My Last Continent: A Novel(64)

“Richard—where is he?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking surprised, as if just realizing she hasn’t seen him for a while. “I’ve gotten our room ready for passengers, so I don’t think he’s—”

“Find him,” I tell her. “Tell him we need his binoculars. Give them to a crew member to pass on to me. Okay?”

“Okay.” I see her nod her head before I’m off again.

Down below, at the open loading hatch, I look up at Captain Wylander, standing at the controls just outside the bridge, struggling to find an ice sheet large enough and thick enough to hold hundreds of stranded passengers. We need a pathway—a bridge of ice, or even a river of seawater—that we can follow to the Australis and its victims. Yet right now I see only large floes and patches of slush lurking everywhere, conditions that are impossible to traverse easily either by foot or by Zodiac. We’ll have to manage it somehow.

I think of our ice landing, only days ago—that one had been challenge enough, but at least we’d been able to choose the field of ice; we’d been in control. And the Cormorant is by no means an icebreaker—in unstable waters, at the wrong speed or angle, a large berg could pierce even a reinforced hull, and then we’d be in no better shape than the Australis. The stabilizing fins that soften our ride through waters like the Drake are vulnerable to the ice, and the Cormorant has no defense in place to safeguard the propellers. Our ship is prepared to rub shoulders with icebergs, but she’s in no position to push them around.

And I know that if the ice gets too thick or the winds too extreme, our captain will not risk damage to the ship; we’ll have to retreat. With the temperature dropping and the winds shoving ice floes roughly into one another, I need to find Keller as quickly as possible. We might have only one chance.

I’m sure Keller is still on board. He’ll put the passengers first, even if it means going down with the ship. And, given the options, on board may well be the safest place—though it’s clear that no one ended up in the water, on the ice, by choice. It already looks as though things are a lot worse than we’ve prepared for.

Wylander is now maneuvering the Cormorant into a large expanse of white, stretching unbroken for at least a hundred yards, and as the cracking of ice stops and the ship comes to a halt, I look up to see his signal. It’s time.

We lower the gangplank, and I step down to a relatively stable section of ice; as one of the lighter crew members, I’d volunteered to be first, though I’m sure everyone knows I have other reasons. About fifty yards in the distance, a dozen passengers are gathered together on the ice, but the Australis herself is still only a dim glow of lights in the fog beyond. Those who are on this patch of ice should be able to make their way over. Some are already hurrying toward us. I hear Glenn’s voice on the PA system, telling the Australis passengers who we are, urging calm, exhorting them to follow our instructions.

But they are exhausted and panicked, and still coming forward—to keep them safe, we need to slow them down, spread them out. As I step forward carefully on the ice—poking it with a sharp trekking pole, hoping the pole won’t meet with slush or weak ice, keeping my ears on alert for that dreadful splintering noise—I wonder whether the other naturalists are as calm as they look. Despite our training, and despite the knowledge, in the deepest parts of our minds, that something like this could happen, I don’t think we ever really believed it would.

The ice under my feet holds up well, and I signal to the others behind me to follow; at the same time, I hold up a hand to stop the passengers coming toward us. As distressed as they must be, they obey.

I turn around and see Thom heading down the gangway. The plan, hastily assembled once Glenn and Wylander assessed the ice and weather conditions, is for Thom and me to scout out a trail for the passengers to follow to the Cormorant, and once we find a safe passage, we’ll leave marker flags along the way. Nigel and Amy will then lead the rest of the expedition team along the trail to make sure the passengers remain spaced evenly apart, so they don’t create more pressure than the ice can bear. It’s obvious, from the bodies floating past, that some have made that fatal mistake already—and our plan is only as good as the weather allows.

I try not to look down, not wanting to see an orange naturalist’s jacket floating past, or Keller’s signature bandanna.

Focus, I tell myself. I need to take one moment at a time, one tenuous step at a time. As I begin to make my way across the ice, I realize that we’ll have to revise our plan sooner than we expected. The group of passengers ahead is stranded on a forty-foot-wide patch of ice with about thirty feet of slush between them and us. They hadn’t stopped in response to Glenn’s or my signal; they stopped because they had nowhere else to go.

“Ease up,” I call over my shoulder. As Thom joins me near the edge of the ice floe, the passengers on the other side advance to the edge of theirs.

“Move back!” Thom shouts. “Spread yourselves out!” He splays his arms wide. “Stay near the middle of the ice, as far apart as you can,” he calls to them. “We’ll get you. Just hold on.”

“We’ll need a Zodiac,” I say, and Thom nods. We’ll have to carry the Zodiac over the ice to this small stretch of water, then use it as a ferry. Despite their rubber construction, these Zodiacs aren’t exactly lightweight; they’re nineteen feet long, and transporting them over land requires at least two or three strong crew members. Even if the ice holds, once we get the boat in the water, boarding anxious passengers safely from a fragile rim of ice is yet another challenge.