The Winter Pony

by Iain Lawrence

  For most of a week, we marched to the southeast, with the smoking mountain falling away behind us. Then we came to a place that Captain Scott named Corner Camp. To me it looked just like all the other places where we’d stopped to pitch the tents. But Captain Scott said it marked our turning point. He held out his arm and pointed to the Pole, still hundreds of miles in the distance. From then on, we would head straight for the south, he said.

  At Corner Camp we buried bales of fodder and many pounds of supplies. Then a blizzard came howling down from the mountains, and for three days it kept blowing. The wind was so full of snow that I could barely see Blucher beside me, and nothing at all beyond him. Like tiny pebbles flung against us, the snow pelted my ears and eyes and nose. It tore at the tents with a fluttering boom of canvas.

  I was very cold. My hair still thought it was summer and had never grown its winter thickness. The blanket helped, but snow was driven underneath it, piling up against my skin. My ears were sore and prickly, and I was afraid that my tail would be torn away.

  I didn’t sleep for more than a moment at a time, and I envied the dogs for their little nests below the snow. They dug themselves in at the start of the blizzard and didn’t come out until it was over.

  If not for Mr. Oates, I might have given up. He came often to see us, groping from the blizzard like a blind man. Sometimes Cherry came with him, and sometimes Patrick. Though they walked only a few yards from the tents, they arrived white from head to toe. With helmets on their heads, and mittens on their hands, only tiny bits of their faces could be seen. They brought oil cakes and biscuits, but I was too cold to be hungry.

  When the blizzard finally ended, we got on our way again. The men took down their tents and dug out the sledges. The dogs heard the sounds and exploded from the snow, bursting from their little burrows.

  Soon the sun was shining. The Barrier glittered in all directions as the men took down the picket line. They peeled away our blankets, tied the snowshoes onto Uncle Bill’s broad hooves, and walked us into our harnesses.

  Then Captain Scott looked around. Satisfied, he nodded. “All right, Bowers,” he shouted. “Go ahead.”

  The little man turned the big pony south onto the trail. Uncle Bill stepped out happily, steady on his snowshoes. One by one we followed in his trail, leaving the dogs and their drivers behind. At the back of the line, Captain Scott walked with old Nobby.

  It was good to be moving. But the blizzard had turned the Barrier to mush, and I struggled again through the drifts. We all looked slumped and slow and tired, beaten by the storm. I could see Blossom’s ribs bending as he breathed. But Captain Scott said things would improve, and they did. The snow grew firm as we went along, and for three days we pushed to the south.

  Far to the right were the mountains, but I hardly ever saw them. They liked to hide in the glare of the sun, or in the whirls of snow, or in the mist and fog. So I saw mostly whiteness, no matter what the weather.

  It was hard going. A never-ending wind blew in our faces. It snatched up the snow from the Barrier and swept it along in a stinging cloud. I longed for the sheltering trees of the forest, for bushes or valleys, for anything that would block that wind.

  I started falling behind. Patrick never made me hurry, but when I heard Blucher behind me, wheezing along in my trail, I had to move faster to keep ahead of him.

  Blucher was in a bad way. His load of fodder and biscuits was lightened to four hundred pounds, then halved to just two hundred. But even that was almost too much for him, and on the third day after the blizzard, his handler—a kindly sailor named Mr. Forde—let him walk the last few yards to the camp as he hauled the sledge himself.

  When Captain Scott blew his whistle to end the march, I staggered from the trail. I knew the routine so well, I hardly noticed. The men tied the same picket line to the same two sledges, and tethered us along it in the same order. Other men were setting up the tents, exactly as I’d seen them do it again and again. On went our blankets, out came our food, just as I knew would happen.

  Then everything changed.

  Instead of heading for his tent, Captain Scott started digging in the snow. I watched him as I chewed an oatcake, trying to puzzle out what he was doing. I wondered if there was grass below the snow, the tart and frozen stems that I had loved to browse in the forest. I moved closer, to the end of my tether.

  But the only thing Captain Scott dug from the snow was a block of snow. He set it down on the surface and dug up another.

