The Winter Pony Page 14

  We hurried a bit, over snow that the wind had smoothed as flat as a floor. But the thing wasn’t far away at all. And it wasn’t even a tent. The sun’s strange light made everything look tall that day, and more distant than it was. After just a hundred yards, we reached an empty fuel tin with a bit of rolled-up paper stuck in its spout.

  There was a message from the motor party written on the paper: Hope to meet at 80° 30’. Mr. Atkinson looked at the date on the note. “They’re five days ahead,” he said. “They’re doing jolly well, aren’t they?”

  He sounded jealous. He sighed as he stared down at the ghostly tracks of the two machines. They must have been far ahead, rattling on and on across the snowy waves, never slowing down, never getting tired, towing their sledges in dead-straight lines. It seemed funny to think of sledges dragging sledges. But I envied them myself. I had to tug and tug to get my own sledge moving again. The crossbar thumped against my legs. Patrick helped with a little pull on the traces, and away we went with Jehu and Chinaman puffing behind us.

  The wind fell as we marched, and by the time we stopped, it was calm. The sun glared his light off the snow, trying to trick us into thinking the air was warmer than it really was. He could fool my back, but not my feet and my belly. They knew very well how cold it was.

  I felt a bit tired after the first day on the Barrier. But Chinaman and Jehu were much worse. They didn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep, but just stood and shivered in the sun, their backs glistening with sweat that was partly frozen, partly thawed.

  The other ponies arrived soon after us. The big ones like Snatcher and Bones and Christopher came charging into camp, snorting like killer whales, their handlers half running beside them. Their heavy sledges—three-quarter tons full—rocked and jolted along. Little Michael, Nobby, and the rest drew up in a straggling bunch, with Captain Scott at the very back, leading a sad-looking Snippets.

  There were ten of us gathered together. Ten ponies tied in a row along the picket line. It was strange to think that I’d been in the very same place before the winter, just starting out, in a group of eight. And of those eight, only me and Nobby were left. I wondered if the same thing might happen again.

  Many of the ponies looked older now; some were gray and patchy. The men seemed older too, not laughing anymore as they’d laughed the last time we were here. No one talked about the books they were reading. No one talked very much at all.

  The next day, not far from camp, we found a dark spot on the snow. Patrick took off a mitten and touched it with his fingertip.

  “Oil,” he said. “Must be bleeding from one of those motor sledges.”

  Soon there was a trail of the motor’s blood, drop after drop, that led us right to the sledge itself. It lay dead on the snow, quiet and cold and still. The poor old thing, I thought. It had staggered on for a long way. It had gone as far as it could go, then fallen in its tracks, just like Weary Willy.

  There were ruts in the snow, and footprints all around. It was easy to see what had happened. The drivers had harnessed themselves to the motor’s sledge and gone on with the other machine, pulling like horses. There were deep gouges in the snow where they’d struggled to get the thing moving. It must have been nearly as heavy as mine.

  We left the motor lying on top of the snow, its parts strewn around as though wolves had got at it. And we went on again, into a rising wind.

  I expected another blizzard. The men made another monstrous wall at the camp and I huddled behind it, shivering. But instead of snow came a white haze, and the coldest weather I’d seen for a while. I shook until my bones were rattling.

  I thought of the motor sledge lying abandoned on the Barrier. Then at last I fell asleep, and I dreamed a bad dream. I was back in the forest, in the grassy place with all my old herd around me, my mother at my side. It was the day the men had come to catch me, and I knew it was going to happen; I knew the men were coming. But I couldn’t stop it. Then I saw the silvery stallion towering up.

  It was just like the way it had happened, except the men were on foot, and they were Mr. Oates and Captain Scott and Patrick. The stallion shrieked and kicked. Then Patrick saw me across the clearing and came walking toward me. I was more scared in my dream than I’d been in the meadow. I didn’t want to be captured. But in my dream I couldn’t run; I couldn’t even move. Patrick tried to tempt me with a biscuit that he held out in his hand. “Come on now,” he said, stepping slowly closer. “There’s a good lad.”

