We're saved! We're saved!
Elizabeth's eyelids fluttered open. “Where were you?”
“They're here.”
She looked at me with fever-reddened eyes.
“Sweet, Garret, Briggs—they're here! Dexter found them up the coast, close to where we shipwrecked. On the night of the storm, their boat got stove and they had to put in to shore. Then it iced over and they were stuck there like we've been stuck here. Of course, it isn't everyone—most folks didn't make it through the night of the storm, God rest their souls, but some did. Isn't that great? We're not alone.”
“I'm thirsty.”
I hardly paused for breath as I fetched her a drink from the dipper. “They're turning over their whaleboat now. They'll use it for a shelter. Dexter's helping them set up another shelter from our whaleboat.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and shivered. “I'm hungry.”
“I'll fetch you some food, don't you worry. Everything's all right now. We're saved.”
I practically skipped out of the shelter, so happy was I to have other people with me. “Garret!”
Garret was bent over, tying down a canvas. During the time he'd been in the Arctic, he'd grown a beard, scraggly and red. He'd also started chewing tobacco. As his beard froze from the condensation of his breath, he couldn't open his mouth wide enough to spit. Instead, he leaned over as juice dribbled out. His beard was now an amber icicle, growing longer each time he dribbled. “Hey, Bones,” he said, opening his mouth with diffi-culty as ice crackled.
“Elizabeth's hungry. Fact is, we're both hungry. All we have is a little more than two kegs of hard bread left.”
Garret stood and braced himself against the whaleboat. Clouds of breath steamed from him. He said nothing, couldn't talk really, panting as he was. Even in the darkness, his skin looked pale, and his freckles seemed frozen solid. His nose and cheeks were frostnipped, white and hard. I don't know why, but my scalp crawled as if it suddenly swarmed with bugs. “Garret, what's wrong?”
He blinked slowly. “Sorry, Nick, I thought you knowed. We don't got no food.”
“But—I thought …” My voice trailed off and I turned away. I couldn't look at him anymore. They're starving. Terrible starving. Worse than us. Jutting cheekbones, hollowed eyes, short-ened breath, all of it. I'd been blind not to see it before.
“All we had was the hard bread in the lantern-keg,” Garret was saying. “Briggs 'pooned a seal once, but it didn't last long. We drank its blood first, and ate the skin too, fur and all. Another time, Sweet trapped a fox, but we ate it in a day. Couldn't keep the fellows off of it. Ate it like they was savages or something. I— I'm sorry, Nick, I'm just so—” Garret's voice faltered.
“What?”
To my surprise, he fell against the whaleboat and began to weep. Deep, wrenching, horrible sobs.
My blood turned to ice as the familiar terror clawed up my chest. “Garret, what is it? Tell me.”
He shook his head, brushing his face on his sleeve. “It's just that I'm so tired of being hungry.”
I patted his back, helpless, until he finally told me to go away and leave him be.
The sound of his crying trailed behind me as I stumbled back to the shelter. I lay next to Elizabeth. She was sleeping. I squeezed my eyes shut, teeth clenched, biting back the terror that swarmed inside of me like worms in a corpse.
Nothing to eat.
Nothing except a couple kegs of hard bread, divided between eleven people now instead of three.
At noon the next day, under a twilight sky, Henry Sweet, being the only mate who'd survived the shipwreck, called the crew together.
“I don't care what ye fetch,” he told us, his black eyebrows powdered with ice and drawn together serious-like, fox cap snugged over his ears, “just so long as ye fetch it quick. Seals, bears, foxes—I even heard they have some kind of deer up here, though I ain't seen one. We've got weapons now that we didn't have before, so maybe we'll have better luck. Go two by two. Stay by the shore. Don't wander or ye'll be lost forever in this darkness. Bones, ye stay behind and look after Thorndike's daughter and keep the fire a-burning. Hopefully we'll be bringing ye a feast.”
Briggs smirked. “Nick's a fine nursemaid, he is. Comes high recommended.”
“Shut up, Briggs,” snapped Dexter. “He's got far more nerve than you'll ever have. He fought off a bear when you'd've likely peed your pants.”
