Antarctica (11 page)

“I STOLE THE MONEY!”
Philip cried out, casting his eyes heavenward.
“I DID IT, BUT I WAS PUT UP TO IT BY THE OTHERS! OUR GUNS WERE TOYS — TOYS, DO YOU HEAR? I WILL TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY AND REPENT! TAKE ME, DELIVER ME FROM THIS PLACE, BUT AT LEAST SPARE COLIN AND HIS FATHER!”

Philip felt himself sobbing.

He sounded ridiculous.

Fortunately Colin hadn’t heard a word of it. He was trying to stanch a wound on his father’s head with a wet strip of cloth he’d ripped from his own coat.

The boat was still miraculously afloat. If Philip wasn’t mistaken, the whirlpool was flattening, too. Losing a bit of strength.

Philip snatched up two oars from the boat floor. He jammed them in the oarlocks.

And he rowed.

February 9, 1910

E
XQUISITE.

In his dream, Andrew is in a restaurant and it is exquisite. Mother sits across the table. She looks young and beautiful, the pneumonia long gone, not the trace of a care on her face. The warmth of her eyes could melt away the entire Antarctic ice cap. And perhaps it has. The other two places at the table, set for Colin and Jack, are empty. But they’re coming, too. Very soon.

Outside the window the fog is thick. It seems as though they’re floating on a cloud. And perhaps they are. Andrew is bursting to tell Mother about the menu, but he doesn’t have to. Right then the waiter arrives with two dinners. He’s a funny sort of fellow, wearing white tie and tails and waddling in an odd manner. With great pomp and dash, he raises the two plates over his head, then sets them on the table in front of Andrew and Mother.

On each plate is penguin meat.

Mother’s face goes white. She is appalled.

Andrew, however, is ravenous. He picks up his knife and fork, plunges them down, and

KKKRRRRROKKKKK!

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

Hayes. Petard.

Andrew opened his eyes and sat up. The dream fell away in fragments.

Around him, the men were waking. The noise had been real.

The taste of penguin remained in Andrew’s mouth, and he ran his tongue along his still-greasy lip. He felt the pleasant bulge in his belly and remembered the sight of the animal slow-roasting over a pit.

Then the memory of the previous night rushed in. The walk with Oppenheim. A sudden chittering noise behind a pressure ridge. A frozen pond full of penguins. A slaughter.

He felt like throwing up.

What had happened? What had he become? An animal. All instinct.

And it had satisfied him. Afterward, back at camp, the smell of roasting meat had brought tears to his eyes and made him drool. His reaction had been no different from that of Socrates.

It was happening just the way he feared it would. A person was an animal, a person had to eat.

Brillman headed for the tent flap. “Probably some pressure ridge tipping over.”

“Not near the infirmary, I hope,” Stimson said.

“Don’t worry, we’d hear Oppenheim complain,” Siegal remarked.

Brillman’s eyes were locked on something outside. He blanched. “Oh my lord. Get out here, men. On the double!”

The sailors pulled on their jackets and raced outside.

Andrew forced himself up, using the tent post for support. The men were racing toward the jagged edge of a narrow stream.

“What is it?” Captain Barth called from the infirmary tent.

“The floe is splitting, sir!” Andrew called back.

“What direction?”

“West.”

“Then strike camp and move southward while we’re still attached!”

The crack was growing around to the south now. The floe pitched on the current, twisting away from the ice sheet.

Robert began taking down tents. Nigel gathered up supplies. Holding Demosthenes in his arms, Kosta whistled for the other dogs. Brillman and Siegal turned the
Raina
right-side up, and then Dr. Montfort and Petard loaded aboard the injured, in their cots. Except Barth. He insisted on walking.

Bailey and Stimson crowded all the supplies around and under the cots, and the camp was ready to go.

Andrew joined the men as they gathered around the
Raina.
He could support himself on the ship’s bulwark and even lend a little muscle to the push.

“Ready? Ho-o-o!”
he shouted.

No one snickered. No one balked at listening to him.

They all pushed forward. Southward. Farther into the ice cap.

