Antarctica (15 page)

Philip cocked the trigger. His face was red.
“Get
…
in … the … brig”

“The secret’s out, Philip,” Colin said. “We all know now. You’re in trouble no matter what. Go ahead and shoot me, if you want. Shoot us all—then you and your friends can take the ship home by yourselves, just the way you planned. Or are you too cowardly for that?”

“You want to see how cowardly I am?
Do
you?”

“DON’T!” Mansfield yelled, diving across the floor.

Philip pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded.

Colin collapsed. He clasped his hand to his head and felt blood.

Mansfield landed hard on Philip—and the room broke into chaos.

In the dim light Colin turned. His eyes saw double. He could make out Mansfield pounding Philip. The other men were jumping on one another, banging against the walls of the close space.

Colin felt the side of his forehead. It had hurt. Much more than he’d expected.

Gunpowder. The rifle had had gunpowder and …

What?

Flummerfelt was charging around the corner now, carrying six rifles, each with a red ribbon around its barrel. Colin struggled to his feet and elbowed his way through the crowd.

“You nearly had me killed,” Colin said.

Flummerfelt shoved three rifles toward him. “These are loaded! I tied the ribbons around so we’d know!”

“You were supposed to
empty
the others!”

“I put grain in some of them, packed it in good. Left in a tiny bit of gunpowder—you know, for the effect.”

“Any more, and my head would have been blood pudding. Now, come on!”

The men were brawling on a deck slippery with wheat and barley. Colin handed a rifle to Captain Barth and another to Windham.

“Flummerfelt’s one of us!” Colin shouted. “These are—”

The crack of a rifle cut him off.

“—loaded,” Colin continued.

The deck went silent.

Flummerfelt was looking sheepishly at a hole in the ship’s hull. His rifle was smoking. “Um, I think it’s above the waterline. Sorry.”

Colin gestured toward Philip with his rifle. “Into the brig. You first.”

Philip spun around on Nigel. “You had to open your big mouth.”

“Me?” Nigel replied. “Wha’ ’appened to the guns? You was supposed to make sure the guns was ready.”

“How could I?
You
were talking so much, lecturing me with your dreary social philosophy, regaling everyone else with tales of my youthful exploits in London. No wonder they were able to sabotage us right under my nose—”

“Your
nose is always so bloody ’igh in the air—”

“Will you shut your traps?” Kennedy said.

The carpenter hauled off and gave Nigel a good kick in the pants, to a rousing cheer from the men.

“I’ll bring you up on charges!” Nigel screamed.

Colin and Captain Barth pushed him into one of the cages. The other men followed meekly.

With a flourish, Captain Barth slammed the doors and closed the locks.

The mutiny was over.

“’Attaboy, mate,” Windham said.

“Three cheers for Colin Winslow!” Kennedy bellowed.

“Our new third-in-command, after Mansfield,” Captain Barth said, “if he’ll agree.”

“Hip hip—”

“HOORAY!”

“Hip hip—”

“HOORAY!”

“Hip hip—”

“HOORAY!”

“Third in command?” Colin said. “I couldn’t …”

Barth put his hand on Colin’s shoulder and smiled. “You have a while to think it over. No matter what you decide, you can be sure your father will hear about this. Now, let’s get this ship moving so we can celebrate the beginning of 1910!”

Colin wanted to feel triumphant but couldn’t. There were now six men to run the ship. Six men to keep her out of the ice while they waited for Father.

Assuming Father returned.

January 2, 1910

“G
O!
Y
OU FIND PAPA!
Later!”

Later? It was easy for Kosta to say. He was lying on the sledge. He was cargo. He didn’t have to be up here facing the blizzard.

Andrew squinted into the blinding snow. The other sledge was gone. It had been next to him a moment earlier, and now it was gone.

Jack had told him they were getting closer to the sea, maybe one day away, maybe three, he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t take any readings, because the compass was lost, and so were the sun and the horizon.

And now that they’d come this far, now that they had a chance of making it back alive, they had loosened up too much, let themselves stray away from each other.

The two sledges were not supposed to separate. One had the food and tents, the other had most of the equipment. Now Andrew couldn’t eat or pitch a camp. Jack couldn’t cook.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Whose idea was this? What kind of stupid planning was this?

