The Rope Eater

by Ben Jones

  We moved off the ice plain and back into the hummocks again. The loose snow stuck onto the bottom of the boat, adding weight and resistance with every step. The sun rose over a blowing, drifty wind; luckily the clouds kept the glare from getting too bad, and we could see where we were going. I felt awful for Creely, crying out as he pitched forward onto his knees. He was forced to stand by as we fought the boat over hummocks, dancing from one foot to the other, and shouting encouragement from beneath his blindfold. Occasionally he would gamely start a shanty, keeping it up as he stumbled and sprang up with new emphasis, shouting out the words with forced gaiety.

  We slogged in the harnesses, praying for open leads. We found one that was so thick with brash ice that it was as easy to pull as row. As soon as we pulled the boat out, more ice accumulated on the bottom and we had to stop to knock it loose. We spotted another lead in the distance, but as we drew closer found that it was not open water, but simply fresh, black ice. Still, it provided a more level surface, and gave us a good pull before it disappeared in the hummocks.

  When the doctor called the halt, the sky was darkening and the wind picking up. He said we’d be lucky if we made five miles, but added optimistically that a night of wind might open some leads for us. We pitched and made our hoosh and sat watching the stove flame for long into the night. Creely and I sat in silence as the wind came up, and listened to the snap and flutter of the tent. In the morning, the doctor went out on his own, then came back in.

  “Sit tight, we can’t move in this weather. A day in the tent may clear up your eyes as well, Mr. Creely.” He ducked back outside and was gone for several hours.

  We fired up the stove and sat in comfort as it blazed. Creely told some stories about the Far East, the ports of Formosa, and Preston about Brazil, where he had been trading for two years before he shipped with Griffin, and for a few meager hours we all had the chance to forget where we were.

  After a time, the doctor appeared and ordered our stove out— if we were stuck for a few days, we needed the fuel. Reluctantly we doused, and tried our candles, but they wouldn’t stay lit. So we each pulled down into the very ends of our bags and pulled the tops shut over us. We passed long hours in the silence and dark before the doctor ordered us to make our dinner. Creely looked better—his eyes squinting but not oozing. Preston looked weary. Still, a little hoosh and we all cheered up. We sang what songs we knew, and some we sang twice. The doctor returned and we doused the stove again, and retreated again into silence.

  Outside, the wind hummed through the guy ropes, and the walls of the tent shuddered. As the snow fell, the sound of the storm grew muffled, as if we were being draped in blankets and drifting to sleep; the temperature rose and the inside of the tent became very comfortable. I listened to the delicate brush of the snow between gusts and drowsed.

  In the morning the wind had resumed and the snow was still falling. The visibility was poor, but Dr. Architeuthis felt it prudent to push on anyway. The snow had drifted high in the lee of the tents and the boat was entirely buried. It took us two hours of hard work to get everything unearthed, packed, and stowed. The wind became maddeningly indeterminate—now blowing fiercely, now dropping off into a breeze. We struggled into our harnesses and pushed off. The snow was very soft and deep—over our knees at first—and we were able to slide the boat along at a reasonable clip. Gusts of wind struck it and threw us off balance, or we stumbled on the uneven footing. After three hours of steady hauling, we came to heavily hummocked ice. The doctor called a halt to take some sightings and determined that we were drifting south, and it was therefore necessary to shift northwest in order to intersect with the Narthex. The ice in that direction was heavily hummocked, so the doctor decided that we would make better time by carrying the boat and relaying. The doctor threaded our harnesses through eyes that Ash had built into the gunnels. Thus we were able to run the harnesses from our shoulders—Preston and I in the front and the doctor on his own in the rear—and pick the boat up entirely.

  We first unloaded the boat quickly and marched off. We actually didn’t have much to carry, and so we sped along. After a half mile, we depoted our gear and returned to the boat. Emptied of our gear, the boat was easier to manage, though still not light. Gusts caught it several times and sent us sprawling, but on the whole we made excellent time.

