Thomas Orde-Lees woke with a
start. He rolled onto his side and stared idly towards nothing in particular.
It was not only a new day, but the beginning of a new year. It was the first
day of January, 1916, in the middle of the Antarctic continent. Orde-Lees
climbed from his sleeping bag and stepped into the frigid weather outside his
shared tent. Like the rest of the stranded crew of the Endurance, he slept
fully clothed to keep his body from freezing in the night.
Orde-Lees
hurried to where Charles Green had fired up their blubber-burning stove. Green
was the expedition cook, but he could not begin preparing the crew’s breakfast
until Orde-Lees, the storekeeper, had issued him the daily rations.
“Mornin’,
Thomas,” Green said, nodding towards Orde-Lees. Green’s face was dark, stained
black by the smoke from the Blubber-Stove. The blackened face seemed such a
stark contrast against the white ice that covered the terrain the men
traversed. Orde-Lees nodded back at Green, before fishing at the stores and
gathering the daily rations. He noticed how low the crew had gotten on stores
and pulled a paper from his pocket, on which tallies and figures had been
written. After looking from the paper back to the stores, and finally back to
the paper, Orde-Lees let out a sigh and shook his head mournfully.
He
delivered the morning rations to Green, and stared at the stove in a downcast
manor. “According to my figures, we’ve got rations for another fifty days,” he
said.
Green
snorted. “By the looks of the portions you brought me today, I’m surprised!
Only fifty?” he asked mockingly. “Are you sure you couldn’t squeeze another
couple weeks out of this stuff?”
Orde-Lees
frowned, obviously hurt by the comments. “I do my best with what we’ve got,
Green! You could cut me some slack you know! So long as each man eats no more
than two pounds of ration a day, it should last us fifty days! After all, I’m
trying to be generous with the men!”
“I’m
sorry, Tom,” Green shrugged, “we’re all on edge. If only we had some penguin
meat… or seal steak! We could supplement the rations. You know, give the lads
something else to chew. As it stands, our meals are just so meagre.”
Nodding,
Orde-Lees agreed. “I know, Charles. But hunting has been scarce. We haven’t so
much as seen a penguin the last few days! It’s so very odd… this time last
year, game was abundant. Such a stark contrast for Nineteen-Sixteen, eh?”
Green
smiled. “That’s right!” he said. “It’s a new Year. Last year, we thought we’d
be well across the continent by now. I guess none of us is a prophet.”
Orde-Lees
grinned at the jest, but sobered quickly. The thought was a discouraging one.
The year had been full of many set-backs and not much progress. At least, not
as much as the crew had hoped for.
As
the pair sat staring at the blubber stove and thinking over the past year, Frank
Wild approached them and sat as well. “Mornin’, lads.” He said, stretching his
palms towards the stove. “Bloody cold, isn’t it?” he paused and stared at the
amassed rations beside the stove. “That’s not breakfast, is it?” he asked. Orde-Lees
rolled his eyes before he stood and scanned the horizon.
Wild was second in command of the crew. The man was
friendly and well-liked by the men. Green smiled at his jest now, and began
placing the rations in pans for warming.
“We’ll be going hunting again
today, then.” Frank said, still staring at the small sized breakfast. “We need
something to supplement the ration with.”
Orde-Lees held up a hand. “I’ll
go, Wild. I can travel pretty quickly on my skis. I’ll be able to cover more
distance than some of the other men that way.”
Frank nodded. “Alright, I’ll
send out a few of the other lads too, but you can go, Lees. You might as well
leave right after you’ve finished morning grub. If we’re going to bring
anything down, it won’t be while sitting around the stove.”
The chores were divvied up
amongst the crew, and Orde-Lees was included in those sent out to hunt. He set
off away from the camp at a quick pace, slowing when he’d gotten a sufficient
distance between them. He used his ski poles to pull himself as he slid across
the ice floes.
Orde-Lees had crossed a number
of floes before he finally stopped to scan the horizon. His eyes flitted here
and there, but he saw nothing. He was alone, just him and miles of ice. If he
was to kill any game today, it had not yet surface from the water beneath the
ice floes. After a few moments of watching the ice, Orde-Lees began his trek again,
this time skiing across the ice more slowly and watching the floes carefully
for emerging heads between cracks and crevices. He was so thorough in his
search, it was mid-day before he stopped again. He allowed his eyes one last
sweep of the horizon before snorting in a disgruntled fashion and turning to
head back for camp.
He
skied even slower now, stopping frequently to look here and there for sign of
life. But his hunt had been in vain. There was no sign of game, no matter where
he looked. It was a powerful disappointment his stomach growled for lack of
food, and the thought of a meagre dinner did nothing to help. As he approached
the camp, he spied the makeshift tents and men going about their business in
the ice and cold.
Suddenly,
Orde-Lees heard a splashing sound and he turned to see a round head looking at
him from the exposed water between floes. The head was that of an enormous
leopard seal and as Orde-Lees exchanged looks with the monstrous seal, he
noticed the hunger in its eyes. He turned and fled, pulling on his ski poles
with every ounce of his might.
