Stay:The Last Dog in Antarctica (4 page)

Cookie and Nemo staggered up the five flights of steps between the Galley and the Bridge with Stay in their arms, groaning under her weight and stopping to rest several times.

‘Where do you want her?’ Cookie asked when they reached the Bridge.

‘Right there,’ the Boss said, gesturing at the instrument panel. There was an empty space next to the radar screen.

Cookie hoisted Stay into position. ‘Must be a fortune in there,’ he said, rubbing his shoulder muscles.

‘Best she stays where I can keep an eye on her, in that case,’ the Boss said. ‘That money needs to be kept safe.’

Cookie shrugged. ‘No one steals in Antarctica. There’s nothing to spend money on anyway.’

‘Can’t be too careful,’ the Boss said.

‘Good night then,’ Cookie said. ‘I’ve got an early start.’

As Cookie and Nemo headed off, Stay looked out ahead of the ship. Snowflakes fluttered down and landed on the foredecks, covering the cargo containers. They must have come a long way while she’d been hidden in the storeroom — far from the spring days in Hobart.

The
Aurora Australis
steamed steadily ahead and, as it grew later, the last of the visitors to the Bridge gradually drifted away.

Stay saw the Boss look around the Bridge. The first mate was right over the other side, looking at some charts. ‘Happy there?’ the Boss asked her softly. ‘You’ve got the best spot on the ship, girl. You can see everything. We’ll be cracking through the sea ice tomorrow. You’d like to see that, wouldn’t you?’

Yes,
thought Stay.

‘We mustn’t let those expeditioners keep you in Antarctica,’ he said. ‘Believe me, you’ll never get home again. I know what they’re like. Stick with me up here, and I’ll make sure you and your money get back to the Royal Guide Dogs.’ He patted her on the head. ‘Don’t be scared of me. My bark’s worse than my bite.’ He looked around again. ‘And don’t tell them I was talking to you!’

Stay smiled to herself. He was certainly a lot friendlier when no one else was around. Then she thought of Chills and Beakie and Laser and Kaboom and Antarctica. Chills had promised her an adventure
and she still longed for it. What should she do? Go to Antarctica with him, or return with the Boss to her job in Hobart, full of money for the Royal Guide Dogs? She wished she knew how to decide.

The two of them stared out at the ocean ahead of them. ‘Big iceberg coming up over to starboard,’ the Boss said. ‘You know what? I never get sick of seeing them.’

Stay watched as the ship moved closer to the iceberg. It looked like an enormous dollop of ice-cream. Even in the gloomy evening light it seemed to shine. The section of it below the water was a beautiful pale green and the cracks down the side glowed a bright electric blue.

‘The blue means the ice has broken off from a glacier,’ the Boss said. ‘Do you want to hear a poem about an iceberg?

‘
And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

‘That’s from a very old poem called “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stay. We see some wondrous sights up here on the Bridge. You might see a jade iceberg like the one in the poem if you’re very lucky. Look — there’s a humpback whale!’

Stay followed the direction the Boss was pointing. She glimpsed the arch of the whale’s back and the mist from its blowhole. As it dived, it lifted its tail and she realised how big it really was.

Dusk was starting to fall. Stay knew it was very late and most people had probably gone to bed. The light outside was a deep blue and the water was so dark it looked black.

‘Time to close the bird curtains,’ the Boss called out, and the first mate pulled the curtains in front of the first row of instruments and computer screens, cutting the Bridge into two sections. The front section was almost dark, with just a little light spilling onto the instrument panel.

‘If the birds see the light, they can get disoriented and fly into the windows,’ the Boss said to Stay. He rubbed his hands together and looked down at the instrument panel. ‘Minus three degrees outside. That’s getting a little nippy, Stay.’

Stay agreed. She was glad to be on the Bridge, which was warm and cosy. She liked how the bird curtains shut off the light and made the room seem like its own little world in the middle of a vast, dark ocean.

It wasn’t such a bad place to stay, for now at least. It sure beat hiding behind the flour bags. But she did wonder what Chills was doing.

The
Aurora Australis
entered the pack ice, a belt of broken-up, melting sea ice and icebergs that surrounded Antarctica for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Stay’s spot on the instrument panel, under the Boss’s watchful eye, looked like becoming her permanent home. She loved watching the sheets of sea ice cracking far out ahead of them under the weight of the ship’s prow. Sometimes the ice was so thick that the
Aurora Australis
had to stop, back up and charge full steam ahead to break its way through.

They passed crabeater seals (who didn’t eat crabs at all, but lived on krill) and little black-and-white Adélie penguins, who looked very surprised to see a giant orange metal ship bearing down on them, and ran off or swam away as fast as they could. Small white birds fluttered and darted around the ship; Stay learnt that they were snow petrels, and a sign that Antarctica wasn’t
far off. The nights had almost disappeared and although the sun set for a few hours, it never got really dark.

