Their boat journey across this sea was a superb achievement of being-in-the-world. The man whose skill at sea made it possible was Frank Arthur Worsley. Shackleton had never made a small boat journey of any length. On the second day out he said to Worsley, “Do you know I know nothing about boat sailing?” And Worsley said, “All right, Boss. I do, this is my third boat journey.” And Shackleton was ruffled and said, “I’m telling you that I don’t.” He was saying that even though he was the boss, it was Worsley who was now responsible for their success or failure; Shackleton was now the student, Worsley the teacher, and Shackleton wanted Worsley to know that he knew it.
And Worsley rose to the challenge. He navigated them across twelve hundred kilometers of empty ocean to a small solitary island less than a hundred kilometers long: British feng shui in its highest manifestation.
Not because of the technical aspects of navigation, you understand, which involve mathematical formulas that can be mastered by anyone; a child’s first wristwatch could do the calculations now. But before the calculations have to come the data, and this involves taking a reading with a sextant to determine how far above the horizon the sun is at a particular time of day. With that knowledge one can then calculate one’s latitude and longitude. But the calculations rely crucially on getting accurate data in the first place. The sextant has to be level with the circle of the horizon; tangent to a point on a giant sphere. One has to see and feel the world, and one’s body in it, with exquisite accuracy! And Worsley had nowhere to make his readings but on his knees, on the bucking canvas deck of their wave-tossed boat, held upright in the grasp of his companions, as both his hands were needed for the sextant. All this in the very few moments of the journey when the sun was shining through the clouds, and in continuously wild seas. What is level when dancing on a cork that is shooting up and down such a violent sea? I might as well be asked to do it here, spinning about in the clouds like a bird! This is the aspect of Worsley’s navigation that is so astonishing and beautiful. He had to feel his place on the planet, he had to make himself sensitive to the gravitational pull to the point where he could tell, with only a bucketing horizon to help him, when he was upright and the sextant level. At that moment he “shot a reading” as they put it, with a quick glance at the device’s curved scale. This number then went through the elementary formulas, along with the precise time of day—note that their clock was a life-or-death item for them, essential for locating themselves in the flow of timespace—and the figures were matched with a book of tables to produce a latitude and longitude. All this in mist and fog and cloud and rain and sleet, flying up and down on the coiled surface of the water.
And yet they made landfall. Worsley wrote, “Wonderful to say, the landfall was quite correct, though we were a little astern through imperfect rating of my chronometer at Elephant Island.” Ha! Because of the chronometer! But happily we must grant him this one touch of pride, so well-earned. Wonderful to say “wonderful to say” in these circumstances, where the achievement saved their lives. Sometimes we are given opportunities, and we take them and make something fine, and the story of that will live forever; and so we have our boddhisattva moment.
After their wonderful landfall, then, and the incredible crossing of South Georgia Island, the Norwegians there took the six men to the Falklands, and Shackleton went into a rage of negotiations, there in the middle of the First World War when few people cared what happened to twenty men; he obtained the aid of no less than four ships before one was finally able to penetrate the pack ice, and save the marooned men before winter came down on them. And so the greatest engagement with Antarctica in all of history came to a close.
And then these men returned to a world tearing itself apart. They never made it back to their lost paradise. Where we go next we never know; plans are only plans. I remember vaguely a story I seem always to have known, encountered perhaps in the heavy colored pages of some old children’s book—about a party of travelers lost in polar regions, who after struggling over icy passes stumble on a valley green amid glaciers, warmed by a hot springs; and they find the oasis is home to people descended from Eskimo and Norse, living in peace cut off from the world; and they leave the valley, why I can’t recall, perhaps to bring back family and friends—but can never afterward retrace their lost steps. And only the story survives.
Now we in this moment are off through space, whirled by the wind to our next landfall, so soon having left that bubble of peace; so sure that a path thus traversed would never be lost to us. But glaciers and peaks are never the same glaciers and peaks. Even if we look and look all the rest of our lives, bubble of peace, how to tell? Where to find?
“Wade! Are you there Wade!”
“I’m here, Phil. Speak up if you can, it’s kind of loud here.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in a blimp.”
“A blimp! Whose blimp?”
“Addie’s blimp. We’re in a cloud right now, Phil, it’s kind of windy. You’ll have to really speak up if you want me to hear you.”
“What’s that?”
“Speak up!”
“Where are you, Wade? Where is this blimp?”
“We’re somewhere in Antarctica, Phil. More than that I can’t say. We tried to take the hovercraft down to Shackleton Camp, but it fell into a crevasse. Then we tried to walk to Shackleton Camp, but we were overtaken by a storm. A very windy storm. You can hear what that’s like. Then we took refuge in a rubble line, and after that we got rescued by some people who are living out here in the Transantarctic Mountains, living on their own.”
“Jesus, Wade, it sounds great! Are these the people who did the ecotage and took all the stuff that’s been missing?”
“They say not. Apparently there are factions out here—”
“Not there too!”
“—yes, inevitably, and the group that rescued us claims another faction has been stealing stuff, and they claim ignorance of the ecotage, though apparently the other faction helped the ecoteurs somehow. We still don’t know what’s really happened.”
“Well you’re big news, Wade, let me tell you that. I’ve been calling you every five minutes for the past day!”
“Sorry I’ve been out of touch.”
“Not your fault! So where are you headed now? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know where we’re headed, but I think we are being taken to witness the exiling of this rogue faction from Antarctica.”
“Uh oh. That sounds like it could be trouble, Wade. You watch out.”
“I will.”
“Tell me what you’re seeing now, then, if you don’t know where you are.”
“Well, we’re in Addie’s blimp, and right now we’re above the clouds. It’s very sunny up here. We’re looking down on cloudtops that cover the land as far as I can see. It’s windy. There are some peaks sticking out of the clouds to our right.”
“All right!” Addie said over the intercom. “Let’s go get ’em.”
Wade stuck his wrist phone under the right side of his headset. “How are you going to kick people out of Antarctica?” he asked Addie.
“Oh we have our ways.”
“Which are?”
“We find them and ambush them.”
“Is this going to be dangerous?” Val asked from beside Addie, sounding surprised.
“Dangerous? Oh no, not dangerous at all!” Again Addie’s sweet laugh. “Nothing we do down here is dangerous, oh my no!”