Me As an Ice Beast

It was about a risky search by the then Captain Wrickbook to the North Pole for supposedly thousands of gold nuggets.

Probably the place with the most gold in the world.

Since I had nothing left to lose, I didn't hesitate long to sign up. "If I was going to die, let it be at the sea," I told myself.

The Siren was a fast ship, so in a matter of two weeks we were skirting the North Pole, just as the captain had promised.

However, there was much to repair on the ship. Every wave in that sea seemed to tear various parts of it.

On the other hand, Wrickbook had managed to keep that crew of freaks calm, but as soon as the first nuggets began to be found, many attitudes changed.

I was trying to get my picking job done quickly, so I could get back to my hammock in the hold. The weather was awful and I just wished I was back in Portsmouth.

I would venture to say that, before long, the Siren was more gold than wood. I had collected up to half a kilogram of gold nuggets. But, due to the same reason, I had become a center of attraction for the other opportunists.

Then, one night when it was snowing heavily and the sea seemed to be freezing second by the second, a man named Johnson came to talk to me.

"You're Van Crugde, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I'm afraid this ship won't make Portsmouth."

"What do you say?"

"Come on, have you been sailing since yesterday, you bastard? It's all illegal. There will be no return to England, but an escape to the Caribbean," this Johnson confessed to me, finishing a bottle of wine as if it were water.

"Doesn't sound like a bad destination to me," I replied with a cold expression.

"Only a few will get there anyway," replied the man reeling in the waves.

"What do you want from me, you insufferable man?" I inquired already standing up and without much patience.

"A bet!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Heads or tails, two out of three! Whoever wins, gets the other's nuggets," the guy told me with obvious malice.

I just laughed in his face and spent the last of my energy that day going to sleep.

However, there was no rest for my exhausted body. At some point in the night, Johnson, along with two others, dragged me out of my hammock with a pistol pointing it at me and taking me to the deck.

"I'm going to make a fuss, even if I get shot," I said in a huge rage.

"Speak up, you bastard! Where are your nuggets?Drop them now!" Johnson's companions told me.

Even though I feared death by a bullet or the freezing breeze, my body did not stop feeling adrenaline for having the slightest chance to triumph over man and nature at the same time. That was why in an instant I replied to Johnson:

"Guess what! I returned the half kilogram of gold to these deadly waters before you appeared down there. No one will have them."

Those were my last words on board before jumping off to starboard so that soon Captain Wrickbook would know what kind of people were left on the Siren.

However, the worst was yet to come.

After that, I only remember swimming in such waters until my body became paralyzed. From one moment to the next, I was no longer aware of my existence.

I woke up I don't know how much time later on a shore where the water, still frozen, managed to melt little by little the beautiful layer of snow that had accumulated on that cruel and distant land.

My thirst was soon quenched, but my hunger did not stop growing. It seemed that my stomach was swallowing itself and I had only a few hours left to survive.

In such agony, I managed to walk a little to try to reach something, but instead that something found me first: I felt something heavy and with extraordinary power pushed one of my legs. Quickly I fell, turned around and realized it was a bear, a bear as white as snow.

It appeared to be young and playful, but even in its youthful innocence I felt it could kill me. "Is this my final fate?" I asked myself before I continued to be investigated by that beast of the ice.

I must have smelled so bad that that creature soon stopped sniffing me. It made a strange sound, moved several meters away and from the deep snow beyond the shore, pulled out a dead seal.

I thought at that moment that after the seal lunch, I would become the dessert, but then the bear was soon staring at me without putting a single tooth to its deceased prey. He was inviting me to eat from his plate!

My hands... I didn't know anymore if they were flesh or ice, but still feeling that I could use them to lift or grab something, I reached into the pocket where I remembered putting a knife.

With all my strength, I pulled it out and began to use it to get flesh and fat which gradually brought my soul back into my body. I never felt so beastly and human at the same time.

Thus, with the unexpected company of a polar bear, I was surviving that hostile place made for few. Without realizing it, I became just another bear. I slept, hunted and swam into the water like the one who had given me a new life.

However, on one of those many white mornings, I woke up in a nightmare: hunters had killed the polar bear right next to me. They spoke a language I could not understand. Although they had not shot me, I felt as if they had done so. For the one who had saved me from death lay there staring at me with sad, unmoving eyes and I had no chance to save him.

Those hunters came to get me out of there and a few days later, they contacted an English ship where I returned to normal lands even though I was an abnormal then.

Since that experience I have been nicknamed "Frozen". I never recovered a finger and a toe, nor did I ever again have a different face, burned by the cold, from those who live in the white lands. That is why everyone has recognized me on all the ships I have embarked on, even this, the Flash HMS.

This story was inspired by prompt #47 Unlikely Hero