The Winter Pony Read online

  The Terra Nova is heavy in the water now, and the waves roll right over the deck. Captain Scott, standing at the stern, can see nothing of his ship but the masts. Two ponies are battered to death in their stalls. A dog is carried overboard. Ten tons of coal are lost, along with sixty-five gallons of gasoline meant to power the motor sledges.

  Scott puts his scientists to work with buckets, lifting water from the bilge. His sailors chop though a bulkhead to reach the clogged pumps.

  Scientists with buckets, and sailors with axes, manage to save the old ship. The storm passes and Scott turns south again.

  Amundsen and his Fram are far to the west, trailing Scott by thousands of miles. He has just passed the Kerguelen Islands, halfway between Africa and Australia. He had hoped to visit the Norwegian whaling station there, but bad weather kept him at sea. Now the winds are fair, and he’s bowling along toward Antarctica. He has four thousand miles to go.

  His ship is covered with dogs. He left Norway with ninety-seven, but puppies have been born at sea, and there are now considerably more. They run loose, not minding the gales but hating the rain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I didn’t know that two ponies had died until I saw their bodies being hoisted through the skylight.

  It was awful to see them so slack and limp, as lifeless as the bags of coal. A group of sailors dragged the bodies across the deck, waited until the ship rolled heavily, then heaved them over the rail. Poor Mr. Oates looked brokenhearted.

  I saw him leaning against the rigging, staring into the sea, and I wished I could go and prop him up, as he had held me through the storm. I knew what he was thinking, that it had not been fair to the ponies to drag them half a world away from forest and field, to see them die in a ship on the ocean. I imagined that he was afraid the ponies hated him for it.

  All the men stopped work for a moment as the dead ponies plunged into the sea. Spray flew up and splattered on Mr. Oates’s boots. He looked horrified by that. Then the sailors went back to work, but Mr. Oates stayed where he was. He got out his pipe and lit it, and turned up his face to the sky.

  Compared to me, he was small and frail. But at that instant, he seemed as strong as an ox, and I knew I would follow him to the end of the earth if that was where he cared to lead me.

  South, south, forever to the south, the ship moved along over rounded waves, to wherever it was we were going.

  We saw the first iceberg of the voyage. It was far to the west, hard for me to see at all. The men were all excited, shouting at each other to look. I leaned to the right and peered between two rows of packing crates. I saw the iceberg far away as sunlight glowed on its top. It looked to me like a lump of sugar, glistening on a gray plate of sea and sky.

  On that same day, we saw sleek fish that the men called dolphins, a very playful sort of fish. The men gathered in the bow to watch them roll and spin. It gave me a small pang to see Mr. Oates among them, smiling so broadly that I wondered if he preferred fish over ponies.

  The dogs, of course, went into a barking frenzy at the puffing sound of dolphin breaths. They did the same with the birds and the chunks of ice that began to appear in the following days. Soon, there was ice all around us, and birds all above us, and the dogs were seldom silent. The photographer, a man named Mr. Ponting, took pictures of everything that moved and many things that didn’t.

  Then the ice grew thicker, and soon the ship could go no farther. We sat in a field of white slabs that stretched forever in all directions. The sails furled, the engine stilled; we just floated there, waiting for a channel to appear.

  We waited for hours. We waited for days. The men grew bored with all the waiting and just stood along the rails and up on the mast, for once as mindless as the dogs. They pointed out everything that moved, from the great whales spouting among the floes, to the tiniest of birds. They shouted at some of the things. They shot at others, the hollow bark of their guns a flat sound with no echo. But mostly they laughed, and they laughed particularly loudly at the fat little birds they called penguins, the sorriest sort of bird I’d ever seen.

  Standing upright on flat feet, with little round bellies and stubby wings, the penguins came waddling toward us in huge numbers. All black and white, like little men in little suits, they swayed from side to side. They sometimes toppled over. Far in the distance, I could see more coming, and more behind those, and distant dark specks, all moving in columns and rows.

