Antarctica (7 page)

Now the map might come in handy.

“Gather, men!” Jack called out.

“What’s the plan?” Ruppenthal called out.

“Put to and sail out of here, I’ll bet,” Siegal said.

“We can’t sail these dinghies in this mess,” Windham said. “We’ll capsize.”

“Pop, I say retreat to a stabler floe and wait out the summer,” Mansfield suggested. “In a couple of months the Ross Sea will freeze up right to the ocean, which’ll give us another fifty miles or so of ice —”

“A couple of months?” Cranston snapped. “We can’t survive here that long!”

“Death never takes the wise man by surprise,”
Oppenheim shouted.
“He is always ready to go!”

“Listen up — I have Chappy Walden’s map and itinerary,” Jack announced. “He left three weeks after we did, sailing west to circumnavigate Antarctica and map the coast. He drew his route for me on this sheet, pinpointing dates and locations. If he has stuck to his schedule, he should be approaching the Ross Sea right around now.”

“So … we stay here and wait for him?” Philip asked.

“Right, and wave to ’im wif our ’ankies?” Nigel said. “Yoo-hoo! Captain Wa-a-a-alden!”

“Staying here, we have little chance of seeing him or being seen,” Jack said. “If we sail now, making our way slowly through the brash —”

“And bergs,” Mansfield interrupted.

“— we’ll reach the shelf ice in two or three days. Fewer if we’re lucky. One thing we know about Walden — he’ll be hugging the coast. Chances are good we’ll cross paths.”

“How close to the shore?” Oppenheim blurted out. “Can anyone really know that?”

The commotion stopped, and all eyes turned to Oppenheim.

“What are the
real
odds of two vessels actually crossing paths in this vast sea?” Oppenheim pressed on. “And what if we
don’t
find him? We marry the penguins and settle in?”

He was making sense. His words were brutal and honest.

Looking at Oppenheim’s face, Jack realized that “crazy” was an easy label. Oppenheim was a rational man with an impossible task — to function as a human without any hope and faith. In his eyes, Jack saw the despair of every man in the crew. And, possibly, their future.

“If all else fails,” Jack said, “we make our way along the western coast until we reach the Antarctic peninsula— which we will follow north to Deception Island. There we’ll find a whaling station.”

“How many miles away is Deception Island?” Andrew chimed in from the
Horace Putney.

The crew turned. Andrew was sitting up with great effort.

Jack wished he could greet him with good news. Instead he told the truth. “About twenty-five hundred.”

“Impossible!” Bailey said.

“Gar!” Nigel shouted. “In
lifeboats
?”

“My good man, that is the entire length of your country,” Philip said, “give or take a state or two.”

“Father, how can we possibly do this?” Colin asked.

Oppenheim began to pace back and forth.
“We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.”

“It has been done,” Jack said confidently, “by lesser men than we. It is our
backup
plan, remember. We’ll start tomorrow morning.”

The men studied his face. He kept a confident cut of the jaw, an upbeat expression.

Confidence was the key.

The journey
hadn’t
been done. It was impossible.

But that didn’t matter. Walden was out there.

And they would find him.

February 5, 1910

“H
EEEEAVE-HO-O-O!”

Colin gave a solid push and the
Horace Putney
slid off its runners. Its bow slapped into the water.

Day one.

If he thought about it, he would count the men and dogs — thirty and thirteen — and then count the boats — four — and he would imagine those four lifeboats on the same savage sea that had battered the
Mystery.
All heading off to die foolishly.

If he thought about it.

But so much had to be done — checking and packing and discarding and rigging and rounding up — that he could easily choose not to think about it at all.

“We can’t fit the seal chops!” O’Malley shouted.

“Toss ’em or eat ’em now!” Captain Barth replied. “We’re only packing penguin hoosh, hardtack, and pemmican! We’ll anchor and hunt when the need arises.”

“Can’t anyone get these bloody pigeons away?” Philip shouted, shooing a bird away from a chunk of meat cooking on the stove.

“They ain’t
pigeons,
ya blighter—they’s seagulls!” Nigel said.

RRRROWFF!
Socrates lunged at a tern, knocking over the stove. The meat fell to the guano-covered rocks.

“My seal!” Philip whined.

