Antarctica Escape from Disaster Page 6

  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.

  11

  Andrew

  February 5, 1910

  “SET 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.

  “She’s not going over in this wind!” Andrew cried out.

  “Fall off and try again!”

  Barth turned the tiller again and Andrew yanked the sheet tight. The sail snapped outward against the force of the gale, and after a moment they tried the tack again. This time the boom cracked as it swung about.

  “The boom is separating from the mast!” Robert shouted.

  “Impossible!” Nigel replied. “I secured it myself.”

  Heeling hard to starboard, the boat picked up speed and began pulling alongside the Samuel Breen.

  “Tighter, Winslow!” Barth said. “We’re going to collide!”

  The boat jerked as it struck something below the surface.

  “Ice!” Lombardo yelled.

  “THIS IS INSA-A-A-ANE.” wailed Oppenheim.

  They were parallel to the Breen now. Separated by thirty feet at the most. Hayes leaned out over the Breen’s starboard gunwale, holding a stout line. “CATCH THIS.”

  He flung the line hard. It soared through the air.

  Robert reached out, his frame cantilevered over the sea. With his free hand, Andrew grabbed the back of Robert’s coat and held tight.

  The line splashed to the water, about three feet from Robert’s outstretched fingers. He lurched forward.

  His coat ripped.

  Screaming, Robert tumbled over the hull. Andrew fell toward him, grasping desperately for some part of Robert, any part.

  He got an ankle and held tight.

  Robert reached up and held onto the gunwale. His fingers clung to the hull, his body skimming the surface of the water. The ice battered his shoulders and face, and he cried out.

  Dr. Montfort leaned over the gunwale and took Robert’s shoulder. “Heeeeeeave … ho!” Together Andrew and Dr. Montfort yanked Robert over the gunwale. All three sprawled into the bilges.

  Robert coughed and gasped for air. “I — I’m fine. Get the line!”

  The Raina and the Breen were pulling near. Soon they’d be hull-to-hull. Hayes had pulled in the line and was waiting to throw again.

  “Look out!” Bailey shouted.

  Hayes threw. Andrew stood against the bulwark, arms open.

  With an abrupt snap, the boom tore loose from the mast.

  The sail blew out, ripping the sail sheet from its grommets. The boom smacked onto the deck and broke into pieces that clattered to the boat’s floor.

  Andrew fell back against the opposite gunwale.

  Without any resistance to the wind, the boat quickly lost speed. The dogs, silent and cowering until now, began to wail.

  “Hold the sail!” Captain Barth shouted. “Create some wind resistance and get us going — somehow. They’re pulling away from us!”

  “O Captain, my Captain!” Oppenheim cried out.

  Robert grabbed Nigel by his collar and lifted him onto the deck. “You said you knew how to rig the boom!”

  “I fought I did,” Nigel said. “I mean, I might’ve been a mite off about the size of this bolt or that, I’m not perfick!”

  Robert grabbed the sail. It flapped in his arms like a struggling child as he carefully isolated a corner. Sticking his finger through a grommet, he handed the other edge to Nigel. “Take this. Do as I do. We’ll hold the sail as if we’re the boom.”

  The two men struggled to pull the sail tight. It was an impossible task. The boat rocked uncertainly. The Samuel Breen was receding. “Throw the line!” Andrew called.

  But Hayes had turned toward the iceberg. The men aboard the Breen were shouting, gesturing.

  And bailing.

  “They’ve hit!” Andrew shouted.

  All hands on the Breen were bailing water over the bulwarks. The boat was stuck.

  Nigel and Robert angled the sail tighter to the mast. The Raina picked up speed.

  Andrew grabbed a piece of the shattered boom, then reached belowdecks and pulled a loose halyard out from underneath the dogs. He tied one end of the halyard to the mast and the other to the jagged block of wood, then stood up and yelled as loud as he could:

  “CATCH THIS!”

  Hayes looked up. Andrew reared back and flung the block high.

  The wood hurtled toward the Breen, straight and true. Hayes caught it chest-high.

  “Attaboy!” Lombardo cheered.

  “Kalo to Theos!” Kosta exclaimed.

  “I’m coming about!” Captain Barth yelled.

  Nigel and Robert brought the sail around to port. The boat heeled awkwardly but slowly began to change direction.

  The rope tightened. Andrew felt the Raina slowing down, pulled by the Breen.

  The other boat was caught. The berg was holding her fast.

  “Trim the sails!” Andrew said. “Pull harder!”

  “We’re trying!” Nigel retorted.

  “The mast won’t take their weight!” Barth shouted.

  “Then I’ll help it!” Andrew replied, grabbing onto the line.

  “Andrew, you’re going to capsize us!” Lombardo shouted. “They’re not budging.”

  “What am I supposed to do, cut her loose?”

