I said nothing, still so steamed I could fry an egg atop my head.
Then with a hail and farewell, he was gone.
week later, Dexter still hadn't returned.
Afraid he might be lost, during what day-light hours were left, I built a fire on two casks stacked one atop the other. Poised pre-cariously on adjacent casks, breath white, I banged flint and steel together. A shower of sparks fell onto the tundra grasses, and as I blew, a thread of smoke curled up. I added more grasses, then small pieces of wood, and finally larger ones that I'd soaked in oil, until flames leapt and black smoke billowed.
I hurried down, choking on smoke and frozen stiff, rubbing my face and beating my hands so that sensation would return, a stinging ache that made me hop with pain. Every day I built this signal, accidentally tumbling off more than once in a cascade of sparks and casks that crunched the snowy gravel and near crushed me. I kept my blubber knife with me all the time. I glanced over my shoulder a thousand times a day.
Often I perched atop the casks, staring off into the whiteness while my signal fire burned. Long ago, pushed landward by the wind, the pack ice had reached the shore. Beyond the pressure ridges, torn and shattered, towering into the sky like blue teeth, the sea ice was flat, empty. Behind me, the barren plain stretched until land merged with sky. The beach, blanketed with gentle dunes, extended in each direction forever. An Arctic land filled with vast nothingness. Where are you, Dexter? Can you see my fire? Do you know I'm sorry for what I said to you? I'm not angry anymore. Just come home. I strained my eyes for movement. For a dark fig-ure. Dragging a bearskin, piled high with meat.
He's dead. The bear ripped him to shreds and he's dead. With each day that passed, hope ebbed from me, swept away in a tide of despair. And in its place, like newly fallen snow, a terrible dread settled over my bones, cold and silent.
Every day I dragged Elizabeth out of the shelter and made her walk with me. I took Ninny with us, as if she were a dog and the three of us were on a Sunday stroll through New Bedford. We strolled to the shore. To the grave. Back to the shore. We picked over the debris lying on the beach as if we could find something of value this time, the hundredth time, something we couldn't see before. But we found nothing. And all the while I chattered like a magpie, trying to make up for Elizabeth's silence.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth continued to sew clothes from sail-cloth. Trousers, coats, oversized mittens to fit over our gloves. I sawed wood, kept the fire going, manned the signal fire, gath-ered tundra grasses, and milked Ninny. I also kept the blubber lanterns filled. It was sadly funny that we now had more whale oil than we could ever use or eat. At night I scarcely slept, listening to the wind moan and imagining footsteps, or claws scraping. Always I wondered where Dexter was, whether he was ever coming back, and whether I'd ever get to make up for the last words I'd spoken to him: I hope the bear eats you. Day after day those words haunted me. I lived them, ate them, breathed them, hated them.
One day I caught a glimpse of myself in the sextant mirror. I gave myself quite a fright because I looked like a waterfront tramp. A layer of filth covered me—soot, grime, and plain old dirt. Scrubbing my face with snow only seemed to rearrange matters.
I'd seen Aunt Agatha make soap once. She used whale oil and ashes and then did something to make it soap. Fine. If Aunt Agatha could make soap, so could I. I heated whale oil and ashes in the metal dipper. It boiled into a gray glop that didn't look or smell much like soap. After it cooled, I scrubbed my face with it. It was greasy and gluelike and I couldn't get it off. Now a layer of greasy slime glued my layer of soot, grime, and filth to my face.
At night, Elizabeth cried. She probably didn't think I could hear her, what with the wind moaning, but come the slightest noise I always snapped awake, reaching for my knife, wondering if Dexter had come home. I expect she cried for her mother and father, wishing she'd never heard of the Sea Hawk or Nick Robbins. I felt helpless. I heard Thorndike's voice saying, Nicholas, Dexter, take care of her. Bring her home again, I beg of ye. And now Dexter was gone, maybe dead. It was up to me.
One raw day when a heavy sky bore down and a chilling dampness penetrated my very bones, Elizabeth tossed aside her sewing and looked at me square. “I'm sick of sewing. I've always hated it.” So saying, she set her jaw in a determined line, sud-denly reminding me of her father.
