The Winter Pony

by Iain Lawrence

  “The ice!” he shouted now. “Cherry! Crean! We’re floating out to sea!”

  Little Birdie Bowers stepped well back from the gap. He was on one side of it, and I was on the other. I looked up and down, and saw that I was all alone on a little island of ice.

  I whinnied for help. I tried to pull myself free from the tether line. But all I did was tug on the sledge behind me, where the line was anchored on my own lonely little island.

  Birdie Bowers gaped at me. So did Uncle Bill, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

  The ice shifted. The gap closed with a grinding sort of crunch, then slowly began to open again.

  On the other side, Birdie Bowers rubbed his hands together. Then he squared his feet, bent forward, and ran straight toward the widening gap. His little feet pattered on the snow. At the edge, he launched himself forward and flew above the water like a puppet flung through the air. He tumbled onto my island, leapt to his feet, and hurried to untie me. But the knots were stiff, the rope frozen.

  He attacked them with his teeth. The ice moved again, nearly knocking Birdie from his feet. He gave up on the rope and tugged instead on the sledge.

  He couldn’t move it by himself. It weighed five hundred pounds and was frozen in its place. So I pulled as well. I backed across the ice, towing with my tether line. We moved the sledge across the gap, and all of us were together again on the same broken bit of ice. Or all except Guts, who was gone forever without a sound.

  And with another bang, our one big island split in two.

  The men struck their tents. They threw them on the sledges. Birdie Bowers took just enough time to sit down and put on his boots.

  “We have been in a few tight places,” he said. “But this is about the limit.”

  The sledges were loaded. I and the other ponies were harnessed. We were ready to move, but it wasn’t clear at all which way we should go.

  We could see land ahead; the snowy slope to the Barrier was behind us. To our right was the glacier, impossible to climb, and on our left were endless floes of ice, all drifting out to sea. Our little islands were going along with them.

  Captain Scott was on the Barrier, the rest of our people at the wintering place. The ice seemed thickest behind us, so we headed back. We fled for the slope that would lead us up to the Barrier.

  “Keep together!” shouted Birdie.

  He led us on, steering Uncle Bill around splits and cracks. But when we came to the first wide gap, the big pony wouldn’t cross it. He shied away from the water, tossing his head so violently that he nearly pulled the little man off his feet.

  The crack was less than two feet wide. For Uncle Bill, it was just a step. But he wouldn’t do it, no matter how Birdie pulled at his tether. The men took off our harnesses and freed us from the sledges, but even then, Uncle Bill wouldn’t cross the gap. I didn’t blame him for that; it was scary to look at the black water and think how deep and cold it was, to think of what lived inside and might be waiting right there below the ice. I had seen the killer whales hunting, and I was terrified that one would come bursting through the gap at any moment. I didn’t want to go near that place.

  But Punch didn’t mind. Punch was the sort of pony who didn’t think about anything he couldn’t see right in front of him. He had no imagination, and I sometimes thought he was lucky for that. Cherry led him away, then turned him back in a circle, speeding him up until he jogged beside a trotting pony. Together they ran toward the gap, and together they crossed it. The ice shook as Punch pounded along.

  I went next. Patrick held me firmly and told me not to worry. “It’s like crossing a puddle, is all,” he said.

  I didn’t look down. But I couldn’t help seeing the black streak below me. I imagined it was just a puddle on springtime snow and that the worst I could do was wet my foot if I missed a step. Patrick pulled. He stepped across the gap.

  I closed my eyes and followed him. I had followed that man for so far that it was easy.

  Nobby came next, then Uncle Bill tried again. He still snorted and pranced, big puffs of breath jetting from his nostrils. But it was either cross the water or stay by himself on a crumbling island. So he made up his mind and went over with a mighty leap, as though crossing a great canyon. Then he looked so pleased with himself, so proud, that Birdie Bowers gave him a piece of biscuit.

