Death on the Ice (36 page)

‘The coal dust had blocked the bilge pump. Hand pumps, too. Water up to the boilers. Had to douse them. Must bail—’ Gran lapsed into Norwegian and Oates lost him. He had the drift, though. They might well sink with all hands, all because of coal dust in a bilge pump.

‘I need a gun!’ Oates yelled. ‘A pistol.’

He pointed to the tortured pony and Gran nodded. ‘See what I can find.’

A half-dozen drenchings later, it was Scott who appeared with a revolver. His face was smeared with black, his clothes ruined, but his eyes were strangely calm. ‘You want me to do it?’ he asked.

Oates saw the relief on the Owner’s face when he shook his head and took the revolver.

‘You sure you don’t need me? It’s all very well saving the ponies, but if  …’

Scott placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not yet, Titus. Stay with your charges. I’d best get back.’

Oates waited for another influx of the sea, so that the other animals were distracted. He placed the gun against the horse’s head and pulled the trigger. A spout of black blood briefly cleared the surface of the water, and the animal gave one spasm and lay still.

Oates moved to the rear of the ship, stepping over cans of petrol slithering about, and, over the fearful racket, he could hear a sea shanty. Buckets were indeed coming up from below and being cast over the side of the ship, only to be returned fifty-fold in the next wave. It was like trying to drain a ship with a straw. As he looked below, he could see a chain of men stripped to the waist, their bodies blackened by the coal dust in the swirling water, working fiercely to a strict rhythm.

‘Welcome to
Dante’s Inferno
,’ shouted Priestley. ‘Teddy Evans and Bowers and the others are going to break down the bulkhead to reach the pump.’

‘Can I help?’ Oates asked.

Charles ‘Silas’ Wright, the Canadian physicist, answered from further down the chain. ‘We bookworms need the exercise. We’ll be fine. Go.’

Oates struggled past dogs being alternately choked and drowned, and Meares and Dimitri trying to hold their heads above the water and getting mauled for their trouble. A huge gash had opened on Meares’s cheek, but still he cradled each of the animals in turn.

When Oates made it back to the stalls, another horse was down. Anton was desperately trying to pull it up with a set of reins he had slipped on, but the animal wouldn’t budge. He put his weight under the belly and heaved, using the moment of the surging water to pull him up, but he refused to go.

As the next wave hissed around them, he felt a second pair of hands under the horse and another encouraging voice. ‘Up y’come, m’beauty.’ Like a newborn foal, the pony struggled upright.

‘There,’ said Atkinson, the surgeon. ‘Skipper sent me to help you.’

‘Thank you,’ he gasped. ‘I need it.’

‘I think what you need is a good canvas sling to get under the animals. We could use one of the dodgers.’ He pointed to a flapping windbreak.

‘Good idea.’ The rescued animal gave a lip-smacking whinny. Oates leaned against him, stroking his face. ‘Don’t worry, Nobby,’ he said. ‘It’ll soon be over.’

Atch ducked as he took another soaking. ‘One way or another, Titus. One way or another.’

The storm, after gusting Force 10, broke in the early hours and, by dawn, the pumps had been cleared and were working. The bailing party was finally stood down, although most of the men could no longer move. They had gone beyond exhaustion to the point where they had become inflexible machines. It took many minutes for them to climb up on to deck or stumble to their hammocks or cabins, where only more wet clothes awaited.

Wilson, Taff Evans, navigator Harry Pennell and Bowers took an inventory as the feeble sun broke through the clouds. The party shuffled wearily around the deck, running on the last of their reserves. Scott was at the stalls, inspecting the ponies when Wilson reported. ‘Uncle’ Bill Wilson was shocked by Oates’s appearance. Nobody on the ship was unscathed, but the ponies had battered Soldier black and blue and his eyes were raw from saltwater and lack of sleep. He was limping, too.

‘How long have you been on deck?’ Wilson asked him.

‘I don’t know.’ His words were slurred with fatigue. ‘Thirty hours. Perhaps more.’

‘Get some sleep if you can.’

Oates nodded. There was one more unpleasant task before he could rest.

‘What losses?’ asked Scott.

‘About nine tons of coal lost, I estimate,’ said Wilson.

‘Perhaps ten,’ said Bowers.

