Afterlands (23 page)

Let’s return, he says, and hope the goods are in the storehut.

The men’s responsive silence has the dense, charged quality of collective prayer.

When they squeeze back into the crewhut and announce that all has been returned, by somebody, Anthing, seeming delighted as well, edges forward in a posture of contrition. His thinned face looks shy and excited. As the other men happily confer, he puts his cheek next to Kruger’s and wraps his warm dry hands, rusty with auburn hair, over Kruger’s fist. I give you my apologies, Roland. You were quite right, in the end. Kruger seeks validation of the words in Anthing’s eyes. To his surprise Anthing meets his gaze, unblinking, the deep pupils large and warm, blue irises soft as felted wool.

Feb. 25
. Have had another long talk with the men, who now seem more inclined to listen. I have explained to them that I hope soon to get to the ground of the bladder-nose seal, which in March comes onto the ice, not far from where we are now, to breed. I have told them—what they already know as well as I—how little biscuit and pemmican we have left, even with the return of the supplies to our store-house, some time yesterday or night (an amount but a little short of what I knew to have been taken, so that it seems likely that whatever remained has indeed been returned). This restitution, I believe by Kruger and the men, is a great relief and a boon; but still I suggested, in case we are later than I expect in reaching the sealing-ground, that we ought to subsist on still less than we have been doing. It seemed hard to ask them to live on one
short
meal
per diem
, but if we do not, we will most certainly exhaust our small store too soon.

The mountainous west-land is still visible about forty miles off, due west, and now, with the supplies returned, I am tempted to try to reach it. But I fear it would be too much for Meyer, Jackson, and little Tobias; and to-day a deep fall of snow has rendered it impossible for even the most fool-hardy to think of starting, although Joe still speaks as if he is willing. We went off hunting instead. About noon found one little hole, and Joe, again our “best man,” shot the only seal that has been seen to-day. The edges of our floe still continue to crumble off in bits; the sea moves in on us from all sides, like a besieging army. Our little continent is now
considerably
smaller than when we first took up residence upon it. Still, we do not despair.

Feb. 26
. The sun is shining through our little ice-window! It is the first day that the sun has gotten high enough to penetrate our burrow directly; but there is no blessing without its drawback; though the sun is welcome, it reveals too plainly our filthy condition. I thought I knew the worst before, but the sun has made new revelations. The crewmen are actually infected with spring-fever, and except for the weakest—Mr Meyer, and Jackson, whom I visited to-day—they are
cleaning house
. I should think a good cart-load of black, smoky ice was taken from their hut, and clean snow taken in. This morning, too, Punnie seemed to be enlightened by the sun. She sat looking at me for some time, and then gravely remarked, “
You are nothing but skin and bone!”
And, indeed, besides will, I am not much else.

Feb. 27
. Clear and cold. The mercury has gone down again to 38 below zero F. Such a set of skeletons as we would have had a poor chance camping out on such a night without the shelter of our huts. We are now on our allowance of one meal a day; but I have insisted on a little supplement for both Meyer and Jackson, to speed their recovery. The men’s co-operation is heartening, of course, but our trials are far from over; we are still all starving; and now this group of formerly stubborn crew-men is my full responsibility once again. Command is best maintained by one of strong body and clear mind; in these conditions, as “Count” Meyer appears to have discovered, it is a test both day and night.

March 1. 5
P.M
.
Our Joe has shot a monster oogjook!—a large kind of seal—the largest I have ever seen. Luckily most of the men were present, on the hunt, to help drag him to the huts. Herron and Jamka fairly danced and sang for joy. The warm blood of the seal was scooped up in tin cans and was relished like new milk. No one who has not been in a similar position to ours can tell the feeling of relief which his capture produced. How we rejoiced over the death of the oogjook it would be impossible to describe. Hannah had but two small pieces of blubber left, enough for the lamp for two days; the men had but little, and Hans had only enough for one day. And now, just on the verge of absolute destitution, along comes this monster oogjook, the only one of the seal species seen to-day; and the fellow must weigh six or seven hundred pounds, and will furnish, I should think, thirty gallons of oil! Truly we are rich indeed. Praise the Lord for all his mercies!

