Death on the Ice (7 page)

Nansen had told Scott dogs would be good company on the ice. It would be like being chained to a lunatic, Scott thought. He’d reluctantly left Scamp behind, because he was fairly certain the huskies, especially the truculent beast they called Wolf, would snap him in two at the first opportunity. Each of the dogs had been assigned a sailor to feed and exercise them. Wolf’s handler had the teeth marks to prove he had been given the cur of the pack.

‘I find petrels far easier,’ said Wilson, by way of an excuse.

‘If you can think of a way to get petrels to haul sleds, I’d happily send these back on the first relief boat.’

‘Happy New Year, by the way, Con.’

‘Happy New Year, Bill.’ They had postponed celebrations of both Christmas and New Year in memory of Able Seaman Charles Bonner, who had fallen to his death from the rigging as they left port. Not an auspicious start. Drink was involved. Although he was in no way to blame, Scott had taken the loss badly.

‘How do you feel?’ Wilson asked.

‘Better, thank you. I think leaving Lyttleton was good for me.’ He had confided in Wilson about his ‘brown moments’, when a melancholy crept through him like a cold front advancing over the sea. He had been forced to fight off several attacks while they tarried in New Zealand, searching for the source of The Leak. ‘No more cables from Markham or the Admiralty. No more going cap in hand to sponsors. No more dignitaries and their wives poking their noses into every corner of the ship. No more speeches, thank the Lord.’

‘And no more Maoris,’ Wilson added, displaying his own prejudice. ‘And their bogus ceremonies. And the crew is set.’

‘At last,’ agreed Scott. Even before they lost the luckless Bonner, there had been some fierce drunkenness on shore, with Taff Evans making a disgrace of himself. The man didn’t actually recall being britchless in the rigging and he was so hangdog apologetic, that Scott let him off with a warning. However, the captain tongue-lashed two able seamen for their dereliction of duty and terrorising of the town. One of them promptly deserted. Now, in that scoundrel’s place, he had Tom Crean, another RN man and a real bonus. Strong and capable, with an unhurried manner and a slow, laconic Irish wit when he was of a mind to display it, he exuded a natural confidence. ‘I wish I could have a whole crew of Creans,’ he said out loud.

‘I think—’ Wilson stopped and went back to shading the teeth of Wolf.

‘Go on, doctor.’

‘One could tire of the navy’s ways. If one weren’t navy.’

‘Have you been talking with Shackleton?’

‘Only about Swinburne. No, because I am a civilian the men occasionally talk in front of me. Some of them expressed concern about the duty roster.’ Scott doubted they had expressed ‘concern’; they would have carped and cursed about his insistence on strict routine. ‘And about why they haven’t been given a clear idea of your plans. If you intend to overwinter
Discovery
or leave a shore party and return the ship to Lyttleton.’

Scott turned and looked out to sea, hoping to quell his irritation before he spoke again. The sky had become brighter as they moved south, yet paler; it was a very delicate blue now. The sea, after some fierce troughs that had tested the inclinometer and the ship’s loading, had grown oily and sluggish around them, presaging the appearance of sea ice. The previous day the air temperature had dropped enough to encourage the formation of ice-webs on the rigging. He would have to watch that. Despite what Shackleton assured him were his best efforts, the holds refused to offer any more space for provisions, coal and kerosene, so the surplus had been lashed on deck with the prefabricated huts that would form their base on the ice.
Discovery
was top-heavy. She’d survived a couple of bad rolls and vast depressions the size of slate quarries in the sea, but ice accretion might just be enough to tip her over. And, although they had wasted all that precious time dry-docking, she still leaked.

As he stared at the ocean, a whale fluked in the distance, the black tail hovering in the air for a few seconds before smoothly sliding away. At night they heard the huge animals hissing and squeaking, a combination of other-worldly sounds that unnerved some of the men. A new century and the thought of sirens could still infect the hardiest of sailors.

Scott turned back to Wilson, prompting more barking from the infernal dogs and a terrified response from the tethered sheep. ‘Every man on this ship is wondering how I will fare on the ice. Including you.’ He raised a hand to quash an interruption. Wilson was the only person he would dare share these thoughts with. ‘I don’t blame them. I would too. What you don’t want is a leader who vacillates. Nor do you want one who allows the men too much idle time. So my orders are direct and unmistakable. And they will know my intentions when I am ready to tell them.’

