Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  20th March, 1922

  … and this afternoon played chess again with Alex. Once more I was defeated solidly in all three matches after which, as we were packing up, Alex asked, ‘Have you given any further thought to my question?’

  In fact, the odd conversation we had after our last match has often occupied my mind, and I’ve spent quite some time toying with the various possibilities. I told him as much and he smiled that strange, almost shy, smile of his and replied, ‘So then, what’s your answer? Which piece are you?’

  I replied that I thought myself to be a bishop – reasonably powerful, a capable piece, and close to the king. At that, Alex laughed slightly.

  ‘Nice reasoning, Will, but I’m afraid I have to disagree with you.’

  I was a little put out at having my suggestion so readily dismissed, especially given the ease with which Alex had acquiesced to Lawson’s assertion that he’d rather be a knight than a queen and enquired, rather stiffly, precisely what it was that he found objectionable about my answer.

  ‘Two problems, Will,’ he replied, ‘firstly, I don’t think you’re as close to the king as you believe you are. Look at the way Rourke has dealt with you recently – under sufferance at best. He’s even dropped you from the polar party.’

  This is still something of a sore point and I muttered words to that effect, but Alex continued.

  ‘More to the point, and this is my main problem, bishops attack at angles, Will. You’re not like that. You move in straight lines. You see situations and you do exactly the right thing – there’s nothing oblique nor obtuse about the way you approach anything. Or anybody. But you’re strong, and reliable, and useful when things are going bad. You’re a rook.’

  I raised my eyebrows at his logic, but had to admit that he had made a reasonably compelling case. My scepticism must have shown in my expression, though, because Alex laughed again.

  ‘No need to look so down in the dumps, Will. You haven’t considered the most telling point of all.’ He winked at me, a gesture I’d more readily associate with Randolph Lawson than Alex. ‘Rooks can castle. In the last resort, it’s the only piece on the board that can budge the king from the centre. In a pinch, it’s the most powerful defensive move a player can have up his sleeve.’

  With that, he left me sitting there, wondering.

  26th March, 1922

  … winds continued to pick up through the afternoon until, at 1700, Alex declared it a gale, and we all fell once more into blizzard mode: battening down the hatches and stringing safety lines on the deck and from the base of the gangplank out to the dog lines and weather screens.

  By the time dinner was finished, at 2000, the storm was in full swing and Alex asked me to accompany him out to the weather station to check his equipment. The anemometer is facing its first real test and he was keen to see if he could get a reading from it in full flight. I agreed and we rugged up, then stepped out into the murky evening.

  The sun, shrouded by driving snow and ice, was somewhere low on the north-western horizon, its precise location impossible to determine. The ship and surrounding ocean were bathed in a dirty yellow light, and visibility down to just a few feet.

  From the foot of the gangway we followed the line south to the weather station, bent double against the force of the wind. There, Alex took his measurements, shouting the numbers to me while I jotted them down with frozen fingers. After just thirty seconds my hands were trembling so badly from the cold that I fumbled and dropped the pencil and, before I managed to scramble for it, the wind whipped it away into the night. Alex heard me swear and asked what was wrong.

  ‘I dropped the pencil. I’ll have to go back to the ship and get another,’ I told him, and he nodded.

  ‘You do that, and I’ll check the anemometer.’ The mast with the wind-guage stood, its base sunk into the ice and its guy lines screaming in the wind, about five or six feet away from the weather screen, at the limits of our visibility, but still just discernible through the ice-thick air. I nodded to show I’d understood, then made my cautious way back along the rope line to the ship and retrieved a new pencil from the chartroom, pausing long enough to cut a small length of twine, tie it tightly around the end of the pencil and then loop it around my wrist.

  I then headed back out and towards the weather station, receiving a nasty shock when, halfway along the blizz line, Alex came barrelling out of the storm, his head down and his legs churning the ice, running into me at full tilt and sending us both sprawling into the snow.

  Falling awkwardly under him, I twisted and turned slightly and experienced a moment of panic when, once we’d come to a halt, I realised I could no longer see the safety line, but then I noticed the deep furrow our fall had left in the snow and knew we’d be able to follow it back to the rope.

  Beside me, Alex was clutching at my fur parka, and when I turned to look at him, I was startled to find his eyes wide with shock. He shouted something at me, but the sound of the storm, combined with the howling of the wind in the rigging of the ship, drowned his words and so I shook my head hopelessly and gestured him to follow me.

  Slowly, painfully, we crawled back to the safety rope and followed it back to the ship. My left leg throbbed where I’d twisted it and by the time we reached the gangplank, my breathing was laboured.

  In the chartroom, we pulled off our hoods and snow goggles and I asked him what on earth had happened.

  ‘There’s somebody out there,’ he replied.

  27th March, 1922

  Alex still insists that he saw a figure lurking near the weather screens last night and no amount of argument will convince him otherwise, despite the clear impossibility of such an event occurring. Outside, the wind is still howling unabated and Mr Rourke has declared all unnecessary movement beyond the ship forbidden, so I have had no opportunity to take him out there and disabuse him of the notion.

