Stay:The Last Dog in Antarctica (10 page)

It was a beautiful day for sledging. The sun sparkled on the snow, the sky was a deep blue and there was hardly any wind. The dogs, full of energy after a day of sleeping in the snow, pulled so hard that the sledge flew along. Windy rode on the back while Baldy ran alongside. Every hour or so they’d change places.

Stay had watched Windy and Baldy trace their sledging route on the map the night before. They were making a wide arc back towards the coast that would bring them out on the sea ice west of the station. They’d make a detour across the ice to Bechervaise Island to drop Stay off, and head back to the station afterwards.

Stay was anxious about falling off at first, but she soon realised that the rope holding her in place was still working. She relaxed and began to enjoy the sights.

After a few hours, they came down off the plateau and onto the sea ice. It took a while for them to find
a safe crossing, for the area of ice at the shoreline, the tide crack, was badly buckled and cracked due to the tide movements under the frozen surface.

But eventually they found a way across and then it was easier going for the huskies on the ice, as the sledge slid along freely and the surface was smoother. They passed a group of Weddell seals, looking like enormous slugs, asleep on the ice near an open hole. The adult seals lazily opened an eye to watch them pass, yawned and fell back asleep again. The young seal pups were more curious, lifting their heads to watch the huskies with wide, dark eyes, and then scratching themselves with the claws at the end of their flippers. Their mouths turned up in permanent smiles that made Stay want to smile back at them.

‘Hey, look at that!’ Windy yelled, right in her ear. Baldy turned his head and Windy pointed. Stay could see a big dark shape lying on the ice further out. Baldy shouted a command and the dogs turned slightly so the sledge was heading towards the shape. As they came closer, Stay peered to see what it was.

‘A leopard seal!’ Windy yelled again, nearly deafening Stay. Baldy waved a hand to show that he’d heard.

Unlike the Weddell seals, the leopard seal had a big, square-shaped head and its shiny coat was mottled and
spotty. As they approached, Baldy ran forwards and grabbed Blackie’s harness to bring him to a halt, while Windy put on the drag brake, leaning hard on its pole so it scraped along the ice.

The dogs barked furiously and the leopard seal lifted up its head and roared back at them. Stay saw that its huge mouth was full of teeth. It looked dangerous and she wished Baldy would take them away.

‘Don’t worry, Stay,’ Windy said in her ear. ‘It can’t move fast on land. But watch out if you ever see one in the water. Don’t go near the edge!’

Baldy turned Blackie slightly and called out, ‘Mush!’ and Windy let the brake off. The dogs began running again, away from the seal, though Stay could feel they wanted to go closer and give it a nip. They were brave, that was for sure.

A single penguin, standing alone on the ice, saw them coming and ran towards them, his flippers spread wide as if he wanted to come with them.
Maybe he’s taken a wrong turn and forgotten the way to the sea,
Stay thought. She hoped he knew to keep away from the leopard seal. He looked just the right size to make a good dinner.

They stopped for a break. Windy gave the black dogs a snow bath to help them cool down after their run. The men drank hot chocolate out of a Thermos and ate biscuits. The dogs chewed on blocks of pemmican and
Stay wished she could eat.
Food looks like so much fun,
she thought.

A breeze blew across Stay’s back and she looked over to the horizon. A line of thin white clouds was forming and for the first time she could remember, the breeze felt warm.

Baldy looked over in the same direction. ‘There’s no bad weather forecast today, is there?’

Windy shook his head. ‘The Met Fairies said it would be sunny today and then a change would blow in tomorrow.’

‘I don’t like the look of that cloud.’

Windy laughed. ‘That tiny thing? Don’t be a wuss.’

‘It’s getting warm. That’s a bad sign. Let’s get going. Sea ice can break up any time.’

It seemed hard to imagine that a small, thin cloud could cause them any trouble, but both men stood and started packing up their lunch things and within minutes they were sledging again.

