The Rope Eater Read online

  We awoke to a cold and drizzling day, and the dogs huddled on the deck eyed us evilly. Hume called out that the barometer was falling steadily, and we looked at each other despondently. By five there was a low but perceptible swell moving through the pack, and the rumbling of the ice had increased to a steady crashing and crackling. The wind swelled, driving the rain through our thin coats, and the sky closed in over us.

  Griffin began pounding us through the low pack, throwing us recklessly into tiny leads and using the full force of the boilers to batter at the floes. We made little progress, and most discouraging, we found no iceberg to which we might moor.

  The barometer continued to fall, and the captain called Dr. Architeuthis to the deckhouse for a hurried conference. Griffin emerged and rushed aloft. He spent long moments peering into the storm with his glass while we waited anxiously below. We were in a narrow lead running north-northwest between two enormous floes. The lead was formed by a slight convex curve in the western floe. Without the momentum of the engines, the wind quickly drove us against the eastern floe, its gusts banging us against it like the loose shutter on a house. Griffin descended from the mast and ordered us into the whaleboats.

  We dropped into the water and threw ourselves on the oars. The waves were not considerable, as they were much stifled by the pack, but the wind was strong and right in our faces. The spray froze quickly on the oars and on our seats, so we slid off, or lost our grips, smashing into each other. Add to this the saw blade, which, because of its length, had to be laid on the thwarts in the center of the boat. Still, we managed to forge our way across the lead, arriving at last at the broad floe. It had a lip that extended some twenty-five feet into the lead; we were able to row about halfway, then were forced to drop into the ankle-deep water and drag the boat up. The floe was several hundred yards long and looked to be around two hundred in width.

  Ash ordered us to pull the boat a long way onto the floe, and when we returned, he was drilling swiftly with an auger into a narrow gash of new ice where two floes had come together. He set a charge in the hole, and we retreated to the whaleboat. The charge exploded with a flash of red and a shower of ice. Over the wind we could hear a ragged cheer from the ship.

  We returned from the crater and set up the saw, crossing two poles at about eight feet over our heads and hanging the saw vertically with a rope so that the saw hung down between the poles into the gaps created by the blasting. Then, as we pulled the rope back and forth, the saw rose and fell, its own weight drawing it rapidly through the ice. Reinhold and Pago worked at the edges of the crater with picks, clearing openings for the saw to begin new cuts. Preston and I hauled the saw up and down. We moved toward the center of the floe while Pago and Reinhold moved out into the water, hacking and splashing. We soon had a long groove cut. Ash called out and we dragged the rig to the other edge of the crater and began to cut. Reinhold and Pago moved to the top of our cut and began to hack across. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see the Narthex turning to face us across the lead, fighting to keep herself headed.

  Ash wrenched the saw free and ordered us back to the whaleboat. He stood calculating for a moment, then laid another set of charges in the cut at the top. He had not even reached us when this one went up, showering us again.

  We peered from behind the whaleboat and saw that our hole was open. The wind was mounting and the lead was bound to close soon. The hole seemed impossibly small, but it would have to do. Ash signaled the ship from the edge of the floe and we stood off anxiously as she gathered steam for the charge. She moved off sluggishly, the waves threatening to turn her to the north. Halfway across the lead she seemed to be barely moving at all. We huddled in a small group, bouncing with excitement, chanting under our breath like gamblers at the track. Twenty-five yards away, she still seemed to be dragging, as if hauling herself through gravel. Just as she reached the ice lip, she charged forward, grinding her way over it easily. At the edge of the floe she rose slightly, then slid into her harbor as gently as a lady into her slipper. We broke into rousing cheers on the ice, and stumped our way back to her arm in arm, singing in triumph. The hole was just large enough to keep her afloat; she knocked against the sides with the swell, but was well protected from the intrusion of other ice.

  From the deck we received a hearty cheer, and the dogs added in their baleful voices—even West stood with a smile on his face. Griffin produced a small bottle of rum and added this to Hunt’s pot of tea and raised a glass to us all: “Fine work, boys, that’s fine work. Stout ship, hard work, and good luck, that’s all you can hope for.”

