It was on the 17th February that we established ourselves on the iceberg. A period of fairly good weather followed and to keep the men constructively occupied and to give them some constant glimmer of hope, however slight, I set them to work cutting steps in the side of the berg.
We maintained a constant watch, and each day this lookout was posted higher and higher as we laboriously cut our way upwards, until at last our lookout post was on the flat top of the berg. This was at about 120 feet above the pack. We did not attempt to climb the pinnacle which rose another fifty feet. It would have been of little use to us had we done so, for we experienced almost constant low cloud and more often than not the pinnacle was lost in a swirling mist.
On 23rd February shortly before midday I was dragged from my tent by an excited lookout. “There is smoke, hr. Kaptein,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Vestover,” was his reply.
I climbed the hundred and forty-seven steps to the lookout and there, just to the south of west, was a great column of smoke. It could have been frost-smoke. But the sea was freezing over now wherever it was exposed to the atmosphere for any length of time, and all day the column of smoke continued to rise from the same spot. And that night, when the sun dipped just below the horizon, we could see a red glow under the smoke. The whole camp was in an uproar of excitement. The sudden thought of rescue was in everyone’s mind. It was a hard thing for me to have to tell them that the only thing it could possibly be was the crew of the Southern Cross igniting the oil they had pumped out of the ship as a guiding beacon to the rescue ships. But even that didn’t damp their spirits. If the survivors of the Southern Cross had decided to make a signal, then it must surely mean that there were rescue ships in the vicinity.
For two days everyone was cheerful and the talk was all of rescue. Then the gale hit us. It came up out of the south-west and flung itself on us with a banshee howl that drowned the constant thunder of the breaking ice, seeming to pin us by its very weight to the ice walls of the berg.
When the storm broke, our ledge was facing straight into it. Our situation would have been bad enough down on the ice. But up there, on an exposed ledge, we got the full force of the wind. And with the wind came sleet and snow. It was terrifying—the bitter cold and the constant noise, the inability to breathe outside our tents and the lack of hot food. It sapped our strength and damped our spirits.
No one spoke of rescue any more. In fact we hardly spoke at all. We were glued to the face of the berg, by the weight of the wind, like flies on a flypaper, and the snow piled up round us and froze, so that there was no longer a ledge. Drawing rations from Bland each day became a major expedition.
We lost a man during this storm. He went out with two others and never returned. They were Tauer III men, all of them, and though I questioned them later, I never really got to the bottom of it. They admitted to going down to the lower camp to scrounge extra rations from Bland, but they wouldn’t say any more. I think what really happened was that they went down there with the intention of deserting our camp for Bland’s only to find that Bland didn’t want them. That one of them disappeared over the edge was, I believe, an accident. It was easy enough to slip over in those conditions and whenever a party went down to draw rations I insisted on them being roped. At any rate, the two who came back suddenly became violently anti-Bland and infected their whole tent.
For six days we lay in a coma of cold and hunger, hardly daring to go out, the tents overcrowded, insanitary and wholly covered by a mixture of snow and ice. On the sixth day all was suddenly quiet. The wind had gone. And on that day the men, led by the two survivors of that trip to the lower camp, complained to me about the amount of rations Bland had issued. They were getting desperate. Bonomi had told them that food was still plentiful in the lower camp. I said I’d go down and talk to Bland himself. Howe dragged me aside then. “This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said.
But I knew what that would mean. “If we led them amok like that,” I said, “they’d pillage the stores. Three men eating well doesn’t make much of a hole in rations being doled out for over forty.”
“It’s the chance we’ve been waiting for,” he insisted. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and feverishly bright.
“No,” I said.
I went down the ledge before he could argue further. Bonomi was standing by the barricade of frozen snow that marked the boundary between the two camps. I called to him. “I want to speak to Bland,” I said.
He put his finger to his lips. “I wish to speak with you.”
“Well, what is it?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk to him. I felt he was a toady and he looked sleek and well fed by comparison with the wraith-like figures who had crowded round me a moment ago demanding more food.
“I wish you to know that Bland is becoming frightened,” he said. “All the time I am telling him how the men are getting desperate and how they believe he killed Nordahl and rammed your ship. At first he would tell me to shut up. Once he strike me in anger. Now he sits morose and uneasy and all the time I am telling him how desperate the men are become. I do not think he sleep well any more.”
“Is this true, Bonomi?” I demanded.
“Madonna mia! Do I trouble to tell it to you if it is not true? I tell you, he is becoming desperate. He is hoping all the time that the iceberg break out of the pack. The storm makes him hopeful. But now he no longer have any hope of that. I think he abandon the camp soon. There is only twenty-five more days of food left and he does not dare to reduce the rations any more.”
“Go and tell him I want a word with him,” I ordered.
He hesitated, looking a little crestfallen. I think he had expected me to congratulate him on his Machiavelian campaign.
Perhaps I should have, for when Bland came up the slope towards me I saw his confidence was broken. He looked well fed, but his eyes were sunk in their sockets and his body seemed slack. His gaze did not easily meet mine. “Well?” he said, with an attempt at self-assurance.
