It was straightforward at the bottom: the slabs at the base of the ridge were almost horizontal, and after slipping a couple of times he discovered a technique for ramming his cramponed feet against the ice to give him some purchase. Then a second slab lying across the first blocked his path, and he had to bury the tip of the ice-axe in its surface to give him enough purchase to pull himself over.
From there on it was all hands and feet. When he was almost halfway up, he paused to get his bearings. The chimney should have been immediately above him, but there was no sign of it, just a wall of sheer-sided ice. Then he glanced to his right and recognised an unmistakable column of ice running up the side of the ridge. The chimney was on the other side of that.
But getting to it was going to be no easy task, without climbing back down and starting all over again. There was nothing to grip on to while swinging himself around the column, so he braced his back against a block of ice behind him and attacked the ice with his axe, carving out both a handhold and a foothold. He stood up, got one foot on to the tiny ledge he had carved, and reached around the column. He embraced it, found his centre of balance, and started to grope for a handhold. There was none.
He could see a ledge about a foot to his right. He buried the axe in the ice above and to his right and used it for support while taking his right foot from the foothold, bracing it against the ledge, and moving his left foot to where his right had been. Then the foothold started to crack, and he had to lunge with his whole body for a spur of ice. He tugged the axe out from its hold and was about to bury it somewhere firmer when his sudden movement startled an auk that had been sheltering from the storm in a crevice amongst the jumbled blocks of ice.
There was always one. It was Molineaux’s First Law of Climbing, a variant of Sod’s law: whatever you were climbing, be it a town house in London, a cliff on the coast of a Mediterranean island or a volcano in New Zealand, there was always a pigeon/seagull/kea waiting for the worst possible moment to break cover and catch you off guard.
He was so startled by the tiny, flapping wings that he had to put a foot back on the foothold he had carved. It crumbled beneath his weight and he found himself sliding back down an almost sheer slope.
He hacked at it with the axe, but its head just bounced off the iron-hard ice. Then his legs shot out over a precipice. He hooked his left arm over a spur of ice and dangled there, his legs and body hanging in space.
He swore, and glanced down – heights had never troubled him – but the ice spicules in the air concealed everything below him from sight. It could not be far to the pack ice below – no more than twenty feet – but he would probably break a leg on landing. And he was not going to get far on a broken leg. Then Killigrew would have to put a bullet in his brain, the same as he had done with Gargrave; and it would be the right, kind thing to do, but Molineaux would not have cared for it one little bit.
‘Everything all right up there, Molineaux?’ Killigrew yelled from somewhere below.
‘Oh, yur, sir. Just plummy!’ he called down scathingly.
‘Then stop hanging around and get a move on!’
‘Use your axe, Wes!’ Riggs called up helpfully. The carpenter’s mate could always be relied upon to come up with unneeded, unwanted advice.
Use my axe, Molineaux thought sourly. What does he think I’m using, my jockum? ‘I’ll use my axe, Jerry! I’ll use it on your bloody noddle, if you don’t shut your trap! You think this is easy? You want to come up here and have a stab at it?’
He swung the axe at the smooth slope above him, but it failed to bite into the ice. The spur he clung to with his left arm was starting to crumble. He swung the axe, and this time it bit: not deep enough for him to be happy about trusting his weight to it, but he did not have much choice.
Then the spur broke away and went spinning into space, leaving Molineaux hanging from the ice-axe. ‘Watch under!’ he yelled, and in the same instant heard the chunk of ice shatter below.
Gripping the shaft of the axe with one hand, scrabbling for purchase with the other, he managed to draw his legs up until he could get the soles of his boots against the ice and his crampons bit. He wormed his way up a couple of feet, swung the axe against the ice further up, and then inched his way up to the chimney. There, bracing his back against one wall and the soles of his feet against the other, he was able to squirm his way slowly and painstakingly to the top.
From the crest of the ridge he could see nothing, just the ice spicules driving out of the darkness at him. He dug a hole in the ice with the axe, buried the hook of an ice-anchor into it, then unlooped the coil of rope from his shoulders, rove one end through the anchor and belayed it before dropping the other end down the side of the ridge.