  “Lusty women!” called Reinhold.

  “Full pockets!” added Pago.

  “Well now,” said Griffin, coloring slightly, “fill your bellies, and first shift turn in, though I recommend you sleep in your clothes.”

  Griffin remained stiffly at wheel, though the ship was moored. I could see that his hands were trembling.

  “Why don’t you head below yourself, sir?” I said. “You’ve been up here longer than the rest of us combined.”

  He turned to me distractedly; his face was haggard and his beard was stained with tobacco.

  “Really, sir, we’ll wake you if need be, but we’re quite safe.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he muttered finally. “Not much I can do here, is there?” He stared out into the storm for a moment more, and then headed below.

  “Poor bastard’s dead on his feet,” said Reinhold as he disappeared. I got the urge to go below and see how Aziz had fared. He had been left to stoke by himself the entire time. But I was drowsy, and leaned against the wall of the deckhouse; I was sure, as I nodded off, that he was doing the same.

  I awoke to the yipping of the dogs. The storm was still blowing fiercely and the deckhouse was dark and freezing. Despite the cold, the others were sleeping as I had been—Reinhold stretched on the floor with several of the dogs draped over him, Pago and Creely slumped on crates. On deck, the dogs were very disturbed, whining with excitement and turning in small circles. I peered out at the deck and onto the floes, straining to see what the trouble was. The swell was slow and regular and the ship seemed silent. Then I felt a slight tremor. I spun and looked into the lead behind us. At first I could see nothing, but then, to the south, I could see the lead had started to close. The tips of the long bay had already met, and the edge of our floe was beginning to ride up on the floe opposite. A grinding roar started, like a thousand engines revving and a thousand guns firing. The sliding stopped abruptly and a ridge began to form, both sides pressing in and up. The entire lead was narrowing. To the north, the edges met also, and a ridge exploded upward. Like a gigantic vise, the floes pressed together, causing our ship to shudder in its tiny harbor.

  With a shout I woke my watch; Griffin’s head appeared from the hatch before I had a chance to open it.

  “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “It’s the lead, sir, it’s closing from both ends.”

  He rushed to the deck. The whole floe was shaking now, blocking out even the motion of the swell.

  “Get the men on deck now!” he shouted, and turned back to the lead.

  Pago ran to the fore hatch and yelled. The pressure ridges were not far now—about two hundred yards to the north and perhaps 150 to the south. The grinding roar had drowned out the sound of the storm completely.

  “Everyone to the ice!” he shouted, and we scrambled for the ropes. Hume and Creely put West in a harness and lowered him; the rest of us dropped rapidly. Aziz appeared and slid down a rope.

  “What about the dogs, sir?” asked Reinhold.

  “They’ll have to fend for themselves now,” he replied. “There’s no time to unload them.”

  And indeed there was not: the lead was barely fifty yards wide now, and the pressure ridges continued to close. They were seven or eight feet high to the south, and a hundred yards away. To the north they were farther—perhaps 150—but still closing. Chunks of ice the size of small house
s rose up and toppled. At seventy-five yards to the south, the ridges slowed suddenly and stopped. I held my breath, suddenly aware of the whining of the dogs.

  With a roar, the southern ridge started again, jerking forward at first, then sliding again with that same awful slowness. We retreated farther and watched helplessly as the ridge closed in to fifty yards, forty, thirty, twenty. The noise was utterly deafening now, shocking through our ears like lightning. The ice of our hole cracked and the ship rose up. The ridge plowed into the hull like a freight train, picking her up out of the water and spinning her sideways. She listed way over to the port side and shot across the ice, her copper sheeting peeling away like the skin of an orange. The pressure ridge formed behind her, closing out the last of the lead. The floe shuddered for a moment, and was still. The Narthex lay on her side like a wounded animal, the fresh dark wood showing like stripped flesh under the sheeting.