  Now and then the ice parted with a shudder, and the ship moved along again, sometimes under sail and sometimes with the engine. Some days we gained less than a mile, and on others we slipped backward, carried along in the floes. Once in a while we came to a bit of open water and sailed a long way, only to jam up in the ice again and begin our waiting all over.

  All the days were the same, except for one called Christmas. On that day, Mr. Oates brought me a special sort of biscuit. Then Taff Evans brought an oil cake, and I could hardly believe my luck to get two fine treats in one day, for doing nothing but standing in my stall. But Christmas wasn’t even finished yet. Captain Scott came by after dinner, and three or four others after him, all arriving one by one. I got more treats and pets that day than I’d had in my whole life before it.

  The last to come was a sailor named Patrick Keohane, who had a funny way of talking because he lived in a place called Ireland. He gave me a piece of apple, the first I’d had in a very long time. Then he stood for a while and petted me. “Do you know they’ll all be in church in Ireland just now?” he said. “Yes, sitting in church, and probably saying a prayer for me too. All day I’ve been thinking of them. Oh, I was missing my home this morning.” The sailor’s hands were tough and red. He squeezed my ear in his fist, in a way that was firm and gentle at the same time. “I was thinking of the sheep. Of the shamrocks,” he said. “Everything’s green in Ireland, all the year round. You’d fancy that, wouldn’t you?”

  I nodded my head. I snorted softly as I pressed against him. He stroked the side of my nose.

  “You poor thing; you’ve no idea what you’re in for.” He chuckled quietly. “I’m not even sure that I know it myself. But I’ve got a sense of what’s coming, and you don’t, and I wonder: Who’s the lucky one, then? Oh, I’d change places with you quick enough, I think.”

  He might have stayed and talked to me for a long time. But another sailor came by, and Mr. Keohane suddenly seemed a bit embarrassed to be talking to a pony. He gave me a friendly cuff, then moved slowly away.

  “Merry Christmas to you, James Pigg,” he said.

  The sun swung very low in the north. The ice turned to many colors, to many shades of blue and red. Then down in the ship, the men started singing. Their songs were solemn and slow, but I felt happy that night, like a shipmate of them all.

  On the last day of the year, Captain Scott saw the mountains on the land ahead. He was standing at the rail with his head poking over a packing crate, staring eagerly to the south like a groundhog poking its head from a hole.

  When he saw the mountains, he cheered. Then everyone looked, and everyone cheered, and I could feel an excitement sweep over the ship like a fire. Even the dogs stirred restlessly, sensing that something had changed, or that something was about to happen. Captain Scott wore an expression of triumph, as though his goal had been only to see the mountains, that he could now turn the ship around and head for home.

  But the ship pressed on. The ice ground against the hull, forced aside as we moved south toward those mountains. And two hours later, though it didn’t matter to me, one year ended and another began.

  In the counting of men, it was now 1911.

  On the third day of the year, we saw the land along the sea. What a terrible place we’d come to, a world that seemed to guard itself with giant walls of ice and rock. There were mountains like dogs’ teeth, and one with a plume of smoke streaming from a rounded top, as though a great fire burned inside it. Glaciers tumbled down between the peaks and calved into the sea with a constant roar and thun
der. The cliff at the face of the glaciers was higher than the masts of the ship, and blocks of ice as big as houses split away and tumbled into the water. The sea churned at the foot of it, where icebergs rolled and tilted.

  I felt a sense of dread as I peered out from my stall. I saw the faces of the men, suddenly grim and thoughtful. Through squinted eyes they looked at the snow and the ice, at the mountains, but not at each other. The land was so cold and barren that it made me shiver. I saw no trees, no flowers, no grass or clover, no plants of any sort.

  But Captain Scott seemed perfectly happy. I could tell he was in love with this place. He had names for the mountains, for the bays and the capes, for the smoking peak with its white plume. He guided the ship along the edge of the ice cliff, around a point and around another. It was an island that we’d come to, but very different from the one we’d left. On three sides it was surrounded by ice, not water, and the only sand was in a black strip where I didn’t feel like running at all.

