Drax kills two Yaks and Cavendish, then escapes

Henry Drax’s escape from the camp turns a proposed departure into a sequence of killings: after freeing himself from his manacles, he kills two Yaks, then kills Cavendish and leaves with the dogs and sledge. The next morning, the surviving crew find Cavendish dead, the Yaks dead in their snow house, and Drax gone. The episode makes escape an act of preparation and concealment, while its delayed discovery leaves the men to piece together a world whose apparent order has abruptly failed.

A Bargain That Breaks Down

Drax tells Cavendish that he plans to leave the following morning with the person departing on a sledge. He says the arrangement has already been made and asks for a file to cut his chains, together with a moment when Cavendish will look the other way. Cavendish does not agree to help. His response frames Drax’s choice as preferring life among the Yaks to hanging as an Englishman, but the exchange does not resolve into a pact.

The plan Drax later carries out is therefore not a straightforward escape assisted by Cavendish. In the night, Cavendish watches him work at his restraints; when Drax finally approaches him, Cavendish is not waiting for the signal Drax says he has not yet given. Their opposing expectations sharpen the scene: Drax has been quietly preparing a way out, while Cavendish has observed his efforts without becoming his accomplice.

Breaking Free and Taking the Sledge

The cold limits Drax’s work. He can remain outside for only about twenty minutes before losing feeling in his hands and feet, so he makes four trips during the night to free himself. Each time he picks his way among the sleeping men, then returns to the tent stiff with frost. The men grumble as he moves past them, but do not wake; Cavendish alone watches. The repeated trips make the escape a labor of patience rather than a sudden break from confinement.

Once the manacles are off, Drax experiences himself as newly enlarged and young, and as no longer subject to the future’s power or meaning. That inward shift accompanies practical preparation: he bundles his clothes, keeps the file, and goes to the snow house where the two Yaks are sleeping. In the darkness he locates them by their positions, touches a sleeping bag, and takes out the foot-long file with its pointed end. He wakes the elder man and kills him; when the younger stirs, Drax silences him and kills him too.

Drax then uses what the killings make available to him. He removes the elder man’s anorak and puts it on, takes blubber knives and a rifle, and returns outside. He retrieves the deerskin traces, wakes the dogs one by one, and harnesses them. He also removes the dead men’s boots, trousers, and mittens and packs them into a sleeping bag. The snow house and sledge thus become part of the escape’s material logistics: clothing, tools, dogs, and transport are gathered before Drax confronts Cavendish.

Cavendish’s Death

Drax approaches Cavendish with the sleeping bag and invites him to look inside. While Cavendish bends to see what it contains, Drax moves aside and kills him with a single stroke of a blubber knife. The confrontation ends the earlier possibility of cooperation, but it also leaves Cavendish no opportunity to call the others or stop Drax’s departure. Drax turns Cavendish over and searches the pockets of Brownlee’s greatcoat.

Afterward, Drax tells Cavendish that the plan was not his own idea but Cavendish’s alone. The claim cannot change what has happened: Cavendish is dead, and Drax is preparing to leave. Its placement gives the killing a final verbal reversal. Drax assigns responsibility to the man he has just killed, converting their failed bargain into an accusation that only the surviving speaker can make.

Discovery and Aftermath

The crew find Cavendish’s body at first light. At first they assume the Yaks killed him; only when they discover that both Yaks are also dead do they recognize that Drax is missing. Their initial explanation is overturned by the scene itself. The deaths do not immediately tell them what happened, and the men stand stunned, unable to reconcile the bodies with the sequence of events that has taken place during the night.

Within an hour, Otto directs the burial of Cavendish in a shallow trench at the headland, covered with stones taken from the cliff. The crew do not bury the Yaks. Because they regard the Yaks as heathens and do not know their funerary rites, they block the snow-house entrance and collapse its roof and walls over the bodies, making a crude, temporary tomb. Otto then gathers the men to pray for mercy and for the dead. The different treatments of the bodies register the limits of the survivors’ knowledge as well as their grief and distress: they bury Cavendish according to their own practice, while the Yaks are left inside the place where they were killed.

The narration withholds the full consequence of Drax’s actions until the crew discover the bodies together. That delay first allows Cavendish to appear as a possible victim of the Yaks, then reverses the assumption when the Yaks themselves are found dead and Drax is absent. Escape is established not through a narrated arrival elsewhere, but through the empty place he has left behind and the equipment he has taken. The men’s stunned response, hurried burial, and prayer close the episode on the survivors’ effort to impose order after Drax has escaped their camp.