by Cormac James
They made their road through the rubble and waste. By noon it was all they could do to keep upright, but for another eight hours that day they drove on. It is far worse than I ever conceived, he wrote. I have always considered myself ruthlessly honest, the enemy of deluded hope, yet today’s landscape has showed me my mistake. Contrary to everything I ever believed, I must consider that until now I have been an optimist.
That night he studied the faces. They were now the faces of older men. A fine white dust had found wrinkles everywhere. Beards and eyebrows and lashes all were stiff and grey. They lay hugged one to the other in their common bag. They would have put her and the boy in the middle, he supposed, with the best furs and the hot-water flasks.
Men’s strength already impaired, he wrote. He and DeHaven lay side by side, as they now did every night. In his own journal, DeHaven began to write. With this wind, it was too cold to talk outside.
More rations, DeHaven wrote.
Too soon. Too slow, wrote Morgan.
False economy. Failing men = slower progress = more rations consumed.
On the other side of him, Daly was squirming ridiculously. He was not looking for sympathy, Morgan knew. He was flexing his muscles, moving his limbs, trying to keep them alive.
As they slept the false flush of the hot food drained away, and the cold came soaking up out of the ground, to claim them. About one o’clock Morgan sat up and lit a candle. Some of the men were shaking mechanically, like men asleep on a moving train. The tent walls looked as stiff as card. He dared not look at the thermometer, but the severe cold brought a strange sense of relief. He felt justified, vindicated. He was right to have left them behind.
Several times already he had dreamed the boy was out here with them, living as they did. He saw the scene: he’d woken suddenly, wondering was the boy breathing, was he smothered, was he stiff. In the tent’s twilight he found the little head, pulled away a flap that had fallen on it. The lips looked blue. He leant closer, held his breath, but it was impossible to hear anything over the general labour. He brought the flame nearer, held it right up to the mouth. The flame wavered and settled, then wavered again.
He kicked Cabot awake. Grog, he whispered. It was a voice with ragged edges, close to tears.
He listened to the man fumbling with the matches. One by one, the terrified hands managed to light all the wicks.
We were in very real danger of freezing, he wrote. We were in mortal danger of falling into a sleep from which we should never wake. We were cold almost to the core. I told Cabot I wanted it scalding. I told him I wanted it steeled with rum.
In his dream, he dipped his finger in it, rubbed it on the boy’s lips, as they had wet with fine wine the lips of the newborn kings of France.
25th May
All morning a bear tracked them. No man was to so much as turn his head, Morgan ordered, even if she came alongside. He wanted to encourage an attack. But the next time he looked, she’d fallen back, was almost out of sight.
Before he could stop the man, Cabot was out of the traces and striding back the way they’d come. Immediately, the bear halted her retreat.
Then she was bounding towards them, towards Cabot, at about four hundred yards. And still the man kept striding on to meet her.
Hold, Morgan told the guns.
Remind me which one is Cabot, said DeHaven.
He’s the big mass of fur.
She was sprinting now.
Hold, Morgan said again.
Afterwards, they watched as she tried to lift herself up off the snow. They laid into her with their rifle-butts, about the head.
Like a cook testing a cake, Cabot eased his carving knife into the gut. Looking on, the men were stepping from foot to foot in a bizarre dressage, to spare their feet. He cut out the tongue, and split her from crotch to thrapple with the axe. The stomach was empty. They left the offal steaming and blubbering on the ice. The birds had already heard the news.
The liver is the best part, Morgan told them, but not a man was willing to try. So he forced himself, to give the example. A minute later he was retching grandly onto the ice a yard from the tent door.
There he was, on his hands and knees, the steam of his own sick rising up into his face. He raked up a handful of clean snow, pushed it into his mouth, chewed it round, spat it out.
Commander Morgan, he said out loud. At your service.
For four days solid, breakfast, dinner and supper, they ate nothing else. Not one man liked it and not one man complained. At supper on the third day, DeHaven told the tent:
He who suffers most in the Arctic is the man with a refined palate.
Only Morgan looked up from his tin. The others were too busy eating, seemed not to have heard. Morgan knew he had only a few seconds to speak. Afterwards, the moment would be gone, and their interminable evening resume.
I am not altogether sure I can agree with you, Doctor, he said.
DeHaven stirred his hand in the air. He was giving his friend permission to make a fool of himself.
For example, Morgan said, Arctic hare I personally find not merely inoffensive, but quite as appetizing as pheasant, as I remember it.
Perfect proof, DeHaven said, that you’ve been away too long.
You’re saying memory deceives?
