“Orders, sir.”
“Where would you like to be?”
“Home, sir, wiv the old lady. By the fire. Home.” His eyes moved round the cramped tent, not really seeing anything. “God, I wish I was at home and out of this. Well out.”
“Will you get home?”
“Nah. No way. It’s all up, innit?”
Jeremiah looked at Robin Quick. There was no need for him to say more. Quick hated him then, hated all his calm acceptance which was so different from the hopeless collapse of his own men. For all he sat there half asleep, unmoved by it all, the Eskimo would fight to the last fibre of his being, and would fight beside Colin in a way Quick could never do. The captain made a brief guttural sound which was lost in the relentless cacophony of the wind, and turned away.
After a while, Ross switched off the pressure lamp. They went into a bottomless pit of black exhaustion. Outside, the storm screamed like a wounded giant, rolling madly on the ice, tearing at the heavy sky with wild fingers, drumming its thunderous heels on the frail, frozen tent, and crying tears of ice, gnashing its iron teeth, bleeding in fountains, and whirlwinds, and deadly drifts of snow.
When Ross woke up, they were gone. They had taken, as had been agreed, almost all the supplies out of the tent, leaving only the lamp and the stove, with enough food to last a few more days if Ross and Jeremiah chose to wait. Quick had also left a letter, written in a scrawl horribly different from his usual neat copperplate script:
Colin,
I have to take this chance: it is the only chance we have to save something from all this. If you do not make it, we might: and vice-versa. It is a hellish way to part after so many years, I know, and I can only explain it in that terrible old cliché we have laughed at so often in Western films: I have to do what I have to do. That’s all there is to it. I think I see a chance where you see none, and I have to grasp it because I see no hope in waiting for Job. God help whichever one of us is wrong.
If we are both lucky, I will see you at Evans or Edward VII, and we will laugh about this.
If you do not make it, I will look after your affairs as though you were my brother.
If I do not make it, look after Charlie and young Simon. See to Mrs. Smith, and McCann’s mother in Greenock.
God help us all,
Robin.
With it was a short note:
To Whom It May Concern,
I hereby relieve Colin Ross of all responsibility for anything that might happen to myself, Sergeant Albert Smith and Corporal Hamish McCann, in that by leaving this place at this time we have contravened the orders of Mr. Ross, the leader of this expedition, and have disregarded his advice.
It was signed by Robin, Smith and McCann. Beside the note, they had left some keepsakes, unimportant trinkets to go to their families if the worst should happen.
There were tears in Ross’s eyes as he looked at Jeremiah.
“He did it. I never really thought he would.”
“When you looked at him you saw only your friend. You did not see the desperate man.”
“Desperate? What about, for heaven’s sake?”
Jeremiah’s gesture took in the tent, the storm, the glaciers, the plateau, the Pole itself.
“What shall I tell them?”
“You are so sure you will tell anyone anything?”
Ross’s head came up. His eyes were as cold as the ice. “I have never doubted,” he said.
“You should have looked at Quick like that more often.”
“But perhaps he also saw only a friend.”
Jeremiah nodded: it was undoubtedly true. He saw another man to the man Quick had seen. That much was obvious, otherwise Quick would still be here.
Jeremiah never doubted that Colin at least would come out alive. And he had another advantage over Quick: even if their radio messages had not been received, they were so long overdue that he knew for certain that Job would come. Jeremiah had an immense respect for his younger brother; and he knew that not even the worst the white south could do would stop him.
“Do we sit and wait for Job?” he asked.
Ross was lost in thought. There was silence except for the wind and the ice falling in the restless tent. Then Ross said, “No. We go out and find him.” Jeremiah said nothing. After a little while Ross continued, “He’s coming in due east from here; or rather, he is if he picked up our last message. If he didn’t, then he’s coming in due east from our last transmission received at Edward. If that’s happened we’re dead anyway, so we might as well take the chance.” He was arguing with himself, still uncertain. He stared at the flickering blue flame of the paraffin stove, and it was that which finally made his mind up for him, for, as he watched, it changed colour, flared and died. “My God, they’ve taken the paraffin.”
They both stared, unbelieving, at the dead stove. As always, a pot of hot water stood on it, steaming slightly. Jeremiah reached quickly, and moved this precious thing to safety as Ross reached for the stove, and wrenched it open. It was dry. Empty. Drained. Quick, or Smith, or McCann, had carefully removed the paraffin to add to the life-saving store the three of them had taken with them to Camp 13. The act of a man terrified for his life. The most terrible thing a man could do out here. The ultimate crime: the theft of fire; the theft of heat; the theft of life. Without warmth they were dead. Without warmth a terrible race began between many forms of death. First, the slow, sleepy death by cold, dulling the mind, freezing the heart to sleep. Then there was thirst, for without heat, there was only ice to drink: ice so cold it froze to the lips, blistering them with an agony of frostbite until the face could stand no more. And hunger, for the food would be frozen like the water, and even if forced past the lips, it would freeze to the inside of the mouth and tongue, and the teeth, trying to chew it, would break before the ice broke.
All these spectres came in to replace Quick, Smith and McCann in the crowded cold of the tent, and Ross regarded them with sombre eyes. Then he turned to Jeremiah, and he said: “OK. We go.”
As soon as he came to his decision, they began to move. Jeremiah took meat, cooked but half-frozen, and put it in the hot water. When it was warm, he put it in a vacuum flask to stop it freezing again. Then he made soup from the now lukewarm water. He put it in another flask: there were two pints of it. Ross collected everything that he could fit into two knapsacks. He put one or two of the personal effects left by the others into his pockets, but he put the letters into his knapsack. When they had finished tidying up, they heaved up their knapsacks and Jeremiah forced his way out into the night. Ross went to turn the lamp off, but he stopped, and checked his watch. He had to fold the top of his mitten forward, the sleeves of his anorak, his heavy woollens, his shirt, his thermal underwear back, the top of his underglove forward. It was 9.30 am. Then he turned out the light, and crawled out after Jeremiah.
Inside the tent, the storm had seemed to be a terrible thing. Out here, the wind took Ross as he lurched to his feet, and sent him staggering until he slipped and fell. Jeremiah’s hands found him and helped him up, but he could hardly see Jeremiah, only feet away at the other end of the strong, steady arms. The freezing snow cut the whole world down to little more than the size of his head. When he looked down, his body became vague below his waist; the feet, with their heavy snowshoes, were totally invisible. He took out his luminous compass, but he had to press his wool-covered nose hard against its glass before he could see what it was reading. When he was facing due east, the wind was coming from his rear, due west.
“Sledges?” he screamed, out of curiosity. Jeremiah shook his head. Ross never discovered whether this meant none had been taken, none had been left, or he didn’t know.
Walking with the wind was easier than walking against it, but only just. They still staggered, hunched forward, almost completely blinded by the solid white fog. They went shoulder to shoulder then, the snow drifting against their backs, crystals flying in flags and pennants from their heads into the clearer air a little in front of them. They stumbled on, their feet sinking into the shallow snow, slithering on the treacherous ice; they fell, got up, walked, fell, got up. The sweat beaded their goggles, and froze on the glass. The fur around the edges of their hoods became spiky with ice. Soon they were as white as the snow itself, two silent shapes moving slowly over the uneven ice, doggedly, relentlessly. In the first six hours they covered perhaps three miles.