Death on the Ice (55 page)

‘Now, William,’ instructed Crean. ‘You push and don’t forget to jump on.’

Evans looked down at the rolling fog bank, and the shapes moving within it. He imagined the vast, waiting apertures, ready to take them like pike taking a gnat. ‘You know, I think we ought to go around after—’

He never finished the sentence. Lashly gave one shove and, as if to show what it could do on a decent surface, the sledge accelerated away. Lashly managed to get on the back, but only by flinging himself diagonally over the rear section and clinging on for dear life.

Evans screamed.

At the front Crean saw the mist part to present the first opening in the ice. It was rushing towards him. There was no bridge spanning it.

‘Oh, shit, hold on there, boys.’

The runners left the ice as the void opened up beneath them. The cold of the cavern seemed to suck the heat from them. Then they landed with a thump on the other side. The sledge began to oscillate from side to side, as if it were going to tip. Crean poked with one of his poles and it steadied.

The bank of fog thinned and Crean was sorry it had. He could see now what lay ahead. A stretch of fissures ripped in the ice sheet, like knife slashes.

The next crevasse was huge, large enough to lose St Paul’s in, but it had three snow bridges across it. Crean steered for the wider one on the left, but the sledge’s forward momentum was too much for the turn. The three of them swished on to the thinner central span, sending up an arc of fresh snow. They all heard it creak and shift beneath them. Evans screamed again.

Then they were across, rattling over pressure ridges, with their teeth clashing and vision blurred. Smaller pockets in the ice seemed to rush up at Crean and he closed his aching eyes for a second. The speed of the sledge sent them across the cracks unharmed.

Three more crevasses flashed by, each two hundred feet wide, each with a bridge in the centre, but nothingness looming on either side. Now the sledge was at maximum velocity and beginning to slither to one side, as if the rear was trying to overtake the front. Crean put out a pole to correct it and it was snatched away, bending his fingers back. The sledge continued to crab, running sideways over another snow bridge until Crean realised the whole contraption was about to spin around. Soon they would be coming down the mountain backwards.

‘To port side!’ he yelled.

‘What?’ Evans shouted.

Crean leaned his weight over the left runner, digging it in and slowing them on that side. Unfortunately, it sank further than he intended, snagged and they pirouetted through a 180 degrees before crashing into a snow bank, throwing them all off on to the ice.

Nobody spoke for a while; they were busy trying to catch their breath, slow their hearts and checking that nothing was broken. Then Crean stood, unfolding stiffly as he did so, and looked back at the way they had come. They had shot down in six minutes what might have taken a whole day, across an icefall and some of the worst crevasses the Beardmore could throw at them.

He laughed, feeling giddy with relief, and looked down at his winded companions. ‘Next time,’ Crean said, ‘someone else can go in front.’

I
T WAS BOWERS WHO
noticed it first. The others were all lost in their thoughts and the drudgery of hauling over the sastrugi. Wilson was daydreaming about Ory. Scott was trying to picture how Peter would have grown and changed by the time he saw him again. Taff was concerned about the pains shooting up his forearm and Oates was dwelling on the irony of being racked with thirst with a world of frozen water around them.

They had covered seven and a half miles that morning, before a brief stop for lunch. Sightings told them they were at eighty-nine degrees, forty-two minutes. ‘The Pole will be in view tomorrow,’ Scott had promised and they all dared hope that would be the case. They would reach it in a sorrier state than they had wished. They were convinced, though, that their spirits would lift once they stood at ninety degrees south.

‘Skipper,’ Bowers said. ‘Over there.’

‘Halt.’

Oates thought for a blissful moment another afternoon had slipped by, but he realised they had only been hauling for a little over an hour. ‘What is it?’

‘There.’ Bowers pointed into the featureless whiteness, slightly to the right of where they were heading. Oates had long learned that spots on his retina played tricks with his vision. He could see nothing. Birdie was the one with the eyes.

‘What is it?’ asked Wilson.

‘Not sure. You see it, skipper?’

‘What are you thinking, Birdie?’

‘I thought it looked like a cairn.’

‘A man-made cairn?’ asked Oates, knowing full well there was no other sort.

‘Now I am not so sure. It could be a large sastrugi.’

‘It could,’ said Scott.

‘Or we’ve come round in a circle and it’s one of ours,’ suggested Oates.

‘That’s not helpful,’ snapped Scott. ‘It could be a mirage. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been fooled.’