Scott touched his head. His fingers came away black with coal grease. ‘Much of it in our hair, I fear.’

Wilson could only grunt an agreement. ‘And sixty-five gallons of petrol, and three cases of tinned provisions.’

‘Including a case of ginger wine,’ added Taff.

‘And the two horses,’ said Oates morosely. They had lost a second pony during the night when its lung expired, too congested to continue the fight. He wasn’t looking forward to the task of dumping the corpses overboard through the fo’c’sle hatch. He felt that he had failed them.

‘Only two?’ asked Wilson, looking at the poor beasts, their eyes still wide with terror.

‘Davy and Jones, m’be,’ said Birdie.

Oates glared at him, despite recognising the graveyard humour behind the comment. Bowers had also had a rough time down in the bilges, along with Teddy Evans, but didn’t show it. The little man was as tough as tenpenny nails.

‘You did well, Soldier,’ said Wilson.

‘And only one dog gone,’ said Scott. ‘Although Osman is in a bad way.’ This was the dominant hound, a feisty if unpredictable animal. ‘Meares has buried him in hay to try to revive him.’

‘We got off lightly,’ said Wilson, with Wonder in his voice.

Scott nodded. The crew had worked miracles, in saving animals, machinery, provisions and the ship itself. Winds had touched over sixty miles an hour and
Terra Nova
had rolled to forty-five degrees. Not a man had flagged and not a spirit had broken. ‘We were very fortunate. And we’ve found out one thing.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Wilson.

‘We might have a handful of a ship.’ Scott looked around at the tattered
Terra Nova
, her equally roughed-up crew and the unsettled, heaving monster of a sea around them, with undisguised pride. ‘But we have a shipful of heroes.’

Dearest Heart,

Just a little note from the ocean to say that I love you. I have been almost too busy to draw breath but once on the barrier there will be long hours in which to think of you and the boy. I hope you don’t forget me. Everything is going pretty well for the present, although we have had one or two frights.

We are just over a week out of New Zealand. The sea is calming at last, which shows the ice cannot be very far off. Air and water at thirty-four degrees, just above freezing. The Antarctic animals have appeared: McCormack skuas, sooty and black-brown albatrosses, hour-glass dolphins are following the ship. Bill Wilson has spotted an Antarctic petrel and a fulmar, and there are whales blowing in the distance, their spumes easily mistaken for icebergs in certain lights. We rode out a rather disastrous storm, but I am happy to report the crew remain cheerful, despite deep discomfort. One hears laughter and song all day long—it is delightful to be with such a merry crew. The singing is surprising: it is odd that such an unmusical group should enjoy it so much. Oates sounds like one of his horses. Ponting plays the banjo, an instrument of torture.

Teddy Evans has settled down now, although he seems incapable of being quiet for more than a minute. His efforts at the pumps when we were in trouble were remarkable. Bill is his usual wonderful calm self. The men come to him with problems as they did on
Discovery
. He now tells me he found it strange I could share a sleeping bag with Lashly and Crean on the last expedition. He says he thought the men would have found it awkward, but I have no evidence of that. Oates, on the other hand, gets on well with the ratings. He and Atkinson spend time in the mess room. I suppose because one is a civilian and the other a soldier they do not follow RN ways. Cherry-Garrard is still rather shy and keeps himself to himself. I am sure the ice will open him up a little. Bowers is a treasure, immensely strong, even more so than Taff, and he is a Trojan. Ponting turns out to be quite a splendid fellow, very reasonable about everything except his photography. On that front, he brooks no interference. The crew sometimes complain in a jocular fashion about ‘Ponco’ making them stop what they are doing and pose, no matter how cold or wet they are.

We intend to land at Cape Crozier, where the Emperor penguin colonies are and where Royds set up our ‘post office’, if possible and not use our old hut. This is a new expedition and I feel we should start afresh. Of course, we have the pack to get through but I am confident we can forge a way. If it traps us I shall put out the fires and wait. At this time of year it is breaking up.

It is hard to realise this letter will not reach you for many months, will not start its journey until
Terra Nova
returns to New Zealand. What pains me most, apart from not seeing you, is that I shall miss the boy growing. How tall he will be when I return. Try to interest him in nature rather than the Navy.

