The White South

by Hammond Innes

  The night it stopped snowing we smoked our last cigarette. In the grey light of morning I wrote in my log: There is now no hope and no reason to go on. The others, I think, realise this now. I shall not abandon Gerda. There is no point.

  We made an early start, wishing to take full advantage of what little energy we had been able to store up by lying still. For the first time there were no sledge tracks running out ahead of us. The snow was feet deep. I made Gerda put on the skis. The snow was crisp and fairly firm and we moved off with a feeling almost of cheerfulness. And round the first snow hillock we came upon the trampled snow of a camp. It had been evacuated that morning, for beyond the camp, sledge and ski tracks marked the new snow, stretching out ahead of us again and disappearing round a cornice of blue, snow-free ice. “Bland?” Gerda asked as she stopped beside me.

  I nodded. So I really had heard voices that night the blizzard started. It was incredible. For three days we’d been camped within a hundred yards of Bland and his party and not known it. “They’re probably not more than an hour ahead of us,” I said.

  “What will happen when we catch them up?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered her. “I don’t think it matters much.” I didn’t think there was much chance of our catching up with them. There were three of them to pull the sledge, and both Bland and Vaksdal were big men.

  “Perhaps we should strike away from their tracks,” she suggested.

  But I shook my head. “They’re travelling roughly in the direction we decided on. The going is easier for us if we follow their tracks.”

  So we went on, following the sledge marks through the fresh snow. Kalstad and I pulled the sledge and Gerda kept up with us easily on the skis. For two or three hours we made good progress. But about midday the sun came through. The glare was frightful and soon the snow began to soften and the going became harder as our boots broke through the surface crust. In some of the drifts we struggled forward through sifting snow that was well over our knees and had the consistency of rice grain. It took too much of our small reserve of energy and I made camp.

  When darkness fell the stars came out in a clear, frozen night. It was terribly cold and none of us slept very well. The cold seemed to eat into our under-nourished bodies. Gerda suffered agonies of pain in her stomach and Kalstad complained of frost-bite due to the fact that his boots, worn by the ice, were no longer water-tight.

  The next morning was cold and cheerless with low cloud and a biting wind out of the south. We were late in starting. Gerda had no energy, no desire to move. Also, she had left her boots outside her sleeping-bag and they were frozen stiff, so that she could not put them on until we had softened the leather over the primus. When we did start we made good progress, for the cold wind had frozen the thawed snow of the previous day into an ice-hard crust. Ahead of us Bland’s sledge tracks unwound steadily like a snaking line meandering through the snow hills of the churned-up pack.

  “Soon we kom to their camp, I think, ja?”

  Kalstad was right. The snow hills gradually flattened out until finally we emerged into an almost flat desert of white where the pack had had time to settle before becoming frozen solid. And in this dead plain we saw the sledge tracks running straight, like parallel lines drawn by a ruler to a black patch. “That is their camp,” Kalstad shouted to me. “And they are still there. I see some peoples moving.”

  I screwed up my eyes, trying to concentrate sufficiently on my vision to produce a clear picture. But the throbbing pain at the back of my eyeballs obscured my sight. All I could see was a dark patch in the virgin white of the snow, a patch that danced and wavered. I don’t know why we pressed on so hard then. We didn’t really want to join up with Bland. It wouldn’t help us. And yet the mere thought of contact with other human beings in that grim waste of frozen snow spurred us forward. “Your eyes are better than mine, Kalstad,” I said. “Are they striking camp?”

  “I think so,” he replied. “Ja. There is no tent.” And a moment later, he said in a puzzled tone, “I do not see more than two people.”

  “Only two?” I screwed up my eyes in an agony of concentration. The dark patch in the snow wavered and separated into two figures. There seemed to be nothing else but those two men. We threw ourselves on the sledge ropes. I think we were both in a panic that it would prove to be a mirage, that the two dots that looked so like human beings would vanish and the snow demons would laugh at us in the howl of the wind. And then faint across the frozen waste came a hail in Norwegian. We could see the two figures waving to us now. We shouted back and ran, slithering on the ice-hard snow towards them. Kalstad was limping badly, yet for a brief spell we must have been going forward at a good three miles an hour.