  Captain Scott knew every inch of it. A snow-covered beach appeared just where he said he would find one, and he brought the ship to the band of ice that floated in front of it, half a mile wide. The men set out anchors and moored to the ice. Their ropes froze stiff and straight, like iron rods.

  Off went the dogs, led over the side. Then out came the pony box, and this time I was glad to see it. Weary Willy went first. He bounded from the box as soon as it was opened, threw himself down on the snow-covered ice and squirmed like a cat, flat on his back with his legs in the air. I was so excited that I could hardly stand still in the box. Like Weary Willy, the first thing I did was lie down and roll onto my back. Some of the men laughed at me. But I didn’t care. It felt wonderful to stretch and scratch, to rub away the lice and the loose hair. My legs were happy because it was the first time in forty days that they didn’t have to hold me up.

  Weary Willy nibbled at my scabs and louse bites. I did the same for him, and then for Jehu and Nobby when they joined us. We stood in a happy group, all tending to one another.

  There was a very nice man with a very big name. Mr. Apsley Cherry-Garrard. To me, and to everyone, he was only Cherry. He was twenty-six, which seemed ancient to a pony but not many years to a man. He looked after Weary Willy, and did it with nothing but kindness. Cherry could see only by peering through bits of glass hooked to his nose, as though he wore his eyes outside his head. It was his job to study the animals that lived in this winter land, and he was probably the happiest man on the whole ship because he was surrounded by the strangest animals.

  There were fat seals sprawled on the ice like huge slugs. There were black skua birds that sat hunched in huge flocks and seemed like very evil little creatures. And there were penguins by the hundred, and they found Cherry just as interesting as he found them.

  Penguins were curious about everything. They came from all around to have a look at us, waddling over the snow and the ice or popping up from the sea like sparks blown from a fire. They shot straight up at the edge of the ice, plopped flat on their bellies, then pushed themselves upright with their little stubs of wings. It amused me to see them.

  In groups of five or six, they stood and stared at us. Their little heads twisted and bobbed, and they muttered to each other in soft twitters that were quite lovely to hear. When they tired of us, they moved on to the dogs and didn’t know enough to be afraid. The dogs snarled and barked, but the penguins kept going closer. Mr. Meares shooed them away. He sent them scattering in their funny tilting steps, but they went right back as soon as they could. For a while, we watched a silly battle, with Mr. Meares running them off, and the penguins waddling back. But it wasn’t long before one of them went too close.

  It was the dog Osmon, the king of the dogs, who lured the bird toward him. He held back, letting the penguin think he was right at the end of his leash. He waited for his chance, then suddenly pounced. There was a wolfish snarl, a flash of teeth, the saddest little squeak from the penguin. Then its body lay torn on a stain of red snow, its feathers scattered across the ice. I shuddered inside, knowing the same thing could happen to me if Mr. Meares ever let his dogs get loose.

  Even then, the penguins learned no lesson. I might have thought they had no fear at all, except they lived in dread of the killer whales.

  They were the worst of all animals, the killer whales. They were black and white with piggish eyes and rows of teeth. They had tall fins on their backs that sliced through the water, and they came sometimes alone and sometimes in wolflike packs. They could swim at the speed of galloping horses, or float absolutely still with their heads high above the water. It was eerie to see them doing that, for they never made a sound while they floated there but just watched with their round eyes. Then down they went without a ripple, slipping quietly into the cold sea.

  When the whales came close, I could hear their voices trembling through the ice. It was a faint sound of whistles and creaks, and at the first sound of it, the penguins burst from the water. Twenty, thirty, forty at once, the fat little birds exploded from the sea like rockets. And behind them, in the eddies and whirls of water, appeared scraps of penguin flesh.

  Then the birds descended. Great flocks of black-winged skuas, all shrieking away, they came to feed on the scraps. I could follow the path of the orcas by the rising and falling of the birds.

  It seemed a cruel world, really, in the icy land of the south. Seals hunted fish, and whales hunted seals, and everything hunted the poor penguins. The little babies tried their best to stay among the adults. But at least once in every hour a skua screamed and swooped, and a mother penguin was left bleating on the ice, gazing sadly all around.

