Shackleton's Disillusionment

A (very) short story..

After all the privations the team had suffered over the past months, Ernest was at a loss as to why they had disappeared. Only yesterday they'd held a vote of confidence in his leadership in letting him overrule them in his choice of campsite for the evening– not the shelter from the cruelty of the Southern ocean that was offered by the lee of a small bluff, the Bosun's choice, nor the cook's choice, a spot right on the beach, convenient for the quick despatching and preparing of the fish that they would surely be able to land, but the unpromising crush of rocks, held together by robust gorse, where they had finally struck on

So now where were they? Barely a trace of them, aside from a couple of empty pemmican tins and ski equipment, surplus to requirements during the summer months in South Georgia, and yet Ernest discounted the idea of a mutiny out of hand.

His curiosity therefore could hardly fail to be drawn by a small square of yellow light which appeared at just the spot where the horizon melded into the grey lowlands, which a short walk revealed as coming from a house – no, a hotel, the word emblazoned in no less than three languages, the proprietors no doubt ready to take any and every business which might drift in from the sea.

The vantage point offered by a steep, glaciated, geological feature which he'd forgotten the name of enabled the now deeply puzzled Ernest to look straight through the open window, from which he'd already caught bursts of aggressive, forced laughter, only to see the rest of the crew, very drunk, and clearly happy to have found environs which wouldn't have been out of place in yorkshire or guernsey, even more so that they were free of their leader's jurisdiction at last.

For the first time in his life Ernest felt truly left out.