Antarctica (6 page)

And when the force began to lift him, Philip realized with horror that this was it. No more excuses. All sins were revealed on the Day of Reckoning, and what could he say for himself — that he hadn’t meant to rob the bank, that it had been a silly game, that he’d suffered enough already in this frozen wasteland — and he felt the force lifting him heavenward, no doubt merely a backswing before pitching him downward to the place he’d always expected to go —

“Pkkkkuaaachhhhh!”

Throwing up before the Pearly Gates. That would not do. Bad form.

“Philip, if you had twice as much intelligence you’d be a half-wit!”

“Rrrrraaaauuuugh!”
He was spewing out water, his body convulsing on hard ice, his lungs frozen.

“Ruskey, put your coat over him!”

Colin’s voice. Jack’s.

Philip struggled to open his eyes. He was alive. The ice fell from his lashes, tinkling onto his cheek. He tried to speak, but his jaw was frozen. “I’ng … ngot … dead.”

“One more second …” Colin said, out of breath, “and you’d have been food for a leopard seal.”

“They’ll have to settle for hardtack,” Ruskey said.

“Ny vag!” Philip sat up. He retched out more saltwater. His lungs felt as if they’d been scraped with a wire brush.

Where was the bag?
Where were those bloody plates?

“Where is my y — al mmmmy bag?”

Nowhere. The hole — the blasted hole he’d fallen through — it was gone. The crack was sealed. Philip fell forward, clawing at the ice. He dug his fingers into the crack and tried to pull.

“Philip, are you crazy?” Colin said.

“You don’t understand. I must have it!”

Colin yanked him away. “Philip, we are between two ice floes. Two
thin
ice floes. Any moment they could open up again!”

Ruskey handed his camera to Jack. “I’ll take the feet. Colin, you get the shoulders.”

The two younger men swooped down upon Philip, lifting him off the ice. He began to weep, but the tears became trapped behind globs of ice on his lashes, giving him a throbbing headache on top of all the other indignities.

This was a punishment, wasn’t it? A salvo from the Almighty, a punishment for his bad deed.

It was unfair. He’d already
lost
the money. That was punishment enough. The photos had been
there,
unclaimed. Surely this one last act could have been overlooked?

The other crewmen were cheering outside the tents — all but the two medical doctors, who were tending to Andrew.

None of them saw the dismal truth. “My plates …” Philip moaned as Colin and Ruskey set him on a cot.

Immediately Dr. Montfort began wrapping him in tarps and blankets.

“Wha’ did ’e say?” Nigel asked.

“Plates?” Nesbit said. “Dinner plates?”

“Just a moment,” Ruskey said. “Westfall, what exactly was in that sack?”

The faces stared down at him, hard
sailors’
faces, full of fight and filth.

“Hardtack,” he mumbled.

“Hardtack … with a little silver nitrate, maybe?” Ruskey said. “Big,
b-i-i-i-ig
flat biscuits with funny white-on-black images?”

“Ruskey, please —”

“You took my photographic plates — the ones I left on the
Mystery
because of the weight limit. Instead of evacuating as you were supposed to, you waited until I left and stuffed them into your sack.”

“You common little feef!” Nigel blurted out. “You was
’idin
the photogs so’s you could sell ’em! Is there no end to your greed?”

“
My
greed?” Philip protested. “You’re angry because
you
didn’t think of it!”

Captain Barth was livid. “You disobeyed orders to evacuate, Westfall.”

“When the foremast fell, Pop had to run back in for you,” Mansfield said.

“He nearly died,” Nesbit added.

They were advancing. Slowly. Like wolves around a poor little lamb.

Philip cowered. “Yes, well, I wasn’t too happy with that turn of events myself.”

“You are despicable,” Pete Hayes growled, “sneaky, lazy, selfish, filthy —”

“I am not filthy!” Philip protested. “But I
am
sick and injured, and frightfully hungry —”

A twisted smile grew across Kennedy’s face. “Say, I’m hungry, too, men … how about y’all?”

“Sure would be nice to have something besides seal, wouldn’t it?” Ruppenthal said. “Somethin’ tender and fat — you know, the way Philip is, on account of his hiding out in the storeroom, eating our good food.”

