Death on the Ice (6 page)

‘So, Culshaw. War, is it?’

‘War it is.’

Oates stood and checked himself in the mirror. He was reasonably pleased with what he saw. He might not be quite the postcard cavalry officer that Culshaw was—he was clean shaven, for a start—but he was a good half inch taller and his eyes were clear and bright. Culshaw’s were bagged and bloodshot, showing the strain of too many hours in the mess or at Lady Dora’s house in town. Oates was bursting with vigour in comparison, and he didn’t have to feign the enthusiasm in his voice. ‘Well, about bloody time, is all I can say.’

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG
for Robert Scott to appreciate that the new ship was not without its problems. She was called
Discovery
, a name chosen by Sir Clements Markham. The vessel had been delivered on time, but was cursed by shoddy workmanship. Scott had also discovered that she was too small. The ship’s company of forty-seven—including five scientists—might have been comfortable, had not so much equipment been required. As it was, she felt overstuffed and overmanned. Which made for short tempers.

There was worse than a few squabbles and the skipper’s sharp tongue, however. The ship leaked. Not a little, but prodigiously. Because of the hull’s complex, multi-layered structure, the source of the tons of seawater washing around its innards proved maddeningly elusive. Re-caulking had not solved the problem. The bilge pump could barely cope. Furthermore, she was a greedy beast. The engines consumed coal as if it were plankton being fed to a great whale.

Scott stood on the open bridge. They were two days out of Funchal, steaming south, and he knew his timetable was crumbling, even though he was still so very far from the ice. It was certainly partly
Discovery
’s fault. The ship pitched and rolled in the deep ocean swell, all wasted motion. The large overhanging bow, designed to crack polar ice, and the bulbous stern gave her excessive buoyancy. As they had found in the Bay of Biscay, a following sea could lift and turn her like a stray cork. Learning to keep her safe and stable would require a strong nerve and plenty of practice.

He could sense the strain of the engines through his feet, a rough vibration, like a horse tiring, its breathing becoming ragged. Smoke streamed from the funnel, thick and gritty, as if the fuel was only half burned. She needed much more efficient engines. The current ones had cost ten thousand pounds. He couldn’t help but feel they had been nutmegged.

It was at moments like this that Scott could sense the brown fog of melancholy rolling through his brain. He could fight it off, with an effort of will, but it left him tired and short tempered. Yet he could not let the men see what a struggle it was for him to remain organised and steadfast. They simply assumed he was a martinet.

He examined the sky between the rigging and masts. It was a rich blue, dappled with feathery dabs of white cloud and the cruciforms of the curious petrels still following them. Despite the rather unpredictable swell, it was good sailing weather; the canvas was filled, giving some assistance to those feeble engines. But it wouldn’t last.

At the end of his watch in the crow’s nest, Armitage had pointed to a dark streak in the West, a strip of charcoal scribbled over the sky. He had warned that it could be something building and indeed, it had grown blacker in the past hour. If not that storm, then some other would catch them. How would the ship respond?

‘Skipper.’

Scott started, plucked from his reverie when Shackleton stepped up on to the bridge, his face pearled with spray. Fully aware of his captain’s habit of daydreaming, Shackleton wiped his eyes clear and waited while Scott composed himself. He handed Scott the coal consumption figures he had been asked to fetch from Skelton, the engineer. Scott groaned. They were worse than he thought.

‘Thank you.’

Shackleton stepped forward, keeping his voice low. ‘Sir, you know the men were expecting a briefing at Madeira.’

‘Were they?’ Scott screwed up the paper into a ball. ‘What gave them that impression?’

‘There was a rumour.’

‘If only we could use rumour to feed the engines.’ He held up the crumpled consumption figures. ‘I think we need to address this first.’

‘How? We can hardly re-coal in the Southern Ocean. What do you propose?’

Scott tutted. No RN officer under his command would make so bold as to ask such a question. ‘Will you watch your tongue, Mr Shackleton. You aren’t with Union Castle now. All in good time. All in good time.’

