by Bob Chaulk
“What happened to Darmy?” asked Jackie. “Did he really die?”
“They couldn’t revive him. I think he’s gone, sport.”
“But they’re not gonna just leave him behind, are they?”
“They don’t have any choice. I’m sure a rescue ship will find him and take him off the ice.”
It was a long while before one of them spoke or even moved. “Well, buddy, I guess we better get ourselves organized here,” Henry said finally, trying to make their situation appear more like an adventure than the looming disaster he feared it was to become. Casting a glance around, he added, “Let’s see if we can find any pieces of wreckage to make on a fire. You go off to the left there and I’ll go this way and we’ll meet back here in ten minutes or so. Mind where you’re walking so you don’t step into the water, now.”
“Maybe we should stay together,” Jackie suggested meekly.
“Yeah, sure, we can do that if you like.”
“A bit chilly, eh?”
“The wind is died down, though,” said Henry. “That’s good. And I see the stars are coming out so there won’t be any snow. Makes it a bit easier to see, too, don’t it?”
“Hey, there’s a piece!”
“You got good eyes. That’s a good-sized piece, too.”
The search for wreckwood that had sprayed over the ice in the explosions was a helpful diversion, and the activity of climbing up, down and around the rough ice kept the cold away.
“Henry!”
“What?”
“Oh, there you are. I couldn’t see you.”
“I’m just over here. I was bent down to get a stick of wood.”
“I think I hear something.”
“What do you hear?”
“Don’t you hear anything? Like moaning, sort of.”
“It’s probably just the ice creaking and rubbing together. It can sound strange sometimes.”
“It’s creepy out here. I guess we got nowhere to sleep, right?”
“We’ll find somewhere to lie down after a while.”
“Do you think we’re going to freeze to death?”
“No, we got lots of clothes on. We’ll just have to keep moving around for a while and then we’ll sleep some. We’ll be all right tonight and then it might be clear tomorrow with some sun.”
“Hey, there’s water here! Henry! Henry! I’m driftin’ away.”
“Don’t jump! Go to your left there… quick, now…run! Here, grab the gaff handle. Now, jump.”
He barely made it, stumbling to his hands and knees as he landed.
“That one sure snuck up on us, didn’t it?” said Henry. “There must be an awful lot of tide out here. I guess that explains why we drove away from the ship so fast. We got a good-sized piece of ice under us now, though.”
“Yeah, well, how do you know it’s not just a whole bunch of little pieces all jammed together? I thought I was standing on a good-sized piece just then.”
After half an hour of scouring the area, they had managed to find enough wood to make a fire. “I guess that’s it for the wood,” said Henry.
“How long do you think it’ll last?”
“That should last for a nice while.”
“That sounds like a Simeon answer. How long is a nice while?”
“Oh, an hour, maybe.”
“You got any matches?”
“Yep.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “But you don’t smoke.”
“Maybe, but I still got matches.”
“I enjoy a smoke now and then,” Jackie declared grandly.
Henry smiled. “Do you, now? You better not be lookin’ to me for one.”
Though it was more wood than he had expected to find, Henry noted silently that of everything they would need to survive—food, water, fuel and shelter—they had only fuel and not much of that. He knew that as time passed without food and shelter they would become increasingly susceptible to the cold, especially the unpredictable spring weather. If it turned mild and rained, and then fell below freezing, there would be no surviving. He was determined that they would not fritter away their paltry store of wood for immediate comfort; it was a precious resource to be used wisely to signal an approaching ship and not just for warmth.
“We should try to get some sleep while the weather is fair, Jack.” He found a low spot among the pinnacles and there they lay down, snuggling together for warmth. “If we’re still out here tomorrow night we’ll have to take turns sleeping so we don’t miss the rescue ship. There won’t be anybody out tonight.”
The night dragged on but, despite waking and shivering frequently, they both got a little sleep. Jackie was surprised at how noisy it was, with the creaking ice and the sloshing of the waves. The wind seemed to come and go, breezing up for a minute or two and then falling calm again. Eventually it started to blow and kept blowing. Each time he awakened it was with unbearable disappointment and dread as he realized anew the situation they were in. He had never felt fear like he felt it now.
“Henry, you awake?”
“Yeah.”
“You hear anything? I think I heard something.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. It sounded like groaning or something.”
“It’s nothing. Just the wind. Try to sleep.”
“Do you think there are spirits out here?”
I could use some spirits about now, Henry thought, as he remembered the Caribbean with its warm winds and cheap rum. “You mean like ghosts?”
“Yeah.”
“There are no ghosts out here or anywhere else. Just go back to sleep.”
Before the dawn broke they had both had enough. Having run out of body parts that weren’t aching from the hard, cold surface on which he was doubled up, Henry finally got to his feet. A few seconds later Jackie was beside him. He had wanted to get up for a long time but did not want to disturb Henry.
“Now then, Jack, I suppose you slept like a baby and had to haul yourself out of bed, did you?” Henry said, conjuring up a smile.
