Surviving Antarctica (17 page)

T-Rex stood there with his ears pinned back, as if to say that something was wrong.

Maybe this pile-up wasn’t her fault after all.

Triceratops was dangling over a shallow crevasse. Only the traces held her up.

Grace stepped away from the crevasse, and using her most serious tone, she called to T-Rex. He ran toward her, eager to obey. The team easily pulled the little one out. She thanked T-Rex before turning to Triceratops. The little dog
whined as Grace checked her for injuries and found none. She walked over to the crevasse, pulled off her goggles, and stared bare-eyed at the shimmering ice. Even though the crevasse was only five feet deep or so, it seemed to hint at another world she couldn’t know. Her grandfather had once told her a story about ice tunnels that extended for miles under the snow. She looked at the horizon. The tracks that the others had made stood out like a frosty highway. But her team was wider than their tracks. This crevasse was just a few feet from where Billy and Robert had ridden so confidently, so unaware.

“Danger is one with life on ice. It sharpens your senses, clears your mind. Lets you know that you’re alive,” she heard her grandfather say.

He had been right. She could still feel her heart pumping in her chest as she settled back into the sled and cracked the whip. “Let’s go,” she cried.

The dogs bounded forward in one wild, uncoordinated lurch. A box fell off the sled.

She stopped the team again. Would the sled steer better if she shifted most of the weight to the back? She repositioned the box before climbing back in.

Patience, Grace counseled herself. Grandfather never said that being an Iñupiat was easy. He had said that living on the ice was an impossible life, worthy of love. The dogs leaned into their harnesses and started along the trail. They passed a lone twisted ice sculpture.

How was that formed? Grace wondered. In subzero temperatures, the wind must have gusted, causing the snow to freeze in midair. Wind art. Only in Antarctica.

She, Grace Untoka, was driving a dogsled in Antarctica. She wasn’t driving it like an Iñupiat yet, but on the first day of her new life, she held a whip ready in her hand.

A SMALL OBJECT
that Polly hadn’t noticed before stood in the distance. Or maybe it was a large object right next to her? Or perhaps an Antarctic mirage? She squinted at the object again. Could it be a plain metal pole that she and Billy were approaching? She had ridden quietly behind him on the snowcycle for several hours. The roar of the motor discouraged conversation.

Billy pulled up to the metal pole.

“Is that the meteorological stand?” Billy shouted, pointing at the pole.

“I think so,” Polly said.

Their map said that the stand was nine
miles from Safety Hut. Although time was largely irrelevant here, Billy checked his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Robert had slowed to keep pace with the dogs, but he had told Billy that he wanted him to stop after four hours. That meant that they would camp near the stand on their first night.

Starting in the 1950s scientists had monitored Antarctic temperatures. But after the Big Bust, when the government no longer had the funds for scientific exploration, the stands were abandoned. Polly couldn’t help remembering that on the Scott expedition, Birdie Bowers had recorded most of the weather data. Since gloved hands would be too clumsy to do the work, Polly imagined Birdie touching his thermometer with his bare hands. Even though Birdie had been the man on Scott’s team most impervious to cold, the daily temperature readings must have been agony.

Billy turned off the cycle. The plan was to set up camp before the others arrived.

Polly hopped off and tumbled into the snow. Her left foot was dead; it had no feeling at all. How had she failed to realize what was happening? She looked down at her green parka, now dusted with snow, and tears filled her eyes.

Billy stared at her.

“Billy,” she cried, pulling off her goggles.

“What’s wrong?”

“My foot.”

“What?”

“I’ve lost the feeling in my left foot. Can you boil some water quickly? I need to drink something hot.”

“Sure.”

Polly tried to get her boot off, but her hands were cold, and she found even this small task daunting.

Billy went to the sled and rummaged around in the bags. It felt like a long time to Polly, but eventually he pulled out the Primus, just as she slipped her foot out of her boot.

Polly couldn’t feel her foot, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was frostbitten, she reminded herself. But what if it was?

Billy fumbled, trying to light the stove.