March 3
. We eat no biscuit or pemmican to-day—oogjook is the only dish; and it does me good to see the men able once more to satisfy their appetites. And they are bound to do so—they are cooking and eating night and day. We have had oogjook sausages for breakfast, the intestines being stuffed with blubber and tied into links, and with these some of the meat stewed. After such long fasting the men cannot restrain their appetites, and some of them, like poor Herron and Jackson, have eaten until they are sick. And yet we make few inroads on this great hill of flesh. Our glorious oogjook has proved, on measurement, including the hind flipper, fully nine feet and seven inches long! What a Godsend!

They are coming, sir. Tukulito squints into the southern light near sunset. Kruger visors his brow with his hand. He can see nothing, but on faith he levers open the rifle’s rusting trapdoor and jams in a cartridge. Herron and Jackson do the same. The four of them crouching on the level summit of Mt Hall. Ebierbing and Hans, distantly visible, are on a for-now adjoining floe hunting seals; every other adult, even Merkut, is outside on the home floe, waiting for dovekies. Small neckless globular clumps of down, they’ve begun to appear, helpfully peeping as they dart and dip northward on their short, pointed wings. The main flocks, Tukulito has told them, are somewhat overdue.

This here gun don’t feel halfway so heavy as it did just Sunday, Jackson says.

That’s thanks to our lovely oogjook, Will. Herron works the word into his conversation as frequently as possible, lips puckering with delight around the juicy, oozing syllables.
Ooog—joook
. He says, Even if we shot a dozen brace of these fowl, still it’s oogjook I’d be eating.

It’s the richest meat I ever had, Jackson says.

I feel fit as a butcher’s dog! Herron exclaims, and his full-lunged laughter triggers their own. It sounds uncanny out here in the open—an openness spilling past headstone bergs to the west-land (farther off today, it seems) and to whistling distances of ice lit by lateral citron rays.

Kruger and Tukulito are side by side, about a body’s width apart. She has left Punnie in charge of Tobias, who is rather improved, she says, by the fresh provisions. Kruger has so many things he wants to say that the words jam in his throat like river ice in a thaw. Now that his belly is crammed with good meat, other appetites are fully resurging. He tries to edge closer, just to feel her solidity—a galvanic contact, nothing more—but she maintains the slim boundary. It’s windless, not too cold. She has her hood down and the smell of her hair comes to him, rich and slightly bitter, like walnut oil. Her naked wind-cracked hands, with the pistol Tyson rejected, are tucked in the apron-front of her parka. Tiny hands! Her presence is such that it’s easy to forget how tiny she is.

Still no sign of the birds that she has sighted, then it’s as if the flock has swooped out of a cloud or a rift in the sky. The four brace themselves, each on a knee, raising their weapons as the black-and-white birds, clumped tight as starlings, bear down on them with shrill tittering cries. Tukulito with both hands lifts the butt of the huge-looking pistol. Kruger shuns the absurd impulse to ask if she needs help. In fact he and the others wait for her to fire first, as if sensing that she controls these dovekies somehow, even conjures them out of the south. The pistol snaps and bucks in her hand. Jackson fires into the dense flock and a bird starts spinning like a small propeller, plunges. As Kruger fires, the brace-plate kicks into his fleshless shoulder; another bird slips from the flock, resumes flying for a moment, dives. The dovekies streaking overhead. Tukulito calmly squeezing off her shots. Kruger reloads in a fluster. He’s wildly impatient, starting to sense how for the rest of his life no store of fresh-killed food will ever be enough.

