Death on the Ice (59 page)

As well as the paraffin worries, the surfaces they had encountered had been atrocious, clogging the skis, forcing them to walk. They had encountered strange, large crystals that seemed to grip the sledge runners even harder than the sand-like snow. The pulling was brutal and exhausting and yet they logged only five and a half miles. And now, Oates, apparently, had a third problem to disclose.

‘What is it, Titus?’ Wilson asked.

Oates slid off his sodden sock and Birdie gasped at the sight. The foot was a bloated, marbled white, apart from a large red sore covering the bridge, and the sooty toes. ‘Oh my Lord, Farmer. How long has it been this bad?’

‘A while now.’

Wilson tutted. ‘I can’t believe you’ve walked on them. Let me see the other one.’

‘Oh, the other one’s worse.’

Wilson eased off the second sock, and, indeed, the foot was even more balloon-like. The skin on this one was blackened yet shiny where it had stretched. There was a rank smell. Wilson rolled up the trouser leg and saw the red ring, where dead flesh ended and living began. Titus Oates’s feet were rotting on his body.

‘I’ll put some cream on them,’ he said.

Oates laughed at the panacea. ‘Can you ride to hounds with no feet?’

‘Hasn’t come to that, Soldier,’ said Scott.

Wilson frowned as he examined the feet further. ‘I’ll dry them as best I can first. It might hurt. I have some morphia, if you wish.’

‘Yes. And how about a little brandy?’ Oates asked.

Wilson nodded. ‘Purely medicinal.’

‘Of course, doctor. Purely medicinal.’

Wilson found the flask and poured a measure. He handed him not more than a thimble full while he prepared the injection, but Oates cherished every drop.

‘Titus, you might want to cut your sleeping bag open at the base.’

‘Why?’

‘The feet will only hurt when they warm up.’

‘I’ve noticed that.’

‘Keep them chilled till we can do something about them.’

‘Right-o,’ said Oates with a forced gaiety.

Wilson clapped him on the shoulder and moved away, hiding the concern eating at his stomach.

Later that night, with the thermometer plunging and a vile wind tugging at the tent, Scott rolled close to Wilson.

‘Your own feet aren’t too good, Bill. You must take care of yourself, too.’

‘I will, Con.’

‘Why are we losing condition so quickly? You are skin and bone.’

‘I don’t know, Con, I really don’t. Could it have been the altitude?’

‘Perhaps.’ He thought for a moment. Shackleton, too, had starved on his return. ‘What about Soldier’s feet? Are they as bad as they look and smell?’

Wilson looked over but Oates was, as far as he could make out, asleep. ‘Worse, Con. It’s gangrene.’

The storm blasted into the tent when Dimitri crawled inside. He rapidly sealed the entrance again and accepted the hot tea from Cherry. ‘Thank you.’

Cherry wiped the last of the moisture from his glasses. At least while he cooked the kaleidoscope of ice crystals on his lenses melted. As he had expected, his frozen spectacles had bedevilled his attempts at navigation. ‘How is it out there?’

‘As you say, thick as a hedge,’ said Dimitri. He took a sip of the drink, shivering hard. The cold was getting to him. They had no minimum thermometer, so could only guess at night-time temperatures. But Cherry had seen the mercury at -38 the night before, just as he was turning in at around eight. It had probably dipped well below that. ‘Cherry, the dogs are suffering.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘They are losing their coats. Stareek has stopped eating. I think Cigan is close to finished. We should go back.’

‘The polar party are out there somewhere,’ he reminded Dimitri. ‘Possibly in the same conditions.’

Dimitri nodded. ‘We have had a blizzard for four days now. They must have had it too. If they are on the barrier.’

It was inconceivable they were still on the Beardmore. ‘They will be by now, surely.’

‘Yes. So they are not moving. Not coming. Just laid up, sensible. Or perhaps they have passed us already. It’s possible. But no matter what, we must leave ourselves eight days’ food in reserve to get us back.’

Cherry did a quick calculation. They had arrived at One Ton on 4 March, but the conditions were such they had used more human and dog rations than planned. ‘We have to turn for home on the tenth.’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

Cherry was concerned about the five men out there, although he consoled himself with the thought that the chances were they were holed up, not too far away. He was well aware they were well provisioned with food and paraffin, and with the likes of Evans and Birdie pulling—and Wilson’s calm head—they would easily make the sixty or seventy miles between depots.