Behind them was a sound like the snap of a great oak tree.

Andrew glanced over his shoulder and saw what was once Camp Hope break into small chunks that bobbed slowly out to sea.

February 9, 1910

P
ULL.

Philip felt nothing.

Pull.

His gloves were rigid with ice. His blisters had grown, burst, bled, then given way to new blisters underneath, which had grown, burst, and bled. His backside chafed against the motion of rowing, and he sat in a moving pool of blood. Saltwater clung to his skin through every item of clothing.

Pull.

Since the maelstrom had ceased — by an act of a merciful God or blind luck — the coast and the sea had remained indistinguishable in the fog. Colin and Philip were in constant motion, but it seemed they hadn’t moved a centimeter. Their oars had grown heavy with encrusted ice, but they didn’t dare stop to break it off for fear of collapsing.

Pull.

In the shadow under the decking, Jack shifted positions.

Philip unlocked his frozen jaw and spoke. “Conscious?”

“No,” Colin replied.

Pull.

Pull.

“Colin?”

“Mm.”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Going back.”

Pull.

“Why do you think, Philip?”

“If they survived, don’t you think they’d have kept on sailing?”

“Yes.”

“Then they would have found us.”

“Maybe.”

Pull.

“Don’t you agree?” Philip insisted.

“Well, what happened to
us
?”

“Us?”

“Mast damage. Hull damage.”

“Ah.”

Pull.

“We put in,” Colin said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe they did, too. Somewhere else. Another cove.”

“Perhaps.”

Pull.

“You think they’re dead, Philip?”

“Or rescued. That Walpole fellow.”

“Walden.”

“Walden. He may have found them. Perhaps he’s coming back to get us.”

Pull.

Pull.

“That would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Colin?”

Pull.

“They … weren’t,” Colin said.

“Pardon?”

“Rescued. They weren’t rescued.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gone. Walden.”

“What do you mean,
gone
?”

Pull.

“I mean, he’s already sailed through here.”

“How do you know?”

“We found his flag in the cave. Matches. A cigarette. Human waste.”

“Are you sure they were his?”

“Can you suggest any other possibilities?”

Pull
.

“And that’s why you and your father were so … inscrutable?”

“Sorry.”

“You
knew
! You knew we were doomed
and you didn’t say anything
?”

“We thought it would bring down morale.”

Pull.

Philip was stupefied.

The plan had hinged on Walden. The alternative, Defection Island or whatever that bloody place was called, was ludicrous. Even with the
Mystery
it would be an outside shot.

Pull

Philip felt everything now — the friction, the blisters, the sores, the pain. The excruciating,
senseless
pain. The realization that every moment, from his humiliating arrival in New York to this slow boat to oblivion, had been the piling on of calamity upon catastrophe that led to only one possible conclusion.

Pull.

“Then why pretend there’s hope of rescue?” Philip demanded. “Why row, Colin?”

“Because.”

“What kind of fool reason is that?”

“Because there is never —
never
— a good reason to stop trying your hardest.”

Pull.

“Oh, that’s rich, Colin. Lovely. Bloody inspirational. Well, let me try to think of a reason. Ah
, I
know: We’re three thousand nautical miles from anyplace where Weddell seal is
not
considered a rare delicacy, our whereabouts are known only to one wretched human being who fouled our cave and sailed off—and, if we’re very lucky, we number thirty men and thirteen dogs
in three rowboats! There’s your reason!”

Pull.

“Why are you laughing?”

“To hide the fact that I want to cry!”

Splash.

“Philip?”

“What?”

“That noise? Did you hear it?”

“What noise?”

“The splash!”

“I hear nothing
but
splashes. Is this some sort of game? Shall we count them, then? Onetwothreefourfive —”

Thump.

Philip shut up.

“Did you feel that, Philip?”

“Of course I did! What is it?”

“I don’t know!”

They stopped rowing.

And slowly, on its own, the
Horace Putney
started to move. Sideways.

“Colin, something’s underneath us!”

“I’ll get the gun —”

Colin ducked under the decking. His father stirred and opened his eyes.