Jack might be ten yards away—or a mile. In this weather, you couldn’t tell. Andrew pulled the dogs in a wide circle. They were shuffling. They had no energy. If only Socrates were among them. If only Jack hadn’t taken him. “Come on, Dimitriou! Foti! Yiorgo! Move it! Go!”

The terrain was rough, piled with icy snow, old pressure ridges. The dogs were slipping, tangling up in their traces, slowing everything down.

Slowing down meant losing time. Losing time meant failure.

“Pethaino!”
Kosta yelled.

“Shut up, you’re not dying!” Andrew said. “We’re going to make it!”

He was sick of Kosta. For hours Kosta had lain on the sledge, shivering and groaning, demanding and complaining—as if there were something more Andrew could do. As if Andrew hadn’t already taken the tarpaulin from the sledge and wrapped Kosta in it. As if the snow wasn’t hitting him like shrapnel and the wind shearing the skin from his face and the dogs putting out about as much energy as field mice.

“What else do you want me to do?”
Andrew shouted.

“Ti?”
Kosta asked.

Nothing.

Never mind.

This was hopeless.

The whole damn thing was hopeless.

The sledge was expendable now. The dogs were a burden.

Kosta was a burden.

There would be no overnight shelter now. The entire distance would have to be covered without sleep. In one long trek.

But not at this pace. At this pace they wouldn’t make it.

He could move faster by himself. He’d have to, if he wanted to live. He could reach the
Mystery
and send back a search party.

He halted the sledge and climbed off.

His skis stuck out the back of the equipment pile, caked with snow. Andrew brushed them off and began putting them on his feet.

“You go?” Kosta asked.

“Yes,” Andrew said.

“Kalòs.
Good.”

Good. Such selflessness. Such a martyr.

The poles were in fine shape. Barring any invisible crevasses, he could make a minimum of fifteen miles a day, maybe double that if it were sunny.

“Andreou?”

“What?”

“Put near dogs. Me die with dogs.”

“Kosta, stop saying that. You are not going to—”

“Se parakalo!
Please!”

This was it. The last demand.

Andrew hooked his arms under Kosta and lifted.

He could feel the older man shivering, praying under his breath:
Pater imon, o entis ouranis …

Andrew didn’t know the words, but there was no mistaking the rhythm.
Our Father, who art in heaven …

The prayer seemed quaint and distant. He hadn’t prayed since Mother’s death, hadn’t thought of it. But as Kosta chanted, the words came to Andrew from far away, from a church and a Sunday school that seemed to be in another life. A life he’d never have again. Never. Even if he did survive.

They were just words now. Words and time. Kosta was heavy, so heavy, and Andrew knew this delay could cost him, this could be the difference between survival and
Thy kingdom come …

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….

But what about here? What about Antarctica? Where was God’s will now? Was He watching over the cold and the snow and the slow, agonizing deaths and saying,
Lo, it is good?
Was this how He rewarded faith?

Faith was the key to the kingdom, Mother always said. Faith, hope, love. Without them, we might as well be stones in the river. Beasts of the field.

Well, faith hadn’t stopped the snow. Hope hadn’t kept the sledges together or saved Shreve. The God of mercy did nothing but watch while men’s blood slowly turned to ice. Faith and hope were suckers’ games.

Deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever …

And suddenly Andrew felt the ice on his face, the rivulet freezing down his cheek, and he was crying, holding Kosta in his arms and crying, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten there, how he’d ended up at the bottom of the world dragging a man through the snow so he could die with his dogs.

A man who had once saved his life.

“Peegheneh, paithì mou.”

“I—I—” Andrew said.

“You go, Andreou!”

“I can’t.”

Kosta had sacrificed. The dogs had sacrificed. Andrew couldn’t turn his back on them.

He turned, pulling Kosta around.

Kosta protested. He told Andrew to leave him. He used many Greek words that Andrew had never heard—blunt words, definitely not biblical.

But he stopped fighting as Andrew loaded him onto the sledge.

“We go,” Andrew said. “Together.
Mazì
. Okay?”