  The process of relaying gave the illusion of great progress as we were always moving quickly, and I do believe we made better time. We camped, having marched close to twenty-five miles in order to make eight miles of progress. Creely’s eyes improved, and he was able to join us in the harnesses; Dr. Architeuthis carved some snow goggles for him from part of the boat’s seat. Another day of relaying brought us no leads, just the weight of the boat through the high hummocks and fragmented ice. Another day and another and another, breaking our backs for precious miles.

  On the eighteenth night, the temperature dropped well below zero and the wind picked up. In the morning, Dr. Architeuthis reluctantly ordered us to stay in our tent, but forbade the lighting of the stove, to conserve fuel. I decided to go out, and spent the day with him in the wind and fading light trying to read gauges, and to break through the hummocks to get more and deeper samples of the ice. Most of the instruments had not been designed for the Arctic in September—they were too small for our clumsy fingers and impossible to read in the fading light. Still, the doctor recorded everything he could with great care, and gathered up countless samples into the endless stream of stopper bottles he produced from his pack.

  We leaned into the wind and made our way back to the tent again. After dinner, we made a hollow with our bodies and lit the candle, huddling over it for warmth and comfort.

  “From tomorrow, regardless of the weather, we will need to stay on the march,” said the doctor. “Otherwise we may lose the boat in the drift of the pack.” He doused the candle and we pulled back into our bags and tried not to think about the cold.

  When Dr. Architeuthis roused us again, it was still dark and the wind was still howling.

  “A quick breakfast and let’s be off.”

  We made weak tea and dipped our pemmican in it to warm it, then dragged ourselves outside. It was bitterly cold and the wind burned and battered. We began relaying again, and made fair progress until we began the second run with the boat. We were marching through shallow drifts between exposed ridges of ice when a gust caught us from behind and lifted the stern of the boat into the air. I was in the bow with Creely and he stumbled just as the boat pitched upward. He fell heavily onto the ice and the boat dropped on him with a sickening crack. We pulled the boat off him quickly; he lay on his back groaning softly.

  Dr. Architeuthis examined him, then turned to us.

  “He’s broken some ribs, and there may be some internal bleeding. He won’t be able to march.”

  There was a moment of awful silence as we looked at him lying there.

  “Right, then. We’ll have to leave the boat for now. We’ll carry him in shifts. Have to come back for the boat once we get to the Narthex.”

  Preston and I made a quick sling from our harnesses and the doctor worked Creely into his bag. The bag, like the boat, had loops to run the harnesses through that let us easily hoist Creely onto our shoulders. His head lolled as we marched and he cried out whenever we jarred him; when the wind dropped, I could hear him gasping as he tried to breathe. The wind rose again until we could barely keep our feet. I did not dare to ask how we knew what direction we were going in. We crawled into our tent hours later and struggled to lay Creely gently in the middle. We managed to balance the stove on his frozen form and get it going. Preston tried to feed Creely some hoosh but could not get him to come around. Even after an hour of roaring stove and two cups of tea, we were only starting to warm.

  The air was clearer in the morning and not as cold; we were able to make good progress. In the afternoon, we found water again—when Architeuthis nearly tumbled into an open lead. Water was an encouraging sign, but it added a
nother hazard to our progress. Without the boat, we had to find our way around the leads, or wait for the edges to close to make our way over them. Creely still had not fully recovered consciousness, though he did not seem to be worsening. The weather was, for the first time, cooperative—mild air, little wind, but cold enough to keep the ice solid. We used floes to ferry ourselves over some of the smaller leads. We went as quickly as we dared, working west and north over the shifting ice.

  The occasional lead gave way to frequent leads, and then to a welter of smaller floes rolling in a swell. Dr. Architeuthis called a halt, and we fought to erect the tent. We were in the middle of a floe about fifty feet across. An icy spray flew up as our floe knocked into its companions and coated our gear with rime. At last we got our tent up, and Creely inside and us into our bags. Given Creely’s injuries, there was no space for the doctor to wriggle into his bag, so he sat near the doorway and draped himself with it.