Baldy was right behind Stay and she could feel him turning his head to look in the direction of the cloud. It was growing thicker, Stay saw, and the air felt even more strangely warm.

Baldy called to Windy and pointed. Stay followed the line of his finger. Ahead of them she could see a scatter of rocky islands in the sea ice. They looked
familiar and she realised one of them was Bechervaise! It wasn’t far now, just a few kilometres until she saw Chills at last.

But clouds were building up fast and Stay saw that a blizzard was blowing in across the sea ice towards them, just the way squalls had blown in across the water when she was on board the
Aurora Australis.
She remembered what Kaboom always said — that Antarctic weather was the most unpredictable in the world and, no matter what the forecast, anything could happen.

Baldy jumped off the back of the sledge and started running alongside the dogs with Windy — so his weight wasn’t making them slower, Stay supposed. She looked at how fast the clouds were moving. It would be a near thing to make the island before they found themselves in the blizzard.

‘Hey!’ she heard Baldy call out to Windy. ‘I don’t like the look of this. I think we should get off the ice and head for the station!’

Windy looked over at the approaching line of white snow. ‘That’s coming up fast! Good idea, I reckon.’

Windy yelled, ‘Leeeeeft!’ and Blackie changed direction, with the rest of the dogs following. The sledge went around in a big curve till they were heading for the station, with the squall almost behind them. The dogs sped up and Stay knew they sensed the danger too.

Though she was terribly disappointed they weren’t going to the island, Stay could see the blizzard was nearly on them. They’d be lucky to make it back to the station without getting caught. She’d heard expeditioners talking about ‘whiteouts’ when they couldn’t see anything in front of them, not even a hand held up to their eyes, but so far she’d never been in one. It looked like she was about to experience it.

They bounced across the tide crack and started up a snow-covered slope. Windy, Baldy and the dogs were running hard and Stay saw Mawson Station’s Redshed building appear over a hill. It looked small, but at least they were in sight of the station. She felt a wave of relief. Surely they were safe? They couldn’t get lost that close.

Suddenly she felt a slam of icy wind on her back, so hard it felt like someone had hit her. The rope that Blackie had chewed jerked, and Stay rocked. The blizzard had caught them.

White snow streamed past and Stay could hardly see the dogs pulling the sledge. Baldy and Windy were two dark, blurry shapes on either side of the dog team. The men called out commands and the dogs slowed. They had to get back to the station as quickly as possible, but they couldn’t run so fast, blinded by the blizzard.

Stay tried to sense how far away the station was, but she couldn’t feel a thing through the flying snow.
All
they have to do is keep going straight,
she thought. The sledge was moving freely across the snow, it wasn’t far now.

Stay felt another jerk and the sledge bumped hard beneath her. It lurched and rocked to one side and she began to slip. The rope holding her on the sledge felt horribly loose.

She tried to send a thought to Windy or Baldy, but the snow was blowing so hard that she could barely see them. The sledge lurched again and tipped further, but somehow stayed upright.

Then Stay heard a loud crack. The snow under the sledge was giving way and there seemed to be nothing underneath it. They were over a crevasse! It must have been hidden by a snow bridge, but the weight of the sledge had broken through the snow and now she was looking straight down into a big blue crack in the ice that looked bottomless.

Faintly, through the blizzard, she heard Windy calling on the dogs to pull harder. The sledge twisted, then hit the ice on the edge of the crevasse and bounced. The rope holding Stay snapped under the strain.

She sent a despairing thought towards anyone who could hear.

HELP!

The sledge jerked and pulled ahead, out of the crevasse, but Stay wasn’t on it. The last thing she saw was the sledge disappearing into the whiteout before she fell backwards, down-down-down into the deep crack in the ice.

Stay scraped, bounced, dropped, clattered, almost stuck and fell again. The coins inside her rolled around and clanged from side to side. Finally she slammed down into a narrow part of the crevasse and felt herself wedge hard into the ice.

