Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 1
Just around the bend in the path, over the nearby rise of snow-covered rock, is my destination. It's a village of sorts. I sat observing the route for a while, then pulled my bulky coat tight, and sipped a last bit of tea, enjoying the warmth from the tiny insulated mug. Presently, I gulped the last, then stowed it away and checked the time.
Now walking to my selected spot, I am comfortably warm, though a draft of cold sneaks past my scarf for a moment, and reminds me of the bareness of the miserable place surrounding me. Grey-black rocky protrusions dot the landscape. Big round ancient rock protrusions form hump-like hills that define the shape of the island as seen from the sea, and give it its name.
In this early morning light it is awesome in its starkness, its pallor, its exceptional lifelessness. Pack ice fills the water into the distance, and a few huge, sculpted icebergs sit parked out in the distance across Table bay. This craggy spit of Elephant Island is caked with snow. The rasping sounds are ice-choked swells of seawater lashing the rocky shore.
Everything is frozen, or salty-wet. A small, solid and weighty object in my inner pocket is the only link from this cold, desolate world to my comfortable home. That's the place where they make micropore, down-filled jackets, synthetic, multi-layered, waterproofed boots, and all this other stuff – wicking polyester undergarments, thin, dense San Marino wool warmth layers, micro-fibre secondary warmth layers, and super-breathable, waterproof, wind protection layers. Everything is trademarked and branded, but I’ve removed those labels, and chosen the drabbest of colours.
Just around the bend in the snow-tramped trail below me, will lay two keel-up boats. The third, the James Caird, had left on a desperate mission over two months ago. I trudge down along the packed snow path in the faintest early morning light, and round the next corner down at which I have stared for almost an hour, anticipating this moment. I feel the weight of history like the palm of a cold, clammy hand over the land.
There are little skirls of snow, and they are whipped around the seemingly lifeless hulks of wood. There are no signs of smoke from the tiny blubber-stove chimney emerging from under the lashed together tarpaulins and hulls. I cannot see any remaining letters on the worn, white paint of the boats, but I know that one of these is the Dudley Docker, the other Stancomb Wills. The tramped, dirty snow around the inverted boats wrapped in tarpaulins belies the twenty two souls that are huddled together inside the shelter.
The sky has brightened enough that I can see the boats well as I pass on higher ground. Frank Hurley is down there right now, I realise. Alive and well – well, mostly just alive. I feel the sense of foreboding from these desperate men, the fear of an uncertain future. It radiates out between the planks of the boats where the men sleep in shivering discomfort. Nearby a bloody stain on the snow marks the spot where a seal was prepared for food and its fat for the stove.
I pull my pack snugly and make my way quietly around to a well-trampled spot beyond about a hundred metres from the slightly sunk-in entrance to the shelter. The rising sun will illuminate me here. It is a spot where I won’t be immediately visible when the first of them emerges from under the boat. By then I’ll be sitting comfortably, and well into my task, and ready for them. This will help to manage the coming confrontation, and avoid the extreme stress my targets would experience were I to simply walk up to them out of the blue.
It is a cold June morning in 1916, and I sit waiting in the loneliest place on earth.
Chapter 2
Even with the hulking eight hundred metre humps of Elephant island, when you compared the rocky lump to the scale of the frigid churning southern seas, our island and spit is but a bit of flotsam amid the icy water. Sitting there, Gnomon island lurked massively over my shoulder, and I went about my tasks getting ready.
On the not uncomfortable steel-and-webbing camp stool where I sat. It was about a hundred meters away, slightly up the snowy slope, from the overturned boat shelters. I had gently placed my large pack and another large bag upon the rocky ground. My heart pounded with excitement.
Just last night as these men huddled together, they recounted to each other the foods they would like to taste just once more. Were they able to magically pull themselves from here, out of nowhere to somewhere, anywhere else in civilization, what simple, memorable delicacies they would have! It was the little things that most mentioned: a mother’s Yorkshire pudding, a pint of stout from down ‘the pub. For all intents and purposes, from their perspective of the universe, magic it would be. From mine? Perhaps the next best thing.
