the train?” She hugged him again, tears streaming down her face. “Stealing home when all and everybody were waiting for you at the station!” She thwacked him again.
“I'm sorry, Mum.” Perce was dizzy from her embrace. “I saw the huge crowd at the station. It looked like the whole street turned up.”
“The whole town, more like!” The real Harry, his next-down brother, threw an arm around Perce's neck. Little Bill, who wasn't so little anymore, grabbed him around the waist. Everyone was talking at once, and the little house was suddenly bursting with people as the neighbors came flooding in.
“Of course they were there! They all wanted to welcome you! Oh, don't eat that.” His mother snatched the cookie out of his hand. “I made a good batch for you.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “These are for the neighbors. The butter is rationed now, you see, because of the war. These are made without. Oh, you gave us such a scare when we didn't see you!” She hugged him and thumped his skull a few more times. “We thought you missed the train! Are you all right? How are you? You're too thin, boy! Teddy, fetch Perce's cookies down. Up top behind the flour. Don't touch a one or I'll turn you inside out! Harry, put the kettle on.”
“Did you bring us a penguin?” Charlie tugged at Perce's coat. “I'm doing a report on penguins now for school.”
“Come sit down by the fire.”
“I'm not cold, Mum,” Perce said.
“Bill, let go of your brother! Where's Father?” She craned her neck and looked down the hall. “All of you out now!”
“Mum?”
“Where's your poor father? Pushed out! Dad?”
“Mum? There's nappies on the line.” Perce felt Teddy push a cookie into his hand. He saw Charlie slither back down the crowded hallway and fling open the front door.
“Hey!” Charlie shouted up and down the street. “He's here! He's here, everybody!”
“Saw what? Nappies? Oh, goodness yes, the baby.” His mother smiled proudly. “Oh, God, how many times did I wonder if he would ever get to meet you!” She burst into full-blown tears now, snatching a tea towel up to her face.
Then Perce saw his father, standing in the back of the parlor. He looked almost exactly the same as Perce remembered. Solid, strong, quiet, he rarely showed his emotions. But now heavy tears ran down the lines in his weathered face. Perce unwound his mother's arms and waded through the tangle of his brothers.
“Hello, Dad,” he said quietly. They shook hands. His father was holding a wiggling fat baby. The baby looked at Perce very seriously, then burped and slurped up a big smile.
“Hello, Perce,” his father said. “Welcome home.”
“It's good to be back.”
“This is your new brother, Reggie.”
“Hello, Reggie. You're a fine big lad, aren't you?” The baby squealed and grabbed at his face. Perce took him in his arms. He weighed about as much as a gentoo penguin. Perce sat down. His head felt spinny. The baby smelled so baby. Perce felt wonderful and awful at the same time.
“Come on, Perce!” Charlie and Bill wiggled through the crowd and flung themselves against his knees. “Tell us everything! Tell us all!”
Baby Reggie smacked his face as if he too were demanding the story. This little baby—all these little brothers—Perce wanted to protect them forever, to keep them here by the warm stove in the safe swarm of friends and neighbors, always. Never for them the ocean's terror, never the desperate hunger, the endless fear. The baby's little feet were soft and smooth and plump as bread rolls. Yes, everything should just stay like this forever.
Your duty is to teach them what grand things they can do and what places there are out here in the world.
“Come on, Perce! Tell. What's the South Pole like? Is it awful?”
“Not so much.” Perce smiled and stretched his feet out toward the stove. “Mostly it was grand.”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The story of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition is one of the great true adventure stories. All of the main events in Shackleton's Stowaway actually happened as they do in this book. I have used my imagination to develop some scenes, but these are always based on actual historical information. I have combined some events (there were actually three different times when the pressure ice squeezed the ship before it was crushed) and occasionally nudged time around a little bit (Shackleton's second attempt to rescue his men actually occurred two days after Perce's operation, not the same day, and Tim McCarthy was really killed three months after Perce got home). I have made up conversations and thoughts for the characters, and this makes for a novel, but the story is all true.
All of the characters were real men, and I have tried to present them as honestly as I could, based on published accounts, interviews with their descendants, and, whenever possible, their own journals or memoirs.
There was a total of twenty-eight men, including Shackleton, on this expedition. It was impossible to put them all in this book, but I am sorry to have left any of th
em out as they were all remarkable men. I feel that I have come to “know” some of them very well, and I have tremendous respect and admiration for all of them. No one has ever gone through an ordeal as long and difficult as this one, and no one should ever think to judge the hearts of these men.
