“I'm scared, Nicholas.”
“Me too.”
We stood there a long time, arms wrapped round each other. Pressed cheek to cheek. I thought, If everything can stay like it is right now, we'll be all right.
But of course, nothing stays like it is.
I know that now.
I had a terrible singing voice, but sing I did. Dexter lay on his back staring into nothing. Elizabeth fingered her ivory figure of Prince Albert and looked a million miles away. Thorndike, his face tanned and weather-worn, simply watched Elizabeth as if he'd never seen her before and was trying to figure out who she was. We'd just eaten our meager meal of hard bread, whale oil, and goat's milk.
This place could use some cheering, I figured, and so, without another thought, I started singing, loud and off-key. They all blinked in surprise. “'Tis advertised in Boston, New York and Buffalo, five hundred brave Americans, a-whaling for to go, singing …” I stopped, frowning. “What are you waiting for? C'mon, join in.”
Dexter rolled his eyes but started singing: “Blow, ye winds in the morning, and blow, ye winds, high-igh! Clear away your running gear, and blow, ye winds, high-o! They send you to New Bedford, that famous whaling port, And give you to some land sharks to board and fit you out….”
Meanwhile, Elizabeth came and sat next to me, smiling as she began to sing. “The skipper's on the quarterdeck a-squinting at the sails, When up aloft the lookout sights a school of whales. ‘Now clear away the boats, my boys, and after him we'll travel, But if you get too near his fluke, he'll kick you to the devil!' … C'mon, Father, sing like you used to! Remember? When I used to play the piano?”
I caught the expression on Thorndike's face. It was that same look of defeat I'd seen in his eyes when he lay under the main-mast. Raw pain. One by one, beginning with mine, our voices trailed off into silence. Thorndike turned away.
The rest of us exchanged looks. Dexter shrugged, ran a hand through his hair, pulled his cap on tight, and rolled over as if to go to sleep. Elizabeth gazed at her father, placed her carving of Prince Albert in her pocket, and lay down too. I sighed, my attempt at cheering folks smashed all to heck. I stoked the fire, blew out the oil lamp, and lay down beside Dexter.
That night, the clouds moved in and the wind started to blow again. Outside the shelter, Ninny bleated. And bleated.
I heard Elizabeth get up. Heard a rustle of clothing. Then she was past me and out the entrance. “Hush, Ninny,” she said.
She fumbled with the lantern. The night outside our shelter suddenly brightened. Her shadow moved away. She got up every night to do her necessary business. Although she didn't know it, I always stayed awake to make certain she came back.
After the crunch of her footsteps faded away, there was nothing. Just the wind. And Ninny bleating. Tugging on her rope.
Sleep pressed down, heavy and warm. I reached up and pinched my tongue between my fingernails to keep me awake. I suppose a needle poked in my eye would have felt just as good.
A scream shattered the night.
I sat up, my scalp prickling. I heard a snuffle. Then a horrible, animal grunt.
Without waiting for Dexter, I raced out of the shelter. “Elizabeth!” I shouted, grabbing a blubber knife from our pile of supplies.
Another scream.
Then a roar.
It's coming from the shore! My God! I raced toward the beach, scarcely aware that my feet were bare. The lantern sat on the beach. In its illumination, I saw a flash of yellowish white fur. A ripple of muscle. Claws longer than my fingers. My heart leapt to my throat. A bear! Blood and thunder! A polar bear!
Elizabeth lay on her back in front of it, her knees drawn up,kicking wildly at the bear, shrieking, shrieking, as it swiped at her.
“Elizabeth!” I raced toward the white mass, screaming at the top of my lungs, my blubber knife out in front of me, terror bub-bling like ocean froth.
The bear lifted its head. It swung toward me and stared with small black eyes. In an instant, the bear charged. I saw a gaping mouth. A black nose. A pink tongue. Fangs. Heard the pounding of its feet. Its claws scrabbling the stony beach. The huff of its breath.
My God!
“Down, Nicholas! I'm going to shoot!” Thorndike's voice!
I threw myself flat on my face, stones stinging my chin. My knife clattered away, I don't know where.
And in that second I heard the most horrible sound: the click of a gun that won't fire.
