The Winter Pony by Iain Lawrence Page A

two weeks, he’ll travel beyond his last depot, all the way to 82 degrees south, but his dogs will be worn out. “This is my only dark memory of my stay in the South,” he writes later, “the over-taxing of these fine animals. I had asked more of themthan they were capable of doing. My consolation is that I did not spare myself either.”

    Scott is worried about some of his men and how they will fare in the spring. Oates’s nose seems always on the point of frostbite; Meares has trouble with his feet. Both Cherry-Garrard and Scott himself have been nipped by frostbite on the cheeks. Bowers, who wears nothing on his head but a felt hat, never seems to feel the cold. But Scott sees that his ears have turned white
.
    On February 18, Scott hurries ahead to meet Teddy Evans and the others he had sent back with the crocks. He goes by dogsled and is amazed by the speed and endurance of the dogs. From morning to lunch, they take him seventeen miles
.
    “The way in which they keep up a steady jog trot for hour after hour is wonderful,” he writes. “Their legs seem steel springs, fatigue unknown—for at the end of a tiring march any unusual incident will arouse them to full vigour.”

C HAPTER S IX
    AT Safety Camp we rested. It was a lovely place, cold and quiet, with the men’s tent like a tiny gray mountain on the plain of ice. We could see Mount Erebus smoldering away to the west, and the glaciers oozing out onto the Barrier. A glacier moved so slowly that I imagined it saw everything else go by in a blur, the sun and moon dashing round and round the world like an eagle chasing a sparrow.
    We expected a long wait for the others to catch up, but after just a day or two, we were surprised by the sound of dogs approaching.
    All of us turned toward the distant yapping. We saw tiny black specks far off to the south, rising over the crests of the snow waves. There and gone, that’s how they came: a little bigger, a little louder, every time they reappeared.
    Two teams of dogs were running side by side, as though racing each other. The men ran beside the sledges, sometimes holding on with one hand. They stumbled and rose and ran on again. I saw Captain Scott and Mr. Meares at one of the sleds. At the other was young Gran, and then Cherry with his glass eyes on his nose. That made everything seem so fine. I was always happy when I saw Cherry.
    Men and dogs, they flew toward us, weaving around the crests of snow. We all watched them come. I peered above my snow wall. Mr. Forde looked out from the tent where he was cooking. Mr. Teddy and Patrick raised their heads from the overturned sledge, where they were sharpening the metal edges of the runners.
    The dog Osman was leading a team. I watched him leap at his harness, and all the others leap behind him. Every dog in every team was silent now, exhausted by their travel. We could hear them panting as their paws pattered along.
    The dog Osman veered around the end of a ridge and galloped across the flat space behind it. The others followed him two by two, leaning into the turn. The second team fell back a bit, and someone yelled at them in Russian, telling them to hurry.
    I felt the old twinge inside me. I remembered men
screaming
those words, and I saw—in my mind—a red-faced Russian raising a whip, his eyes full of fury.
    The memory was more real than the dogs and the sled and the pale streaks of the clouds. I winced from the whip, closing my eyes as I waited for the sting. So I didn’t see the dogs plummet through the snow.
    It was the sound that brought me out of my memory, a frantic noise of dogs and men. I saw the dog Osman standing alone in the snow, leaning forward with his feet planted firmly, as though he was pulling a thousand pounds but not moving an inch. Behind him was a gaping hole, a crevasse so wide and deep that every dog except for Osman had vanished inside it. On the other side sat the sledge, tilted at the very lip of the crevasse. Captain Scott and Mr.