The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 62
The hospital column ordered to traverse East Falkland’s No Man s Land was commanded by a captain in the Irregulars, a nephew of the Falklander commander, Brackenbury. He was a butcher who encouraged his men to shoot at will at the beasties who showed themselves to our line of march. I thought this hideous, and also stupid. There were less than a dozen sound men in the column—the bulk wounded, with women and children tending a flock of sheep we drove before us. The treeless moors made our group helplessly naked. We marched and shot all day, up the muddy sheep runs and into the foothills of the gray-green and snowcapped central mountain range. Our line of sight was impeded only by folds in the land and a patchy ground mist. I asked one trooper if our tactics—sniping at the beasties—did not invite trouble from them, whom we could see camped in large numbers way down below us along the north shore of the island. Because of this conversation, later that day the butcher challenged my loyalty and deprived me, Otter Ransom, and Lazarus of our weapons.
After that, we were used as cart beasts, all pain, up and down the rolling tracks, leaving the foothills to make for the big mountains to the east. On the second day, we crossed a rocky waste pitted with bogs and piles of sheep skeletons. The smell of battle drifted over us from the south, and we swung away from a pass and made for a path north of the range. With nightfall, we could see hundreds of campfires below us, above us, all about us. We three were assigned burial duty. When we finished, we were banished to the off-loaded hospital carts and given small rations. We pulled blood-soaked sheepskins over us to keep out the howling winds.
The beasties attacked before first light. Iceberg woke me with her paw. The wind at first covered the shots and screams. The battle centered on the food carts that had been set in the middle of the main camp, fifty yards off from us. They came in waves down the hillside, men and boys and women, filthy and slowfooted, a few weapons, mostly clubs and fists. The melee was savage, awful noises—growls, snarls, whines. We three rolled under an empty cart with Iceberg. We watched the butcher command his men to form a circle around the tarpaulin, where the wounded were laid out. We watched a tide of flesh crash over a wall of flesh. It was cold-making, the wind and the dying, those beastlike noises.
Longfaeroe appeared out of the dark. He carried a torch, led several children and women by the hand. He must have seen Iceberg’s eyes flash in reflection of the torch, because he beckoned us to him. He had the women pile crates together, which he smashed with his foot, lit for a fire. This, with all the rest continuing. We stayed under the cart. There was nothing between us and the massacre but heath, wind, and Longfaeroe. He organized the people near the fire, perhaps ten yards from us. He told them to bow their heads. He filled his lungs and sang out clearly, and as he did, first I, then Otter Ransom and Lazarus, crawled over to listen to his prayer: “Rescue me from my enemies, O Jehovah! Be my tower of strength against all who assail me! Rescue me from evildoers! Deliver me from men of blood! Savage men lie in wait for me! They lie in ambush to attack me, for no fault or guilt of mine! O Jehovah, innocent as these be, they take post against us. . . .”
They did pass over us; at least, they let us be. We huddled there, praying with Longfaeroe as the sky lightened to the east. We fed the fire and wept. It was shock, and eventually we did respond to the cries of the wounded. I have no explanation why we were not murdered. I think of Longfaeroe’s psalm, 59 in the Fiddle Bible, which concludes with celebration “when morning comes,” and makes much of Jehovah as “the strong tower.” I assumed then that Longfaeroe saw himself as a strong tower too. He sat there, stern, wind-whipped, and faced down that murder. I put weight on him for it.
Thinking of that psalm, I ask myself what protected me. It was certainly not true that I was without fault, or guilt, for I had likely killed that stranger in Vexbeggar. Perhaps the lesson I took most completely from that heath at the time was that it was vain of me to try to tally innocence and guilt, good and bad, pleasure and pain in a formula that can explain why some men die horribly, ripped and smashed, and others walk through slaughter unscarred. I saw that there is a divine justice that has judgments beyond my intellect. The Norse in me then, as it does now, offered luck for proof. Though that can seem inadequate, it is all I know to say of the mystery of how I survived that hospital column.
Longfaeroe took command of the remnant. We pulled a single cart. The women led the children. It was not right to leave the dead uncovered. We had to flee, down into the ravine and up with the sun toward another mountain. There is one more aspect of that episode that I must record, for it signified for me a beginning of my understanding of Lazarus, and of myself. It was night again before Lazarus, Otter Ransom, and I could talk intelligibly. We made the