Sixty Days to Live (48 page)

The thirteenth day was even worse. They lost the road entirely and the scattered houses along it gave no indication, from a distance, where it lay, as they were now snowed up to their chimney-pots. All the natural features of the land except its general contours had disappeared. Even tall trees, pylons and woods were concealed beneath one vast, white blanket which stretched away in a series of rolling slopes as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Sweating in their furs, pulling and shoving, the men laboured on, while the girls sought in vain for any landmark which might guide them. But at two o’clock in the afternoon Lavina gave a cry of joy and pointed ahead.

Following the direction she gave them they saw, rising to their left front, a steep hill crowned by a large white knob. In that locality, even in such a waste of snow, it could only be Dover Castle.

It was a long pull up the hill. With aching muscles the men dragged the sledge from snow-drift to snow-drift, but two hours later they were among the chimney-pots in the higher quarter of the town. No sign of its lower part remained, as the sea had risen to the same level as the Thames, burying its main street, harbour and dockyard deep below the icy surface.

They chose a row of chimney-pots on the slope above the town and, digging away the snow from round about them, soon discovered a broken skylight through which they were able to climb down into one of the houses. Utterly tired out, they forced themselves to break wood and get their braziers going. After they had made some coffee and eaten a little cold meat they crawled into their fur bags and fell into an exhausted sleep.

On exploring the house next morning they discovered it to be a fair-sized villa so they had reason to assume that the other buildings in the row were the same; and it was decided to break into all of them in order to collect as many stores as possible before attempting what must prove the most hazardous part of their expedition—the crossing of the Channel.

They were faced with twenty-one miles of frozen sea which they had to cross before they could hope to secure fresh supplies in Calais, and although they said nothing of their fears, they were dreading the journey.

Derek voiced a doubt that had occurred to them all when he suggested that with the ever-increasing depth of the snow all the houses in France might be so deeply buried when they got there that they would not be able to locate them, and that the wiser plan therefore might be to remain in Dover.

But Gervaise was unshakeable in his determination that they must push on. When the thaw came pestilence would strike Dover as well as London. It was vital, he said, that while there was breath left in their bodies they should continue their march until they reached not only the edge of the ice-pack but a land well beyond it to which the plague could not be wafted by the winds in the springtime.

‘But there will be dead bodies there as well,’ Derek argued. ‘I hadn’t thought of that before, but, now I have, it seems to me that our risk of dying from some ghastly infection will be just as great when we get there.’

‘No,’ Gervaise shook his grey head. ‘The bodies of the people in those lands are rotting in the sunshine as we sit here now, and the pestilence which they germinate will have been dissipated by the winds and flood waters long before we reach a suitable spot far from all risk of contamination in which to settle.’

That morning they divided themselves into couples and searched the whole row of villas, entering them, as they had the first, through their skylights. It was a grim and horrible business, as they found many drowned bodies of men, women and children who had remained cowering in their homes in preference to rushing out into the streets during those last moments in which the deluge had swept down upon them. But the foray resulted in a hoard of fresh supplies sufficient for Gervaise to decide that they might attempt to start the Channel crossing on the following day.
In the afternoon they rested in order that they should be fresh and fit, when morning came, for their hazardous undertaking.

It had been decided to make an early start so as to take advantage of every moment of daylight, and at seven o’clock on the morning of September 3rd they set out from Dover. Behind them the great cliffs still stood out high above the ice-pack; before them stretched an apparently limitless plain of snow. The weather was favourable although intensely cold. Only a mild wind was blowing and the sun shone overhead in a blue sky.

Hour after hour they pressed forward, the men bending their backs to the weight of the sledge as they ploughed along on their broad snow-shoes, the girls cold but uncomplaining and determined. All topics of general conversation had been exhausted by now. During the last few days they had ceased singing on their marches; even Lavina’s joyous treble no longer quavered, small but tuneful, across the snow flats. Every breath was needed for the great effort they were making. They knew that if they could reach Calais a new lease of life would be granted to them, but if they were caught by a blizzard in mid-Channel their chances of survival would be very slender. Once in France they could lie up and rest if need be, but until they reached the coast they dared not spare themselves.

When they halted that night and set up their camp Gervaise was more than satisfied. Over the flat surface they had been able to make far better progress than in the preceding days and he estimated that they must have covered a good twelve miles. They spoke little over their evening meal, as they were very tired, but when they turned in they were immensely comforted by the thought that over half the crossing was accomplished.

The second day proved equally satisfactory until the early afternoon, when, having covered six miles, they came upon broken ground. That it was not land was certain, as they could see the cliffs to the south of Calais, now only about three miles distant. Hemmingway and Gervaise decided that the uneven surface was due to a strong wind having got up when the ice had been only partially formed in that area, and great chunks of it having been piled up on top of one another by the heaving sea.

After their splendid start in the morning Gervaise had hoped to camp above French soil that night but they were not destined to do so. To add to the difficulties of the broken terrain a strong
wind began to blow, whirling from every eminence great puffs of powdered snow which loaded their clothing and penetrated the openings of their hoods until their faces were almost blue with cold. Margery had to have Sam’s help to stagger onward and the tears froze on Lavina’s cheeks as they ran from under her snow-goggles.

A halt was called when they judged themselves to be still about two miles from the French coast, but they could no longer see it as the evening was drawing in and the nightly snowfall now obscured everything more than a few yards distant.

Next morning they crawled out of their tents to find that their camp was half-buried in a drift and that it was still snowing. As Gervaise had taken a compass bearing of the French cliffs the previous afternoon they were able to continue their journey, but they had to pause every hundred yards to restore their circulation by flapping their arms and stamping their feet or taking a sip of brandy.