“He sure looks like a well-fed pig,” O’Malley added. “Prob’ly just as tasty, too.”

Their jokes were sick. Simply disgusting.

Philip sat up. “Yes, I admit to a youthful zeal for the photographic arts, and I deeply apologize if I have offended anyone — but it is hardly the occasion for such morbid humor.”

“I imagine he’d be pretty soft,” Sanders guessed.

“Oily, too,” Cranston said.

Ruppenthal nodded. “You’d need a lot of barbecue sauce to cover the stink.”

Barbarians. Visigoths. Cannibals.

Philip stood up, his blankets and tarps still draped around him, and backpedaled out of the tent. “M-m-m-may I remind you, s-s-sirs, we are
gentlemen.
We can s-s-s-settle our hunger issues like rational, courteous b-b-beings —”

“LU-U-U-UNCH!”
cried Ruppenthal.

Like slavering beasts, they sprang.

Philip spun. He bolted away.

He hadn’t seen the stove directly behind him.

He slammed against it and fell to the ice in a clatter of coal, wood, and blubber-blackened steel. “Stop! This is inhuman! I am not edible!
I am an Englishman!”

He rolled himself into a ball and braced for the sacrifice.

But the men did not come nearer.

Philip parted his elbows. Cautiously he peeked out.

Flummerfelt was the first to laugh — a long, brutish
Hawwww
most likely honed to perfection on some hog farm in Iowa.

The men erupted, doubling over, slapping one another’s backs and pointing. Rejoicing at his humiliation — as if he were some cheap vaudeville performer. Even Lombardo and the Greek were up and about, enjoying a guffaw or two at his expense.

“Gotcha, didn’t we?” Sanders brayed.

Philip stood up. He calmly brushed himself off. He would not let them see his embarrassment. Even though his clothes were frozen through and his entire body felt bruised and stiff, he still had his dignity.

“I didn’t believe you,” he said. “Not for a moment.”

He was dreaming of plum pudding with heavy cream when the dogs woke him next morning. One of the larger ones — Agamemnon or Hypocrite or some blasted Greek name — was licking his face, slobbering bacteria into every cut and pimple.

Philip sat up. He felt as if his head had been smacked between cement blocks.

He lay back down.

They were all bustling around him. They were always bustling.

“Fifteen minutes for breakfast, and then into the traces, men!” Captain Barth shouted.

“Thank you,” Philip grumbled, “but I think I’ll stay here.”

Colin sat next to him. “How are you feeling?”

“So kind of you to ask. Dreadful.”

“Ready to pull, or do we need to put you in the boat with Lombardo, Andrew, and Oppenheim?”

“Anything but Oppenheim.”

Colin smiled. “You’re a lot tougher than I gave you credit for. Andrew’s dead to the world.”

“Andrew was bitten. I merely froze.” Philip slowly rose to his feet, his shirtsleeve falling far down over his hands. “You gave me your clothes yesterday, didn’t you?”

“They were spares.”

“After that cruel treatment I received, you fed me and made sure I was warm. I shan’t forget that.”

“Look, it wasn’t a proposal of marriage, Philip. I was looking out for Andrew, and you happened to be in the tent, too.”

“Thanks anyway.”

Colin gave him a half smile, then ran off to breakfast.

Humanity lived, after all, in Camp Perseverance.

The penguin pemmican tasted especially foul this morning, the coffee like charcoal. The teams were already hitching their dogs to the sledges, and men had begun slipping into their traces.

Andrew lay on a cot, alone on the
Horace Putney.
Lombardo had insisted on skiing.

“Philip, when you finish dining, take the harness next to Oppenheim,” Mansfield said. “He’s giving it a try today.”

Philip’s heart sank.

Oppenheim turned toward him with a wide smile.
“I’m going to ride the chariot in the morning, Lord! Oh, I’m getting ready for the Judgment Day.
…”

Three hours of hard labor with a madman.

Philip took a bite of penguin pemmican and chewed. Slowly.

The clouds had rolled in again overnight, hiding the sun and the horizon. He wished he could roll away with them.