Wilson looked at him with a very direct gaze. ‘You’re a little scared, I think, Con.’

To Wilson’s surprise, Scott found this most amusing. ‘If I wasn’t a little apprehensive, I’d be more than a little foolish, don’t you think?’

‘Berg!’

It was Able Seaman Dell up in the crow’s nest, his deep, resonant voice carrying above the snarling dogs and the querulous sheep and the thump of the engines. ‘Iceberg, starboard side!’

Scott’s face broke into a smile as Wilson leapt to his feet and the dogs threw themselves against their chains in a frenzy. Ice. It had begun.

‘There, I see it,’ said Wilson.

‘Mr Royds!’ Scott yelled, his breath rolling out clouds into the chill air. When the junior officer appeared Scott shocked him by saying: ‘New Year’s Day and our first iceberg. Get the galley to make up a rum punch ration for all hands.’

It wasn’t a huge berg, a tabular with steep sides and a flat top and less than fifty feet high. But it was impressive enough to get every man up top for a good look as they steamed past it at a safe distance. The surface was a hard, translucent white, stippled with patches of trapped air bubbles that sparkled in the sun. It looked like a giant slab of seaside rock with the colours bleached from it. But where it touched the sea, the orphaned berg created a halo of various blues: there were rings of cyan, cornflower, azure and indigo. Occasionally a glimpse of a lurking shadow below the waterline hinted at the submerged mass that formed the foundations.

Trailing behind it was a smaller lump of ice, like a calf following its mother, this one expertly sculptured by the sea, with an opalescent arch bored through its body. As Scott examined this second floater’s almost transparent edges, feathered in places to blade-like sharpness, he realised this was no youngster, but an older berg, already shaped and eroded by wind and wave.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Wilson to Scott as they stood at the rail. The doctor was already analysing how to catch the ever-shifting play of silvery light across ice and water on paper.

Armitage, the ice pilot, overheard him and stopped what he was doing.’ ’Tis nothing, doctor. This is just the beginning. That’s only a growler. The
Southern Cross
saw bergs a hundred miles long.’

‘Isn’t that almost a country?’ asked Wilson.

‘Aye, Dr Wilson. A country that melts. You know we can use the bergs for fresh water? Salt leaches out of them after a while.’

Wilson had heard this before, but feigned surprise. ‘Really?’

Scott peered at the horizon. He could see a strange luminescence on the underside of the clouds. They looked as if they had been painted with mother-of-pearl. ‘What is that?’ he asked himself.

‘Ice blink,’ said Armitage.

‘Ice what?’ Wilson asked, genuinely baffled this time.

Tom Crean, enjoying a pipe nearby, answered for him. ‘Ice blink. The light bounces off sheet ice, reflecting on the sky.’

Armitage, the old Arctic hand, chipped in, his voice carrying an unwelcome undertow, hovering between respect and fear. ‘It’s not any old ice. It’s the pack ice. And we’ll be hitting it soon enough, gentlemen.’

Bill Wilson felt the conflicting pull of anticipation and fear.

‘And then, skipper,’ said Tom Crean, slapping the rail, ‘we’ll really find out just how proud the shipbuilders of Dundee have done you.’

T
HE TOWN THE INNISKILLINGS
woke up to was surprisingly modest. Aberdeen was once a neat collection of well-to-do clapperboard houses and less desirable wattle-and-spit dwellings with a ludicrously grand town hall and a church, which had lost its spire. On close inspection, most buildings showed signs of war damage: at least three bloody battles had been fought over the humble burg. It hardly seemed worth the loss of life.

The Boers had left the column unmolested during the final march, allowing a series of rain squalls to do the work of draining morale for them. The British had pitched camp to the south of Aberdeen, with a few lucky officers obtaining billets in the town. But there had been tents waiting for the troopers, well used but serviceable, if a bit frowsty inside with the sweat of other soldiers and a smattering of mildew from damp storage. Despite that, it had been better than the other nights on the trail.

It was barely dawn when a runner summoned Oates to see Colonel Herbert. He’d been dreaming of Gestingthorpe, his mother and sisters and their first nanny. It was a long hot summer, and they’d been playing with Arthur, the cook’s boy, damming the river. He shook himself awake and climbed into his dust-stiffened uniform. Young Arthur was dead, he remembered, as his brain reordered itself. Kicked in the head by a horse. The memory made for a glum start to the day.

