The Little Friend

As her discomfort increased, and her heart pounded louder, sparkling needle-pricks pattered quickly over her scalp in icy waves, like raindrops. Her eyes burned. She closed them. Against the throbbing red darkness rained a spectacular drizzle of cinders. A black trunk bound with chains clattered across the loose stones of a riverbed, swept by the current, thump thump, thump thump—something heavy and soft, a body inside—and her hand flew up to pinch her nose as if against a bad smell but still the suitcase rolled along, over the mossy stones, and an orchestra was playing somewhere, in a gilded theatre ablaze with chandeliers, and Harriet heard Edie’s clear soprano, soaring high above the violins: “Many brave hearts lie asleep in the deep. Sailor, beware: sailor, take care.”

No, it wasn’t Edie, it was a tenor: a tenor with black brilliantined hair and a gloved hand pressed to his tuxedo front, his powdered face chalk-white in the footlights, his eyes and lips darkened like an actor in a silent movie. He stood in front of the fringed velvet curtains as slowly they parted—amid a ripple of applause—to reveal, center stage, an enormous block of ice with a hunched figure frozen in the middle.

A gasp. The flustered orchestra, which was composed mostly of penguins, struck up the tempo. The gallery was filled with jostling polar bears, several of whom wore Santa Claus hats. They had come in late and were having a disagreement over the seating. In their midst sat Mrs. Godfrey, glassy-eyed, who sat eating ice cream from a harlequin-patterned dish.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed. The tenor bowed and stepped into the wings. One of the polar bears craned over the balcony and—throwing his Santa hat high in the air—roared: “Three cheers for Captain Scott!”

There was a deafening commotion as blue-eyed Scott, his furs stiff with blubber grease and coated with ice, stepped onto the stage shaking the snow from his clothes and lifted a mittened hand to the audience. Behind him little Bowers—on skis—emitted a low, mystified whistle, squinting into the footlights and raising an arm to shield his sunburnt face. Dr. Wilson—hatless and gloveless, with ice crampons on his boots—hurried past him and onto the stage, leaving behind him a trail of snowy footprints which dissolved instantly into puddles under the stage lights. Ignoring the burst of applause, he ran a hand across the block of ice, made a notation or two in a leather-bound notebook. Then he snapped the notebook shut and the audience fell silent.

“Conditions critical, Captain,” he said, his breath coming out white. “Winds are blowing from the north-northwest and there seems to be a distinct difference of origin between the upper and lower portions of the berg, suggesting that it has accumulated layer by layer from seasonal snows.”

“Then, we shall have to commence the rescue immediately,” said Captain Scott. “Osman! Esh to,” he said impatiently to the sled dog which barked and jumped around him. “The ice axes, Lieutenant Bowers.”

Bowers seemed not at all surprised to discover that his ski poles had turned into a pair of axes in his mittened fists. He tossed one deftly across the stage to his captain, to a wild din of honks and roars and clapped flippers, and, shouldering off their snow-crumbled woolens, the two of them began to hack at the frozen block as the penguin orchestra struck up again and Dr. Wilson continued to provide interesting scientific commentary about the nature of the ice. A flurry of snow had begun to whirl gently from the proscenium. At the edge of the stage, the brilliantined tenor was assisting Ponting, the expedition’s photographer, in setting up his tripod.

“The poor chap,” said Captain Scott, between blows of the axe—he and Bowers were not making a great deal of headway—“is very near the end, one feels.”

“Hurry it up there, Captain.”

“Good cheer, lads,” roared a polar bear from the gallery.

“We are in the hands of God, and unless He intervenes we are lost,” said Dr. Wilson somberly. Sweat stood out in beads on his temples and the stage lights glinted in white discs across the lenses of his little old-fashioned glasses. “All hands join in saying the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.”