Death on the Ice (9 page)

Shackleton looked at him. ‘About the sheep or the ice?’

‘The sheep won’t bite,’ laughed Skelton.

But the ice might give you a nasty nip. Those who had ventured to the far north had a refrain they were fond of repeating:
You can’t trust the ice.
Shackleton knew all about the forty-six gruelling days it had taken for Ross to break through the barrier of floating ice to reach the solid mass of the ice shelf. He had heard Armitage’s tales of ships crushed like hen’s eggs in the floes. To Shackleton, the sea ahead was a white, blue and green kaleidoscope, where the currents and the icebergs seemed to flow in contradictory directions. It was confusing in the extreme, but Armitage had the eye. From his perch aloft, he could see clear water and safe passage where others saw only a treacherous icy trap. Or so he had assured them.

Shackleton peered up at the sky, a palette of pastel blues streaked with delicate strands of thin, white clouds. ‘It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?’ he said.

Skelton grunted. Like many of the crew, the engineer struggled to see the wonder, complaining there was nothing to please the eye out on the ice.

‘Whenever I think of the end of the world,’ said Shackleton, ‘I think of it burning, being consumed by fire. But it might be it will end in ice, frozen in permanent stasis.’

‘Are you going to go all poetical on me again, Shackle?’

Shackleton pulled back the bolt on the rifle. ‘I wouldn’t waste my breath, Reg. The only poetry you like is the rhythm of crankshafts. Come on, let’s get this over with before the skipper changes his mind and adopts them all as pets.’

They stepped around one of the bulkier items on deck and Skelton nodded at the shape under the tarp. ‘Is he really going to use Eva?’

‘I damn well hope so,’ said Shackleton. ‘Do you know how much it weighs? And all those cylinders to go with it? Took me half a day to stow that lot. He’d better use it.’

‘A balloon, though. In Antarctica. He must be bloody mad.’

Shackleton threw back his head and roared, peering up at the icicle-encrusted spar masts till his condensing breath clouded his view. He slapped Skelton on the back. ‘Not like the rest of us then, eh, Reg?’

After the seal and sheep slaughter and a series of hearty meals, came a late Christmas on 5 January, with skiing races and football and rum. Scott also finally revealed his plans which, whether they approved of them or not, at least lifted the uncertainty of the crew. Discovery would not be returning to New Zealand when night fell. It would overwinter as far south in McMurdo Sound as they could safely manage and then, come summer, sledging parties would be sent out to explore the volcanoes, the magnetic pole and perhaps probe south towards the pole. They would attempt to discover the relationship between the Great Ice Barrier and Victoria Land. The sledging parties would also aim to sustain a second winter, depending on their progress and the disposition of the rescue ship that Markham had promised.

On ‘Boxing Day’,
Discovery
broke free of the temporary grip of the ice and sailed on through the canal-like bands between the floes. Two days later, on an eye-wateringly bright day, the air filled with delicate snow petrels, Scott saw what he thought initially must be a mirage. It wasn’t. It was Antarctica proper, the continent itself, rather than its protecting aureole of ice. The filmy curtain that had blurred the horizon for days lifted and revealed its mountains, sparkling and flaring in the low midnight sun as if created from frosting sugar. It drew every pair of eyes on deck, and men moved to the rail just to gawp. It was as foreign a world as most had ever seen.

‘The Admiralty Range,’ said Shackleton.

‘Must be a hundred miles away or more,’ replied Scott. ‘And the Pole beyond it.’

‘Well, Dr Wilson’s God isn’t going to make it easy for us to stand at that pole.’

‘If we decide to go for it.’

‘Of course.’ The shore team had not discussed an assault on ninety degrees south, at least not formally. On the face of it, the physicists were more concerned about the magnetic pole and the variations in the earth’s magnetic pull, the biologists about the new species of penguin or plankton, the geologists by the volcanoes and the age of the rocks; but, in their hearts, they all knew that the bottom of the world was the hard, glittering prize. ‘But when we get back
Discovery
will be judged not by the science, or the new lands we have named, but by
how far
and
how long.
You know that.’

‘We mustn’t let such concerns distract us,’ said Scott.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t feel it?’

