The Surfacing (40 page)

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.

Layer by layer, the fingers peeled the blindfold away. DeHaven bent a little closer,
touched his fingertips to the clenched right eye, as he'd once seen a faith healer
do. Beside him, Cabot was holding the eyedropper in mid-air, reverently, as though
it risked exploding at the slightest jerk, like pyroglycerine.

Now, DeHaven ordered, as his fingers pried the eyelids apart. The dropper twitched
once, twice, and each time – the synchronization perfect – Morgan gave a whimper
that sounded exactly like a little child.

The next day, the noon sun gave him 78°08' for a latitude. One or even two minutes
of that might be credited to the glare and the mist and the sorry state of his eyes.
But
that was all the leeway he could in good conscience allow himself. He wrote the
figure on the page, closed over the cover of his journal, told himself that later
he would look at it properly.

That evening again he'd seen bruises on the southern horizon. Clouds, perhaps. And
clouds meant water, in his scheme. At the very least a mess of leads, possibly a
chance to wet the boat, maze a way south to the open sea. He could see it to the
smallest detail. If he closed his eyes he could even hear it, the brutal scraping
of the keel as it ran over the edge. He watched her sliding into the water, settling,
sitting proudly, over and over again.

Beside him the men were snoring. From outside came the valiant grunts of the ice.
From inside his chest, half smothered, came a steady, righteous industry. He breathed
in and out calmly, expertly, just like a sleeper, but sleep wouldn't come. He was
too excited and too afraid, at the prospect of finally getting away.

It was the 12th of June. An early morning mist had burned off to show a thin brown
shadow on the southern horizon. It held his stare. It was nothing, or it was land.
He handed the glass to DeHaven, whose eyes were in far better shape. It was land,
DeHaven said. Morgan took the glass again. To his mind the line of the horizon was
slightly smudged, that was all. Even so, he let DeHaven broadcast the news. It was
meant as an encouragement, should have quickened their efforts, but they were beyond
such gallantries now. It was all they could do, at almost any moment of the day,
not to collapse.

When they paused at noon, he had the men form a pyramid, triple tier, as they had
so often done for DeHaven's gymnastics, back at the ship. Three, three, and two.
He struggled to the top, and stood swaying ceremoniously on the upper men's shoulders.
To the horizon the floe seemed as solid as ever, as patient and as wise. Overhead,
the moon was bright as a saucer of milk. What we took this morning for land now looked
distinctly like a herd of musk oxen, he wrote. I shall
veer a little more to the
southeast, to meet them. I am putting off any decision until then.

They were nothing but chunks of a berg which had once been rolled in the dirt.

16th June

He made a list of what they would take, what they would leave. Sextant, he wrote.
Caulking Iron. Lamp. Beside Anchor, he wrote an X. Unarguable necessity, was the
standard. What will enable us to advance, or to persist, and nothing else. For the
moment he preferred not to calculate the total load. In any case, it was useless
to tell the men what weight they must haul, if it could not be reduced.

Blue Rockets, he wrote. Fishing Gear. Harpoon. Rope. He changed his mind, and began
to add it all up, pound by pound. There ought to be a direct translation, he wrote.
So much less to haul, he wrote, so much more to the march, each day. He was flailing
and grabbing. Every thought was now tainted with the cheapest hope. He wanted to
be saved.

The floe had been shattered, but overnight the snow had grown up out of the ground
to cover the cracks. He had them fan out in the traces, as wide as they could, to
spread their weight. He had strapped two tent-poles together for a feeler, twelve
feet long. His blind man's cane. He wandered left and right, divining. Somewhere
under the surface, invisible, was a safe way.

17th June

The distant floes were a solid blue. Overhead was a hard bright sky. Underfoot, it
was like dragging through liquid mud. At noon, with his instruments, he located himself
as best he could. 78°04', the instruments said. What the instruments said was that
a week's killing labour had somehow pushed them backward, several miles closer to
the ship.