The
Discovery
gave a lurch as an oblique roller sideswiped her. Scamp, Scott’s Aberdeen terrier, lost her footing and there was the sound of claws scrabbling on wood as she slid into Scott’s ankles. He scooped the animal up and stroked its wiry muzzle. The dog whimpered appreciatively. ‘So tell the galley to break out some of the lamb we loaded at Funchal for this evening. And the claret.’

‘Aye.’ Shackleton looked puzzled, and for once Scott shared his thoughts with him, throwing him a painter to be going on with.

‘The gist of it is, bad news is best taken on a full stomach, Mr Shackleton.’

‘Bad news?’

‘I’m curtailing the scientific programme. We’re not calling at Australia either. It’s Lyttleton to check for the source of the leak and then straight down to Antarctica.’ Shackleton’s jaw worked, but Scott raised a hand to stop him speaking. He didn’t care for Mr Shackleton’s thoughts on the matter. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

Before the dinner, Scott had one important task to perform in the wardroom and he left the bridge and headed straight there, with Scamp scuttling after him.

All on board shared the same food—a little touch of the Merchant Navy—but the ratings had their own, less well-appointed mess, minus the linen and silver and with beer and rum instead of wine and port. If the ship was not perfect, at least the cosy wardroom, lined with cabins for the officers and gentlemen, was well up to snuff in all but dimensions, which were parsimonious. However, its burnished wood panels, ornate brass lamps, fine, solid furniture, French Salamander stove, mahogany dining table and brace of attentive stewards made for a most harmonious atmosphere. At least, till he broke the news to the scientists that he was cutting short their trawls and readings en route. Still, the real work was to be done in Antarctica. The best of them—Dr Edward Wilson, the zoologist, and Vere Hodgson, the marine biologist—would understand that and appreciate the crisis brought on by coal consumption. The others could go and hang.

Scott carefully took down the picture of Sir Clements Markham. It was time to break those particular ties. Sir Clements had achieved much, by a mix of guile, bullying and special pleading, but the old man’s shadow must not loom over the ice. For better or worse, it was Scott’s show now.

A
SOUR MOOD PERMEATED
the first camp the Inniskillings made in South Africa. Oates’s exhilaration at arriving in Cape Town with his troopers had been tempered by three things. One was the realisation that Captain Anstice, although a well-turned-out officer who looked magnificent on his horse, was a dithering fool when it came to command. The troopers, Oates felt sure, could sense his prevarication. The man had a whim of iron. Second, he was shocked by just how awry the South African campaign was going, with the Boers penetrating well into Cape Province itself. The third was the biggest blow, however. News arrived that Queen Victoria had died. An age was over. None of them had known any other monarch. He was sure the King was a good man, but it was difficult to see how anyone could replace the powerful symbolism of Victoria. It felt as though the whole Empire had shaken, a tremor of unease passing through a quarter of the globe. With the war progressing badly, it seemed as if everything that was certain in life was being called into question.

Culshaw had dared to voice what they all thought: could this be the end of England?

Oates was not the only one to blink away the tears when the passing was announced and there were many, many toasts that night. Then news came through that they were to entrain and move east, away from Cape Town to Aberdeen, and join with Colonel Herbert to take on a commando of Boers headed by Willem Fouche. Perhaps, Oates thought, they could honour their dead queen by bashing these guerrillas and ending the war.

‘Shouldn’t take long,’ Anstice had decreed. ‘After all, what use are mere farmers—Dutch farmers at that—against the Inniskillings?’

Oates, maudlin and in his cups after one brandy too many, thought that remained to be seen.

The column came under attack thirty miles short of Aberdeen, two days after leaving the railhead. It was late afternoon and the fierce heat of the day was only just abating. Not a cloud had troubled the sun for their march, yet at night they suffered tropical downpours that left them cold and shivering in their blankets. It was as if the southern African climate were a Boer supporter too.

Over the day, the procession of men, horses and carts had grown ragged, and although Oates and Culshaw made sure their own portion of the expeditionary force remained tight, they could do little about the other three hundred men who made up the mission to chase the Boers out of Aberdeen. Occasionally, Oates left his own troopers to try to ascertain why there were vulnerable stragglers. As often as not he was told to get back to his own business by a crotchety senior officer.