Isn’t that its prime purpose?
But Morgan refused to take the bait. The marrow of the musk ox, you must admit, is a great treat, he said. From what I remember, these boys here nearly came to blows over it, last time round.
They’d eat rotten offal if sufficiently starved, DeHaven said. Wouldn’t you Banes?
Banes considered him hatefully, the man who worked so hard to keep them all in good hauling health.
Eat a bloody lizard in India, one time, he said. Out in the desert. Eyes and all and glad to get them. Warn’t nothing else.
And Cabot’s whale chumps in red wine. Close your eyes and you’d take it for boeuf à la Bourguignonne. You’d almost think you were back in Paris, wouldn’t you, Geoff?
Bear, DeHaven said. It was a glove thrown down. Tell us how delicious bear can be.
Bear, I will concede, is an acquired taste.
Acquired or imposed? Leask put in.
This was good. They were listening. Some were even interested now.
Necessity is a fine gravy, of course, Morgan said.
The others sat chewing their lumps of meat. It might as well have been opium, Morgan thought. The conversation had lifted the heads a few minutes, but they were withdrawing again, one by one, each to his own private world. Cabot had closed his eyes just for a moment, nodded off, but did not topple. He sat propped inside the hard shell of his coat.
30th May
Cabot was holding a canvas boot in the air over the lamp, turning it painfully slow. The night before, he had forgotten to take them with him into the bag, and now they were frozen. One by one, the drops were sucked down into the flame.
Higher, Morgan said. That’s the last pair you have.
His own were starting to crack at the folds, like his hands and his
feet. He rubbed them all with the same fat. Most of the other boots were as bad. They would have to be renewed. They would have to start cutting up the sail.
While they packed up the boat, Morgan walked out a little way alone. Dotted here and there on the ice were banks of bloody steam. Finally he let his eyes settle on a smudge due south, trying to decide what it deserved. He would have to be wary, he knew. In this light, in this landscape, everything you stared at quickly came to life.
They had five minutes every hour to breathe, and to take a dose of rum. They knew the ritual by now. As soon as he piped them down, they all gathered in a tight circle in the lee of the boat. Each man in turn stepped into the centre, slipped his mask, raised his face, and opened wide his mouth. As he brought the bottle close, Morgan’s hands trembled – as though the danger were all for him. But he enjoyed the trust. If flesh and tin touched for even an instant, they would have to be ripped apart.
Starting again after lunch, he wrote, I could not help but notice the bizarre efforts employed by Cabot in his attempts to walk. At first I wondered whether this might not be an unwelcome effect of the severe cold combined with the quantities of rum, which in our deadened state we drink down like milk. This was wishful thinking, of a sort. Cabot’s feet were obviously freezing. He could barely stand, yet somehow the man managed to stagger forward. His knees would not bend. He was like a man walking on stilts – falling forward beautifully slow, one step at a time, rolling his hips to always get the next leg in front of him, left and right, to prop himself up.
Today I piped them down early, he wrote, out of consideration for Cabot. We cut off his boots and for a full hour all hands were engaged in vigorously rubbing his legs and his feet. The things were white and waxy halfway to the knees. With a courage and dignity I confess I did not expect of the man, he did not much complain.
Afterwards Cabot lay there in silence. Morgan had him served first, but he barely looked at his food. With a kind of cruelty, a coolness, he watched the others chew. It was as though he now knew something they did not.
1st June
June 1st. I am beginning to suspect my charts, my compass, and my plan. We are now almost two weeks hauling without the first hint of land. It did not particularly matter. He did not have to justify his course. The shortest way to land or open water had to be due south.
Saturday 2nd. That the ground slopes upwards in every direction, is an impression many of us share.
Tuesday 5th. Another difficult march, with no visible change. It is as though day after day we wake to find ourselves returned to the same point of departure, to travel all day every day over the same ground.
The drift came roaring along the surface, wave after wave, blowing their legs out from under them. Had they been any length of time at all on their march, he would have ordered them down. Eyes closed, joined and spaced by the frozen traces, they staggered on. Morgan their leader, with his long white cane, always sounding for the next trap. They were fat and featureless, silted up. The chests were heaving against the weight. The veils crackling with ice. Leaning forward preposterously, whenever they had to stop.
Six hours later, they planted the tent as best they could on the stone-hard ice, crawled inside, lit the lamp. They watched Cabot prying away bits of the block, dropping them into the pot. It was like splitting shale. Afterwards, in total silence, they stared at the conjuror. Evening worship, DeHaven called it. One by one, he inspected the corns and the blisters, the noses and ears. Their mouths were watering. Morgan thought he saw tears in Cabot’s eyes. The hunger was worse now than it had ever been. Morgan himself had stomach cramps. The smell of meat filled the air.
