The Winter Pony (27 page)

As quickly as it had cleared, the sky filled in again. Clouds thick and gray descended on the Barrier, and snow came drifting down.

Captain Scott looked sad and beaten. He had lost four days: He should have been another sixty miles ahead, halfway up the glacier. He couldn’t wait any longer to get started again. He asked for Nobby to be led out so he could see how the surface would hold up. Mr. Oates said it was a wasted effort to untie the pony, but the captain insisted.

Nobby looked as tired as me. He dragged his feet through the snow, then sank to his belly as soon as he rounded the end of the pony wall. The fresh drifts were nearly as tall as Mr. Oates.

We couldn’t pull our sledges through snow like that. So the men settled down with cups of tea, and all of us waited. And we waited some more.

The coldness came back as the sun swooped toward the Barrier. A crust formed on the snow, and everything froze again. But still we waited. By the time the men had slept and woken, I was desperately hungry. I scraped at the snow to tell Mr. Oates I was looking for food.

Of course he understood. He came and rubbed my neck, trying to stir up a warmth inside me. “There’s no more,” he said. “Not a handful of forage, not a scrap of oil cake. I’m sorry, James Pigg. It’s gone.”

I couldn’t believe that Captain Scott would make us march without food, or that Mr. Oates would let him. But while the sun was climbing up again behind the clouds, the men got ready for the march.

Traces and harnesses were laid out. The tents were struck and packed onto sledges. The dogs came awake, and for them there was plenty of food.

Patrick fed me another piece of biscuit—just a little scrap. I knew he was offering his own food, but I couldn’t help eating it. I gobbled it greedily from his hand. Oh, I felt like a lucky pony, but not so lucky as Nobby. He got every one of Mr. Wilson’s biscuits—all five, one after the other. From the look on Mr. Wilson’s face, I guessed he was feeding his pony for the very last time.

The snow hadn’t frozen. It was still powdery and soft, in most places as deep as a pony’s belly. The men had to wear their skis to stay on top of it.

We had a dozen miles to go, and no more food to eat. I wondered if there was a cache of fodder waiting at the Beardmore. Or would that be the end for all of us?

The men led the way. The big sailor Taff Evans and his crew headed off with their sledge, laboring through the drifts. Captain Scott and Birdie Bowers took another, trying to make a trail for the ponies. They hauled their sledges half a mile, then came back without them. “Right. Let’s get the ponies moving,” said Captain Scott.

Snatcher was first. A crowd of men gathered behind his sledge and pushed it, while Mr. Oates pulled on the tether. Snatcher moved forward. He leapt up in his traces and plunged into snow to his waist. He had to struggle out of the
hole he’d made, only to sink into another. The men pushed and pulled and got him moving, then came down the line to help old Bones.

I was the last. I saw Bones get started, and Snippets and Nobby. They looked like sea lions wallowing over waves of snow. It was no easier for the men, already exhausted and covered in white. By the time they reached me, they were sullen. They were silent. I didn’t like the feelings that came off them, filling the air like smoke. There was bitterness and anger and dreadful impatience.

A man grabbed my halter. It was the Russian, the dog driver, and it didn’t matter to him that Patrick was there already. He just grabbed and pulled. He shouted at me in Russian, commanding me to move.

The one word brought back such terror. I remembered a hundred whippings that had begun with that word, a clubbing that had left me senseless, a bottle breaking on my shoulder.

The man shouted again. He wrenched on my halter.

Patrick pushed his arm away. “You leave him alone,” he snapped. “He’s my pony. I know how to handle him.”

For Patrick, I tried my best. I pulled with every bit of strength I had, while the men pushed the sledge from behind. My traces went slack, and I hurled myself at the harness. The sledge moved along, though it slithered to one side and tried to pull me over. But I kept my balance and struggled down the broken path of ponies and sledges and men.

“Good lad,” said Patrick. “Good lad, James Pigg.”

I wanted to keep going. But I couldn’t. The snow was too deep. I was too hungry, too tired and cold. I took three more steps, then collapsed in the snow.

I dragged Patrick with me. He fell forward and sideways, sprawling out across the snow.

The Russian hit me with a ski stick, a sharp smack across my flanks. It was more shocking than painful, but I shrieked. Patrick roared at the man: “Get away!” Then Captain Scott was there, standing over us on his skis, looking down with his old look of worry and care.

I knew he would end the march right there. He would tell the men to pitch the tents, to rebuild the wall. He would send Mr. Meares with his dogs to fetch the fodder we’d left behind, and we’d eat our fill and everything would be all right. He would make new snowshoes that would hold us up with their magic, and we would glide across the snow as though it was grass and clover.

But he didn’t do any of that. He looked down at Patrick and said, quite coldly, “If the animal won’t move, you’ll have to drive him.”

Patrick was on his knees beside me. He looked back at the captain as though he didn’t understand.

“Do whatever it takes. Just get him moving,” said Captain Scott. “The sooner it’s over, the better.” He had the points of his sticks resting on his skis, leaning his weight on the handles. “We have to get out of this …” He gestured with one of the sticks, sweeping the point in an arc. “This slough of despair.”

The Russian grabbed my halter and hauled me up. He twisted on the leather, forcing me backward. “Up! Up!” he shouted in Russian. Patrick looked terribly sad, but he didn’t try to stop him. Captain Scott watched with an expression that was more disgust than satisfaction, then turned his skis around and went off along the line.