Sitting here now, I have just set up a twenty-first century camp cook-stove. and pulled out a stack of lightweight plastic bowls. I sat them aside. A handful of plastic spoons, as well, sit just there. With a few minutes work I have a large pot of multi-grain porridge bubbling on the stove. Mostly oatmeal, water and a bit of salt, some seeds and buckwheat round it out. But a few large containers sit on a flat stone and will very likely, in a few minutes, bring tears to the eyes of these men.
Anger? Probably some of that too, due to the confusion mostly. But I have learned that food is a great enabler, giving me a chance to break through feelings of shock, and incredulity and to offer a few words of explanation. Beside the containers of heavy cream, and golden brown sugar, I put out another containing a cake of yellowish white butter.
Now, the lid of the huge camp coffee pot is erupting with the steam of boiling water, and I pull out a handful of coffee from a vintage looking cloth bag and drop the grounds into the water, adding a deep black to the water almost immediately. Lid back on the pot - it makes a metallic clink. A bit loud perhaps. The wind is not as stiff just now, that sound may well get someone’s gears going and be an impetus to get up out of the cramped quarters for a look around.
My heart is again pounding in my chest with anticipation. I am downwind from them, so they will not be drawn by the odours. The dancing of the coffee pot lid will probably do it, though. And it’s going well now.
A sound? A crusty tarpaulin being drawn aside? A blackened looking, hairy face, under a thick wool cap. He’s wrapped in a drab, dirty, coarse, Burberry coat, and wears scuffed, worn trousers. He stiffly rises from under the boat shelter. He surveys the surroundings. He sees me in seconds, and freezes. He says nothing. He’s terrified. He’s frozen motionless.
Now, I know from experience, the best approach here is to be passive rather than actively engage. Let him – let them – do the reacting.
He cranes his neck forward. Shifting from foot to foot, he looks away, and down at his feet. My heart pounds, aches with a compassion not unlike that of seeing a child abandoned in a bombed out city. He looks back again, still unsure what to think. Yes, I’m still here, my friend.
His lips move, not immediately voicing anything. This one hasn’t spoken in days - the men sometimes do not have much to say and their interactions about the camp often wane down to merely a few words here and there. Unless they are in the dark of the shelter where their hearts soften a little, and the odd tears are their own and fall as little ice pellets while listening to the cold night’s wind.
I am about a hundred metres away, and cannot quite hear the words when they come, but I hear a hoarse rasp that beckons the others. It is not quite a “hear come and see this.” It’s more of a “please come and check something for me,” I suspect.
I give a lot of thought to the structure of this moment, before I plan my expeditions. I do not wear a fire engine red puffy nylon jacket, a radical snow-boarder toque or neon-green gloves. There’s no blaring music and dancing girls. I have purposely chosen greys and browns which are not shocking, that fit into the scene they have had around them for months. The shape of me and the twenty-first century paraphernalia around me will be shock enough.
It looks like about eleven faces have emerged now. Some look over or around the boat keel at me. There is fear, no – terror, in their faces. The scene nearly brings tears welling up in me too. This is unadulterated suffering I am witnessing. It is also inspiring. It is dogged determination and survival of the human spirit at its best. But the suffering and sadness here is palpable.
That is, after all, why I am here.
Chapter 3
A word or two about that curious concern of so many – paradox. You will, of course, have heard the inspiring story of our Ernest Shackleton. You may know it in depth if you have read one of the many books on the topic. The legendary Elephant Island period follows their harrowing extrication out of the hands of almost certain death following the failed attempt to be first to the South Pole. You may also have read about the journey of the little group of life boats from the Antarctic continent in a desperate self-rescue attempt. And perhaps you have seen some pictures of the gut-wrenching southern ocean in all its fury.
You most certainly did not read about the morning in the June snow that greeted those poor souls upon awaking this day, today, punching through the depths of their despair. One might wonder why that is the case.
Time is a resilient, stubborn old horse. It works its way through otherwise confusing situations quite handily. It is mostly through the concept of parallelism, more than anything else, that our beloved history is kept on track.
One asks, when I go back and stick my nose into the midst of some historic event, do I not forever change the outcome of the situation, and thus my own history as well? Perhaps even the fate of my own existence could hang in the balance, surely. If my interference puts the romantic entanglement of my proverbial grandfather and grandmother at risk, what then? Do I go ‘poof’ and disappear?
