Against the Ice, page 21
Now that the sun was back we felt frisky and strong, and we determined to test our strength with a small sledge trip before we began preparing for a possible journey by boat and ice to Angmagssalik. As the weather seemed settled now that the sun was back, we put our shoulders into the traces and started off with high courage — and speedily regretted it, for unfortunately we discovered all too quickly that our strength was far from what it had been. The labour of pulling the heavy sledge was almost beyond us, and after two days it became more than we could manage, and we had to turn and go back.
As we could not pull the sledge even with a small load, there was no question of our being able to haul the load we should need to have if we were to try drifting south with the ice.
It was bitter to have to admit to ourselves that we were no longer able to do what, in our arrogance, we had thought would be relatively easy. Our hopes of being able to get away by ourselves were dashed completely, and we had to accept the fact that we must just wait for a ship to come and rescue us, wait a short time or a long, but just wait. And if the wait was a very long time, say another year, it would undoubtedly also be for all eternity.
We went to another small island, Walrus Island, and on the shore there we found a large piece of drift timber. Before leaving to return to Bass Rock we erected this piece of timber in a pile of stones, and I tried to carve our initials into the hard wood, so that any who might come that way would know where we were. My knife was not sharp enough to give the letters the depth necessary, if they were to be distinct and easily legible; nor did we have a pencil; but a rifle bullet being of lead proved serviceable, and, having rubbed one to a point on a stone, I was able to print on the white wood
E.M. BASS ROCK. 11/4. 1912
letters that perhaps were what saved us, for they were seen that summer by a sealer.
That done, we toiled back to our little, dark untidy hut and hoped that the summer of 1912 would be considerably better than the preceding one.
CHAPTER XIX
Hopes Fulfilled
Bears and bear-hunting — I operate on my neck with a sheath knife — Doubt and depression — What fools can quarrel over — A ship comes — Journey and arrival home
Over the years we had had a number of adventures with bears, honest, decent creatures on the whole, though often led into harm’s way by their insatiable curiosity. I remember how once we sent a shot after a bear so far away that the bullet struck the snow a good way behind it. The bear, hearing the report of the rifle and the thud of the bullet, could not resist turning back to investigate. It walked towards us, snuffing as it came, as though bent on finding out what it was that had come flying after it.
That proved our opportunity and the bear’s undoing, for we were able to come within proper range and also to get broadside on to it. Thus, the next time the rifle spoke, the bullet drove deep into the bear’s chest.
Once — but that was the only occasion — it was touch and go with us. That was just after we had had to give up the plan of drifting south with the ice, and we had gone back to the hut on Shannon to leave word there that we were waiting for a ship on Bass Rock. A bear had taken up quarters in a snowdrift up against the hut, and when we arrived and began breaking up packing cases for firewood, the bear became angry and turned against us. Iver just caught a glimpse of the bear through the half-open door and hurriedly slammed it to. Unfortunately the door opened inwards, so Iver set his back against it to keep the brute out, shouting to tell me that a bear was attacking and that I must get ready to shoot as quickly as I could.
That, however, was easier said than done, for my rifle was frozen, the cartridges were frozen, and there was too much hoar-frost filling the chamber. When I loaded the rifle, the bolt would not close properly and I feared, certainly with every justification, that the locking mechanism would not hold if I fired a shot. So I seized an axe as my weapon against the bear, which was hissing and roaring wickedly, and playing such a tattoo on the door that we expected it to be sent flying into the hut at any moment. Iver was still braced against the door and yelling at me to get the rifle right.
Then there was a moment’s quiet, and we breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that the bear had raised the siege; but that was a vain hope, for a few seconds later we heard it snarling just outside the hut and I realized that if it hit the door now, it would strike so hard that neither clasp, hinges nor Iver could keep the bear out.
It did strike hard, a decisive blow; yet before the door crashed in and Iver was flung across the hut, a pan of water spilled on to the red-hot coals in the stove, enveloping us in steam and smoke. I had already shouted to Iver to take his rifle and fire, but not to stop and look to see if it were loaded — and let’s hope that it was! — and we were now standing side by side. Ten feet away was the bear with its forepaws inside the hut and a highly astonished look on its face, as it stared at a half-tumbled stove, a lot of sizzling embers and hissing steam, and two live creatures the like of which it had never seen.
Luckily Iver’s rifle was loaded. In the confined space of the little hut the report was ear-splitting. When the bullet entered the bear’s chest, the fur billowed like a field of corn under a gust of wind. The bear stood for a moment shaking its head dejectedly, then all at once it collapsed with blood gushing from the wound, its nose and its mouth, stone-dead. The tension had been considerable, and as the bear died we both subsided on to a packing case and sat there wiping off the sweat that had sprung out on our foreheads, even though cold air was pouring in through the open door from the sunlit outside and condensing into opaque mist in our dark and clammy den.
Spring came, and the migrating birds passed overhead on their way north to the plains of Shannon Island and the fertile land round Danmarks Havn. None settled on our Bass Rock, for there was only stone to be had there, none that is except the snow buntings which did not seem to mind its sterility. Those small pretty birds were a great joy and encouragement to us, as they hopped about, chirruping and pecking at the few blades of sprouting grass and picking up what oatmeal the hares had not had time to eat.
