February 9, 1910
EXQUISITE.
In his dream, Andrew is in a restaurant and it is exquisite. Mother sits across the table. She looks young and beautiful, the pneumonia long gone, not the trace of a care on her face. The warmth of her eyes could melt away the entire Antarctic ice cap. And perhaps it has. The other two places at the table, set for Colin and Jack, are empty. But they’re coming, too. Very soon.
Outside the window the fog is thick. It seems as though they’re floating on a cloud. And perhaps they are. Andrew is bursting to tell Mother about the menu, but he doesn’t have to. Right then the waiter arrives with two dinners. He’s a funny sort of fellow, wearing white tie and tails and waddling in an odd manner. With great pomp and dash, he raises the two plates over his head, then sets them on the table in front of Andrew and Mother.
On each plate is penguin meat.
Mother’s face goes white. She is appalled.
Andrew, however, is ravenous. He picks up his knife and fork, plunges them down, and
KKKRRRRROKKKKK!
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
Hayes. Petard.
Andrew opened his eyes and sat up. The dream fell away in fragments.
Around him, the men were waking. The noise had been real.
The taste of penguin remained in Andrew’s mouth, and he ran his tongue along his still-greasy lip. He felt the pleasant bulge in his belly and remembered the sight of the animal slow-roasting over a pit.
Then the memory of the previous night rushed in. The walk with Oppenheim. A sudden chittering noise behind a pressure ridge. A frozen pond full of penguins. A slaughter.
He felt like throwing up.
What had happened? What had he become? An animal. All instinct.
And it had satisfied him. Afterward, back at camp, the smell of roasting meat had brought tears to his eyes and made him drool. His reaction had been no different from that of Socrates.
It was happening just the way he feared it would. A person was an animal, a person had to eat.
Brillman headed for the tent flap. “Probably some pressure ridge tipping over.”
“Not near the infirmary, I hope,” Stimson said.
“Don’t worry, we’d hear Oppenheim complain,” Siegal remarked.
Brillman’s eyes were locked on something outside. He blanched. “Oh my lord. Get out here, men. On the double!”
The sailors pulled on their jackets and raced outside.
Andrew forced himself up, using the tent post for support. The men were racing toward the jagged edge of a narrow stream.
“What is it?” Captain Barth called from the infirmary tent.
“The floe is splitting, sir!” Andrew called back.
“What direction?”
“West.”
“Then strike camp and move southward while we’re still attached!”
The crack was growing around to the south now. The floe pitched on the current, twisting away from the ice sheet.
Robert began taking down tents. Nigel gathered up supplies. Holding Demosthenes in his arms, Kosta whistled for the other dogs. Brillman and Siegal turned the Raina right-side up, and then Dr. Montfort and Petard loaded aboard the injured, in their cots. Except Barth. He insisted on walking.
Bailey and Stimson crowded all the supplies around and under the cots, and the camp was ready to go.
Andrew joined the men as they gathered around the Raina. He could support himself on the ship’s bulwark and even lend a little muscle to the push.
“Ready? Ho-o-o!” he shouted.
No one snickered. No one balked at listening to him.
They all pushed forward. Southward. Farther into the ice cap.
Behind them was a sound like the snap of a great oak tree.
Andrew glanced over his shoulder and saw what was once Camp Hope break into small chunks that bobbed slowly out to sea.