“The men are complaining about the rations,” I said.
“Let them complain,” he said.
“There’s no rationing, I believe, down in your camp,” I accused him angrily.
“Why should there be?” he answered. “They made the choice.”
“They’re getting desperate,” I told him. “If you’re not careful they’ll rush the stores. You know what that means, don’t you, Bland?”
He passed his tongue quickly over his chapped lips. “I’ll shoot anyone who attempts to rush us. Tell them that, Craig. And tell them also that it’s not my fault we’re short of food.”
“They’ll believe that when they know that you’re on the same scale of rations as they are,” I answered. “How many days’ supply is left? Bonomi says only twenty-five.”
“Damn that little bastard,” he muttered. “He talks too much.”
“Is that correct, Bland?”
“Yes. They’ll get the present scale of rations for twenty-five more days. That’s all. Tell them that.”
I made a quick mental calculation of the quantity of food four men, unrationed, would consume in that period. “I want thirty days’ rations for my men, three boats together with our full share of stores and navigating equipment by nightfall,” I said.
He stared at me and I saw he was scared at my tone. “If you’re not careful, Craig, I’ll cut off rations completely.”
“If what I’ve asked for isn’t ready at this barrier by 18.00 hours to-night, I won’t answer for the consequences. That’s an ultimatum,” I added, and left him to think over what I’d said. If Bonomi had told the truth, and it certainly looked like it from Bland’s manner, then he’d do as I’d demanded.
I told the men what I’d done. For the first time in days I saw them grinning. “But it doesn’t mean the end of rationing,” I warned them. “It just means that we shall control our own rationing.”
The men gathered in hungry groups at th
e snow barrier. I saw Bland watching them uneasily. Just after midday the men cheered. Down in the lower camp Bland’s two mates and Bonomi had started humping stores. Bland himself kept guard with his rifle. We broke down the snow barrier and boats and stores were run into the upper camp. I put McPhee in charge of stores and Gerda in charge of food. Without Gerda, I think the men would have broken into the food in one glorious orgy. We were all desperately hungry.
The end of the month came and went with only the entries in my log to mark the passage of time. There was a period of darkness at night now, and each day this period lengthened with amazing rapidity. But though the weather was calmer, in ten days I only managed to shoot the sun once. My calculations gave me a position of 63.31 S. 31.06 W., just about 230 miles nor’nor’east of the position at which we had abandoned Hval 4. It gives some idea of the rate of drift.
All this time Howe had been working away at his stanchion, working secretly for fear that McPhee would send it flying over the edge after the other one. Every time either of us or Gerda came into the tent he hid it from us and lay there, feeling it with his hand, watching us with a guilty smile on his face.
Apart from this and our general situation, Judie was a source of worry. Her attitude was an additional weight on my mind, so that I found it very hard to shake off the increasing periods of depression. She hadn’t spoken to me since the day we had reached the ledge. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, into a state of more or less blank misery. Gerda told me that she sometimes woke up in the night to find her crying and murmuring her father’s name.
“You must do something,” Gerda said to me one day. “If you do not, I think she will just fade away.” That was on 8th March. I went to Judie’s tent and tried to speak to her. She looked very pale and thin and her eyes were huge in their sunken sockets. She stared at me without a word as though she didn’t recognise me. I told Gerda to feed her some of the precious meat extract that had been included amongst the rations Bland had handed over to us. I left the tent in a mood of utter despair.
That was the day the aircraft flew over us. It was an American plane, the star markings plainly visible as it passed over at about 500 feet. We had nothing to signal with, and half blanketed in snow on the sheer flank of the iceberg it was hardly surprising that they did not see us. We piled inflammable stores together and kept constant watch in a fever of excitement and renewed hope. Two days later we saw another plane, away to the south. I picked it up in the glasses, but it was too far for our smoke to be visible and I would not give the order to ignite our precious reserves of fuel.
Sleet and snow followed and we never saw another glimpse of the search planes. The monotony of hunger, cold, and dying hope settled on the camp.
Once in the middle of the night I was woken by one of the lookouts who told me Howe had passed him without a word making for the lower camp. We found him halfway down the ledge, standing there quite still, the spear-sharp stanchion gripped in his hand. He didn’t move as I came up to him. He seemed lost in his own thoughts and in the cold light of the stars I saw the conflict inside him written on his face. He must have been standing there for some time, for he was so stiff with cold that he could hardly move. He let me take the weapon from him and as I led him back he was crying. He would have done no good anyway, for I saw a movement down in the lower camp and knew that a guard was posted. I called Gerda and left him with her.
