Voyage of Ice (16 page)

My stomach hurt all the time now. Growling, empty, gnawing. All we'd had to eat for the three weeks we'd been ship-wrecked were hard bread, milk, and whale oil. Of water we had all we could want. We melted snow in a metal dipper over the fire. The whale oil, much as we needed it, had its draw-backs. It turned our bowels to soup. It was hard to figure what was more miserable—starving to death, or whipping down my drawers in the freezing cold ten times a day so I could drain my insides.

Much of the time, when either Dexter or I wasn't pretending to hunt, we stayed in the shelter. Elizabeth sewed clothing from sailcloth. I milked Ninny, keeping her half cask filled with fresh tundra grasses for warmth and food. When I wasn't milking Ninny or hunting, I whittled and carved wood. Dexter told jokes and kept the fire and lanterns going. He loved telling stories, too, spinning yarns that almost made me forget where we were. Almost. Elizabeth was silent most days, saying only what was necessary. There was a sadness in her eyes that never left now. I longed to take her sadness away, but nothing I said or did seemed to matter.

On the twenty-seventh day of October, I turned sixteen years old. Everyone forgot except me, even though I'd reminded them last week. I spent the day curled up, shivering, far away from the fire, wondering if Aunt Agatha had forgotten me too. It was a miserable day and I was glad when it was over.

The sun only stayed up for seven hours a day now, never high, skimming the horizon like a rock across a pond, bathing the sky in purples and pinks and drenching the ice in a bluish shimmer before heading back down. Even in the dark, even on
moonless nights, it was possible to see, as the ice and snow seemed to gleam with lights of their own.

“I'm going hunting,” said Dexter one day in early November.

I rubbed my hands over the fire, my stomach pinched even though I'd just eaten supper. “And you need my permission?”

“No, you don't understand. I mean, I'm going hunting. I'll be gone for a while.”

I gaped at him. “Gone? What do you mean? What are you going to hunt? All we've seen is the bear.”

Dexter brushed back a lock of sandy hair and gazed at me calmly.

My eyes widened. “Are you crazy?”

“Look, either he hunts us, or we hunt him.”

“Either way, we lose. He'll kill you.”

Dexter shrugged. “We can't survive on three casks of hard bread for the next seven months. One cask is half gone already, and besides, I'm so hungry I could eat a bear myself.”

Elizabeth sat nearby, mending a rip in my coat. I knew she was listening, and silently cursed Dexter for discussing this in front of her.

“Or we could kill Ninny,” Dexter suggested.

I'd dreaded this moment. I'd known it was coming. I had my speech prepared. “The meat would be gone in a few days. Right now, all we have to do is feed Ninny tundra grasses and she'll give us milk.”

“She won't live through the winter. Her milk is getting thin, and there's not much of it.”

I crossed my arms. “So we'll worry about that when the time comes. For now, hands off.”

Dexter rolled his eyes. “You never could stand for anything to get hurt.” He added another piece of wood to the fire. “Well, I guess that settles it, then. I'll leave in the morning.”

“It settles nothing. You promised Aunt Agatha you'd bring me home. You promised Thorndike you'd take care of Elizabeth. So you see? You can't leave.”

“What do you think I'm trying to do?” Dexter was raising his voice. “Blast it all, Nick, sometimes I swear you don't have a brain in your head. A bear would provide us meat for the winter and another fur besides. I'm trying to do what's best.”

“I have a brain enough to know when you're being foolish.”

“Foolish!” Now Dexter was practically screaming, his nor-mally easygoing expression livid with anger. The only other time I'd seen him this mad was when I'd tossed his toy ship out the cupola window when we were little because he wouldn't let me play with it. “You want to hear
foolish
? How about a sailor who can't stay away from the captain's daughter? How about a sailor who doesn't know enough to burn her letters, and instead leaves them lying round for anyone to find? How about a sailor who can't stay at the helm during an emergency, or who can't remem-ber port from starboard?”

“Fine. Go. I hope the bear eats you.”

“Darn right I'll go. No one can stop me.”

“I certainly won't.”

The next day, nobody spoke as we outfitted Dexter for his journey. A harpoon. A canvas knapsack filled with hard bread. A blubber knife. Rope. For water, he'd have to eat snow or ice. Finally, when it came time, Dexter gazed out across the sea ice and in a tight voice promised to stay along the shore so he wouldn't get lost.

I said nothing, still so steamed I could fry an egg atop my head.

Then with a hail and farewell, he was gone.

week later, Dexter still hadn't returned.

Afraid he might be lost, during what day-light hours were left, I built a fire on two casks stacked one atop the other. Poised pre-cariously on adjacent casks, breath white, I banged flint and steel together. A shower of sparks fell onto the tundra grasses, and as I blew, a thread of smoke curled up. I added more grasses, then small pieces of wood, and finally larger ones that I'd soaked in oil, until flames leapt and black smoke billowed.

I hurried down, choking on smoke and frozen stiff, rubbing my face and beating my hands so that sensation would return, a stinging ache that made me hop with pain. Every day I built this signal, accidentally tumbling off more than once in a cascade of
sparks and casks that crunched the snowy gravel and near crushed me. I kept my blubber knife with me all the time. I glanced over my shoulder a thousand times a day.