Click.
Click.
Then the bear was on me.
felt teeth in my scalp.
Hot breath on my neck.
Liquid slipping down my cheeks.
I knew I was screaming, thrashing; I could hear it. But it sounded like a stranger, as if the screams really didn't belong to me, as if the boy lying crunched beneath a polar bear were someone else.
I heard others screaming. Elizabeth. Thorndike. Dexter. And then I was on my back, my knife in my hand again. I don't know when I rolled over, or even how, but I was on my back and fighting. Fighting for my life.
I slashed at the bear, catching it across the shoulder.
A huge wound opened.
Blood stained the fur. Spattered in my mouth, my eyes.
Claws. Fangs.
Screaming.
Then the bear was off me.
In a flash of white, he attacked someone else.
I lay for a moment, dazed, my head wet, then realized.
My God! The bear's attacking Thorndike!
And then I was on my feet. There was another blur of white. A deep-throated growl. A slash of claws.
Elizabeth screamed as Thorndike collapsed to the ground, his bones suddenly turned to jelly. At the same time, I swung at the bear with my knife. Another wound.
With a grunt the bear looked at me, turned, and ran. In a heartbeat, it seemed, he was gone. Lumbering down the beach.
We huddled in our shelter. Lantern light glowed behind the smoky glass. At the entrance, the fire blazed and snapped, stoked to ward off the bear. Smoke whisked round the shelter and out the hole above. Hoarfrost melted and dripped. Ninny was silent.
“I'm dying,” Thorndike said, his voice near lost in the howl of the wind and the snap of canvas. He sat propped against a cask, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Half his scalp was torn away. Blood trickled down his face, down his scar, and into his beard.
Elizabeth mopped his face with her stained, tattered hand-kerchief, then laid her head against his chest and wrapped her arms round him. “You can't go, Father. Not yet. Please. I need you.” Elizabeth had suffered gashes on her legs. For now, though, the bleeding had stopped. We would tend to her wounds, mine as well, in a moment. Not yet …
Thorndike caressed Elizabeth's face, his hand dark against her skin. “I'm sorry, daughter, for the pain I've caused ye. Sorry I blamed ye for your mother's death. Sorry for all I've done. You were right. I've been a poor father. Forgive me.”
Elizabeth's face contorted. “I know you've only wanted good for me. I know that. Just don't die, please don't die! I—I love you, Father! I always have.” She buried her face in his chest as he stroked her hair. Her shoulders heaved. My eyes stung with tears and I looked away.
“Nicholas, Dexter, take care of her. Bring her home, I beg of ye. The whaling fleet will come again this summer.” Thorndike paused, his breathing labored. Each breath, slower, slower. “Find them. Travel south to them if ye must.”
I nodded, unable to answer, wiping my nose on the back of my sleeve.
Dexter replied, “Aye, sir.”
Overhead, the wind gusted and the canvas flapped against the rafters. Ice crystals rained down in a shower of white dust.
“You've been good boys. I'm sorry for all the misery I've caused ye. I misjudged ye, Nicholas, I see that now. Any captain would be proud to have ye for a son. Please—please take care of her. You're her only chance.”
I heard Thorndike breathe again. And again.
Then, nothing. Jus
t the wind. Elizabeth sobbing.
I pressed my face into my hands, the terrible truth wrapping round me.
Thorndike was dead.
Elizabeth's injuries weren't so terrible, considering. She had four deep gashes on her left thigh, one near five inches long. There were other gashes too, some on her arms, but the ones on her thigh were the worst. I stitched her gashes together the way Thorndike had told me before he died. In the casks storing sail-cloth were needles for mending sails. The needle was so cold it blistered my fingers as if it were red-hot. After warming the nee-dle over the fire, I threaded it with a strand of hemp and went to work.
Elizabeth was most brave, what with only a few swigs of grog to dull the pain and a needle big enough to stitch an ele-phant. Not to mention her father's body lying nearby, covered with a sailcloth. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, but she never made a sound. After her wounds were treated, Elizabeth turned silently away from us.
Then it was my turn.
