A Victim of the Aurora Read Online Free Page B
Author: Thomas Keneally
laughed and rebounded to their bunks. I asked Paul Gabriel, prone in the upper bunk, if he needed any help. He said no, he was very tired.
Alec Dryden cranked the gramophone and pointed its red enamel trumpet across the littered dinner table. His favourite record âNight Hymn at Seaâ, sung by Clara Butt and Kennerly Rumford, wheezed out across the hut.
I heard Victor Henneker, in the bunk beside mine, mutter, âClara Butt is a dismal old tartâ and begin to sing softly a song of Gaby Deslysâ.
âAll the boys just come and stare â¦
Sur le plage, sur le plage
Men are full of persiflage .
When I take my bain de mer
All the boys just come and stare â¦â
Lost in images of Gaby Deslysâ rich little body, I closed my eyes.
Then Dryden had the night to himself. On the hour he left the hut by the laboratory door to view the great prismatic veils of green and gold and blue that hung vertically from the stars. There were means of making observations from Waldo Warwickâs meteorology-room if the weather was too bitter, but that night of Hennekerâs penultimate sleep was clear and still, and the temperature a mere â38 degrees F.
I didnât sleep well. Not by Antarctic standards anyhow, for sleep there â when it comes â is deep and long. I was awake at 7 a.m. I could hear faint sounds of the cook, Walter OâReilly, clanging his pans next door. I was awake when AB Russell Stigworth came in quiet as a church warden at 7.30, broom in hand. He swept the floor four times a day and washed the mess traps and tidied, a thin-faced little man who prided himself on his work and grew radiant when Stewart and Dryden or any of us praised him for it.
He spent so much time on these duties I wondered if he had seen or absorbed the auroras or been awed by the ice shelf or the mountains across the sound with the moonlight on them. What would he tell his grandchildren of his Antarctic experience? I suppose he could always tell them Sir Eugene Stewart had called him a fine hand with a broom. I studied Stigworth out of one eye as he shunted his broom through the debris of the mid-winter feast, extracted Beckâs Schnapps bottle from the floor and put it in his hessian bag of rubbish.
At 8 a.m. I heard the men next door rousing and, soon after, a faint whinny from the stables as Alexandrei arrived to feed the ponies their morning hay. They slept standing all night, those ponies. The floor of the stable was too cold for them to lie on, but Warren Mead said they were comfortable and had a locking joint in their knees that took the weight off their hoofs. It was the way they slept in Siberia, said Mead, since the time they were foals.
A little later I heard the dogs greet Nikolai. They occupied a slight incline to the north of the hut, most of them leashed to two thin cables. They too were from Siberia and were all post dogs used to deliver mail, or else the offspring of post dogs. When blizzards came they sat and let the dry snow cover them and, so insulated, slept the time away. When Nikolai came to them each morning with their frozen seal meat they applauded him madly. Some of their howling was like that of ordinary dogs, but they could also sing better than a coyote, and keen better than a wolf.
Next I heard the thud of the men lifting slabs of snow, cut with coal shovels out of the ice embankment behind the hut, into the snow-burner.
Every morning âthe strongmenâ â the haulers and sledders like POs Mulroy, Wallace and Jones, had to melt down a dayâs supply in a blubber-fed burner near the acetylene tanks. The water dripped slowly from the burner into a (somehow never full) tank in the galley area and from it Bernard Mulroy issued us our daily ration.
At 8.30 I saw Eugene Stewart emerge from his curtained compartment and cross to the stove, rubbing his hands gently, like some old monk to whom even the cold is a gift. Stigworth the sweeper brought in two
Alec Dryden cranked the gramophone and pointed its red enamel trumpet across the littered dinner table. His favourite record âNight Hymn at Seaâ, sung by Clara Butt and Kennerly Rumford, wheezed out across the hut.
I heard Victor Henneker, in the bunk beside mine, mutter, âClara Butt is a dismal old tartâ and begin to sing softly a song of Gaby Deslysâ.
âAll the boys just come and stare â¦
Sur le plage, sur le plage
Men are full of persiflage .
When I take my bain de mer
All the boys just come and stare â¦â
Lost in images of Gaby Deslysâ rich little body, I closed my eyes.
Then Dryden had the night to himself. On the hour he left the hut by the laboratory door to view the great prismatic veils of green and gold and blue that hung vertically from the stars. There were means of making observations from Waldo Warwickâs meteorology-room if the weather was too bitter, but that night of Hennekerâs penultimate sleep was clear and still, and the temperature a mere â38 degrees F.
I didnât sleep well. Not by Antarctic standards anyhow, for sleep there â when it comes â is deep and long. I was awake at 7 a.m. I could hear faint sounds of the cook, Walter OâReilly, clanging his pans next door. I was awake when AB Russell Stigworth came in quiet as a church warden at 7.30, broom in hand. He swept the floor four times a day and washed the mess traps and tidied, a thin-faced little man who prided himself on his work and grew radiant when Stewart and Dryden or any of us praised him for it.
He spent so much time on these duties I wondered if he had seen or absorbed the auroras or been awed by the ice shelf or the mountains across the sound with the moonlight on them. What would he tell his grandchildren of his Antarctic experience? I suppose he could always tell them Sir Eugene Stewart had called him a fine hand with a broom. I studied Stigworth out of one eye as he shunted his broom through the debris of the mid-winter feast, extracted Beckâs Schnapps bottle from the floor and put it in his hessian bag of rubbish.
At 8 a.m. I heard the men next door rousing and, soon after, a faint whinny from the stables as Alexandrei arrived to feed the ponies their morning hay. They slept standing all night, those ponies. The floor of the stable was too cold for them to lie on, but Warren Mead said they were comfortable and had a locking joint in their knees that took the weight off their hoofs. It was the way they slept in Siberia, said Mead, since the time they were foals.
A little later I heard the dogs greet Nikolai. They occupied a slight incline to the north of the hut, most of them leashed to two thin cables. They too were from Siberia and were all post dogs used to deliver mail, or else the offspring of post dogs. When blizzards came they sat and let the dry snow cover them and, so insulated, slept the time away. When Nikolai came to them each morning with their frozen seal meat they applauded him madly. Some of their howling was like that of ordinary dogs, but they could also sing better than a coyote, and keen better than a wolf.
Next I heard the thud of the men lifting slabs of snow, cut with coal shovels out of the ice embankment behind the hut, into the snow-burner.
Every morning âthe strongmenâ â the haulers and sledders like POs Mulroy, Wallace and Jones, had to melt down a dayâs supply in a blubber-fed burner near the acetylene tanks. The water dripped slowly from the burner into a (somehow never full) tank in the galley area and from it Bernard Mulroy issued us our daily ration.
At 8.30 I saw Eugene Stewart emerge from his curtained compartment and cross to the stove, rubbing his hands gently, like some old monk to whom even the cold is a gift. Stigworth the sweeper brought in two
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