The Pole by Eric Walters Page B

we’d been so firmly stuck in the ice that wedidn’t move at all—we were locked in place. When that happened, the Captain had to back his way out and look for another way through.
    I’d heard grumblings from some of the sailors that they thought we weren’t going to be able to make it to Cape Sheridan. I didn’t have any doubts. I knew that Captain Bartlett had done it before with this same ship, so why shouldn’t he be able to do it again? If any man could do it, it was him. I figured if worst came to worst Captain Bartlett would climb out and walk along the ice, towing the boat behind him. I thought even the ice might be at least a little afraid of him and would get out of his way when he yelled. After all, there wasn’t a man aboard, including Commander Peary, who didn’t give the Captain a wide berth when he was angry about something.
    Sometimes people did go out on the ice.They used axes and gigantic metal pry bars to chop and hack and create a little channel of open water for us to force our way through. Once, they even resorted to using a dynamite charge to blow up a place where the ice had rafted together and was too thick to chop through. There was a tremendous explosion and pieces of ice rained down from the sky.
    I hadn’t seen much of the Captain since we’d left Etah, ten days ago, but I’d certainly heard him. He was practically living up in the crow’s nest, scouting out the best route, scouring the horizon, looking for littleseams of open water or places where the ice wasn’t as thick. Angus had explained to me that newly formed ice was a different colour—or actually a different tint, more blue than white. I couldn’t really see that much of a difference but the experienced sailors could— especially Captain Bartlett. He could just tell.
    â€œDanny!” Angus yelled out. He was holding two shovels. “Give us a ’and, mate.”
    I ran over and grabbed the second shovel. I had expected I might have lots of different duties on this trip, including shovelling snow. But I hadn’t expected to be shovelling what I knew I was about to be shovelling. I followed Angus to the aft deck, which was entirely filled with dogs—two hundred and twenty-six sledge dogs.There was practically no spot on the deck that wasn’t filled with a dog—or dog crap.That was what the shovels were for.We had to continually push it overboard. Angus said if we didn’t he figured the weight of it would capsize the boat. I knew he was kidding me, but it was still amazing how much there was.
    â€œQuite the stink, ain’t it, boy?” Angus said.
    â€œWorst thing I ever done smelled.”
    â€œCan ya imagine how much worse it would be if we wasn’t doin’ this a few times a day?” he said.
    â€œDon’t want to imagine that.”
    â€œI’ll start toward the front an’ you starts at the back, boy,” Angus ordered.
    I nodded and carefully tried to wind my way through the crowd of dogs. I didn’t want to be stepping on anything I shouldn’t, but my bigger fear was coming too close to one of the bad-tempered dogs. There had been more than one person bitten, and I’d had a couple of close calls myself, including having one dog rip a piece out of the seat of my pants.Thank goodness it hadn’t ripped a piece out of my seat!
    At first the dogs had all looked pretty much the same to me, but now I could tell many of them apart. I certainly knew the ones that were to be avoided, and which ones were gentle and friendly. I’d taken to bringing out extra scraps from the galley and feeding the nice ones.
    As bad as the smell was, the noise was almost as terrible. The dogs could bark up a storm. And there always seemed to be one or two of them snarling or yelping or snapping at the others.
    The funniest thing I ever saw involved the dogs and a big seal. The seal had heard the dogs barking and kept