Death on the ice, p.47
Death on the Ice, page 47
Wilson nodded. ‘Purely medicinal.’
‘Of course, doctor. Purely medicinal.’
Wilson found the flask and poured a measure. He handed him not more than a thimble full while he prepared the injection, but Oates cherished every drop.
‘Titus, you might want to cut your sleeping bag open at the base.’
‘Why?’
‘The feet will only hurt when they warm up.’
‘I’ve noticed that.’
‘Keep them chilled till we can do something about them.’
‘Right-o,’ said Oates with a forced gaiety.
Wilson clapped him on the shoulder and moved away, hiding the concern eating at his stomach.
Later that night, with the thermometer plunging and a vile wind tugging at the tent, Scott rolled close to Wilson.
‘Your own feet aren’t too good, Bill. You must take care of yourself, too.’
‘I will, Con.’
‘Why are we losing condition so quickly? You are skin and bone.’
‘I don’t know, Con, I really don’t. Could it have been the altitude?’
‘Perhaps.’ He thought for a moment. Shackleton, too, had starved on his return. ‘What about Soldier’s feet? Are they as bad as they look and smell?’
Wilson looked over but Oates was, as far as he could make out, asleep. ‘Worse, Con. It’s gangrene.’
The storm blasted into the tent when Dimitri crawled inside. He rapidly sealed the entrance again and accepted the hot tea from Cherry. ‘Thank you.’
Cherry wiped the last of the moisture from his glasses. At least while he cooked the kaleidoscope of ice crystals on his lenses melted. As he had expected, his frozen spectacles had bedevilled his attempts at navigation. ‘How is it out there?’
‘As you say, thick as a hedge,’ said Dimitri. He took a sip of the drink, shivering hard. The cold was getting to him. They had no minimum thermometer, so could only guess at night-time temperatures. But Cherry had seen the mercury at -38 the night before, just as he was turning in at around eight. It had probably dipped well below that. ‘Cherry, the dogs are suffering.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘They are losing their coats. Stareek has stopped eating. I think Cigan is close to finished. We should go back.’
‘The polar party are out there somewhere,’ he reminded Dimitri. ‘Possibly in the same conditions.’
Dimitri nodded. ‘We have had a blizzard for four days now. They must have had it too. If they are on the barrier.’
It was inconceivable they were still on the Beardmore. ‘They will be by now, surely.’
‘Yes. So they are not moving. Not coming. Just laid up, sensible. Or perhaps they have passed us already. It’s possible. But no matter what, we must leave ourselves eight days’ food in reserve to get us back.’
Cherry did a quick calculation. They had arrived at One Ton on 4 March, but the conditions were such they had used more human and dog rations than planned. ‘We have to turn for home on the tenth.’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
Cherry was concerned about the five men out there, although he consoled himself with the thought that the chances were they were holed up, not too far away. He was well aware they were well provisioned with food and paraffin, and with the likes of Evans and Birdie pulling—and Wilson’s calm head—they would easily make the sixty or seventy miles between depots.
He had shared that terrible winter journey with Wilson and Bowers, forging a bond that could never be broken. Cherry knew they weren’t quitters. And Scott had always said they had planned everything so that they didn’t need the dogs beyond resupplying One Ton Camp. Still, he was relieved it wasn’t him struggling to make it home.
No matter how much he would like to wait and see his old comrades, he had no choice but to agree with Dimitri. There had been no biscuits for the animals cached at One Ton. As Atch had warned, if he went further south, they’d have to kill some dogs to feed the others. Cherry could just imagine the wigging Scott would give him about that next season. Still, he found himself kneading his hands, his stomach sick with his indecision. ‘We go back even if they don’t show?’
Dimitri nodded. The tea had barely warmed him and he began to cough, the pannikin falling from his hands. His right side was becoming numb, and it was hard to grip anything. It wasn’t only the dogs that were going downhill, he knew; his chest hurt, his arm was partially paralysed, and his fingers were disintegrating. ‘Even if they don’t show.’