  Griffin and Ash toured the ship to assess the damage. The screw had been badly bent and the rudder was damaged. We began dragging parts from the hold and helping Ash repair the screw. Hume and Creely had pulled the sheeting back toward the hull and tacked it on. Ash and Preston patched the rudder, which had been somewhat protected by the hull underneath but had had no protection against the ice intruding from behind. At last, Griffin ordered us to our bunks, where diligent, beloved Hunt met us with a pot of tea and we collapsed.

  I believe I have never had such an awful sleep as that night. Shivering in my soggy clothes, I was too tired to fall asleep, my nerves still jangling from the closing of the lead. Each slight tremor of the ship brought me to full wakefulness, sick with terror that the ship was being crushed again. I imagined us on the ice as the ship split like a nut in a nutcracker and slid below, leaving us in the midst of the jostling pack with no food, no shelter, and the wind shrieking around us. I slept in short fits, shivering myself awake in fear and cold. The stove in our cabin glowed steadily, but it could not seem to reach the deep cold I had inside me. I could not remember how it felt to be warm.

  We were not awakened for the first watch, nor the second, and with the exception of myself, I believe we slept well and soundly. By morning even I began to drowse and drift off.

  The captain raised us at noon, and we shuffled wearily onto the deck, leaning to keep our balance. The wind had died and the air felt warmer, but the sky was still dark gray.

  “Quite a pinch, gentlemen, quite a pinch. We’ll do a full shift this afternoon to pack an emergency supply kit in the deckhouse in case we get pinched like that and need to abandon quickly. Should have been done a long time ago. After that’s finished, we’ll go half shifts to repair the hull and screw until the morning, unless the ice opens before then.”

  Hume was put in charge of the emergency kit, and we spent an hour ferrying out various supplies and bits of equipment: pemmican and biscuits, a lamp, tins of kerosene, a barrel of potatoes, one four-man tent, spare sleeping sacks, matches, a pot, two rifles and five hundred rounds of ammunition, fishing line and a hook, a knife and saw, a tarp, and some other odds and ends that he crammed into the back of the deckhouse as we finished. Hunt had cooked up some of the marled meat in a thick and savory stew, and we returned to our bunks warm and full, and slept like dead men.

  Adney roused me for my watch at two in the morning. I emerged onto the deck into a soft gray twilight. The wind had disappeared and the air felt positively tropical. The ice was finally silent and still. The moon had settled, like a feather, in the eastern sky. Around the ship, broken ice lay in pieces, and the pressure ridges extended away like ancient battlements fallen into ruin. I felt as if I were an archaeologist, surveying the remains of an ancient, alien city. What temples these, with what altars raised? What truculent gods descended? In the gray light, their walls lay shattered, script indecipherable and lost, fragments now dispersed and buried in a thousand graves.

  The sun slid over the horizon and washed the ice in soft shades of red and lavender and changed its shadows from razored black to velvet blue. Around me the ice creaked with the last of the swell, and the ship rested unstirring. I was loath to wake the captain and rouse the crew, and so I sat until my stomach began to protest and I rose to pull them into the day.

  The ice showed no signs of yielding that day, though the temperature had risen higher and streams and pools of meltwater appeared on the floes. Reinhold took the dogs down to the ice and let them run freely. They took to it slowly at first, but were soon scampering like puppies, tumbling over each other, and racing playfully around the ship. We gathered on deck and took quick baths in sun-warmed water; some rinsed their filthy clothes and hung them in the rigging to dry. There was no sign of West, but Dr. Architeuthis emerged from his cabin to scrub himself off and rinse his clothes.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it,” said Pago, who stretched beside him, “that the temperature can change so quickly and so completely?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, “remarkable.”

  “It’s a miracle,” I said happily.

  “A matter of pressure,” he said sternly. “The cold air sweeps through and the warm comes in behind it.”

  “A miracle,” I persisted.

  “Now, now,” said the doctor, shaking his finger at me like a schoolmaster. “You, of all, should know there are no miracles.”

