Everland by Rebecca Hunt

Author:Rebecca Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2015-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

29

March 1913

That was rather explicit,’ Napps said.

‘Knew you’d like it,’ Millet-Bass said without looking up. In order to solve the problem of his hand skidding down on to the blade of his clasp-knife, he was trussing the handle with a thick bandage of string.

Unlike Napps and Dinners, who could only remember parts of a few hymns, Millet-Bass had a seemingly unlimited catalogue of sailors’ songs. They all centred on a range of themes so narrowly specific, inappropriate and sinfully easy to visualize it made Dinners’s face boil red with embarrassment. Not that Dinners really minded. Singing at least stopped them talking, and the only thing they ever talked about was the storm. Feverishly discussing the storm from every conceivable angle was their main recreation. And whatever the angle, whatever the premise, the end result for Dinners was always skull-crushing despair.

The blizzard had now continued through four days and nights. In trying to make the supplies they had with them last, the men’s meals had dwindled into spoonfuls of pemmican and quarter-cups of water. Although the tent was designed to withstand one-hundred-knot winds, it shook and wrenched at the guy ropes. The walls strained concave, the whole flimsy-feeling structure threatening to lift airborne and vanish into the dark with a snap of fabric.

Millet-Bass put a rag into the candle tray to soak up the melted wax, then transferred the rag to his thickly bound knife handle and rubbed the wax in with his thumb. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he said as he worked. ‘The air’s almost clean in here.’

Dinners understood that Millet-Bass was referring to their curious lack of odour and pressed his nose into the friendly dirtiness of his top. The reek of their long-unwashed bodies had waned to a point where it was barely noticeable. Napps and Millet-Bass said it was a blessing, and had devised various theories to explain its odd disappearance, but Dinners thought their smell had been comforting and unmistakably human, and he secretly mourned its absence.

‘What are you thinking of now?’ Dinners said swiftly, filling the lull in conversation before Napps could mention the storm. He liked to ask this question despite the predictably monotonous replies. Dinners would always volunteer that he was thinking of Elizabeth, Napps always answered that he was thinking of Rosie, and Millet-Bass always lied.

‘No one. Swords,’ Millet-Bass would say, thinking of Grace. Or he’d say, ‘Pig farming.’ He’d say, ‘No one, I’m inventing an irrigation system,’ thinking constantly of Grace.

‘Irrigation? How you entertain yourself with that is a mystery,’ Napps said.

‘Personally, I enjoy it,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘I enjoy anything which distracts me from remembering that we’ll all die on Everland.’ Smiling in the furiously merry way of the obstinate pessimist, he lay back for a session of daydreaming about Grace. With a shave and a smart set of clothes, he thought, and no chat about collectible guns or field-dressing carcasses. He was sure his nervousness around Grace could be overcome with practice, so he rehearsed various scenarios. He pictured them

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