  The men left us on our new bit of ice and brought the sledges across. Then we moved along to the next gap. Punch went straight across, but the gap widened even as he crossed it. Patrick held me back until the floes came closer again. Then I and Nobby and Uncle Bill went across together.

  From gap to gap we moved along, from island to island. The ponies went first, then the men hurried back for the sledges. We headed for a sloping island that made a ramp to the Barrier, where the cliff was less than twenty feet high. But for every yard we gained, the floe took us a foot in the other direction.

  I wasn’t afraid. Neither were Punch and Uncle Bill. We trusted the men, and waited for them at every crossing. I felt bad that they pulled the sledges, heaving in the harnesses until they were red and panting.

  At last we had only two gaps to cross to reach the sloping island. But as we waited for the first to close, the killer whales arrived.

  Their black fins sliced up through the water. Their breaths puffed up in steamy spouts. One held up its head and stared at us, and we saw its wicked rows of teeth gleaming like the snow.

  Back and forth they swam in front of us. I heard their voices in the water; I felt them through the ice. Others came from all around, gathering in the gaps.

  The floes were shifting. When they jammed together, we went across—all at once—in a line like a cavalry charge. The men rushed back for the sledges and we moved on to the last gap. So did the whales.

  Again we waited for our chance, and again we got across. We climbed the slope toward the Barrier, Birdie Bowers so happy now that he whistled as we walked.

  But at the top, there was a terrible disappointment. The ramp did not reach all the way to the Barrier. There was a gulf of water forty feet across, and it stretched for miles on either side.

  The sea swell rolled through it, bouncing off the Barrier, bouncing off the ice, churning that gulf into wild white water. Huge chunks of ice tossed and tumbled, and the whales swam everywhere, their breaths a terrific roar.

  Birdie Bowers looked beaten. I could feel his despair as he looked at that stretch of water. Our only safety was on the other side, but crossing was impossible.

  The men got out their stoves. They brewed tea for themselves, and hot mash for the rest of us, then sat on a sledge, all in a row. They didn’t talk, but I could sense the worry shared by the three of them.

  In front of us, the killer whales swam back and forth. A seal barked from a distant floe, and a pair of penguins popped up to have a look at us. But the men looked only at the Barrier, watching for the wind.

  If the wind picked up from the north or the west, we were safe. Our island would be blown across to the Barrier. But if the wind came instead from the south, we were finished. We would sail away on our icy little home, away from the winter station, away from our friends and our food. There was not a ship in all the land to save us.

  And the wind almost always came from the south.

  On the lip of the Barrier, little whirls of snow showed that the wind was already blowing up there. Cherry took off his glass eyes. He wiped them with his mitten, then put them on again, working their little arms under his wind helmet. Then he sat facing the west, and three times he slurped his tea. “You know,” he said, “if a chap went off that way, he might find a place to get across to the hut. He could tell Captain Scott what’s happened.”

  Birdie nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  I believed they were right, but it was hard to tell. Far to the west, the ice did seem to butt up against the Barrier. But it might have been a trick that the ice was playing, the way it sometimes looked very close when it was really far away, or
how it sometimes seemed to float upside down in the sky.

  “It’s worth a try,” said Cherry. He bent down to tighten his boots for the long walk. But Birdie Bowers, looking very comfortable, said, “I say, it might be better if it’s Crean who goes.”

  Mr. Crean suddenly sat up straight. Cherry blinked through his little glass eyes. “Why?” he asked.

  “Well …” Birdie frowned and twitched. “Well, the chap has to see,” he said with an awkward laugh. “You understand?”

  Poor Cherry. I felt so sorry for him as he turned away. It wasn’t his fault that he had to wear his eyes on his nose, hooked over his ears. He scraped a little rut into the snow with his boot. “Yes, of course,” he said softly. “You’re quite right.”

  So Mr. Crean headed off alone. We watched him work his way across the floes, standing in our little group—four ponies and two men.

  Cherry hated to sit and do nothing. He got out a tent and began to set it up. “At least we’ll have a marker,” he said.