“Take your time,” Polly said. This cold made accomplishing even the smallest tasks difficult. She kneaded her toes until they began to feel the way Polly did on being awakened by her mother too early.

“Darn!” Billy said as he tried to light a match. He blew on his fingers to warm them and tried again.

Polly pounded her foot with her fist.

On Scott’s expedition, Titus Oates’s foot had gotten frostbitten. It was clear that the remaining four men couldn’t carry Oates and still survive. Polly wished that for once the Memory would fail her and that she couldn’t remember word for word Scott’s description of Oates’s terrible decision:

Would Polly be brave enough to crawl off into the snow and let the others go on without her? The books said that dying of cold was pleasant, almost dreamy. That you felt hot. She would love to feel hot right now.

Billy finally succeeded in lighting the match, and he loaded heaps of snow into the outer ring of the Primus. It seemed to take longer for the water to boil than for a glacier to form, but the
stove gave off a little warmth, and Polly snuggled as close as possible to it.

Finally little bubbles appeared on top of the water.

Scott’s men had described the large white blisters that appeared on frostbitten skin. The men had popped them. Sometimes the pus inside was frozen into hard white balls.

Billy poured hot chocolate mix into the water and stirred it. When it was ready, he handed her a cup.

Polly pressed it against her face. She breathed in the delicious smell of the chocolate. It was ironic that in these miserable conditions she could have all the chocolate that she wanted. What she would have given for a cup of hot chocolate each night in their hut in New York!

Polly didn’t mind that her first sip burned her tongue, because her mouth filled with warmth. She swallowed. The bullet of warmth sped down her throat into her stomach. She took another sip, forgetting to savor it, just craving its life-giving warmth.

The warmth crawled farther this time, through her limbs, into her fingers—and yes, she felt a trickle travel to her feet, and through her feet to her toes. She took another big swallow
and resisted the impulse to unbutton her jacket. For she was feeling warmer—even hot—and she tried once again to wiggle her toes.

This time the command reached them and they woke up. All five of them began to move. Now, instead of being drowsy and insensible, they screamed in pain. She yelped.

First little piggy, second little piggy. Ignoring their protests, she made them do exercises: sit-ups and stretches, a regular army drill.

“How do you feel, Polly?” Billy asked.

“Better,” Polly said. “But I should stand up and get moving.”

“Okay,” Billy said. “We can get started on the tent.” He walked over to the snowcycle and lifted off a heavy black bag.

Polly painfully tried to stand.

“I can do this. Just rest,” Billy said.

“I can’t!” Polly snapped, and then immediately felt bad. For once, Billy was trying to be nice. She hadn’t shared Oates’s story with the other kids. During his last few nights Oates had slept with his frostbitten foot out of the warmth of the sleeping bag so he wouldn’t have to go through the painful agony of a partial thawing. The pain that she was experiencing was good. It was her friend. Giving up was not yet an option.

Billy looked at her curiously.

“I just have to use my feet, that’s all,” Polly explained. He didn’t understand how serious frostbite was. Billy, Robert, Grace, and Andrew knew only what she had told them about Robert F. Scott and his men. They didn’t hear the voices of Scott, Oates, Bowers, Evans, and Wilson in their heads. They couldn’t feel these explorers’ suffering. She wondered if the kids would be so relaxed if they knew what the Antarctic had done to those five brave, strong adults. She hobbled over to where Billy had dropped the bag with the tent. She started back toward the snowcycle. She limped to the spot where Billy was setting up the tent and back to the snowcycle, again and again and again. She was so worried about her foot that she barely noticed that the tent didn’t look big or high enough to house five kids. But then what did she really know about camping in frigid conditions? Nothing, she despaired.

While Polly took care of her foot, Billy set up the tent by himself. It was hard in the cold, and when he finally stretched the last piece of canvas over the pole, he felt very hungry. Polly was still busy, so he unloaded his sleeping bag and crawled into the tent with it. He unrolled the fur bag, which had started shedding hairs. He
quickly transferred his food from his backpack to the bottom of his sleeping bag. Then he grabbed a bag of nuts.