“Mazì,”
Kosta replied.

They would have to travel lighter. Andrew ran around to the back of the sledge and began unloading things they didn’t need: snowshoes … skis … packs … books … microscope … medical supplies.

He kept the sextant. The Primus stove. One club and one rifle. Enough equipment for two.

The compass was gone. They’d have to go by wind direction. Jack had said the wind was coming from the north. But that was a while ago. Without landmarks, it was impossible to tell if the direction had changed.

Andrew would have to head into the wind and hope. At least until the sun was visible.

“Let’s go!”

The dogs dug in. Andrew leaped onto the sledge, yanked the reins, and braced himself.

The wind was brutal. It shoved the breath back down his throat. He had to drop his head, keeping the top of his hood to the wind.

Andrew felt his eyelids droop and he jerked his head back. He would not fall into the trap. He knew better now.

He jumped off the sledge and started to walk. Without his weight, the dogs immediately picked up speed.

Good. They would force him to keep up. You couldn’t fall asleep while you were walking.

He grabbed hold of the supply pile, put his head to the wind, and trudged forward.

The snow sprayed out from beneath the sledge runners, hissing rhythmically, and he thought of his Flexible Flyer racing through the Boston Commons, how scary that seemed back then, how simple life used to be, back before the fights and the police station, before Jack and Colin and all the good years in New York, before the plans for the trip and Mother’s pneumonia.

It was all connected somehow, all the happiness and grief, so that this moment and all those moments occupied the same space, and his life was not a long string of events but one point in time, all ages existing at once.

Another day or two, that was all. He’d be on the
Mystery
again, heading back to that life. Back to home and warmth, food and poetry, paved streets and parks, hearthstones and hobs, hospitals and horses and gas lamps and automobiles and evening clothes and soot and outings and music and wouldn’t Brahms be good now—death and life touched each other in his music, in his soul—the voices lifting up, singing:
Tod, wo ist dein Stachel!
Death, where is thy sting?

Where indeed.

For a while Andrew’s feet moved. Then they didn’t.

January 8, 1910

H
IS HEART WAS BEATING.

He looked dead and his skin was bone-white, but Colin saw that his heart was beating.

Colin glanced over his shoulder, but no one was there. They had taken the Greek back with the sledge.

They hadn’t even seen Andrew in the snow.

He lowered his shoulder, lifted his stepbrother’s arm, and hoisted him up with such force that Andrew almost flew over.

He was the weight of a lashed foresail. He needed food badly. Food and warmth.

Leaning slightly forward, Colin held Andrew across his shoulders, linking his arms behind Andrew’s knees and neck. Carefully he retraced his footsteps. They led to a mound of ice, about chest high, connected by wire to another mound about fifteen yards away. It was the end of a row of cairns that extended outward from the
Mystery
for maybe 200 yards. The cairns had been Colin’s idea. Several rows of them radiated out from the ship, like spokes from an axle. They served as guides for anyone caught in a blinding storm.

Had Andrew stayed on his feet for another few moments, he would have spotted this one.

The
Mystery
soon came into sight. The men were passing Kosta up and over the gunwale. The dogs waited on their haunches, emaciated and dazed.

Mansfield and Flummerfelt offered to help with Andrew, but Colin walked him up alone.

Captain Barth was waiting at the top. “How is he?”

“Alive,” Colin replied.

“We have a makeshift hospital in the afterhold. Dr. Montfort will look at him right away. We’ve set up a cot next to your father.”

“My father? He’s—?”

Barth nodded. “Alive. Awake. Flummerfelt found the other sledge. Off starboard bow. With all the men. They were wandering, looking for Andrew. Somehow he’d separated from the others. Your father wanted to stay out and find him. Flummerfelt practically had to wrestle him back here.”

Colin carefully descended the stairs. The after-hold deck had been cleared, and the expeditioners were laid out head to toe. Three cots were off to the port side. Father and Kosta rested on two of them. Colin lay Andrew on the other.

Dr. Montfort, who had been dressing the wounds on Kosta’s feet, immediately shifted to Andrew, checking his pulse and lifting his eyelids. “Windham, get this boy some food and liquid!”