Authors: Peter Lerangis
The men’s faces were blank.
“Cat got your tongues?” Captain Barth said. “Come on, give us a show of hands—who will stay aboard ship?”
No one raised a hand.
Jack’s heart stopped. He would have to replace them all. It would take months. It was an impossible task.
Colin had been right. The trip was doomed.
“Pop?” Kennedy. The carpenter.
“Yes, sir?” Jack said.
“Begging your pardon,” Kennedy said, “but will we have to eat penguin? And if so, have you considered laying in a couple cases of ketchup?”
The first mate, Siegal, was the first to laugh.
Lombardo followed, a big, brassy honk. His hand shot in the air. “Count me in, Pop—straight to the bottom of the world!”
“To the bottom!” Hayes called out. He was an enormous man, and as he thrust his fist upward, it seemed to rise to the yardarm.
“To the bottom!”
“To the bottom!”
Hands. A sea of hands. They were picking up the chant now, raising a racket that could no doubt be heard in port.
Jack let out a whoop of delight, then lent his voice to the chant.
And beside him, Elias Barth was laughing—laughing!
It was a sound Jack had never heard from the man.
On landing Jack was swarmed by sailors. After two sailors from New York left, he chose two replacements: a sharp-eyed, rugged Argentine named Luis Rivera and a Masai warrior-turned-sailor from British East Africa who called himself Robert.
In a drydock nearby, under repair, was a formidable-looking ship called the
Meriwether Lewis.
She was a barque, a three-masted vessel similar to the
Mystery
but with two full-rigged masts (fore and main) instead of one. Like the
Mystery,
she’d been fitted for an engine. Which meant she, too, was heading into treacherous waters.
As Jack checked the men’s papers and gave them their orders, the barque’s captain walked over to introduce himself. His name was Lawrence Chapman Walden and he was an American cartographer, attempting to be the first man to map every inch of Antarctica’s coastline.
“Greenheart, eh?” Walden said, glancing at the
Mystery
. “Guess you’re heading my way. South Pole attempt?”
“Well—I—” Jack stammered.
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.” Walden grinned. “Must be a secret if I don’t know about it. The government’s keeping mine quiet, too. They’re worried I’m going to fail, I guess. That’d be bad publicity for Uncle Sam. When you leaving?”
“As soon as we can load up—you?”
“A few more weeks.” Walden wrote quickly on a sheet of white paper. “Here’s our plan, more or less. Maybe we’ll run into each other at one of the hotels.”
Jack laughed. As he took the sheet, Walden pulled a tiny American flag out of his pocket. “Here, you take something of mine and give me something of yours. It’ll bring us both good luck. Old family superstition. Just do me one favor—leave the flag at the Pole, OK?”
“You bet,” Jack agreed.
He was searching his pockets for a similar good-luck charm when the dogs arrived.
They came jumping off the back of a tumbledown slatted truck, thirty-five of them, flea-bitten and mangy, slavering and frustrated and cabin-crazy. Their ears were chewed, their mouths frothing as they ran among the sailors, jumping and barking.
“They have to be kidding,” Jack murmured. “Excuse me, Captain Walden.”
“Chappy,” Walden corrected. “And bon voyage!”
Jack ran to the truck. “Who brought these?” he demanded.
A dark, bushy-mustached man lumbered over to him. He wore a dark blue wool cap and gestured toward the dogs as he spoke. “Dogs is no have food!”
“These can’t be the ones I asked for,” Jack said. “I was assured they were the best. Who are you?”
“Kosta, Greek, me. Work Argentina, drive truck. English no good. Man have truck. Give to me dogs. Dogs is good.”
“What’s he talking about?” Andrew asked.
“The dogs came in shifts from the north,” Jack said. “A relay. Trucks were to wait at each touch point, give the dogs rest and food.”
Kosta shook his head. “No food. Man say no
leptà
—money. Me have no money.”
“Oh!” shouted Philip’s voice. “Get that beast off my leg! I’m allergic to dogs!”
“
O popopo
…” Kosta disappeared among the men.
Jack and Andrew took chase. They saw Kosta kneeling on the dock, his arms wrapped around an Alaskan husky, whispering Greek into its ear. Philip was backing away, sneezing.
The dog whimpered, its head slumped and sheepish. “This Socrates. Is love peoples.” Kosta turned around and beckoned, “Plutarchos! Taki! Dimitriou!”