  Birdie helped him. It was a job they could do very quickly, but one or the other was always looking away from the canvas and the poles, his head turned to the west. It was always Cherry who said, “Is that Crean I see now?” Or “Look; is that a group of men on the ice?” His glass eyes didn’t work very well. Every time Cherry saw a man, Birdie said it was only a penguin.

  When the tent was up, the men fed us again. They gave us our nose bags, with plenty of oats inside them. Punch and Nobby chewed away quite happily, but I kept watch for Mr. Crean. I didn’t feel like eating until I knew he was safe. And at last he appeared on the Barrier, so far to the west that he was just a little dot with waving arms. He looked like a flea.

  Cherry saw him too, and pointed. “Birdie?” he said. “Is that a man over there?”

  Birdie sighed. He’d been asked to look at a hundred penguins. But now, as he turned and looked again, he laughed with delight. “Why, yes, it’s Crean!” he cried. “Thank God one of us is out of the woods, anyhow.”

  The little flea waved its tiny arms again, then vanished onto the Barrier.

  I knew he would find Captain Scott. I wasn’t sure what anyone could do to help us, but I had no doubt that the captain would find some little trick. So again we waited. And the killer whales waited, standing up to watch us. Soon the skuas came, one by one, until a big black mass of them was sitting on the ice around us, hoping to get what was left when the whales had their feed. Everyone waited.

  A big shard of ice came drifting in from the east. A sliver off an iceberg, or a fragment from the cliff, it was like an enormous broken tooth. It turned; it tilted. It drifted on.

  When Cherry saw it, he started shouting. He started waving. “Over here!” he cried, half laughing. “Come on. This way.”

  The ice jammed to a floe to the east of us, then freed itself and drifted on again. Now Patrick called to it as well. They cheered as it came nearer. When one end touched our own little island, and the other end swung around and jarred up against the Barrier, Cherry and Birdie and Patrick all held their hands in the air and grinned at each other. They had a bridge now that would take them straight to shore. It was big enough for both of them, and maybe for a pony. But there were fifteen feet of cliff to climb on the other side. And only men could climb a cliff.

  I didn’t blame the men for being so happy. Their only chance for escape had appeared from nowhere, just when everything looked as bleak and dark as possible. It was as though their lives had been snatched away, then given back like a gift from the world.

  They laughed as they set to work. They took everything off my sledge and put it on the other sledges. Then they used mine for a ladder, lowering one end to the bridge. They had just put it in place when a voice called across the strip of water. It was Captain Scott! He was standing at the edge of the Barrier, with Mr. Oates and Mr. Crean beside him.

  Captain Scott shouted, “Come across. Hurry!”

  Little Birdie Bowers answered, standing on his toes as he shouted, “What about the ponies?”

  Captain Scott yelled back, “I don’t give a damn about the ponies!”

  It stung me to hear those words. At the same time, I knew why he said them. There was nothing else that he could say that would get Birdie to leave us behind and make his way to safety.

  “It’s you I want,” shouted Captain Scott. “And I am going to see you safe here up on the Barrier before I do anything else.”

  Birdie and Cherry started their way across. Birdie went first, down to the bridge of ice. Cherry followed. Then Patrick turned around to step backward onto the sledge. With his hands on the snow, his feet on the sledge, he raised his head for a moment and we found ourselves looking right into each other’s eyes. I knew he had to go, but I didn’t want it to happen.

  I saw him swallow, a big lump bobbing in his throat. I tried to make it easier by turning away myself, though it was a hard thing to do. My eyes wanted to look again, to watch him go, but I wouldn’t let them.

  He called out to me. “So long, James Pigg,” he said. “I promise I’ll be back.” And a moment later, he was gone, clambering down the sledge.

  I saw him again, he and Birdie and Cherry together, lifting the sledge to the Barrier cliff. Killer whales snorted and roared, and the men scrambled up and over the top as Captain Scott and the others reached down to help them. Then they all moved away from the edge, and I couldn’t see them anymore.