There were so many different kinds of pain, Oates felt that he was a walking compendium. Hot, cold, shooting, throbbing, electrical, grinding. It had invaded his head, too, a great regimental drum thumping away, so severe he had to close his eyes. It was there even during the fitful sleep, there when Oates woke in the morning to that bitter, bitter cold.
He could see the impatience in the others as he took nearly two hours to get dressed, his stiff, bloated limbs refusing to speed up, his feet stabbing with every move. They tried their best to hide their irritation, especially Wilson, but by the time he had pulled on his socks and finnesko—he had been forced to slit the new ones so he could get his ballooned feet into them—the meagre warmth of breakfast had gone. They would start cold, endure more cold, and then camp cold. The pemmican was eaten barely warmed; the tiny amount of remaining fuel was used to melt ice for tea or cocoa, drunk tepid.
And now he couldn’t pull his ski boots on. All he could do was hobble alongside the sledge, head down, listening to the others strain like spent nags. Mt Hooper had proved another disaster. Someone had riffled the supplies on their way back and the fuel was a trickle. There had been no resupply of the meagre depot. ‘A terrible jumble,’ Scott had said.
Oates doubted they were making one mile an hour, no more than six miles in a day. They were fifty-five miles from One Ton, with a week’s supply of food left at most. Even Oates’s poor arithmetic told him they were going to be twelve or thirteen miles short. Why were they going on?
Scott turned and looked at the stumbling figure behind the sledge. He was walking with a pronounced limp, favouring the leg with the old bullet wound. Soldier was in worse shape than any of his ponies had been at the end.
‘Bill,’ asked Scott as they trudged on, ‘what we discussed after breakfast?’
Wilson shook his head vigorously. ‘As I said then. I am against it.’
‘You are for suffering, then?’
‘It is unChristian.’
Scott didn’t speak for a few minutes, rehearsing his argument as they tramped on. ‘Longinus?’ he finally asked.
Wilson turned to look at Scott. The Owner’s face was thin, and disfigured by sores and blisters, but the expression was still dogged and determined. ‘The Spear of Destiny?’
‘Yes, did Longinus not shorten our Lord’s suffering on the cross with a lance? Was that not a noble thing for a Roman to do?’
Wilson didn’t feel he had the intellect left for an exhaustive answer. When he tried to think, food invaded his thoughts. He was beginning to suffer from phantom aromas. That day, he could smell roasting grouse. ‘Jesus was already dead.’
‘Surely it was a way of making sure he suffered no more,’ insisted Scott. ‘Or else, why bother?’
‘Possibly.’ Wilson looked ahead at the monochromatic canvas of the barrier, his eyes searching in vain for some feature to latch on to, a point of interest, a shadow, but there was only a blank dumbness. Strange, he had thought black the colour of Godlessness. Now he knew otherwise. ‘Perhaps Melville was right.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So, Bill, how many tablets do you have?’
Wilson caught the whiff of grouse again, and felt saliva flow and his stomach rumble. ‘About a hundred and twenty, all told.’
‘Thirty each,’ said Scott.
‘Yes.’
Scott looked back at Oates, his feet dragging through the woolly snow crystals. It was too much effort for him to lift them now.
‘His nose is frostbitten.’
‘I saw.’
‘Poor Soldier. He knows he’s a hindrance.’
‘He’s a fighter, Con. He asked me what his chances are this morning.’
‘What did you say to that?’
Wilson couldn’t speak for a while, his wind gone. When they had some assistance in the sail and his breath returned he said: ‘I told him I didn’t know. That it was in God’s hands. But he knows the truth. As we all do.’
‘If we were fit, we’d make it, Bill.’
‘I know that, Con. Such luck we’ve had. Such luck.’
‘Oh for Shackleton’s Irish fortune.’ Scott watched Birdie’s back for a while, the tired plod of his short legs. He had stopped speaking now; he and Oates were silent most of the time, lost in their gloomy thoughts. ‘Bill, I think you should issue it. Let each man decide.’
‘Under protest.’
‘Protest noted, Bill.’