Well, the answer is a simple one. It is simply Occam’s Razor. The Romans called it lex parsimoniae, and it is a law that applies everywhere in the universe. I am here, having presumably returned with the account, so clearly I did not mess anything up to bad. The simplest reason is not only the best explanation for everything, it is also the best solution to everything - in the realm of time-travel, at least.
People don’t go poof, and that is good enough for me. The elasticity of the time-line keeps us sane, and in return we do not push too hard in the opposite direction.
Presumably, from the moment of my interference, a new path is carved through the universe, swinging out of the tracks of that previous history. Like a big heavy rubber band though, time pulls everything back in again. With a bit of energy we leave the wheel-ruts of our time-stream to carve some parallel ones for a short way, but then we snap back into our own again once our old horse pulls us back to the centre of the road. The incongruous bits have a way of falling out of the historical record, and peoples' lives. Curious comments about an anachronistic event get brushed aside by those who hear about it, or just forgotten by those who were around to see it. Occasionally, we do perform a little bit of clean-up ourselves. You’ll have to remind me to tell you about a certain Mr. Stanley and visit to Africa some day.
Perhaps you will see my face at the back of the crowd in one of Hurley’s photographs somewhere, but it is the least disruptive path to the quickest return that always wins the day, and lets me get back to my home as I remember it. It is like water finding its way to the lowest spot, or the shortest path between two points being a straight line – nature pulls things together with the least energy use possible.
The little bit of help I do provide ensures nothing is too messy. I minimise my impact, and ensure that the few others who know about my technology and employ it do the same. I will entrust you with the same discretion, should you accompany me in future. “Help us keep a little secret here,” I will often ask, “For the sake of our futures, and the sake of our work.”
Shackleton’s men stand there for what feels like five minutes. I have been careful to remain passive and mostly motionless, but something needs to break the impasse. They might stare at this mirage all day. Or they might come to a consensus of denial and go about their day ignoring me. A tendril must be extended to move this along - I do not have all day after all.
I pick up a spoon, and lift a lid on the simmering porridge and give it a stir. The motions are universal and for a group of hungry, cold men, they are irresistible.
One figure extricates himself from the crowd now and is taking a few tentative steps. Black cracked rubber boots are wrapped with strips of cloth around the ankles. The edges of heavy wool socks roll out over top of his baggy pants. Others stretch out behind him now, like a trail of molasses dripping from a warm spoon.
These are tough moments on the minds of the locals, as we call the residents of the distant time. Facing the anachronism we sometimes present is like approaching a wild horse. One’s primitive instincts are invoked. I am treading on a mess of emotions here, I know – superstition, primal fear, the clash of logic and reason with the metaphysical. It is the survival instinct honed to an edge. An obsequious movement will help here, and I slowly rise and do a slow half bend like a Japanese greeting. A raised hand the universal sign of peaceful greeting.
A sweep of a hand towards them.
I indicate some coarse, burlap wrapped pads. They are actually closed-cell foam cushions that I have scattered about as warm seats among the snow and rocks. “Come, have a seat.” I finally say, breaking the silence, as they get closer. Another sign of welcome. “You are a long way from home, and I have come a long way to see you. Please don’t be afraid.”
They approach now, and I have tried to bend my twenty-first century accent towards theirs, for it will be strange and foreign to their ears. We will have some time for questions, and explanations regardless. Two months ago, their leader Ernie and four others left these twenty-two in a desperate attempt to save them all. They have no way to know if rescue will ever come, or if they have been left to die slowly one-by-one. A limping figure is helped along by another. Ah, yes the frostbite took poor Mr. Blackborow’s left toes. That must be him.
“I have some hot food which I am happy to offer, gentlemen, if you would do me the great honour of sharing my breakfast.”
Chapter 4
“Who the bleedin’ hell are ye?” asks a hoarse voice from the lead man. He’s terrified, yet drawn to the scene I’ve created. He wears a rough, dark moustache and just thin growth of beard across a ruddy, dark and pockmarked complexion. His dirty grey pants are rolled into his socks at the ankle, and the worn leather boots must do little to keep out the cold. The ubiquitous gabardine Burberry coat covers hunched shoulders, his woollen clothing still damp from the transpiration in the cold of the night lets off thin steam around his face. It’s Frank Wild, almost certainly, I realize. He is the no-nonsense second in command on the expedition, and the most senior one left on the island. Known for being a man of few words, he is straight to the point.