  His insistence has provoked a mixed response from the crew. For the most part, the notion of an ‘ice man’ has been greeted with gentle teasing, but nothing too pointed or untoward. There are a few people though, notably Per Petersen and several of the crew, led by Tom Walsh, who appear to be taking Alex’s startling claim seriously, and have been debating the possibility that Piotre is lurking out there, skulking around in the blizzard somewhere nearby.

  I imagine their speculation is largely the result of boredom and our confinement, and therefore not to be taken seriously, however this sort of talk is not especially helpful and certainly not conducive to a calm and settled company. Mr Rourke has instructed George Smythe-Davis and myself to put a lid on it as soon as possible and so I have been trying hard to assure Alex that what he saw was most likely a trick of the light – the sunset playing upon the constantly moving flurries of the blizzard – but nothing I’ve said has convinced him.

  ‘I know what I saw, Will,’ is all he says, stubbornly.

  30th March, 1922

  Woke to a clear morning, the blizzard finally having exhausted itself during the night. Tensions aboard are high at the moment, the days of close confinement causing everybody to get on each other’s nerves, and so it was a relief to step out onto the deck and to stand in the cool, pale light as the sun rose, a garish red disc, above the ice for the first time in five days.

  The first order of business was to check the dog lines and feed the animals, a hearty meal of seal meat and blubber, which had been thawing on the galley stove through the night, despite the protests of the men living in the ’tween deck accommodation. The dogs all appeared well and happy to see us, and seem to have weathered the storm comfortably.

  When we first came out to check them we thought they must have escaped, as there was not a sign of them anywhere, but as soon as they heard our voices, they rose, almost as one, from the nests they’d built in the backs of their ice-kennels and greeted us boisterously, shaking huge amounts of powdery snow from their coats and licking everybody enthusiastically.

  Several fights broke out over the food, the m
ost serious involving about twelve dogs and led by Devil (of course), who charged into the fray with fangs bared. His only saving grace is that Lawson, who used him in the number four position on his team during the search for Piotre, gave him a good report and proclaimed him to be a solid worker in the harness, for all his bad manners.

  With the animals fed, we set about restoring our base to something manageable. To Alex’s dismay, the wind gauge had blown over in the storm and was not found until late this afternoon, buried in the piled snow at the bow of the ship.

  Much of the day was then spent exercising the dogs, putting several teams together and having Lawson demonstrate the principles he’d managed to master from Piotre’s descriptions and teach us the Russian commands. This filled several hours and culminated in a race, of sorts; four laps around the ship, following a course that Lawson and Tom Irvine laid out. Lawson proved the victor, naturally, with Dick Ryan a close second. I’m sorry to report that my own team put up a singularly poor showing, with Vera heading off the course in the middle of the second lap and setting off north, apparently intent on running home to Russia, much to the amusement of everybody watching.

  By the time I turned her and the team around and got them back to the ship, the other teams had all finished and we were greeted with catcalls from the deck, where the spectators were enjoying the sport from every vantage point.

  All in all, a most enjoyable, if somewhat embarrassing, end to the day.

  After settling the dogs, Alex took me aside and asked me to come with him to the weather screen, where he pointed at a series of raised lumps in the snow.

  ‘Footprints,’ he said.

  Certainly the lumps, which extended from the ship past the weather screen and away towards the south, could well have been footprints, the compressed snow filled in and then raised slightly by the driving, powdery blizzard. I pointed out to him, however, that there was no reason to think they hadn’t been made by any one of us, either during the search for Piotre, or simply when going about our business. After some moments, Alex grudgingly conceded that this was possible.

  31st March, 1922

  A terrible sight greeted us when we woke this morning. At some point during the night all the dogs had gotten free and vanished.

  This was not discovered until 0600 when Ernie, who had the morning watch, noticed that things were very quiet from the direction of the kennels – none of the howling or occasional snapping and growling which usually accompanies the hours before dawn – and so he decided to go and check that everything was fine.

  When he got there, all he found were empty kennels and no sign of the dog lines, which have been pulled completely free from the ice into which they’d been fixed.

  Immediately he raised the alarm and the news sent a wave of shock and pandemonium through the ship, with everybody scrambling into their gear as quickly as possible, then rushing down the gangplank to see for themselves.

  Not that there was anything to see, really – just the two rows of ice kennels, looking forlorn and deserted without their occupants, and a mess of scuffled ice and snow, flattened by pawprints and torn up at the points where the lines had been fixed to posts, which had in turn been drilled into the ice.

  I was about the fifth or sixth person to reach the scene and Mr Rourke arrived a minute or two behind me, storming down the gangplank with his expression as thunderous as I’ve ever seen. A nervous hush fell over us while he quickly took in the scene and then methodically worked his way up and down along each of the lines, peering into the kennels, and paying particular attention to the points where the lines had been anchored. Then, his examination complete, he turned and glared at the whole company, who were by this point assembled a few feet away.

  ‘Who was responsible for anchoring the lines?’ he asked.

  Dick Ryan stepped forward and spoke, his eyes narrow and his tone belligerent. ‘Me and Tom put them lines in, and if you’re suggesting –’

  But the Leader held up a hand to silence him.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything at the moment, Mr Ryan.’ He paused, briefly, scratching his beard with one hand before snapping his next order.

