Death on the Ice (18 page)

Oates looked at Flynn who shrugged. ‘We’ll have to do it.’

Oates pointed over his shoulder. ‘I’ll not let your knackers have him.’

‘As you wish,’ said Flynn. ‘My main concern is for the animal—’

‘Then give him more time.’

‘He’s finished, lieutenant,’ said Parrish softly. ‘He can’t get up.’

‘He’s right,’ added Flynn. ‘It’ll be a mercy.’

Oates clenched his fists in frustration. ‘But you don’t know what it is.’

‘No. But we can see what it’s doing to him. The animal is in pain, Oates.’

‘You don’t need to be a vet to see that.’

‘Then do something, man. Do something.’

Oates felt a hand on his shoulder. It belonged to Jefferies, the trainer. ‘He’s right, lieutenant. Maybe Danny was trying to tell us something. With the shivers an’ all. And we just wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to listen.’

Oates looked down at his fallen horse. The eyes had dulled, but the coat was wetter than ever. ‘I’ll do it. Fetch me the bolt.’

‘There’s no need—’ the vet began.

Oates spun on Flynn, stepping so close that he could smell the trace of alcohol on the man’s breath. ‘I’ll do it and I’ll take him home, thank you.’

‘That’s not the arrangement here,’ Parrish said. ‘Mr Flynn has the rights to any animal put down on the track—’

‘That’s all right, Mr Parrish,’ Flynn said, worried by the expression on Oates’s face at the suggestion that the glue pot had first dibs on Mr Daniels. ‘The lieutenant can take his horse with him. And I’m happy for him to put him down. I’ll fetch the bag.’

‘W
HAT ON EARTH DO
you think is wrong?’ yelled Wilson.

The day was murky, with no horizon in sight, just a spongy greyness. To make it worse there was a southerly wind battering their faces, snatching words away, so that each man had to shout, a strain on already-dry throats. At first the thought that every single step was a new conquest, fresh lands never before explored, had been exhilarating. Now, it felt each pace took them further away from safety, into a world of naked hostility.

‘What?’ asked Scott.

Wilson lifted up his goggles and rubbed his gritty eyes. ‘What do you think is wrong with them?’

Scott shook his head. They had paused to let the dogs take a rest, but several of them had slumped to the ground, panting, letting the snow drift over their haunches. They were barely two weeks out, the support party had been gone not much more than a day, and the dogs had suddenly developed a malaise.

‘It’s the snow,’ said Shackleton, breaking out their lunch of seal meat, biscuit and sugar cubes.

Scott bent down, removed a mitten, and ran the surface between his fingers, feeling them tingle at once. ‘No, they’ve coped with worse. And even the new sastrugi.’ They had been traversing a novel form of ice-waves, steep sided and pointed, and it made the hauling hard for the dogs compared to the usual gentler undulations. Even so, they had knuckled down and got through the field.

After the men had eaten their hoosh, they tried again but the dogs, even Nigger, seemed to have lost heart. Several of them looked at the humans with imploring expressions, as if they were asking a simple question. Do you really expect us to do this?

‘I’ll have to use the whip,’ said Scott.

On previous occasions just brandishing it had done the trick. These dogs were not stupid. But this time, even Jim refused to budge, and Scott steeled himself. He lashed out, caught FitzClarence on the rear, and the pack lurched forward. Scott, Shackleton and Wilson broke into a trot.

It lasted less than half a mile and they felt the progress slow. They went from a jog to a walk to a crawl and then Nigger flopped down. Scott cajoled and threatened, but the dog remained implacable.

Shackleton looked at the sledgemeter. They had barely made two miles since breakfast. ‘It’s the weight,’ said Shackleton. ‘We’ll have to haul too.’

Scott nodded. He broke out the extra harnesses needed. Shackleton took the lead, with Wilson behind him. Scott, with the whip, took up a position at one side, just ahead of the lead sledge.

‘On three. One.’ They gave a preliminary jerk to free the runners. Two.’ Another yank. ‘Three. Heave.’

Shackleton leaned into the wind, hauling with every muscle and sinew. He looked over his shoulder and shouted, ‘Hi-looo.’ The whip snaked over them and snapped the air. Reluctantly, the dogs got the message and the sorry convoy gathered momentum, heading into a grey, featureless shroud.