Dexter inspected my head, said I had a fat blubber-head, and it was no wonder the bear couldn't get a good grip. Said my thick woolen cap had saved me. Only a few gashes here and there, and only one was deep enough to maybe take a peek at my brains, which wouldn't be much to look at anyways. The liquid all over my face was mostly bear slobber. I knew Dexter was trying to be funny so Elizabeth would laugh, for he kept making jokes and glancing at her. But she said nothing. Dexter looked at me, his brown eyes mirroring my concern. He added a few stitches to my big gash, ordering me to stop blubbering like a blasted baby and saying he knew it didn't hurt any more than sticking your foot in a sausage grinder.
By the time Dexter finished, morning was near. We lay down next to Elizabeth. But I know no one slept. I heard their silence, because the same silence was inside of me.
It was the silence of listening.
Listening for Ninny to bleat.
Listening for a grunt. A huff. The scrape of claws on sandy gravel.
But we heard nothing. Nothing but the wind. The snap of fire.
And the silent heaviness of death.
I hacked at the frozen earth with a broken harpoon. I heard the sound of my breathing—ragged and gasping. Sweat drenched me. Beside me, Dexter used a crowbar. For a long time, neither of us spoke. We just chopped and hacked. Chopped and hacked.
“It's deep enough,” said Dexter finally.
It wasn't really deep enough—more of a slight depression than a grave—but I nodded. We had reached a layer of perma-frost so frozen we could dig no deeper.
The body was stiff. We slid it into the hole. I stood for a moment, breathing hard, staring, then bent over and yanked off his boots. Seemed silly to waste good boots.
“His socks, too,” said Dexter.
And his coat, his hat, his gloves … God forgive us.
After we covered the body with as much snow and tundra as we could scrape together, I began to pound the wooden marker into the ground. I'd spent all morning on it. It read:
Here lies Ebenezer Thorndike
Captain of the Sea Hawk
Killed by a bear
October 8, 1852
With a sharp crack, the marker splintered in half. I cursed and jammed the harpoon in its place, propping the marker against it.
We stepped back.
It was a crude and ugly grave. An arm stuck out, rigid, its fin-gers like claws. Bare feet poked out, frost forming on the toes.
“Rest in peace.” I tried to think of something else to say. A prayer, maybe. It was too cold, though, and all I could think of was “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”
Dexter nodded. “Aye. Here lies Captain Thorndike forever-more.”
As we turned away, back toward our shelter, the wind got to howling. Snow peppered my eyes. Everything turned white. Sweat chilled me to my marrow.
Dexter and I crawled into our shelter, where Elizabeth lay, blood still crusting her hands and smeared across her cheek. I laid the coat over her. “Better?”
But instead of answering, she began to cry. As she cried, Dexter and I looked at each other, an unspoken understanding passing between us.
Now that Thorndike was dead, we were alone, terrible alone, in this vast wilderness. And unless a miracle happened, all of us would die.
Finally, days later, when the storm let up, I went to take care of Thorndike's grave. Dexter stayed behind in the shelter, for we never left Elizabeth alone.
I carried the blubber knife with me for protection. It was a good weapon, with a two-foot-long blade, sharp as a razor, used to cut apart blubber pieces. If it could hack a whale, I knew it could hack a bear. It already had—twice—which was likely why the bear hadn't returned.
A drift of snow had settled against the body on the windward side. To leeward, I saw an arm, a foot, white with ice. Using the bail bucket from the whaleboat, I scooped up gravel from the beach and hauled it overland to where we'd buried him. It took me three hours. I piled it deep so that the bear wouldn't smell him, all the while looking round me, gripping my knife so hard my knuckles popped.
The next day I visited the dead sailor's grave, intending to tidy it up. I wish I hadn't. The body was dragged from the grave, half eaten. I'd never seen the insides of a human body before. I ran, leaving my hard bread behind, a steaming little pile in the snow.
At least we now had two extra coats, extra wool sweaters and trousers, a reindeer fur, and extra gloves, hats, and boots. And when we all slept together at night under the fur, huddled close for warmth, it was sometimes bearable.