The dogs came running. They gathered around him, pawing the ground pathetically as he soothed them.
Mansfield, the second in command, slid through the crowd toward Jack. “Bad news, Pop. The dog handler bailed out. Says Putney reneged on the agreed salary.”
Jack saw red. The trip was in full swing, and Horace was penny-pinching. All along, he had scoffed at Jack’s budget for the dogs. They were animals, he’d said. They could live on nothing.
“What about the dog food?” Jack asked. “All those tons of whale meat? The dogs can’t eat only pemmican and hardtack.”
Mansfield smiled. “Folded the meat into the general-storage budget. The butcher’s gone back for it. He brought good Argentine steaks for the men and we put them in the hold, but—”
“Then unload some of them, on the double.”
“Yes, sir!”
Kosta’s face brightened.
“Ah, bravo, paithàkia mou! Thah fatteh crèas!”
The dogs began leaping all over Kosta, barking excitedly.
“They understand that?” Andrew asked.
The dogs watched the ship expectantly until Mansfield came down the gangplank with an armful of wrapped steaks. “Come ’n’ get it!”
The dogs bolted.
Mansfield was a goner.
“No!” Jack yelled.
“KATHISETEH!”
Kosta’s voice boomed out over the dock.
The dogs stopped reluctantly. One by one, they looked over their shoulders at Kosta, whining, as their hindquarters sank to the ground.
Jack had an idea.
“Kosta,” he said, “do you by any chance mind the cold?” He pantomimed a shiver and gestured toward the ship and then south.
“Krio?”
Kosta asked, mirroring the shiver. He looked out to sea.
“Ochi Antarktikos?”
“Yes!” Jack exclaimed. “Antarcticos, that’s it!” .
Kosta thought for a moment. “Me no have money.”
“I’ll give you free room and board. And money, yes, after we return—if I have to take it out of my own account.”
“Money, yes?” Kosta smiled. “Is good. Kosta love dogs.”
Jack extended his hand. “Welcome aboard.”
A list of the crew of the
Mystery,
as of September 5, 1909:
Jack Winslow—
expedition leader
Elias Barth—
captain
Peter Mansfield—
second in command and chief navigator
John Siegal
—first mate
Luis Rivera—
second mate
Colin Winslow
and
Andrew Douglas Winslow—
junior officers
Dr. Ross Montfort—
general physician
Dr. Harold Riesman—
veterinarian
Dr. Frank Nesbit—
biologist
Dr. David Shreve—
geologist
Harv Talmadge
—meteorologist
Jacques Petard—
physical instructor and chaplain
David Ruskey
—photographer
Kosta Kontonikolaos
—dog handler
Sam Bailey, Pete Hayes, Vincent Lombardo, Mike Sanders, Chris Ruppenthal, Bruce Cranston, George Oppenheim, James Windham, Robert
(last name unknown)—able seamen
Tim O’Malley—
able seaman/second cook
Hank Brillman
—electrician
Wyman Kennedy—
carpenter
Horst Flummerfelt
—machinist
Rick Stimson—
cook
Philip Westfall—
helpmeet at large
Aspros, Chionni, Demosthenes, Dimitriou, Eleni, Fotis, Galactobouriko, Hera, Hercules, Iosif, Ireni, Kalliope, Kristina, Kukla, Loukoumada, Maria, Martha, Megalamatia, Michalaki, Nikola, Panagiotis, Pericles, Plato, Plutarchos, Skylaki, Socrates, Sounion, Stavros, Taki, Taso, Tsitsifies, Vrochi, Yanni, Yiorgos, Zeus—
dogs
October 16, 1909
“W
E’RE SHIPPING WATER LIKE
crazy! Don’t let it rise to the engine! Bail!”
Kennedy was screaming.
There had to be almost a foot of water now. Colin dug two five-gallon buckets into it and pitched the water out the bilge hole. He’d been doing it for an hour now, along with another sailor, a hulk of a man named Flummerfelt.
“If this isn’t bailing, I don’t know what is!” Colin shouted back.
Colin’s biceps ached. His calves ached. The ship was pitched upward, maybe forty-five degrees. It was like climbing a mountainside in a flash flood. His clothes clung to him, soaking wet. He’d spent as much time slipping into the water as walking through it.
Father had warned about the Drake Passage. The gulf of storms. The only sea that wrapped itself around the entire planet—no interruption by land, nothing to tame it. When the sea swelled, it swelled for miles. Winds were sudden and violent. The Drake Passage had no limits, no rules, no pity.
