The Surfacing (2 page)

Through the window, they watched the rain flailing at the mud. The water ran red
in the tracks, as though the whole country had been dyed on the cheap. They watched
the mud fuming under the stampede until the hour was rung on the watch bell, out
in the bay. Under the roar of the rain, the toll was cheap tin.

Even as they were throwing the furs into the boat, she came after them. She had brought
him a bag of coffee, and a little bag of seeds. She had written in English on the
folded paper. CARAWAY. The whalers swore by it, she said, for the blood. It needed
heat, she said, but could be started off in the dark. Morgan told her to go back,
quickly. The rain had eased off, but that would not last.

29th May

On the 29th they pulled out of the bay and swung north. The rigging was strung with
salted cod. Water, ice and sky were the colour of ash.

Two days later, at four in the morning, Myer hustled all the officers out of bed
and up on deck. Here, at last, forming a lee shore, lay the thing they had heard
so much about: The Pack. In the early morning quiet, they listened. It crackled like
a burning log.

After the rest had gone down for breakfast, Morgan remained at the bows with MacDonald,
the chaplain. They stood side by side, like men hypnotized. Straight ahead, rising
up out of the water, stood a block of marble about the size of the Taj Mahal. Each
in his own way, the two men admired greatly its utter indifference to the constant
fuss and clamour of the sea.

At lunch, MacDonald declared: In my sermon next Sunday, I am tempted to propose the
iceberg as a symbol of the Almighty Himself, that is to say, the perfect embodiment
of unlimited power held perpetually in reserve. An analogy of which Mr Morgan, I
somehow feel, will entirely approve.

Not wishing to contradict you, Mr MacDonald, but I don't know that I'd see the thing
in quite the same terms as yourself, Morgan said.

What terms would you prefer?

I don't know.

Come come, MacDonald said. We've all seen your bookshelf. We've all read your reports.
You're an articulate man. Give us at least an idea of what you mean. Look, you have
a captive audience.

I'm not being coy, Morgan said. I simply don't know how I feel about the thing. What
we saw this morning. That is the simple truth.

The door burst open. It was Cabot, the cook.

Giorgio! He's disappeared. Over on the floe.

They rushed up on deck. Two hundred yards from the ship,
some fifty yards into The
Pack, a group of men were standing on a giant pan of ice. The officers all rowed
over, drove the boat as far in as they could, clambered out.

The boy had gone out with Petersen, to carry his rope and hooks. The Greenlander
had spotted a seal, and they had gone to try their luck.

Only for the fun, Petersen said. He looked more annoyed than upset. They had been
hopping from pan to pan, he'd been pushing on ahead, and when he turned around the
boy was gone. The rope was floating in the water, in one of the cracks. The heavy
grappling-hook, perhaps, had caught in his clothes and pulled him down. There was
no other trace.

I want only the boy to see, Petersen said. I am telling him the story. He wants to
see with his two eyes.

Hand over hand, Petersen drew the rope up out of the water. The gap between the two
pans was barely a foot wide. Morgan watched the man coiling the rope nicely onto
the ice. Inside him, a stupid hope had already bred, that the boy might still be
attached to the end of it. He would come up laughing and spluttering, amused as much
as relieved.

Perhaps Mr MacDonald would consider saying a few words, Myer said.

Of course, MacDonald said.

They gathered about the coiled rope. So close to the edge of The Pack, the ice was
always alive, and already the crack had completely closed over again.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, MacDonald
told them. Such has been our young shipmate's sacrifice here today. Our every action
must henceforth stand in its shadow. His memory must inspire us to equal abnegation.
Our brother Giorgio, I say, has shown us the way.

Afterwards, the whaleboat ferried the men back to the ship. As there was not room
for them all at a go, Morgan and Cabot and DeHaven remained behind.

Not a bad way to go, when all's said and done, DeHaven said.

How do you mean? Morgan said.

A smile on your face, all is right with the world, and a minute later . . . bonne
nuit.

He might have preferred a few more rounds of the carousel, all the same.

Perhaps. But I hope when my time comes it'll be as quick and as quiet.