  All the ponies were watching him. The men all watched as well. They were cold and tired and hungry, eager to get into their tents and cook their dinners. But they stayed to watch.

  Captain Scott went quietly on with his work. He arranged the blocks to build a little wall in front of Nobby, to shield his pony from the wind.

  It was the nicest thing I had ever seen a man do for an animal. He went to a lot of trouble to see that Nobby was comfortable before he found comfort himself. And from then on, every man did the same thing. At the end of every march, Patrick built a wall for me, Mr. Oates for Punch, that lovely Birdie for Uncle Bill. They built half the wall as soon we stopped, and the rest when they finished their dinners.

  It was wonderful. I loved to stand behind my wall and watch the wind whip whirls of snow from the top of it. At last I could sleep.

  But some of the ponies were angry at the men for bringing them out on the Barrier. Guts, especially, liked to kick down his wall just so poor Cherry would have to come out and build it again. He did everything he could to make sure the men suffered too.

  South we went. South again, every day a little worse. Our sledges grew a tiny bit lighter every time we ate, for it meant that much less to carry. But I was sure that mine was growing heavier! Soft snow on the Barrier made the work harder for everybody.

  Blucher and Blossom looked half dead as they struggled along with their sledges. Their noses nearly touched the snow, and their hooves never lifted free of it. They dragged long furrows from one footstep to another.

  Now it was Weary Willy who lagged behind, way at the back of the line. He wasn’t tired as much as lazy, and just went as slowly as he could until he heard the shrill of Captain Scott’s whistle. And didn’t he move himself then! He went along at a trot almost, his mane shaking, his harness buckles jingling.

  His trick nearly did him in one day as a keen wind tore across the Barrier.

  We were moving very slowly into whirls of blowing snow; our line stretched out for more than half a mile. I couldn’t see Uncle Bill; he was too far ahead. Only Weary Willy was behind me. I could just see him, dim and gray, if I turned my head far enough.

  Captain Scott blew his whistle early. The sound was muffled by the snow, so faint that I doubted if Weary Willy could hear it. I imagined him dragging his hooves, lagging farther behind every minute, not knowing he could hurry now and get his food and shelter.

  At nearly the same moment, I heard the dogs. Every day, it gave me a fright as they came up along our trail, as though all day they’d been chasing us. Today their foolish yipping and yapping came more faintly than the whistle, the sound pushed away by the wind. Patrick didn’t hear anything. It was no wonder, his head covered by his helmet and his helmet by his hat. He didn’t look up at the whistle, or back at the dogs, but kept going at the same steady pace as if we had hours more to travel.

  The dogs drew closer, their sound more frantic. They used the wild bark that told they were hungry.

  I looked back at Weary. He was like a shadow on the snow as he plowed his way through a drift. I saw the dog Rabchick appear from the blizzard, bounding along at the head of his team. He was a wild sort of dog, that Rabchick; if his parents were not wolves, his grandparents were. The second and third dogs appeared behind him, then the third and the fourth, and they swung out in a line to pass the pony. I saw the sledge appear, and young Gran racing along with it.

  Then Weary Willy stumbled in the drift, his back end collapsing. And quick as a wink, the dog
Rabchick suddenly turned and went straight at him.

  Patrick was tugging on my halter, trying to make me face forward. But he stopped when he heard the new sound of the dogs, the savage snarls and growls.

  The snow thickened with a gust of wind. We saw only the shapes of the dogs and the man and the pony. In a pack, the dogs were attacking. Weary Willy struggled up and kicked with his hind legs as he bit with his teeth. He plucked a dog right from the snow and thrashed it around in the air. He hurled it down and snatched up another, whirling again as the dogs leapt for his withers.

  Then Gran was there, wading into the fray, striking out with his ski pole. Mr. Meares appeared beside him with his dog stick, but the dogs kept attacking old Weary Willy. The pony was tangled now in his harness. He couldn’t run away, and he couldn’t turn anymore to face the dogs.