  I was glad there was nothing in that land to eat a pony, except the dreadful dogs.

  For three days we did no work. Tied to a picket line on a snowy slope above the beach, we watched the men unload their things from ship to ice.

  Off came the big packing crates that had covered so much of the deck. Inside them were strange sledges with motors on their backs. Instead of runners, they had wide belts that rolled round and round as the motors roared and clattered. They lurched along the ice, reeling over every hummock, while a gang of men scurried around to keep them moving straight and upright.

  I was pleased when one of the sledges crashed through the ice and disappeared. But Captain Scott was so sad that I felt rotten for being happy. The other two motors went straight to work carrying loads of wood and canvas. Weary Willy loved to watch the machine doing his job, and the only thing that could have pleased him more would have been for the sledge to carry him.

  Then out came harnesses for ponies and dogs, and another sort that I didn’t understand. The men laid them out, attached the traces, then stepped right into those harnesses themselves. I could hardly believe it: men in harness, pulling like mad, puffing and grunting as ponies lounged nearby. I wondered if the cold and loneliness had driven them crazy. They even strapped boards to their feet—they called them “skis”—and went sliding across the ice, dragging a sledge piled high with bales of fodder.

  It was a strange thing to stand idly, watching men work. In Russia, it would have pleased me; why, it would have stunned me. But now I felt useless, afraid that Captain Scott didn’t believe ponies could work. I felt out of place; I wanted to do my share. To make things worse, the dogs were put in harness as well. They went dashing across the ice, pulling little sledges that were quick as lightning. A whole team pulled only three hundred pounds, a third of what I could manage on my own. Mr. Meares drove from the back of the sledges, shouting commands in Russian. “Ki!” he cried, and the dogs swung to the right. “Tchui!” he shouted, and they wheeled in a line to the left. With howls and barks, they made almost as much noise as the motor sledges.

  I watched load after load come ashore. The men set up a winter station, starting with a big tent, and then a hut they built beside it. I thought I might never have a job to do.

  At last I heard the jingle of a pony harness. To me, it was a lovely s
ound, but the work turned out to be harder than I’d thought it would be. There were so many supplies! We had to bring enough food and gear to see all of us through the winter, men and ponies and dogs. I found that dragging a sledge was not the same as dragging iron rails or heavy logs. If I slowed down, the sledge sometimes overtook me, and the heavy crossbar banged against my legs. But if I tried to hurry, it stuck in soft snow and I jolted up against the traces. Still, I pulled nearly eight hundred pounds at a time, across the ice to the beach, up a hill to the building site. Then I trotted back for another load.

  We all joined in, going round and round like the tracks on the motor sledges. I liked to see the long line of ponies, the leaders changing all the time. Uncle Bill, the biggest pony of all, pulled a thousand pounds on his sledge. But it was Michael, the smallest, who somehow pulled the fastest.

  I was often overtaken. It seemed a long haul to me, from the ship to the hut, over the ice and up a slope. I didn’t like that part of the work very much. I liked the parts better where I went back with the empty sledge, and where I waited while the men filled it again. A nice little man named Birdie Bowers was in charge of the stores, and he counted every bag and box like a chicken counting her eggs. He made sure that my sledge was never overfilled. Then Patrick Keohane, the Irishman, led me off again, and he let me amble along as I pleased.

  Stubborn old Weary Willy went past me. So did Nobby, who was about my size, and even little Michael. But I overtook Blossom and Blucher, who were very old. And I fairly rocketed past poor ancient Jehu, who couldn’t have passed a snail. The voyage had been hard on the oldest ponies, and he and Blossom and Blucher labored across the ice with their heads down, as though they were marching into a blizzard. Jehu’s load was barely three hundred pounds, but he still wheezed with every step.

  I slowed when I passed him for the first time. Our feet crunched together in the snow; the runners on our sledges rasped behind us. Jehu turned his head just enough to see that it was me, and his look was full of anguish. We knew what happened to ponies who couldn’t keep up.