No need to hurry, sir, she says, methodically refilling the pistol’s cylinder. Kruger looks up. The flock, as if attracted by the gunfire, which must sound to them like ice cracking, opening leads where they can alight and rest, are assuming a tight circle pattern, like chimney swifts close above. Kruger fires and brings one down. They’re packed so tight it’s hard to miss. He levers the breech—the ejected casing flying at his cheek, hot as a bee sting—and lets out a throttled cry, not of pain but of joy. A sound he hardly recognizes. They’re killing together, that’s what it is—he and the men, but most of all he and she, and now, as the dovekies go on offering themselves to the hunters, it starts to feel like a kind of sacrament. Every bird he sacrifices is for her—his gift of warm flesh, of fat, of heat. And if he never gets any closer to her than now, perhaps this fierce and primal joy, seemingly shared, can be remembered as enough.

They shoot faster into the cyclone swirling above. A dismantled bird, black, white and blooded, thumps down on the trampled snow among them. It lies still amid the brilliant brass casings. Heat smoking off the barrels of the guns. Food, life, raining down on the ice. Of this there can never be too much. Yet already, like sexual pleasure, the moment has crested, is in decline. It’s more and more unsettling the way the birds, frantic yet unshakeably patient, will not stop revolving above their killers, transforming the air into an orderly abattoir, awaiting their turn to be culled. Some suicidal instinct has them on a tether. It’s their own nature. The ice is cobbled with little round bodies. The ammunition running low. At last, it’s almost too much, something in this mass mania, the birds’ mania, he almost wants to scream at them Stop now, stop it! Go on, fly on!
Because you all think with your blood
. But the birds are helpless and, as long as they stay up there and a single bullet remains, the hunters are helpless too.

March 10, morning
. Our three days of calm have been shattered by a gale. These storms seem endless, and continue to eat away at our raft, which is now only perhaps a quarter of its original dimensions. There will be no hunting to-day. Fortunately we have still much of the oogjook remaining, as well as a good number of dovekies, small though they be. Little Tobias, whom I have tried to help Hannah and Punnie to nurse, continues to improve. This morning he has been returned to his parents; so there is now a little more room inside our hut. As for Hans, he again is working hard for us, in part, I think, to counter-weigh the men’s apparent belief that it was
he
who was our store-house thief. I assume Kruger convinced the men of this; and I suppose it is not entirely impossible.

March 11
. Last night was one of great anxiety. The gale raged fiercely throughout the day, and at 5 P.M. the ice began a great uproar. Our heavy floe commenced working, cracking, breaking with a succession of dismal noises, like distant cannon-fire, mingled with sharp reports and resounding concussions; and these noises seemed to have their centre immediately under our huts. Commingling with the raging storm, the crushing and grinding from the heavy pressure of the bergs, and heavy ice around us, these sounds gave us good reason for alarm. They startled me from my sleep; several times I thought the floe was going to pieces. In the swirling snow we had got every thing ready to catch and run—but where to? That was the question. There is precious little room left.

About nine o’clock, hearing a heavy explosive, then grinding, sound, Joe and I felt our way outside in the darkness and some twenty yards to the rear of our hut, while Hannah stayed with Punnie, who was clinging to her pathetically. There we found the floe had broken. The sides of the severed pieces swaying back and forth, then rushing upon each other and grinding their sides with all the force which sea and gale could give them, caused the alarming noises I had heard. We crept back inside, then had to stay alert all through the night—and with such feelings as I leave the reader to imagine—but nothing more serious occurred. At some point, I went out to check on the other huts.

The gale still blows this morning, and there is some rough seas under the ice. We have never before felt it move up and down like this; but then, our raft is only a fraction of its original size. Should the ice break up still farther, and we be obliged to abandon our little snow-burrows or be turned out of them by farther disruption, it would be very hard upon the party, with such weather prevailing.
But a kind and merciful God has thus far guided and protected us, and will, I trust, yet deliver us
.