Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [127]
“Lynne, you can stop now,” Dr. Keatinge shouted. His voice was heavy with concern. He was afraid that my temperature would drop more. He hadn’t been able to get a reading.
“You know, if you stop now, you will have succeeded,” Dr. Keatinge said.
“How far is it to the snowbank?” I asked.
Vladimir asked a crewman, then told me, “Half a mile.”
“Bill, it’s okay if I stop now?” I asked Dr. Keatinge, trying to decide what to do.
“Yes. Yes. You can finish right there,” he said, pointing to a rock.
We were fifty yards from our goal.
“She’s heading in to shore,” I heard Dr. Keatinge say, his voice filled with relief.
But when I turned to breathe, I saw the bright snow on the beach and I saw the little black dots that must have been the Soviet people standing there. I asked myself, Will you be satisfied if you stop now? Everything you have done has been about extending yourself, about going beyond borders. You’ve had to go beyond your physical and psychological borders. Everything everyone has done for you and for themselves to this point has been about extending themselves, too, beyond their own borders, about believing when there was little to believe in. But now you can stop. You’re only ten yards from shore. You can stop now and know that you have succeeded.
God, I want to. I’ve got to think about how cold I’m going to be when I climb out of the water. I took a few more strokes forward. You’ve got to decide now, I told myself. In a moment the crew will be preparing to land.
“You can finish on that rock,” Dr. Keatinge coaxed. “It’s the flat one. Over there. It should be smooth.”
I knew I would regret it all my life if I didn’t push on. I turned left and began paralleling shore. I glanced at Dr. Keatinge. He looked surprised, then worried. He must have thought I was becoming disoriented and going into hypothermia.
“Bill, it’s all the way or no way,” I shouted.
He grinned, and the crew started cheering and clapping and waving their arms in the air. I rode their wave of energy, took it all in, let it carry me. They continued cheering. Oh, did I need their support.
Look into their faces. Look at their smiles. Draw from their energy, I coached myself. But it was really hard swimming. The current was flowing into us at one knot, diminishing my speed by half. We were moving in slow motion, and all I wanted to do was to get there.
Dennis Campion had said that the current might be easier closer to shore, so I angled in. The crew thought I was getting ready to stop. “No. We’re not stopping. I’m just trying to find a way to break through the current,” I said. It took so much energy to talk.
Dennis was right; it made all the difference. We started moving faster. And then I heard Jack Kelley shouting, “Look, you can see the people on the snowbank. They’re waving!” I counted thirty black figures on the bright white snowbank.
I looked at my hands pulling through the water. They looked like the purple-gray hands of a cadaver. My shoulders were blue, the color of blueberries, and my arms, legs, and trunk were splotchy white. They felt heavy, like meat taken out of a freezer. My thighs could no longer feel water being pushed past them. My face no longer felt like a face; it felt detached from my head. I started swimming faster, faster. Looking up, I could see the colors of the Soviet people’s clothes, red, blue, green, and black. And they were moving. They were running, slipping on the ice, picking their way down to the water’s edge.
Dr. Nyboer and Dr. Keatinge shouted, “Sprint! Sprint in to shore!”
That sure sounded great to me.
The journalists’ umiak zoomed ahead as men in military uniforms set out small wooden ramps for the umiaks to land on.
The journalists were leaping out of their boats, onto shore. Dr. Keatinge and Dr. Nyboer were leaning over the pontoon right beside me. Their smiles were very big.
Then