Innocent Murderer. Suzanne F. Kingsmill

very stiff legged.

      As I approached the dog again I heard some piece of machinery, or maybe it was several, come alive in a gentle hum. He’d begun to shiver and this time he let me pick him up without a protest. He was whimpering now, trembling and wet, and I put him inside my jacket where he took up hardly any room, but he felt like a little ice ball next to my heart.

      I stood up and looked over the pack ice, wondering with a shiver what it must have been like to be Franklin, lost in this cruel white desert. That’s when I heard the drums begin to reel in the anchor. I wheeled to look at the ship, my heart and the dog’s wildly beating. I ran back toward the gangway and stared in horror at what I saw, or rather at what I did not see. The gangway was being raised. There was no way up and the pack ice and the ship had drifted away from each other.

      I began to yell, my voice sounding lonely and useless in the eerie dawnish light, the sun sending shafts of golden light across the ship. It must have been about 3:00 a.m.

      When would they notice I was gone? Maybe not until 9:00 a.m. It could be twelve hours before they doubled back along their course and found me — assuming they did find me. My piece of pack ice wasn’t standing still. It was drifting with the current. I weighed my options and eyed the watery distance between myself and the ship.

      Even if I could survive the cold of a five-foot swim, once I got to the ship there was nothing to hold onto.

      I yelled and yelled until my voice was hoarse. At one point I thought I saw someone looking my way, stand–ing partly in shadow near the controls for the gangway.

      I renewed my yelling, but I must have been mistaken because they seemed to melt away. I turned and watched the anchor line going up and thought, “Is this how I’m going to die?”

      The dog whimpered in my arms, bringing me back to my senses. I had to do something. I couldn’t just stand there. I walked along the pack ice towards the bow, yell–ing the whole way and scanning the ship for anything that might rescue me, but the noise of the engine drowned out my voice. I might as well have been yelling at a rock for all the help it would bring.

      Again I became aware of the anchor line being reeled out of the water and panicked. The ship was leaving me here to freeze to death, just like Franklin. I looked at the chain for some moments before my mind got itself around it. My heart, already racing, had gone into over–drive. I wondered if I was crazy, but I couldn’t see a bet–ter way out of the situation. I ran along the pack ice to the anchor chain. Just three feet away, in a calm sea, if I had no choice I could do it. Even with the dog, I could do it. I was small enough. I put the dog in the hood of my jacket and before I could think anymore I backed up and ran, planting my feet at the edge of the ice at the last moment and jumping out and up, my hands reach–ing high.

      Both my hands grabbed a link in the chain and immediately began to slip. I heard the little dog yip and then start whimpering. Frantically I coiled my legs around the chain and forced one hand through to grab the other hand. I looked up and saw the gaping hole, the chain ahead of me sliding into it, the rusty stains from where the anchor had rested against the side of the ship at sea. Slowly the anchor chain raised me up. As I entered the hole the chain slid sideways, catching three fingers of my left hand that were clasped with my right, and I screamed. I nearly let go in pain — which made me almost cry out again.

      There was no danger of me slipping into the sea unless I lost my three fingers, which I decided wasn’t a good thing to dwell on. As my body entered the hole I had to let go of the chain with my legs and hung from my arms.

      The dog was no longer whimpering, just shivering like aspen leaves in the wind, but I really had no mind for it or anything else except the light at the end of the tun–nel. I had no idea how slowly an anchor comes back to its mooring, but by the time my head broke out into the light my arms were screaming with pain. And suddenly, as the anchor chain hauled my body out of the hole my hands were clear, the awful, grinding pressure gone. I had the strongest urge to let go then, but I hung on until the chain pulled me clear of the tunnel and I flopped down on the deck like a stranded fish.