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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.
