The North Water

CHAPTER SIX

Brownlee dreams he is drinking blood out of an old shoe. It is O’Neill’s blood, but O’Neill is dead now from the cold and from drinking seawater. They pass the shoe around, and each man, trembling, drinks from it in turn. The blood is warm and stains their lips and teeth like wine. What the fuck, Brownlee thinks, what the fuck? A man has to live, another hour, another minute even. What else is there to do? There are casks of bread floating in the hold, he knows, barrels of beer also, but no one has the strength or cunning to reach them. If they had had more time — but in the darkness it was pandemonium. Twelve feet of water in the hold and in a quarter of an hour they were over with nothing but the starboard bow left showing above the rampant waves. O’Neill is dead but his blood is still warm, the last man licks at the insole, rubs his fingers round the inner heel. The color is startling. Everything else in the world is gray or black or brown but not the blood. It is a godsend, Brownlee thinks. He says it out loud: “It is a godsend.” The men look at him. He turns to the surgeon and gives his instructions. He feels O’Neill’s blood in his throat and in his stomach, spreading through him, giving him new life. The surgeon bleeds them all, and then the surgeon bleeds himself. Some men mix their own blood with flour to make a paste, others guzzle it down like drunkards straight from the shoe. It is not a sin, he tells himself, there is no sin left now, there is only the blood and the water and the ice; there is only life and death and the gray-green spaces in between. He will not die, he tells himself, not now, not ever. When he is thirsty, he will drink his own blood; when he is hungry, he will eat his own flesh. He will grow enormous from the feasting, he will expand to fill the empty sky.