“We could fit the meat in the boats if we didn’t have the dogs,” Ruppenthal snarled.

“Don’t start in about them again,” Talmadge said.

The dogs had been a problem. A couple of the men had wanted to abandon them. But Jack had said no, they come, too.

The stove and many of their supplies would be left behind. The men would take two Primus stoves, Ruskey’s photographic plates, weapons for hunting, buckets for bailing, string and frozen seal blood for repairs, a Bible, lots of extra wood — and, of course, ballast. With the weight so evenly spread port-to-starboard, the boats would need to be ballasted properly to prevent heeling.

No extra clothes.

“Dogs first, then men!” Jack cried out.

“Socrates! Demosthenes! Iosif! Kalliope!”

Socrates ran for the
Samuel Breen.
The others ran away.

“Ellàteh, paithià mou!”

Socrates leaped. His front legs locked onto the gunwale, but he fell back into the water, dousing Nesbit.

Demosthenes jumped on Socrates. Kalliope jumped on Nesbit.

“Get this thing off me!” Nesbit shouted.

Mansfield let out a whoop. “This is war!”

The men ran after the dogs, picking them up one by one and depositing them in the boats.

One by one, the dogs jumped out.

Lombardo fell to the ice as Fotis licked his face. Ireni began digging a hole. Nikola bayed at an albatross.

It took the better part of a half hour to get the dogs settled. By then everyone was soaked and in high spirits.

Except Philip. Philip was dry and miserable. “I request a canine-free vessel,” he said.

“You’re coming with me in the
Horace Putney
,” Jack said, reading from a handwritten list, “along with Colin, Mansfield, Cranston, Sanders, and Kennedy.”

Philip?

Colin couldn’t believe it. As Father turned for the boat, Colin elbowed him. “Why’d you pick
Philip
?”

“For his protection,” Jack replied. “If I put him on any other boat, the men’ll kill him.”

Now the opportunity’s all mine,
Colin thought.

Jack gathered the men into a circle. He linked arms with Colin on one side and Andrew on the other.

One by one, the others locked arms, too.

“We are a chain,” Jack said. “We must stay together,
in each other’s sight,
at all costs. We’re loaded beyond any reasonable standards. Exercise
extreme
caution. If we separate — if one boat is damaged — our return voyage is doomed. With God’s help, we’ll find Walden soon. I believe that with all my soul.”

Silence greeted the speech, but no words were needed. In glances and facial tics, posture and movement, the men spoke volumes. Despair for the unreasonable, hope for the impossible.

The boats now lay half in the water. Colin committed the personnel of each to memory. The dogs were already in: Ireni, Maria, and Stavros in the
Horace Putney;
Kalliope, Fotis, and Martha in the
Iphigenia;
Demosthenes, Socrates, and Yiorgos in the
Samuel Breen;
and Kristina, Iosif, Nikola, and Panagiotis in the
Raina.

Into the
Iphigenia
climbed Rivera, Riesman, Talmadge, Windham, O’Malley, Flummerfelt, Ruppenthal, Ruskey.

The
Samuel Breen
: Siegal, Nesbit, Petard, Brillman, Stimson, Bailey, Hayes.

The
Raina
: Barth, Andrew, Montfort, Kosta, Lombardo, Oppenheim, Robert, and Nigel.

Some would be standing — there was no way to prevent that. The dogs would have to lie on the ballast and in men’s laps. And Father had made it clear that the personnel should switch boats regularly at each stop along the coast.

Colin gave the
Horace Putney’s
stern a hard push until it was afloat, then jumped in himself.

The boat rocked on a strong, choppy current. The brash ice billowed against the hull, making a noise like crunching gravel. Cranston took the tiller as Colin and Jack used oars to push against the larger blocks of ice, guiding the boat northeast, toward a break near the horizon.

“Oh, I believe I am getting sick,” Philip moaned.

The dogs whined, moving around in circles. Colin was jammed against the starboard hull and had poor leverage.

The boat was uncomfortable. Badly balanced. Slow.

And thrilling.

The land had not been kind. The sea was a friend; the sea had gotten them here alive, and now perhaps it would deliver them.

The current pulled the boats steadily northwest, aided by a sharp crosswind. They were headed for a field of freshly calved icebergs, about three-quarters of a mile away.