Killigrew climbed up after him, followed by Ågård, Qualtrough, Riggs, and Kracht. Endicott tied pylons, anchors and tools to the end of the rope and they drew them up next. They managed to rig a cat’s cradle and then dragged the first sledge up. The sledge weighed close to fifteen hundred pounds and it took all six of the men on the crest of the ridge to draw it up. It got stuck against the underside of a projecting slab of ice. They lowered it a foot, tried to lift it again, but again it got caught.
Molineaux sighed, belayed his rope to an ice-anchor, then tied another rope to another anchor and rappelled down the side of the ridge to where the sledge was stuck.
‘Give me some slack!’ he yelled up to Killigrew.
The others lowered the sledge a foot. Molineaux wedged himself beneath it and pushed it out from beneath the slab of ice so they could pull it up over the projection. Then it was all they could do to hold it in place until Molineaux had climbed back up to the ridge to help them. They hauled it up the rest of the way, grunting with the effort.
Orsini and Butterwick climbed up next, and Riggs and Kracht rappelled down to the pack on the other side of the ridge, where at least there was some shelter from the driving wind. The men left on the ridge lowered the sledge to them, and the carpenter’s mate and the blacksmith untied the ropes. Killigrew and the others drew the ropes up and then threw them down on the other side so Endicott and Hughes could belay them to the second sledge.
Getting the other three sledges over was no easier, and it took them two hours of back-breaking work in those appalling conditions to get sledges, dogs and people over the ridge. Inevitably, the weather waited until they were almost done before easing off, and visibility improved to the extent that they could see the pack ice below from the ridge. Ågård and Molineaux were the last to climb down from the ridge, pausing to remove all anchors and pylons from the crest. Molineaux tested a spur of ice for strength, and then doubled the last rope around it, so they could climb down without leaving anything behind: they might need it again before their long trek was over.
‘Thank God that’s over,’ said Ågård, preparing to precede Molineaux down to the pack ice below. ‘I wouldn’t want to go through all that again.’ As the starlit sky cleared, Molineaux glanced to southwards and saw something that made his heart sink. Half a mile away across the pack, he could see another pressure ridge in the ice. And behind that, another. And behind that, another. Ridge after ridge, stretching away as far as the eye could see beneath the starlit sky.
Chapter 22
A Frightful Fiend
‘How far have we come?’ Killigrew asked Yelverton as they set up camp in the lee of another pressure ridge on the ice pack four days later.
‘Thirty-eight miles since we set out on Christmas Day,’ said the master. ‘That’s an average of six and one-third miles a day.’
‘Not quite the twelve miles a day I’d been hoping for. What’s our average been since we reached the first of the pressure ridges?’
Yelverton lowered his voice. ‘Two miles a day.’
Killigrew swore. ‘And how long’s it going to take us to reach Fort Hope at that rate?’
‘One year, two weeks and two days, I should say. But it can’t be much more than another twenty miles before we reach th
e mainland. No more pressure ridges – we’ll make much better time.’
‘We’ll have to: at this rate it’ll be another ten days before we even reach the mainland! How many more days’ rations have we got, Latimer?’
‘At our current rate? Fifty-four days.’
‘Which gives us forty-four days to get from the coast to Fort Hope,’ mused Killigrew. ‘How many miles a day will we have to cover to make up for lost time, Yelverton?’
‘If my guess that there’s another twenty miles between us and the coast is correct, then that leaves seven hundred and thirty-eight miles to Fort Hope. Divide seven hundred and thirty-eight by forty-four days…’ He looked up at Killigrew with worried eyes. ‘Seventeen miles a day, near as damn it.’
Killigrew felt a tightness in his stomach, and not just because he had been on six-upon-four rations with the rest of them. ‘Seventeen miles a day is nothing.’ He tried to sound blasé. ‘That’s from Falmouth to Truro. I used to do it all the time when I was a boy.’
‘That’s seventeen miles a day after having been on six-upon-four for over a month,’ Yelverton reminded him gently. ‘Dragging sledges behind us through some of the worst conditions known to man.’