The echo of her fall seemed to go on and on and the coins spun inside her, eventually coming to a stop. Stay felt a pang of despair. If the tumble under the weight of Wreck had broken her leg, then this fall would surely crush her. She wasn’t built for this kind of rough treatment.

As the echoes died away, Stay’s sight adjusted. She was a long way down in the ice crevasse. It would be hard to get out. It looked like there was barely room for a person in the crevasse, and how would they get down to reach her anyway?

She was stuck lying on her back, looking up the
crevasse. She’d seen the beautiful blue cracks in icebergs while she was on the ship, but she’d never thought about being in one. Even in the gloom of the blizzard, the ice near the surface seemed to glow bright blue. It was like the neon light that Stay remembered from a shop window in Hobart.

Hobart felt a million kilometres away at that moment.

Stay wondered what was taking the men so long to turn around. Perhaps it was hard to stop the dogs so close to home. The longer they stayed out in the blizzard the colder they would get, and she knew the huskies would have one more reason to hate her.

I’m down here,
Stay thought in the direction of Windy and Baldy.

She couldn’t hear anything in return. She was wedged tight as a cork in a bottle. It was very cold and she could hear water dripping somewhere underneath her.

Baldy and Windy must have decided to go back to the station without her, Stay realised. It sounded like a dangerous blizzard up there, howling across the snow like a pack of wild dogs. It was true, being fibreglass, she couldn’t freeze to death. It would be safer for everyone if they waited until the blizzard had passed before rescuing her.

The wind whistled over the top of the crevasse, making a noise like the one the people in the Last Husky made when they blew across the mouth of an empty bottle. It was a lonely sound.

Stay didn’t know how many hours passed before the wind dropped and everything went quiet.

She looked up. She could see the sides of the crevasse glowing blue above her, though she’d fallen so far into it that it was almost dark where she was. Above, at the surface, she saw that the blizzard had blown snow over the top of the icy crack and the snow had frozen into a bridge, covering the opening of the crevasse again.

That was why the men and the dogs hadn’t seen the crevasse in the first place. It had been completely covered, invisible from the surface. They hadn’t known it was there until the sledge had broken through it.

It was invisible again, and that would make it difficult for them to find her. She wondered how long it would take. She wasn’t very far from the station — perhaps they wouldn’t even need the dog sledge again.
Baldy and Windy could just get into their cold-weather clothing and use a couple of quad bikes to come looking.

They’d probably want a big breakfast before heading out into the cold, and it might take them an hour or two to get ready. It might be as late as lunch time before she was rescued. She’d hear them walking around and send them a strong thought about where she was. Easy.

It was the time of year when the sun didn’t set, so Stay had no way of knowing how much time had passed, except by how bored she was.

She was so bored she wanted to explode!

She’d remembered every adventure she’d had in Antarctica so far. She’d remembered every funny nickname and why it was given. She tried to remember every single person at Davis Station and everyone at Mawson Station. She even remembered all of the crew on the
Aurora Australis.
She remembered all the different meals the chefs had cooked up. She remembered the puppies and how cute they looked. It wouldn’t be long until they grew up into big bad sledging huskies.

She remembered all the hiding places she’d been in. This one was the best. It would be very hard for someone who didn’t know she was there to find her.

Very, very hard.

Nearly impossible.

For the umpteen millionth time Stay strained her senses, trying to feel if any humans were nearby, but all she heard was silence. Silence so quiet that her ears rang. Silence so quiet that it felt loud.

As far as Stay could figure out, several days must have passed.
At least four,
she thought,
and perhaps five or even six.

It had taken all that time for her to realise that no one was coming to look for her.

Windy and Baldy knew she’d been on the sledge when the blizzard struck, and they must have known she’d fallen off. Perhaps they hadn’t known straight away — perhaps not until they got back to the station. But it shouldn’t have taken long to mount an SAR — a Search and Rescue — just as Jackie had said she would if they got into trouble.