I had a dream last night about the early days just after we had met. When I used to walk along the Embankment and stare up at your lighted window, not daring to knock on the door. Do you remember that? It is strange how memories come back in fits and starts.

It is a little later. I was called up because Evans (T) spotted two icebergs on the port beam, only visible from the masthead. They were tabulars, perhaps sixty to eighty feet high, and even at a distance one could see the blues and greens playing off the sides, which were highly fissured. It was oddly cheering to see them, to know we are nearly at the real start of our journey at long last and the sooner it is over the sooner I will be back with you. There is a strong ice blink in the sky. The pack is ahead. We will hit the first floes within ten to twelve hours and try and batter our way through. I shall write again soon, my love.

O
ATES LAUGHED AT THE
barked instructions from the increasingly frustrated Norwegian. ‘
Ooop the fut, oop the fut
. Speak bloody English, man.’

‘I am speaking English; you must up the foot,’ said Gran.

‘What have you put on these skis? They smell worse than the ponies.’ Oates and Anton had shovelled out three-foot mounds of horse excrement from the stalls when the animals were let out of them for their first exercise in weeks.

Oates and Gran were half a mile from the stationary ship, which glistened in the sun as her icing of frost slowly melted. The
Terra Nova
was not only held fast by ice anchors, but she was also pinched by slabs of shiny congelation ice that refused to yield to her bow. The ship was a captive of the floe; skiing was one way of distracting their thoughts from the predicament.

‘Special recipe. Linseed oil and tar. It stops them slipping. Now, again.’

‘Hold on.’

Oates put down the poles and pulled off his sweater and undershirt. His outer jacket lay on the ice next to Atkinson, who had come out to join the fun. Oates’s body was white, his Indian tan having long faded, but the cavalryman’s muscles were still there, honed by hard manual routine on the ship. He had rarely felt fitter and hardly noticed his old leg wound. As he had told Anton, shovelling shit was good for the lungs.

‘Hot work, this,’ he said to Gran as he dropped his unwanted layers.

‘Not if you do it properly.’

Oates adjusted his goggles, leaned slightly forward as Gran had instructed, began to pole and move his legs. The skis went back and forth, but he stayed where he was. ‘No wonder there aren’t many Norwegians. They don’t get to meet each other to procreate.’

‘You’ll wear a hole in the ice. Watch me.’ He leapt forward, the skis gliding over the fine powder that lay on top of the ice. Within a few minutes, he was a distant figure, almost at the edge of their floe, scattering a group of Adelie penguins that had stopped to watch this strange creature. He swivelled round, raised his poles above his head in salute.

‘Bloody show-off,’ said Oates.

Suddenly Gran bent down and began to massage his thigh. Cramp again. The lad seemed very susceptible to cold and cramp. Captain Scott had made a few disparaging remarks about it, which had upset the young man. The Owner didn’t like physical weakness, which is why he pushed himself so hard and why he admired powerhouses such as Bowers, Taff, Crean and Lashly.

‘Hold steady now.’

It was Ponco Ponting and his camera, aiming to capture Oates on film.

‘If I hold steady I’ll freeze. Atch, Mr Ponting wants to take your picture.’

Atkinson was still playing with his bindings and had not yet shed any layers. Wilson had set up an easel next to him and was sketching
Terra Nova
, which did look magnificent against the background of floes and bergs and, in the far distance, a pair of sunning leopard seals. There were two things Wilson would probably leave out of the finished article: the ragamuffin flags of sailors’ clothes draped in the rigging, finally drying after weeks of being damp, and Cherry on the ice, skinning the penguins Wilson had ‘pithed’, a technique that involved stirring a metal rod in the brain to kill them. The young man whistled while he did his gruesome work, occasionally stopping to eye the skuas, patiently waiting for their pickings to begin.

Feeling the cold prickle his exposed skin, Oates put some effort into the strange motion and, to his delight, began to slither over the floe. His progress wasn’t as elegant as Gran’s, but he certainly had the speed. He let out a whoop as his poles dug in and he found a certain rhythm that propelled him forward. He felt the slipstream against his face, and poled harder.

‘Hey, Norskie. Look at this!’ he shouted.

The crack and creak of breaking ice didn’t reach him till it was too late. It sounded no louder than a thickish branch bending then snapping. The hole immediately opened up beneath his skis and he plunged in, almost head first.