I blinked with surprise. It was the first she'd spoken in weeks.
“Well, that's fine, I—I expect nine hundred pairs of canvas trousers and twenty thousand coats is plenty.”
She rubbed her hands and put them over the fire. “What can I do now?”
“Well—uh—let me see—Ninny needs fresh tundra grass, and I was thinking of sawing wood for the fire.”
“Fine.” And out she went to work, leaving me with my jaw flapping.
Just like that, Elizabeth was talking again. We told each other all about ourselves, Elizabeth and I did. She told me that her father had taught her to play the piano, taught her Mozart and Beethoven—his favorites. She told me how she used to sneak into the lazaret, a storage area in the stern. How she'd have tea in the lazaret with her imaginary friends. How they'd play dominoes and talk about the weather and how they were all going to marry sea captains. How her mother used to make her a new dress every Christmas, but that now she supposed she wouldn't have a new dress even though they'd purchased mate-rial in Honolulu.
She looked away as she told me about Thomas, who'd died at sea. Everyone in her family had died at sea. She'd never marry a sailor, she vowed. She both loved and hated the sea.
I told her about my childhood, about Aunt Agatha and our considerable grand mansion, about my father and waiting for his ship, and his being smashed by a whale. I told her about my dreams, and how they were all wasted now, seeing as I didn't like the whaling life and was here in the Arctic besides.
“What will you do?” Elizabeth asked. She sat cross-legged next to me in the shelter, her face smudged with smoke.
I shrugged, fingering the wood I was carving. “Haven't con-sidered it much.” Suddenly, a thought came from somewheres deep inside. A happy thought that made me smile. “Why, I'll be a carver. Don't know why I didn't think of it before.”
“A carver?”
“I'll carve figureheads for ships. I'll carve sea hawks and maidens—”
“King Neptune and mermaids!”
“Aye.” I laughed, cutting another curl of wood off the block, feeling that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. “I'll have my own shop downtown. I'll hang a sign out front. Nicholas Robbins: Carver.”
“I'll help you make the sign! It can say, Nicholas Robbins: Extraordinary Carver. Oh, Nicholas, you'll make a fine carver. The best around.” She was quiet for a minute, watching me, then said, “Wait here.” And to my surprise, she left the shelter.
I heard her digging not far away, wondered if I should go and keep watch, curiosity busting my britches. But before I could make up my mind, she returned, hiding something behind her back. “Guess what it is?”
“Hot gingersnaps.”
“No.”
“Soap.”
She laughed. “We could use some, but no.”
“A ship to take us home.”
“No.”
“I give up.”
Eyes shining, she brought my whale's tooth out from behind her back.
“My tooth! Where did you find it?”
“I picked it up off the deck, you know, that night. I've been keeping it for you. I meant to give it to you when it was safe. On the night of the shipwreck, while I was still locked in my cabin, I stuffed it down my coat.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my glove, then took it from her gently. “I never thought I'd see it again. This is my father's ship, or was my father's ship. My father carved it.”
“Talent must run in the family.”
I set down the tooth and coughed, trying to hide the emotion in my voice. “So what are you going to do now?”
“What do you m
ean?”
I'd been intending to ask her this question for some time now but hadn't known how to approach it. Seemed a delicate subject, it did. “I mean, what are you going to do, now that your parents are—you know—”
A shadow passed over her face. “I've thought about it a lot. I—I don't really know. My father has a sister who lives in New York. I suppose I could go live with her, if she'll let me. But I've never met her.”
“You could come live with Aunt Agatha and me,” I blurted.
“Do you think she'd mind?”
I blew the chips away from the block and gazed at her. Now that I'd thought of it, it seemed a fine idea. “Aunt Agatha would be happy to have another woman round to keep her company, I expect.”
“I—I could help with the housework. I could help with the garden, although I don't know how to grow anything. And maybe someday I'll go to school and learn to teach music. I've never been to a real school, with people my own age. I—I've given it some thought, Nicholas. I've got to make my own way, you know, just like you. And we could—you and I could—”
“What?”
