38. In which salt is spilt and the hardships seem to belong in the limbo of forgotten things
IN WHICH SALT IS SPILT AND THE HARDSHIPS SEEM TO BELONG IN THE LIMBO OF FORGOTTEN THINGS
Dawn broke, the sun painting the sky pink.
The Tempest rose and fell on the swell. Great glaciers rolled down from the rocky cliffs of South Georgia, and out ahead was a small cove, and as luck would have it, there was a gap in the jagged teeth of the reef.
Hester sat at the tiller, a hand shielding her eyes as she tried to spot a good landing place.
“Aiming there,” Hester said, pointing ahead.
“If I’m right, this is King Haakon Bay,” Septimus said. He sat next to her, the mainsheet in his hand.
“We’re the wrong side of the island for the whaling ports, but Winston needs rest.” She cast a glance towards her bosun, huddled in the bow. Hester bit her lower lip. He’d been in and out of consciousness.
“There’s no doubt about that. I’m not sure the boat will make the journey round to the north coast. It would be best to land on this side and try and get him well,” Septimus said.
“We could walk for help. Over the land.”
Septimus was quiet for a long moment. “I have never heard of anyone crossing the interior of the island. Mountains, glaciers, crevasses. One wrong step and we would be dead.”
What other choice was there? The boat was about to fall to pieces.
“We shall be the first to cross.” Grim determination settled in Hester’s stomach.
She heaved at the tiller, changing their course for the bay.
“We land here, then you and I will cross the island for help.” She hung onto the tiller, narrowly avoiding a reef.
“It’s a fine thing I’m so bloody good at this,” she said through her teeth.
Septimus huffed a laugh. “And modest to boot.”
She smiled. No. She had never been modest. If she didn’t cheer for herself, who else would?
The knot that had taken up residence in her stomach since her mother had vanished under the waves tightened.
She was gone. Whatever was left of her. Just gone.
And Hester barely knew what to do with the grief other than to keep going as she always had done.
As she needed to for her crew. After all, she’d lost something she’d never really had, and was that a loss at all?
She bit the inside of her lip, tasted the iron, swallowed down her sorrow.
The Tempest hit the beach, pebbles scraping on wood, and Hester let out a soft sigh, finding a grin for Peggy, who lay between Winston and Frank. Peggy’s face cracked into a smile, a tear in her eye. “We made it?”
“We made it, my friend. Eight hundred miles across the world’s most deadly ocean, in this tiny, glorious lifeboat.” She kissed the tiller.
A great number of elephant seals lay further along the shore.
Hester licked her chapped lips, her stomach growling its approval.
“And I spot lunch.” She hopped out of the boat with Septimus, and Frank half-fell over the side, laughing and rolling on the stones.
For a moment, Hester wished Snowball were here.
The dog would have done the same thing. And Snowball wouldn’t have asked questions she wasn’t ready to discuss the answers to when she hugged her, unlike Septimus.
She had told him it was her mother who bound the demon.
Knew he wouldn’t have been able to see the sacrifice she made, but she was not ready to delve further into the feelings.
Had never been good at talking about feelings, despite his insistence that talking would help.
“Looks like there’s a cave up there. I’ll go and investigate.” Septimus staggered up the shingle, weaving like a drunkard, and Hester turned her attention to Winston, forgetting her mother in the face of taking care of her friends.
Peggy shook him awake. “Winston. Wake up, we made it. Let’s get you settled and you’ll feel better in no time.”
Hester vaulted back into the Tempest, helping Peggy and Frank to lift Winston, who was only half-conscious. They laid him higher up the beach. Hester rolled up her coat and placed it under his head, brushing hair out of his eyes.
He blinked at her. “Hester? Where are we?”
“South Georgia. You’re going to be alright, Winston.”
“Yes,” he murmured, closing his eyes again, his chest rising and falling slowly.
Hester’s eyes burned. He had to be alright. He just had to be.
16th May 1916, Elephant Island
Charlotte crawled through the canvas tube and into the hut, Marjorie behind her.
The stench was awful. Sweat, oil and rotting meat.
There was no ventilation, and the thirteen crew spent the majority of the time sheltering within.
The floor didn’t bear too close an inspection, littered as it was with penguin feathers, crumbs and hair from the ever-shedding reindeer sleeping bags.
Rufus was frantically picking bits out of the stones and rocks of the floor, muttering to himself.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“I dropped my entire week's worth of salt ration on the floor,” Rufus said, sitting back and looking at her with baleful eyes. “It’s gone everywhere.”
