Antarctica (10 page)

The men had driven three posts into the snow and tied up the dogs, some of whom had dug themselves deep holes, curling up inside for warmth and shelter. The others, however, including Socrates, paced restlessly.

Andrew stayed inside his sleeping bag until he couldn’t hold off his curiosity. Throwing on his sweater and overcoat, he stepped outside.

The snow seemed to come at him from all directions. It made its way into his hood, his pockets, his boots as he edged away from the tents.

Just beyond the shelter of the hill, the wind hit.

It was like a solid thing. It knocked him off his feet and he dived to the ground. It flung snow at him like the edges of a thousand knives, shearing his skin and his tongue, taking away his ability to breathe.

Opening his eyes into this was impossible. He struggled upward, drawing his hood around his face, and stumbled back toward the tent.

“Stay put, there’s nothing you can do to bring them back!” It was Jack, waiting by the flap, shouting to be heard over the wind. “Shreve is a smart man. More experienced than any of us. He’s probably holed up somewhere, waiting for this to pass.”

“What about Kosta?” Andrew asked.

“With any luck, they’re together—” He stopped, cocking his head.

Andrew listened. Through the screech of the wind, he heard a sound. Percussive. Coming nearer.

Jack ran toward the open area beyond the hill, clinging to his wool watch cap.

The dogs leaped out of the wall of snow. They tackled Jack to the ground, yapping and licking his face.

Kosta was slumped over the sledge.

Andrew ran to help. He tried to lift Kosta, but he was deadweight. His skin was bone cold, his face blue.

Jack scrambled to his feet. He and Andrew grabbed the dogs’ traces, but pulling them toward the tents was almost impossible. They were all worked up, jumping, trying to wrench away.

Siegal, Lombardo, and Cranston were awake, pulling on their parkas and rushing over to help. They lifted Kosta off the sled and dragged him into a tent.

Soon Ruppenthal and Petard were up, too. They helped Andrew and Jack pull the dogs.

“Where do they want to go?” Ruppenthal shouted.

“Back into the storm!” Jack replied.

“Why?” Petard asked.

“Ask
them!”

“Come on, Plutarchos … shhh, shhh,” Andrew said. “Taki, calm down.”

Gradually they worked their way to the posts, tied the dogs, and ran back to the tent where Kosta had been taken.

Andrew had to elbow his way through the men who’d crammed inside. His hands were numb, and he removed his gloves to blow into his cupped palms. Everyone was awake now, kneeling around Kosta, who lay in the center in a sleeping bag covered with blankets. Dr. Riesman was examining him with a stethoscope.

“That’s it, Siegal, massage his fingers, but gently,” Dr. Riesman said. “Don’t warm them too fast. The fingertips may be frostbitten a bit, but the damage isn’t bad.”

“He’s going to be okay?” Jack asked.

Dr. Riesman nodded admiringly. “He’s tough. Considering the amount of exposure, I’m amazed at his resiliency.” He passed some smelling salts across Kosta’s nose. “Kosta, can you hear me?”

Kosta’s eyes fluttered.
“Poo … eemai?”

The men burst into cheers.

“Yeeee-hah!” Andrew shouted. “He made it!”

“Olla eenai entaksi,”
Jack said. “You’re all right.”

Kosta looked dazed and agitated. He peered around the tent. “Sreve?
Poo eenai
Sreve?”

“Shreve?” Jack said. “Do you know where he is?”

Kosta tried to rise to his feet, but Dr. Riesman held him down.
“Then vlepo!”

“What’s he saying?” Lombardo asked.

“He didn’t see Shreve,” Jack explained. “He wants to go back and find him.”

He pushed his way toward the tent flap, pulling on his gloves.

“Where are you going?” Dr. Riesman asked.

“
I’ll
find him,” Jack replied.

“I’ll go with you,” Petard volunteered.

“No!” Siegal shouted. “We can’t afford to lose you, too.”

“We haven’t lost
Shreve
yet,” Jack said. “If he’s snowbound, if he’s in the same condition as Kosta, we can save him.”

But before the men could move, a dog bounded through the flap. It was matted with snow, yowling terribly, and squirming away from the hands that reached for it, until it finally leaped onto Kosta.

It was Dimitriou. From Shreve’s sledge.

He was alone.

And his traces were in shreds.