  I woke up as he touched me. I woke up and there he was. He stood right in front of me with a bit of biscuit in his fingers. He was smiling, happy to see me. But I thought I was in the forest, not out on the Barrier behind the big pony wall, and I believed he’d come to capture me. I pulled away, confused and afraid, meaning to dash for the trees, just as I’d done when I was very young. But I only tugged against the tether line, with a shock that made me scream. I startled Jehu beside me, who startled Christopher, who wheeled away with his hooves flashing.

  I reared up. And without meaning to, I struck out at Patrick. My knees slammed against his chest. The biscuit flew from his hand as he fell backward.

  He landed flat on the snow, and suddenly there was a look of dread in his eyes, of fear that I was about to stomp him right into the snow. He even held up a hand to save himself.

  I lowered my head, of course. I blinked my eyes; I licked my lips, my tongue flickering like a snake’s. I wanted Patrick to know I would never hurt him, not for the whole world. He could get up and beat me if he wanted, and all I would do was stand there and wait for him to finish.

  But he crawled away from me. On his back. Using his elbows for levers, pushing with his feet. And that look of fear stayed in his eyes until he had gone far enough that I couldn’t possibly reach him. Then he stood up—slowly—and he said in a whisper, “What’s the matter with you, Jimmy Pigg? What’s wrong with you, lad?”

  I ached to feel his hand on my nose, but I knew he didn’t trust me. I could see that in the way he stood, in the way he held his hands. I snorted and moved closer, and he only moved away. He went back to the tents, where the men were up and working, getting ready for the march. When he came later to put on my harness, his hands trembled all the time he stood beside me.

  I was as gentle as a rabbit. I made no sound; I didn’t move a muscle. But still Patrick smelled of nervousness. He kept talking, yet his voice was different. “Easy now,” he said. “Easy now.” He said it again and again, like a bird with its call. “Easy now.”

  I was afraid that he would never trust me again. I was afraid he didn’t like me anymore. When we set out with Jehu and Chinaman, it was the same as all the other days, and terribly different too. Patrick didn’t stand so close to me. He led me by my rope instead of my halter. If I stumbled or lurched, he was quick to leap even farther away.

  We went along for hours. They all seemed long and sad, as though time had turned to a sort of mush that I had to slosh aside. I kept remembering the way Patrick had looked up at me from the ground, and I felt like a rotten old apple, all brown and horrid inside. I wished Patrick could know that he’d scared me out of a dream. And then, quite suddenly, he let go of the rope and took my halter instead. His glove slipped under the leather strap, back into its old place. His head tipped sideways and pressed against me. I pushed back. I snorted softly.

  “Oh, James Pigg,” he said. “Did I startle you this morning? Is that what it was?” He tightened his hand. He whispered to me. “You’re a good lad, James Pigg.”

  I wanted to believe that Patrick knew what I was thinking. But it seemed a little bit impossible. No man had ever done that—or even bothered to try. But no man had ever cared for me like Patrick did.

  At the end of the march that day, we came to Corner Camp. The men dug out the buried supplies and loaded our sledges. They uncovered bales of forage that had been under the snow for nine months and let us chew away. I thought it was delicious. The frozen stems crackled in my teeth.

  Each po
ny tucked into the fodder as he arrived at the camp. We went at it like pigs, even turning down our oil cakes to feast on the fodder.

  As I stood eating by the wall, I watched Christopher come into the camp with Mr. Oates. The man kept a firm hand on his rope, not giving the pony an inch to spare. The crossbar swayed and hit the snow. The pony stepped higher, faster, as though trying to outrun it. So Mr. Oates checked him with a sharp pull on the rope. Then Christopher kicked out with his hind legs and tried to skitter sideways.

  In a flash, I was thinking of the crowds at the horse fair. I heard the noise and the shouts and the cries of the horses. I remembered a man trying to pull a boy by the hand, the boy not wanting to go. He had leaned back, digging his heels into the ground, screaming as he struggled and squirmed.

  Christopher was just like that boy. All the way across the snow, he tried to buck and kick, to run away. Mr. Oates stared grimly ahead, marching along—for once like a soldier.

