Surviving Antarctica (26 page)

He struck the wall again. Another chip lay at his feet.

At this rate, making stairs would take hours. But what else could he do?

Steve drew close to the mike.

Chad nodded slowly.

“Andrew, you’re not alone,” Steve said.

“Who are you?” Andrew asked again.

Steve didn’t know what made him say the name. It just came to him. “I’m your ancestor Birdie Bowers.”

“Oh,” Andrew said. “You died in this stuff, too.”

“You’re not going to die,” Steve said. “You’re going to make it.”

“How?” Andrew asked.

“You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No,” Andrew said. “I’m fine.”

“First, let’s try to figure out if there’s anything else you can do to stay warm.”

“I’m not that cold,” Andrew said.

“Incredible,” Chad whispered to Steve.

“Great. But you may have to be there for a while. So zip up your parka, button up all your buttons, and pull the flap down on your cap.”

Steve heard Andrew fumbling around in the narrow crevasse.

“I can’t find my cap,” Andrew said after a while.

“That’s bad,” Chad murmured to Steve.

“What happened?”

“I must have lost it in the fall.”

“Do you have anything that you could cover your head with?” Steve asked.

“No.”

“Do you have anything to eat in your pockets?” Steve asked.

Again Steve heard a rustling as Andrew checked his pockets.

“A little pemmican,” Andrew said.

“Good,” Steve said. He looked at the other screens. Polly and Robert had opened the tent flap and were staring at the storm.

Billy and Grace sat huddled around the Primus stove.

“I can’t see him,” Polly said.

“The storm has gotten much worse,” Robert said.

“Andrew!” Polly called. But the wind carried her words away, and Steve could hardly hear her.

“I’ll go look for him,” said Robert. “He saved my life this morning.”

“No,” Polly said. “You’ve got a hurt shoulder. I’ll go.”

“You get cold the easiest,” Robert pointed out.

“I won’t stay out there too long,” Polly promised. She pulled on her gloves, her neck warmer, and her parka.

“Tie yourself to a rope,” Robert directed.

“You’re right. We should have never let him go outside without a rope,” Polly said.

“It wasn’t that windy when he left.”

“Life becomes death in an instant,” Grace heard her grandfather say.

Polly and Robert stared into each other’s eyes as Polly handed Robert one end of the guide rope.

Steve and Chad watched Polly slip the rope around her waist and lift the tent flap.

Steve waited anxiously to view the storm through Polly’s eyes.

As Robert held the flap open for Polly, she pushed away the heaps of snow that had piled up at the entrance to the tent. On her knees, she entered a swirling white world.

The morning’s snow had been fine and powdery. This snow was wet. After crawling only a few feet, Polly lost her sense of direction. She wiped the snow off her goggles with her gloves. Her knees sank into the deep, soft powder.

Cookie’s white body would be hidden in the snow, but if she got closer, she might be able to make out the outlines of the sleds.

The wind howled, and from every direction the snow pounded her. Polly fought it off as she would a raging white beast and crawled a few more steps. The wind gusted again and lashed
her face. She struggled to lift her head. “Andrew!” she tried to yell, but she couldn’t hear herself over the roar of the wind. When the burst of wind died, she held her hand in front of her face but still couldn’t see it. Both her mind and her body felt numb. She tugged on the rope. She felt Robert’s answering tug and then the rope tighten before she began tumbling, tripping, and crawling her way back to the tent.

Steve went back to Andrew’s screen. He was chipping away at the wall of ice. “You’re really lucky you have that roof. The blizzard has picked up. Polly tried to reach you, but it looks like she won’t be able to rescue you for a while.”

Neither Steve nor Andrew spoke for a moment.

“Was it colder when you were here, Birdie?” Andrew asked.

Steve would have to try to remember everything he had heard on EduTV. “Yes,” he said. “It was seventy below, night after night.”

“Tell me about it.”

“When we woke up in the morning and tried to put on our clothes, they were frozen into boards.”

“So you know what it’s like to be cold?” Andrew said, trying to ignore the growing
numbness of his hands and feet. I never want to be cold again, he thought.

“Poor kid,” Steve muttered to Chad.