  I put the cooker over Creely’s legs and managed to light it on my first try.

  “The turn of luck,” I said, as I threw the pemmican in. The tent heated up rapidly and feeling returned to our hands and faces. The cooker flame flickered with the gusting wind, but stayed lit. The familiar wet heat returned, and the welcome smell of meat simmering. Preston pulled Creely’s head into his lap and tried to feed him some hoosh again. At first Creely rolled his head away from it and shook spasmodically, but Preston brought it back again and again to his lips until finally he drank. The shaking stopped and he relaxed into sleep. Weary muscles sagged and my head drooped on my neck.

  The tent shuddered as we crashed into other floes and the tent wall sagged under the weight of the water; the wind rose in pitch to a whistling whine, then dropped to a throaty roar. I would not have imagined I could sleep, but sleep I did, until Preston wrenched me awake.

  “The tent,” he shouted. “I think it’s going.”

  Before he had finished, the tent walls plunged inward, then shot outward; the tear of silk was lost in the shriek of the wind as the tent walls shredded into ribbons. I wriggled out of my bag and threw our cooker and the oil into it. The doctor pushed Creely’s head into his bag, and held it shut. Around us, waves were breaking over the edge of our tiny island. Preston and the doctor scrambled out and looked in dismay at the remains of our tent.

  “We have to move,” shouted the doctor. “Head for firmer ice and make a forced march to the ship. Pack up.”

  We shouldered our packs and hoisted Creely in his bag. The doctor roped us all up and we started out. The floes around us were no bigger than ours and some were much smaller. The spray coated them and froze in the wind, so they were all slippery. By heading back the way we had come—I think—we found larger floes and firmer ice, though no respite from the wind. Then we swung off to the west, trying to stay in the thicker ice. I don’t know how Dr. Architeuthis decided which way to go; I imagine he was gathering data on the march, but perhaps he just slogged and hoped.

  Creely seemed mercifully insensible as we staggered along. I was exhausted and the others were no better. I could feel, through the rope, the tug or slack of each misstep, of each pause, each slowing. The rope communicated the full misery of each to the others, and yet dragged each ahead, drawing strength from the whole. Even the doctor, who strode ahead (and often wet his feet in hidden leads as a consequence), showed signs of wavering. The storm gave no sign of abating.

  The doctor finally called a halt. We set Creely in the snow and sat heavily.

  “We will eat on the march; we need the food to keep moving.” He handed us each a biscuit and some pemmican. I tore greedily at mine, before it could slip from my numb fingers. Then the pemmican was gone quickly and I stood a moment looking mournfully at the biscuit, and on we went.

  The doctor tried a shanty and abandoned it, skipped and slowed, pounded me on the back when I started to waver. I beat my hands against my sides to keep the blood moving through them, and beat my arms against my sides, and beat my hands against my head.

  We stayed awake by the continued articulation of words— curses and prayers at first, each man lost in his own roaring world; then histories and singsongy rhymes, exhortations to keep on trailing into whimsical opinion. I closed my eyes to concentrate, to gather my thoughts, build myself a thought I could carry through this time—but I could not, as they scattered in the roaring as I sunk to my knees, or stumbled, as I looked at my hand, which I could see but not feel. I could not hear the others—could not hear myself—and still I kept on in fancied conversations, answering questions firmly, my head nodding. Then a stagger ahead—establishing a ground instantly forgotten—and then a pause to marshal again, and so a fresh assertion, fresh push, and loss upon loss.

  After an age, Architeuthis’s head appeared. He handed me another hunk of pemmican and moved off again into the darkness.

  The storm blew out and a weak day dawned. I had hoped to see the ship in the distance, but there was only ice. We had a double portion of pemmican at noon, heated in the lee of a bag, to keep up our strength. Creely stirred for the hoosh and managed to feed himself. We gathered our packs again and slung him up between us. Our packs had a little oil left, some pemmican; the bulk of the weight was our sleeping bags—which grew heavier day by day—and the ice samples we had collected.