He had shared that terrible winter journey with Wilson and Bowers, forging a bond that could never be broken. Cherry knew they weren’t quitters. And Scott had always said they had planned everything so that they didn’t need the dogs beyond resupplying One Ton Camp. Still, he was relieved it wasn’t him struggling to make it home.

No matter how much he would like to wait and see his old comrades, he had no choice but to agree with Dimitri. There had been no biscuits for the animals cached at One Ton. As Atch had warned, if he went further south, they’d have to kill some dogs to feed the others. Cherry could just imagine the wigging Scott would give him about that next season. Still, he found himself kneading his hands, his stomach sick with his indecision. ‘We go back even if they don’t show?’

Dimitri nodded. The tea had barely warmed him and he began to cough, the pannikin falling from his hands. His right side was becoming numb, and it was hard to grip anything. It wasn’t only the dogs that were going downhill, he knew; his chest hurt, his arm was partially paralysed, and his fingers were disintegrating. ‘Even if they don’t show.’

There were so many different kinds of pain, Oates felt that he was a walking compendium. Hot, cold, shooting, throbbing, electrical, grinding. It had invaded his head, too, a great regimental drum thumping away, so severe he had to close his eyes. It was there even during the fitful sleep, there when Oates woke in the morning to that bitter, bitter cold.

He could see the impatience in the others as he took nearly two hours to get dressed, his stiff, bloated limbs refusing to speed up, his feet stabbing with every move. They tried their best to hide their irritation, especially Wilson, but by the time he had pulled on his socks and finnesko—he had been forced to slit the new ones so he could get his ballooned feet into them—the meagre warmth of breakfast had gone. They would start cold, endure more cold, and then camp cold. The pemmican was eaten barely warmed; the tiny amount of remaining fuel was used to melt ice for tea or cocoa, drunk tepid.

And now he couldn’t pull his ski boots on. All he could do was hobble alongside the sledge, head down, listening to the others strain like spent nags. Mt Hooper had proved another disaster. Someone had riffled the supplies on their way back and the fuel was a trickle. There had been no resupply of the meagre depot. ‘A terrible jumble,’ Scott had said.

Oates doubted they were making one mile an hour, no more than six miles in a day. They were fifty-five miles from One Ton, with a week’s supply of food left at most. Even Oates’s poor arithmetic told him they were going to be twelve or thirteen miles short. Why were they going on?

Scott turned and looked at the stumbling figure behind the sledge. He was walking with a pronounced limp, favouring the leg with the old bullet wound. Soldier was in worse shape than any of his ponies had been at the end.

‘Bill,’ asked Scott as they trudged on, ‘what we discussed after breakfast?’

Wilson shook his head vigorously. ‘As I said then. I am against it.’

‘You are for suffering, then?’

‘It is unChristian.’

Scott didn’t speak for a few minutes, rehearsing his argument as they tramped on. ‘Longinus?’ he finally asked.

Wilson turned to look at Scott. The Owner’s face was thin, and disfigured by sores and blisters, but the expression was still dogged and determined. ‘
The Spear of Destiny
?’

‘Yes, did Longinus not shorten our Lord’s suffering on the cross with a lance? Was that not a noble thing for a Roman to do?’

Wilson didn’t feel he had the intellect left for an exhaustive answer. When he tried to think, food invaded his thoughts. He was beginning to suffer from phantom aromas. That day, he could smell roasting grouse. ‘Jesus was already dead.’

‘Surely it was a way of making sure he suffered no more,’ insisted Scott. ‘Or else, why bother?’

‘Possibly.’ Wilson looked ahead at the monochromatic canvas of the barrier, his eyes searching in vain for some feature to latch on to, a point of interest, a shadow, but there was only a blank dumbness. Strange, he had thought black the colour of Godlessness. Now he knew otherwise. ‘Perhaps Melville was right.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So, Bill, how many tablets do you have?’

Wilson caught the whiff of grouse again, and felt saliva flow and his stomach rumble. ‘About a hundred and twenty, all told.’

‘Thirty each,’ said Scott.

‘Yes.’

Scott looked back at Oates, his feet dragging through the woolly snow crystals. It was too much effort for him to lift them now.

‘His nose is frostbitten.’

‘I saw.’

‘Poor Soldier. He knows he’s a hindrance.’

‘He’s a fighter, Con. He asked me what his chances are this morning.’

‘What did you say to that?’