  Andrew held fast. Eight men were on that boat. Eight men trying with all their strength to live. Siegal and Bailey were jamming oars into the water, trying to lift the Breen off whatever held it fast.

  The Raina’s keel was out of the water. She was listing hard to starboard. The men crowded to the uplifted port side, their heads now at least six feet higher than Andrew’s.

  “Let go!” Oppenheim cried out.

  Andrew planted his feet against the inside of the starboard hull, now almost parallel to the water. He tensed his arms, threw his weight back, and pulled with all his strength.

  Suddenly he
fell back. The port side dropped.

  Broken. It was broken.

  The men of the Breen were goners.

  Andrew sat up and glanced toward the berg.

  The line hadn’t sunk into the water. It stretched across the surface, still attached to the Breen.

  Trying to tack, Nigel and Robert had lost control of the sail. The Raina had slowed — but the Breen was moving.

  “HA! You did it, my boy!” Captain Barth whooped.

  Andrew pulled. Lombardo grabbed hold of the line and helped him.

  On the other end, Bailey and Nesbit pulled, too. The Breen slowly drew closer. Bucketfuls of water spilled over the side as the other men continued to bail.

  “They’re way below the waterline,” Dr. Montfort said.

  Nigel and Robert managed to find the right angle to the wind, and the Raina picked up speed.

  In all the commotion, Andrew hadn’t noticed where they were heading.

  Toward Antarctica.

  Andrew turned to Captain Barth. “We’re going the wrong way.”

  “We have no choice,” Captain Barth replied.

  “But Jack said we had to —”

  “We have no rigging. The Breen needs to be patched. We have to make land as soon as possible. If Jack were here, he’d do the same.”

  Andrew’s leg began to throb again. His body shook.

  If we separate, Jack had said, if one boat is damaged — our return voyage is doomed.

  The team had split in half. Two of the four boats were crippled.

  And those two were returning.

  Andrew felt numb as the men began to shout anew and the dogs sent up a racket.

  He turned and saw the Samuel Breen sinking beneath the ocean.

  12

  Jack

  February 5, 1910

  THE ICE WAS LIKE stone.

  It clung to the rigging, at least an inch thick. Jack tried to break it but he couldn’t. The sheets were like solid pipes.

  They’d set the sail, hoping to tack and return to the Raina and the Samuel Breen, but the storm had come up from nowhere. Now, rigid with ice, the sail was trapping the wind, making the boat heel and pitch violently.

  Jack had to hold onto the mast for balance. The Horace Putney was veering crazily. “I need a hammer!”

  Colin emerged from below the decking with an ax. “Use this, Father!”

  Jack grabbed the hilt and smashed the back of the blade against the ice. One … two … three … A chunk broke off. Then another.

  Mansfield pulled the sheet. The sail creaked. Jack pounded.

  SNNAP!

  With a sudden crash, the ice shattered like glass, and Jack jumped away. “Take ’er in!”

  Colin released the sheet, lifted the boom, and lashed the sail. Cranston held tight to the tiller. Mansfield grabbed an oar and gave another to Philip.

  “What do I do?” Philip asked.

  “Row!” Mansfield replied. “You know how to row, don’t you?”

  “Indeed!” Philip dipped the oar into the water and tried to paddle.

  “This isn’t a canoe!” Mansfield shouted. “Use the oarlocks! Do what I’m doing. You hold while I back.”

  Philip inserted the oar into the lock and sat down. “Hold what?”

  Jack took the oar. Submerging the blade, he held fast while Mansfield backed the boat around to face the wind.

  “I’ve lost sight of the Iphigenia!” Colin called out.

  But Jack’s attention was focused straight ahead. A swell rose on the horizon, spreading like a wide, sloping mountain. The Horace Putney’s bow pointed toward the center of it.

  “Cranston, hold the rudder tight,” Jack said. “We’ll face this head-on.”

  The center of the swell bulged. At this distance it seemed to be standing still, although the water’s roiling movement suggested great speed.

  The wind caught the Horace Putney full blast, sending a spray of ice and spindrift into the men’s faces.

  “She’s yawing!” Cranston cried out.

  As the boat began to climb, the bow drifted south. Jack paddled furiously in the opposite direction. If she turned sideways to the swell, they were dead.

  Up … up … up …

  “Lord ’a’ mercy!” Kennedy pleaded.

  The men pitched forward to keep from falling back off the stern. Sanders screamed.

  And then the boat crested.

  For a moment the clouds stretched above and below them, as if they’d been jettisoned skyward and might now fly away.

  But as the boat tilted down, the men were thrown backward, onto the deck with the yelping, frightened dogs.

  Jack heard the creak of splitting wood.

  The mast had cracked from the base clear up to the midpoint.

  In front of them, the slope dropped into the clouds, with no bottom in sight. On the tiller, Cranston’s knuckles were white.

  They plummeted.