“How long do blizzards last?” Andrew asked.

“Not too long,” Steve said. He wished that he knew.

“POLLY, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE
to rescue him right now,” Robert argued. “Go to sleep so you can be fresh when we try again.” Even though they were all huddled around the Primus, he had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind.

“No,” Polly said.

“Don’t get emotional on me,” Robert said.

“I
am
emotional,” Polly said. “I’m mad and scared.”

“Who are you mad at?” Billy asked.

“What?” Polly said.

Billy repeated his question. Ever since he had failed to help Robert, he had felt guilty.

“I’m not mad at you, Billy,” Polly said. “Or at
you, Robert, for caring about a broken-down motor.”

“Then who?” Robert asked.

“I’m mad at the Secretary of Entertainment. I’m mad at anyone watching this stupid television show. I’m mad at America. A sweet boy may die so the viewers at home can be amused. It’s sad. It’s sick. I don’t care what the Secretary does to me, I am never, ever watching one of her sick shows again.”

“The viewers,” Billy said.

“Oh, she’ll cut this scene from the program,” Polly said with disgust. “I’m sure other contestants have felt like me, but no one has ever heard them complain on television.”

“I agree with you,” Robert surprised Polly by saying. “But we can’t let our anger get in the way of our survival,” he continued. “We’re running out of food. The best thing we can do is sleep.”

“But we just woke up,” Grace said.

“Does anybody have a better suggestion?” Robert said.

As if in answer, the wind howled.

“I can’t sleep, thinking of Andrew lost out there,” Polly wailed.

“If anybody can make it, Andrew can,” Robert said.

Billy planned to eat a health-food bar for his dinner tonight. But it was his last one, and he was worried. He had lots of Chocobombs, but the sugar wasn’t filling. He hoped that everyone would fall asleep, because he wanted to count the bags of peanuts and crackers. He was scared that if the blizzard didn’t stop soon, he was going to be hungry. It was frustrating to realize that more supplies were only seventeen miles away.

“What happened, Polly?” Billy asked suddenly. “Why did Scott and his men die?”

“I thought we were going to try to get some sleep,” Robert said.

“You were,” Grace answered.

“Sounds like an essay question for EduTV,” Robert said.

Billy didn’t laugh. “I want to know.”

“Well,” Polly began, “the mystery about Scott’s death is that he and his men died in their tent eleven miles from a depot of food. Scott’s diary suggests that the polar party had a run of unusually bad weather, a blizzard of ten days’ duration.”

“Ten days?” Billy said. This blizzard couldn’t last that long. They would run out of food for sure.

“So just bad luck?” Robert said, interested in spite of himself.

Polly shook her head. “On the ship, I read some modern books about the expedition. Research proves that on Scott’s polar trek the weather was colder than usual, but it also proves something else.”

“What?” Billy said.

“In all the years that scientists tracked temperatures here, they never once recorded a ten-day blizzard.”

That’s better, Billy thought. “So why didn’t Scott hike to the food?”

“Scott wrote this:
My right foot has gone, nearly all the toes—two days ago I was proud possessor of best feet. These are the steps of my downfall. Like an ass I mixed a small spoonful of curry powder with my melted pemmican—it gave me violent indigestion. I lay awake and in pain all night; woke and felt done on the march; foot went and I didn’t know it.
”

“So Scott had frostbite?” Robert asked.

“Yes,” Polly said.

“But what about Bowers and Wilson?” Grace said.

Polly was surprised that Grace knew their names. She hadn’t realized that Grace listened to her stories.

“So Scott ordered Bowers and Wilson to stay?” Robert said.

“No,” Polly said. How could Robert think that Scott was a man who would order his friends to starve to death?

“Don’t make us guess,” Robert said. “You said that Scott had frostbite and that’s why he didn’t go for food. Why did Bowers and Wilson stay in the tent instead of trying to get to the depot? They could have brought food back to Scott. At least two of the explorers could have survived. Why didn’t they?”

“Wilson and Bowers could have made it to the depot eleven miles away. Their feet weren’t frostbitten. But they couldn’t have carried Scott the hundred miles back to camp.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Billy said. “You just said that blizzards don’t last for ten days. Why did Scott lie about the ten-day blizzard?”