  It took four men to get Christopher out of his harness. The mean pony fought them all, like a bear in a pack of wolves. I hated to see it. I hated to hear it. Christopher whirled himself around, trying to bite at every arm and leg that came near him, and he didn’t give up until he was exhausted, until he stood bent and heaving, as trembly as a shrew.

  I understood it then. Christopher was terrified.

  The men thought he was mean. They thought he was vicious and angry. But the pony was only frightened, scared of his harness, of the feel of the sledge dragging behind him, of the trapped sort of feeling that came with the collar and traces. He was so scared of men that he couldn’t stand to have one beside him holding his halter or rope. Of course he struggled! Of course he fought! I wished Captain Scott would see it for himself. And poor Mr. Oates. I saw him staring at the pony with tears in his eyes, because he hated the battles just as much as Christopher did.

  At Corner Camp, Mr. Oates had a good look at all the ponies. I was feeling a bit stronger, and I was glad that he noticed. “Much improved,” he said, smiling proudly. He told Captain Scott that I was getting fitter from my exercise. But he said the same for Jehu and Chinaman, and I thought they looked a little worse every day.

  When I left that camp, I was pulling nearly five hundred pounds. I remembered the last time I was here, when Captain Scott had pointed the way to the Pole, a straight line across the Barrier. Even he looked different now, a little bit thinner and a lot more worried. As he trudged along ahead of me, leading the way to the south, I thought his wish to reach the Pole was stronger than ever. He would do it, I thought, no matter what it meant for his dogs and ponies, and maybe even for his men.

  We found the body of the last motor sledge just a little way from the camp. The drivers had left another note saying they were going ahead, man-hauling for One Ton Depot.

  We passed the thing in a strange sort of mist that shone with a white light. The men in goggles, the ponies with their fringes on, we marched steadily south.

  The wind rose slowly. But soon we were leaning against it, our heads down again as blowing snow whipped up around us.

  We camped early, too cold to go on. The wind became a blizzard, piling snow against the pony wall, thrashing the sides of the tents till the canvas shook and boomed.

  Captain Scott came out of his tent and stood all alone in the wind. With his hands behind his back, he squinted terribly into the blizzard. Then he came and stood among the ponies, as though trying to see for himself how much shelter we got from the wall. He put his hand on my back, at the edge of the blanket, in the snow-clotted tangles of my mane.

  A feeling of gloom came out of him. I could feel it through his hand, a sense of gathering despair, or of dwindling hope. Then he looked toward the wind with an angry face, as though the wind was a person, as though the blizzard was blowing just to annoy him.

  The snow gusted around us, over the wall. It piled up on my blanket. It piled up on the ground and banked against the tents, against the sledges and the fodder bales. When Captain Scott took his hand from my back, his mitten was white with snow.

  I twitched my ears. Beside me, Jehu was doing the same thing. He swung his head to the north, toward the faintest sounds.

  Out of the blizzard came the dogs. Faint and gray in the whirling snow, their faces caked with white, they ran at an easy lope. The sledges slid along, and I saw the men running beside them, made fat in their sledging clothes. I heard the Russian commands called out against the wind, and the words sent my old fears shivering through me.

  The men veered to the right and stopped. They made their camp downwind of ours, and the dogs started up a mournful howling that sounded far too much like wolves.

  Captain Scott was watching them, his hand moving like a brush to keep the snow from his eyes.

  “So they can travel in this,” he said to himself. “Still, you can’t trust them. It’s ponies you want on the Barrier.” He turned to face me. He took off his mitten and thrust his bare hand under my blanket, trying to feel how much snow had gathered there. He kept talking in sad tones. “The motors are gone. The dogs can’t last. It’s up to you lot now.”

  He pulled out his hand. He tightened the edges of my blanket, then gave me a solid and friendly thump. “My life’s in your hands, James Pigg,” he said.

  At Framheim, the change in weather comes incredibly quickly. In the first week of September, the temperature plummets from – 43.6 to – 63.4, then soars to – 20.2 The next day it’s – 7.6.

  “At last the change had come, and we thought it was high time,” writes Amundsen. “Every man ready, tomorrow we are off.”