“Boys! Boys!” Sweet held out stiffened arms between the two. “Don't be a-wasting your energies on fighting. We've all got to be thinking 'bout surviving. Our womenfolk at home need us to be calm. Now pick your hunting partner and be off with ye.”
Twelve hours later, the last hunting party straggled back to camp. No one had caught anything. “We're whalemen,” grum-bled Briggs, flinging his harpoon aside, “not deer hunters.”
A mask of ice weighing several pounds covered Garret's face. “I told Carrot Sticks not to chew tobacco,” said Dexter, leading him into our shelter. “Told him beards only make things worse, but he wouldn't listen.”
Garret couldn't talk, his mouth sealed in a muzzle of ice and tobacco juice. One eye peeped at us, the other frozen under the mask. We set him near the fire and chipped away at his face. After several hours, it was all off, and we finished the job by shaving his beard with a sheathing knife.
“Never again,” said Garret, spitting out his wad of tobacco once he could move his mouth.
The next day Sweet sent everyone out again. And the day after that. And the day after that. Meanwhile, Garret's skin peeled off from his hairline to his Adam's apple. We joked and said we were having peeled carrots for supper, but somehow he didn't think that was funny.
Peeling your skin must be good luck, though, because the next day Garret and Dexter trapped several fat white hens with feathery legs. We made biscuit and fat white hen soup with milk. Though watery, it was delicious, and we made it stretch for a few days. But it didn't stop me from dreaming about custard pie and hot biscuits and fish chowder and the smell of flour on Aunt Agatha's hands.
One night I started awake, custard pie crumbling to ice in my mouth.
Something's wrong.
The blubber lamp was near out, the fire cold. A gray fog hovered near the ceiling. I glanced at Elizabeth, but she lay sleeping, her breathing steady. Dexter and Garret lay on the other side of her, both out to the world. Quietly, I pulled on my boots, lined with fat white hen feathers. Outside the shelter a sharp wind blew from the north. I pulled up my collar and yanked down my stocking cap, expecting to hear Ninny greet me. Instead, the wind moaned. Snow swirled round the ground in gusts.
I peered inside Ninny's half cask. “Here, girl.”
The cask was empty.
I picked up Ninny's rope. It had been cut cleanly, as with a knife.
It was then I noticed a soft glow coming from the shore. Taking a deep breath, knowing what I would find but having to go anyways, I headed in that direction. Long before I arrived, I saw him.
Broad shoulders hunched over the fire, Briggs gnawed on a meaty shank, his pimply face glistening with grease. When he saw me, he stopped chewing.
“You killed her,” I said, fists clenched.
He grinned and shrugged.
“You stole her! You didn't even let me say good-bye.”
“Poor baby,” he said with a sneer.
“And now you're hogging her all to yourself. You can't even see fit to share with your friends. You're a pig, Briggs. You hear me? A pig.”
Briggs licked his fingers noisily and kept eating. “Shut up, Bones. I'm sick of you and your holier-than-thou ways. If 'twas up to you, we'd all die, we would. You're too stupid for your own good.”
I choked back bile, hating his smug face covered with grease. I hated his easy smile, his arrogance. With a will, though, I closed my eyes and forced my fists to unclench. Hatred never solves anything, I thought, remembering Captain Thorndike and how I'd once hated him. “I can't let you eat another bite.” I opened my ey
es, surprised my voice sounded so steady.
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, Bones? Eh, Bones? Gonna wrestle me for it?” Briggs smiled. “Tell you what. It'll be our secret. You and me. Why tell the others? I got some here just for you. Been saving it for you.” He held up another meaty leg. When I didn't take it, his eyes narrowed. “You breathe one word about this, Bones, I swear, I'll—”
“Sure, I'll take it.”
I could see the surprise on Briggs' face as I took the leg and sat beside him. After a moment, he grunted, shrugged, and tore off another bite.
“Say, we need some grog, don't we, Briggs? I can't eat goat without grog.”
“Huh?”
“Wouldn't you like some grog to warm you?”
“I like grog.”
“Why don't I sing for some grog?”
“Huh?”
I began to sing. “It's all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog, all gone for beer and tobacco! Spent all me tin on the lassies drinking gin, and across the western ocean I must wander!”
Briggs stared at me, swallowing goat with a gulp.