The Bridge was always busy. Everyone came up to watch their progress through the ice and spot animals and birds through the binoculars. People put coins into Stay every now and then and the weight of the money kept her firmly anchored to the instrument panel.

In the wee small hours of the night, after he’d made sure no one else was around, the Boss would talk to her quietly. He told her stories of things he’d seen at sea, like whales and giant squid, icebergs so big that they floated in the sea for years and were given names, and pirate fishing ships that operated outside the law. He told her about stars and the aurora australis, red and green waves of light in the sky also called the southern lights. Their ship was named after the lights, which could usually only be seen in the winter months. Stay loved hearing his stories.

Chills and his friends came onto the Bridge several times, but he seemed to be keeping his distance and Stay felt a bit hurt. Perhaps he’d changed his mind about taking her to Antarctica after all? Perhaps he’d lost interest in her, now that the continent was near and he had more exciting things on his mind.

She tried to vibe him to come over to her one evening on the Bridge. He was standing far away, talking
to Kaboom and Laser. Stay thought he glanced over at her every now and then, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt rather lonely, staring out at the ice as dusk fell. The ship was abuzz with excitement, with everyone talking about what they’d do when they got to Antarctica and how much they were looking forward to it.

Stay wished she was going with them. Travelling home again on the ship started to feel like a boring plan.

The Bridge gradually emptied out as people left to go to bed. Chills and the others left without a backward glance, laughing loudly at some joke as they shut the door behind them. The Boss sat up in the big chair for a couple of hours afterwards, steering the ship carefully through the pack ice and around the huge icebergs. Then he yawned and stretched and called over the second mate.

‘Your shift,’ he said. ‘I’m turning in. It’ll be a big day tomorrow getting into the station.’

‘Night, Boss,’ the second mate said. ‘Sleep tight.’

He waited till the Boss had left, then changed the music to something with lots of electric guitar and drums. He hopped up in the chair and tapped his fingers in time on the armrest.

‘Hey, Angus, how you doing?’ Kaboom wandered onto the Bridge. It was very dark with the bird curtains closed and Stay could barely see her.

‘Good. And you?’ the second mate said.

‘Great.’ Kaboom went over to the stereo and turned the music up. She called over it, ‘I’ve got to do some iceberg observations for Jamie and I don’t know how to use the radar. Can you show me?’

‘Sure,’ the second mate said. He jumped down from the chair and took her over to the screen. ‘This shows the direction we’re going,’ he said, pointing to the top of the screen. ‘You can change it like this.’

As he pushed the buttons at the bottom of the screen, Stay heard a sound down near the ground behind her. Hands slid up and grabbed her legs. She couldn’t see who they belonged to in the dark.

Thanks to the loud music, Angus didn’t hear them. The hands tried to slide Stay backwards, but she was so heavy with money that she hardly moved.

There was a scuffle on the floor beside Stay. Angus, who was still talking to Kaboom, had his back to her and didn’t notice.

‘We’ll have to pick her up,’ someone whispered. Two figures, dressed in black, stood up silently, grabbed Stay’s legs, heaved her off the instrument panel and put her on the ground. They crouched next to her and froze.

‘If you click this button, you can change the range on the screen,’ Angus said.

‘Sorry, can you show me that again?’ Kaboom asked.

‘Now!’ one of the figures whispered. They lifted Stay between them and staggered across the Bridge in the dark. They nearly got tangled in the bird curtain, but managed to push through it. In the light on the other side, Stay saw it was Chills and Beakie who were carrying her. She felt a rush of happiness. They weren’t going to leave her to be sent home after all!

‘Quick,’ Chills hissed. He pushed open the door out of the Bridge and checked to see no one was in the corridor. ‘Into the Met lab.’

They carried her through a nearby door, with a sign on it that said ‘Meteorology’, and put her down on the floor. Chills had a sack in his hand and Stay thought he was going to throw it over her head. But to her surprise he rolled her on her side and started to fiddle with the lock on her base.

Stay felt a rush of alarm. He was taking the money! The Boss had been right! She wished she could growl and show her teeth. That money was for the Guide Dogs. How dare he touch it?!

Chills managed to unlock the panel and coins began to trickle into the sack. He put his hand inside and started to scoop them even faster. Stay felt sick as they rolled out. The notes were the last to go — the money that had been paid to get revenge on Neptune. Horse’s
hundred dollars fluttered out at the end. She felt Chills snatch it and stuff it into the sack. With all her might she tried to send a thought to him.

Don’t you steal that money!

