Death on the Ice (14 page)

Then, something solid and real emerged from the maelstrom, a tantalising glimpse and it was gone. Scott stared at his feet and saw it again, a flash of material, followed by a crack like a gunshot. The tent. Then he realised it was still lying on part of the ground-sheet, even if it was buried beneath the snow. The tent hadn’t disappeared completely, but the wall above his head had detached itself from its anchoring and blown over him, leaving him exposed. There was shelter just a few yards away.

Scott shuffled around with his elbows, trying to protect his hands, which were covered only by light, fingerless woollen gloves, from the ice. Replacing his arms inside the bag, he rolled himself like a sausage to the billowing apparition, and once he had reached it, he risked grabbing the canvas. The feeling went from his fingers within a second. He lifted the skirt and pulled himself inside, hoping to find warmth.

He discovered the storm within, howling like a trapped, demented animal, flinging itself against the walls of its prison. Shackleton and Barne were both in their bags, partly covered by drifts, struggling to get free, and the flap that sealed the ‘tube’ entrance had been torn back. ‘Shackle—’ he began, just as the wind lifted the whole bell of the tent and began to drag it away. Scott managed to grab part of the skirt as it lifted over his head. The other two, finally free of their snow cover, moved quickly to aid him. Then the wind, as if furious at being denied the trophy, changed into something altogether more ferocious. Scott felt himself pulled up and out of his bag, as if he were a peg to be taken alongside the rest of the shelter.

With gritted teeth, he forced the fringe down to the ground and managed to scrape some snow on to it as ballast. With an extra moan, the wind flicked it off with desultory ease.

‘Try and get a decent amount of snow on it,’ Scott yelled. ‘But watch your fingers.’

Shackleton had wrestled his section to the ground, pulling part of it under his body, but still it threatened to lift his entire bulk and toss him aside.

‘Mr Barne, your hands. Be careful of your hands.’

Barne nodded. His fingers were still damaged from the last dose of frostbite, which made them doubly vulnerable. But he couldn’t let go of the tent. The three of them were barely enough to prevent it becoming airborne.

‘One hand at a time, Mr Barne. Warm one at a time.’

Barne tried to slide one set of fingers under his armpit, but the wind sensed the weakness and flapped that part of the tent into his face. He yelled as the canvas sliced through the bridge of his nose.

‘Get your mittens, Mr Barnes. We’ll hold it.’

Shackleton laughed at that, but managed to swing a leg on to a loose flap of material, pinning it down. Barne quickly sorted through his scattered belongings and found his mittens. He showed them to Scott. They were filled with snow.

‘Better than nothing,’ he said, not entirely sure that was the case.

‘Mine will be drier,’ yelled Shackleton. ‘Use them.’

Barne didn’t argue. He found Shackleton’s gloves wrapped in his night bag and slid them on. Then he threw himself back to the tent’s hemline and began to shovel snow.

The gale was finding every crevice, and Scott could feel the sleeping bag freezing solid around him. His teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. He forced himself to bite down hard, locking his teeth, controlling the jaw muscles, till he could speak again.

Barne’s cheeks were taking on a deathly pallor as the blood drained from them.

‘Try and keep your face from the wind! Mr Barne!’

His words barely made it even across the confined space. He hoped the dogs were safe in their burrows.

‘Skipper, watch your own hands.’ It was Shackleton. He had worked himself up into a sitting position and placed his bottom on the tent edge. He was gripping it too, but keeping his fingers close to his body. With his head on his chest, he was doing his best to minimise the amount of flesh exposed. Scott forced himself to adopt the same position and encouraged Mr Barne to stop ruining the mittens by getting them wet and to sit out the storm.

It was four hours before the wind gave one last defiant wail, and then began to drop progressively, diminishing minute by minute, till all that was left was a residual roaring in their ears. Nobody moved, nobody could move, for many minutes. Eventually, Shackleton lurched forward and fell on to his face. He brought up his stiffened fingers and examined them. They had frozen into claws. ‘Damn.’

‘Let’s pin the tent down and get something to eat,’ said Scott, wrenching his own hand free and painfully straightening the fingers. Stabs of pain, like barbed wire dragged over the skin, shot up his arm and he bit his lower lip. Blood quickly filled his mouth.