“C'mon, Briggs, what are you waiting for? Join in!” I kept singing. Louder, louder, till I was near screaming. Blood vessels bulged in my neck. My temples pounded. “Where are me boots, me noggy noggy boots, they've all gone for beer and tobacco! The leather's kicked about and the soles are all worn out, and my toes are looking out for better weather!”
I could hear shouts of “Shut up!”, sounds of men stirring, Dexter saying, “It's Nick! Down by the shore!”
Briggs still stared at me, his mouth hanging open, bits of meat stuck between his teeth.
I burst my lungs singing. “I feel sick in the head and I haven't been to bed since first I came ashore with me plunder! I see centipedes and snakes and I'm full of pains and aches, and I think that I should push out over yonder!”
By this time the entire camp had gathered, save Elizabeth.
I stopped singing, panting, my chest heaving. Dexter laid a gloved hand on my arm. “It's all right.”
Sweet grabbed a meaty bone from Briggs. “Ye coward! What do ye mean by eating the goat all yourself?”
Briggs cast me a dark look. “My belly's about stuck to my backbone. I'm hungry all the time and it hurts. I got to have meat, I do. Red meat.”
“Oh,” said Dexter. “Like none of the rest of us have bellies or backbones.”
Sweet sighed. “Well, boys, looks like grub's on. Garret, divide up the meat. Equal portions for everyone, including Elizabeth. None for Briggs. He's eaten his lot and more.”
“Aye, sir,” said Garret.
Back at the shelter, I woke Elizabeth. “Here, eat this.”
“What is it?”
“Food.”
She took it from me with trembling hands.
While she ate, I ate too, afterward licking my fingers over and over. When I was finished, I lay back down, crying softly. Because my heart ached for Ninny, and because I wanted more.
Two weeks before Christmas, Elizabeth sat up, her eyes clear of fever. The next day, she stepped out of the shelter for the first time in over three weeks. Like a child on Christmas morn, she gazed about her at all the new arrivals.
I told her how none of the others had survived, so far as we knew. Cole, Walker, Cook, Duff, and others, all gone. She just nodded, her jaw set in that now familiar line.
That evening, in celebration of Elizabeth's recovery, every-one gathered round a fire, where we sang sea chanteys, and everyone had a swallow of grog. My heart warmed from the grog and from seeing Elizabeth smile, throwing her head back to laugh. She sang softly, coughing sometimes, blushing at the bawdy words, whispering to me between songs that she'd grown up listening to those songs, and by fire, it was good to sing them finally!
Then Garret began to sing a ballad. His voice filled my insides like hot syrup in snow, the tenor tones rich and warm. Tears misted my eyes and I brushed my face with my glove. “And it's home, dearie, home! oh, it's home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted, and I must out to sea, for the oak, and the ash, and the bonny birchen tree, they're all a-growin' green in the North Countree; oh, it's home, dearie, home! oh, it's home I want to be.”
I heard sighs all round. A sniffle or two. Elizabeth grasped my hand. Her eyes shimmered. “We'll get there someday,” I whis-pered. “I promise.”
She laid her head on my shoulder. Warm, delicious feelings flooded me, and I looked out across the group. Sweet, Garret, Dexter, all had that misty-eyed look too. But when I looked at Briggs, it was like an icicle stabbing my heart. He sat by himself, sucking the marrow out of one of Ninny's bones, staring at Elizabeth with hard, narrowed eyes. And in the depths of his eyes I saw a meanness and a hunger, the way he must have looked at Ninny before he slit her throat.
'd heard the yarn many a time—in the fo'c'sle, lounging round the windlass during the dogwatch. It was a true story about the whaleship Essex from Nantucket, about how she was stove by a maddened sperm whale and sank in the middle of nowhere, leaving behind twenty men in three whaleboats to survive best they could with just a few ships' biscuit between them. They did survive. A few of them, anyways. They survived by killing and eating their mates.
It was Briggs' favorite yarn.
Even now, when we huddled round the fire as lights danced and swirled above our heads in the cold, endless Arctic night, Briggs told it all the time, ignoring everyone who told him to shut up.
Whenever he told it, he giggled, a crazy, hungry laugh that made goose pimples crawl over my flesh as if it were my bones split in two, crunched between teeth; as if it were my marrow being sucked and swallowed.