  “It is Vaksdal and Keller,” Kalstad gasped.

  “No sign of Bland?” I asked him.

  “Nei, nei. Only Vaksdal and Keller.”

  They came out to meet us, shouting and cheering and waving their arms. But when they were about a hundred yards from us, they stopped and were suddenly silent. We dragged the sledge up to them, exhausted, gasping for breath. They made no move to help us. They just stood and stared at us dumbly. Vaksdal looked thinner and gaunter and he had no boots on. Keller also had no boots. He had a knife and a piece of leather in his hand. “Where’s Bland?” I gasped, dropping the sledge rope and staggering slightly now that the impetus of moving forward no longer held me in a straight line.

  “Bland?” Vaksdal’s eyes suddenly blazed from their deep sockets. “He is gone on. We thought you were a rescue party who have found our sledge tracks. How much food do you have?”

  “None,” I said. “A few pieces of sugar and a biscuit or two.” I sat down on the sledge. Now that I’d stopped exhaustion was taking hold of me. I just wanted to lie down and sleep. God, how sleepy I was! And the cold drove right through me. “What did you say about Bland?” I asked, trying to concentrate my mind.

  “He is gone.” Vaksdal’s voice was angry. “You are right, hr. Kaptein. You are all right and Keller and I are fools. He is left us. This morning we wake to find the wind blowing on us and Bland pulling the sledge out of the camp with the tent thrown on top of it. We shout to him and he just laugh at us. We start to follow. But he has take our boots. My gun is gone, but Keller has his inside his blankets. He try to shoot then. But Bland is too far. We have nothing; no tent, no food, no boots, nothing. The bastard have left us to die.”

  So it had happened, just as Howe had said it would. He’d used them as pack mules, and when they were nearly fifty miles from the iceberg and there was a chance of reaching open water and rescue, he’d abandoned them. He’d chosen a lone death just as he had when he’d stayed behind at the Tauer III Camp in order to have the faint chance of coming out alive as the sole survivor. “How much food had he?” I asked Vaksdal.

  “For one man—perhaps three or four days. But very little, you understand.”

  “And he’s weak?”

  “Ja. Too weak to pull the sledge alone for very far.”

  “All right,” I said. “Start pitching camp, Kalstad.” The skis; that was the answer. I turned to speak to Gerda. But she wasn’t there. I looked back along the line of the sledge track. Gerda was lying in the snow several hundred yards behind us. I unstrapped our gear and cleared it from the sledge. Then Kalstad and I started back. I don’t think I knew how exhausted we were until I turned back for Gerda. It was only about three hundred yards, but it seemed miles that we dragged that empty sledge before we reached her crumpled figure lying face down in the snow.

  She was alive. I could see that by the way her breath had thawed the snow around her nostrils. But she was quite unconscious. It was as much as the two of us could manage to lift her body on to the sledge. Her weight made a vast difference and I thought we’d never reach the spot where I’d off-loaded our gear. I don’t think we’d have got her there, but for the fact that Vaksdal and Keller came out to help us.

  We set up camp then and got some water boiling and made s
ome beef tea. Gerda’s return to consciousness was slow. The beef tea she retched up. But I managed to get a little of our precious brandy down her throat. And when she could speak, she kept on saying, “You must leave me now, Duncan. You must go on. You must go on.” Her voice was so urgent that she exhausted herself. To keep her quiet I told her how Bland had abandoned his two companions and gone on alone with all their stores. She didn’t say anything when I’d finished, but just lay with her eyes closed, her face grey and puffy. I thought she hadn’t heard. Then her hand touched my arm. “One of you must go on,” she whispered faintly. “Take the skis and go on. He must not get out alone. There are all those men on the iceberg.”

  I said, “Don’t worry. One of us will go on.”

