The Winter Pony (17 page)

I didn’t blame the men for being so happy. Their only chance for escape had appeared from nowhere, just when everything looked as bleak and dark as possible. It was as though their lives had been snatched away, then given back like a gift from the world.

They laughed as they set to work. They took everything off my sledge and put it on the other sledges. Then they used mine for a ladder, lowering one end to the bridge. They had just put it in place when a voice called across the strip of water. It was Captain Scott! He was standing at the edge of the Barrier, with Mr. Oates and Mr. Crean beside him.

Captain Scott shouted, “Come across. Hurry!”

Little Birdie Bowers answered, standing on his toes as he shouted, “What about the ponies?”

Captain Scott yelled back, “I don’t give a damn about the ponies!”

It stung me to hear those words. At the same time, I knew why he said them. There was nothing else that he
could
say that would get Birdie to leave us behind and make his way to safety.

“It’s you I want,” shouted Captain Scott. “And I am going
to see you safe here up on the Barrier before I do anything else.”

Birdie and Cherry started their way across. Birdie went first, down to the bridge of ice. Cherry followed. Then Patrick turned around to step backward onto the sledge. With his hands on the snow, his feet on the sledge, he raised his head for a moment and we found ourselves looking right into each other’s eyes. I knew he had to go, but I didn’t want it to happen.

I saw him swallow, a big lump bobbing in his throat. I tried to make it easier by turning away myself, though it was a hard thing to do. My eyes wanted to look again, to watch him go, but I wouldn’t let them.

He called out to me. “So long, James Pigg,” he said. “I promise I’ll be back.” And a moment later, he was gone, clambering down the sledge.

I saw him again, he and Birdie and Cherry together, lifting the sledge to the Barrier cliff. Killer whales snorted and roared, and the men scrambled up and over the top as Captain Scott and the others reached down to help them. Then they all moved away from the edge, and I couldn’t see them anymore.

Whirls of snow came down from the lip of the Barrier. To the west a huge chunk of ice fell away, tumbling into the sea with a rumble and a great splash. Waves spread out through the gap, breaking against the bridge, nearly knocking it away.

A penguin leapt up to the ice. A killer whale cruised past it, puffing a breath that sparkled in the sun.

I thought of poor Guts, trapped suddenly under the ice in
that awful cold and darkness. I wondered if it had happened so quickly that he didn’t really
know
it had happened. It would be good if that were true. In a way, I wished the ice would crack open right then and swallow me. I didn’t want to drift around on a bit of ice until I starved to death.

Whatever was going to happen, it didn’t matter to the skuas. They ruffled their wings and settled, hunched, in the snow. Their little black eyes were open, watching. Those birds, I thought, could sit and wait forever.

I felt rather sorry for myself just then. I had wanted to be such a help to Captain Scott and Mr. Oates and the others. I’d thought I would spend my last days with them, in one way or another. But now I was nothing but a worry to them, no use at all.

I was surprised when they came back to the edge of the Barrier. Uncle Bill noticed them first, and whinnied sadly for Birdie Bowers, who had cared for him as fondly as Patrick had cared for me. The big pony shifted on his feet. He dug at the snow with one hoof.

I supposed the men had come for one last look, as a way of saying good-bye. Mr. Oates had brought something long and thin that he rested on his shoulder. I thought it was probably a rifle. But when he swung it down from his shoulder, I saw that it was a shovel. Birdie came up behind him with another shovel, and together they started digging.

They pushed the blades into the surface. They pried with the handles and levered up chunks of snow that they tossed over the edge, down to the bridge. Then they did it again, cutting back from the edge. The snow splattered on the icy bridge with small explosions.

The men were making a ramp.

Patrick and Cherry started working beside them, using skis to dig in the snow. Mr. Crean used his hands, breaking off bits from the edge. Then Birdie scrambled down and across the bridge, bringing a shovel to start another ramp up to our island.

The work would take hours and hours, and the men raced against the wind. The gusts were stronger now, and shiny sprinkles whirled from the falling clods of snow. At any moment, a gale could come, and we’d go sailing out to sea.

Captain Scott was watching for that. He paced along the Barrier’s edge, looking now to the south and now to the sea. Mr. Oates and the others were digging like fury. They had thrown off their heavy coats, their mittens and wind helmets. They bent and straightened, working the shovels without a moment’s rest.

I felt the ice shift. The bridge jarred across the floe with a sound like teeth being ground together. Captain Scott shouted down to little Birdie, his voice shrill with urgency: “Bowers, come up!”

Birdie Bowers looked up. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

“Now!” screamed Captain Scott. “Come up, I say.”

The bridge was breaking loose. It tipped to one side, spilling half of the snow that was piled on its top. Birdie grabbed his mittens and coat and raced for the Barrier.

