Ian McGuire - The North Water

Drax nods and smiles.

“That seal meat don’t agree with me none,” he says. “I’ll be in and out all night for shitting, I ’spect.”

Cavendish nods. He stays crouching, placing one hand on the floor for balance.

“I been thinking,” he says.

“Oh aye.”

“What if I come along with ye when you go?”

Drax sniffs and shakes his head.

“It’s safer here.”

“We can’t all winter through alive. Ten men? It int possible.”

“One or two may die, but I’d say you won’t be one of ’em.”

“I’d sooner take my chances with the Yaks, like you are.”

Drax shakes his head again.

“That int the agreement I made. It’s me alone.”

“Then I’ll make my own agreement, separate like, why not?”

Drax turns the ivory over in his hand and feels its shallow indentations with his thumb.

“You’re best to stay,” he says again.

“Nay, I’ll be coming with,” he says. “And that there file’s my ticket out.”

Drax thinks a moment, then reaches into the blanket and touches the file’s relentless edges, feels its tight-packed rills like the cold surface of a metallic tongue.

“Ye always were a bold and blusterous fucker, Michael,” he says.

Cavendish smirks and rubs his beard eagerly.

“You’d thought to get one over on me, I ’spect,” he says. “But you won’t do it. I int staying here to die with these others. I got bigger plans than that.”

It is so cold outside the tent that Drax can only work on his manacles for twenty minutes at a time before he begins to lose feeling in his hands and feet. It takes him four separate trips spaced out across the night to fully free himself. Each time he leaves the tent, he picks his way carefully through the low hillocked landscape of dark sleeping bodies, and each time he comes back, frosted and shuddering, his clothes stiffened with ice, he does the same. The men groan and curse as he nudges into them, but no one opens their eyes to look, aside from Cavendish who watches him intently.

Freed from the chains, he feels suddenly larger and younger than before. It is as if, since the instant he murdered Brownlee, he has been asleep and now he is awake again at last. He has no fear of the future, no sense of its power or meaning. Each new moment is merely a gate he walks through, an opening he pierces with himself. He whispers to Cavendish to get himself ready and wait for his whistle. He ties his clothing into a bundle with a cord, tucks the bundle under his arm, then drops the file into his coat pocket and makes his way over to the snow house. The moon is high and waning. Its frail light turns the broad white snowscape the color of gruel. The fierce air around him is crisp and odorless. The dogs are sleeping; the sledge is packed. He lowers himself onto his hands and knees and crawls inside the snow house. It is pitch-black, but he can smell them anyway — the younger on the left, the elder on the right — and hear them softly breathing. He is surprised they do not wake up, that his very presence does not alert them. He waits a moment, gauging the position of their heads and the directions they must be lying in. It is warmer here than in the tent, he notices. The atmosphere is close and oily. He reaches out carefully, slowly, and touches with the tip of his fingers the surface of one of the sleeping bags; he pushes very slightly down, and there is an answering moan. He puts his hand into his pocket and takes out the file. It is a foot long and an inch wide and one end is spiked. The spike is not especially sharp, but it is long enough for his purposes, and he thinks he will manage. He grips the end of the file in his fist and leans forwards. He can see the men’s faint outlines now — a thicker, denser black against the darkness of the snow house walls. He sniffs once in preparation, then reaches out and shakes the elder one awake. The man murmurs and opens his eyes. He leans up on one elbow and opens his mouth as if to speak.

Holding the file with both hands, Drax drives the spiked end into the man’s neck just below the ear; there is a spurt of hot blood and a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a gasp. He pulls out the spike and then quickly drives it in again, a little lower this time. When the younger man stirs, aroused by the noise, Drax turns, punches him twice to keep him quiet, then starts to throttle him. Being naturally scrawny and encased in a narrow, tight-fitting sleeping bag, he makes a poor fight of it and is suffocated before the elder one has finished dying. Drax pulls them both out of their bags, then strips the elder of his anorak, slits it up the side, and pulls it on over his own head. He feels around for the blubber knives and the rifle, then crawls back outside.

There is no sound or movement, no indication that anyone in the tent has heard a noise. He goes over to the sledge and gets the deerskin traces. One by one, he wakes the dogs and harnesses them. He crawls back inside the snow house, takes off the dead men’s boots, britches, and mittens and stuffs them inside one of the sleeping bags. When he comes out again, he sees Cavendish standing over by the sledge. He raises his right hand and walks across to him.

“I hant whistled you yet,” Drax tells him.

“I int waiting for no fucking whistle either.”

Drax looks at him and nods.

“The case is altered. I have to show you something now.”

“Show me what?”

Drax puts the sleeping bag down on the snow, tugs it open, and points inside.

“Lookee in there,” he says. “Tell me what you see.”

Cavendish pauses, shakes his head, then moves forwards and leans down to take a look in the bag. Drax steps off to the side, grabs him by the forelock, yanks his chin upwards, and cuts through his windpipe with one single slice of the blubber knife. Cavendish, rendered suddenly mute, grabs his gaping neck with both hands as if hoping to reseal the opening and drops onto his knees in the snow. He shuffles forwards for a few moments, like a crippled penitent, jerking, rasping, and gushing blood from his impossible wound, then topples, shudders like a hooked fish drowning in air, and stops moving completely. Drax turns him over and starts going through the pockets of Brownlee’s greatcoat.

“That wont my idea, Michael,” he tells him. “That one were yours alone.”

It is still half-dark when they find the first mate’s corpse spread-eagled on the snow, frozen hard, throat gashed, bibbed and spewed over with blood. They assume the Yaks have murdered him until they realize that the Yaks are both dead themselves, and it is only then that they notice Drax is missing. When they figure what has happened, they stand there stunned, unable to parse the world implied by such events. They look down at Cavendish, dead and rime-covered, as if expecting him to speak to them again, to offer up one last unbelievable opinion on his own demise.

Within the hour, under Otto’s direction, they bury Cavendish in a shallow, scooped-out trench at the tip of the headland and cover the body over with slabs of rock and stones prized from the cliff face. Since the Yaks are heathens and their funerary rites, in consequence, obscure, they leave their bodies as they found them, only blocking the snow house entrance and collapsing the roof and walls on top to form a crude and temporary mausoleum. Once this work is complete, Otto calls the men into the tent and suggests they pray together for God’s mercy in their present distress and for the souls of the recently deceased. A few kneel and bow their heads; others unfurl themselves lengthways or crouch cross-legged, yawning and picking at themselves like apes. Otto closes his eyes and tilts his chin upwards.

“Oh dearest Lord,” he starts, “help us to understand Your purposes and Your mercy. Preserve us now from the grave sin of despair.”