  She seemed to relax then and I think she went to sleep. Kalstad pulled at my arm. “Her spirit has outrun her body, I think,” he said. “She is like a horse who is too willing.”

  He was telling me she was going to die. I felt the tears at the back of my eyes. I should have known how terribly driven she had been to keep up with us and not be a burden. And still she had had energy to think of us and of those others back on that ledge. I crawled out of the tent. One of us must go after Bland. I thought immediately of Vaksdal. He was the strongest. And he could be trusted, now that he knew the sort of man Bland was. Anger at being abandoned to die like that would spur him on. But when I began to organise the thing, I soon discovered that in removing their boots, Bland had as effectually stopped them following him as if he’d shot them down as they lay in the snow. Whoever went after Bland must go on ski, and that meant well-fitting boots. Kalstad’s feet and mine were much smaller than Vaksdal’s or Keller’s. To loan them our boots was, therefore, out of the question. The choice lay then between Kalstad and myself and Kalstad was suffering from frost-bite.

  There was nothing for it. I should have to take what little rations remained and go on myself. “Get your rifle, Keller,” I said, “and some ammunition.” I packed a rucksack, and when I was all ready to go I crawled into the tent. I don’t know whether Gerda was asleep or unconscious. She was quite still and her eyes were closed. I bent and kissed her. She moved slightly. Perhaps she knew I’d kissed her. At any rate, I’m glad I did and I hope she knew—knew that I was saluting a very brave woman.

  I went out into the biting cold of the wind then. Kalstad helped me to fix the skis. I slung Keller’s rifle over my shoulder. Then Kalstad lifted the rucksack on to my shoulders, the rucksack that contained for him all that was left of life. I was leaving them nothing but the remains of the beef extract and the primus with the last of the fuel. He clapped me on the back and said, “Good luck, hr. Kaptein.” I gripped his hand. Vaksdal and Keller looked on, sullen and morose. Since the discovery that we were not a rescue party and had virtually no food they had been in a state of miserable despair. Not even the fact that I was going out after Bland had stirred them.

  “You are in command now, Kalstad,” I said. “Look after Gerda Petersen.”

  I turned then and set out along the track of Bland’s sledge. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to be reminded of the pathetic loneliness of that last camp. Gerda and the rest would die there. And somewhere out along the sledge track I was following, I, too, should die. I kept my eyes on those ruler-straight tracks and concentrated on the thought of vengeance.

  Christian teaching would say it is a bad thing to go out to your death with only the thought of vengeance in your mind. I can only say this, that it was through that thought of vengeance that I achieved the strength to go on. It gave me a purpose. I no longer had any hope of finding the Southern Cross Camp, or even any hope that there was such a camp. I was going out to kill the man who had brought about all our deaths, who had killed Judie’s father, rammed my ship and abandoned his two companions. I didn’t stop to think that if there was no chance of him being rescued, then the ice and snow would do the job for me. I just knew I had to kill Bland with my own hands. That alone in my mind would justify my existence in that moment. And that alone gave me strength.

  It was surprising how much easier and quicker I found it travelling on ski. The surface of the snow was crisp and firm. The skis slid forward with a crunching hiss, and only the constant driving of arms on sticks was tiring. And the going was over flat, snow-covered ice. In places it was ridged like the sea and here I had difficulty until I learnt to control my legs, for it’s extraordinary how, in the unending white of limitless snow, it is impossible for the eyes to differentiate between an undulating and a flat surface.

  Bland had, I reckoned, a three-hour start of me. I had left the others shortly after midday. Presuming that I could travel twice as fast as a man dragging a sledge, I should be up with him about three in the afternoon. I had, therefore, only a few hours’ margin of daylight. If I wasn’t in possession of Bland’s tent by nightfall, then I should never see another day. A night in the open would kill me. I don’t think I really thought about this. But it was there at the back of my mind, a spur to my body, for I knew that if I were to achieve my purpose, it must be done before nightfall.