‘The sledges will get lighter the further we go. As soon as we’ve used up enough of our victuals, we’ll take all the equipment off Charity, divide it between Faith and Hope, and abandon Charity. Then we’ll be nine men to a sledge instead of six. Besides, the further south we go, the more wildlife we’ll be able to hunt to supplement our victuals.’
‘I’m afraid food might turn out to be the least of our problems,’ said Latimer.
Their hardships had aged them all since they had entered the Arctic, but sometimes the young clerk looked positively decrepit. His once-rubicund face was permanently ashen. He hardly spoke at all now, and sometimes when they bedded down for the night in their tents Killigrew heard him quietly sobbing himself to sleep. Latimer needed keeping an eye on: he was going to be the first to break, and it would happen soon. ‘We’re getting through bottles of spirits of wine at an appalling rate. When that runs out, we won’t be able to cook any food or even melt snow into drinking water.’
Killigrew stared at him. ‘You told me we had more than enough spirits of wine to see us to Fort Hope.’
Latimer flushed. ‘I’m rather afraid I miscalculated.’
‘You miscalculated?’ Varrow asked incredulously, rising to his feet. ‘You miscalculated? Well, that’s bloody champion, isn’t it? We’re all gannin’ to die, because this bloody quill-driver miscalculated!’ He grabbed Latimer by the lapels and hauled him to his feet. ‘Maybe we should send you back to the depot on foot to fetch some more bottles! ’
‘All right, Mr Varrow, let go of him,’ Killigrew said firmly.
The engineer complied.
Latimer straightened his clothing with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘There was nothing wrong with my figures. I calculated the amount of spirits of wine we’d get through on the basis used up per man for each of the sledging expeditions. We’re using up more now, that’s all.’
‘Of course we are,’ said Strachan. ‘The weather’s that much colder: it takes that much more fuel to thaw food out before we eat it.’
‘It can’t be helped,’ sighed Killigrew. ‘We’ll just have to wait for the sun to return, that’s all. And in the meantime, we treat spirits of wine like liquid gold: no more wasting it to melt snow into drinking water. From now on, if anyone wants a drink, he can scoop snow into his water bottle and wear it next to his body until it melts.’
Molineaux came across with a couple of mugs in each hand. ‘I made you some cocoa, sir. I’m afraid it’s not very warm, but… drink it up, before it freezes.’
Killigrew gulped the tepid cocoa down. ‘God bless you, Molineaux.’
‘Happy New Year, sir.’
‘Good God, is it New Year already?’
‘I wonder what 1853 has in store for us?’ mused Strachan.
‘More snow and ice, for the next three months at least,’ Yelverton said morosely.
Killigrew shook his head. ‘The world we left behind is still waiting for us, gentlemen. A world of warmth and sunlight. That’s what we’re heading for. I know it seems like a long-forgotten dream now, but it was real enough once, and it will be again.’
Strachan sang a chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ softly, and the others joined in the refrain, without much enthusiasm. ‘So, any New Year’s resolutions, anyone?’ Strachan asked when they had finished.
‘If we get out of this, I’m going to start going to church every Sunday,’ said Latimer. ‘Because it’ll be thanks to the grace of God and God alone.’
‘Mr Yelverton?’ prompted Strachan.
‘Mr Yelverton’s going to admit himself to a hospital the moment we get back to Britain,’ said Killigrew. ‘Isn’t that so, Giles?’
‘The devil it is,’ said Yelverton. ‘Since every minute may be my last, I’m going to live life as if that was the case. That’s my New Year’s resolution. What about you, Mr Strachan? In my experience, a man who asks others what their New Year’s resolution is only does so in the hope they’ll ask him his.’
Strachan made a pretence of thinking about it. ‘My New Year’s resolution? Never to go on another expedition to the Arctic so long as I live.’
As the others crawled into their tents one by one, Killigrew lingered outside to celebrate the New Year with his penultimate cheroot. Ursula joined him. With no one else close by, she felt confident enough to slide her arm through his and the two of them leaned against one another companionably. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked him.