“Wild!”
he yelled as he sped over the ice, “Wild! Help! Bring your gun!”
Orde-Lees
glanced over his shoulder and spied the leopard seal tearing after him, its
mouth open as it ran. He could see the rows of sharp teeth in the creature’s
maw, saliva dripping from between. The seal rushed after him, rocking in the
characteristic way seals traversed the ice. As Orde-Lees pulled away as fast as
he could, he could hear the sea leopard gaining on him from behind. In a few
more bounds, it was sure to be on him and then he’d be the game of the day. But
as suddenly as the seal had appeared, it left, diving between the floes and
into the frozen depths beyond.
Orde-Lees
continued to yell for Wild as he hurried towards the camp. He began to calm as
he noted the seal was no longer anywhere to be seen. Perhaps he had simply been
too quick, too much of a hassle to catch. He was about to cross onto safer ice
when the jagged opening just ahead of him splashed upwards and the leopard seal
leapt onto the floe with a spray of chilling water. Orde-Lees gave in to panic
and his calls for help became near unintelligible screams of fear. The sea
leopard lunged at him, snarling, its jaws open as wide as they could. The
hunter dashed back the way he’d come, not bothering to look back over his
shoulder.
Wild
was in his tent when he heard the yells. He thought he head his name being
called, before his ears picked up the higher pitched screams of terror. He
grabbed his rifle and a box of cartridges before tearing out of his tent and
towards the sounds.
As he crested a low hummock of
ice, Wild could finally survey the scene for himself. He was shocked by what he
saw: a terrified Orde-Lees forcing himself across the ice as fast as he could
pull, and an enormous leopard-spotted seal chasing him. The monster was gaining
on the man, leaving Wild little time to react. He leaped from the hummock and
tore after them, running across the ice in an attempt to get within rifle range
of the sea leopard. As he ran, Wild forced cartridges into the chamber of the
rifle until he could load no more. He yelled at the top of his lungs, hoping
the seal would turn from its pursuit of Orde-Lees to himself instead. To Wild’s
relief, the seal took the bait.
Wild dropped to one knee,
steadied the rifle, and fired. The bullet ripped into the seal’s carcass,
painting the ice with crimson blood. But the seal still came on. Wild fired
once more, yanking back the bolt and ramming it forward again. His second
bullet also found its mark, but the seal never slowed. It tore towards him,
racing full-bore. As the monstrous sea leopard closed in, Wild fired a third
time and a fourth, both shots hitting the animal squarely, and both doing
little to stop it.
The seal was now within thirty
feet of Wild and closing. Its mouth agape, the rows of yellowed teeth arrayed
for Wild to see. He steadied the rifle, his heart beating in his ears. Sweat
trickled down his face and back as the rifle raised and lowered with his
breath.
“Come on, now, Wild lad.” He
said to himself “Make this shot count, or you’re dead man.”
Staring down the sights of the
rifle, Wild exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The seal stopped and plunged to
the ice, finally halted by death. Wild breathed in slowly and let out a sigh of
relief. His stiff arms loosened and dropped to his sides and he stood to walk
off the shakes that his body had contracted. Orde-Lees arrived, his eyes round
and wide. There was a trail of blood from where Wild’s first shot had struck
the seal to where it lay not far at all from where Wild had knelt to fire.
Orde-Lees kept looking from the
dead seal to Wild and back. He was out of breath and shaking as well. “That was
a close shave.” He said, his voice hoarse from his yelling and heavy exertion. Wild
only nodded. He walked up and down the length of the seal his eyes never
leaving it.
Orde-Lees paced it out, calling
to Wild that the animal was twelve feet long. “Bloody thing’s a monster!” he
exclaimed, giving the seal a push with his boot. “Green’s got his wish after
all! This seal ought to yield plenty meat to supplement the rations with. We’ll
be eating like kings!”
Wild nodded. “All I know, is I
better get a bloody, massive slab of steak from this beast. If that last shot
hadn’t brought him down, he’d be feasting on me right about now.”
“I’m just glad you showed up
when you did, Wild. I might have died of heart failure if he didn’t catch me up
first! He was fast for not having any legs! And clever, too. He tracked my
shadow from under the ice and leapt out in front of me!”
Soon, a number of crew members,
having heard the shots and cries for help, arrived at the sight of the seal.
All of them were amazed by the size of the seal and a round of cheers went up
when the story of the encounter was told.
The seal was dragged back to
camp and butchered. When the men opened its carcass they discovered the remains
of three smaller seals; several of the monster’s earlier meals. When the
leopard seal’s jawbone was removed, it measured near nine inches across. The
men gave it to Orde-Lees as a souvenir of the encounter. An encounter, he was
loath to forget, souvenir or no. As far as Orde-Lees and Wild were concerned,
such an experience was the nearest they ever planned to approach death.
(Written in response to prompt
"Hunting Trip")