“My name is Phiney,” I reply sitting down and turning my eyes away. Gentle and slow is the strategy now.
I lift the lid off the porridge, and give it a stir. “Cutler Phiney,” I say again. “ And you had best take a bowl here and we can get some of this into you. She’s a cold old morning and you will be wanting to ask me lots of questions. But not a one will I answer until I’ve got you all warmed up.“
I am holding back some of the details of the repast until I need the impact. Porridge and coffee will be luxurious enough concepts for them at this point. Any breakfast without seal meat must be a recurring dream for these men. I make the fire grow substantially with three large instant-fire logs – it must look miraculous to these poor sods who cherish the slightest stick of drift wood, or ounce of penguin fat for their stove.
“All you chaps, please. I know you’re all in a state where a friendly meal will go down well. You’ve... you’ve been here a frightfully long time, and I dare guess you are low on supplies. We might as well enjoy what I’ve got here for you.”
I had toyed with calling them by name right off and mentioning their Captain Shackleton by name as well. Or perhaps even suggesting that I was there as his representative. However, deceit always has a way of breeding distrust, or coming back around to bite you later, regardless of the intention. So truth was my standard operating approach. I certainly knew that erring on the side of scarcity-of-information was the best policy to get started, though.
There was some awkward waiting, but I held out. Finally, the sight of the warm food, and the smell of coffee that was reaching them made a breakthrough that words could not, and a younger, limping lad came forward to take a steaming bowl from me, and a mug, and a seat.
“It’s real!” he said in hushed tones. “It’s not a dream, come and see for yourselves!” His Welsh accent was thick and his voice excited.
Terror seemed mixed with the elation on his face, and he avoided the eyes of Mr. Wild for fear of what he would see. The food in his hands was respite enough from the demons in his head. That first capitulation was the key, and I knew I was winning the day. To drive it home, I resorted to the big guns.
“In those containers there, young lad, you’ll find some sugar and some cream. You’ll want a good bit of each on your oatmeal, and a dollop of butter will keep your bones a bit warmer in this cold.”
He looked at me like I had hit him.
He turned to the containers swiftly and nervously, such that he almost dropped his coffee mug. Such conditions for almost two years does not make a man careless with his food, however, and he recovered and worked the spoon in the brown sugar container like a shocked soldier picking shrapnel out of a fresh wound.
Upon scooping up a chunk of butter, he showed an amazing strength of restraint and manners that cut though the desperation of these conditions. It was like a child trying desperately to avoid contravening the rules of the table, for fear he would be chastised and sent away without pudding.
This young fellow, was most certainly Perce Blackborow. Frost bite had likely claimed his toes by now, as the limp had suggested, and it warmed my heart to see him digging into the hot gruel with butter and sugar. The rich taste of cream made him physically choke briefly and he wept silent, icy tears. It also brought the others in rapidly to join him.
Blackborow was the poster child for misadventure. Refused from the expedition upon his application, he stowed away to participate and ended up with a cabin steward’s job and a fight for survival for which he had never bargained.
Once or twice, I applied a friendly, hearty response to fend off questions, “Ah, not a word of answer to your questions until all your mates have a spoon in their hand and food on their lips.”
A few laughs now from the men, giddy with disbelief at their good fortune. “Bloody Devon cream on my lips,” giggled one in a hoarse whisper. But most were still very quiet and took their food timidly, defensively. Blank looks of shock were etched on their faces. Wild sat his bowl aside but held the coffee in his hands to absorb the warmth. He had filled his own, chipped white porcelain cup, and even grudgingly took a sip from it, as he waited for answers.
All the names were hard to recall, but the surly, dour face of Orde-Lees, keeper of one of the key diaries was easy to recognize. Standing off from the rest still, he would be the last, I was sure. Not broadly liked by the others, the literate, yet slightly superior-acting Brit was a focal point of concern for me that morning. I had a number of tools at my disposal and I considered which would be most potent to deploy.
Everyone served, save him.