  They went for his blind spots, for the backs of his legs. He kicked like a maniac; he snorted and screamed. Gran broke his ski pole on the back of a dog. Mr. Meares broke his stick on another. Both kept thrashing away with the shattered handles, until I thought the dogs would turn on them. One dog yelped, and then another, and that was enough for the rest. They gave up the fight and rolled onto their backs or slinked away. They whined the most pitiful whines I’d ever heard, as though they felt the world was terribly cruel.

  I hoped the men would kill them. But they didn’t. Captain Scott was just as pleased to see that no dog was injured as he was to see that Weary Willy wasn’t eaten. The pony had nothing worse than a bit of scraped-away hair. But he’d put up a great fight, and the men rewarded him by harnessing themselves to his sledge and dragging it into the camp.

  Captain Scott was one of those men, and he was furious to find how heavy that sledge really was. Weary Willy had been dragging more weight than any other pony. It was no wonder, I thought, that he’d become a little stubborn.

  That night, in the long sun, Weary Willy was fed hot mash. He got a wall that was higher than usual, and extra sacking on top of his blankets. I shivered beside him as the temperature fell far below zero, and I wondered if he wasn’t trying for sympathy by looking so pathetic.

  Ninety miles from where we’d started, the men had a meeting in one of the tents. I could see their shapes on the canvas as they sat around the cooking stove. It looked warm in there—a little room full of warmth on the endless snow of the Barrier. The stove hissed as it burned. Someone put a kettle on top, the shadow of his arm stretching out.

  It was Captain Scott. I heard his voice. “The ponies are a disappointment,” he said.

  At the edge of the group, Mr. Oates leaned back until he rested his shoulders on the canvas. I could tell his shape right through the cloth. He answered quite loudly: “You expect too much of them.”

  Behind me on the picket line, Blucher was pawing at the snow. He looked thin and hungry, and I imagined that he was searching for grass where he couldn’t possibly find any.

  “I still want to get them to eighty degrees,” said Captain Scott. The shadow of his hand turned the shadow of his kettle. “If we don’t leave our depot at eighty degrees, we won’t have a chance in the spring.”

  “Oh, you’ll get them there,” said Mr. Oates, with a cheery laugh. “Or most of them, at any rate. But I’ll tell you this: You won’t get them back.”

  The stove kept hissing away. Little whirls of steam shadowed on the side of the tent.

  “There’s three that might drop dead tomorrow,” said Mr. Oates. “They’re on their last legs. They’re done in.”

  I looked again at Blucher. He was still muzzling through the snow, and I was happy he wasn’t listening to the men or he didn’t understand the words. He was surely one of the three who wouldn’t last, and I thought Blossom was another. But I wasn’t sure about the third.

  Birdie Bowers looked at Captain Scott. I could tell it was him by the long shadow of his nose. “Why not send them back now?” he said. “They’ve done a sterling job, haven’t they? Let them live to fight another day.”

  That was all I heard. Patrick came out from the other tent and began to feed me biscuits. Weary Willy put on such a show of sadness that he got one as well.

  In the morning, I was surprised to see what happened.

  Nearly a hundred miles from his hut, at 79 degrees south latitude, Captain Scott sends the weakest ponies back to the stable. He buries their load of fodder, names the place Bluff Depot, and keeps heading south with his five other ponies. He plans to reach 80 degrees and plant his final cache, a ton of supplies. Every pound of supplies that he carries now—every mile he takes it—means less work in the spring, a quicker dash to the Pole.

  His dogs are thin, underfed on their diet of biscuits. He notes that Meares will have to give up his habit of riding on the sledge if he wants the dogs to last. “Meares, I think, rather imagined himself racing to the Pole and back on a dog sledge,” he writes in his journal. “This journey has opened his eyes a good deal.”

  The ponies are worse. Cold weather is hard on the animals, and the temperature falls to twenty below out on the Barrier. To spare the animals, Scott stops early. He plants his last depot at 79 degrees, 28½ minutes south, about twenty miles short of his goal. He marks the spot well, with a cairn six feet high, a flag on a bamboo pole, and a pile of biscuit tins to reflect the sun. He stands the empty sledges up on end, then turns north for the trek home.