November 21, 1909

A
NDREW WAS THERE, RIGHT
in front of him. He was riding away on a sledge but not facing forward, no, he was looking over his shoulder, staring at Colin, wanting to say something but all tongue-tied—and he couldn’t see the iceberg that rose up before him, bursting from the earth like a monster god, the god of the Southern Frontier, flecked with black and red and brown, the bodies of its sacrifices, dinosaurs and seals and penguins and humans. It had a mouth, cavernous and black, that opened wide for Andrew with slavering greed—
Andrew, turn around, turn around, you fool—
Colin tried to shout the words but his mouth was paralyzed. He tried to point but his arms were dead. All of which made Andrew even more concerned; he was calling out to Colin now—
Colin, what’s wrong with you? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?—
but that wasn’t the point, the sky was turning dark, the snow falling red, red as blood, red as death, and Andrew wasn’t seeing it—
Why wasn’t he seeing it?

“Andrew!”

Colin sat up, banging his head on the wooden panels above.

“Will you shut your trap and go to sleep!” Bailey called out.

Wood. Wood and horsehair and the smell of wet wool and Bailey’s voice.

He was on the ship. Safe and warm. There was no monster.

No Andrew.

“Sorry,” Colin said.

It was so real. Like his dream about Mother seven years ago. And Stepmother, last June.

He had the power to see things no one else could. Mother had always told him that.

But this was just a nightmare.

There were no ice monsters. The snow didn’t fall like blood.

Andrew was okay.

That’s all. Just a nightmare.

Colin sank back into his bed.

But his eyes stayed open the rest of the night.

November 21, 1909

“T
HAT’S IT,
D
IMITRIOU! GOOD
boy!”

The dog was way ahead, running alone, throwing up clouds of snow. Shreve’s tracks were long gone, covered by the blizzard. But somehow the dog knew.

The two sledges moved slowly, loaded up with three sledges’ worth of equipment. There was room for only one driver on each, and the men took turns while the others walked alongside. Jack was driving one, Petard the other.

They’d gone at least four miles. Shreve had covered a lot of ground, but the storm had come up too soon and he hadn’t had time to return.

It was crazy to let him go, Jack thought, to let him just take off without waiting for Kosta. Shreve was a good man and an extraordinary scientist. But he was impulsive. Excitable.

Jack squinted against the morning sunlight. Never again. He would never let any of them out of his sight. They traveled together or not at all. A life was fragile here. The place could hypnotize you, then crush you in the snap of a finger.

Dimitriou had been taking a straight path. Dead ahead was the outcropping of rock that Shreve had wanted to see. But now the dog was angling to the right in a wide arc.

The sledges adjusted. But soon Dimitriou was tracing a path to the left. Then suddenly right again. Then backward, crossing over his own path.

“Heyyy-o!” Jack halted the sledges.

They waited and watched.

“Where’s he going?” Petard asked.

“This must have been where Shreve hit the storm,” Jack replied. “He lost his bearings, started backtracking.”

Quickly Jack and Petard dismounted the sledges. Lombardo took over one, Oppenheim the other.

Dimitriou began barking loudly again, heading obliquely to the right. This time he was continuing.

“Move ’em out!” Jack shouted.

He trudged along behind Lombardo’s sledge. Out of the corner of his eye, he took a head count. Thirteen, including himself. All present.

Andrew was with Oppenheim. In front of the pack. Running instead of walking. He was trying too hard. The boy was all heart. But he was a kid. At this rate, he was going to wear himself out.

“Conserve your energy, son!” Jack called out.

The ground was changing now, the powder giving way to long, wavelike ridges of ice and snow. The sledges jolted violently, slipping into the tracks between the ridges. Andrew took a spill, then Ruppenthal and O’Malley.

Sastrugi. Jack had read about these. The wind created them—a wind strong enough to shape solid ice.

Just beyond the sastrugi was a huge pressure ridge. Dimitriou stood beside it, yapping loudly and wagging his tail.

“Attaboy!” Jack called out.

The two sledges pulled up beside the dog and halted. Lombardo and Oppenheim quickly climbed off and Jack ran up alongside them.

His heart stopped.

Hidden behind the ridge was a gash in the earth. It began at their feet and widened to about twenty yards.

Dimitriou was whimpering now, walking in circles.