  Whirls of snow came down from the lip of the Barrier. To the west a huge chunk of ice fell away, tumbling into the sea with a rumble and a great splash. Waves spread out through the gap, breaking against the bridge, nearly knocking it away.

  A penguin leapt up to the ice. A killer whale cruised past it, puffing a breath that sparkled in the sun.

  I thought of poor Guts, trapped suddenly under the ice in that awful cold and darkness. I wondered if it had happened so quickly that he didn’t really know it had happened. It would be good if that were true. In a way, I wished the ice would crack open right then and swallow me. I didn’t want to drift around on a bit of ice until I starved to death.

  Whatever was going to happen, it didn’t matter to the skuas. They ruffled their wings and settled, hunched, in the snow. Their little black eyes were open, watching. Those birds, I thought, could sit and wait forever.

  I felt rather sorry for myself just then. I had wanted to be such a help to Captain Scott and Mr. Oates and the others. I’d thought I would spend my last days with them, in one way or another. But now I was nothing but a worry to them, no use at all.

  I was surprised when they came back to the edge of the Barrier. Uncle Bill noticed them first, and whinnied sadly for Birdie Bowers, who had cared for him as fondly as Patrick had cared for me. The big pony shifted on his feet. He dug at the snow with one hoof.

  I supposed the men had come for one last look, as a way of saying good-bye. Mr. Oates had brought something long and thin that he rested on his shoulder. I thought it was probably a rifle. But when he swung it down from his shoulder, I saw that it was a shovel. Birdie came up behind him with another shovel, and together they started digging.

  They pushed the blades into the surface. They pried with the handles and levered up chunks of snow that they tossed over the edge, down to the bridge. Then they did it again, cutting back from the edge. The snow splattered on the icy bridge with small explosions.

  The men were making a ramp.

  Patrick and Cherry started working beside them, using skis to dig in the snow. Mr. Crean used his hands, breaking off bits from the edge. Then Birdie scrambled down and across the bridge, bringing a shovel to start another ramp up to our island.

  The work would take hours and hours, and the men raced against the wind. The gusts were stronger now, and shiny sprinkles whirled from the falling clods of snow. At any moment, a gale could come, and we’d go sailing out to sea.

  Captain Scott was watching for that. He paced along the Barrier’s edge, looking now to the south and now to the sea. Mr. Oat
es and the others were digging like fury. They had thrown off their heavy coats, their mittens and wind helmets. They bent and straightened, working the shovels without a moment’s rest.

  I felt the ice shift. The bridge jarred across the floe with a sound like teeth being ground together. Captain Scott shouted down to little Birdie, his voice shrill with urgency: “Bowers, come up!”

  Birdie Bowers looked up. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

  “Now!” screamed Captain Scott. “Come up, I say.”

  The bridge was breaking loose. It tipped to one side, spilling half of the snow that was piled on its top. Birdie grabbed his mittens and coat and raced for the Barrier.

  He barely made it. He had to leap across a gap on the other side. Mr. Oates stretched out on his stomach, reaching out a hand to grab the little man. They hauled up the sledge, and an instant later, the bridge flopped on its side. A gap opened between its far end and the Barrier. There was two feet of water, then six feet of water, then twenty feet of water.

  Uncle Bill hadn’t taken his eyes off Birdie for a moment. Now he swayed as the ice shifted again. His tail swished sadly.

  We had our blankets on. I was wearing two—my own and one that still smelled of Blossom. But I had never felt so cold as then.

  The men went away, but not far. They must have pitched their tents as close as they dared to the edge, because there was always one of them—and often more—standing right at the edge. Patrick was there at the end of the day, as the clouds and the snow turned to the colors of fire.

  Then everything faded away into blackness. The mountains disappeared; the Barrier vanished; the skuas eased out of sight. I wished the moon would come down through the clouds, but he didn’t. The night was the loneliest I remembered, so cold that my breaths froze into icicles.