With all the agility of a trio of Methuselahs, they weighted down the canvas fringe with heaps of wet snow, then moved around inside the tent, trying to find the rations and clothes that weren’t ice encrusted. The stove had gone, whipped away out into the void, as had the biscuits. Scott’s clumsy fingers managed to unwrap some chocolate, while Shackleton broke out slabs of pemmican.

Scott crawled over to Barne. Parts of his face had the death-white of frostbite, his lips were cracked, and his hands were causing him considerable pain. He remembered how Barne’s ruined fingers had been after Crozier, like blackened sausages, with curls of skin flaking off them. It was as if someone had taken a wood plane to them.

Shackleton, too, had damaged his hands and his nose was frost-nipped. He pointed to Scott’s cheeks and grimaced, to show there was marring. ‘You know, Con, sometimes I think we are just like wisps of smoke out here; not men, but something diffuse and weightless, just waiting to be blown away.’

‘Pushkin?’

‘Shackle.’

Scott slumped back, exhausted. The overwintering had taken more from them than he had thought. After a day’s sledging, they had simply been too exhausted to secure the tent properly. It had been a fine, clear night, so they had thought they could get away with it. Now they were truly spent.

You can’t trust the ice.

There was a whimpering at the entrance and Brownie, one of the friendlier dogs, slithered in. She was shivering piteously and Scott gave her his last slab of chocolate. She slid next to him and pressed her body against his legs. Scott ruffled the fur between her ears. They had finally got to grips with using these beasts in the last few weeks, discovering to their cost just how vile and aggressive they could be if split into smaller, rival groups. If teamed correctly, though, they could make astonishing time. And on this short run they had worked well, despite the chaotic, pressure-ridged snowfields they had encountered.

Shackleton tossed a piece of pemmican, which Brownie snapped from the air. ‘I think that’s a deputation. From the dogs.’

‘What do you think they want?’

‘I think they want to go home,’ said Shackleton morosely.

Scott looked at the scarred faces and at Barne’s crippled fingers trying to snap the chocolate. He found it incredibly difficult to say the next sentence, especially as they had travelled so little south, without a single pound of the supplies on the sledge cached for the long march to come. Still, he knew that they were dangerously cold and afflicted by frostbite. Barne would lose his hands if they pressed on. And Shackleton, normally so resilient, looked beaten. Scott had no choice, even though every sinew of his own body cried for him to push on.

‘I think the dogs are right. We go home.’

Scott was pleased to see
Discovery
, even so soon after leaving her, but their reception was muted. He hadn’t expected bunting or cheering after such a circumscribed trip, but the way the crew avoided the gaze of the returning party seemed a harsh judgement on their aborted attempt south.

They quartered the dogs, made sure they were fed, and trudged back to the ship, where Wilson was waiting to examine them.

Scott sat in his cabin until Shackleton and Barne had been treated and tried, painfully, to write up his journal. His grip, though, was unsteady. It would take more than a bowl of hay to warm him through. He summoned Hare to draw him a hot bath.

He held his fingers to the oil lamp and then wrote a spidery account of the night they spent clinging on to the tent like beleaguered washerwomen trying to save their laundry:

 … But the worst was poor Barne, whose fingers never recovered from last year’s frostbite. To hang on like that for so many hours must have been agony.

He considered writing something about Shackleton’s keenness to return, too. It surprised him. He was aware they had to drop food for the journey south, yet he had been the first to suggest abandoning the trip. Was it for Barne’s sake? Or his own? In the end he decided not to commit to paper. Hasty judgements recorded in a diary were often wrong. Already, he had changed his mind about the crew, the dogs and possibly about the use of skis, even though in his early entries his opinions had been trenchant.

There was a tap on his door and a grave-faced Wilson entered. His expression alarmed Scott.

‘How are they, Bill? How are Barne’s fingers?’

‘He’s been lucky. Again. But I don’t think you can risk him on the ice, not this season. Once you have been bitten in a place, it becomes far more susceptible to a return bout.’

‘And Shackleton?’

‘Blistered fingertips. And severely hurt pride.’

‘Ah, I think that is contagious. I have caught it too.’

‘Did you accomplish anything?’

‘The getting of wisdom. I shall never be too tired to secure a tent property again. Waking up outside on the ice is not an experience I wish to repeat.’

Wilson stepped closer. ‘May I?’