‘What if one of us skis ahead?’ asked Wilson. ‘Give them something to aim at?’

‘That leaves only two hauling or one hauling and one steering the sledges. And we can’t get too far ahead without disappearing into that muck.’

They fell into silent strain, working cold, reluctant muscles up to smooth pistons, not speaking again until a late-afternoon halt, and then they only exchanged a few words, before carrying on for the rest of the day.

The wind that had sought to beat them back faltered then dropped altogether and the temperature rose, up towards freezing. They all began to sweat in their clothes, soaking their undergarments, which would cause problems later when it froze. The dogs panted harder and some began to whine pitifully, the warmer conditions suiting them even worse than the cold. As usual, dog excrement seemed to coat everything, sledge, traces, animals and men.

Shackleton’s foot sank through the crust with a sharp report that fled across the ice and he stumbled. The dogs stopped and a few began to growl. There came a dull, hollow sound, followed by a thrumming bass note that appeared to come from the earth beneath them. The rumble of a collapsing top surface grew and ice was flicked into the air, creating a low ground mist. The solid footing beneath their feet dissolved and Scott braced himself as they began to sink.

‘Con—’ Wilson started, before he, too, felt the earth drop away from under his boots.

The terrified howl of the pack blotted out all else as the entire train plunged through the crust.

Six inches.

The unexpected jolt jarred Scott’s back. His heart was beating wildly under his jacket and he felt hot sweat trickle down his neck. Instead of a crevasse opening up beneath them, they had fallen all of half a foot. But that initial drop had shaken them all.

‘Jesus,’ said Shackleton. ‘That gave me a start.’

Scott knelt down and examined the sub-surface. They had broken through a crust of brittle, compacted snow, passed into an air pocket and fine powder and on to another hard, icy layer. He could hear the basso profundo of more subsidence off in the distance.

‘You know, this forms because there is not a single creature to disturb it. Like the skin hardening on a rice pudding. There must be dozens, maybe hundreds, of square miles of it.’

‘Make the going even tougher if it keeps happening,’ said Wilson.

‘Grand,’ said Shackleton. ‘Just grand.’

Scott noticed the huskies had taken the opportunity to sit, heads on their front paws, as if they were settling down for the night. ‘Let’s move on.’

It was, as predicted, a hard day, with the friable crust collapsing every few miles, and, later, a persistent fall of wet, sticky snow which clung like porridge, binding the sledge runners and slowing the pace further.

Scott’s croaky voice called a halt when they had reached the point at which they might not have enough energy to unpack the gear, let alone pin the tent down with ballast. The dogs collapsed into the snow and stayed where they lay, barely rousing themselves to protest that they were hungry. They knew from bitter experience that the tent came first.

The poles and canvas were duly erected and secured and the dogs fed. Wilson was unhappy that several of them merely picked at their food and Jim refused to eat at all, preferring to whimper plaintively and snap at any animal that came near.

The ice was melted on the stove, the pemmican, salt and pepper added, and they slowly thawed their fingers and picked the ice—frozen sweat—from their beards and necks. The mixture was almost at boiling when Shackleton gave a yell. His leg shot out, and the stove and its contents flew across the tent. The groundsheet began to sizzle and dance with flames, but Scott was on it in a second, smothering the spot and extinguishing the fire. Without a word he began to scoop up the hoosh.

‘Sorry. Cramp.’ They all suffered from it after hauling. It was one of the reasons why Wilson preferred individual bags, sacrificing warmth for freedom of movement if the terrible contractions struck. Scott remained a protagonist of the triple version because of the shared body warmth.

Wilson massaged the rogue leg, while Shackleton writhed in pain. Scott managed to recover most of the lost food, relit the primus and carried on cooking. At least he hadn’t put the cocoa in the outer ring yet. That would have been far trickier to scrape up. But he was alarmed by the surge of anger that had almost engulfed him, although equally pleased he’d managed to chase it away. ‘This is no good,’ he said quietly.

Shackleton did his best to keep his own temper in check. ‘I said I was sorry, skipper.’

‘Not the hoosh or you. This, this hauling. You’ve seen the dogs. They’re done in. We’ll have to split the load. We’ll have to relay.’

Shackleton groaned, but Scott wasn’t sure whether it was the pain or the prospect of relaying.

Wilson moved away from Shackleton. ‘How much?’