She fiddled with her braids, twisting and curling them. Then, to my surprise, she leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek. The kiss was warm, and I sat for a moment without moving, as if I'd turned into a figurehead myself. “I'd love to stay with you and your wonderful aunt,” she whispered. Then she put both her hands on my cheeks and drew my face down to hers. I realized I was breathing hard.
She pressed her lips against mine. They were warm, so warm. The carving dropped to my lap. I felt myself kissing her back, pulling her close, felt her lips, her breath mixing with mine. Should we be doing this? Here in the Arctic? With her father's grave so close?
“Nicholas, what's wrong?” She pulled away, her forehead creased.
“Nothing. Nothing's wrong.” I picked up my carving tool again, as if we'd merely had another walk to the beach, as if my heart weren't hammering like a cooper's mallet.
She turned away from me, silent, her jaw set. Blast it all! I've gone and hurt her. Now she's not going to say any-thing for the rest of the winter! “You're a fine young lady, Miss Elizabeth. I'm proud to be here in the Arctic with you. Proud it's me, and not someone else. I figure you're the most special …”
But I'd ruined it. Our special moment. I'd ruined it, and no matter what I said after that, I could never make it up. She didn't speak to me as we lay down to sleep, blowing out the lantern and letting the darkness overtake us. All night she lay with her back to me.
In the morning when I awakened to the darkness, Eliza-beth was burning with fever. “It's back,” she whispered. “My sickness.”
First the shipwreck. Then Thorndike dying. Then Dexter leaving. Now Elizabeth was sick again. If she died too …
Even the sun abandoned me. For the first time in my life, it refused to rise, instead fleeing south, leaving me stranded in the Arctic darkness. I don't know but what I'd never been more scared in my life. A right awful terror crawled into my chest and hunched there all the time now. I wished I could shove a stopper down my throat and not have to worry that it would come screaming out. But I was scared. So scared.
I soaked hard bread in whale oil and milk and fed it to Elizabeth. I put the mix of food in the dipper and kept it warm over the fire, or else it froze before I could get it to her mouth. If any of it dribbled down her cheek, I scraped it off and put it back in the dipper. Nothing could be wasted. Nothing. I cut a corner from my reindeer fur and boiled it. Then I cut it into bite-sized pieces, dipped one in oil, and ate it, hair and all. Surprisingly, it wasn't half bad. A little hairy, of course. Fact was, anything solid was better than nothing. I fed some to Elizabeth, and she ate it without complaint.
Sometimes she stared at me with eyes that seemed shrunken yet bulging at the same time, ringed with dark circles. Lips cracked and dry, she didn't just breathe, she panted. Chills often overtook her, and she shivered violently. When that happened, I held her in my arms. It was then the terror most wanted to come bursting out. Then, just as suddenly, she boiled with fever. Off came the hat. The mittens. The coat. But then she turned cold again. It never ended. And as I held her in my arms, I wished for the millionth time I had another chance to kiss her.
For five days a gale blistered out of the northwest. Three times the wind blasted the canvas covering from off the rectangle of casks, even though it was secured with rope and tucked beneath the heavy casks. Three times I ran after it, ice needles stabbing my face, my eyes watering.
By the time I placed the canvas back, taking an hour, two hours, the canvas whipping like a sail in a hurricane, Elizabeth had turned white, motionless. The fire and lantern had gone out. I always kept sulfur matches and tinder in the lantern-keg, and so got a fire going again, but each time I held my breath till I saw the flames.
Eating only a half pound of hard bread per day, plus whale oil, reindeer hide, and a little milk, I was so exhausted by the time I finished putting our shelter back together and building a fire and taking care of Elizabeth that every muscle shook and my knees trembled as though they belonged to someone who was ninety rather than sixteen. I lay beside her, panting, listening to the canvas snap and groan as snow flurries filtered through, dusting us with white.
When will this ever end?
Her fever.
The storm.
The forever night.