‘Very well, Con. I’ll give the opium tablets out as soon as we have pitched tent.’
Seventy-six
London, March 1912
THE FIRST SEA LORD, Admiral Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman, requested he be sat next to Mrs Scott at the luncheon. The admiral was to step down from his position and it was one of a series of dinners at the Greenwich Naval College in his honour. Kathleen had been brought downriver by launch; she was sorry Peter could not be there to see the wonderful buildings and the pageantry of the welcome. But he had been suffering a strange fever for a week now, and she was concerned the chill of the Thames in winter might make it worse.
‘Are you worried?’ Sir Francis asked after they had sat down. ‘That there is no news.’
‘Worried? Not a scrap. I would not expect any, not till Terra Nova docks in New Zealand, and that could be weeks yet. In fact, last year Bill Wilson wrote to his wife saying they might even miss the ship.’
‘Really? Harry Pennell would leave before word of their success reached the ship?’
‘Yes. If they are late back, rather than risk Terra Nova being frozen in for the winter. So, I don’t think there is much to worry about.’
‘Your husband is a fine man, Mrs Scott.’
‘I know it.’
‘And no word from the Norwegian?’
She thought, for a second, he meant Nansen. They had written to each other since Berlin, his letters keeping her amused. He liked to proclaim his love in flowery terms, but he had accepted that nothing physical would happen between them. He was an adorable man in many ways. She sometimes felt guilty about liking him so much. But was it so very old fashioned for two people to simply enjoy each other’s company? ‘Oh, Amundsen. No. Nothing.’
It was over coffee that the news arrived, passed from waiter to guest, till the room buzzed.
‘What is it?’ Sir Francis asked his neighbour, a young lieutenant.
‘Well, Chinese whispers, really. It seems Amundsen is in Hobart.’
‘Tasmania?’
‘Yes,’ said the lieutenant. ‘He says categorically Scott reached the pole. Well done, Mrs Scott.’
‘Brave-o,’ said Sir Francis.
She felt a giddy flush of relief before the first doubts set in. ‘But he could only know that if Con got there first, and he second, surely’
‘I s’pose,’ said Sir Francis.
‘Then surely we would have heard from Con by now.’
‘True.’
Kathleen shook her head, determined not to be swept up by conjecture or bowled over by false hope. ‘There’s something not quite right.’
‘You think so? Don’t fret,’ advised Sir Francis. ‘You know how unreliable cables can be.’
‘Yes. But nonetheless.’ She stood and Sir Francis got to his feet. ‘If you will excuse me. I think I should be with Peter.’
There were reporters at the door, shouting at her, vying for an exclusive, and once she was inside they continued to hammer at the windows.
She ordered the drapes pulled, the telephone unplugged, and retreated upstairs. Peter was in bed, looking stronger. His forehead felt cooler and she took his temperature. Ninety-nine degrees.
‘Is Daddy home?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Who are those people downstairs?’
‘Just some over-excited reporters.’
‘Is he in the papers?’
‘He will be, Peter. He will be.’
The cable from Nansen arrived in the evening, confirming her suspicions.
AMUNDSEN MADE POLE. NO SIGN OF SCOTT SINCE JANUARY. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES FROM POLE. MY THOUGHTS WITH YOU.
Of course, Nansen would be one of the first on the planet to hear any despatch about the Pole. The sighting must have meant Terra Nova had come north again with the news about him being 150 miles away.
She closed her eyes, imagining how crushing a disappointment it would be for Con to find the Norwegians had primacy. But he would bounce back, she was sure. One hundred and fifty miles short in January? That was very late in the season. He was certain to have missed Terra Nova, which meant another winter on the ice. She sent a reply to Nansen for protocol’s sake, one she didn’t really feel. Hurray for Norway anyway.
Kathleen read to Peter at bedtime, a chapter from Walter Scott, whom the boy always insisted must be a relative.
‘Is Amundsen a good man?’ he asked when she told him the news about the Pole.
‘Yes. I think he probably is.’
‘I think both Amundsen and Daddy made the Pole. Daddy has stopped working now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He is resting.’
