Death on the Ice (40 page)

He turned to see how Willie was enjoying the song, but he was fifty metres back, had stopped dead still, and was half buried in the white, his sledge stuck fast.

‘Oh, was it that bad?’

He shushed over and, reluctantly, smacked the rear of the animal with a ski pole. The horse stumbled forward and he did it twice more and the sledge squeaked free, moving ahead again. It was like swimming through talcum powder. He tried to sing once more but Willie made wheezing noises loud enough to disturb his rhythm. ‘Wonderful. My horse is a music critic.’

He gripped Willie’s lead and skied alongside the animal. The depth of the snow lessened and they began to make good time, with Gran slipping into an easy, repetitive motion. His mind went into a kind of reverie then. He knew it was possible to dream as you poled along, as he did when cross-country skiing through the forests at home. He often imagined himself in Norway, in spring, in a garden full of flowers and heady scents. There were cherry trees, the petals falling like the Antarctic snow, carpeting the lawn. It was a shock to fall out of the vision and find the petals had become a sea of ice.

He checked on Willie, still plunging into the small drifts with admirable grit. His eyes, though, seemed duller than usual. Gran tapped his flanks with his pole, but he didn’t react, just thumped on in steam clouds of heavy breathing, gaze fixed on nothing, like the pictures you saw of soldiers after battle. Gran wondered what horses dreamed of when they were in such a state. Green pastures and firm going, perhaps.

His stomach was rumbling by the time he saw the distant signs of a bivouac. Scott and the others had halted for food. He redoubled his efforts, but the distance refused to shrink. It was another trick of the light, the telescoping of distance that plagued men on the ice barrier. Then a haze of ice crystals blew over and obscured the vision altogether. One mile or five to go? He couldn’t tell.

Willie began to make strange blowing sounds and there was foam flecked around his mouth. Gran swore he felt the whole ice barrier shake as the sorry animal keeled over and thumped into the snow.

‘Come on, boy, no time to lie down.’

But as far as Willie was concerned, that was exactly what it was. Gran peered south, but the infuriating haze was still there. It could be that Scott’s encampment, where Oates, Bowers and the others also waited, was no more than half a mile hence. ‘Hulllooo!’ he shouted, but his voice seemed to hang in nothingness.

He turned again and put his arms under Willie’s head. The steaming horse breath smelled disgusting, as if something had died in the nostrils.

‘Come on, lad. Just one more effort.’

Gran heaved, and tugged and prodded with his ski poles, but the horse still lay in the snow, hardly moving.

That’s when he heard the snap of a whip, coming from the north, and the swish of well-oiled runners being tugged by a speeding dog pack. It would be Dimitri or Meares.

Gran pulled away from the fallen animal and then raised his sticks. ‘Hey!’

It was Cecil Meares. The driver pulled the dogs around and jumped off the sledge to free the animals. He thought it was the camp.

‘No. Not here.’

Behind him Willie let out a long, nervous neigh.

The lead dog’s ears pricked.

‘Meares. No.’

Free from their traces the animals raced over, yapping and snarling. Gran skied into their path, but they bowled him aside. Their teeth were bared and their eyes blazing. The wolves within had taken over.

‘Cecil, I have a horse down.’

Willie let out a hideous noise as the first dog buried itself in its belly. He began to thrash with his legs, catching one of them a good blow. It rolled away, shook its head, and rejoined the fray. There came the sound of tearing flesh and yelps of pleasure and greed.

Gran was behind them now, his skis cast aside, and he was laying into the huskies with his poles. He hit with such force one stick snapped, but the crazed dogs were lost in their frenzy, oblivious to pain.

Flowers of blood began to speck the ice and Willie raised his head and wailed in agony.

Meares was beside him now, shouting at the dogs in Russian, the only language the beasts responded to, grabbing them by their manes and flinging them over his shoulders. He began to swing his iron braking pole between the thirteen dogs and there came the sound of metal on bone. Some of them slunk away, dazed. Gran managed to position himself between dogs and horse and had his own finnesko boot torn by sharp teeth for his trouble.

‘Up, up, Willie, please,’ Gran pleaded.

Trailing strings of red flesh, Willie staggered to his feet. The dogs circled, furious at being denied. There was a sharp snap followed by a boom, and their ears went back. From the south came Scott and Oates, the Owner brandishing a pistol, which he fired again.