Dexter gone.
And I'm so hungry.
So alone.
Is it really going to end like this?
I figured it was the first of December or thereabouts when the wind stopped. While I had carved daily notches on a cask to mark the passage of time, sometimes I lost track of day and night what with storms, and the sun no longer rising. If my reckoning was correct, we'd been shipwrecked now for over two months, and Dexter had been gone near a month. I'd fed the last of the reindeer fur to Elizabeth the night before.
“Don't leave me,” she begged when I said I was going to saw more wood for the fire. Her skin stretched across her jutting cheekbones, dusky with soot, her eyes small, frightened.
She's starving. The understanding stabbed me afresh. She's starving and dying. We'll never make it out of here alive.
I looked away and swallowed the lump in my throat. What can we eat now? Ninny? “I won't be gone long. I'll keep watch on you the whole time. I promise.” Sighing, I gently pried Elizabeth's hands off my arm. Lighting the tin lantern for her, I took the other lantern and my blubber knife and left the shelter.
Ninny crawled from her cask, hooves clattering, and bleated softly, shoving her head into my hand. My eyes smarted when I thought of having to kill her. For now I rubbed her between her horns, whispered that she was a good girl, the best, and then headed toward the shore, snow crunching beneath my boots. Ninny bleated after me.
The ground gleamed ghostly white beneath the blackest night. Stars glittered like ice crystals. Snow and hoarfrost covered the debris pile. Already the end of my nose and my cheeks were turning numb. I rubbed them briskly with the back of my glove to keep the blood flowing. I set down my lantern and knife and went to work, frigid air like glass in my lungs. It was deathly quiet, and every noise I made seemed unnaturally loud.
Usually I dragged large timber spars up beside the shelter, where I sawed them into smaller pieces. But after trying to drag the first spar, I realized I no longer had the strength. I would have to saw them on the beach and carry them piece by piece. Doing even the smallest job now took all my strength and will.
I fetched my saw and again set to work, only vaguely realizing that something was wrong. Something out of place. Different. I sawed for a while, until the realization seared me like the touch of frozen metal against bare skin.
Where the land met the shore ice, enormous tracks mean-dered along the beach. My skin erupted with goose bumps and I suddenly felt sick.
Bear tracks.
I whipped round, scanning every direction, heart crashing, blubber knife ready. I heard my
self swallow. Every icy crag became a bear, every end of wood sticking out of the snow, a nose, as I slowly skirted the pile of debris. In the distance I heard Elizabeth cough.
Seeing nothing, I studied the tracks. It appeared the bear had stopped at the debris pile, investigated, but moved on. I followed the tracks down the beach for a ship's length, and they continued as far as I could see. The bear was gone.
Back to work I went.
Still, every fifteen seconds or so, I looked round me. Round the shelter, round the ice-covered sea, to the east and west, searching for movement. White against white. A black nose. I pricked my ears for the scrabble of claws. A huff of breath. After watching, listening, I went back to sawing. All I heard was the hum of the blade, my own loud breath, and Ninny bleating.
Bleating …
Bleating …
And as the hair raised on the back of my neck, I knew.
I was not alone.
hey came like phantoms.
Silent.
I saw them in the east, far away. Movement along the beach.
Nine of them.
Dragging a whaleboat behind them.
I waited, the terror inside of me thawing like ice under a warm sun. They're here. Elizabeth and I are no longer alone. They've come. They're not dead after all. We'll spend the winter together. Maybe they have a plan for get-ting us out of here.
Maybe they have food. Bear meat …
I recognized Dexter first, leading the way. I don't know when I started to run, but suddenly I was dropping my saw, running, stumbling over snow, ice, and gravel, with a strength I hadn't known I possessed. “Dexter!” I screamed.
Dexter dropped hold of the rope and ran too. “Nick! Thank God you're still alive!”
Then we were clapping each other on the shoulders, splitting our cheeks with grins. Others surrounded us. Garret, Sweet, Briggs, and more. Giddy with relief, I began laughing like a crazy man.
Voyage of Ice Page 11