I made brief eye contact with him, and he stood unmoving, untrusting. Feeling now, that his mates had abandoned him for the sirens, no doubt. Maybe expecting them all to be consumed by devils or simply fearing that, should he attempt to move forward, he would wake up before he got his bowl. He didn’t know which way to turn.
He was alone, like Odysseus, lashed to the mast, and holding on for dear life. I did not push it, after that brief seconds-worth of a shared stare. I sat his bowl aside, casually, gesturing that it was his. His astute brain would certainly have noted that there were exactly enough bowls for everyone. ‘How was this possible?’ he would want to know, so I had best disclose some tidbits of information before it escaped him, thrown as a barbed accusation, leading to confrontation.
I added water to the porridge pot, and a good helping of more oatmeal and some salt. Just the containers alone were causing furrowed brows on the men. The plastic spoons, the screw-lid oatmeal container. Twos and threes here and there were mumbling to themselves while tapping their thick plastic bowls with their spoons. “Whale bone” I heard one man pronounce with some certainty. “Aye, Aye…” replied another uncertainly.
Orde-Lees looked like he was inflating himself up to talk, after making challenging eye-contact with Wild, and I knew it would be an attack almost certainly. The best defence being a strong offence, I sought to defuse his attack with a quick disclosure.
“Mr. Orde-Lees, you must give us the honour of sharing our meal, and I’ll be most happy to give everyone some answers to your important questions straight away,” I said to him loudly, but with a friendly tone.
In that phrase I had made the answers everyone sought contingent on his move. As well I had disclosed that I knew his name.
The group fell silent, as if hit by an icy wave breaking across their bow. Orde-Lees shifted from challenging to frightened, and then embarrassed and he sensed that the best way out was forward, and he stepped ahead to take a bowl. “This bloody well better be good,” he retorted, and I knew he did not mean the porridge. “How the devil did you get here and how do ye know…”
“Yes, yes, I do know your name, sir.” I returned. And addressing others: “Gentlemen of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition,” I began more loudly now. I noted that he took a seat, and accepted the container of cream from a smiling, white-spotted, bearded face next to him.
Chapter 5
The few drips of cream that punctuated beards here and there, served as illustration as a scruffy, smiling man hoarsely whispered. “It’s bleedin’ cream, Thomas! Get it in ye before ye wake me up and ruin it for the lot of us.”
“We’re not sleeping, Charles. In hell maybe, or heaven. I don’ know, but ‘tis real. It’s all real.” The anguish was clear in Orde-Lees face.
“The warmth you are feeling is simply from yourself.” I commented to a fellow who was curiously feeling his seat, and wondering from whence the heat came. “Mr. Reginald James, I presume?” I said to a bespectacled fellow with a wispy beard at his right, “And Doctors Macklin and McIlroy, where are you?” I asked.
A Scots accent piped up from a proud looking man at the rear, “‘Tis I, the ships surgeon, sir,” said the figure of Macklin. McIlroy merely raised a hand behind him.
“Yes, Dr. Macklin can well attest to the amount of heat that even the most tired body among us exudes to keep us alive. Even if we are feeling cold, our bodies are little furnaces burning the food we eat to warm us. And Mr. James as a physicist you will understand the nature of insulation that can hold heat loss in check. Thus, sitting on these special seats made of a very good insulation, the heat you feel is merely that which you would otherwise lose, held close to you.”
“Miraculous,” says Macklin.
“Most curious,” comments James.
“As I mentioned, kind gentlemen, My name is Cutler Phiney, and I have come here today for the simple reason that I wanted to ease the suffering of a group of hardy men who have survived a difficult and challenging time of loss and suffering. It is the nature of any of us, as poor creatures at the mercy of nature, after having drawn from our survival instincts for so long, to distrust a scene such as this which I have presented to you. Given where we find ourselves, I would ask that you hold your doubt for a brief time longer, and I will explain all of this to you. It will be difficult to grasp.
“Please, Mr...?” I drew upon a man at my left.
“Holness, Sir”
“Ernest Holness, ah yes, of course. The captains namesake, and a loyal man to the expedition! Give your mates a refill of their coffees, and don’t spare the sugar and cream gents.”