Everything of value to him was gone — the money, the photographs, his pride. What was the point of going home? Mum had gotten rid of him. Uncle Horace couldn’t stand the sight of him. The only people who wanted him were the police; they’d be waiting with open shackles.

Of course, he could escape after landing, as Nigel had proposed — but then what? Hop Argentine freighters … with
Nigel
? Pick bananas in Honduras?

Colin should have let him sink. No one would have shed a tear. For the first time in his life, he’d have brought a little good into the world.

“’Ay, Philip, whatcher waitin’ for, an engraved imitation?” Nigel yelled. “We need yer sorry carcass!”

Philip spat out the pemmican, walked to the boat, and picked up his traces.

February 4, 1910

“A
VAST — HO!”
J
ACK CRIED
out.

He was exhausted and short of breath. The sweat stung bitterly when it dripped into his eyes, and it left a brackish taste on his lips.

The air had changed. It was sea air, and he’d smelled it miles away. Anyone who knew the sea could detect its fragrance in the unlikeliest of places — in the grimy industrial air of New York City and the bone-dry California deserts, in the rainy mountains of Washington State and the dusty Texas plains.

Salt had no odor, and neither did water — but together with the rotting algae, the fish carcasses, and the mold in the air, the scent was unmistakable.

To a sailor, it was perfume.

All three teams slowed to a halt. The ice here was crisscrossed with webbed footprints, the distant ridges lined with penguins, gulls, and terns. A lone skua swooped overhead, screaming. In the distance, a gliding bird plummeted from the sky toward its prey below.

The dogs yapped madly, lurching toward the birds, pulling the sledges in all directions.

Over the last two days, the pulling had become almost impossible. The wet snow clung to the soles of Jack’s boots, and his team had nearly lost the
Raina
when its runners caught in a field of hummocks.

Not far ahead of them were three good leads, long fingers of deep blue water thrusting through the surface. Maybe a half mile farther, the floes broke up into choppy brash ice. Beyond that would be open sea.

“This is as far as we go,” Jack announced.

“I could have told you that,” Siegal said.

Mansfield thrust a fist into the air. “Hip hip—”

“Feet feet,” Ruppenthal grumbled, “shoulders shoulders, knees knees— they all hurt.”

The men unhooked themselves and sat on the ice, one by one, as O’Malley and Stimson untied the food bags. A few of the men — Colin, Mansfield, Barth, Siegal, Kennedy — seemed relieved, but most were too tired to react.

Of the sick men, Kosta and Lombardo were doing the best. Oppenheim, however, was hurling oaths and chunks of ice back in the direction they’d come.

Jack walked back to the
Horace Putney
with Captain Barth. “How’s Andrew?”

“Sleeping,” Colin said.

Dr. Montfort nodded reassuringly. “The gash is healing well. It wasn’t as deep as I’d feared. No broken bones or torn ligaments — he’ll have a whopping bruise for a while, but that’s about it. He’s one lucky kid.”

“Brave, too,” said Captain Barth.

Jack nodded. Andrew would need bravery. And good health.

What came next would require both in spades.

“What now, Father?” Colin asked.

“We can’t stay here,” Jack said. “The ice isn’t stable enough — especially if the weather turns warmer.”

“We have to decide something fast, Jack,” Captain Barth said. “To keep the peace.”

Raised voices echoed from the men’s encampment — Lombardo and Ruppenthal, Nigel and Philip, Oppenheim and Rivera — arguing, taunting, everyone at the end of his tether.

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a small American flag wrapped around a crumpled, water-soaked sheet of paper. Carefully he unfolded the paper and read the India ink inscription on top.

Below it was a neatly drawn map of Antarctica, the coasts in great topographical detail, the interior a blank expanse of white.

Walden had planned to map every inch of the Antarctic shoreline. He would move slowly, returning to the mainland for fuel when necessary.

The two men had met in Argentina. For good luck, each had agreed to give the other a souvenir. Walden had given Jack the flag and the map. Jack, distracted by problems, had returned nothing — and had been haunted by that ever since. A broken gesture had power. It worked on your mind in quiet ways, weakening your resolve and your courage.