  ‘Downes, Ryan, Smythe-Davis, I’ll see the three of you in my cabin in five minutes. The rest of you, get ready to go hunting.’

  Then he turned on his heel and strode back towards the ship.

  I glanced at George Smythe-Davis and in response he made a hopeless gesture with his hands. He didn’t say a word. There was no need.

  Five minutes later the four of us gathered in the close confines of Mr Rourke’s cabin. The tiny space smelled of sweat and tobacco and, by the time we arrived, Rourke was already pulling on his woollen pants and top. The moment the door swung closed behind us, he started speaking, wasting no time on pleasantries.

  ‘The first order of business is to recapture the animals, or at least try to. Once we’ve done that, we’ll consider the matter of the traitor in our midst, and deal with him accordingly.’

  The three of us exchanged a quick glance. Even Dick Ryan looked somewhat startled at such an extraordinary statement. George Smythe-Davis cleared his throat carefully, which I took as a signal to stay silent and allow him to deal with the situation.

  ‘Edward …’ he began, but before he could finish Rourke wheeled sharply and lifted one fist high, as though he was about to strike the Captain. When he spoke his voice was a low, fervent hiss.

  ‘Whatever it is that you’re about to say, George, I am not interested.’

  In the dull lamplight, Rourke’s eyes glittered black, and for just a moment I fancied I could see madness behind them, but he quickly pulled himself back under control.

  ‘We can discuss the ins and outs of this later today. For the moment, I want each of you to take one of these …’

  Opening a drawer built into the woodwork of his bunk, he produced four service pistols, already loaded, and handed one to each of us.

  ‘I am presuming that all three of you know how to use these.’

  ‘You want the dogs shot?’ Ryan asked, as close to surprised as I’ve ever heard the man.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Dick. I want the dogs back. These …’ he gestured at the guns, ‘are to be used on any man or men who attempt to prevent or slow that recovery. Understood?’

  ‘Edward, this isn’t a good idea,’ George observed, but Rourke simply thrust his own weapon into an inside pocket of his parka and continued his preparations.

  ‘I have already told you I’m not interested, George. The three of you have your orders, now I suggest you each go and get ready. We have a long day ahead, and however things eventuate, there will no doubt be some unpleasant business to attend to at the end of it.’

  Thus dismissed, I followed the other two from the cabin, pausing only long enough to secrete my own weapon in a pocket.

  Fifteen minutes later, back out on the ice, Rourke split the group into four parties, assigning each a quadrant to search, and we moved out. Despite his gammy leg, George Smythe-Davis wasn’t excused from leading his own group, and had to be dragged along on a man-hauled sledge, an indignity which he bore with silent disapproval.

  My own group comprised Michael Burke, Doug King, William Moreton, Stanley O’Hanlon, Tom Walsh, Ernie Tockson, Danny Carston and Dave Lacey. It didn’t escape my notice that Rourke kept both Lawson and Alex in his own party and that, for the most part, mine was made up of men I’ve had few dealings with. We marched out, single file, following several sets of dog tracks west towards a series of sastrugi that crouched some way off, I felt the weight of the pistol, which I’d tucked in the side pocket of my woollen top, and couldn’t help but suppress a shiver.

  Clearly, Mr Rourke believed that somebody on the ship had freed the dogs deliberately, for what reasons I couldn’t begin to say, and that in his mind everybody was suspect. Certainly, it seemed unlikely to me that the dogs could have pulled the lines up on their own, sunk as firmly as they were, but given the unpredictability of the ice – the strai
ns and pressures it puts on the ship are proof enough of that – it is always possible that some movement in the pack loosened the pickets holding the dog lines in place, just enough for the animals to free themselves.

  Gradually, I fell back until I was walking at the rear of the group, where I could observe each man individually. None of them struck me particularly as the type to involve themselves in sabotage of this nature. Certainly none of us are happy with our current lot in life but, as far as I could determine, neither are any of us so bent on failure that we’d resort to such low measures as this.

  At the first of the sastrugi, an immense pressure ridge perhaps fifteen feet high, we turned south, following the dogs’ tracks along the line of the ridge onto harder and harder ice until the tracks vanished completely. There we stopped and rested for a few minutes. Doug and Danny attempted to climb the ridge, but were prevented from reaching the top by poor footing and returned to the group no wiser.

  While we sat, gathering our energy for the next push, there was some desultory conversation. Naturally, the escape of the dogs was the major topic of conversation, and theories as to the cause varied wildly, everything from ice movement right through to Tom Walsh’s theory that the ‘ice man’ had come and freed them all while we slept. At that point I stepped in and put a stop to any further speculation, ordering everybody back to their feet again.

  For the next three fruitless hours we pushed on, eventually finding a suitable point to traverse the ridge, only to scramble down the other side and find ourselves confronted with another running parallel, and equally inhospitable. Finally, in the early afternoon, and without having seen so much as another pawprint since first losing the trail, I called a halt to the search and we wearily retraced our steps.