“Good Lord, Mother of God…” exclaimed the stoker as he took the pot and began filling the other’s cups. “I don’t know whether ye be from, heaven or hell, but either way, I don’t think I care anymore.”
I stood then like a 19th century orator on a soapbox speaking gently to a group of tired men. Only rather than a soapbox, I stood on a frozen boulder.
“Well, yes, indeed. Heaven or Hell. I too find this a miraculous and wonderful meeting gentlemen, one that is something very special for me. No, it’s not your souls I come for, nor have I loosed you from your respective mortal coils. Your experience is one of epic courage, and survival. A story that will live through the ages. The opportunity to merely meet you all, and share a few moments of your time, is a reward whose value I can scarcely describe to you.
“In a manner not much more difficult than the effort it takes one to walk down to the corner chemist in your home village, I have the good fortune to come here and bring a small amount of peace and comfort to your ordeal.” I told them, launching into the crux of the matter.
Mr. Rickinson, the engineer who would have, or perhaps has already had a heart attack on the island, pipes up weakly, “But that is just daft. How can you tell us that you’ve just appeared here to us like a dream, as easy as if it were a walk down the high street?”
“Yes, this is a difficult thing to grasp, but it will become more clear in a moment. You see, there are things that appear daft and are certainly hard to explain, even to men of science and engineering such as these among you who are similarly wracking their brains to come to understand it for themselves.” I indicated James the physicist and Rickinson, the ailing engineer and young Alfred Kerr also an engineer. “But perhaps Mr. Orde-Lees will have some of the insight into this situation. Have you, perchance sir, read some of the works of Mr. H.G. Wells?” I enquire of him.
“Wells? Yes.” A pause. “A man of the future then are ye? Here to explore the mysteries of the past? Will you take us away with you then?” And there is a little sarcastic edge to his voice.
I had hoped that this – the question of rescue – would not come up so quickly, but I had also hoped that by avoiding the question, they would gently get the gravity of the matter. Certain things were not flexible.
There could be no rescue from this situation by someone such as me, travelling through time. I could at most provide some reassurance. But rescue was not in the cards – or in the history books – and as such off the table.
Chapter 6
“The unfolding of ages is something that has long been a mystery to man,” I began, “In Mr. Wells’ stories, he explores the distant mists of time. What one in this field needs to concern himself about however, are the challenges not of distant time, but of recent time.
“I am indeed a visitor from far away, in space and time. From the North American continent some century and more hence. For the time traveller, time is a mostly resilient thing, that stretches and adapts to our movements through it. It is not unlike a snowy plain, where my footsteps show briefly, but are soon covered in drifts and tiny blowing snowflakes. But like thin ice, it is similarly fragile. Changes I inflict upon the established path of time eons ago may easily be coerced back into line with the reality we know, such that little-to-nothing is changed in history as I know it in my time. The closer I get to my own time, the more careful I must be to ensure I do not do any damage from which we cannot recover. I must give the winds of time some space to cover my tracks, or else tread very softly indeed.
"These things you see around us are artefacts from my time. You can rest assured that though your time here has been, and will continue to be, very difficult, among the greatest struggles of any mens’ lives anywhere, your Captain has already been successful in his endeavour – if you’ll pardon the pun. You will in fact survive this ordeal. It will continue to be hard and test your resolve, but survive you will.
“Such though is the nature of time, that I must avoid telling you too much about your futures. I am happy to give you the reassurance of your success, and this impromptu sustenance and warmth I brought today. I hope that it bridges over your suffering for a short time with a little bit of humanity. After all, how disruptive to the universe can it be to have you a little happier on one day than you might otherwise have been?
“I must leave your minds unclouded by the detailed knowledge of your destinies, and I must request that you do not inquire of me where your individual paths lead. Ask yourself, can you not give me this as your side of the bargain in exchange for this morning’s respite from suffering, isolation and cold? I will take nothing from you but the honour of having met some great men. And you, from me, only a simple meal and the knowledge of your survival, which is beyond what any other man in such a situation has ever had.”
“How do we know you aren’t lying to us,” asked a suspicious Wild.