Finally, sick of telling him to shut up, Sweet flung aside his pipe and lit into Briggs, giving him a black eye and a fat lip that stuck out so far that for three days Briggs had to pour water into his mouth from above if he wanted a drink. After that, Briggs didn't say anything. Just stared at Elizabeth. Licked his lips. Stared and stared.
It was Christmas. I lay awake, knowing it wasn't time to get up yet. Outside was still and terrible quiet, as if the Arctic held its breath. It had usually been at this time of morning that Ninny had bleated to be milked. I missed Ninny. I missed Aunt Agatha, too. I imagined her bustling down the stairs into the parlor to find Dexter and me under the Christmas tree, poking packages. I imagined her saying, “So I expect ye'll want to open them? Well, Dexter and Nicholas Robbins, not before ye've had your porridge and not before you're dressed and scrubbed.” I felt the familiar press of hot tears that came whenever I thought of home. Would I ever see it again?
After setting more wood on the fire, I lay back down, already frozen to the bone. Beside me, Elizabeth stirred. “You awake?” I whispered, trying not to disturb Dexter and Garret.
“Aye.”
“I have something for you.”
“You do? For me?”
“I made it.” From my pocket I pulled out a gift, wrapped in sailcloth and tied with hemp. “Merry Christmas.”
She untied the bow and unwrapped the cloth, eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Why, it's a wood statue of my father.”
“Aye. Standing and a-smoking his pipe. For you to remember him by.”
“Thank you, Nicholas. I'll treasure it always.”
A warm glow spread through my middles as she looked at me.
“I have something for you too,” she said.
“For me?”
“Who else, silly?” She pulled out a pair of goatskin mittens from inside her fur parka. “Here. Merry Christmas, Nicholas Robbins.”
I smiled. It was a good gift and a sad gift, all at the same time. “Thank you. I really need them.” I tried them on, satisfied that they were a good fit.
So we lay there, each admiring our gifts, Elizabeth caressing the lines of the statue. The legs, the hat, the pipe… She sighed. “It's like I can smell the tobacco smoke right now.”
I sniffed the air. Aye, it strangely reeked of tobacco smoke.
Then I he
ard a scrape of boot outside the shelter, a rum-maging of something, and Henry Sweet's voice bellowing, “All hands! All hands on deck! We've got ourselves a situation!”
The hard bread was gone. Every last crumb. Gone.
“One of ye has stolen the biscuit!” Sweet marched up and down the line of us men. “If ye return it now, I'll pretend it never happened. But if we find it on ye, or if ye gets fat and blubbery while the rest of us poor folks starves thin as a rail, why, you'll wish ye never heard the name o' Henry Sweet, by fire, and that's the truth of it!”
Of course no one said anything, but we all stared at Briggs. Briggs gave us a dark look and curled his hand into a fist. “First man that accuses me gets it.”
“Shut your trap, Briggs, I've had enough of ye,” growled Sweet. “Search the camp, boys.”
An hour later, after lighting every oil lamp, turning the camp upside down and inside out, and poking round for places the hard bread could have been buried, we gathered back round Sweet.
Nothing. No biscuit, nothing.
Sweet poked tobacco into his pipe and set it alight. The ici-cles hanging from his mustache and eyebrows glowed orange. “I don't know 'bout the rest of ye fellows, but I'm 'bout ready to eat me pipe. We've got to double our efforts for hunting. Get ready to go within the hour. And if I find anyone keeping what he caught to himself, he'll be what's in the stewpot. Now fetch me a whale, boys. Dismissed.”
When I returned to the shelter, Elizabeth declared, “I'm going hunting with you.”
My jaw flapped open. A woman go hunting? Elizabeth? What does she know about hunting? I shook my head. “I—I don't think that's a good—”
“You can either come with me or not, Nicholas Robbins, I don't care, but I'm not staying here acting like I don't have legs and arms and a brain like the rest of you. I'm going to fetch me some food, and that's that. Now are you coming or not?” She moved to the entrance, and I realized she was all ready to go, knapsack on her back, whale lance in her hand. Two blond braids dangled out from under her hood. Her jaw was set, and on her face was a look of the purest determination I'd ever seen.
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