Scott turned his face upwards and Wilson massaged the pale spots that disfigured it. There was no blackness, no signs of necrosis. Scott winced at the pain as Wilson pressed harder. ‘I plan to go back out again. The food depots must be laid.’

Wilson picked up Scott’s swollen hands and grunted. ‘There’ll be no lasting damage.’

‘I said I plan to go out again. Is there any physical reason why I shouldn’t?’

Wilson pushed back Scott’s upper lip and examined the gums. ‘When did you last eat a proper meal?’

‘Thirty-six hours ago.’

‘You have suffered nothing that will prevent you doing so after some food and rest.’

Wilson said this with the bearing and gravity of a mortician, not a doctor. Scott thought of the glum crew and the downcast eyes. ‘What is it?’

Wilson sighed.

‘Bill, please. What are you keeping from me?’

‘Armitage and his party returned shortly after you left.’ His second-in-command had set off with a five-man skiing party to find a path to the magnetic pole.

‘And?’

‘We were hoping to save the news—’

Scott stood, fearing the tidings would be of another man’s death, yet angry that anyone on his ship should try to protect him from serious developments. ‘And so, Dr Wilson? So?’ He grabbed the man’s biceps, ignoring the pain in his fingers. ‘What is it? Where is Armitage? Why didn’t he report to me at once upon my return?’

‘He is resting on my orders. All of them are. They, too, ran into blizzards. They were pinned down for days on end.’

‘Frostbite?

‘Yes. But worse—’

Scott was fit to burst. ‘Who have we lost?’

‘None yet. All five returned.’

Scott loosened his grip. ‘Then  …?’

‘There are sprains. Bruising. Bleeding.’ Even before the confirmation came, Scott knew what Wilson had diagnosed. ‘All of them have scurvy, Con.’

L
IEUTENANT LAWRENCE OATES THOUGHT
his colonel was about to explode. His face had turned a deep red, almost mauve, and a vein had started to pulse alarmingly in his temple. Before he spoke he took in a huge lungful of air and catapulted the words into Oates’s face. He caught the whiff of stale cigar. ‘I beg your pardon, lieutenant?’

‘I simply said it isn’t terribly convenient at the moment.’

‘Convenient!’ The face darkened further. ‘We don’t run the army for your convenience, Oates.’

‘Sir, with all due respect—’

Colonel Sterling leaned back in his chair. ‘That would be a novelty.’

‘Sir, when I returned after my convalescence, I was shipped to South Africa, where I did little more than get enteric while the war petered out, then I was shipped back here, on the understanding I would be at the Curragh for some considerable time. I had my horses brought over and I have purchased more. I have just made arrangements to race Sorry Kate at Dundalk, and I am looking for a hunt. I thought a position at First Whip might help for when I get my own pack—’

Colonel Sterling propelled himself forward once more. ‘Stop. Stop now.’

‘Then there is my boat. I have bought a yawl,
The Saunterer
, Sixteen tons, built by—’

‘Stop!’

Sterling stood and moved to the window. Rain was lashing against it, but through the blurred panes he could see the rolling countryside that reminded him of parts of Surrey. He often wished he were there. It was tiresome dealing with officers who thought the cavalry was a part-time job for idle sons of the wealthy. He had already hit opposition when he tried to change inspection of barracks, stables and tack from Sundays to Saturdays. Officers rebelled on the grounds that it would interfere with other activities. Such as Saturday polo. The word ‘moderniser’ was a term of denigration, and he often heard it whispered in the mess behind his back.

Sterling ran a hand over his thinning hair, a habit he had acquired when there was rather more on top. ‘The army is changing, Oates.’

‘I have noticed, sir.’

‘Poor men with brains, that’s what we need. Not rich men with hobbies such as hunting.’

‘You will be hard put to get men with brains, rich or poor, to join a peacetime army. And it isn’t a hobby. Hunting, I mean. The pursuit of the fox has many similarities to a military campaign. Riding to hounds teaches patience, endurance, strategy and fortitude. Major-General Parsons said so.’ It was a well-rehearsed argument that he had used to solicit funds from Carrie, who sometimes suggested his was a dilettante—and expensive—approach to soldiering. Oates usually responded with a spirited defence taken from Parsons and the suggestion that he could always volunteer for the Front again. That usually calmed things down.