Stay already knew the huskies didn’t like her.
Blackie had chewed on the rope so it would break. He wanted her to fall off. They were probably happy that she was lost. But she had believed the humans would look for her. They were the ones who’d brought her to Antarctica. Surely they wouldn’t just forget about her?

It had taken days for her to understand that she was wrong. They didn’t care.

Stay had been left alone before. When Chills and Beakie had hidden her in the Hägg and left her there for days after taking her money, she’d been furious with them. But they were just smuggling her ashore, and the money was perfectly safe. It all turned out fine.

This time Stay couldn’t see any way it would turn out fine. She was stuck deep in a crevasse, hidden by a layer of snow, too far away to reach anyone with her thoughts.

As she lay there, Stay felt a terrible pain in her chest. She realised it was what people meant when they talked about being heartbroken. She wasn’t sure if she had an actual heart, but the pain in the place where her heart would have been was real. The thought that none of those people cared for her was breaking her heart.

Where are you, Chills?
she thought, but just softly. It was useless to project her thoughts.

She couldn’t feel angry at Chills. He might have forgotten all about her, but she knew she would never
forget him. She was a Labrador after all. She’d stay loyal to him right to the end.

With nothing else to do, Stay listened to the sounds that broke the Antarctic silence. It was so quiet that when faint sounds did come, she heard them with new clarity. She heard the harsh cries of big brown skuas and the shrill chattering of little white snow petrels, above her on the surface. Once she heard the trumpeting of an emperor penguin and another time the raucous calls of Adélies racing past on their way to the rookery, their feet making little crunching sounds in the snow. She sent a thought in their direction, but they didn’t hear her.

The ice made noises as if it was alive: sharp cracks and creaks, groans and squeaks. The ice flowed like a river, Stay remembered. She’d heard a glaciologist telling a carpenter about it one night at the Last Husky. It was always moving, shifting, melting and reforming, flowing down towards the sea. Eventually it would break off in sections that would become icebergs.

Stay could hear the sound of dripping water as the Antarctic snow melted and collected in the bottom of the crevasse. It trickled away somewhere. To the sea, Stay supposed, underneath the layer of sea ice, which would also be melting now that summer was well advanced. She remembered that they’d turned around
just near the edge of the sea ice, so she wasn’t far from the shore. If she strained her ears, she could hear the sea, washing back and forth.

When she concentrated hard, she heard very strange sounds from that direction: whistles and chirps that sounded like some machine Laser would have used to measure something. As she strained to hear them, she realised it was the Weddell seals talking to each other. The same seals she’d seen sleeping on the ice like great big slugs had a busy and graceful life under the water, singing as they swam about. She could understand a little of what they were saying — mostly about fish and finding mates — and she listened for a long time, wishing she could talk back to them.

She didn’t know what she’d say to them, though. She was a fibreglass dog whose job was to raise money for the Royal Guide Dogs so they could help blind people. She’d been dognapped and carried to Antarctica, and she was staying for the summer to raise some more money. But she was stuck in the bottom of a crevasse, buried under a snow bridge, somewhere near Mawson Station. By the look of it, she would be there forever.

She didn’t think that would be easy to explain to a seal.

Then she remembered the story that the glaciologist had told about Robert Falcon Scott and his men, who
died on the way back from the South Pole. Their bodies had been left in the ice, which was slowly moving. One day they would be carried to the sea by the movement of the glacier.

The same thing would happen to her! One day, after many years, she’d come to the end of the glacier and the ice she was in would break off. She’d find herself in an iceberg floating on the ocean, and when the iceberg eventually melted, she’d fill up with water and sink. And there she would end her days, lying forever on the ocean floor.

She wouldn’t be alone: there’d be seals and fish and krill and penguins and whales and all the other creatures that swam in Antarctica’s oceans. But no people and no dogs.

There was nothing she could do about it.
My name’s perfect,
Stay thought sadly. The only thing she could do was stay put, and remember Chills.