Often I perched atop the casks, staring off into the whiteness while my signal fire burned. Long ago, pushed landward by the wind, the pack ice had reached the shore. Beyond the pressure ridges, torn and shattered, towering into the sky like blue teeth, the sea ice was flat, empty. Behind me, the barren plain stretched until land merged with sky. The beach, blanketed with gentle dunes, extended in each direction forever. An Arctic land filled with vast nothingness.
Where are you, Dexter? Can you see my fire? Do you know I'm sorry for what I said to you? I'm not angry anymore. Just come home.
I strained my eyes for movement. For a dark fig-ure. Dragging a bearskin, piled high with meat.

He's dead. The bear ripped him to shreds and he's dead.
With each day that passed, hope ebbed from me, swept away in a tide of despair. And in its place, like newly fallen snow, a terrible dread settled over my bones, cold and silent.

Every day I dragged Elizabeth out of the shelter and made her walk with me. I took Ninny with us, as if she were a dog and the three of us were on a Sunday stroll through New Bedford. We strolled to the shore. To the grave. Back to the shore. We picked over the debris lying on the beach as if we could find something of value this time, the hundredth time, something we couldn't see before. But we found nothing. And all the while I chattered like a magpie, trying to make up for Elizabeth's silence.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth continued to sew clothes from sail-cloth. Trousers, coats, oversized mittens to fit over our gloves. I sawed wood, kept the fire going, manned the signal fire, gath-ered tundra grasses, and milked Ninny. I also kept the blubber lanterns filled. It was sadly funny that we now had more whale
oil than we could ever use or eat. At night I scarcely slept, listening to the wind moan and imagining footsteps, or claws scraping. Always I wondered where Dexter was, whether he was ever coming back, and whether I'd ever get to make up for the last words I'd spoken to him:
I hope the bear eats you.
Day after day those words haunted me. I lived them, ate them, breathed them, hated them.

One day I caught a glimpse of myself in the sextant mirror. I gave myself quite a fright because I looked like a waterfront tramp. A layer of filth covered me—soot, grime, and plain old dirt. Scrubbing my face with snow only seemed to rearrange matters.

I'd seen Aunt Agatha make soap once. She used whale oil and ashes and then did something to make it soap. Fine. If Aunt Agatha could make soap, so could I. I heated whale oil and ashes in the metal dipper. It boiled into a gray glop that didn't look or smell much like soap. After it cooled, I scrubbed my face with it. It was greasy and gluelike and I couldn't get it off. Now a layer of greasy slime glued my layer of soot, grime, and filth to my face.

At night, Elizabeth cried. She probably didn't think I could hear her, what with the wind moaning, but come the slightest noise I always snapped awake, reaching for my knife, wondering if Dexter had come home. I expect she cried for her mother and father, wishing she'd never heard of the
Sea Hawk
or Nick Robbins. I felt helpless. I heard Thorndike's voice saying,
Nicholas, Dexter, take care of her. Bring her home again, I beg of ye.
And now Dexter was gone, maybe dead. It was up to me.

One raw day when a heavy sky bore down and a chilling dampness penetrated my very bones, Elizabeth tossed aside her sewing and looked at me square. “I'm sick of sewing. I've always hated it.” So saying, she set her jaw in a determined line, sud-denly reminding me of her father.

I blinked with surprise. It was the first she'd spoken in weeks.

“Well, that's fine, I—I expect nine hundred pairs of canvas trousers and twenty thousand coats is plenty.”

She rubbed her hands and put them over the fire. “What can I do now?”

“Well—uh—let me see—Ninny needs fresh tundra grass, and I was thinking of sawing wood for the fire.”

“Fine.” And out she went to work, leaving me with my jaw flapping.

Just like that, Elizabeth was talking again. We told each other all about ourselves, Elizabeth and I did. She told me that her father had taught her to play the piano, taught her Mozart and Beethoven—his favorites. She told me how she used to sneak into the lazaret, a storage area in the stern. How she'd have tea in the lazaret with her imaginary friends. How they'd play dominoes and talk about the weather and how they were all going to marry sea captains. How her mother used to make her a new dress every Christmas, but that now she supposed she wouldn't have a new dress even though they'd purchased mate-rial in Honolulu.

She looked away as she told me about Thomas, who'd died at sea. Everyone in her family had died at sea. She'd never marry a sailor, she vowed. She both loved and hated the sea.

I told her about my childhood, about Aunt Agatha and our considerable grand mansion, about my father and waiting for his ship, and his being smashed by a whale. I told her about my dreams, and how they were all wasted now, seeing as I didn't like the whaling life and was here in the Arctic besides.

“What will you do?” Elizabeth asked. She sat cross-legged next to me in the shelter, her face smudged with smoke.

I shrugged, fingering the wood I was carving. “Haven't con-sidered it much.” Suddenly, a thought came from somewheres deep inside. A happy thought that made me smile. “Why, I'll be
a carver. Don't know why I didn't think of it before.”

“A carver?”

“I'll carve figureheads for ships. I'll carve sea hawks and maidens—”

“King Neptune and mermaids!”

“Aye.” I laughed, cutting another curl of wood off the block, feeling that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. “I'll have my own shop downtown. I'll hang a sign out front.
Nicholas Robbins: Carver.
”

“I'll help you make the sign! It can say,
Nicholas Robbins: Extraordinary Carver.
Oh, Nicholas, you'll make a fine carver. The best around.” She was quiet for a minute, watching me, then said, “Wait here.” And to my surprise, she left the shelter.

I heard her digging not far away, wondered if I should go and keep watch, curiosity busting my britches. But before I could make up my mind, she returned, hiding something behind her back. “Guess what it is?”

“Hot gingersnaps.”

“No.”

“Soap.”

She laughed. “We could use some, but no.”

“A ship to take us home.”