‘We should take a look, then,’ added Taff glumly. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

Thirty minutes later, every man felt the blow at the same time. Whatever it was, it was black. Black. Not the colour of the Antarctic, at least not the plateau, where no rocks poked through the vast covering of ice. Black. The sign of man. The colour of defeat.

It was a wooden sledge bearer, with a large black flag tied to it. As they pulled nearer, each step wearier than the last, they could see other signs. Sledge tracks and dog paws. Lots and lots of dogs’ tracks and canine excrement soiling the snow.

When they shrugged their harnesses, Taff undid his boot bindings and fell to his knees, as if praying to an idol. Wilson put a hand on Scott’s shoulder and the Owner’s mitt came up to touch it.

Oates felt very little, except the sensation that he had known it would come to this all along. Since when? Since he saw the horses on Quail Island, perhaps, or the chaotic caravan of motor-sledges, dogs, skis and feet that Scott had assembled. Or when the blizzard cost them all that time on the barrier? He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t feign shock. He could only express resignation. ‘Looks like he chose well,’ he muttered, scratching at the swirl of paw marks with the toe of his boot.

‘I’d keep that thought to y’self,’ muttered Bowers.

Oates bent down and came up with a brown stub. He held it to his nose. He saw the look on Birdie’s face and chortled. ‘Don’t worry. It’s a cigar butt. I think they had themselves a small celebration.’

Taff had begun to sob, his forehead pressed to the icy surface. Wilson pulled him up into a sitting position. ‘What of my pub now?’ he howled. ‘Those bloody Norskies. What of my money?’

‘Taff,’ said Wilson with some kindness. ‘Pull yourself together, man.’

Oates examined the black flag and noticed that the material had frayed and faded somewhat. He didn’t voice the thought, but it had been up some time, weeks, rather than hours or days. They hadn’t just been beaten. They had been trounced, thrashed, routed.

Wilson came over and fingered the treacherous pennant ‘It’s a little careworn.’

‘I was thinking the same thing.’ The Owner was walking in a circle, head down, deep in troubled thought. ‘We have to be strong. For Con.’

Oates found himself nodding. If he had anger within, he was too tired and aching to summon it.

Minutes passed while each man dealt with the disappointment in his own way.

‘Hold it!’

Bowers took a photograph. Oates imagined it would show a rather unhappy group. Scott was standing away from the others, and was still staring south, although he had stopped pacing. His shoulders were slumped, and there was a wisp of steam around his hood. They let him be and made camp some distance away from the Norwegian’s dark banner, freezing their fingers erecting the tent.

Once it was up, Wilson walked out and stood a pace behind Scott. He pulled some ice from his beard. ‘Sorry, Con.’

Scott spun about. ‘You are sorry? No, no, it is I who must apologise. I have brought you here with the promise of glory—’

Wilson stopped him. ‘We didn’t do it for glory.’

‘Taff did.’

‘Taff is not himself. We did it for you, Con.’

‘And I’ve let you down. Forestalled.’

‘We aren’t there yet.’ The flag was not the Pole, just an outer marker.

‘No. But they have been boxing the Pole, haven’t they? This is where they took one of the sightings to make sure they were correct.’

‘I imagine that is so,’ said Wilson. He felt like crying, too, not for himself, but for what Scott must be going through. He knew his recriminations would be deep and wide ranging and the object of his anger would be Captain Scott himself. ‘I think we must not let our brains overheat right now, Con.’

Scott looked around at the terrible bleakness that echoed perfectly the emptiness in his soul. ‘Great God, this is an awful place. And to have laboured here without priority.’ He shook his head.

‘We might as well stand on it, though, Con. We deserve Ninety Degrees.’

‘Yes. You are right. Tomorrow, we five will at least stand at the Pole.’

Scott wiped a mitten over his eyes and composed himself. Within a few moments, he had his bravest face on. He went to try to motivate his tired, cold men who had stuck with the Owner, only for him to reward them with pain, heartache and fury.

The Pole didn’t want them. The next day it blew even harder into their faces, ripping Bowers’s cheeks raw and chilling Taff’s hands so savagely they had to stop for an early lunch. The temperature sat around twenty below and the dragging seemed harder than ever. Even so, Scott tried not to let the misery of disappointment slow their pace, and they managed fourteen miles. Although they passed two small cairns, mocking them as they hauled by them, there were no further signs of their rivals when they camped.