We both of us wanted livening up, for neither of us felt well. I had a nasty tumour on my neck, a sort of malignant boil that had plagued me since the darkest days of winter, and it was growing almost from day to day and hurting so badly that something had to be done. But what? Iver suggested hot compresses and we tried that, but the compresses became cold so quickly that they did not help, rather the reverse.
I had long been toying with the idea of cutting a hole in the tumour, for it was not a proper boil; but it is one thing to come to the conclusion that such a thing ought to be done, and quite another to put it into practice, especially with conditions as they were in our dirty hut. I knew, or thought I knew — which amounted to the same thing — that there was a network of nerves and sinews near the place where the tumour was largest. What would happen if I put a knife to my neck, pressed it in and perhaps severed those sinews and nerves? It seemed to me that the consequences might be disagreeable. Also I had no idea where the arteries were. Thus there was plenty to make one hesitate about such an undertaking.
Added to all these more or less real dangers, there was the further obstacle that I had nothing but my sheath knife with which to perform the operation. This was the knife I used at table, and it was also brought into service for skinning bear, or shaping a piece of wood or any other special purpose; but it was not especially sharp, and, though no doubt I could have found a stone that would have done as a whetstone, whenever I thumbed its rusty edge, as I did many times a day, I always decided to postpone matters.
Iver refused to have anything to do with the operation. If there was to be one, I must perform it myself. And always, just as I had made up my mind to do it, I found a fresh excuse to put it off: such as that we had no mirror, so that I could not see where I was making, or should make, the cut. When it comes to it, of course, you do not need such a thing; on a calm day a puddle can do instead — until the blood begins to flow; but that I only discovered, when it started dripping into the water.
I spent a day or two sharpening my knife and then, as the sun was shining and the air relatively warm, I had a dress rehearsal, mirroring myself in a puddle and drawing a piece of stick across the place on my neck where I considered the cut should be made. This was not easy; it is, in fact, quite difficult to follow direction in a reflected picture. Then, feeling I could wait no longer, I pulled myself together, gave the knife an extra whetting, nodded to Iver and saw that he had some cloth from an old tent ready for a bandage, stared at my image in the puddle and pressed the knife into my neck, finding to my amazement that I did not feel so very much. The moment the blood and pus began dripping into the puddle, the surface became ruffled and quite useless as a mirror. I had just sufficient presence of mind left to press the knife in and draw it downwards — then everything went dark, and Iver bandaged the wound as well as he could.
That operation brought me relief and the wound never became infected, but when I reached home a few months later and the doctors got hold of me, they shook their heads in horror and said something about only a fool being able to get away with what ten wise men would hesitate to do.
We were looking forward to the early summer; to the days when the ship could come, though for all our longing we had not been able to exorcize doubt with its insidious if. We tried to banish that horrible word from our minds — of course the ship would come — but it is easier to doubt than to believe, and by degrees, as high summer drew near and our expectations grew, we both became more nervy and irritable than we had ever been before. We realized that we could not endure another winter. Neither our health nor our minds could bear the heavy burden of another period of darkness, and also we had used almost all the provisions, clothes and ammunition which were absolutely essential for the maintenance of life.
We tried to keep ourselves busy with hunting, or we walked ourselves tired by continually going up the mountain to look at the ice, or rather the water between the ice. Conditions did not, in fact, look so bad, much better than the previous year, but a storm could dash all our hopes in the course of a few hours. And what then? The spectre of doubt was at once beside us whispering: “What will you do, if the ship cannot come in this year either? Will you take up the struggle for continued existence, or will you give up?”
We looked at each other and said nothing, for we each had difficulty enough in keeping our own thoughts in check. Silence under such conditions, however, was not good, for it could become oppressive and give birth to evil ideas. Nothing, of course, happened, or could happen, during those two months between spring and summer. We had to stay where we were, where we knew every stone, every light effect, every sound; thus an outside influence strong enough to break down any wall of silence that might arise between us was a most unlikely thing. Where could it come from? We had to be very wary, much more so than before, and although we had been alone together for nearly two and a half years without once quarrelling, it would not have taken much for us to have let slip some thoughtless word that would have been deeply wounding.
Our nerves were worn thin, thinner than ever before. We were hag-ridden by the fear of having to spend another year there, and each time we saw the scattered state of the pack ice and hope of the ship’s arrival welled up within us, dreadful doubt was at once there whispering.
And then, of course, Iver must needs do what he should have avoided at all costs, and say things that shattered the calm for which we had struggled so hard. It was morning just as I woke. I was on the point of saying something comforting to Iver, who was standing at the stove making a sort of porridge that tasted awful but was filling; but I never got it said, for just at that moment Iver began singing a song I had not heard before, a song about my girl and me, that is the girl from the postcard, Miss Steadfast, my sweetheart.