  The doctor estimated we were still at least twenty-five miles from the ship, though we were making good time with the mild weather and without the boat to weigh us down. It lasted another day, then two, and the ice held; the doctor spent noon peering through his telescope for the ship, but saw nothing.

  As the light faded in the middle of the afternoon, we were confronted with a broad lead, running north-south and angling over us to the east, a half mile wide and trailing off into the distance at both ends. It was filled with a soupy mix of crystals and seawater, nearly solid in places but open in others. I cooked under a heap of bags as the doctor looked for the ship and Preston scouted to the south for a way across.

  The doctor did not see the ship, but he did see another storm brewing in the southwest, black clouds standing out even against the looming night. Preston returned to report that there was no way across to the south. We had been lucky since the tent was destroyed—but that luck was ending.

  “We have few alternatives,” said the doctor. “I do not believe we can survive the storm camped in the open, though we might on the march, if we can continue to move. We must get across the lead and push north before the storm pushes us further away from the ship. We could try to cut free a floe and ferry across, but the sea ice is freezing rapidly and is likely already too solid to move through. We must wait for the lead to freeze and then cross and head north as quickly as we can.”

  Sea ice, as it starts to freeze, is not like freshwater ice; the salt makes it spongy and springy as it freezes, instead of brittle; as we moved onto it, I could feel it give underfoot, and could feel the reverberations of the others; if I stood still on it, I could feel the waters creeping up my boots. It was now completely dark, and the first of the storm winds were rising. We sat huddled together, the doctor going out at intervals to test the ice. We ate cold pemmican and watched the stars disappear in the south.

  “We must go now,” said Dr. Architeuthis finally. “Spread out so that we have a hundred yards between us. I will carry Creely. When you hear my signal, run. Try to slide your feet rather than raising and lowering them, but move quickly. Even if the ice starts to give, you may be able to make it across.”

  “What happens if it isn’t frozen in the middle? Or if we fall through?”

  Preston had already shouldered his pack and moved off into the darkness. The doctor looked at me, not unkindly, and said: “Keep running. Try to slide.”

  I made my way down along the lead and waited. Off in the distance, the doctor shouted: “Now!”

  I took off, and I could feel the ice buckling underfoot, wobbling and pitching, and a splash of salt against my coat. I looked down at my feet, which I could barely see, and
thought about sliding them; saw one disappear, and then a pause, and the other popped up. I closed my eyes and yelled and forgot about sliding, but just ran as fast as I could. I tripped violently and fell forward onto the snow—the snow! I was across! I shouted and laughed and heard first Preston and then the doctor answer.

  “Come on,” shouted Dr. Architeuthis. “We must get north before the storm hits.”

  We clapped each other on the back, harnessed up, and moved off quickly, invigorated at conquering the lead, and feeling that we must surely reach the ship now. I wonder in the long history of exploration how many hidden triumphs lie buried with unsuccessful expeditions—how many men congratulated each other and thought, Surely now, we would not have come through that if we had not been meant to live.

  The wind came up behind us, billowing and then roaring steadily, and fresh snow began to fall. Fresh snow was a good sign because it meant the temperature would not get so terribly cold.

  When we paused, I looked over at Preston; his face was a dead white and his eyes were fish-empty. He tugged often on the harness as he stumbled and wavered against it like a kite on the end of a long line. The doctor called a halt again after some hours on the march. We huddled together to hear him.

  “We cannot go further tonight. We shall make a snow hut here to get out of the wind and then two will go ahead to find the ship. The other will remain to care for Creely and wait out the storm under the bags. I, for one, will go ahead. Who else can go on?”

  Preston righted his rolling head and announced that he too could go, but the doctor shook his head. I looked miserably at him, and raised my hand. We cut a low ridge of snow blocks to the south. Then we sliced open my bag and the doctor’s and laid them over the men, anchoring the bottom edge in the ice. Preston fired the cooker and gave us a quick cup of cocoa. We stood for a moment with our heads and hands poking under the bags, then put down our cups and said our good-byes.