I thought it was raging and cursing you wanted to go, Morgan said.

Under their feet and all around, the ice was awake. They listened to it fret. They
stared at the spot. They did not yet dare to be bored.

The boat had ferried and unloaded its passengers, was coming back.

Well, DeHaven said, at least we now have an extra bunk. Maybe we could send Hepburn
down with the men.

Geoff, Morgan said, the old man deserves a little comfort.

And the rest of us don't? We're living one on top of the other, the four of us, in
that little cell.

Maybe we could send Hepburn down to berth with the crew, have MacDonald take his
place, and MacDonald give you his cabin. Would that suit your convenience?

It would, DeHaven said.

They passed the Women's Islands early the next morning, the 1st of June. By breakfast-time
the wind began to fumble, and falter, and even as he sat eating Morgan could feel
the life draining from the ship. By noon the wind had died to nothing, left them
sitting like fools in thick fog, amidst phantom fragments of the floe. They could
not see fifty feet. It did not matter. Morgan knew exactly what lay ahead. They were
making their way north as into an estuary, that had been narrowing from the off,
since Disko. Miss Rink had told him what every one of the whalers had told her –
that where Myer hoped to pass, up along the coast, they would find a solid white
wall.

2nd June

They were set in a pane of glass, a mile from the shore. The surface was sprinkled
with thousands of eider ducks, as far as the eye could see. The world was at peace,
the morning impeccable, the bergs sparkling thoughtlessly in the sun. All day long,
there had not been a breath of wind.

Morgan was standing alone in a boat by the shore. Even a mile off, he was sure he
could smell the dried cod. The mists and showers had ruined it, but Myer still insisted
it would do for the dogs. To shut it out, Morgan closed his eyes, felt the cool air
creeping over him, down off the glacier. Then he heard the thunder. The entire face
of an iceberg was falling away, to reveal the same face again, shed of its mask.
At the ship, too, they heard the guns in the distance, and saw the birds begin to
bob. The wave reached them minutes later, and set the ship in a lazy roll.

The next morning the canvas began to stir, and the light ice began to drift away
from the wind, southward. They watched the pieces sail by. They spotted a seaman's
chest. Morgan told Banes to row over and fish it out. The label was ruined for reading
but they could tell it was neither
Erebus
nor
Terror
. Inside were last year's
Almanack
and a fine pair of riding boots.

That evening, from the Crow's Nest, free sailing was announced to the west, well
inside The Pack, but from there stretching to the horizon. Myer declined to go up
and see it for himself. He did not need good cause, only a good excuse. The next
morning, he announced, they were going in.

4th June

All morning they forced their way through the mess, until they made what Myer had
baptized The Open Water. They drove hard, free and unhindered, north and west. By
noon, from the deck, they had sunk the coast.

From the Crow's Nest, Myer was shouting down directions. Brooks was at the helm.
Morgan sat on a crate near the stern, smoking his pipe, trying to pretend he knew
nothing of what was going on. But overhead Myer was bellowing like a schoolboy.
Ahead of them now was half a mile of water at most.

The ice was visibly nearer. Inside it, the little lead they were aiming for was the
colour of ink. Another order was roared from above. Morgan watched the men heaving
frantically at the braces. She turned shyly towards the gap.

The first contact put him lying on the deck flapping frantically at the cinders
on his coat. All around him, fish were hopping off the boards. Far above, a man was
screaming. It was a voice Morgan had never heard before. The shock was done, no more
fish fell, but their dead eyes like dried peas rattled over and across the deck,
as the ship ground and grunted, and bulled for an even keel.

Afterwards, Morgan brushed himself off and went to the bows, to see where their commander
wanted to go. Even here at its widest it was a nice fit, and tighter still in the
distance. Myer seemed not to notice, but called for a full spread of canvas, even
to studding-sails, and ordered all hands out on the floe, with picks and pinch-bars,
to work them farther in.