Wilson couldn’t speak for a while, his wind gone. When they had some assistance in the sail and his breath returned he said: ‘I told him I didn’t know. That it was in God’s hands. But he knows the truth. As we all do.’

‘If we were fit, we’d make it, Bill.’

‘I know that, Con. Such luck we’ve had. Such luck.’

‘Oh for Shackleton’s Irish fortune.’ Scott watched Birdie’s back for a while, the tired plod of his short legs. He had stopped speaking now; he and Oates were silent most of the time, lost in their gloomy thoughts. ‘Bill, I think you should issue it. Let each man decide.’

‘Under protest.’

‘Protest noted, Bill.’

‘Very well, Con. I’ll give the opium tablets out as soon as we have pitched tent.’

T
HE FIRST SEA LORD,
Admiral Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman, requested he be sat next to Mrs Scott at the luncheon. The admiral was to step down from his position and it was one of a series of dinners at the Greenwich Naval College in his honour. Kathleen had been brought downriver by launch; she was sorry Peter could not be there to see the wonderful buildings and the pageantry of the welcome. But he had been suffering a strange fever for a week now, and she was concerned the chill of the Thames in winter might make it worse.

‘Are you worried?’ Sir Francis asked after they had sat down. ‘That there is no news.’

‘Worried? Not a scrap. I would not expect any, not till
Terra Nova
docks in New Zealand, and that could be weeks yet. In fact, last year Bill Wilson wrote to his wife saying they might even miss the ship.’

‘Really? Harry Pennell would leave before word of their success reached the ship?’

‘Yes. If they are late back, rather than risk
Terra Nova
being frozen in for the winter. So, I don’t think there is much to worry about.’

‘Your husband is a fine man, Mrs Scott.’

‘I know it.’

‘And no word from the Norwegian?’

She thought, for a second, he meant Nansen. They had written to each other since Berlin, his letters keeping her amused. He liked to proclaim his love in flowery terms, but he had accepted that nothing physical would happen between them. He was an adorable man in many ways. She sometimes felt guilty about liking him so much. But was it so very old fashioned for two people to simply enjoy each other’s company? ‘Oh, Amundsen. No. Nothing.’

It was over coffee that the news arrived, passed from waiter to guest, till the room buzzed.

‘What is it?’ Sir Francis asked his neighbour, a young lieutenant.

‘Well, Chinese whispers, really. It seems Amundsen is in Hobart.’

‘Tasmania?’

‘Yes,’ said the lieutenant. ‘He says categorically Scott reached the pole. Well done, Mrs Scott.’

‘Brave-o,’ said Sir Francis.

She felt a giddy flush of relief before the first doubts set in. ‘But he could only know that if Con got there first, and he second, surely’

‘I s’pose,’ said Sir Francis.

‘Then surely we would have heard from Con by now.’

‘True.’

Kathleen shook her head, determined not to be swept up by conjecture or bowled over by false hope. ‘There’s something not quite right.’

‘You think so? Don’t fret,’ advised Sir Francis. ‘You know how unreliable cables can be.’

‘Yes. But nonetheless.’ She stood and Sir Francis got to his feet. ‘If you will excuse me. I think I should be with Peter.’

There were reporters at the door, shouting at her, vying for an exclusive, and once she was inside they continued to hammer at the windows.

She ordered the drapes pulled, the telephone unplugged, and retreated upstairs. Peter was in bed, looking stronger. His forehead felt cooler and she took his temperature. Ninety-nine degrees.

‘Is Daddy home?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Who are those people downstairs?’

‘Just some over-excited reporters.’

‘Is he in the papers?’

‘He will be, Peter. He will be.’

The cable from Nansen arrived in the evening, confirming her suspicions.

AMUNDSEN MADE POLE. NO SIGN OF SCOTT SINCE JANUARY. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES FROM POLE. MY THOUGHTS WITH YOU.

Of course, Nansen would be one of the first on the planet to hear any despatch about the Pole. The sighting must have meant
Terra Nova
had come north again with the news about him being 150 miles away.

She closed her eyes, imagining how crushing a disappointment it would be for Con to find the Norwegians had primacy. But he would bounce back, she was sure. One hundred and fifty miles short in January? That was very late in the season. He was certain to have missed
Terra Nova
, which meant another winter on the ice. She sent a reply to Nansen for protocol’s sake, one she didn’t really feel.
Hurray for Norway anyway.