these days—and Kruger feels as if he is running on stilts, way above the ice, numb and tottery, as in a sickbed dream. They reach the hummock and scramble up and then slide and stutter-step down the backslope. Two starved men chasing a crippled dog on a doomed ice floe. Spike stops and glances back at them: the white mask of his face, the ears pricked. He has reached the eastern rim of the floe, the very shore of the world. A blood and emerald aurora billows faintly. In the dimpled gloom the men slowly approach. They make soothing sounds. Kruger trembles from head to toe. Spike checks them over his shoulder, his backside to them, scrawny haunches tensed, his anus seeming to watch them like an eye from under the erect tail. He leaps. The white corona of a splash in the black sea. If only I had my rifle, and Hans his kayak! Spike has been his favourite among the dogs, but now he thinks only of that gristly, life-giving flesh.
They run to the edge as Spike scratches up onto a teetering cake of ice barely large enough to hold him. He turns and faces them: a rug of matted fur draped over a rack of ribs. When he shakes himself, droplets fling around him and tick down, beads of ice by now, on the darkly smoking sea. The lead between Great Hall Island and the ice cake widens as the island drifts on to the south, and the ice cake, amid other pans and patches of grey frazil, recedes westward, pushed by the side-wake of the floe. Shivering on his flake of ice, staring with limpid eyes as a breeze riffles the tufts frozen between his ears, Spike watches the men in silence as he drifts out of sight.
Nov. 19 . I am down sick with rheumatism, hardly able to hold a pencil. Our island is now entirely encircled by water, and I judge we are drifting to the southward very fast. Today at noon, only a faint streak of twilight in that direction. The natives tell me that they saw two bear-tracks and five seal-holes; but they brought home nothing. How I wish they had better fortune.
Here we are, and here, it seems, we are doomed to remain.
Nov. 21 . The last few days the weather has been clear and cold; I have been confined to the hut with a heavy cold and rheumatism; but, thank God, I am around again. It has been very difficult for the natives to hunt this month, except the few times the moon has shone, on account of the darkness; but today, thank God, they have brought in two seals. Without them we should have no fire, with one boat already cut up. It will never do to touch the other, for the time must come—if we live to see it—when the boat will be our only means of safety. As for Captain Hall’s writing-desk, which is all we have left of him, and which the men might also cut up, two weeks ago I asked Hannah and Joe to keep it safe with them in their hut.
We are living now on as little as the human frame can endure without succumbing, and suffer much from the cold; when the body is ill-fed the cold seems to penetrate to the very marrow. Some tremble with weakness when they try to walk. Mr Meyer suffers much from this cause; he was not well when he came on the ice, and the regimen here has not improved him. He lives with the men now; they are mostly Germans, and so is he, and the affinity of blood draws them together, I suppose. This is natural enough, yet such growing affinity is troubling. He joined them three days ago, and now I have joined Joe, Hannah, and Punnie. I prefer living with them, as they can and will speak English, which Mr Meyer and the men seem increasingly reluctant to do. The biscuit has disappeared very fast lately: more of this hereafter . We have only eight bags left. God guide us; He is our only hope.
Punnie, poor child, is often hungry, and indeed all the children often cry with hunger. We give them all that it is safe to use. And indeed, tonight, for the first time since separating from the ship, we have all eaten enough. I have fed heartily on seal—yes, and drank its blood, and eaten its blubber, and even
They run to the edge as Spike scratches up onto a teetering cake of ice barely large enough to hold him. He turns and faces them: a rug of matted fur draped over a rack of ribs. When he shakes himself, droplets fling around him and tick down, beads of ice by now, on the darkly smoking sea. The lead between Great Hall Island and the ice cake widens as the island drifts on to the south, and the ice cake, amid other pans and patches of grey frazil, recedes westward, pushed by the side-wake of the floe. Shivering on his flake of ice, staring with limpid eyes as a breeze riffles the tufts frozen between his ears, Spike watches the men in silence as he drifts out of sight.
Nov. 19 . I am down sick with rheumatism, hardly able to hold a pencil. Our island is now entirely encircled by water, and I judge we are drifting to the southward very fast. Today at noon, only a faint streak of twilight in that direction. The natives tell me that they saw two bear-tracks and five seal-holes; but they brought home nothing. How I wish they had better fortune.
Here we are, and here, it seems, we are doomed to remain.
Nov. 21 . The last few days the weather has been clear and cold; I have been confined to the hut with a heavy cold and rheumatism; but, thank God, I am around again. It has been very difficult for the natives to hunt this month, except the few times the moon has shone, on account of the darkness; but today, thank God, they have brought in two seals. Without them we should have no fire, with one boat already cut up. It will never do to touch the other, for the time must come—if we live to see it—when the boat will be our only means of safety. As for Captain Hall’s writing-desk, which is all we have left of him, and which the men might also cut up, two weeks ago I asked Hannah and Joe to keep it safe with them in their hut.
We are living now on as little as the human frame can endure without succumbing, and suffer much from the cold; when the body is ill-fed the cold seems to penetrate to the very marrow. Some tremble with weakness when they try to walk. Mr Meyer suffers much from this cause; he was not well when he came on the ice, and the regimen here has not improved him. He lives with the men now; they are mostly Germans, and so is he, and the affinity of blood draws them together, I suppose. This is natural enough, yet such growing affinity is troubling. He joined them three days ago, and now I have joined Joe, Hannah, and Punnie. I prefer living with them, as they can and will speak English, which Mr Meyer and the men seem increasingly reluctant to do. The biscuit has disappeared very fast lately: more of this hereafter . We have only eight bags left. God guide us; He is our only hope.
Punnie, poor child, is often hungry, and indeed all the children often cry with hunger. We give them all that it is safe to use. And indeed, tonight, for the first time since separating from the ship, we have all eaten enough. I have fed heartily on seal—yes, and drank its blood, and eaten its blubber, and even
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