“Not really,” Jackie replied, not even pretending to be cheerful.
“No, b’y. To tell you the truth I didn’t either. It wasn’t exactly a feather bed, was it? My ass is some dunched!” he said, slapping his behind and trying to bring some life back into his haunches. Jackie grunted something unintelligible.
“How are you there, Brud? You doin’ all right?”
“That wind is pretty cold,” he managed to croak. Henry touched his shoulder and could feel him trembling.
“You are cold!”
No response. “…and maybe a little scared?”
Jackie hesitated. “I dunno.” After a long pause, he confessed, “Yeah.”
Henry searched for the words that would bring comfort to his young friend, but he had little to offer. All his role models rarely if ever acknowledged their fears, and usually talked nonchalantly in the face of enormous dangers. If you were afraid you kept it to yourself. That was the example he had been given and he felt helpless with the knowledge that it was all he had to offer Jackie.
He managed to scrape together a few shallow words of comfort. “I can’t blame you for being a bit scared, b’y, but we’re goin’ to be all right, just you wait and see. We’re on a nice big hunk of ice and we got some wood to burn if it gets too cold. I’m expecting to see a rescue ship when the sun comes up, so we’ll be okay.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Jackie asked.
“No,” said Henry. “Why should I be afraid?”
“Well, I’ve seen you scared. You looked pretty nervous goin’ down the side of the ship the other day.”
“You’re wrong,” he answered emphatically. “I wasn’t scared then and I’m not scared now. And neither should you be. We’re going to get picked up in a day or so and then everything will be fine.”
“Huh.”
“What’s the point in being scared?” said Henry. “Sure, it won’t do a bit of good. We need to be like my cousin,
Ches, who turned his punt bottom up one time sailing from Whale’s Gulch to Cottle’s Island. He couldn’t swim a stroke, of course, so he clung to the overturned boat for about two hours until somebody finally came out and got him, barely alive. ‘I bet you was scared out there, eh Ches, hangin’ onto the keel o’ yer punt wit’ nar rescue in sight,’ they all laughed.
“‘Hah!’ Ches snarled. “‘Course I was scared. I coulda got me baccy wet.’”
Henry slapped his knee and waited for the laughter that came every time he told the story, but Jackie said nothing.
“You didn’t like the story?”
“Sure. But I’d like it better if we lit a fire and warmed up?”
“Maybe we should wait a little while longer until we really need to, since we only got enough wood for one fire. How about if we wait until the rescue ship comes in sight?”
“Yeah, well, what about if…” Jackie felt his voice breaking and he stopped. He absolutely could not show fear; it was unthinkable. He had already let his guard down too much.
Henry quickly filled the void. “I figure you’ll be all set with that big army coat on. You need to jump around a bit and get yourself warmed up. Start flappin’ your arms like this.” Getting no response he cajoled, “Come on now, let’s go drivin’ works a bit; that’ll get your blood movin’.” And bit by bit he got his companion to start dancing around and then teased him into a mock fight, dragging him down to the ice and wrestling him, where they enjoyed a brief respite from their despair, but they were soon standing in the semidarkness, silent and staring at the least dark part of the sky, waiting for the light. Eventually the sun sent out the first clues that it would be arriving.
The dawn began by splitting the horizon and unfolding its first orange brilliance from off to the right, and then extending back towards where the sun was about to show itself. It seemed backwards. Henry had watched many sunrises from the deck of a ship, and was often surprised by what he experienced; it must have had something to do with the earth’s curvature, he assumed.
“Nice puffy clouds, eh? What do they remind you of?” he asked.
“I dunno. They just look like orange clouds to me,” Jackie replied in a sullen voice.
“Come on, now. Look closer. Don’t you see a big fluffy animal, a bit like a…a pig, yeah, a pig all covered in soapsuds?”
“A pig covered in soapsuds? You’re nuts.”
“No, no, look again. See, there’s his ass on the right and his head on the left and it looks like he’s sniffing where the sun is going to come up. Maybe he’ll root up the sun for us with his snout.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess it is a bit like a pig. You got a good imagination.” “And if you watch carefully you’ll see that he’s moving from right to left like he’s chasin’ after the sun. See it?”
“Right. Ha!”
“See. He looks like he’s in a big, flat field, slooooowly coaxin’ the sun up.”
The pig soon started to disintegrate and progress all but halted. From the time the light made its debut until the sun finally came up seemed to take forever, but they had lots of time. Barring the arrival of a ship, it would be the biggest event of the day, and they watched with obsessive interest, as though its progress would stop if they looked away.
The pig became a blob of red cloud as the top of the life-giving ball finally pushed its way up from the obscurity, then came on with assurance, erasing the gloom with its presence. Jackie thought of the simple words of Genesis that he had learned in catechism: “Let there be light. And there was light.” As an involuntary shiver escaped, he wished he had a magic wand so he could declare: “Let there be heat.” But there was none. The light, at least, was welcome. In a few minutes the sun had escaped the horizon and was suspended above the earth, filtered through thin clouds and displaying its reds and oranges reflected off the ice with such intensity that they could no longer look at it. After a while they detected the slightest tinge of warmth.