  It’s February 16, 1911.

  As Scott marches south, his Terra Nova sails along to the east. She’s heading for the farthest edge of the Barrier, to an explored part of the continent. She carries four men and two ponies—Jehu and Chinaman—meaning to leave them in the strange land and collect them again the next summer.

  But as the ship crosses the Bay of Whales, the men see a strange sight. The spars of a ship reach up above the edge of the Barrier, stark black lines of masts and yards against the glare of the sky.

  They know right away it’s the Fram. There’s no other ship it can be.

  Aboard the Fram, a watchman is drinking coffee. He hears a rattle of chain and comes up on deck at midnight to see the Terra Nova anchored off the stern. He rubs his eyes; he pinches himself, because he can hardly believe he’s awake.

  Amundsen visits the Terra Nova, then the Englishmen dine on the Fram. But the visits are short. Everyone seems in a hurry.

  The Terra Nova changes plans and returns straight away to Evans. She brings the news that Amundsen is less than six hundred miles away, working his dogs on the ice.

  She unloads the two ponies, who have no choice but to swim ashore, towed along by a whaleboat. Chinaman manages well, but Jehu can’t move his legs and has to be hauled through a mile of icy water. On shore, each pony gets half a bottle of brandy poured down his throat, and Chinaman staggers around for a while, comically drunk. But the swim nearly kills little Jehu, and he’s never the same after that.

  Amundsen is also laying depots on the Barrier. He has taken just three men, three sledges, and eighteen dogs. Each sledge carries 550 pounds, but most of that weight—350 pounds per sledge—is dog food.

  A man goes ahead on skis, “to show the direction and encourage the dogs,” he says. The sledges follow in a line. The lead driver has the compass, and he calls directions to the forerunner: “A little to the right, a little to the left.” Each is annoyed by the other.

  The forerunner has the hardest job. “It is no easy matter to go straight on a surface without landmarks,” says Amundsen. “Imagine an immense plain that you have to cross in thick fog; it is dead calm, and the snow lies evenly, without drifts. What would you do? An Eskimo can manage it, but none of us.”

  Amundsen drives the last sledge, watching for things that fall from the others. They travel through a haze that hides the horizon. There are no shadows; the forerunner can’t see the rises and hollows in the snow until he stumbles over them. But they make seventeen miles a day, then twenty-eight on day three. They reach 80 degrees south on Valentine’s Day, and Amundsen places his depot there. He builds a cairn
twelve feet high.

  They mark their route with black flags. When the flags run out, they use dried fish instead, dangled from bamboo poles. Every half a kilometer—measured by the sledge meter—a man calls out the distance, and Amundsen drives another fish into the snow as they dash along. With their sledges emptied, they’re flying over the Barrier: forty-three miles the first day, sixty-two the next, to reach their base in just two days.

  It’s autumn now in the south, with winter coming quickly. But Amundsen makes two more trips across the Barrier, laying depots as far to the south as 82 degrees of latitude.

  He settles down for the winter with a huge lead over Scott. But he’s worried that he might be beaten already. He knows the Englishmen have brought motor sledges, and he imagines the machines rattling on and on across the Barrier.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I spent the night wondering about the third pony. I didn’t sleep for all my thinking.

  Blossom and Blucher were certainly crocks. They barely ate, and shivered all the time, and went everywhere at a plodding walk as slow as funeral horses. I was pleased they were turning back. But who would go with them? I had no idea. Was it Weary Willy? Was it Nobby?

  In the end, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  It was me.

  I knew it as soon as Patrick came out of his tent. He was more quiet than usual, not joking with the others. He came and fed me a biscuit, as he always did. But as he brushed the snow from my blanket and mane, I could feel the sadness inside him. I heard him sigh as he looked to the north. I knew he was turning back, though he’d rather go on.

  Right after breakfast, the men took the supplies from my sledge, from Blossom’s and Blucher’s, and buried it all in the snow. Captain Scott named the place Bluff Depot because there was a big bluff of mountains fifty miles to the east, though mostly it was hidden. They built a cairn to mark the place.