‘We leave half the load. We go forward and deposit. Then come back for the other half.’

‘Two steps forward, one step back,’ said Shackleton. He gave a chesty cough. Even without a stethoscope, Wilson could hear fluids rattling in the tubes.

Wilson rubbed his stinging eyes as he calculated what relaying meant. Leaving half the gear behind then returning to pick it up, covering the same stretch of the ice three times in all. Constant packing and repacking, which often meant removing mittens, exposing the fingers to tie and buckle and tighten the loads. Frost-nip within minutes, its nastier cousin not far behind.

‘It will be more than that. We will cover three miles for every mile we gain.’

‘You have a better solution?’ It was snapped out and Scott took a breath to calm himself. He had already thought this through. ‘My apologies. But I can see no other way. We have provisions for weeks yet. The dogs are failing. But the load will get lighter as we consume the food and fuel. What do you think? Bill? Shackle? We three are in this together.’

The others knew what the alternative was. The ignominy of another early, defeated return. Shackleton sat up to accept the pannikin of hoosh that Scott offered. He took a spoonful and felt the familiar gag reflex as his body revolted against the fat. He forced himself to swallow. ‘We relay.’

‘Correct me if I am wrong, Bill,’ said Scott as he applied the hazel-dine cream to his cracked lips, peering at his reflection in the single pocket looking-glass they carried. The stove was hissing, and he kept an eye on the time, ready to turn it off after it had boiled for two minutes, to conserve their fuel. The paraffin creep that caused the fuel to evaporate through the cork bungs at low temperatures was costing them dear. ‘But weren’t the dogs meant to haul us?’

Wilson laughed as best he could without smiling. The skin around his mouth was fissured and chafed. They had had poor sick Snatcher on the sled all day. The relaying was as dreary and dispiriting as they had feared and southerly progress was slow and slowing. They had been doing it for days, and seven miles was a good tally; in poor weather, it had dropped to two. Except for the fiercest of blizzards, Scott insisted they worked if they could, otherwise they would sit in the tent burning energy with no gain at all. ‘I don’t think anybody told the dogs that,’ Wilson said.

‘What do you think ails them?’ asked Shackleton, running a comb through his tangled hair. Scott held up the mirror so Shackleton could see the snow and windburn on his face and the blackened, cracked lips.

‘You have to stop licking your lips,’ said Scott, passing the hazel-dine. ‘It doesn’t help.’

‘I see you doing it,’ the Irishman replied tetchily.

‘The food,’ said Wilson emphatically, before a squabble broke out. One side effect from relaying was short tempers, which remained till a hot supper was inside them. ‘I think it’s the food that ails them.’

‘The stockfish,’ agreed Scott. ‘They never liked it. Brownie vomited it back up today. It’s tainted.’

‘Good Lord, I believe you’re right,’ said Shackleton, as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. ‘We are feeding them rotten food. That explains it.’

Wilson said: ‘Then how do you account for the fact nobody noticed it had spoiled? The stockfish, I mean.’

Shackleton hooted at this. ‘It smells bloody rotten when it’s fresh. It must have spoiled in the hold in the tropics.’

‘What shall we do?’ Wilson asked nobody in particular. ‘We can’t spare any of our supplies. Not for nineteen dogs.’

Scott stirred the hoosh. It was watery. Preserving food and fuel had been on his mind as their rate of progress had plummeted. ‘The land we have seen to the West—we must head there. There will be landmarks where we can make another depot we are sure to find again. We get rid of the dog food and leave supplies for our return.’

They accepted their pannikins and all ate in silence for a while, the only noise the scrape of spoon on metal and the crack of canvas as the wind probed the tent for weaknesses. Muscles were slowly coming back to life, ripples of cramp running through them. Relaying was all about repetition, going over the same ground time and time again. It numbed the body and the soul; it was when you stopped that the pain started. Occasionally, one of them groaned and massaged a thigh or rotated an aching shoulder. Feet either ached or burned with an intense fire that was followed by the most agonising itching that was impossible to scratch. If you started, you were likely to tear the flesh off before relief came.

Wilson finally asked the question that had been on all their minds. ‘What about feeding the dogs? If the stockfish really is rotten?’

The look on Scott’s face told them the answer, a mixture of distaste and horror at the only solution that presented itself.