There were six sailors on the Endurance, but very little is known about them. All of the published accounts come from Shackleton himself, the officers, and the scientists. Perce Blackborow probably did not keep a journal. He never spoke of one, and no one in his family ever found one. Billy Bakewell did write his memoirs, but he had so many adventures that this one takes up just one-fifth of them! Perce's thoughts, his conversations with Billy, and his feelings are all my own creation.
EPILOGUE
When he returned home in 1916, Perce Blackborow tried to enlist in the British navy but was rejected because of his missing toes. Instead, he joined the merchant navy and spent the rest of the war working on transport and cargo ships. After seeing much of the world, he returned to his hometown and married a young Irishwoman named Kate. They had six children, two of whom died young. He never talked about his experiences on the Endurance, but his daughter Peggy remembered sitting on his lap in the 1930s listening to a special BBC radio program about the expedition. The lights were low in the living room, so she couldn't see his face clearly, but when the story came to the part where they had to shoot the dogs, she knew he was crying.
Perce never walked with a limp, and no one but his wife ever saw his foot. He worked hard all his life as a dock boatman in the harbor, rowing out to bring in the mooring lines for big ships. It was hard physical work and often very cold. Perce would come home at night and sit with his feet up in front of the stove. He treasured his shelves full of books and encyclopedias. He liked nature and took his daughter Joan for long walks in the woods on Sunday afternoons, where he told her the names of plants and birds. Every Christmas, he bought his wife a new hearth rug, and every Saturday, he would bring home a bag of candy for his children.
Perce died in 1949, probably of a combination of chronic bronchitis, pneumonia, and a heart condition.
William “Billy” Bakewell worked for almost a year on the sheep ranch in Patagonia. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, he decided to return and join the navy. However, since he did not have a passport, a birth certificate, or “some other papers that I had never heard of before,” he could not get aboard any American ships or even enter his home country. Instead, he talked his way into a job on a British merchant ship. He spent the rest of the war working on supply ships, crossing the Atlantic many times. Twice he was on ships that were sunk by torpedoes, making a lifetime record of four shipwrecks! When he finally went home to Joliet, Illinois, around 1920, he had been away from home for twenty years. Billy decided it was time to settle down. He got a job with the railroad, fell in love, got married, and had one daughter named Elizabeth and three granddaughters. He remained an avid reader all his life and was never without an open book nearby. He died in 1969 at the age of eighty-one.
Perce and Billy never met again in person, but remained lifelong friends through letters. In 1964, Billy's daughter, Elizabeth, traveled to Wales and met Perce's family. The two families remain friends to this day.
Tim McCarthy was killed in action on March 16, 1917, when his ship, the SS Narragansett, was torpedoed by the Germans in the English Channel. He died at his post and went down with the ship. His body was not recovered.
Ernest Shackleton, after rescuing the stranded crew of the Aurora, gave a series of lectures in the United States, then served out the remainder of the war in northern Russia. After the war, he went on a world tour, giving slide-show lectures about the Endurance voyage. He hated doing this, but he still had lots of debt to pay off from the expedition. He also hated writing books and dictated his book South to a collaborator. The writer said that Shackleton could hardly talk about the terrible walk across South Georgia Island.
Shackleton never really felt at ease in civilization. In a way it was true when he wrote in a letter to his wife that he went exploring because he “wasn't good for much of anything else.” In 1920, he organized another expedition to Antarctica with a ship called the Quest. He didn't have a very clear mission this time. He planned to circumnavigate the continent, updating charts and looking for uncharted islands. He also thought they might stop off in the South Pacific and look for Captain Kidd's pirate treasure and investigate early Polynesian navigation methods.
Many of the Endurance crew went with him again. Frank Wild, Doc Macklin, Worsley, and several sailors were on board. Hussey was there, with the same banjo that had kept everyone going for so long. Charlie Green was once again the cook. Macklin knew that Shackleton was ill. He suspected that he had serious heart trouble for many years and had probably suffered several small heart attacks while on the Endurance. But Shackleton would never let doctors examine him or even listen to his heart. On January 4, 1922, the Quest stopped at South Georgia Island. That night, Shackleton called Macklin into his cabin at two in the morning. He was suffering a heart attack. A few minutes later, he died. He was forty-eight years old. Wild was going to send the body back to England, but Shackleton's wife, Emily, sent a telegram and asked that Shackleton be buried on South Georgia Island. She knew he was always happiest in the Antarctic.
