Fred Saberhagen - The Frankenstein Papers

Exhausted by my long flight, I dragged my hungry, weary body aboard the hulk. Here in this cabin I found lamps, oil, a stove, and wood aplenty. I contrived to start a fire. That done, I pulled the bedding from the captain's bunk and, wrapped in what had once been the captain's blankets, fell into a slumber so intense that it was akin to a swoon.

How much time I have been asleep since reaching the ship I cannot say, only that most of my time aboard has been spent in that condition. There have been intervals of full wakefulness, in each of which I have been increasingly aware of hunger. Each time I awoke I fed the stove, and melted ice and snow on it to drink. Then I fell into oblivion again, wrapped in furs and blankets. Sometimes on awakening I ate sparingly from the small stock of provisions I still had. Later, somewhat rested, and increasingly aware of my plight, I began to search the ship more or less methodically. I found only frozen crumbs.

So things stood when the bear came.

I was sleeping, as usual, on the cabin floor beside the berth, when sleep was broken by an awakening sharper, more sudden, and more complete than any that had preceded it. Hunger was my first thought_that the beginning of starvation had again tipped the balance against exhaustion. For a moment, still wrapped in fur, I lay in the endless twilight, staring up into the gloom of dark planks above my head. The ship creaked around me, with the ponderous, glacial movement of the ice shifting its grip.

A moment later I was sitting bolt upright, throwing off my furs and blankets. Another moment and I was on my feet. A rhythmic component of the sound had separated itself from the inanimate noises of ice and water—a heavy, padded shuffle on the deck above.

I was not the only inhabitant of that frozen gloom, nor the only one who hungered fiercely. But that sound emanated from no human agency. Thus I first heard the tread of the white bear.

Moving swiftly to the cabin door, I made shift to close and block it with such poor materials as were at hand. My effort came none too soon; a hungry snuffling and a heavy scraping soon began outside the door. The keen senses of the beast had led it unerringly to warmth, motion, and potential food.

On my first arrival, I had noticed a musket leaning in the corner of the cabin, as if it had been set down there by some careless or distracted hand, and then forgotten. I could picture the captain, tormented by the fear of some mad mutiny, and then abandoning his precaution when another danger became more real and pressing. I had supposed, without giving it much thought, that the weapon must be loaded. Whether the powder in the pan might still be dry and ready was something I might have ascertained earlier, but now had no time to try; my slight barricade at the door was already about to fall.

Gripping the weapon in one hand, I smashed out one of the ice-covered windows in the stern, and made shift to clamber out and up, quickly gaining the poop deck.

When I reached the deck I realized that my escape from the cabin had availed me only momentary respite. As always, the eternal icefields stretched away in all directions to an indeterminate horizon. Out there lay only death and desolation. My only chance for life was here aboard the Mary Goode , and I suddenly discovered that life was, in spite of all, all-precious to me.

The bear, on discovering the cabin empty, and hearing my movements on the deck above, was not long in coming after me. The only delay was the few seconds required for the bulky animal to turn itself around in the cramped quarters below. Then as I had expected, it reappeared on deck. But to my consternation it came up by a different companion-way than the one where I had aimed my musket.

I swung my aim quickly toward the animal, and pulled the trigger. Almost to my surprise, the musket fired. But I had not aimed accurately enough. The musket-ball, that at point-blank range could have slain the beast instantly, instead tore into the furry neck and shoulder, producing as its only immediate effect a most savage roar. A moment later, the bear had lurched free of the companionway onto the open deck, and with a blow of its paw had knocked my now-useless weapon from my grasp.

With all my agility I sprang away, just in time to avoid the next sweep of that deadly arm. Leaping to grab the frozen shrouds, I swung myself from line to line, across the ship and back again. I might have climbed one of the masts and got my-self well above the monster's reach; but I perceived at once that such a maneuver would only leave me hopelessly trapped, in a place from whence I must eventually climb down, or fall, or freeze in place if I did not.

There was nowhere to flee, nor did I wish to. A mad rage was upon me, and I roared as fiercely as did the bear.

I maneuvered myself above the wheel, and certain crates and other obstacles upon the deck, more quickly than the bear could dance around them, and thus attained the position of advantage that I wanted. Then, giving a howl compounded half of rage and half of despair, I sprang upon the monster from behind. Locking my right forearm under its throat, I gripped my hands together with all my strength, while my legs clamped the great body of the beast between them. With eyes closed I sank my teeth into my adversary's hairy ear, adding the strength of my jaws to that of my arms and legs in the effort to keep my position as the huge body thrashed and rolled and bellowed beneath me.

The horizon of ice and snow and sky spun round me, and the masts seemed to be toppling together upon my head. Indeed, when the beast rolled over in an effort to dislodge me, I thought that they had done so. Yet still, with the strength of rage and fear combined, I persisted in maintaining my grip.

The slavering, roaring jaws of the bear were only inches from my face, yet he could not turn the inches necessary to fasten those great teeth into my skull. The four mighty limbs of my enemy worked with pile-driving force, yet almost helplessly, for I remained out of their reach while the claws tore splinters from the mast and deck. I tasted the blood torn by my own teeth from my enemy's flesh, and I gripped the furred body ever harder with both arms and both legs. Again and again I was battered and bruised as the massive weight rolled over me, pounding me against the deck, the rails, I know not what. Fighting for breath, certain at each moment that in the next I must be torn off and devoured, yet I clung on, my whole being concentrated on maintaining my grip, and even tightening it.

A moment came when the bear roared no longer, because it no longer had the breath to roar. How long the grim contest continued after that I could not tell, only that it was a long time before the struggles of my opponent ceased. A long time later still I dared release my hold. Quivering, gasping, bruised in every fiber of my body, I dragged myself away, and lay for long hazy minutes on the verge of fainting before I could regain my feet.

Probing the dead carcass with a knife has confirmed my first impression about the musket-ball: The damage done by it was hardly more than superficial. With my teeth, my hands, my arms, the strength of my body, I have slain the white bear.

No human being could possibly do such a thing. My creator, in some ways, wrought exceedingly well.

That was the day on which I began this journal. Since then I have feasted on the bear's meat, scorched over the fire in my stove. I have fitted a sheet of clear ice over the cabin window from which I broke the glass in my escape.

And since my fight with the bear I have looked long into the captain's frozen little mirror. The face that gazes back at me is still smeared with traces of the bear's blood, and is undoubtedly inhuman. But it is no less alive and worthy for all that.