The men of her own crew nodded agreement, their eyes kindled—not by hope, but by their sacrifice for something they thought right and good.
McPhee stepped forward and said, “Will ye tell us, sir, who ye’ll be taking with ye?”
“Yes,” I said. “Kalstad, if he agrees to come.” And then I added, “Before you decide, let me warn you that there is little hope in this and we shall almost certainly die on the way. But it is a chance, and we should take that chance, however slight, before we are too weak to attempt it.”
“I will kom,” said Kalstad.
“Good,” I said, and asked the men for their decision. They didn’t say anything, but I saw one of the stewards had gone to prepare a meal. They were all grinning excitedly like children. They made of their sacrifice a sort of festival. They crowded round the cook-pot, advising, offering more food. Gerda was crying, her eyes starry, and she went amongst them, thanking them, kissing them in her excitement and her sense of their innate kindness. She thought that they were doing it for her, and not for any desperate hope of relief—and I’m not at all sure she wasn’t right. Rough men have a way of showing their love with inordinate sacrifice, and there wasn’t a man who hadn’t gained strength and courage from her indomitable cheerfulness.
So it was arranged and for two days the three of us fed like fighting cocks. I could literally feel the strength flowing back into me. It coursed with the blood through my veins. Depression was thrown off. I even had some hope. And the cold receded. Kalstad grew taller and more cheerful. And as we were fed up, the rest of the men seemed to shrink into sunken-eyed ghosts by comparison. The air of cheerfulness was kept up at a forced and artificial level as the men crowded round us to watch us eat, trying desperately to hide the hunger fever in their eyes and the saliva that drooled from their lips at the sight of so much food.
On the evening of the first day on full rations, something happened which should have warned me what Bland was planning. Bonomi came into our camp and asked to speak to me. He looked shrunken and cold and very frightened. He pleaded to come and join our camp. “They eat everything,” he cried wildly. He was almost in tears of self-pity. “They will give me nothing, and they eat and eat. Soon there is nothing left. I am ’ungry and I do not wish to be cook to them no more.”
“That’s a matter for you to sort out with Bland,” I said. “You’ve done pretty well out of being their cook so far.”
“Si, si. But now they will give me nothing. Nothing, I tell you.”
“Better go and talk to Bland. He holds your rations.”
“But he will give me nothing.”
“It’s a matter between you and Bland,” I repeated. “Go and sort it out with him.”
I am afraid I was rather brusque. My mind was on more vital things than Bonomi’s rations. That morning we completed the building of a really good light sledge. We turned in at midday and the evening meal was served to us in our blanket sleeping-bags. One more day at Iceberg Camp and then we should be out on our own, trekking across illimitable wastes of ice searching for the Southern Cross Camp. We didn’t know where it was. We didn’t even know whether it existed. We should just have to go on and on until the end came. It was a frightening thought—more frightening now that our bellies were full and we had the energy to hope. The three of us were together now in my tent and we talked interminably of the best possible route, little knowing that the route would be chosen for us.
I was wakened very early the following morning by somebody shaking me and calling my name. For a moment I thought it was time for us to leave. But then I realised that it was not until the next day, the 22nd, that we were starting out. I opened my eyes to find Bonomi bending over me. “Capitano. Capitano. They ’ave gone. They ’ave gone and they ’ave leave me nothing. Nothing at all.” He was excited and scared.
I sat up. “Who’s gone? What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Bland,” he cried. “Bland is gone and he take all the rations, everything. He is down on the ice—he and Vaksdal and Keller. Come and see if you do not believe.”
I crawled out of my tent and stood in the cold stillness of the ledge, shielding my eyes from the glare and trying to see what Bonomi was pointing to. It was an incredible morning. The sun was a blood-red orange away to the north-east, the sky a sort of greeny blue and all the ice was tinged with silken pink, like a damask quilt. “There. Do you see?”