It seemed impossible, but what if there were cameras in this small tent in the middle of nowhere? Or what if Polly looked in?

Just in case, he crawled inside the sleeping bag and pulled it over his head. He popped a delicious nut into his mouth.

“Billy, what are you doing?” Polly called a few minutes later.

“Just resting,” Billy answered. But he felt panicky as she passed through the tent flap. What if she could smell the nut? He snapped at the air in front of him, trying to swallow the smell.

“What’s that sound?” Polly asked.

“Nothing.” Billy swallowed air again. “Is your foot okay?”

“It’s better,” Polly said.

Billy put the rest of the nuts into his pocket and peeked out. Polly was looking at him strangely. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Let’s get the stove inside and the rest of the sled unloaded.” He crawled out of his sleeping bag.

“This tastes great,” Grace said as she took a second bite of hoosh. It was warm in the tent,
maybe as warm as an igloo would be.

“Billy, you did a good job finding your way here,” Robert said.

Billy blushed at the praise.

Robert nodded at Billy. “Useful guy. You’re our snow-and-ice man, and”—he paused—“our navigator.” Robert was impressed. Billy seemed to navigate effortlessly.

Billy didn’t say anything.

Robert frowned. “We would have been here much sooner except for the dogs.”

“They’re getting better, Robert,” Grace said simply.

Of course, they had had a late start because of the ponies, but in four hours they had made only nine miles. Robert knew that if they abandoned the dogs, they could travel faster.

Andrew sat down next to Polly, who was tending the stove. “How does your foot feel?”

“Okay,” Polly said hesitantly. By the time the others had arrived, she was certain that her circulation was restored, but she still felt shaky.

“Take off your socks and let me see,” Robert said.

Polly didn’t want to cry, but somehow she felt as if she had done something wrong. She slowly, painfully, peeled off her layers of socks. Were her toes whiter than usual, or was
that only her imagination?

“Robert, I’ve got an idea,” Andrew said. “I used to do it for my little brother.” He began unbuttoning his shirt.

“What are you doing?” Robert said angrily. “I don’t want
two
people with frostbite.”

“No, she can put her foot on my chest. It’ll be like a heater. It’ll warm up good.”

Robert didn’t stop him when Andrew grabbed Polly’s foot and pulled it toward him.

Polly put her foot against Andrew’s bare chest and felt its warmth. The warmth of the sun, she thought as she closed her eyes.

“Thank you, Andrew,” Polly said.

“No problem,” he replied.

“Is your whole family like you?” Grace asked.

“How do you mean?” Andrew said.

“Furnaces,” Grace said.

Polly laughed.

“Not my little brother. He can’t even go outside when it’s snowing. My mother wears a bathrobe all the time.” He pictured the heavy gray woolen bathrobe that his mother wore even in summer, and he felt homesick. “But my dad and I are. In fact …” He stopped. Should he tell them? It was just a silly old family story. Probably wrong.

“What?”

“My aunt always claimed that we were related to someone on Scott’s expedition.” He shrugged. “A man named Bowers. He’s my great-great-great uncle….” Andrew’s voice trailed off, because he had no idea how many greats to string together. “Or something like that,” he finished lamely.

“Oh!” Polly clapped her hands in delight. “He’s one of my favorite men. So unselfish and kind, and so much like you. Even in this awful weather he hardly ever bothered to cover his neck.”

“Did he … ?” Andrew started to ask a question, but Robert turned to him with a disapproving gaze.

“Did he what?” Polly said, but she knew what Andrew wanted to ask.

“Survive?” Andrew choked out.

“No,” Polly said.

Robert glared at her.

Polly glared back. “You want me to lie to him?”

Robert shook his head. He wondered if Polly knew how depressing she was.

“Did he die of frostbite?” Andrew asked.

“Not exactly,” Polly said. “He was one of the four men Scott took with him to the Pole. Three of the men—Bowers, Wilson, and Scott—died in
their tent.” On the ship, Polly had read several books about the expedition, but the cause of the last three men’s deaths was still a mystery to her. She had a theory, though, that she wanted to explain to Andrew.