The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(13)

Reynolds shook his head to rid himself of those romantic visitations, which seemed out of place there, as if they belonged to a strange, distant world he could scarcely believe existed. He gazed at the infinite expanse of ice imprisoning them, that landscape far from civilization, which even the Creator Himself had forgotten to adorn with living creatures. The ship and her crew had set sail from New York in the fall of 1829 hoping to reach the South Pole three months later, in the middle of the Antarctic summer; but a series of unfortunate mishaps, which had dogged them almost as soon as they weighed anchor, fatally delayed the voyage. By the time they had passed the South Sandwich Islands heading for Bouvet Island, even the lowliest kitchen boy knew they would be lucky to arrive before the end of summer. However, the voyage had involved great expense, and they had gone too far for the option of turning back to be feasible. And so Captain MacReady had resolved to continue until they reached the Kerguelen Islands, in the hope that the sailors’ rabbit’s-foot charms would prove effective in the polar circle. Heading southwest at eleven knots in a fair wind, they had soon found themselves dodging the first icebergs, which seemed to guard the Antarctic coastline like hostile sentinels. They navigated the channels between the icebergs and the pack ice, pounded by fierce hailstorms, making good headway without further incident, until they realized from the expanse of solid ice almost covering the water that the long Antarctic winter had arrived in mid-February that year, much earlier than usual. Even so, they forged on with na?ve zeal, trusting in the double hull of African hardwood with which Reynolds had insisted the old whaling boat be reinforced. It was a long and arduous struggle, which came to be fruitless when at last the indestructible pack ice closed in around them. Captain MacReady proved resourceful in a crisis: he gave the order to scatter hot coals on the encroaching ice to melt it more quickly, and to furl the topsails. He even sent a gang of men down armed with spikes, shovels, pickaxes, and any other sharp tools they could find in the hold. He did everything in his power except try to push the vessel himself, like a god of Olympus. But all that activity did not succeed in rendering their situation less dire. They were doomed from the moment they ventured onto that sea strewn with icy snares, perhaps from the moment Reynolds had planned the expedition. And so, no longer able to move forward, the Annawan became gradually hemmed in by sea ice until she was stuck fast in the immensity of the Antarctic, and the crew had to accept their situation, like warriors accepting defeat, as the ice encroached hourly upon the narrow channel of water behind them, crushing any hopes they had of survival.

When they had managed to clamber off the ship, which was slightly tilted to her starboard side, MacReady ordered one of his men to climb to the top of the nearest iceberg and report what he saw. After hacking out a few steps in the ice with a pickax, the lookout peered through his brass spyglass and confirmed Reynolds’s fears: for them, the world was now no more than a vast frozen desert spreading in all directions, dotted with mountain peaks and icebergs. A white expanse without shelter or refuge, it rendered them instantly insignificant. Whether they lived or died was of no consequence in the face of that immensity, cut adrift from the world.

Two weeks later their situation was no better. The stubborn ice holding the Annawan prisoner had not yielded an inch. On the contrary, they could only deduce from the alarming groaning sounds the ship’s hull made that the ice was wrapping itself even more tightly around it. It would be eight or nine months, perhaps even longer, before the return of summer, when the ice would begin to melt, and then only if they were lucky, for Reynolds had heard many similar stories in which the long-awaited thaw never came. In fact, once Man ventured into those icy domains, however experienced he was, everything became unpredictable. The expedition Sir John Franklin had led in 1819 to map the north coast of Canada, for example, had not been able to rely on a kind fate. The wretched explorers had spent so long in the ice that Franklin had been forced to eat his own boots as the only way of staving off extreme hunger. Although, unlike some of the others, he at least had made it home. Reynolds looked down uneasily at his frost-covered boots and wondered whether their names would also be added to the already lengthy list, carefully kept by the Admiralty, of doomed expeditions, ships that had vanished, dreams swallowed up by the unknown. He cast a mournful eye over the Annawan, which despite all her reinforcements had been taken hostage quickly. The enormous whaler had formerly been used to hunt sperm and yubarta whales in the South Atlantic Ocean. All that remained of those glory days were half a dozen harpoons and spears that were kept in the armory as terrifying souvenirs of those brave harpooners, who would skewer the huge whales during epic duels. And now the Annawan lay absurdly tilted on what looked like a marble pedestal, her prow sticking up in the air. To reduce the likelihood of her capsizing, MacReady had ordered the crew to strip her two topsails and rigging and to shore up her starboard side with a mound of ice that would act as a ramp. The sun hovered just above the horizon, where it would remain for a few more weeks, spinning out the dusk, until April came and it vanished completely, heralding the endless southern winter night. For the moment it still cast a dim light over the Annawan. Like it or not, the explorer thought to himself, that phantom-like vessel would be his home for the foreseeable future. Perhaps his very last home.

Tired of being confined to the ship’s narrow hold, of banging their heads on the utensils hanging like vines from the ceiling, and of being hemmed in by bunk beds and piles of provisions, a few of the men had huddled in a group at the foot of the Annawan, braving the fierce cold that played at forming crystals from their vaporous breath. Besides Reynolds himself, who was the titular leader of that reckless expedition, the ship’s company under Captain MacReady consisted of two officers, a quartermaster, two gunners, a surgeon, a cook, two kitchen boys, two carpenters, two electricians, and a dozen sailors. One of these was Peters, a huge, silent Indian, the offspring of an Absaroka woman and a white man, who was responsible for looking after the sled dogs. As far as Reynolds could tell, none of the men seemed overly concerned about their fate, instead showing a kind of hardened resignation. Still, the explorer hoped that however long the coal and victuals lasted, the store of rum would never run out: Reynolds had heard that in such situations there was nothing to worry about so long as there was plenty to drink. But once the rum was finished, things would change drastically: insanity, which had been content thus far to hover in the wings like a timid lover, would begin to tempt the crew, luring the weakest of them, and it would not be long before one placed a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. Then, like some macabre ritual, the sound of gunshots from different parts of the ship would become their only form of entertainment throughout the long polar winter. Reynolds wondered how many gallons of rum remained. MacReady—who, judging from the smell of his breath, had his own reserves of brandy—had ordered Simmons, one of the kitchen boys, to dilute the daily grog rations with water to make it last as long as possible. Thus far none of the sailors had complained, as if they also knew that so long as they had their rum they would be safe from themselves.