They could not see more than ten yards ahead, and lugging the sledge over mounds of snow sometimes fifteen or twenty feet in height was desperate, gruelling work. At midday Sam suggested that they should camp again and hope that the next day would bring better weather; but Gervaise would not hear of it. The blizzard might last for days, and unless they could reach a place within the next twenty-four hours where there were materials to make a fire so that they could again warm themselves thoroughly, he felt that there was a serious danger that they might die of cold and exhaustion.

It was shortly after they had moved on again that a major catastrophe befell them. The weight of the two girls, who were plodding on together a few yards ahead, was not sufficient to test the snow-crust and it suddenly gave way under the sledge. Sam and Hemmingway, who were drawing it at the time, were nearly jerked off their feet by the pull of the harness as the front of the sledge tilted up and the back end disappeared into the mouth of a deep crevasse. There was a loud report as one of the cords which secured their stores to the sledge snapped under the strain. Next moment the things upon which their very lives depended were slipping and falling into the icy crack.

In a desperate effort to stop them Derek and Gervaise, who were walking behind, flung themselves on their knees and, leaning
over the narrow gulf, grabbed at the slipping packages just as Sam and Hemmingway gave a terrific heave and hauled the sledge into safety,

Panting with anxiety they hurriedly examined the remaining contents of the load and peered down the fissure in the frozen snow to see what they had lost. It was about four feet wide at the top but some twenty feet in depth and narrowed till the sides met at its bottom; so many of the packages had stuck about halfway down.

Their tents were safe, as these were stacked on the forepart of the sledge, and so were three of the sleeping-bags, but the others had fallen into the crevasse. Gervaise had caught their drum of paraffin as it fell and Derek one of the primus stoves; but all their stores, medicines and scientific instruments were gone; and many of the cases having burst on hitting the sides of the cleft, most of their contents were now scattered right at its bottom.

It was vital that they should retrieve everything possible so Derek was lowered on a rope. He managed to fish up the sleeping-bags, a case of maps, and a brazier bucket into which were packed candles and some food; but he could not get far enough down to reach the tins and flasks or their picks and shovels, and half a ton of snow suddenly falling in a few feet farther along the top of the crevasse buried the rest of the goods beyond hope of recovery.

Almost overwhelmed by this stroke of evil fortune they examined the contents of the brazier. In addition to candles it contained salt and some tins of Camp coffee but barely enough food to suffice for a full day’s ration for the six of them. From standing about inactive while the men endeavoured to salvage the stores the girls had become half-frozen. As they clung together the biting wind tore at their clothing, the snow stung their faces and their lips were blue. Neither of them were fit to go further yet they knew that they must force themselves to another effort.

It had now become imperative that they reach Calais or they would surely die, so the party staggered on again, making a little better progress owing to the decreased load which the sledge now carried. But a few moments later they became aware of another bitter blow which their recent accident had caused them. As Gervaise had flung himself forward to save the drum of paraffin
his prismatic compass had been jerked out of the small leather case in which he carried it on his belt.

They returned to look for it but after a quarter of an hour they gave up the search, concluding that it had fallen into the crevasse; and as the spare compass was buried there with their other instruments they had now no means of finding their direction.

As they knew that they must now be very near, if not actually on, the coast of France and would certainly be able to see it once the snow-storm ceased, they decided that it would be better to camp where they were in the hope that the next day would bring clear weather, rather than risk losing themselves and, perhaps, marching out to sea again. Pitching their camp in miserable silence they ate a small evening meal from their now incredibly precious stock of provisions, and turned in to an uneasy sleep harassed by fears of what fresh trials of their endurance the morrow might bring.

Peering fearfully from their tents when they woke they saw with sinking hearts that the blizzard was still raging. But they had to go on now, or die. Calais, the Mecca of their nightmares, could not possibly be more than a morning’s trek distant, yet they only had food for two more snack meals, or three if they cut themselves down to starvation rations. They decided to do without breakfast and, unrefreshed by their troubled sleep, set off once more.

The cold was so intense that it seared their lungs with every breath they drew as they fought their way through the blinding curtain of whiteness which seemed to dance before their eyes. They were now chilled to the marrow and felt that they would never get properly warmed through again. Even their furs could not protect them from the icy wind which drove the snow against them and pierced their clothing, making their limbs ache with every step they took; but with clenched teeth and straining muscles they forced themselves forward from sheer desperation.

Two hours after they set out they got clear of the broken surface, which cheered them a little, but by that time Margery was so done that she broke down and declared she could not go any farther. Sam gave her the last mouthfuls of brandy from a private flask he was carrying and Gervaise said that, as they dared not stop, she must ride on the sledge. They tied her on it a sobbing, unprotesting bundle and again lurched forward.

It seemed by this time that unless they were moving in circles they positively must be over the French coast. The cliffs they had seen before the blizzard had not been high ones, as the new level of the sea and twenty feet of snow had concealed their base; so it was possible that they had passed through a gap in the cliffs without knowing that they had done so.

At midday, after they had eaten another small portion of the remaining food and drank some coffee that Sam had made for them, Gervaise decided that they should take a new direction. Feeling certain that they must now be above French soil and knowing that Calais lay a little to the north of the cliffs for which they had been making, they now headed left.

Heartened a little by their few mouthfuls of food and the coffee, they trudged on looking like snow-men from the flakes that clung to their clothing. Even the small portions of their faces which they had to leave exposed, in order to see their way, were powdered with it. Their snow-goggles were rimed with frost as their steamy breath turned to ice almost as they exhaled it, and although they constantly rubbed them their noses ached intolerably.