I followed Bonomi’s pointing finger and saw three figures moving across the ice—three tiny figures dragging a sledge. They had their backs to the sun and they were headed towards the position where the Southern Cross might be expected to be. I ought to have realised what it had meant when Bonomi had said that Bland and the two mates were eating full rations. Bland had finally despaired of the iceberg breaking through to the open sea and had started westward in search of the Southern Cross Camp or the rescue ships which might still be searching on the edge of the pack.
Bonomi’s excitement had roused the camp. One by one the men stumbled out into that satin-pink morning and stared at the three figures moving slowly across the ice below. I remember one man said, “I think perhaps you do not go now, Kaptein. They have had more food, those three. If anyone reach the Southern Cross Camp they will. There is good hope now.”
Howe heard him and he said, “If Bland reaches the Southern Cross Camp, no rescue party will come here. He’s gambling on being the sole survivor. That’s the only way he can save himself from being hanged for murder.” He turned to me. “Craig,” he said “you’ve just got to get there. Don’t let him beat you on the last stretch. You and Gerda have got to reach the Southern Cross Camp.”
It meant that we should have to follow Bland’s tracks. I had no illusions about the man. Somewhere along the route he would abandon Vaksdal and Keller. And if he did reach the Southern Cross Camp and we didn’t, then there’d be no rescue party for the survivors on the iceberg.
The three of us remained in the tent all day, conserving our energies and eating enormously. We’d talk over our prospects, possible routes, what would happen if we caught up with Bland; then we’d drowse, only to start talking about the same things as soon as we woke. Lying there, warm and well fed, the iceberg assumed the friendliness of a home. In contrast, the trek that was to begin next day seemed more and more frightening.
That night, shortly after our evening meal, the flap of the tent was pulled back and Judie’s voice, very low, almost scared, said, “Can I come in a moment, Duncan?”
She crawled in, caught hold of my hand and fell, sobbing, into my arms, her cold cheek against mine, her body trembling. At length she said, “I have been so stupid. All this time—I have wasted it, lying in my tent being miserable. And now—” She kissed me and lay close against me, quietly crying. It was as though Bland’s departure had freed her from the thing that had lain so heavy on her mind.
At length she said, “You must sleep now. I shan’t watch you leave to-morrow. I’ll say good-bye here.” She kissed me, her fingers caressing my beard. Then she said, “I don’t think we shall meet again, Duncan—not in this world. Will you please remember that I—love you—always. And I’ll be with you out there—if it helps.” She stretched her hand across to Gerda. “Goodbye, Gerda,” she said. “I wish I were coming with you to find my father.” She kissed Gerda. Then she kissed me again. The flap of the tent dropped back. She was gone and I’d only the salt of her tears on my face to remind me she had been in the tent.
Gerda touched my hand. “You must get through, Duncan—for her. You must go on, whatever happens. You understand?”
I didn’t say anything. I understood what she meant. Decisions like that couldn’t be taken in the comfort of a full stomach and a warm tent. That was for the next day and the days and days of weary ice that lay ahead.
X
NEXT MORNING, AS soon as it was light, we started out. We carried food for six days, a little tobacco, a pair of skis, one length of rope, a small primus with a little fuel, tent
, blanket sleeping-bags and a change of clothes. All this was piled on one sledge. The morning was very still and our breath hung round us like a cloud of steam. The sun came up as we went down the ledge and the world turned gold with an orange band along the horizon. Most of the men turned out to see us off. They came with us as far as the bottom of the ledge and a ragged cheer went up as we lowered ourselves on to the broken surface of the pack ice. Our sledge was lowered after us and then McPhee, who had climbed down with us to help get the sledge on to the ice, gripped my hand. “Good luck, sir,” he said.
“We’ll be back with whale-meat within a fortnight,” I said. I spoke loudly and with a confidence I did not feel in order to encourage the men. “If we’re not back by then,” I said to him privately, “do the best you can.” Poor devil, it was a rotten job I’d given him. Gerda said I should have put Mueller, the second mate of Hval 5, in charge. But I didn’t know Mueller. I did know McPhee. He was an engineer, not a whaler, but he had all the tenacity of the Scot and I knew he could be relied on to the bitter end.