  I could not tell whether he was joking or not.

  “It is only a matter of time and effort before man will have marched into every dark and dusty corner of nature and set it in order.”

  “Oh I see,” said Adney with mock gravity, “so you’re a sort of intellectual washerwoman for the world.”

  “Exactly,” said Dr. Architeuthis, smiling with our laughter. “Once fully understood and set in order, its various forces can be turned to our advantage—powering our cities and feeding our people. At every edge of the planet are dumb generators that are waiting to be subdued to the useful and the good. As soon as we can comprehend them and learn to direct them, our power over the world increases exponentially. Even here in this forbidding wasteland are great engines, waiting for us to ignite them.

  “Imagine the power of the ice pack turned to the generation of electricity—all the miners in the world could retire immediately and devote themselves to more useful ends.”

  Reinhold snorted. “You’ll never hook up the ice to a—a turbine. It’s ridiculous.”

  “That is merely a matter of a turbine of sufficient design to use the force it would generate. I imagine that within a hundred years, these waters will be crowded with men making their livings off the power of the ice. It’ll be tamed and settled in a generation or two.”

  “Men’ll never come up here, besides the Eskimo. They’d never survive,” Adney said.

  The doctor snorted.

  “Man needs only two things to survive here or anywhere: meat and heat. With fuel to drive his body and warmth enough to keep his extremities working, man can live as easily here as he can in the tropics. It’s only our ignorance and weakness that keeps our own capacities hidden from us. I imagine that we will learn much that is useful in the course of this trip.” He glanced, smiling, at Reinhold, who scowled in return.

  “Allow me to demonstrate.” He rose, took an axe, and descended to the ice. He chopped a hole about two feet across. Then, to our amazement, he stripped off his clothes and dove in. He bobbed to the surface, gasping, but with a look of steady concentration, his breathing returned to normal, and he continued his lecture:

  “So you see, my body can quickly adapt itself even to this cold. Given the right fuel, I could remain here indefinitely, heated by my own internal combustion. The Eskimos have merely discovered the balance of fuel they need to remain warm. So it is with the whole of the world—it remains only for our reason to dispel our own feeble perceptions that keep us huddled in the dark.” He remained treading water for a moment, then pulled himself onto the ice and dressed slowly. His body was a clear, empty white, as if bloodless.

  It seemed astonishing to me—as i
f he had with that one act conquered the whole of the ice we had been battling against.

  “Quite a trick, Doctor,” said Pago when he had returned to the deck. “Where’d you learn it?”

  “In Holland as a boy,” said the doctor, laughing. “It was the first of my experiments. I was testing the body’s reaction to extreme temperatures.” His face turned serious again. “I have come, in part, to help us prepare for the coming ice.”

  “What ice is that?” asked Pago.

  “We are enjoying a brief respite, in geological terms, but ours is in fact an ice age. It shall not be so many generations of men before the glaciers will sweep down again, and man must be prepared to overmaster the ice. It is the focus of many scientists.”

  Dr. Architeuthis droned on, and I climbed the shrouds to see if the ice had opened. In the crow’s nest I found Captain Griffin, scanning the horizon with his glass.

  “Had enough of the good doctor?” he asked without lowering it.

  “Yes sir,” I replied, laughing. “Enough school for today. How does it look? Any signs of a breakup?”

  “We’ll be under way tomorrow—with luck through the leads. The trouble is that we’re drifting south with this pack. We’ve lost more than fifteen miles already, and it’ll cost us in time and coal to make it up.”

  I had had no sensation of drifting. The world of the pack seemed totally immobile, and it was a cruel trick that it was carrying us away from our goal.

  “Are you sure?” I found myself asking.

  “Of course I’m sure,” he snapped, closing the glass impatiently. He frowned at me and clambered down to the deck.

  I glared out at the ice, wishing that I could batter my head against it until it gave way before me. This feeling stayed with me through the day, and I found myself churning in my bunk that night, still furious.