The
Mystery
was tossing like a toy. Although her sides were tight, the water was pouring in over the bulwarks and onto the decks. The engine room was the lowest point, and if the water rose any more, it would wreak havoc with the machinery.
Colin planted his feet carefully and walked to the bilge hole. Through the hatch above them came the stench of sweat, vomit, and wet canine. The dogs had been brought belowdecks with the crew, and their frightened howls vied with shouts and the occasional guttural choke of a sailor who hadn’t made it to the head in time.
Only Kennedy, Colin, and Flummerfelt were in the engine room.
Colin was “carpenter’s apprentice” these days, which meant he was always with Kennedy. This was Father’s latest plan. It was supposed to get Colin to work hard, bring him “out of his shell.”
It was ridiculous. Colin understood little about woodworking. Or Southerners with rancid senses of humor.
“What are you doing, Flummerfelt, drinking the water?” Kennedy shouted. “And Winslow, get in here before I grow gills!”
Colin rushed back. Kennedy was lying in the water, tinkering with the bilge pump.
“Doesn’t it waste more time fixing that”—Colin stooped and filled the buckets again—“than it would if you bailed, too?”
Kennedy threw a bucket at him. “Who made you captain?”
Colin doubled his effort. Soon the pump was working, and Kennedy helped bail. As the water level began to drop, Jack poked his head into the room. “Where’s your brother?”
“How should I know?” Colin replied. “And he’s not my brother!”
“Find him! Make sure he’s all right!” Jack said, rushing back to the bow.
Colin dropped his buckets. Make sure
Andrew
was all right. Andrew was a big boy. Couldn’t he take care of himself?
Colin left the engine room and elbowed his way through the cabin. He lifted the steerage hatch and called down. No answer.
As he stood up, Socrates jumped on him, wagging his tail and yelping. With Kosta’s care and a steady diet of whale meat, the dogs had put on weight.
“Katto!”
Kosta commanded.
Socrates sat, and Colin took his paw. The dog’s face was ringed with wet fur that stood straight up. He looked like a big, smiling hedgehog. “You didn’t eat Andrew, did you?” Colin asked.
“Andrew?” Kosta said. “He go opp-stairs!”
“He’s on deck? In this?”
Kosta nodded.
“Neh, neh.”
Colin raced up the ladder. The rain hit him like an open hand. He struggled to open his eyes against it.
Andrew was alone, at the foremast, fumbling with the halyards. The sail was flapping violently.
“Heave to!” Colin shouted. “Cut the line and heave—”
He had to shut his mouth. He was swallowing water. In this rain, you could drown standing up.
Leaning into the wind, Colin struggled toward the bow, around the battened-down mountain of coal. Before them the water rose, black and steep, like a giant endless hill. For purchase he dug the sides of his boots into the empty kennels, which were bolted to the inside of the hull.
The main and mizzenmasts were safely lashed. Bailey and Hayes had taken care of that.
But Andrew was pulling on the halyards. Tightening the foresail.
“Take it down! Heave to!” Colin lunged forward and grabbed his stepbrother’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“You said ‘Heave ho!’” Andrew shouted.
“Heave
to,
you fool!” Colin grabbed the halyards and released them from their catches. They shot upward through the winches, and as the sail slackened it gave a gunshot of a snap.
Colin quickly gathered in the sheets. The sail was sodden, heavy with the weight of water, but Andrew just stood there. “Help me!” Colin cried out.
Andrew tried to put his arms around the sail, but the boom swung sharply, knocking him to the deck and pulling Colin with it.
Colin tried to hold fast. But his hands were frozen and wet, his fingers losing their feeling. The sail slipped out of his grip and billowed out behind him. He tried to haul it back in, but the wind caught it, suddenly snapping it outward.
The halyards ripped through their pulleys and the sail flew away, waving like a lost ghost over the side of the ship.
“Look what you did!” Colin shouted.
“I didn’t do it!”
They were yelling now, yelling at each other across the boom as Colin struggled with numb fingers to fasten it.
“Why were you up here?” Colin demanded. “You don’t know how to handle the foremast!”
“I read all about it!” Andrew shouted.
“You can’t learn this stuff in books!”
“Colin, there are plenty of spare sails in the gallows.”
“And with you here, we’re sure to use every last one!”
“If you’re so smart, why weren’t you up here?”