“Och, ye’ll find ’em,” he said. “Dinna worry aboot us. Maybe the berg will break out into the open sea yet.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and picked up the sledge ropes. Gerda was saying a last farewell to Howe, who’d scrambled down beside us. Kalstad and I started out with the sledge along the track that Bland and his party had blazed. Howe called after me: “Craig, you’ve got to get through. If Bland gets through alone. …” He didn’t finish, but I knew what was in his mind.
I waved my hand in acknowledgment and Kalstad and I began to wind our way through the hummocks of snow-covered ice. Gerda caught us up, and in a moment the three of us were swallowed into a strange world of ice—an iridescent fairyland of golden silence.
As we wound our way through the great humps of ice we caught occasional glimpses of the iceberg with dark figures moving back up the ledge to the tents that showed black against the green of ice as yet untouched by the sun. Once I saw a figure I thought was Judie waving to me. I waved back and then turned my face resolutely to the west. It was surprising how quickly the iceberg was lost to view in that broken plain.
I am familiar, as I’ve no doubt you are, with the great ice treks of Polar exploration; Peary’s sledge run to the North Pole, Scott and Shackleton’s desperate struggles and Amundsen’s great dash to the South. In execution and design our trek across the ice was in no way comparable. I realise that. But in fairness to my companions—both of whom are dead—I must make it clear that what we suffered was little short of what the great explorers suffered in the most desperate of their journeys. We had no dogs, no special equipment, no finely designed sledges or proper clothing—not even real tents. And we were weakened by exposure and starvation before we started. We weren’t explorers, and, therefore, we had no great goal to lift our morale and keep us struggling forward. We were shipwrecked sailors with shipboard clothes, and sledges made out of bits of packing cases, an old piece of canvas for a tent and short rations. Our only goal was to save our own lives and those of the men we’d left behind on the iceberg. We were going to try and find the survivors of a ship. We weren’t sure whether there were any survivors and we weren’t sure of the position in which it had gone down. In fact we were on a forlorn hope—a last desperate bid for life in which I don’t think any of us really believed.
Finally, there were none of the smooth miles of snow to be found on the Ross Barrier or the high land in towards the South Pole. True it was not so cold and the blizzards not so severe, but winter was coming on and it was cold enough in our weakened condition. And the area across which we were trekking was the area through which our own iceberg had smashed its way, leaving chaos in its wake—an area of jumbled, broken, jagged ice in which every step forward was a struggle. The skis were useless. We trekked on foot, one of the party path-finding, the two others following, dragging the sledge.
But though we had soon lost sight of the iceberg owing to the broken nature of the pack, I remember the bitter disappointment I felt when on pitching camp that night I climbed to the top of an ice hummock and saw berg and ledge picked out clearly in the pink of the setting sun. It was like a fairy castle and seemed so near that I had only to stretch out my hand to touch it. I could even see the camp and figures moving about it. Gerda had some sort of a hot stew ready by the time I returned to the tent. We ate it hurriedly and turned in, taking our boots into our sleeping-bags with us to prevent them from becoming frozen.
In four days, trekking fourteen hours a day, we made about thirty miles. It doesn’t sound much, but though the weather was good, the going was incredibly bad. We were trekking back over the pack through which the icebergs had ploughed their way. It was as though an earthquake had thrown the floes in all directions. In addition, the snow which half covered this fantastic litter of ice was partly thawed, particularly at midday, and time and again the pathfinder was only saved by the rope. Also, of course, we were weak after our long period of malnutrition, exposure and inactivity. I doubt whether we would have made thirty miles in four days if we hadn’t been following the tracks of Bland’s sledge.