  Jack took Colin’s shoulder, and for a moment he thought of the scrawny little boy on the dock in Harwinton, Alaska, staring at the bay for hours waiting for Raina. And now he was a man, and the dream of seeing her again — both of their dreams — returned as the sea came to claim them.

  The Horace Putney hit bottom hard, raising a wave that broke over the bow. The men scrambled for buckets and began to bail.

  Jack glanced astern, looking for a shadow, any sign of life from the other boat.

  All he saw was the black wall of water, receding in the fog.

  The sea now lapped over the bulwarks, loaded down by the weight of the water. In the frenzy of bailing, no one spoke.

  The mast was useless. Jack ran his hands along the crack and hoped that somewhere they had stored another mast.

  A curtain of white emerged slowly to starboard. The shore was coming closer. “Colin, get the binoculars and find us a cove or a sturdy floe, someplace where we can put in and fix the mast. Mansfield, row us closer. Cranston, turn us forty-five degrees east of south.”

  As the three sprang into action, Philip grabbed an oar and readied himself to row.

  Kennedy gestured for Philip to move aside. “I’ll do it, Westfall.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of rowing,” Philip said. “We do that in England, you know.”

  “Eyes to stern!” Sanders suddenly shouted. “They made it.”

  Jack turned. The Iphigenia, listing to port but intact, floated toward them out of the mist.

  “Thank God,” Jack said under his breath. He pulled a rifle from under the deck and fired a shot into the air. Moments later the Iphigenia returned the signal.

  Colin scanned the shore with the binoculars. “I see a cove.”

  Mansfield looked over his shoulder. “Where?”

  Colin pointed out a small depression in the shoreline. “Beneath that long, jagged ridge.”

  Mansfield began pulling his oar harder. “Two o’clock, Philip!”

  “Thank you,” Philip replied. “How lovely to have a watch that works.”

  “That’s not what I meant! I’m giving you directions. Pretend you’re in the middle of a clock, got it? Now, straight ahead is twelve, behind you is six, to the right is three — “

  “Right-o. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  Philip pulled as hard as he could. And even though Mansfield’s greater strength kept pulling the boat off course, they managed to gain quickly on the cove.

  Colin was the first to notice the heads of floating seals — and the rocks. They made whitecaps in the waters of the cove, clusters of them all over the place.

  “Oarsmen, take it slow,” Jack said. “Cranston, point her toward the coast.”

  Colin had his eye on the port side. Jack focused on the starboard.

  The rocks came up quickly, large and black. Volcanic debris. The boat was riding low, and the cloud cover made for shallow visibility.

  Jack tried to keep a watchful eye, but the water was blurring.

  His lids were heavy, so heavy.

 
He blinked. He shook his head hard.

  Fatigue was out of the question. Alertness was all.

  Eyes front. Focus.

  Something was heading toward them, long and thick like a killer whale. And close.

  “Pull it to port!” Jack shouted. “To port!”

  The ship suddenly jumped.

  A long, tearing sound ran from bow to stern.

  The dogs leaped back, barking viciously.

  “We’re stove in!” Sanders shouted.

  Jack felt the water gushing into the boat at his feet.

  Part Four

  Separation

  13

  Barth

  February 5, 1910

  “WALK! MOVE YOUR LEGS!” Captain Barth tried to lift Hayes out of the water, but the man must have weighed 250.

  “I — I — c-c —”

  “Come on, Hayes, I was counting on you to help me!”

  “C — co — cold —”

  Barth pivoted around, knelt, dug his shoulder into Hayes’s midsection, and stood. Hayes was draped over him like a sack of cornmeal.

  Speed was crucial. Humans weren’t supposed to survive in water like this for longer than ten minutes, fifteen at most. Hayes had been in for fifteen, Nesbit longer. Of the three dogs, Yiorgos had perished in the water. Socrates and Demosthenes had made the swim to the Raina. And they were both near death.

  Barth was sure he’d lose all of the Samuel Breen crew. But they were sailors of the old school, scrappy and indestructible. Siegal and Petard had managed to climb on board the Raina; Bailey, Brillman, and Stimson had grabbed onto her gunwale and hung on as they sailed to this godforsaken floe. The others — Hayes and Nesbit — had swum all the way.

  Or tried to. Hayes had made it to within twenty feet before he seized up. Nesbit was still in the water.

  Robert ran to the water. “I’ll get ’im, Captain.”

  “N-n-no, all h-hands are needed in the infirm-m-mary.” Barth shook uncontrollably as he deposited Hayes carefully on the tarp. “Hayes is alm-most gone, M-M-Montfort. You’ve got a j-j-job cut out for you.”

  “Captain … ?” Robert said.

  Barth ran back to the edge of the floe. It was insane to risk Robert on this.

  Nesbit was out maybe fifty yards. He was a good swimmer. But he wasn’t even trying.