He barely made it. He had to leap across a gap on the other side. Mr. Oates stretched out on his stomach, reaching out a hand to grab the little man. They hauled up the sledge, and an instant later, the bridge flopped on its side. A gap opened between
its far end and the Barrier. There was two feet of water, then six feet of water, then twenty feet of water.

Uncle Bill hadn’t taken his eyes off Birdie for a moment. Now he swayed as the ice shifted again. His tail swished sadly.

We had our blankets on. I was wearing two—my own and one that still smelled of Blossom. But I had never felt so cold as then.

The men went away, but not far. They must have pitched their tents as close as they dared to the edge, because there was always one of them—and often more—standing right at the edge. Patrick was there at the end of the day, as the clouds and the snow turned to the colors of fire.

Then everything faded away into blackness. The mountains disappeared; the Barrier vanished; the skuas eased out of sight. I wished the moon would come down through the clouds, but he didn’t. The night was the loneliest I remembered, so cold that my breaths froze into icicles.

I could hear the whales and the birds, but I couldn’t see them. Everything was invisible.

I moved close to Uncle Bill. He pressed against me, snorted, and began to nuzzle at my neck. Then Punch came and joined us, pushing up against my other side. Even squeezed between them, I was still cold, but it made the night less lonely.

In the morning, I saw that we had moved along in the darkness. Our little island was jammed in a mass of ice below the Barrier, at a place where the cliff had crumbled away. There was a slope from top to bottom.

I hoped to see Patrick looking down at me, but nobody was there. The killer whales had followed us. As I looked across the water, one lifted its head high from the surface and gazed back at me with its piggish eyes. And the skuas had moved nearer. The whole flock was gathered close by.

In the shadows below the cliff, something moved and caught my eye. I had to blink frost from my eyelashes and turn my head to see it properly. A little man was coming across the ice. He lurched and tipped, as though trying to keep his balance. I made a happy sound; I stomped my feet and shook my mane.

But it was only a penguin. I saw the white feathers at its front, its orange feet padding along. It hopped from one floe to another, then up onto our own small island. It waggled its stump of wings and made a funny chirping sound, then settled down, as though waiting to see what would happen.

The sun was climbing through the sky when I saw Patrick. He was still quite far away, but I knew for sure it was him. Soon I saw Mr. Oates and Captain Scott and Birdie Bowers too. They moved quickly along the edge of the Barrier, and then down the ramp to the ice.

Uncle Bill saw them. So did Nobby. Both turned in that direction, their ears twitching wildly. But Punch only blinked, blinded by the snow and glare.

Captain Scott and Patrick went off in different directions, looking for the best route across the ice. But Mr. Oates and Cherry and Birdie Bowers came straight to our island, hauling an empty sledge that they used to bridge across the widest gaps.

I could feel the hurry, the anxiousness inside them. Wispy
clouds were flying northward, and the wind would soon come down to the sea.

They chose Punch to go first. Birdie grabbed his tether rope and tugged him forward. Punch lurched down the slope toward the first gap, three feet wide. “Straight across,” said Birdie, leading the pony faster.

Punch was cold and stiff, half blinded by the sun. But he trotted along beside the little man.

“Yes, yes,” said Birdie, half running now. His short legs swished back and forth, and the skuas that sat by the water flew up in a great black horde.

Maybe it was the birds that frightened Punch. Something certainly did. At the very edge of the floe, he dug in his heels and Birdie had to leap across by himself, letting go of the rope.

The ice broke away, crumbling back from the edge. Punch cried out. He tipped forward headfirst and tumbled into the sea.

He surfaced again a moment later, such fear in his eyes that I looked away. I heard the killer whales talking. I saw their black fins veering toward us.

Punch tried to paw his hooves up to the ice, to pull himself to safety. He struggled and screamed. But the terrible cold of the water sapped his strength in a moment. He sagged down in the water, raised himself again, and then looked desperately around at the men.

Captain Scott and Patrick came running to help. All the men worked together, trying to keep hold of Punch. But he kicked and thrashed in the water, and there was no hope of pulling him out. In moments, the killer whales would be
tearing at his legs, and it was the creaky feel of their voices that put such terror into poor old Punch.

Mr. Oates was holding a pick. It was Mr. Oates who had to do the awful thing.

I turned away. So did Patrick and Birdie Bowers. I heard the thud of the pick, and a grunt that might have come from either one, the pony or the man.

When I looked, Punch was gone, and Mr. Oates was standing there with the pick hanging from his hand. His back was toward me, his shoulders were hunched and his head hanging down.

Patrick came up and grabbed my rope. “Time to get you moving, James Pigg,” he said. At the same time, Birdie took hold of Nobby and ran him toward the gap. The pony held back at first, then trundled along, faster and faster. But he veered aside at the last minute, nearly trampling Birdie.

“You’ll have to show him how,” said Patrick. He thumped my neck with the flat of his hand. He rubbed my nose. “Ready? Off we go,” he told me.