It was strange, those sledge tracks. At first, we had regarded Bland as the enemy, something to be beaten in addition to the ice. We followed the sledge tracks for convenience, knowing we could leave them when it suited us or when our planned route lay away from his. But as we trekked on and on, those tracks gradually ceased to be hostile. We’d no gun. If we caught up with Bland he could kill us if he wanted to—and if there was any chance of reaching the Southern Cross survivors or being rescued by the search ships, I knew that that was what he would do, just as he would have to get rid of his two companions. And yet, though we never actually mentioned it, I’m certain none of us, after the first few days, would have thought of turning aside from the tracks and striking out on our own. With hard frosts and clear skies the tracks remained as sharp and clear as when they were made. And as exhaustion gripped us, they became our only friends in that white wilderness. Those two lines ran out endlessly ahead of us, our only contact with other human beings. Soon we were following them blindly, not caring where they led, buoyed up by the constant hope that somewhere ahead of us, round the next ice hillock, over the next limit of our horizon, they would connect us with the outside world.
On the fourth day Gerda began to show signs of weakening. Kalstad was limping from a swollen ankle and I was beginning to feel the stabbing pain in my chest again. We made little more than two miles that day, the snow having softened with the result that we sank through the honey-combed ice. We nearly lost the sledge in a crevasse. In a strange land of cold green caverns draped with almost golden icicles we pitched camp. Up to that time, I think we had been going faster than Bland, for early that morning we had passed his fourth camp site. It makes a lot of difference in the conditions we were experiencing if someone has blazed the trail for you. But we were pretty depressed that night. The only thing that encouraged us was that from the top of an upturned floe we had seen a dark line along the western horizon that looked as though it might be a water-sky, indicating open sea ahead. But how far ahead? It might be forty miles, and we knew we could not do very much more.
Next day Gerda was weaker. She showed signs of dysentery. Kalstad and I were also suffering from diarrhæa and beginning to weaken. Also the constant glare without sun goggles was inflaming our eyes, so that it was difficult to see. The snow held crisp that day and we pressed on fast, using up in savage effort the last reserves of energy. It was the first day of good going and we had to take advantage of it.
By midday I think we had made as much as ten or eleven miles. I know that when I climbed to the top of a hillock of snow-covered ice and looked back I could only just see the tips of the icebergs on the horizon to the east of us. They were tall ships sailing in line on the horizon’s glare, insubstantial mirages that came and went, now expanding, now contracting. Only by taking a bearing could I decide which was our own berg.
After eating a biscuit and two pieces of sugar each we pushed on. The sun became a pale disc shining wanly through a curtain of mist. The air became colder and the world we moved through lost its colour. It was less painful to the eyes, but it was also less friendly. I think we must have gone on to the limit of endurance. And then suddenly we knew we could go no farther and we pitched camp.
In the stillness of early evening I thought I heard voices. Imagination plays hellish tricks. That night as we lay in the tent Gerda whispered, “Duncan. It is no good. You must leave me behind.”
I remember experiencing a terrible sense of shock. I hadn’t realised how near the limit of endurance the day’s trek had brought her. I remember I shook my head angrily. “We’ll go on together,” I said.
She caught hold of my arm. “Please,” she whispered. Her voice, though weak, was urgent. “It was selfish of me to come. I should have known I have not a man’s strength. It is your duty to go on without me. I shall hinder you and always you must think of all those peoples on the iceberg.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said. And I got close against her, so that if she moved I should know. I was afraid she might walk out into the snow.
For a long time I lay half awake, thinking over what she had said, arguing against what I knew was inevitable. And at length I shifted my body away from hers and went to sleep. It was horrible. But I knew that she was right. Too many lives depended on us. The fittest must always push on until the very end.
Some time in the night the wind rose and by morning it was blowing a blizzard. I looked out of a corner of the tent into a grey, swirling void. Then I turned quickly to see if Gerda were still there. She was, thank God, for we could not move, and the enforced rest might enable her to make another day’s march.
For three days the blizzard continued, and in those three days we finished all our food with the exception of five biscuits and fifteen lumps of sugar. The tent was in perpetual darkness. It was like being buried alive. We used an old biscuit tin as a bed-pan and just lay listlessly in our sleeping-bags, never stirring except to turn over to relieve the aching stiffness of our limbs.
The White South Page 27