The Surfacing Read Free

Erebus nor Terror . Inside were last year’s Almanack and a fine pair of riding boots.
    That evening, from the Crow’s Nest, free sailing was announced to the west, well
inside The Pack, but from there stretching to the horizon. Myer declined to go up
and see it for himself. He did not need good cause, only a good excuse. The next
morning, he announced, they were going in.
    4th June
    All morning they forced their way through the mess, until they made what Myer had
baptized The Open Water. They drove hard, free and unhindered, north and west. By
noon, from the deck, they had sunk the coast.
    From the Crow’s Nest, Myer was shouting down directions. Brooks was at the helm.
Morgan sat on a crate near the stern, smoking his pipe, trying to pretend he knew
nothing of what was going on. But overhead Myer was bellowing like a schoolboy.
Ahead of them now was half a mile of water at most.
    The ice was visibly nearer. Inside it, the little lead they were aiming for was the
colour of ink. Another order was roared from above. Morgan watched the men heaving
frantically at the braces. She turned shyly towards the gap.
    The first contact put him lying on the deck flapping frantically at the cinders
on his coat. All around him, fish were hopping off the boards. Far above, a man was
screaming. It was a voice Morgan had never heard before. The shock was done, no more
fish fell, but their dead eyes like dried peas rattled over and across the deck,
as the ship ground and grunted, and bulled for an even keel.
    Afterwards, Morgan brushed himself off and went to the bows, to see where their commander
wanted to go. Even here at its widest it was a nice fit, and tighter still in the
distance. Myer seemed not to notice, but called for a full spread of canvas, even
to studding-sails, and ordered all hands out on the floe, with picks and pinch-bars,
to work them farther in.
    At dinner that night, Myer did not say a word, and his officers did not mention
the ice, or what they had been at. They leaned their elbows on the table, heads down,
hunched under an invisible weight. They ate their food mechanically, but when Myer
coughed, as though clearing his throat, all the forks stalled in mid-air. Still Myer
said nothing. They kept eating, and the cutlery kept creaking and squealing on their
plates.
    After supper Myer sent Morgan forward to the crew’s quarters to get Daly, their strongest
man. Out on the ice, they watched Daly crouch down, to lift their smallest kedge.
The thing weighed at least one hundred and fifty pounds. They watched him waddle.
There was no protest or complaint.
    Now then Doctor, Morgan said, there’s a nice specimen for your collection. He could
feel it inside him, the jealousy, now well awake. The man was of a different breed.
The veins were standing out on his forearms, and the forearms looked carved from
wood.
    They watched him go. To his friend, quietly, DeHaven wondered about the wisdom of
sending a man out over doubtful ice, carrying an anchor.
    He is a sailor in Her Majesty’s Navy, Myer announced, turning to face his accuser.
If he is not so fond of danger, he should have stayed at home to dig potatoes.
    From the bows, they watched Daly hack a hole in the surface with some class of hatchet.
Into this hole he hooked the anchor. He threaded the hawser through the eye. The
slack was wrapped round the capstan. The men got into place, three to each arm. It
was now half past eight at night. They leaned into the bars. The hawser rose up off
the ice. It began to tremble. Soon they could hear it crack and splinter, like wood.
The object of their efforts was beautifully simple: to pry apart the two halves of
the world with their bows, and drive themselves into the crack, where the danger
was greatest.
    They had not been heaving two minutes when Myer swore he’d seen a definite twitch
in the floe. It was like a wedge being hammered home. Ten minutes later, when they
paused to swap teams, Morgan saw that a crack about two inches