‘Good Lord,’ he said when he saw the garish splatters of blood staining the snow.

Oates swerved to the shivering horse, pulled off a mitten and ducked underneath the body, feeling the belly, while Willie stood panting. He mumbled comforting words as he did so.

He straightened and put on his glove once more. ‘Those bastards,’ he said, looking at the animals as Meares harnessed them. ‘He’s torn but it hasn’t penetrated far. I’ll treat it and bandage it at camp.’ He undid some of the straps holding Willie’s load and began to stack the cases in the snow. ‘Leave this. I’ll fetch it with Nobby later.’

‘Thank you,’ said Scott. ‘I should never have let Willie fall behind like that. It’s my fault.’

Like the others, he looked at the excavation, a swirl of depressions and trenches, mounds and ridges marking the fight. It was like a casting for a sculpture. He was sure Kathleen would find it wondrous, a three-dimensional record of turmoil, beauty out of horror. But, of course, there had been genuine terror, for man and beast. ‘Are you all right, Gran?’

The Norwegian examined his leg. His boot would need repairing, but that was all. ‘Yes. No damage.’

‘Very good.’

Gran couldn’t help thinking Scott would have been more sympathetic to one of his own men. Englishmen.

Soldier was leading Willie away, his steps marked by the spatter of blood pitting the snow crust, but Gran stopped him. ‘Can I take him into camp? I shall make him some warm bran.’

‘Good idea,’ said Oates. ‘There’s a nice, tight snow wall, too.’ He fell in beside the Norwegian and waited till Scott was out of earshot to speak again. ‘Another lesson, Trigger.’

‘What?’

‘Dogs and horses don’t mix.’

The pallid sun had a ‘bow’ around it, a glowing decoration they all knew meant bad weather ahead. The men, horses and dogs had reached seventy-nine degrees and twenty-eight and a half minutes.

The temperature was dipping to minus twenty-five and intermittent storms were plaguing them. The ponies looked terrible, bony and lifeless. The men had suffered too. Even Bowers had found his ears so cold he had exchanged the foolish green hat he favoured for something more protective. Gran had completely frozen his hands while preparing lunch and Oates had suffered frost-nipped fingers while feeding the horses.

The dogs, meanwhile, seemed to thrive on steel-springed legs. Despite being whippet-thin, their resilience surprised everyone, although their social habits, from eating their own excrement to attacking each other whenever the opportunity arose, were tiresome.

Scott decided they would depot at that point, before another blizzard took them. Oates and Gran were behind the snow wall, which protected them from the drifting surface snow. Gran was feeding the animals, while Oates changed Weary Willie’s dressings, when Scott appeared to break the news of the change of deputing location. Oates was telling his favourite joke.

‘So, the young lady is late for dinner and she explains to her host that the horse was to blame. That the coachman had quite a time with him. “Perhaps he was a jibber,” the host says. “Oh no, he was a bugger,” says the young lady. “I heard the coachman say so several times.”’

Oates laughed and Gran looked puzzled. ‘What’s a jibber?’

‘It’s a … ah.’ He caught sight of Scott. ‘Hello, skipper.’

‘Hello, gentlemen. I have some news.’ He carefully laid out his plans. They were to deposit 2,1118 lb of stores at that very spot. Butter, fuel, biscuits, oats, fodder, sledges, skis, everything a party might need upon their return from the Pole.

‘The animals are about done in, I see. They’ll be glad to turn,’ he said. ‘You, too, no doubt.’

Oates wiped the snow blowing off the wall from his eyes. ‘We are still some miles short of eighty degrees, are we not?’

‘Yes. About thirty-one miles.’

‘Then I say we push on, sir.’

Scott frowned. ‘And you think these ponies are capable of that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gran, knowing what Oates was considering, said: ‘But not on getting back.’

Oates shot him a harsh look. Titus spoke, as he often did when trying to make a point, with great deliberateness. ‘No. They wouldn’t make the return. We’d have to kill them and depot them. But it would be good food for next season further out on the barrier.’

Scott looked shocked. ‘My dear fellow, after bringing them all this way? I thought you cared for these ponies, Oates.’

‘I do. I can’t put them through the misery of a slow death on their return as well. They’ve suffered enough. We should get them as far as we can and kill them humanely. There will be pony meat then for the dogs and sledgers on the polar journey.’