She heard him jiggle the bag and give a satisfied chuckle at the sound of the coins chinking together. Then he picked up one coin and put it back into Stay before closing the panel on her base and turning her the right way up.

‘An excellent haul,’ he said. ‘Now put her in the bag. I’ll deal with this.’

Stay felt Beakie pulling the black bag over her head. He picked her up and she felt him open the door, then start carrying her down the stairs. She wanted to howl. How could they betray her like this?

Beakie carried her a long way through the ship and Stay lost track of the staircases and corridors. They arrived at a place that clanked and echoed. It sounded like a large, open area, but Stay couldn’t imagine where she was.

She heard lots of scuffling and clacking before Beakie laid her down on her side. She felt him pile a whole lot of heavy things on top of her. She wanted to struggle or to find some way to escape, but there was nothing she could do.

‘See you later, Stay,’ he said.

She heard a door slam nearby and then the distant sound of his footsteps disappearing.

Stay felt lonely. She had let herself be dognapped and now she’d let herself be robbed too. All that money was gone. How would she ever raise so much again? She’d thought Chills and Beakie were her friends. That
part hurt most of all. She’d trusted Chills, and it looked like she’d been wrong.

Jet had told her that Labradors were a trusting breed.
Too trusting,
Stay thought. She should have been more suspicious. Perhaps all along Chills and Beakie had been planning to rob her and then hide her so no one would find her before the ship headed home from Antarctica.

She tried to send a thought to the Boss to come and rescue her, but wherever she was on the ship, she couldn’t sense humans nearby.
I won’t even see Antarctica now,
she thought. She’d spend the rest of the voyage stuck inside a bag and when she did get back to Hobart, she wouldn’t have any money to show for it. Nothing. Stay sank into misery.

Hours passed. Eventually Stay could sense the buzz of human excitement on the ship. She realised that the day of their arrival had begun and everyone was awake. This was the day they would crack through the sea ice to get as close as possible to Davis Station. The Boss had told her how he would push and push until the ship was firmly wedged into the fast ice, which was thick sea ice attached to the shore, so the cranes could unload the cargo containers over the ship’s side straight onto the frozen ocean. Big trucks and machines from the station would then carry the containers to land, along with all the people. A fuel line would be
connected from the ship to the tanks on shore and the
Aurora Australis
would pump out hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel fuel needed to run the station.

‘It can take a week to resupply the station, or even more if anything goes wrong,’ the Boss had told her. ‘We have a thing called the A-factor, which means that in Antarctica something nearly always goes wrong.’

The Boss would notice she was gone, Stay knew, but this was his busiest time. Getting the ship wedged into the ice without breaking it up and making it unstable was a delicate and dangerous business. He’d need all his concentration to do it properly. He’d have no time to come looking for her.

Stay thought that they must be getting close to the station. The ship went
crunch-crackle-grumble-crack-crunch
forwards through the ice and stopped. It backed up with a heavy roar of engines and then moved forwards again.
Crunch-crackle-ram-crack-boom!

The
Aurora Australis
stopped. They had arrived. They were in Antarctica. As hard as she could, Stay sent out a silent plea for anyone, anyone on the ship at all who might hear her.

Help me!

But no one heard.

The noises of cargo unloading went all day and all night. Stay imagined that she was blind. Without being
able to see anything, her hearing became even more acute. She could picture the unloading process from the sounds that were magnified through the ship’s hull.

Stay heard the big ship’s crane groaning as it lifted the containers high in the air, swung them over the ship’s side and lowered them to the ice. If she strained her ears, she could hear the sound of cracking and shifting in the ice when the heavy containers landed.

The trucks rumbled back and forth between the ship and the station. She heard excited laughter and talking as the passengers crowded at the top of the gangway and then made their way down. Stay heard the throb of the pump sending fuel through the long, flexible pipe and across to the shore. Very close to where she was hidden, she heard the
doof-doof-doof
of the helicopter taking off and landing, its blades beating rhythmically.

Sometimes, if it wasn’t too noisy, she could hear the squawking of penguins and little splashing noises when they were swimming nearby. Antarctica sounded so interesting! Stay was terribly frustrated that she couldn’t see it.

From the way the ship sounded more and more echoey, Stay realised that the resupply was almost finished. She could tell there were far fewer humans on board now — just the crew who would be taking the ship back to Hobart. The Boss had told her that the handful of
people who’d spent winter in Antarctica would be coming back with them too. But compared with their trip down, the ship would be very quiet on the way home.

Stay moped in the darkness and thought mean thoughts about Chills and Beakie and even Kaboom, who’d seemed so nice and wasn’t nice at all.

Everything went quiet and eventually Stay fell asleep.