So it wasn’t the day following the discovery of the flag but the day after—18 January—that they found the tent that confirmed their defeat. It was a neat, simple affair, with a single bamboo pole. A small Norwegian flag fluttered above the apex. Below it, lest there be any doubt about the tent’s provenance, was a pennant with the word ‘
Fram
’. Again, the whole area was marked by dog tracks.

Scott dipped inside and came out with a note, which he read: ‘Roald Amundsen. Olav Olavson Bjaaland. Hilmer Hanssen. Sverre H. Hassel. Oscar Wisting. Dated the sixteenth of December 1911.’

Bowers let out a groan. Taff Evans began to curse, till Wilson stopped him.

Weeks, Oates thought, not days. It was dated 16 December, but clearly they had been in the vicinity for some time before the letter was written. He and Wilson had been right, they had been beaten by a whole month. Not a whisker, not a tiny margin, but a huge chasm. A month! It looked as if the Norwegians had their heads screwed on when it came to dogs.

There was silence for a few minutes as they tried to come to terms with another disappointment. Their ears filled with the howl of wind, the snap of cloth and the roaring of blood. Five had certainly made it to the Pole first. Just the wrong five.

A month, Oates thought again. They had been and gone, were probably almost home now. Warm. And safe.

Scott cleared his throat. Oates couldn’t meet his eyes for fear of what they might see there. It wasn’t a race, he’d always said. But even so, whatever it was, they’d come second.

‘He has also left a letter for the King of Norway in case he failed on the return to the fram.’

‘So we are bloody postmen now, are we?’ Taff asked, sitting down on the ice and banging the ground with a fist.

‘Be brave, gentlemen. Even now we aren’t sure we are at the Pole yet,’ Scott reminded them.

‘At least we will make it by good British man-hauling. The nobler way,’ said Bowers. ‘Not the soft option like these Norskies.’

Scott smiled at the plucky little man.

They marched the six miles till they were sure they were within half a mile of the actual Pole and camped. Shivering with cold, they built a cairn and placed the Union Jack on it and took their photographs. None could raise much of a smile for the camera. Even Bowers looked forlorn and admitted his face was terribly sore. Scott applied Vaseline and they took one more set of images.

‘Where’s the glory?’ Taff kept muttering, as if he had expected to find something tangible by that name at ninety degrees south. ‘Where’s the fucking glory?’

‘That’s enough, PO,’ Scott snapped. Taff turned to muttering his question under his breath.

More sightings were taken and the five then trudged the remaining half-mile and left the flag on a piece of spare sledge wood, as close to the Pole as they could fix it. The Union Jack looked a poor, slighted thing.

‘Here ends our daydreams,’ said Scott to Wilson, watching the flag snap back and forth as the wind caught it. ‘Now we have to haul without the fuel of victory to urge us on. Sole author I, sole cause.’

Wilson could almost see the old gloom clouding Scott’s eyes. ‘We’ve done what we set out to, Con, remember that. It was never our intention to race anyone.’ He reached into his tunic and handed him a sad, bent cigarette and, after a few poor attempts, lit it.

Scott coughed. ‘My God, what a queer taste. Where did you get this?’

‘Had it all along. It’s taken on some of the reindeer, the paraffin and our sweat.’

‘Lovely. I’ll settle for a square of chocolate when we get back to the tent. Here, hand it round.’

Wilson took the cigarette and puffed on it. It wasn’t so bad, he thought. He walked across and handed it to Oates, making a mental note to examine Soldier’s face back at the tent. The end of his nose looked white and there was a bloom under his right eye. Frost-nips and bites were beginning to afflict them all. Oates was also standing at a peculiar angle, leaning on the leg that sported his old wound. It suddenly seemed a lot shorter than the other.

Wilson turned back to Scott, trying to sound positive. ‘Now for the run home. At least Bowers can pick up his skis.’

Scott stared north, where ice crystals fogged the world once more. The best part of eight hundred geographical miles away, with the Beardmore and the barrier between them, was Hut Point. And they would be hauling all the way. Although, he reminded himself, Teddy Evans would tell Meares or Dimitri to come south, beyond One Ton Camp, to meet them which would give them an extra margin. One Ton itself was six hundred miles distant, which sounded more manageable than eight. But if the weather intended to be as uncooperative as it had been so far, it was a slimmer margin than he had planned for. What he really needed was a mild autumn out on the barrier and a good pulling surface.