Voyage of Ice (15 page)

That night, the clouds moved in and the wind started to blow again. Outside the shelter, Ninny bleated. And bleated.

I heard Elizabeth get up. Heard a rustle of clothing. Then she was past me and out the entrance. “Hush, Ninny,” she said.

She fumbled with the lantern. The night outside our shelter suddenly brightened. Her shadow moved away. She got up every night to do her necessary business. Although she didn't know it, I always stayed awake to make certain she came back.

After the crunch of her footsteps faded away, there was nothing. Just the wind. And Ninny bleating. Tugging on her rope.

Sleep pressed down, heavy and warm. I reached up and pinched my tongue between my fingernails to keep me awake. I suppose a needle poked in my eye would have felt just as good.

A scream shattered the night.

I sat up, my scalp prickling. I heard a snuffle. Then a horrible, animal grunt.

Without waiting for Dexter, I raced out of the shelter. “Elizabeth!” I shouted, grabbing a blubber knife from our pile of supplies.

Another scream.

Then a roar.

It's coming from the shore! My God!
I raced toward the beach, scarcely aware that my feet were bare. The lantern sat on the beach. In its illumination, I saw a flash of yellowish white fur. A ripple of muscle. Claws longer than my fingers. My heart leapt to my throat.
A bear! Blood and thunder! A polar bear!

Elizabeth lay on her back in front of it, her knees drawn up,
kicking wildly at the bear, shrieking, shrieking, as it swiped at her.

“Elizabeth!” I raced toward the white mass, screaming at the top of my lungs, my blubber knife out in front of me, terror bub-bling like ocean froth.

The bear lifted its head. It swung toward me and stared with small black eyes. In an instant, the bear charged. I saw a gaping mouth. A black nose. A pink tongue. Fangs. Heard the pounding of its feet. Its claws scrabbling the stony beach. The huff of its breath.

My God!

“Down, Nicholas! I'm going to shoot!” Thorndike's voice!

I threw myself flat on my face, stones stinging my chin. My knife clattered away, I don't know where.

And in that second I heard the most horrible sound: the click of a gun that won't fire.

Click.

Click.

Then the bear was on me.

felt teeth in my scalp.

Hot breath on my neck.

Liquid slipping down my cheeks.

I knew I was screaming, thrashing; I could hear it. But it sounded like a stranger, as if the screams really didn't belong to me, as if the boy lying crunched beneath a polar bear were someone else.

I heard others screaming. Elizabeth. Thorndike. Dexter. And then I was on my back, my knife in my hand again. I don't know when I rolled over, or even how, but I was on my back and fighting. Fighting for my life.

I slashed at the bear, catching it across the shoulder.

A huge wound opened.

Blood stained the fur. Spattered in my mouth, my eyes.

Claws. Fangs.

Screaming.

Then the bear was off me.

In a flash of white, he attacked someone else.

I lay for a moment, dazed, my head wet, then realized.

My God! The bear's attacking Thorndike!

And then I was on my feet. There was another blur of white. A deep-throated growl. A slash of claws.

Elizabeth screamed as Thorndike collapsed to the ground, his bones suddenly turned to jelly. At the same time, I swung at the bear with my knife. Another wound.

With a grunt the bear looked at me, turned, and ran. In a heartbeat, it seemed, he was gone. Lumbering down the beach.

We huddled in our shelter. Lantern light glowed behind the smoky glass. At the entrance, the fire blazed and snapped, stoked to ward off the bear. Smoke whisked round the shelter and out the hole above. Hoarfrost melted and dripped. Ninny was silent.

“I'm dying,” Thorndike said, his voice near lost in the howl of the wind and the snap of canvas. He sat propped against a cask, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Half his scalp was torn away. Blood trickled down his face, down his scar, and into his beard.

Elizabeth mopped his face with her stained, tattered hand-kerchief, then laid her head against his chest and wrapped her arms round him. “You can't go, Father. Not yet. Please. I need you.” Elizabeth had suffered gashes on her legs. For now, though, the bleeding had stopped. We would tend to her wounds, mine as well, in a moment. Not yet …

Thorndike caressed Elizabeth's face, his hand dark against her skin. “I'm sorry, daughter, for the pain I've caused ye. Sorry I
blamed ye for your mother's death. Sorry for all I've done. You were right. I've been a poor father. Forgive me.”

Elizabeth's face contorted. “I know you've only wanted good for me. I know that. Just don't die, please don't die! I—I love you, Father! I always have.” She buried her face in his chest as he stroked her hair. Her shoulders heaved. My eyes stung with tears and I looked away.

“Nicholas, Dexter, take care of her. Bring her home, I beg of ye. The whaling fleet will come again this summer.” Thorndike paused, his breathing labored. Each breath, slower, slower. “Find them. Travel south to them if ye must.”

I nodded, unable to answer, wiping my nose on the back of my sleeve.

Dexter replied, “Aye, sir.”

Overhead, the wind gusted and the canvas flapped against the rafters. Ice crystals rained down in a shower of white dust.