‘Feel what?’

But Shackleton just continued to stare at the distant range of jagged peaks, letting some unseen magnetism tug at his soul, till the curtain of mist descended and obscured the land once more.

Dear mother,

You may have heard the news, but I hope this reaches you before any other message. And certainly before you read the South African press, which if given a stick, contrives to get the wrong end of it. I am billeted in a house in Aberdeen, laid up for the moment. There was a bit of a scrap. I have broken my leg.

Actually, shattered was a more accurate word.

Not too bad, considering. Didn’t hurt too much.

A
S HE TWISTED IN
his bed and felt the fire streak up his thigh, Oates managed a rueful laugh. When they had finally reached him, several hours after he took the bullet, they re-set the splintered bone without so much as a tot of brandy. Then there was the ride back to town, every jolt bringing grinding pain.

Am being well looked after.

Colonel Herbert had pulled out and left him with the local doctor. With too many Boers around for comfort, his hosts had decided to transport him to the hospital at Naauwpoort. Three days, they estimated. That was twenty-five miles on roads like baked corduroy, then a train. And the bullet was still in there. Oates was not relishing the prospect.

So mustn’t complain. Apart from the fact I am losing fitness.

And three stone.

I am as weak as a kitten. Still, I am mentioned in despatches.

He stopped writing. When he had visited, Culshaw had told him there was talk of a Victoria Cross. If only, he said, Oates stopped complaining to all and sundry. Not that Oates was moaning about his own pitiful condition. His anger was directed towards the army. They had lost dozens of men that day on the patrols. Oates had written to Kitchener, no less, arguing the army was under-resourced and badly used. He doubted he would get a VC, not after criticising his superior officer’s so-called rescue attempt. As if he cared about a gong. It had hardly been Rourke’s Drift. He would feel a fraud accepting it.

The men of my draft are calling me ‘No Surrender Oates’, but please, just stick to Laurie when I get home. I don’t like a fuss, as you know.

Would his mother catch the superciliousness? The nickname was certainly being used, but he would squash it as soon as he could.

So, wish me happy birthday, although I shall spend it on my back. Not quite what I had in mind. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine by the time I see you in six or seven weeks.

He stopped and changed it to eight or nine. It was a long time. He’d be thoroughly bored with such inactivity. Or Boer’d. He laughed at that and incorporated it into the letter and then let an uncharacteristic cloud of gloom wash over him. He was bed-ridden, in continuous pain, facing an agonising journey and, so the senior medical officer had told him, the chances of a lifelong limp were pretty high. One leg, apparently, was shorter than the other. What a way, he thought, for a chap to spend his twenty-first birthday.

A
S SCOTT TRUDGED UP
the snow-covered slope behind the three huts and the kennels they had constructed, he took stock.
Eva
, the balloon, had been a fiasco. Although he had gone aloft, he had seen little and the valve leaked hydrogen, depositing him back on the ice with a painful and embarrassing thump. Thirteen hundred pounds wasted and his pride bruised. Still, they had found a useful inlet, now named Balloon Bight. And, after all, he wasn’t the only one who had made a fool of himself. Shackle’s first attempts at travelling over the ice had not gone well. Shambles was the word.

‘Skipper?’ It was Shackleton, a few yards behind. ‘You all right?’

Scott halted, catching his breath, and repositioned the skis and the long single pole on to his other shoulder. He was dressed in his sledging gear, with woollen underwear, flannel shirt, thick sweater, jacket and breeches and a Burberry gabardine outer suit. On his hands, he had wolfskin mitts. It was hot work, climbing the slope, but by now Scott realised it was important to get used to the bulky clothing. ‘Yes. Was I mumbling?’

‘Yelling, more like.’

‘I was thinking of your reconnaissance. You and Wilson and Ferrar in that tent.’ The sailor, doctor and geologist had undertaken the initial sledging trial after the expedition had constructed their huts. ‘Like a French farce.’

‘It wasn’t funny at the time.’