Jack looked down into the blackness but saw nothing.

One by one, the men took off their hats and lowered their heads.

“Lord, into Thy hands we commend the spirit of our brother David Shreve, a man of great intellect and physical courage.”

Petard made the sign of the cross, completing his brief eulogy. Slowly the team began to file away from the crevasse.

Jack watched his men as they adjusted the sledges, hooking up Dimitriou to a new harness. Kosta was fighting back tears, muttering in Greek. Blaming himself, no doubt. Dr. Riesman was ashen and silent. He and Shreve had been friends since college.

Soon only Andrew remained by Jack’s side.

“Son, I’m sorry—” Jack said.

“He was with us just a few hours ago,” Andrew replied softly.

“The suddenness is a shock.”

Andrew nodded and walked back toward the sledges.

Jack felt tongue-tied and feeble. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He had vowed not to lose any men. Not one. Now, Shreve was dead.

He wanted to say something to Andrew. To the men. Something to lift them up, to take away the sting. That Shreve loved nature with such passion that it consumed him. That he died outdoors, exploring, the way he would have preferred it. But the words seemed hollow and cold. And they didn’t tell the whole story.

He went because I let him go,
Jack thought.
Because I didn’t have the strength to say no.

Jack tried to shake off the feeling. Guilt had no place in a trip like this.

Guilt was the enemy.

Siegal quickly took readings with his compass and sextant. He set them back on course, south by southeast. When Dimitriou was finally harnessed, they started again.

Thirty-two dogs were barely enough to pull the loads on the two sledges. The sky had filled with snow again, and the transantarctic winds roared from the south directly into their faces. Jack’s Burberry parka couldn’t keep out the cold. An icy rim had formed on the inside of his hood. Soon, if he didn’t do something, it would close up solid, a mask of his own frozen breath. He’d be warmer inside it, perhaps, but he wouldn’t be able to see. Or breathe.

Maybe that was just as well.

By the dimmed light of evening they approached a broad plain, scarred with crevasses. Ruskey reached for his camera. “There must be six of ’em. It’s a polar canyon.”

Siegal slowed his dogs. “Pop,” he said, “if we get stuck in that place when the sun sinks, we can end up like Shreve.”

“Then we’ll have to go around it, won’t we, Mr. Siegal?” Jack snapped.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Slowly they made their way across the plain. The wind pushed harder with each step.

Jack wrapped his scarf around his face, leaving only his eyes to the cold.

December 11, 1909

S
MACK.
T
INKLE.

Smack. Tinkle.

Smack. Tinkle.

This wasn’t so bad, breaking the ice off the rigging. It had a kind of rhythm, a music to it. The other men had done the hard part—cleaned off the top. Philip merely needed to handle the bottommost … rigs. Or whatever you called these poles and ropes. It was a shame, though, when you thought about it. Everything had looked so pretty covered with ice.

No, not ice.
Rime.
Rime was a marvelous thing.

It grew like moss—but it was water vapor, freezing on contact with a solid object. It built itself up, one particle on another,
into
the wind, exactly the opposite of what you’d expect.

Ice
was what surrounded the
Mystery.
Pancake ice, to be exact, the flat, soft, snow-covered kind. It seemed perfectly harmless, yet Captain Barth was convinced they needed to move to safer water.

“Wake up, Westfall, before we hoist you with the sails!” Captain Barth called out.

“Aye, aye, O Mighty Captain.”

Oops. Naughty.

Ah, well. Philip was no longer scared of Barth.

Much had happened in the month since the polar boys had left. Nigel had foreseen correctly, to Philip’s great astonishment. Hayes and Brillman were easy recruits to the mutiny plan—and they, in turn, had convinced Bailey and Stimson.

Stimson, especially, was a relief. It would be murder to have to banish the cook to the brig. Nigel would no doubt insist on preparing the meals. Which in itself might cause a countermutiny.

They were a merry band of six now. They would need a few more. But there was still time. Plenty of time.

Across the deck a block of ice moved slowly, carried atop a stout body. Flummerfelt, the motor expert. The thick-necked master of all things mechanical.

Barth had been hard on him over the months. Given him some of the worst jobs, such as carrying the ice to the mess for water. Flummerfelt should have been a Likely. But he was a loyal, unquestioning sort.