“Scott would never lie. Remember, Scott couldn’t walk. He couldn’t leave the tent,” Polly said. “He had to depend on what Bowers and Wilson told him about the weather.”

“I don’t understand. Stop talking in riddles,” Billy said.

“This was one of his last diary entries:
Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale…. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the
door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift.”

“So they all starved.” Billy had made his decision. He would rather freeze to death than starve.

“Probably,” Polly said.

“Was that his last entry?” Billy said.

Polly shook her head. “No. His last entry was undated:
For God’s sake look after our people.”

“But what about Wilson and Bowers?” Robert asked.

“Wilson and Bowers gave up,” Billy said. “It was easier for them to stay inside a warm tent than to brave the cold.”

“Those two would never have given up!” Polly shot back. The insult to her heroes filled her eyes with tears.

Suddenly Grace understood: Bowers and Wilson had stayed in the tent because they didn’t want Scott to die alone. She heard the pounding of the wind outside and found herself strangely grateful for the two men’s kindness to the long-dead explorer.

“There wasn’t a blizzard, but Scott believed there was.” Robert thought out loud. “Wilson and Bowers must have lied to Scott. Why would they lie?”

“Otherwise Scott would have ordered them to save themselves,” Polly said, reciting the
theory of an expert on polar exploration. “That was the kind of man he was. The kind of man whose last words were
For God’s sake look after our people.”
After everything he’d gone through, Scott thought of their families at the end.

“So Bowers and Wilson chose to stay?” Billy asked, amazed.

“Who knows what really happened?” Polly nodded her head and wiped her tears with her sleeve. “But somewhere out there in that snow and ice Andrew is dying alone,” she choked out. She couldn’t talk anymore. She crawled toward her sleeping bag and stuffed her head inside it to muffle her sobs.

Bowers and Wilson were good guys, Robert thought.

Bowers and Wilson died because they were loyal. Andrew went down into that crevasse to save Robert. Polly wanted to go out in the snow to look for Andrew. The snow teaches people to take care of one another, Grace thought.

I miss my home, Billy thought. I miss my Compu-gametable. I want to survive. I don’t care if I win. I want to go home. More than anything else, I don’t want to starve.

When Polly lifted her head up, she heard Robert’s and Billy’s loud snores.

“Grace, are you awake?” Polly asked.

“Yeah,” Grace said.

“Can I talk to you some more?”

Grace didn’t say anything, but Polly didn’t sense her silence to be unfriendly.

“Scott headed to the Pole with only four men. The rest of the expedition waited at different camps. Around the time Scott was expected to return to the main camp, Cherry-Garrard, one of Scott’s crew members, drove a dog team to try to find Scott and make his journey back easier. When Cherry-Garrard was about to run out of dog food, he returned to the main camp. That’s what Scott had told him to do. He was just following orders. Months later, Cherry-Garrard was one of the men who found the explorers’ bodies. He read their diaries. He figured out that he had been only a two- or three-day march away from the Scott team as the men lay dying.

“Cherry-Garrard was a rich man. He had an estate in England. But he was never happy after he learned that he might have saved Scott. He always wished that he had ignored Scott’s orders and gone on and looked for his friends.”

“Horrible,” Grace said.

“Yet Cherry-Garrard shouldn’t have gone on searching,” Polly said. She paused to gather
strength to recount the haunting story. “His trip to find Scott was the first time that he had managed a dogsled. Cherry-Garrard wore glasses that constantly fogged up, but he was blind without them. He probably wouldn’t have survived if he had ignored his orders and continued looking for Scott.”

“Just like you and the wind,” Grace said.

“Yeah,” Polly said. “The fact that Cherry-Garrard didn’t attempt that impossible task ruined his life.” She started crying. “And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Polly,” Grace crooned, as she did to her animals.

“I’ll hate myself,” Polly mumbled.

What could Grace say? What could anyone say? Blizzards froze comforting words into ice.

“HOW CAN I
leave him?” Steve said to Chad.

“You must,” Chad said. His hand lay heavily on Steve’s shoulder. “The day shift will be here any minute.”