The effort of man-hauling, the clumsy dressing and undressing in the cramped tent, the three-in-a-bag sleeping arrangements and the ice-stiff socks and clothes they had to contend with had sapped their energy. The party had averaged one mile an hour and given the men their first taste of frostbite and Wilson of the terrible cramp the cold could bring on. Such pain was unbearable under normal circumstances; dealing with it while trying not to wake your colleagues in the reindeer-hide bag was sheer torture. There was one positive outcome: the trio had climbed White Island and were sure that the ice barrier which they had landed on stretched all the way south, down towards the Pole. There was no inland sea to bar their way. Just the distant, forbidding mountains. But were they capable of tackling those?

‘We didn’t do enough preparation,’ Scott said. ‘Enough practice at the basics.’

Shackleton knew Scott was flagellating himself, taking every setback to heart. As if it was his fault the three of them made such a mess of pitching the tent and operating the stove. ‘You didn’t have enough time.’

Scott hesitated before nodding his agreement, thinking of the deadlines and the furious preparation against rival teams that had, so far, failed to materialise.

‘I’ll race you down,’ said Shackleton and began to stride confidently off towards the summit, his boots making the now familiar squeaking-crunching sound. The snow was reasonably deep and crisp, not like some of the sticky porridge-like mush that had hampered their earlier ski tests.

‘Nansen told me when I met him in Norway that he thought no man walking could match another on skis. What do you think?’

Scott did not seek advice very often, but the question of skis and dogs had been occupying his thoughts ever since they had chosen this spot—Hut Point as it was christened—to overwinter
Discovery
. ‘I think he’s a man who knows what he’s talking about. And to watch Skelton, you’d think it might be true.’

‘Aye, he’s good, is Reg. But Armitage says skiing is all nonsense, that it’s one thing here, another out on the ice sheet. It’ll be a race worth having. Foot versus ski.’

‘And the dogs?’

‘We’ll see about them when we head for Cape Crozier.’ Scott intended to leave details of where they were quartered, so a relief party might locate them. Markham had sent word to New Zealand that he had raised enough funds to ensure a ship would come the next summer to check their progress, bring fresh supplies and take off any sick or injured. ‘We’ll try the dogs then.’

They attained the summit, and Scott pulled down his wide-brimmed hat to shade his eyes from the low sun, which had stained the cumulous clouds a distinctive saffron and fringed the mountains with a dark purple. It had started to vanish below the horizon at midnight, a taste of twilight, presaging the long night to come, the half-light revealing the brightest of the stars that daylight had masked. Time was short if they were to try more sledging. But then, it seemed to Scott, time was always short.

He looked down towards the ship, still surrounded by limpid open water, and the rather depressing suburban prefabricated dwelling the men called Gregory’s Villa. Next to it were the two asbestos huts for the physicists and the dog kennels, which, being contrary, the animals had spurned in favour of snow-burrows. Scott bent down and fixed the ski bindings to his boots, exposing his hands in order to close the fiddly buckles and straps.

He imagined performing this task when the temperature had dropped to minus thirty and the wind was howling and making it seem even colder. Dr Koettlitz had given them all a lecture on frostbite, but Scott felt he had rather underplayed the dangers. The men were more interested in his toilet advice. The doctor, with pantomime help from Armitage, had explained carefully the necessity of cupping your privates when urinating and the advantages, when
in extremis
, of soiling your britches and letting it freeze, chipping it out later. ‘But only’, Armitage advised, ‘if you’re passing solids.’ There followed an argument about whether such a thing would be possible with the lardy pemmican—a mixture of dried meat and fat that would be their staple on the ice—they had brought and the discussion had become a little too corporeal and bawdy for Scott’s tastes.

‘To the rocky outcrop and its little friend?’ Shackleton suggested, indicating a cairn-shaped lump of ice with his pole, and the waddling shape next to it. ‘The one with the penguin that doesn’t realise just how close to becoming lunch it is?’

Scott shuddered. Much as he found seal unpalatable, especially the liver and kidneys, he still preferred it to oily penguin. He rolled the balaclava he was wearing under his hat down over his face. ‘Indeed. Call it?’

Shackleton adjusted his balaclava and crouched into an aggressive position.

‘Ready. Winner gets this slope named after him, eh? Scott Slope or Shackleton Slope?’