‘I was just thinking about what I’d be doing right now if I was in London instead of here in the Arctic.’
‘And what would you be doing, if you were in London right now instead of in the Arctic?’
He checked his fob watch. ‘Let’s see now: it’s just after three in the morning in England. This time last year, I was passed out on my bed in my chambers…’
‘Alone?’
‘That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers,’ he replied primly. ‘I woke up at ten o’clock and went for a swim in the Serpentine to clear my head.’
‘In the middle of winter?’
‘Very invigorating. And believe me, it’s a lot warmer in London at this time of year than it is in the Arctic.’
‘I have never been to London,’ she said wistfully. ‘I should have like to have seen it, before I died.’
He clasped her hand in his. ‘And so you shall. Why, London’s the finest city in the world! Everyone should see it once. Perhaps you should make that your New Year’s resolution.’
‘My New Year’s resolution is the same as Herr Yelverton’s: to live each day as if it were my last. It’s strange – I feel as if I’ve woken up from a dream, after ten years.’
‘Ten years?’
‘Ever since I married Wolfgang,’ she explained. ‘When you are a woman, your whole life seems to build up towards marriage; one should be forgiven for thinking that once that goal is reached, all one’s problems will be solved.’
‘Instead you found you had a whole new parcel of problems to cope with?’
She nodded. ‘I found myself trying to become what he wanted, rather than being myself. Somewhere along the line I forgot what it was like to enjoy life. As terrifying as these past few months have been, I’ve felt more alive than I can ever remember having been before. Strange, that I should have come to the dead world of the Arctic to rediscover the pleasure of being alive.’
‘When we get back to England, I’ll take you around London, show you the sights: the Royal Opera, the British Museum, the Great Globe, the Royal Academy, the Tower, the Zoological Gardens… I hear they’ve got a polar bear, if you’re interested in seeing one?’
She elbowed him in the ribs. ‘No, thank you! I have seen all the polar bears I ever want to see.’
‘Then there’s the Crystal Palace…’
‘They were going to re-erect it somewhere, the last I heard. It’ll probably be open again by the time we get back. Let’s see, it’ll be summer by the time we’re there. You want to live? You haven’t lived until you’ve been boating on the Serpentine at high summer.’
‘But still you have not told me your New Year’s resolution.’
‘Mine? To get us back to safety; every last one of us.’
* * *
Molineaux was awoken by the dogs barking furiously. He peeped out from under the flap of the tent he shared with Yelverton, Latimer, Hughes, Orsini and Fischbein. Outside it was still dark.
But the first signs of returning light were already visible, already the sky was starting to grow lighter at noon, and if Yelverton was to be believed they would catch their first glimpse of the returning sun within a week.
He nudged the man snoring next to him until he stopped snoring: Hughes. ‘Is it morning already?’ the Welshman mumbled.
‘I don’t know,’ whispered Molineaux. ‘What time is it?’
‘How should I know?’ Hughes grumbled, and turned over to go back to sleep.
Ågård had been supposed to rouse Molineaux at two in the morning when it was Molineaux’s turn to stand guard, yet the boatswain’s mate was certain he had been asleep for a lot longer than two hours. He crawled out from under the dinghy and stretched stiff and aching limbs, his torso sore where the ropes of his harness chaffed it. What he would not give for just one night in a hammock! Or, since he was fantasising, a night in a nice cosy bed with Lulu.
He glanced about the encampment in the moonlight. There were the other two tents, the black patch between them, where the camp-fire had burned out. By the dog sledge, the huskies barked into the darkness.
Then he saw the sledges, saw that something was not right. He rummaged through the stores until he found a bull’s-eye, lit it with a match and cursed in horror and disbelief at the sight that greeted his eyes. Faith and Hope remained as they had been left the night before, with their victuals and equipment neatly bundled and strapped on. But Charity had been overturned, the Halkett boat ripped to shreds, crates broken open, tins of food torn apart, their contents scattered. Even the sledge itself had been broken up.
Killigrew and the North-West Passage Page 45