At dinner that night, Myer did not say a word, and his officers did not mention
the ice, or what they had been at. They leaned their elbows on the table, heads down,
hunched under an invisible weight. They ate their food mechanically, but when Myer
coughed, as though clearing his throat, all the forks stalled in mid-air. Still Myer
said nothing. They kept eating, and the cutlery kept creaking and squealing on their
plates.

After supper Myer sent Morgan forward to the crew's quarters to get Daly, their strongest
man. Out on the ice, they watched Daly crouch down, to lift their smallest kedge.
The thing weighed at least one hundred and fifty pounds. They watched him waddle.
There was no protest or complaint.

Now then Doctor, Morgan said, there's a nice specimen for your collection. He could
feel it inside him, the jealousy, now well awake. The man was of a different breed.
The veins were standing out on his forearms, and the forearms looked carved from
wood.

They watched him go. To his friend, quietly, DeHaven wondered about the wisdom of
sending a man out over doubtful ice, carrying an anchor.

He is a sailor in Her Majesty's Navy, Myer announced, turning to face his accuser.
If he is not so fond of danger, he should have stayed at home to dig potatoes.

From the bows, they watched Daly hack a hole in the surface with some class of hatchet.
Into this hole he hooked the anchor. He threaded the hawser through the eye. The
slack was wrapped round the capstan. The men got into place, three to each arm. It
was now half past eight at night. They leaned into the bars. The hawser rose up off
the ice. It began to tremble. Soon they could hear it crack and splinter, like wood.
The object of their efforts was beautifully simple: to pry apart the two halves of
the world with their bows, and drive themselves into the crack, where the danger
was greatest.

They had not been heaving two minutes when Myer swore he'd seen a definite twitch
in the floe. It was like a wedge being hammered home. Ten minutes later, when they
paused to swap teams, Morgan saw that a crack about two inches wide ran crazily out
from the bow for a hundred yards. That little gap, of course, was nothing and everything.
Somehow they had managed to push apart two floes each as big as a nice-sized cricket
field.

Quod erat demonstrandum, Myer announced, waving his hand grandly at the entire visible
world. Proof of a principle I
have cherished all my life, but never before been furnished
with so perfect an example. That every force, however small, against opposition however
great, must ultimately have its effect, if exercised relentlessly. Naturally – the
hand dismissed the notion prettily – the orthodox mind insists the thing cannot be
done. We are simply out of our depth, n'est-ce pas? He showed the sceptics his sorry
specimens, and their surrounds. This against this. One was small and weak, the other
giant and indifferent. Now the hand showed them the new crack in the floe. Was ever
evidence more eloquent? he asked. It has been done.
We
have done it. That is why
a man must never listen to reason. He must merely exercise his will unceasingly,
and only afterwards stop to consider what he has achieved.

When they paused to swap teams again, Myer sent Morgan down to check the progress.
He knelt on the ice to peer into the crack, to see how deep it was. To Morgan, the
thing seemed no wider than before.

Put your hand in, said DeHaven, who was standing over him.

Morgan looked up, looked offended. Are you out of your mind? he said.

What are you afraid of? DeHaven said.

Put your own hand in. If you're so brave.

What are you afraid of? DeHaven said. The anchors are well dug in. The hawser is
brand new. The tension is good. Or do you think someone up there is watching and
waiting? Do you think this has all been contrived, just to trap you?

Morgan curled the tips of his fingers around the top of the crack.

Deeper, DeHaven said.

Morgan slid in his whole hand, to the wrist.

Deeper, DeHaven said.

He forced his arm almost to the elbow, until it was firmly wedged in place. He had
to tug hard to get it out. The skin was striped, white and red.

Now you, he said.

DeHaven looked at him askew. Me? he said, perplexed.
Are you out of your mind? He
was grinning superbly. Just how stupid do you think I am?

Up at the capstan, they leaned into the bars, and groaned, and cursed, and changed
teams, and leaned into the bars again. For four long hours they stuttered forward,
inch by inch. By midnight they had driven themselves quarter of a mile deeper, and
the vessel stood motionless – dead centre of a vast, featureless plain. But for a
few streaks of water, the world around them was now perfectly white.