From the port side came a deep watery bellow like the sudden release of a thousand fire hoses.

Philip was afraid to turn and witness the thing that was now reflected in the eyes of both Colin and his father.

As he peeked slowly over his shoulder, he saw the flank of a humpback whale submerge, and the beast’s tail slap the surface of the water like a gunshot.

February 9, 1910

“I
T MUST THINK WE’RE
a fish!” Colin shouted.

“It doesn’t
think!”
Philip shouted. “It’s a beast. It destroys!”

Jack stood at the bow. The fall onto the gunwale had raised a bloody welt on his head, and it throbbed. His bandage was wet and sticky, and his brain felt three sizes too large.

He held the broken mast waist-high, waiting for the whale to emerge. If he struck it, it might turn away from the boat and leave them alone. Or it might be angered into fighting back.

Which?

In an emergency you asked the right question. Every problem yielded somehow. But a whale was different.

A whale decided your fate.

No cleverness, strength, or skill prepared you for its attack. Its victims littered the seafloor. With a shift of its bulk, it could break the hull of a five-masted whaling vessel containing two-score crew. Melville called it the Leviathan, a sea monster conquerable only by God.

The
Horace Putney
didn’t stand a chance.

Colin rowed with powerful strokes, trying to direct the boat away from the beast.

It was thrashing, kicking up its tail as if the boat had poisoned the water. A plume rose from its back. Water rained down in thick, putrid drops.

Philip sat staring at it, his oar still.

“Row, Philip!”
Colin shouted.

The boy was paralyzed. Laying down the mast, Jack took up the oar. He shoved Philip aside and plunged it into the surf.

“It’s … bleeding,” Philip said.

“It must have scraped itself on the hull!” Jack replied.

“No wonder it’s angry!” Colin shouted.

“No,” Philip said. “That’s not why. It has something in its side.”

Jack glanced over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“A harpoon,” Philip said.

“How can it have a harpoon out here in the middle
o
f—”

Colin was cut off by a high, screaming sound. A long object burst through the clouds.

TTHHHHWUCK!

Jack stopped rowing. “What the —?”

As the whale dived underwater, it rolled over. One long metal spear pierced its flank, another jutted from below its blowhole.

“Father!” Colin cried out.

“You see?”
Philip said, leaping to his feet.
“We’re saved! Ho, there! Whalermen!”

“Sit down!” Colin admonished.

SHHHHINNNG!

Another harpoon whizzed over the deck of the
Horace Putney,
narrowly missing Philip.

Philip dropped to the deck. “Just call me Moby.”

“They don’t see us!” Jack exclaimed.

“We can’t survive this far to be speared like animals!”
Philip shrieked.

Colin crawled under the deck and came back with a hurricane lamp, filled with seal blubber.

Jack pulled the box of matches from his pocket. Only two left. No time to cut these in half.

He cupped his hand around the match. Colin put a hand overhead as an umbrella. Jack struck the match and held it to the wick.

It blew out.

One left.

“Philip, help!” Jack commanded.

Philip removed his coat. He huddled with Colin and Jack, holding the coat over their heads.

Light.
Please. Please, Lord, don’t let this blow out.

He struck again. The match flared.

A gust of wind sneaked under the coat, and the flame blew sideways.

Colin and Philip squeezed closer to Jack, blocking the wind.

Jack thrust the flickering match into the lamp.

It went out again.

But slowly, the seal blubber began to glow. As Colin slammed down the glass housing, the flame rose. And danced.

Colin held it high.

“H-O-O-O-O-O-O-O.’” the three bellowed.

The whale rose again from the depths. Closer now.

TTHHHHHWUCK!

A
fourth harpoon grazed its side, opening a long gash. Blood sprayed into the foam. The whale was enraged, desperate. Like a stuck bull, it snorted and heaved its bulk high into the air.

It crashed down beside the
Horace Putney,
sending up a tremendous wake.

The boat’s port side lifted upward. Jack, Colin, and Philip fell to starboard. The lamp flew out of Colin’s hand and into the sea.