From ahead came the smack of leather, the frightened squeal of a pony. I saw Snippets trying to leap through the snow, a man lashing his shoulders with a harness strap. The Russian raised his hand and brought the ski stick whistling down onto my back. I struggled up, trying to watch Patrick. But he looked into my eyes for an instant, then turned away.

A slough of despair
. The captain had the right words exactly. The Barrier was more a bog than a snowfield, and we mired in it, everyone of us. The soft snow dragged us down like quicksand and held us in place as we tried to move forward. It swallowed the sledges until the men had to lever them out. And through the air flew the shouts of men, the sound of ponies screaming.

I saw Mr. Oates strike at Snippets with a tether rope—again and again—as the pony wallowed on his knees. I saw Cherry hitting Bones so hard that his glass eyes were flung askew. And even Patrick lashed me with a tether.

They didn’t beat us with the cruel pleasure of my old Russian masters. They didn’t leer as they did it. They didn’t laugh. But they did it. They hit us; they shouted; they drove us along.

I felt betrayed.

For the first time in my life, I wished I was a dog. Maybe Captain Scott wished for it to, because this was a place that was meant for dogs, not for ponies. Everyone knew it, but nobody said it.

For twelve hours we floundered and struggled and plunged
through the snow. We didn’t stop for lunch; there
was
no lunch. Patrick stuffed a bit of old biscuit in my mouth as I lay trembling in the snow. But he yanked on my tether before I could eat, and it fell out of my mouth as he tugged me forward. When I tried to reach it, he pulled my head around. “Come on. Get up!” he shouted, and someone strapped me from behind. I had to leave the biscuit lying on the snow. It was nibbled around the edges—a people’s biscuit—left forever on the Barrier.

The white haze was thick all around us for most of the day. It made shadows of Snatcher and Snippets, with shadow men whipping them on. It made their cries seem softer. Then it cleared very quickly, and I saw them distinct and sharp against the snowy slope of the Gateway. One was lunging at his harness, his sledge half buried. The other had sunk to his belly, and two men were trying to haul him up.

The mountains were close around us, the Beardmore crawling up between them. I thought again that they didn’t want us there, that they hated Captain Scott. They had piled the snow in front of him; they had turned the Barrier into a swamp. But still he’d forced us through it, right to the foot of the Gateway.

The surface was hard and windblown there. We stood again on top of the snow, breathless and wheezing. Patrick reached out to pet me. I shied away from the movement, and that put such an awful look in his eyes that I wished I hadn’t seen it.

“It’s all right. It’s over now,” he said. He moved his hand more slowly. But still I closed my eyes until I felt his fingers in my forelocks. “You’re a good lad, James Pigg,” he whispered.

We marched in a ragged line toward the mountain, every pony wheezing, every man hunched over. My shadow walked beside me, our hooves stuck together. It had the long, thin legs of a racehorse, a neck like a swan’s, but its ears were as tall as a rabbit’s. Patrick’s shadow led my shadow, as though four of us walked together.

Right ahead on the blue top of the Beardmore, where it swept to the right between the great pillars of the Gateway, I saw three ponies walking. They weren’t the gray and ghostly things I’d seen in the blizzard but sharp little figures high on the ice, white against the blue. They walked on a glaring whiteness, in the warmth of full sunlight, but they had no shadows beside them.

I watched the distant ponies pass beyond the great pillar of rock and ice. Then Captain Scott blew his whistle, and we came to the end of the march. We turned to the left one by one, as we had done so many times before. But the men didn’t set to work building a pony wall, and they didn’t stretch out a picket line. Captain Scott nodded to Mr. Oates, who went away and got his pistol.

He took Snatcher first. The rest of us stood with our handlers, so tired now that we could barely stand. Patrick kept rubbing my nose. He started talking to me, telling me about all the things we’d seen.

“Do you remember the island?” he asked. “That’s the first place I saw you, James Pigg. Where that lady took a fancy to you; do you remember that? She’d be proud to see you now, I think.”

I heard the bang of the pistol. Mr. Oates came trudging back for Snippets.

“Then we had that long voyage. Do you remember that?” Patrick sniffed. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “You weren’t too keen on the sea, were you, lad? That terrible storm; do you remember? I don’t mind telling you now, James Pigg. I was badly afraid.”

The second shot rang out. Snippets made a sound like a sob as he fell.

Patrick’s hand shook as he kept stroking my ears. “You were so happy to get ashore. I remember how you rolled in the snow. And the crevasse; do you remember that?” He half laughed and half sobbed. “We nearly lost you down there.”

Mr. Oates took Bones away. The big pony went slowly, a soft snort with each step.

“And there was that time on the ice with the whales all around us,” said Patrick. “And all those poor ponies. They called you a crock; but you were never a crock.”

There was another shot. Patrick held me firmly, so I couldn’t turn my head. By the shaking of his hands, I guessed that old Bones didn’t die right away. I heard the thud as he fell, then the scrape of hooves in the snow.

“And the winter. That was a long time for you to stand in a stable,” said Patrick. “And you saved my life; do you remember? When we lost our way, you led me back to the hut. Maybe you meant to; I’ll never know.”

Mr. Oates took Nobby. The pony’s handler turned away, the smell of sadness very thick around him.

“You nearly died of the colic.” Patrick combed my forelock the way I liked so much. His tears were freezing in the corners of his eyes, making icicles on his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. I’m sorry, James Pigg.”