‘I have to say, Oates, you have a strange idea of animal welfare. We’ll make One Ton Camp here.’

Oates spoke carefully, without emotion. ‘Sir. I am afraid you’ll come to regret not taking my advice.’

Scott bristled so much, snow spun off his Burberry. ‘Regret or not, my decision is made. As a Christian gentleman.’

Oates bit his tongue, unable to see exactly what Christianity had to do with it. ‘Very well.’

‘I shall return with the dogs. So will Wilson, Meares, Cherry and Wilson. You, Bowers and Gran here will lead the ponies back. We will all rendezvous at Safety Camp. Can you manage that?’

‘Sir.’

Scott turned to go. He had walked a few paces before he turned. ‘Oh, and Oates.’

‘Yes, skipper?’

‘The tip of your nose is quite white. If you aren’t careful you’ll lose it.’

While Oates frantically rubbed at his face, he spoke through the moving fur of the mitten. ‘I bet you a lunchtime biscuit the horses don’t all make it back,’ he said to Gran once Scott had left.

‘Only if you swear it is one bet you are happy to lose.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Oates, looking at the bags of bones he had to nurse home. ‘I’d try my damndest to make sure you take the biscuit, Trigger.’

O
ATES WATCHED WEARY WILLIE
expire with a long, last shudder. He had wanted to put him down, but Scott insisted they should nurse him. Scott built a snow wall and tenderly fed the dying animal hot mash. It was a night-long vigil, torture for man and beast. Several times Oates considered slitting the animal’s throat and hanging the consequences, but Scott fussed over the animal like a nursemaid. Oates, meanwhile, tried to keep Jimmy Pigg’s strength up. The second pony was also tired, emaciated and cold; a shivering Oates was beginning to understand just what that felt like.

Meanwhile Meares and Wilson had set off with the dogs, aiming to cross the four miles of sea ice for Hut Point, the old
Discovery
base. Following in their tracks were Cherry, Bowers and Crean, with the remaining horses. Gran had been sent to Corner Camp to find Teddy Evans to tell him they were all rendezvousing at the old 1902 expedition hut.

When Willie had breathed his last, Scott turned to Oates. ‘It looks as if you were right, Soldier.’

Oates said nothing. He could tell how much effort the apology—if that was what it was—had cost the Owner. Oates felt no victory. Yes, they should have killed and depoted the horses at eighty degrees. Now Weary Willie would be tipped into the water and wasted.

‘We should get some sleep, Titus. You look done in. I imagine I do, too.’

Soldier nodded and moved mechanically towards the tent.

Oates had barely climbed into his bag and closed his eyes when he heard the yelling. Scott didn’t need to shake him awake, but it was some minutes before he was dressed and out of the tent.

It was Crean, beaten and drawn, the big man almost in tears. His swollen eyes showed signs of snow-blindess. ‘Dropped my goggles,’ he explained. ‘Can’t see too well.’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Oates.

Crean answered with a mumble, and Oates only caught the words ‘ice’ and ‘floe’.

‘It’s Bowers. And Cherry,’ said Scott, his voice loaded with fright.

‘What?’ Oates demanded. ‘Where are they?’

‘They are out on the sea ice,’ Crean said. ‘It’s breaking up. Woke up and we’d drifted off from the shore. I had to jump from floe to floe to get here. They are still out there.’

‘On the ice?’ Oates asked.

Crean nodded. ‘Floating offshore.’

Oates picked up whatever he thought he might need from the sledges, including ropes and ice picks. Scott grabbed provisions and more ropes. All their tiredness and frost-nip was forgotten.

As they set off for the forced march to the barrier edge, Oates asked Crean: ‘The horses?’

‘Guts has gone, sir.’

‘Gone?’ Oates repeated.

‘In the night. No sign. The others are out there with them. Drifting into the Ross Sea.’

‘And Wilson and Meares?’ asked Scott.

‘They made a faster time with the dogs and veered off south. They made landfall at The Gap. They’ll get to the hut all right. But we’d best hurry if we are to save the others.’

They trudged north, with the wind against their backs, and as they closed on the barrier they could hear the familiar split and splash of bergs calving into the water. When they reached the cliff edge, an astonishing sight greeted them. Water. Miles of slab ice, dissected by wide channels and great lakes, some covered with frost mist. The floes looked like misshapen lilies on an enormous pond. The whole of the ice barrier was disintegrating.