My stomach hurt all the time now. Growling, empty, gnawing. All we'd had to eat for the three weeks we'd been ship-wrecked were hard bread, milk, and whale oil. Of water we had all we could want. We melted snow in a metal dipper over the fire. The whale oil, much as we needed it, had its draw-backs. It turned our bowels to soup. It was hard to figure what was more miserable—starving to death, or whipping down my drawers in the freezing cold ten times a day so I could drain my insides.
Much of the time, when either Dexter or I wasn't pretending to hunt, we stayed in the shelter. Elizabeth sewed clothing from sailcloth. I milked Ninny, keeping her half cask filled with fresh tundra grasses for warmth and food. When I wasn't milking Ninny or hunting, I whittled and carved wood. Dexter told jokes and kept the fire and lanterns going. He loved telling stories, too, spinning yarns that almost made me forget where we were. Almost. Elizabeth was silent most days, saying only what was necessary. There was a sadness in her eyes that never left now. I longed to take her sadness away, but nothing I said or did seemed to matter.
On the twenty-seventh day of October, I turned sixteen years old. Everyone forgot except me, even though I'd reminded them last week. I spent the day curled up, shivering, far away from the fire, wondering if Aunt Agatha had forgotten me too. It was a miserable day and I was glad when it was over.
The sun only stayed up for seven hours a day now, never high, skimming the horizon like a rock across a pond, bathing the sky in purples and pinks and drenching the ice in a bluish shimmer before heading back down. Even in the dark, even on moonless nights, it was possible to see, as the ice and snow seemed to gleam with lights of their own.
“I'm going hunting,” said Dexter one day in early November.
I rubbed my hands over the fire, my stomach pinched even though I'd just eaten supper. “And you need my permission?”
“No, you don't understand. I mean, I'm going hunting. I'll be gone for a while.”
I gaped at him. “Gone? What do you mean? What are you going to hunt? All we've seen is the bear.”
Dexter brushed back a lock of sandy hair and gazed at me calmly.
My eyes widened. “Are you crazy?”
“Look, either he hunts us, or we hunt him.”
“Either way, we lose. He'll kill you.”
Dexter shrugged. “We can't survive on three casks of hard bread for the next seven months. One cask is half gone already, and besides, I'm so hungry I could eat a bear myself.”
Elizabeth sat nearby, mending a rip in my coat. I knew she was listening, and silently cursed Dexter for discussing this in front of her.
“Or we could kill Ninny,” Dexter suggested.
I'd dreaded this moment. I'd known it was coming. I had my speech prepared. “The meat would be gone in a few days. Right now, all we have to do is feed Ninny tundra grasses and she'll give us milk.”
“She won't live through the winter. Her milk is getting thin, and there's not much of it.”
I crossed my arms. “So we'll worry about that when the time comes. For now, hands off.”
Dexter rolled his eyes. “You never could stand for anything to get hurt.” He added another piece of wood to the fire. “Well, I guess that settles it, then. I'll leave in the morning.”
“It settles nothing. You promised Aunt Agatha you'd bring me home. You promised Thorndike you'd take care of Elizabeth. So you see? You can't leave.”
“What do you think I'm trying to do?” Dexter was raising his voice. “Blast it all, Nick, sometimes I swear you don't have a brain in your head. A bear would provide us meat for the winter and another fur besides. I'm trying to do what's best.”
“I have a brain enough to know when you're being foolish.”
“Foolish!” Now Dexter was practically screaming, his nor-mally easygoing expression livid with anger. The only other time I'd seen him this mad was when I'd tossed his toy ship out the cupola window when we were little because he wouldn't let me play with it. “You want to hear foolish? How about a sailor who can't stay away from the captain's daughter? How about a sailor who doesn't know enough to burn her letters, and instead leaves them lying round for anyone to find? How about a sailor who can't stay at the helm during an emergency, or who can't remem-ber port from starboard?”
“Fine. Go. I hope the bear eats you.”
“Darn right I'll go. No one can stop me.”
“I certainly won't.”
The next day, nobody spoke as we outfitted Dexter for his journey. A harpoon. A canvas knapsack filled with hard bread. A blubber knife. Rope. For water, he'd have to eat snow or ice. Finally, when it came time, Dexter gazed out across the sea ice and in a tight voice promised to stay along the shore so he wouldn't get lost.
Voyage of Ice Page 10