There were no storms now. Just the everlasting glare of low cloud and the nights lengthening with the increasing cold. The steadily falling temperature was magnified by lack of food and our decreasing resistance. Life became a monotony of waiting for the end, without hope. The men no longer looked hungrily at the lower camp, for through Bonomi we knew that their ration scale was as low as ours. Daily I checked the stores and watched our meagre reserves of food dwindle. The lookout no longer searched the sky for planes, but peered at the ice through eyes inflamed by the constant glare, searching for some sign of life—seal or penguin, anything that would do for food. The movement of the berg through the ice gradually slowed. Everything was much quieter; the silence of death seemed to be settling over us. No pressure ridges sent their roaring battle challenge thundering over our precarious perch. All round us stretched a silent, lifeless waste. Our fuel was almost finished. Soon we should have nothing hot. Without any hot drinks, life would quickly desert us.
The 19th March carries the following entry in my log: Reduced rations still further. Grieg dead. Broken rib probably pierced lung. Has been weakening for a long time. Slipped his body over the edge as though burying at sea, none of us having the strength to cut a grave in the snow, which is hard like ice. Very cold. Wind has dropped and iceberg now stationary in pack. No hope now of breaking out to open sea.
I knew it was time for the last desperate effort I had been planning. Gerda apparently had the same thought. She came to my tent next morning. As she sat there in the dim light I was surprised to see how much weight she had lost. She was almost slim. Howe was with her, thin as a wraith under the bulk of his clothes, his ugliness lost in the æsthetic sunken appearance of his features. He reminded me somehow of a modern artist’s impression of Christ on the cross.
“Duncan. It is time we do something,” Gerda said. “We cannot just stay here, waiting for death.”
I nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said.
“Anything is better than to die without effort. I think soon I go to join my father.” She paused and then said, “It is quiet now. We can go down on to the ice. The Southern Cross was per’aps fifteen, not more than twenty miles from us when she sink. Per’aps my father is alive. I do not know. But I must go and see.”
“You realise we’ve drifted nearly 250 miles from the place where the Southern Cross went down?”
“Ja, ja. But they also will have drifted. I think perhaps we do not find them. But I must try.”
“Don’t forget we’ve been on this iceberg,” I said. “We’ve been moving steadily through the pack for days. Suppose there are some survivors, they’ll be a lot more than twenty miles away. You’d never make it. You’re too weak.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I also think they will be a long way away. Also, we cannot be sure in what direction they now are. But I must go. Per’aps I am too weak, as you say. But it is the spirit that is important. My spirit is strong. I shall go to search for my father.”
There was no point in arguing. I could see she had made up her mind. “And Howe?” I asked.
Her face betrayed no emotion. She knew it meant his death. He would die first and she would have to watch him die. But she never flinched. She just said, “Walter comes with me.”
I could see they had been over this together. Their minds were made up. In their faces was a sort of glow of exaltation. I almost loved Howe’s ugliness in that moment, for he wasn’t ugly—he was beautiful. His spirit, purged of all bitterness and cynicism by Gerda’s love, shone through his features and transformed them.
I lay back, not saying anything, but going over in my mind something that had been there for a long time. At length I sat up. I was looking at Howe, wondering how he’d take it, hating myself for having to do it. “Walter,” I said, using his Christian name for the first time. “You’re not strong—physically. Whatever your strength of will, you know you will die before you reach the position where the Southern Cross survivors might be. You know that, don’t you?”
His eyes clouded. The glow died out of him. He knew the drift of my words. He nodded slowly, and there was a queer resignation in his face. It was as though I’d killed his spirit. “You think I should say goodbye to Gerda here?”
“Are you prepared to if it would give her a chance of reaching her father—and give us all just a chance of preserving life a little longer?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice scarcely audible
I got up then and crawled out of the tent, Gerda clutching frantically at me, pleading to know what I intended to do. I think she was a
little scared at the thought of making the journey without Howe. He was now the source of her strength. I said, “Wait,” and called the men together, those that could still crawl out of the tents. The air was cold and still as they assembled round me.
“You know there is food for only a few days more?” I said.
They nodded.
“I checked the stores this morning,” I went on. “On our present rations there is food for seventeen more days. That is all. After that there is nothing. We have seen no sign of any living thing in all this time. Unless we get food and fuel we shall die.” They stood there, dumb—stunned by having what they all knew put bluntly to them in words.
“Gerda Petersen wishes to try to reach the position of the Southern Cross.” I went on. “She wishes to know whether her father is alive. She has the right to go, if anyone does.” They growled agreement, waiting for me to continue.
I then told them what I planned to do. “The Southern Cross unloaded stores on the ice before she went down,” I said. “She had a big cargo of whale-meat. This and blubber would have been transferred to the ice. If there are any survivors, then they will have meat and fuel. I intend to try and reach them. It is a desperate chance, and you must decide whether you agree to my going. We have no hope of reaching them in our present condition. The party, which should consist of three, must be properly fed for at least two days. That and the rations they will have to take with them will cut your own food supplies by about three days. It is up to you to decide whether you wish to take this chance.”
The men nodded and began to talk amongst themselves. Gerda stepped forward and said, “Whatever you decide I must go. I do not need your food.”
The men stared at her. Then one old man from her father’s ship said, “We will not let you go without food. Hval 4 will give you part of their rations.”
The White South Page 26