“You've been good boys. I'm sorry for all the misery I've caused ye. I misjudged ye, Nicholas, I see that now. Any captain would be proud to have ye for a son. Please—please take care of her. You're her only chance.”

I heard Thorndike breathe again. And again.

Then, nothing. Just the wind. Elizabeth sobbing.

I pressed my face into my hands, the terrible truth wrapping round me.

Thorndike was dead.

Elizabeth's injuries weren't so terrible, considering. She had four deep gashes on her left thigh, one near five inches long. There were other gashes too, some on her arms, but the ones on her thigh were the worst. I stitched her gashes together the way Thorndike had told me before he died. In the casks storing sail-cloth were needles for mending sails. The needle was so cold it
blistered my fingers as if it were red-hot. After warming the nee-dle over the fire, I threaded it with a strand of hemp and went to work.

Elizabeth was most brave, what with only a few swigs of grog to dull the pain and a needle big enough to stitch an ele-phant. Not to mention her father's body lying nearby, covered with a sailcloth. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, but she never made a sound. After her wounds were treated, Elizabeth turned silently away from us.

Then it was my turn.

Dexter inspected my head, said I had a fat blubber-head, and it was no wonder the bear couldn't get a good grip. Said my thick woolen cap had saved me. Only a few gashes here and there, and only one was deep enough to maybe take a peek at my brains, which wouldn't be much to look at anyways. The liquid all over my face was mostly bear slobber. I knew Dexter was trying to be funny so Elizabeth would laugh, for he kept making jokes and glancing at her. But she said nothing. Dexter looked at me, his brown eyes mirroring my concern. He added a few stitches to my big gash, ordering me to stop blubbering like a blasted baby and saying he knew it didn't hurt any more than sticking your foot in a sausage grinder.

By the time Dexter finished, morning was near. We lay down next to Elizabeth. But I know no one slept. I heard their silence, because the same silence was inside of me.

It was the silence of listening.

Listening for Ninny to bleat.

Listening for a grunt. A huff. The scrape of claws on sandy gravel.

But we heard nothing. Nothing but the wind. The snap of fire.

And the silent heaviness of death.

I hacked at the frozen earth with a broken harpoon. I heard the sound of my breathing—ragged and gasping. Sweat drenched me. Beside me, Dexter used a crowbar. For a long time, neither of us spoke. We just chopped and hacked. Chopped and hacked.

“It's deep enough,” said Dexter finally.

It wasn't really deep enough—more of a slight depression than a grave—but I nodded. We had reached a layer of perma-frost so frozen we could dig no deeper.

The body was stiff. We slid it into the hole. I stood for a moment, breathing hard, staring, then bent over and yanked off his boots. Seemed silly to waste good boots.

“His socks, too,” said Dexter.

And his coat, his hat, his gloves …
God forgive us.

After we covered the body with as much snow and tundra as we could scrape together, I began to pound the wooden marker into the ground. I'd spent all morning on it. It read:

Here lies Ebenezer Thorndike

Captain of the
Sea Hawk

Killed by a bear

October
8, 1852

With a sharp crack, the marker splintered in half. I cursed and jammed the harpoon in its place, propping the marker against it.

We stepped back.

It was a crude and ugly grave. An arm stuck out, rigid, its fin-gers like claws. Bare feet poked out, frost forming on the toes.

“Rest in peace.” I tried to think of something else to say. A prayer, maybe. It was too cold, though, and all I could think of was “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”

Dexter nodded. “Aye. Here lies Captain Thorndike forever-more.”

As we turned away, back toward our shelter, the wind got to
howling. Snow peppered my eyes. Everything turned white. Sweat chilled me to my marrow.

Dexter and I crawled into our shelter, where Elizabeth lay, blood still crusting her hands and smeared across her cheek. I laid the coat over her. “Better?”

But instead of answering, she began to cry. As she cried, Dexter and I looked at each other, an unspoken understanding passing between us.

Now that Thorndike was dead, we were alone, terrible alone, in this vast wilderness. And unless a miracle happened, all of us would die.

Finally, days later, when the storm let up, I went to take care of Thorndike's grave. Dexter stayed behind in the shelter, for we never left Elizabeth alone.

I carried the blubber knife with me for protection. It was a good weapon, with a two-foot-long blade, sharp as a razor, used to cut apart blubber pieces. If it could hack a whale, I knew it could hack a bear. It already had—twice—which was likely why the bear hadn't returned.

A drift of snow had settled against the body on the windward side. To leeward, I saw an arm, a foot, white with ice. Using the bail bucket from the whaleboat, I scooped up gravel from the beach and hauled it overland to where we'd buried him. It took me three hours. I piled it deep so that the bear wouldn't smell him, all the while looking round me, gripping my knife so hard my knuckles popped.

The next day I visited the dead sailor's grave, intending to tidy it up. I wish I hadn't. The body was dragged from the grave, half eaten. I'd never seen the insides of a human body before. I ran, leaving my hard bread behind, a steaming little pile in the snow.

At least we now had two extra coats, extra wool sweaters and
trousers, a reindeer fur, and extra gloves, hats, and boots. And when we all slept together at night under the fur, huddled close for warmth, it was sometimes bearable.