“You don’t of course. But can there be any ulterior motive? You have nothing that I can steal from you, no business in which I could cheat you. You are here with nothing but your lives, and your perseverance and the strength of your humanity. Taking the lives of men who have already defied the wrath of nature provides nothing to another mortal man. Indeed, the taking of a life only devalues that of the perpetrator. I seek thus to take away nothing of yours when I leave, except a little of your despair. That little bit which we burn together on the hearth on this cold June morning at the bottom of the world.”
We talked for several hours that morning, and the food was quickly gone. I gathered the bowls up and put them aside. A couple are missing, as I had expected. This is the grasping for evidence in a miraculous situation.
Many questions were put to me. Some I answered, and others I declined, or answered only in the broadest terms. Many things I did not know. I did not have information regarding the states of loved ones and family. “I am not an all knowing god,” I chuckled. “I have the means to deliver myself here, and know of your story from the history books, and that is all.”
The sun reached its apex in the northern sky and the winds were unusually calm for this locale. A group of men heard some stories of my travels, shared many of their own, and felt some calm, and occasionally some easy silence in a frightfully isolated corner of an icy world.
Chapter 7
For a late lunch, I pulled three small, rough wooden crates out, and opened the first to provide energy bars to the men. Someone went away briefly and came back with some seal meat and, skewered on a wire, roasted it over the seemingly endless, yet un-stoked fire. In a touching gesture, mostly symbolic, they offered a portion to me, and I gratefully accepted a sinewy, yet not unpleasant meaty bone.
Additional energy bars I would leave behind, and had no doubt that the wood of the crates would be burned, and the contents eaten, and provide a brief extra energy for their meagre lives in the coming months, leading up to their rescue, and leave no trace of an anomaly to concern me.
“Could I take some or even one of them back with me?” they asked directly, in the end. “Alas, no, it was beyond my control,” I explained.
If I had arrived on some sort of recognizable conveyance, a lesser man might well have considered arresting control of it. But they were magnanimous and questioned out of genuine curiosity. I noted one curious soul removed himself from the crowd, ostensibly to relieve himself, and trundled up the path around the bend to the high ground on the spit. No doubt off to search for my hidden ship among the rocky shore. But mostly they were honourable and grateful for what they had received. The returning individual wore his lack of success on his face, and they were resigned to what I had told them.
“I am not changing history. I will not, and cannot, change the outcome of this expedition. I hope to have made things a little less horrible for you today with little overall impact. I ask you not to write of me in your diaries…” I consciously looked toward Orde-Lees, who turned his eyes out to the horizon, and the ice pack that stretched across Table Bay and for many kilometres in all directions, broken only by large ‘bergs that spanned across the field of view in the distance.
“I suspect none would believe us were we to relate any of this at any rate,” comments James with an underlying tone of loss.
“Have I brought to you some change out of the monotony then? Some respite from the cold? Some sustenance against the bite of hunger?”
“Aye… yes… aye…,” came the responses.
“And do I ask for but a little in return?” Again the affirmative, and nodding heads. “To preserve your future uncompromised, and the stability of your world, and that of your loved ones, and to keep the stream of time undamaged, it is all I ask. I leave these few rations to help you through the next few days. You need to continue to work your hardest to stay well and safe. I’ve not made it much easier on you, but be rewarded to know that none of your effort is for naught, though it will be most difficult still.”
From my pocket I pull a scanner and identified the location of the missing few bowls, cutlery and cups, and asked that they be tossed in the bag with the others. “I cannot leave items which will be an anachronism to your time. I am happy to leave this extra food and the limited information I’ve shared with you. But I cannot go beyond that.
They grudgingly consented, and complied, aiding me in putting my gear together a tight pile.
“So when will you be off then, Mr. Phiney? Will your craft be coming up to shore here through the ice-pack, or will it fly through the air above the sea like an aeroplane,” asks the wiry seaman McLeod. A chuckle rounds the group with mixed giddiness and a hint of sarcasm, as if there was still some disbelief, and I was deluding myself in my story. Yet the experience is still savoury on their tongues.
“Neither vessel, floating or flying, will be needed, my friends,” I retorted with a smile, and surveyed the group. They stood about me then. There were the seating pads gathered and in a bag, added to the pile. I stand at the focus of their uncertain parabola of humanity. The cold bites at them, the wind has picks and we share a final silence.
