Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

“Anything is better than to die without effort. I think soon I go to join my father.” She paused and then said, “It is quiet now. We can go down onto the ice. The Southern Cross was per’aps fifteen, not more than twenty miles from us when she sink. Per’aps my father is alive. I do not know. But I must go and see.”

“You realize we’ve drifted nearly two hundred and fifty miles from the place where the Southern Cross went down?”

“Ja, ja. But they also will have drifted. I think perhaps we do not find them. But I must try.”

“Don’t forget we’ve been on this iceberg,” I said. “We’ve been moving steadily through the pack for days. Suppose there are some survivors, they’ll be a lot more than twenty miles away. You’d never make it. You’re too weak.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I also think they will be a long way away. Also, we cannot be sure in what direction they now are. But I must go. Perhaps I am too weak, as you say. But it is the spirit that is important. My spirit is strong. I shall go to search for my father.”

There was no point in arguing. I could see she had made up her mind. “And Howe?” I asked.

Her face betrayed no emotion. She knew it meant his death. He would die first and she would have to watch him die. But she never flinched. She just said, “Walter comes with me.”

I saw that they had been over this together. In their faces was a sort of glow of exaltation. I almost loved Howe’s ugliness in that moment, for he wasn’t ugly, he was beautiful. His spirit, purged of all bitterness and cynicism by Gerda’s love, shone through his features and transformed them.

I lay back, not saying anything, but going over in my mind something that had been there for a long time. At length I sat up. I was looking at Howe, wondering how he’d take it, hating myself for having to do it. “Walter,” I said, using his Christian name for the first time, “you’re not strong, physically. Whatever your strength of will, you know you will die before you reach the position where the Southern Cross survivors might be. You know that, don’t you?”

His eyes clouded. The glow died out of him. He knew the drift of my words. He nodded slowly, and there was a queer resignation in his face. It was as though I’d killed his spirit. “You think I should say good-by to Gerda here?”

“Are you prepared to if it would give her a chance of reaching her father, and give us all just a chance of preserving life a little longer?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice scarcely audible.

I got up then and crawled out of the tent, Gerda clutching frantically at me, pleading to know what I intended to do. I think she was a little scared at the thought of making the journey without Howe. He was now the source of her strength. I said, “Wait,” and called the men together — those that could still crawl out of the tents. The air was cold and still as they assembled round me.

“You know there is food for only a few days more?” I said.

They nodded.

“I checked the stores this morning.” I went on. “On our present rations there is food for seventeen days more. That is all. After that there is nothing. We have seen no sign of any living thing in all this time. Unless we get food and fuel, we shall die.” They stood there, dumb — stunned by having what they all knew put bluntly to them.

“Gerda Petersen wishes to try to reach the position of the Southern Cross,” I went on. “She wishes to know whether her father is alive. She has the right to go, if anyone does.” They growled agreement, waiting for me to continue.

I then told them what I planned to do. “The Southern Cross unloaded stores on the ice before she went down,” I said. “She had a big cargo of whale meat. This and blubber would have been transferred to the ice. If there are any survivors, then they will have meat and fuel. I intend to try to reach them. It is a desperate chance, and you must decide whether you agree to my going. We have no hope of reaching them in our present condition. The party, which should consist of three, must be properly fed for at least two days. That and the rations they will have to take with them will cut your own food supplies by about three days. It is up to you to decide whether you wish to take this chance.”

The men nodded and began to talk among themselves. Gerda stepped forward and said, “Whatever you decide, I must go. I do not need your food.”

The men stared at her. Then one old man from her father’s ship said, “We will not let you go without food. Hval Four will give you part of their rations.”

The men of her own crew nodded agreement, their eyes kindled, not by hope, but by their sacrifice for something they thought right and good.

McPhee stepped forward and said, “Will ye tell us, sir, who ye’ll be taking with ye?”

“Yes,” I said. “Kalstad, if he agrees to come.” And then I added, “Before you decide, let me warn you that there is little hope in this, and we shall almost certainly die on the way. But it is a chance, and we should take that chance, however slight, before we are too weak to attempt it.”

“I will kom,” said Kalstad.

“Good,” I said, and asked the men for their decision. They didn’t say anything, but I saw that one of the stewards had gone to prepare a meal. They were all grinning excitedly, like children. They made of their sacrifice a sort of festival. They crowded round the cook pot, advising, offering more food. Gerda was crying, her eyes starry, and she went among them, thanking them, kissing them in her excitement and her sense of their innate kindness. She thought they were doing it for her, and not for any desperate hope of relief — and I’m not at all sure she wasn’t right.

So it was arranged, and for two days the three of us fed like fighting cocks.

I could literally feel the strength flowing back into me. Depression was thrown off. I even had some hope. And the cold receded. Kalstad grew taller and more cheerful. And as we were fed up, the rest of the men seemed to shrink into sunken-eyed ghosts by comparison.

On the evening of the first day on full rations, something happened which should have warned me what Bland was planning. Bonomi came into our camp and asked to speak to me. He looked shrunken and cold and very frightened. He pleaded to come and join our camp. “They eat everything,” he cried wildly. “They will give me nothing, and they eat and eat! Soon there is nothing left! I am ’ungry and I do not wish to be cook to them no more.

“Better go and talk to Bland. He holds your rations.”

“But he will give me nothing.

“It’s a matter between you and Bland,” I repeated. “Go and sort it out with him.”

I am afraid I was rather brusque. My mind was on more vital things than Bonomi’s rations. That morning we completed the building of a really good light sledge. We turned in at midday and the evening meal was served to us in our blanket sleeping bags. One more day at Iceberg Camp and then we should be out on our own, trekking across illimitable wastes of ice, searching for the Southern Cross camp. We didn’t know where it was. We didn’t even know whether it existed. We would just have to go on and on until the end came.

I was wakened very early the following morning by somebody shaking me and calling my name. For a moment I thought it was time for us to leave them. But I realized that it was not until the next day, the twenty-second, that we were starting out. I opened my eyes to find Bonomi bending over me. “Captain! Captain! They ’ave gone! They ’ave gone and they ’ave leave me nothing! Nothing at all!” He was excited and scared.

I sat up. “Who’s gone? What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Bland!” he cried. “Bland is gone, and he take all the rations, everything. He is down on the ice — he and a and Keller! Come and see if you do not believe!”