‘Yes, I’m sure he is. Goodnight.’
Peter’s strange turn of phrase alarmed Kathleen. She tucked him up and went downstairs to consult her diary and make arrangements. It was a long way off yet, but she had decided that she would travel to New Zealand, via America, and be there to meet Captain Scott when he returned from the Pole the following year.
Seventy-seven
17 March 1912
THE WHITE-HOT STABBING in his legs caused Oates to cry out as he woke up. It had been so bad on the last march he had bitten into his hand; the teeth marks were clearly visible. Nothing about him was healing, apparently. As Wilson had suggested, he had cut the bottom out of his sleeping bag to keep his frostbitten feet exposed, so that they would not thaw. But the morning temperature was high enough to cause him bursts of agony around his ankles and what was left of his toes.
He looked around at the three grey, gaunt faces and the red, sunken eyes that stared back at him. The spectral green light of the tent, once so comforting, made them look jaundiced. Blisters were tracked across their faces and lips were swollen, scabbed and fissured. An ice rime from their freezing breath deposited crystals over their face and hair. Their vocal faculties, the external machinery for speech—lips, jaws and tongues—had all been damaged. Each man spoke as if he had been born with an impediment.
Oates cleared the frost from his mouth. ‘Sorry. I thought. I might not wake at all. Hoped.’ The words came thick and slow, such was the effort to form them. Sentences were punctuated with short gasps for breath. ‘I bet you hoped so. Too.’
‘Nonsense. A few more days’ effort, Soldier,’ said Scott. ‘Soon as the blizzard goes, we march on.’
‘You go on. I haven’t another march left in me.’
‘You must have.’
‘No. None.’ He pulled a leg from the bag and rolled down the sock, just to show how the necrosis had progressed up his calf. The others held their breath and glanced away till it was covered again.
Scott looked over at Wilson and nodded. It was time.
Wilson carefully opened his medical bag and extracted the four tubes. He had already counted them out, so each man had enough to end his suffering if he wished.
They all knew what lay in store now. They were cooking their final supplies with a tiny spirit lamp and a blizzard had surrounded the tent once more. The outside world was a howling maelstrom. Starvation was looming.
‘Just in case,’ said Wilson as he passed the phial to Oates.
Soldier put up his hands, black and swollen like his feet. ‘Can’t even do that without help. You should have left me.’
He had offered to stay on the ice in his sleeping bag while the others marched on. Scott had all but dragged him the next few miles to camp. ‘We couldn’t do that,’ said Bowers with some difficulty. ‘Nobody gets left behind.’
‘What about Taff?’ Oates asked. ‘We left him behind when his skis gave trouble.’
There was a guilty silence. They had indeed carried on without him for a short while before pitching camp, before returning for him.
‘Taff had gone in the head,’ said Bowers eventually. ‘You know that.’
Oates looked at the three men, from one to the other. None was in good condition, but he was the worst by some margin. His feet and hands useless, his brain as slow as a one year old’s, although not as demented as Taff’s had been. His body was worse, though. To his shame, Wilson had spoon-fed him the previous night, even though the doctor was in serious pain from his feet and a torn tendon himself.
‘Do you need help with them, Soldier?’ asked Scott, picking up his own tube of pills.
‘Con,’ Wilson objected.
‘No, skipper, I don’t need help.’
Oates lunged forward and managed to get on to all fours. The pressure on his bones caused him agony and his breath came in short gasps.
‘What are you doing?’ Scott asked.
‘Just going. Outside.’
‘It’s minus forty,’ said Wilson, thinking Titus was answering a call of nature. ‘Perhaps less. Do it in your britches. Or I’ll give you a hand. There’s a blizzard, man.’
Oates laughed. ‘Then I may be some time.’
‘No, Soldier. It’s too late for that. It’ll make no difference, Titus,’ said Bowers, stirring himself, as if he only just realised what was about to happen. ‘Not to us. Don’t do it for us.’
‘Let me do it. For myself.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think my regiment … will be proud of me?’
‘I do,’ said Scott.