Chapter 8
From the bag I pulled a final two logs for the fire and my audience shifted almost involuntarily closer to the flames as I dropped them in. They watch intently as it begins to produce an inordinate amount of heat to warm their bones, as it would continue to do for a few hours hence.
Standing about in the glow of the fire, I regarded the group of men of Elephant Island - or “Hell-of-an Island” as they liked to say. Here were people trapped in a landscape of rock and ice and water and wind, who somehow clung to life and their humanity. In the stories they shared and with even a few laughs we shared, for a short time they seemed like any other fellows one might strike up a conversation with down at the local pub. Sure a warm fire burned now, but there was another fire burning here in every man. The tenacious fire of survival. An energy that kept them going through some of the most trying, hopeless conditions humans had ever faced.
Stepping back to my gear now, affords me some separation from the crowd. My hands are in my pockets and I gently press a stud on the small, heavy controller within an inner hidden pocket. Instantly there pops up a slightly shimmering, perfect sphere around me and my gear. Along the ground, one can see the field conforming to the sand and dirt and rock like a silvery blanket - excluding the soils and odd bits of vegetation, and slipping under the boxes and bags. In an instant it seems to solidify and shift from vaguely shimmery to an almost golden transparent foil. They all pull back with a gasp. I stand surrounded by the gossamer jewel and regard them. Nobody tries to approach, as occasionally has happened in other such situations. Had they reached out they would have felt a thick, crackling static charge. Had they tried assertively to penetrate the field, the force would have pushed back to eject them just as forcefully.
But this quiet, frightened, yet stoic, group stares, occasionally looks away to the horizon and back. They have seen a lot today and other than the initial surprise, seem able to accept anything from their perspective on the edge of survival. They absorb the warmth I left in the fire, and the fantastical vision appears to comfort them somehow.
Perhaps they feel, given such a miraculous sight, that my reassurance about their ultimate survival is somehow more believable – trustworthy.
In context of a most exceptional morning, they accept that there is yet one more happening that they do not understand, but that is okay.
“I’ll be on my way then, gentlemen,” I call out over the rising crackle of the field. “The opportunity to meet with you has been a most enjoyable one. You are all a model of the human spirit, and a credit to your countrymen!”
“Just as easy as that then?” queried Wild for the group.
“Aye, just as easy as this, I will be whisked away. Your turn is not so long away now either, but you’ve still some hard days to get through yet.”
“Say hello to Mr. Well’s then…” chuckles a young Perce Blackborow.
“I will indeed, and the best to your intrepid Captain, if you decide to tell him of our morning here together,” I concluded. A bit of mumbling crosses the lips of the men, uncertain whether they would or not, or whether they would be considered mad for recounting the tale.
There would have been a small pop sound, and rush of wind as the air about filled in the sudden void.
From their point of view it must have seemed almost as if I had never been there. Except for the fire still raging, and the two and half crates of energy bars still at their feet, it was a scene as any other morning.
On August 20th, the ship Yelcho would drop anchor off their craggy shore. Someone would rush to light a signal fire, more in formality than necessity. The crew of the Yelcho would already be rowing toward them before the smoke started to curl up from the cairn at the point of the spit. Their captain would greet the weary 22 souls from the shores of Elephant Island.
In their teary embrace, Sir Ernest would praise the men for their perseverance, and beg for their forgiveness at not being able to break through the pack ice that had held him back on two previous return attempts in recent weeks.
He would query what kept them going. Amidst the stories of seabirds and seals, snow and cold nights, a brief mention about the “friend of Mr. Wells” would bring a chuckle from a few. Shackleton would choose not to dwell on the clearly delirium-driven comment, and reply “Well, you will have to share the joke with me sometime, but for now, let’s get off this God-forsaken island and back to England.”
“Aye, Aye!” would exclaim the crew, and, “Hooray!”
The story of my visit would not be recorded in the history books. Whether in deference to my request, disbelief of the authors who interviewed the men and their descendants, or because of those strange elastic forces of nature, like a rubber-band pulling the threads of time back together, I will never know. It is likely that through this powerful elasticity of time, a few scrawled notes were lost into crevices, dustbins and hearths along the way, preserving the sanctity of the time-line, and leaving all memories of a chilly, unexpected breakfast on Elephant Island to those resilient souls who were there to partake of it.