You’d eat bear now, I wager, Mr Banes, DeHaven said.
A bear, said Daly.
Would you eat it raw? Would you eat the liver?
Banes did not answer. The bodies were beginning to drip and steam. That day the wind had shrivelled further the remains of their purpose, their defiance, their hate. They lay there watching the conjuror, watching Cabot, waiting for the first sign that the food was nearly done. Morgan lay in his bag like the rest, cursing his stupid fingers, forcing himself to write. To protect our eyes from the general brightness, and from the frozen particles hurled at us by the wind, we are now obliged to advance almost entirely blindfolded, he wrote. ‘Advance.’ He was smiling grimly even as the word drained from his pen. Eyes shut or blinded, we shuffle forward in total obscurity, arms outstretched to meet the innumerable obstacles set in our way.
He lay in the bag between Cabot and DeHaven, wondering where he would find the strength. Cabot’s lips were murmuring again. Under the eyelids, great scenes were taking place. Harmless revels, Morgan told himself. They were all breathing heavily, still at work. They were beasts of burden. At full rations, they had enough for perhaps another month.
6th June
The men were marching on the spot, like soldiers on the stage. As usual, their boots were stiff as tin, and they were all desperate to be on the move. Already the drift had them shapeless. There was an occasional half-hearted effort to shake it off. The last bag was stuffed under the tarp. They leaned into the weight, leaned out over the frozen sea. I have several times now lightened the load, he wrote, yet it feels heavier at every start. The morning is always the worst, I tell them, but I wonder is this true. As soon as joints and lungs warm up, he told himself, the feet will find their slot. As though a party had preceded them, dragging the same sledge, the runners leaving two tracks the same depth, the same width apart. Sooner or later, he promised himself, they would slide into line. The track was out there, laid down in advance.
Every so often, with a great cough, an entire drift ceded under the weight of the boat. A good hint there was open water locally, he announced. Higher temperature, thinner ice, softer snow. It was good news, he told them, trying to trade.
By late morning he was so exhausted he felt quite drunk. Relentlessly, his feet fell into place. He was searching for a rhythm to help him forget the fatigue, the constant nagging strain, the needless shock of every step. Lulling him into a kind of half-sleep. His mind become soft and malleable, unbraked, spinning loose and free. Where it imposed nothing and did not defend itself.
About eleven the wind hoisted the drapes to show what lay ahead. Line after line of waves, frozen at full tilt. They would have to hack a way through it, by shovel and pick. Beside him, Cabot was already bent over, hands on his knees, scrounging for breath. The sweat was dripping from his face down into the snow.
I can’t, Cabot said.
Morgan believed him. Both his own shoulders were raw.
I had hoped the daily march would eventually inure us to fatigue, he wrote, or make it sufficiently familiar that we could accept it callously. This idea, like so many others, has proved a fantasy, bred and nourished by other men’s accounts of hardship, and my own willingness to believe.
The next morning, when Morgan left the tent to empty his bladder, Cabot crawled out after him. For the past two days, Morgan had refused to notice the man’s limp. Now that limp was on display.
What is it, Cabot?
My foot.
What about it?
It is not in such good shape.
How so? You’re standing on it now, aren’t you?
> It’s blown up, very big.
So are mine. What do you want me to do about it?
Well, it’s because today I can’t quite put my boot.
Morgan had so far avoided looking at the thing. He looked at it now. It was a fat parcel of fox-skin.
So, you let it get bitten and didn’t tell anyone, is that it?
Yes.
And now you want us to put you in the boat and haul you along like the Queen of Sheba, is that it?
No.
You want us to sit around here eating our way through the last of the food, until it suits you a little better to go on?
No.
You want to be left behind?
No.
You want Papa to carry you on his shoulders, is that it?
Non.
What is it you want, then? You want to be nice and snug back in the ship with Kitty and Tommy and all the rest of them, is that it? You want me to wave my magic wand? You want everything the way it was before?
Cabot didn’t answer.
Is there anything else?
No, sir.
Very good then, Morgan said.
10th June
Morgan was lying on his back, blindfolded.
Tuck your hands inside your trousers, DeHaven ordered him.
They watched the gentle struggle inside the bag, and DeHaven nodded to the man kneeling on each side. They leaned forward and leaned into it, all their weight, to hold him down.
DeHaven was kneeling behind the head. Ready? he said.
No.