I listened, surprised and rather hurt at my old friend’s complete lack of loyalty; for the song that Iver must have composed during the night was an insult to my honour and that of my girl. There I sat in my sleeping bag, gazing in amazement at the singer stirring his porridge — and feeling a wall of silence growing up between us, an insurmountable wall behind which Iver stood, his stirring hand moving more and more slowly, while the smile in his eyes vanished and was replaced by an expression of sorrow and shame.
Iver passed me a bowl of porridge: “It’s better today,” he said with a little catch in his voice. I took the bowl without a word.
We ate our porridge without speaking, and not a word was said as we did the day’s jobs. Then Iver went out, and I too went out and up on to the mountain and looked out across the ice; but never so much as a nod did I give the man who stood only a few yards away pretending to be looking across the ice as well, while he shot stealthy glances at me. We returned to the hut without having exchanged a word or even said that the ice looked better than the day before, a fact that normally would have made us jubilant.
Iver took exceptional pains with our bear-steak for dinner and handed it to me with a queer beseeching expression in his eyes. And I? Yes, I honestly did try to find the words that would break the barrier of silence, and I felt ashamed at being so silly, but I could not find anything to say, or to do, that would break the curse of silence.
When the time came, we crept into our sleeping bags without having said a word to each other all day long. I could hear that Iver lay awake most of the night, as I did too, filled with shame and despising myself for not having been able to find a word to break the horrible noose that silence had drawn round us and was pulling tighter and tighter.
When the sun was again peering in at our little window and it was time to turn out, we were still silent as we sat, each on his packing case, staring despondently into the air. In the end Iver stood up, wrote something on a piece of paper and went out.
All of a sudden I felt so utterly alone and forlorn that I shuddered. I was actually making for the door, intending at last to break the stupid, dangerous silence, when I heard Iver’s feet crunching on the snow: he was coming back to the hut. Contrary to our habit he knocked on the door, hesitantly.
I knew what that meant and called: “Come in!” The first words either of us had spoken for almost two days. Then Iver opened the door ajar, threw a piece of paper in through the crack and said in a rather quavering voice:
“Here’s a letter from Denmark!”
The next moment he was gone again and the door shut, but on the floor lay a piece of paper, shining and lifting the weight from my heart, for I knew what it meant and was: an apology for things said without thinking, a talisman that would extinguish the embers of smouldering hate and break the awful silence.
I picked up the little note and read: “I am so sorry I took your girl. Take her back, take my four as well, take the whole damned lot — only be cheerful again!”
And that was the man I had been on the point of hating! I suddenly wanted to see him, more than I have ever wanted to see anyone, and he was outside in the cold waiting anxiously for a word of friendship.
I spoke it and we laughed to each other, promising never again to let ourselves be caught in the evil circle of silence. Then Iver cooked a meal of the best the house could produce, which was not very grand. We sat on our packing cases looking happily at each other and thinking of our friendship that had held through the bad times when Death itself walked with us. To think that a few thoughtless silly words could have wrecked that friendship, had in fact done so for a few bitter hours, during which silence had grown up between us and our thoughts become malevolent.
Together we went up the mountain and looked out across the ice and the water, helping each other drive doubt underground, so that it left us in peace for some days. We again went hunting bear, hares or birds together, for our store of provisions had shrunk unpleasantly swiftly down to the bare minimum, and we had not had any fresh meat for some time. We were badly in need of fresh food, for our muscles were gradually stiffening, our joints growing tender, our gums red and swollen, our teeth loose. We were again threatened with scurvy.
We saw neither hares nor bear, not even a seal, but that did not make our need of meat any less; on the contrary, it grew and grew, until we wondered whether we ought not to have recourse to our last reserve, a flock of auks which had babies upon the mountain-side? We could not bring ourselves to that, however, so we tightened our belts instead, drank our coffee that smelt of carbolic and paraffin, smoked our stinking cigarettes, ate our musty biscuits and mildewed oatmeal, talked about the ship that could come any moment now, for the ice was broken and the sea navigable. The hour of our release must be at hand.
The next morning we decided that we would shoot the auks after all, and eventually we got them within range and in a place where the wind would make the dead bodies drift towards us. We lay side by side, looked at the auks and then peered out to sea in case there was a ship rounding the outer headland, which would have meant that the auks could have been allowed to live and go on giving their babies the food they were collecting for them with so much squawking.
How loud would not the squawking be, we thought, in a few hours’ time, when the parent birds were in our pot? We could not bear the thought of the plaintive cries that would grow louder and louder and only stop, when the babies could cry no more and died of starvation. So we lowered our guns: “Let them live till tomorrow. We have gone hungry before. Perhaps a ship will come tonight.”
We felt easy in our minds and proud of our magnanimous action as we walked back to our dark little hut, crept into our sleeping bags and said, as we had so many times before, perhaps the ship will come tonight?
Some hours later Iver was wakened by a commotion outside the hut. Thinking it was a bear rummaging among the cases and things we had lying outside, he seized his rifle — we badly needed meat now and a bear would be very nice to have. The commotion woke me as well and, seeing Iver making for the door with his rifle, I kicked my sleeping bag away, seized my rifle and ran barefoot for the door — which suddenly opened and outside we saw a group of men headed by a tall broad-shouldered chap who held out his hand: “Give us your rifles, boys, we come as friends.”