Disquiet had been gnawing at him for weeks. He was pleased to be at war at last—what man wouldn’t be?—but this army was not the one of his imagination. As he had told his mother, there was much that was disappointing, from the quality of leadership to the paucity of some vital equipment and supplies. On the positive side, he had two good horses, especially Sausage, the charger he was riding that day, and one of his brace of servants was his old Boots, McConnell, who had managed to find passage.

Those little fillips aside, though, he had to admit that what he had seen of the British army so far was disenchanting to someone brought up on tales of the Peninsular wars. How did this ill-disciplined, ill-equipped mob defeat Napoleon? And the drabness of the new khaki uniform certainly diminished the army’s impact. It seemed the War Office wanted to make the men invisible. The latest ruling was to stop shining buttons, as they attracted snipers. What rot, Oates thought. Soldiers attracted snipers, not their fastenings.

They were moving through semi-arid scrub, low sandy hills covered mostly with thorns of one description or another—every plant seemed to come bristling with them—when Oates heard the first shots.

He whirled his charger around, and glimpsed four or five black wraith-like shapes cresting one of the low rises to the south. Captain Anstice signalled for Oates to stay put and spurred his horse forward, no doubt to consult Colonel Herbert, who was at the van of the column.

There came a series of distant cracks and he saw two or three muzzle flashes come from the raiders. Oates realised the men were firing from the saddle, like accomplished cavalrymen. Mere farmers, Anstice had said. These men didn’t ride or shoot like farmers.

The air around him whistled and snapped. Another five men, blurred, darting figures, had appeared from beneath a bluff. Return fire had started from the British column, but it was like trying to hit fast-moving crows. And too many British soldiers had, like Oates, Martini-Henry carbines, rather than the more effective Lee Enfields.

Fresh firing erupted from the far side of the line and then from the vanguard. In a flash of clarity, Oates visualised the column as the enemy saw them: overstretched, underdefended and plodding along a valley floor, hemmed in by a series of hills and ranges.

Oates extracted the carbine from Sausage’s flank and levered a round into the chamber.

‘Dismount!’ he shouted, sliding off his own horse.

Culshaw took up the call. ‘Troopers dismount and suppress fire!’ Individually, the carbine was a feeble weapon, but en masse it could be effective, just as long as the enemy was foolish enough to approach within its limited range.

Anstice returned at the double, his horse kicking up a plume of sandy dust. The captain began yelling at Oates and the Inniskillings. He, apparently, didn’t want them off their horses. They were to mount a counter attack.

‘That’s just what they want, sir,’ Oates protested. ‘A fight on their terms, in their country.’

Anstice, who had had trouble with Oates before, turned quite puce with anger and was about to lambaste his lieutenant when his two front teeth and top lip disappeared in a conical splash of crimson. His eyes went wide with shock, before his head dropped forward to show the entry wound. He slumped in the saddle and slid, almost gently, to the ground, his holed topee still in place.

By the time Oates pulled his attention back from the fallen captain to the marauders, the Boers had gone, swallowed by the hills.

It was getting dark, they were still a good few hours from Aberdeen, and there was a guerrilla force in the unfamiliar country around them. They were exposed and vulnerable to more hit-and-run attacks. The same thoughts must have struck others, because he felt a ripple of apprehension run through the column.

He re-holstered the carbine and bent down, struggling with the weight of the dead Anstice, and was relieved when other hands came to his assistance. Together they heaved him on to the saddle and bound his limbs under the belly of his horse. Another British grave to be dug in Aberdeen. It was, Oates considered, unlikely to be the last.

S
COTT PROWLED THE OVER-LADEN
decks, humming a selection of hymns to block out the continuing bleating of terrified sheep and the aggressive yapping of the dogs, both of which they had picked up in New Zealand. As he walked by the huskies’ kennels they snarled and bared their teeth.

‘No respect for authority,’ quipped Wilson, who was sitting on a stack of coal sacks, sketching the hounds. Scott stopped to admire his work. On most days, Bill Wilson was able to turn out exquisite watercolours of animals and scenery. His work on South Trinidad had been inspired and inspiring. The dogs, though, were eluding him, as the many corrections and erasings testified. They were foul-tempered animals, these Siberian huskies, liable to nip man or beast that came within range or, failing that, each other.