Jackie’s stomach reminded him that breakfast soon followed the dawn. Oh, how he longed for a bowl of his mother’s porridge, with lots of brown sugar and Carnation milk, and feeling its warmth as it plunged into his empty belly. He felt a great pang of loneliness as he thought of home. Struggling to shake if off, he watched Henry climb to the top of the highest pinnacle he could find. “See anything?” he yelled.
“Yes,” Henry replied, as Jackie’s heart sped up. “Ice and water. Every direction looks the same,” he said as he kept turning, “flat calm with loose ice everywhere. There’s not much point in trying to walk anywhere; there’s no land in sight in any direction. At least we’re on a nice big piece of ice, a lot bigger than I thought, and about…I dunno, maybe a thousand feet to a side.”
But what happened to the land? Henry wondered; there’s no sign of the disaster site and no evidence of the Horse Islands—no land anywhere. We were just a few miles off Cape John. Where in the world are we after driftin’ to?
Jackie climbed up to look around, too. Their island of ice sure wasn’t smooth like the ice he had skated on at Quidi Vidi Lake. When the ship was jammed he had watched it heave and crumple like a jigsaw puzzle, as huge slabs slid across one another, then broke and heaved up still more. What he was looking at could have passed for a batch of large flat stones piled in a haphazard fashion atop one another, with snow here and there in the crevices.
We must be moving east, away from the Horse Islands, thought Henry, because if we were moving westerly, then the two islands would be in sight; and if we were going south, then we would have run ashore by now, or at least we would be able to see Newfoundland. We could be moving northerly, I suppose, but I don’t think so. We would have run into some heavy ice and there’s not much sign of that; it looks the same in every direction. If I’m right and we’re moving east, then that should take us right into the path of any rescue ship on her way up from St. John’s.
He stared hopefully into the direction of the sun, straining to see if there might be something on the horizon. It was too bright. When he lowered his eyes, he thought he saw something. Squinting until his eyes were almost closed he realized what he was looking at. “Jack!”
“Yeah?”
“I just saw something over there and I don’t think it’s good. I think there might be somebody else on our ice floe.”
“No kiddin’? Did he wave? Is he coming this way?”
“Looks like he’s lying down or unconscious. We better go and take a look.”
“What, is it one of the sealers?” Jackie asked, his enthusiasm dissipated. “I’ll go see. You stay here.”
Jackie followed him anyway. “Is he dead?” he asked, as they looked down at a crumpled body that looked like it had been dumped into a depression between two pinnacles.
Henry hesitated to touch him, as though he might jump up and grab him. “Halloo!” he yelled down at him. Then, feeling foolish for being so timid, he leaned down and touched the man’s face. It was cold. Feeling his neck for a pulse, he said, “Feels like he’s still a little bit warm. I guess he hasn’t been dead for very long, the poor bugger. Looks like he’s after takin’ quite a beating.”
Jackie gulped. “He’s the guy who whistled from the ship when I gave the bow!”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. I wonder how he got all the way out here,” said Henry.
“He flew over here. He got blasted right over my head last night. Aw, shit!”
“I’m surprised we didn’t come across him when we were picking up the wood.”
“I’m just glad we stayed together. Jeez, I wouldn’t want to come upon this guy in the dark by myself.”
“You know something?” said Henry. “I thought I heard somebody moaning when we were walking over here last night, but with all the goings on I thought I was imagining it. It must have been this guy, still alive, and I’ll bet it’s what you heard in the middle of the night, too!”
“We could’ve helped him.”
“I doubt it, Brud. I don’t think there was anybod
y who could have helped him. It’s too bad he had to die alone, though.”
“What will we do with him?”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do. It’s just as well to leave him here as anywhere. Later we’ll check to see if he has any identification so we can report his death, but to tell you the truth, I don’t feel like it right now.”
chapter twenty-three
Eight miles west of the Viking, the people in the tiny community of Horse Islands were getting ready for bed when a thunderous sound disturbed their tranquil Sunday evening. Excited children standing at the windows had never seen anything like it, especially when flares went shooting into the air like fireworks.
Soon the village was in an uproar. Men pulled on their coats and boots and ran to the headland for a better view.
“That can only be one thing—a sealing ship caught fire.”
“It must be. Unless it’s an ore boat from Tilt Cove.”
“You ever see copper ore burn like that? She’s too close, anyway. That’s a sealing vessel as sure as God is in heaven. And the way she’s goin’ up I would hope and pray that she’s into some ice so the fellers aboard can have some way to get off her.”
“What can we do?”
“Not very much right now. Well, there is one thing I suppose. Let’s get some lanterns up high—upstairs in Frank’s house—because if there’s anybody survives they’ll head in here. Bram, you and I’ll stay up for the night to tend to the lights and keep a watch in case anybody comes in sight. I’ll be surprised if that happens, though, with the condition of this ice.”