The Lost Men by Kelly Tyler-Lewis

Author:Kelly Tyler-Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

On March 16, Mackintosh lay in the tent. Eight days before, he had watched the party plod north until they disappeared and he was alone. The worst of it was the terrible suspense of wondering how Spencer-Smith fared. For over five weeks, the chaplain had lain in his bag, uttering virtually no complaint and showing far more concern for his fellows than himself. Then, in the wake of the great blizzard, he had questioned why Mackintosh had allowed him to march beyond 81° when he was so obviously ailing. Though not intended as a rebuke, Spencer-Smith’s plaintive question cut Mackintosh to the bone. It had been his choice to see the sledging through, no matter the cost. He was awash in regret. Alone in the tent, he thought of his wife and daughters at home in England. A year before, he had questioned his very reasons for coming to this place. “How one longs to be out of this infernal region—the dear ones at Home what are they doing?” Now he quietly gave up hope. Joyce’s party had been gone far too long. Once again, he wrote last letters to his loved ones and waited for his end.

Mackintosh was outside the tent when he heard the dogs approaching from the north. He seemed in a daze when Joyce, Richards, and Wild approached. “Told Mackintosh of Smith’s death and it did not seem to impress him much,” Richards recounted. Joyce found him “a little peculiar.” Mackintosh told them he had not been alone. There were others in the tent with him, voices he knew must be imaginary, but nonetheless he felt compelled to answer. Richards urged fried seal meat on him and they strapped him to the sledge. The trio turned in eighteen miles that day, and twenty miles the next. On the morning of March 18, the temperature plummeted to minus forty degrees. The sun had set by the time they neared the hut. They found Hayward little changed.

“As there is no news here of the ship & we cannot see her we surmise she is gone down with all hands,” Joyce wrote after a search turned up no message from Stenhouse. “I cannot see there is any chance of her being afloat. I don’t know how the Skipper will take it.”

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