“Let me help.” Charlotte got to her knees and picked the salt crystals from between the stones, setting them in her cupped hand.
“Thanks, Boss.”
Rufus sat back on his heels an hour later, a smile on his face. “I do declare, I think I have three weeks’ worth of salt now!”
“I’m not sure it’s all salt,” Charlotte murmured, sure he had a mix of all sorts of disgusting things in his hand, but she smiled back.
Outside, the gun-crack of the glacier calving echoed across the bay.
17th May 1916, King Haakon Bay, South Georgia
Hester had never smelled anything as good.
She sat under the upturned Tempest, with Frank, Winston and Peggy, all watching Septimus cook elephant seal steaks on the primus stove in the dim light. The rain pattered against the hull, the white noise comforting.
Winston was finally sitting up, colour in his cheeks, his health much improved after a week of eating well.
“We should set out for Stromness tomorrow,” Hester said, stealing a steak from the pan. “Ouch, that’s hot.”
“Of course it’s hot. What did you expect?” Septimus said, though there was a lightness in his blue eyes, a twitch at the corners of his mouth. His wicked mouth. Oh, the things he had done to her with that mouth. Hester chuckled, a shiver running up her back.
She bit into the steak, blood and fat dripping down her fingers onto the stones. “Mmm. Delicious. Hilary tastes wonderful.”
“I do wish you’d stop naming them just as I’m about to shoot them,” Septimus said.
Hester smirked. “I like that growly noise you make when you tell me off.”
Septimus’s mouth twitched again.
Winston shook his head, muttering something she didn’t quite catch and rubbing at the scar on his neck.
Peggy jabbed a finger towards her. “Enough, lovebirds. So, we’ll set out tomorrow?”
“You are in no fit state, Peggy, nor Winston. You can barely walk outside to relieve yourselves. Septimus and I will go. Frank will stay here to look after you until we can fetch help.”
“Alright, Captain,” Frank said, his words sombre.
“The end is nigh, fear not.” There was just the small matter of crossing a hostile mountain environment to contend with. But surely that was nothing compared to the voyage to get here. Hester settled back. Nothing would stop her from rescuing the crew.
Elephant Island
The mood in the stinking, cramped hut was morose, and Charlotte was at her wits’ end with knowing what to do about it.
Rufus let out intermittent sighs. Mei grumbled as she stitched her breeches back together, and even Arnold was in a foul mood.
“That dratted cat scratched me across the face. We should have shot him along with the dogs,” Emlyn said.
Fliss patted Emlyn’s scratched cheek. “It’s a marvel he’s made it all this way, honestly. He’s made of strong stuff, that one.”
Rufus sat up in his sleeping bag. “He shat on my pillow last night. I didn’t notice till I’d put my ear in it. I can still smell it. Disgusting creature.”
Charlotte grimaced, shifting so that the little loaf of ginger cat was hidden behind her body.
19th May 1916, South Georgia
One foot, then the other.
Hester had climbed all day and night, trudging up the mountains behind Septimus.
They stood at 2500 feet above sea-level, and after months of low rations, her legs were shaking with exhaustion.
The full moon lit the broken interior of the island, the crevasses in deep shadow, the glaciers stretching forever. It looked nigh-on impossible to cross.
“Shit,” Septimus breathed.
She flicked the rope slung around her middle. “It’s not that many miles, as the crow flies.” But it could have been a thousand.
“It looks like…death. Like certain death.”
“There’s that optimism for which you are so famous,” Hester said, resting a hand on his back. “Let’s eat. I need to rest for a moment.”
She sat in the deep snow, shivering and opening a bag containing the primus stove and their rations. Her fingers shook as she tried to light the stove. “I can’t light the damn match. You do it.”
He took it from her, struggled for a minute, and then the flame sparked.
“I’ll never want to drink beef extract again, in all of my days,” Septimus grumbled, sipping from the mug Hester handed him.
She huffed a laugh. “Beef extract, seal, penguin. Adding them to the list. The dogs were rather good though, weren’t they?”
He shook his head. “You’re joking about that now? I thought you were going to shoot me after that.”
Maybe it was too soon. She felt guilty as soon as she’d said it.
Hester snuggled into his side, tugging on the tether between them.
She liked to check it was still there every so often.
“My mother said you were my mate. What does that mean?” She’d been thinking about it a lot.
Replaying the reckoning with Orcus over and over in her mind.
“Like animals have mates?”
“I suppose. The only book we had left at the end was the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It said some animals mate for life.”