Tom Crean returned to Ireland and his job in the navy. He spent the rest of the war working on patrol ships along the coast. In September 1917, he married a woman named Nell, from his hometown of Annascaul. They had three daughters, one of whom died at age four.
Shackleton wanted Crean to come along on the Quest expedition in 1921, but Crean did not want to leave his family. (He told Shackleton, “I have a long-haired pal now!”) He had also been injured in a fall aboard a ship and suffered damage to his eyesight. Although he never mentioned the suffering he had endured during his three expeditions in Antarctica, there were some visible signs of lasting damage. His ears had been frostbitten so often that his daughters described them as feeling like planks of wood. His feet were badly discolored and probably often painful. He had special boots made.
In 1927, Tom and Nell opened a pub and named it the South Pole Inn. The locals always called him “Tom the Pole” and his wife “Nell the Pole.” Like so many of the crew, he rarely talked about his experiences in Antarctica. He didn't give any interviews, and when people asked him questions, he usually changed the subject. He lived out his life just enjoying quiet times with his family. He remained very fond of dogs and named one Toby after one of the pups he raised on the Endurance.
Tom Crean died in 1938, just a week before his sixty-first birthday. He had appendicitis and had to travel several hours to get to a hospital for surgery. His appendix burst, and he died from infection.
Frank Wild worked for the British navy in the Arctic for the rest of the war. He helped supply ships navigate through the ice for the Russian army. (The Russians were allies of the British and Americans in World War I.) Then he served with Shackleton in Russia. His brother Ernest, who had survived his own ordeal with the crew of the Aurora, died from typhoid fever while serving in the war. Frank Wild went with Shackleton on the Quest voyage and helped bury him on South Georgia Island. He took over command of the Quest and finished the journey but never seemed to recover from the loss of his best friend. He moved to South Africa and tried cotton farming but was ruined by years of drought. After so many years as an explorer, he never seemed to be able to find another passion or a place for himself in the world. Some shipmates from earlier expeditions tried to help him out, but sadly, he became an alcoholic and died in 1939.
When Charlie Green joined the Endurance in Buenos Aires, he sent a letter to his parents in England, but they never received it. They eventually thought he was dead and were very surprised when he returned home. They had cashed in his life insurance policy, and his girlfriend had married someone else. Charlie enlisted in the British navy as a cook and served until the end of the war. He married i
n 1918. He went with Shackleton on the Quest expedition as a cook. Shackleton gave Charlie a set of slides from Frank Hurley's photographs, and Charlie gave illustrated talks about the Endurance expedition for the rest of his life. Charlie continued to work as a cook and baker and died in 1974 at age eighty-five.
Frank Hurley went back to South Georgia Island in February 1917 to take more photographs and film of scenery and wildlife for a movie about the Endurance expedition. His film was first shown in December 1919 and was very popular. He became an official war photographer for the Australian armed forces and continued to pioneer photographic techniques all his life. In 1918, he met a French opera singer named Antoinette in Cairo, Egypt, and married her ten days later. They had three daughters and a son. He traveled the world as a photographer for the rest of his life. He died of a heart attack in 1962 at age seventy-six.
Dr. Alexander Macklin served as a medical officer for the rest of the war and was awarded several medals. He had become very close to Shackleton and helped him sort out all the financial affairs of the expedition. He went along on the Quest and was with Shackleton when he died. He settled in Aberdeen, Scotland, married, and raised two sons. His dream of a pill to cure infections was finally realized in 1940 when penicillin, the first antibiotic, became available. (It was discovered in 1928 but was not really developed as a drug until 1940.)
Thomas Orde Lees returned to his position as a fitness instructor with the British Royal Marines, then joined the Royal Flying Corps. At forty, he was too old to become a pilot and was put to work on observation balloons, where he learned to use a parachute. He got very interested in parachuting, which was a new thing at the time. He began a crusade to give parachutes to airplane pilots. The military believed that if pilots had parachutes, they would become cowards and jump out anytime they got in trouble! Orde Lees performed several public demonstrations of parachute jumps. He divorced his first wife and moved to Japan, where he married again and raised another daughter. He died in New Zealand in 1958 at age seventy-nine.
Shackleton's Stowaway Page 24