“Set the sails!” Father called out.

Kennedy and Mansfield scrambled to unlash the sail and lower the boom. “Ready about!” Kennedy cried, pulling the sheet.

The
Iphigenia
was directly behind them. The
Raina
and the
Samuel Breen
had drifted west and were tacking to catch up.

“It doesn’t look like we’re getting away from those bergs!” Cranston shouted.

“The bergs are moving, too,” Jack replied.

“Shouldn’t they be moving the other way?” Kennedy asked.

“Must be some kind of crosscurrent,” Mansfield said. “Watch for a strong riptide — or whirlpool.”

A cloud cover had developed in the south, over the Antarctic plain. It loomed behind the other three boats, growing fast.

“Jibe to the east and be prepared to lower sails!” Father shouted.

The wind was at their backs, forcing them to zigzag in order to catch a good crosswind. For a good forty-five minutes, Colin watched the cloud gradually turn black. It swallowed the
Raina
and
Samuel Breen
first, then quickly engulfed the
Iphigenia.

“Bring her around and heave to! On the double!”
Jack commanded.
“READY ABOUT.”

Philip ducked under the forward decking. Mansfield and Kennedy released the sheet and let the boom swing again.

They trimmed the sail and brought the
Horace Putney
about so that its bow faced into the wind. Again they let the sheet loose and the sail went slack. As the two men secured the sail, Sanders kept a firm grip on the rudder, making sure the boat stayed properly hove to.

The wind struck like a cannon. It blew rocks and ice into their faces and sent up swells that tossed the boat furiously.

Stavros began yowling from the bottom of the boat. Instantly the other dogs — and Philip — joined.

“Stay low!” Sanders called out.

Colin and Jack inserted their oars into the oarlocks. For stability they extended the oars, feathering them so that the blades rested flat on the water’s surface.

“I see the
Iphigenia
!”Colin shouted.

He shielded his face, keeping his eyes on the place where he’d spotted the boat’s silhouette. It peeked in and out of the fog, heaving to and tossing on the waves.

As the wind increased, the clouds began to blow off.

“Where are the other two?” Mansfield shouted.

The
Iphigenia
had held position fast. But the
Raina
and the
Samuel Breen
were nowhere in sight.

Colin scanned the horizon until he saw two specks emerging from behind the trailing edge of the fog. “Twenty-five degrees off the starboard bow!” he yelled. “Heading for that growler!”

Both ships lay across the wind. They were being blown straight into an iceberg.

February 5, 1910

“S
ET THE SAIL!”
CAPTAIN
Barth bellowed.

“The wind must be forty knots!” Andrew replied.

“I didn’t ask for a weather report!” Barth held the tiller tightly, trying to point the boat in the direction of the
Samuel Breen.

Fifty yards ahead of them, the
Breen
careened toward the berg. It was a small one, a growler, with maybe twenty feet showing above water. But Andrew knew that ninety percent of an iceberg’s volume lay beneath the surface.

For a boat this size, in a wind this strong, it was deadly.

Andrew braced his leg against the deck. The calf was wrapped in thick canvas and Dr. Montfort assured him it was healing well, but the pain was still excruciating.

He couldn’t dwell on it. He was one of eight on this boat. And considering that Oppenheim was deadweight, Kosta wasn’t much of a sailor, Lombardo was still weak, and Nigel was Nigel, Andrew knew he had to pull his weight.

He and Lombardo quickly unfurled the
Raina
’s sail. As it caught the wind, the boat swung hard to starboard.

With a loud smack, the
Raina
struck a pitted chunk of old ice.

“Kosta, are you tryin’ to scuttle us?”
shouted Nigel, manning the port oar.

Kosta pushed his oar against the floe.
“Then vlepo! I no to see it!”

Andrew held onto the sheet, tightening and releasing it as the sail flapped in the fickle wind. The boats had been out of control since they’d hit the riptide. The men had tried to heave to, but the rudder had been useless against the storm.

The
Breen
’s sail was set. Siegal and Bailey were trying to coax the boat away from the berg.

“We can’t get close this way!” Barth yelled. “I’m coming about!”

As the boat turned, Andrew released the sheet. The boom swung to port — but then it came back, as if losing confidence.