  It doesn’t go quite as smoothly as he plans. The dogs are rambunctious. Two of the teams bolt and have to be rounded up. It’s more than an hour past noon when they leave, and Amundsen almost turns back right away because three puppies are following the sledges. But he decides to go on, believing the puppies will turn around.

  The old tracks of the sledges fade away on the windswept Barrier, but the drivers pick up the line of flags that were planted in the fall and follow them easily. “The going was splendid,” Amundsen says of that day, “and we went at a rattling pace to the south.”

  He tells that the teams did not go far: “eleven and three-quarter miles.” But that’s only two hours’ running. The Norwegians pitch their camp at three-thirty in the afternoon.

  “The first night out is never very pleasant, but this time it was awful,” writes Amundsen. “There was such a row going on among our ninety dogs that we could not close our eyes. It was a blessed relief when four in the morning came round, and we could begin to get up. We had to shoot the three puppies when we stopped for lunch that day.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  IN bright sunshine, with a cold wind blowing, we followed the old cairns across the Barrier. It was a good day’s march with ten miles covered. But the crocks and I were going a bit slowly, and the others caught us up in the afternoon, with a mile or two to go.

  Christopher came first. He thundered past with his breaths puffing white, his great hooves slamming the snow. Mr. Oates held his tether, but the pony led the man, barreling on as if he was heading for his stable. Victor was close behind him, with little Birdie Bowers trotting at his side. Snatcher followed, then Nobby and Michael. They all went by, one by one, last of all Captain Scott and Snippets.

  I felt sorry for Patrick, stuck at the back with me and the crocks, and I pressed myself harder, digging in with my hooves. But he held me back.

  “It’s all right, James Pigg,” he said. “You’re doing just fine.”

  A moment later, Mr. Wright called out from behind us: “Hold up a minute, will you? I think my sledge meter’s jammed.”

  We stopped and waited. Patrick fed me a little piece of biscuit that he found in his pocket. Then I heard Chinaman whinny, and turned my head to see him standing by himself in his harness. Mr. Wright was clearing snow from the wheel that trailed behind his sledge. The pony whinnied again—a sad sound. He didn’t like to be left alone bac
k there, with the big ponies far ahead. Christopher, in the lead, had crossed a wave of snow and was slipping away behind it.

  Chinaman snorted. I heard a jingle from his buckles, a rattle from the sledge, a sudden shout from Mr. Wright. Then Chinaman went galloping past us. It startled me to see him rushing past, going as fast as he could go across the Barrier.

  “Wait! Wait!” shouted Mr. Wright. And a moment later, he went past us, running flat out, with his mittens flying from their tethers. His long legs sprang like a cricket’s as he bounded across the snow. “Stop!” he shouted.

  But Chinaman kept running. And Mr. Wright kept chasing him. And suddenly, Jehu, with a toss of his head, broke loose from Mr. Atkinson and went running after the both of them.

  Mr. Atkinson was too surprised to move. He gaped at the three figures loping over the snow, and then he started laughing. Patrick laughed as well, and up ahead, the men looked back and saw the two old ponies plowing along in their wild sort of canter, with Mr. Wright racing between them, and soon the sound of laughter filled the wide Barrier.

  Nobody had thought Chinaman remembered how to run, he was so old. They had given up on Jehu right at the start, and now rewarded the little pony with a nickname: the Barrier Wonder.

  That was the nicest day of all, everyone happy as they pitched their tents and built the pony walls. I hoped every day would be like that, but the next morning took us back into misery.

  Strong winds made the marching very cold. Then a blizzard stopped us after only five miles and covered the Barrier with fresh snow that made the slogging harder when we started out again.

  All of us bogged in the pits of snow, but again the bigger ponies passed me. Chinaman had to struggle for every yard, heaving huge breaths, with his ribs bending in and out. He didn’t have the strength to keep the sledge moving, so hurled himself at the harness to shift it along a foot at a time.

  Mr. Wright tried to help him, but there wasn’t much he could do. When we staggered into camp, he asked Mr. Oates to have a look at Chinaman. “It’s not proper to drive him like this,” he said.