  Ahead of me the sky was dark, like the beginning of night. In contrast the low cloud behind me seemed dazzlingly white. The world was flat—flat like the Western Desert, but white; blindingly, eye-searingly white. And as I slid through this unending world of snow, the surface began to change. There were crevasses, under the surface. Without the skis I could not have gone a mile. The snow bridged innumerable gaps and I heard it crumble as I slid across. Then I was in an area of open fissures, gaps too wide for the snow to bridge. The sledge tracks began to wind between these crevasses and in one place I saw Bland had had trouble getting his sledge across where the snow had crumbled into a gap.

  It was shortly after two that I saw the first open water in weeks. It was like a black lake and clotted thick with brash ice. I pressed on faster now, drawing on my last reserves of energy. Darkness was not far off and the patches of open water that were beginning to appear suggested we were nearing the edge of the pack. Bland had food for four days. There was still just a chance. And this ray of hope seemed to revitalise me.

  I wasn’t far out in my reckonings, for it was just after three when I sighted a small, black dot moving ahead of me. For some time the sledge tracks had been winding amongst black pools of half-frozen brash towards a small berg caught in the pack, and it was against the sheer green slope of this berg that the figure showed like a small dot dancing in the white void. It was painful to try and keep my eyes on it, and dangerous because it tended to make me lose my balance. After I’d had one fall through not watching my skis and had got up again with great difficulty, I ceased to worry about the mark ahead and concentrated on ski-ing as fast as possible.

  When I looked again the berg was much nearer, but there was no sign of Bland. Presumably he’d passed behind it. Or had he seen me? Was he lying in wait? I left his tracks and circled away to the north of the berg. I soon caught sight of him then, not half a mile away and moving along the flank of the berg, which was a long one. Between us the snow lay flat, like a sheet of white. I drove my sticks into it, thrusting forward on a line that would converge with Bland.

  He had almost reached the end of the berg when he saw me. He stopped and then his voice reached me on the cold wind. He was shouting to me and waving his sticks. Just as his companions had done, he thought I was part of a rescue party.

  I unslung my rifle then, cocked it and slithered forward with the ski sticks looped over one wrist. Now that the moment had come I found my heart hammering wildly. I fought to steady myself as I went forward.

  Something in the way I moved towards him must have warned him, for he suddenly stopped shouting and stood quite still, staring at me as I advanced on him. I was getting close now, and though the snow-glare made it difficult for me to see, he was outlined against the final shoulder of the berg and a good target. But I was taking no chances. I closed him steadily, just as I would have done an enemy ship.

  “Who ar
e you?” His hail came to me quite clearly and I realised I was getting into the shelter of the berg.

  “Craig,” I yelled back, and there was an exultant feeling inside me and I saw him stare at me for a moment and then dive for the sledge and his gun. But he didn’t get up again and a moment later the thin crack of a shot sounded across the snow. He was firing from the shelter of the sledge. I turned then and circled to the west of him, cutting off his line of advance and reaching the shelter of the western end of the berg. He fired at me several times before I was out of sight, but I was a moving target and his bullets vanished into space.

  The snow was heaped in fantastic shapes round the berg and I moved steadily through the sheltering hummocks towards the final shoulder. And here, round the corner of a hollowed cliff that gaped with green jaws filled with the white teeth of icicles, I saw Bland’s sledge deserted in the snow. He was in the cover of the broken ice close in to the berg’s flank. I crept slowly forward. There was the crack of a shot and a puff of ice in my face. I felt blood flowing from a cut. I brushed it away and raised my gun. I could see him now, peering from behind a fluted column of ice, his gun raised. I was just about to fire when I saw something moving behind him. It was travelling fast across the snow with a strange undulating movement like a well-sprung sleigh. It was a big, ungainly animal, tawny-coloured with brown spots, and although I’d never seen one before, I knew what it was. It was a sea-leopard, after the killer whale the most dangerous inhabitant of the Antarctic.

  Bland must have seen it at the same time, for his gun swung away from me, and I heard the sharp crack-crack as he fired. The huge beast did not check. He fired once more, at point-blank range, and then it was on him. He staggered as he was borne back and then he fell with the beast on top of him.