Herbert had taken over the town hall as his HQ and black servants were unloading a very well-stocked baggage wagon. Herbert was sitting on a folding chair in the soft morning sunshine, watching the proceeding, sipping coffee. ‘Ah, Oates. Shame about Anstice.’

That was clearly as much of an obituary as the fallen officer was going to get. ‘Sir.’

‘I’m minded to send out three patrols, see if we can’t flush out that band of Boers that attacked us and killed your captain.’

Flush out.
Oates didn’t like the sound of that. From what he had seen of the Boers, they wouldn’t be flushed out very easily.

‘I want the Inniskillings to take the dried river bed to the east. Major MacMunn has a map of the area. There is a small settlement eight miles away, two farms. Some of these fellas’—he pointed at the porters, already glistening with sweat under the strengthening sun—‘are adamant they harbour the Boers. Say a commando group calls there every week or two for supplies. Give them some robust questioning, would you?’

Robust.
That was a fine English euphemism. Oates wondered when robust slipped into rough. Beating up the men? Threatening the wives? Burning the farmstead?

‘Oates?’

He had drifted away for a second. ‘Sir.’

‘I want you to pick fifteen troopers and be ready to leave within the hour. Clear?’

‘Fifteen?’

Herbert put his coffee down and brushed the froth from his moustache. ‘Fifteen, yes. And best take a scout.’ He had caught an unwelcome inflection in Oates’s tone. ‘What is it?’

‘Just that with a smaller number, we might slip out of camp unnoticed.’

‘Unnoticed by whom?’

‘Well, the Boers are probably watching, if not for the actual columns, for the dust a sizeable force would kick up. The Boers, I noticed, were riding in groups of five or six.’

A puzzled look crossed Herbert’s face. Oates was apparently suggesting they copy
the enemy
. ‘Fifteen men. One scout. An hour. Dismiss.’

It was amazing, thought Oates as they left Aberdeen, how the rains made precious little difference to the countryside. The soil just soaked up most of the water that fell during the night like an enormous blotter. The sun dealt with the rest. The only green was around the riverbed, which at least still had a number of stagnant pools along the bottom. Here and there sheep grazed on the banks, but they were scraggy-looking specimens. It was a strange country, he mused, some of it ridiculously verdant, other parts parched to endless dust.

Ahead of Oates, his gaze constantly swivelling between the low-lying hills that rose away from the river valley, was Henry Carlton, a civilian scout. Behind Oates were the fifteen troopers he had chosen for the party, held together by Staff Corporal Docherty, a foul-mouthed but efficient NCO who had made sure the Inniskillings were the smartest of Herbert’s contingent.

They were four miles out of town when they heard the distant pop-pops. They sounded feeble, but worryingly familiar. ‘Is that gunfire?’ he asked Docherty.

‘It might be, sir. The other patrols perhaps?’

‘Perhaps.’ But they wouldn’t have got much further out of town than Oates.

‘They might be in difficulties,’ Docherty said, echoing his thoughts.

‘Get the men into the river bed, staff corporal.’

With a few terse commands and economical hand signals, Docherty herded the men towards the wide ditch. It was the signal for the Boers concealed on the hillside to their left to open fire.

The slap of bullets entering flesh was clearly audible. The scout and his horse were first to fall under the sustained volley. He was dead before the horse crumpled, crushing him under her flanks. Docherty’s animal gave a huge shudder, managed a half-whinny and died on its feet. The staff corporal leapt off to avoid being pinned by the collapsing mass of dying horseflesh.

Oates managed to turn Sausage and swung a leg out of the saddle as they scrabbled down the three-foot bank to the river bed. He hit the earth hard, pulled the horse down and extracted the carbine from the saddle holster. Around him the troopers were following suit, yanking their horses on to the dried bed, clear of the bullets still whining overhead.

‘Two men down plus the scout. Four horses dead.’ It was Docherty. ‘Where the fuck did they come from, sir?’

Oates ignored the rhetorical question. ‘Check for wounded. Keep your head down.’

Docherty crawled along the gulley, examining each man in turn. Upon his return he said: ‘McGrath had a nasty gash around the ear, bleeding like a stuck pig. If he’s lucky it’s missed anything vital and only got his brain.’