My Last Continent (18 page)

HOURS BEFORE SHIPWRECK

North of the Antarctic Circle
(66°33'S)

B
rash, pack, slush, rotten, black, pancake, frazil, grease, fast—there are so many words for the different types of ice conditions in Antarctica, so many ways for a ship to find herself in trouble. And now, as the
Cormorant
continues north through loose brash, I wonder about the conditions farther south, where the
Australis
is. At the first sign of stormy weather, Glenn had gotten us out of there, just as the
Australis
had been venturing in.

It would be less dangerous if the sea farther south were simply impenetrable—but I know that if it looks navigable, a pressured captain trying to please an overzealous cruise director might take a chance. The
Australis
can pass through the harmless frazil and grease ice—the beginnings of the freezing process—and she can sift her way through the pancake ice: the round, flat formations that float close together in the early stage of creating compact sea ice. Yet when the salt begins to seep from the ice into the ocean below, when the wind shoves
the pack together, when the hummocks and ridges grow taller and taller, the ice becomes more and more difficult to maneuver. As the ice solidifies and sticks together, the terrain becomes more like ground than like sea, and eventually it becomes impossible to turn back.

Our passengers, thanks to our hasty retreat from the sea ice after the landing, are both fascinated and worried—and full of questions and misperceptions at happy hour in the lounge. One passenger refers to the
Cormorant
as an icebreaker, and I correct him.

“A true icebreaker not only has to have a strengthened hull,” I say, “but also has to have the right shape and enough power to drive the bow up onto the ice. What breaks the ice isn't just the hull but the weight of the boat.”

“So why don't we use an icebreaker?” the passenger says.

“They're very expensive,” I say. “And they don't usually have stabilizers, like we do, so you can imagine how much more seasick you'd be. We'd never take passengers into ice conditions thick enough to require an icebreaker anyway.”

I glance at my watch. It's almost time for dinner, so I excuse myself and steal my way to the satellite phone in the business center. When I'm connected to Keller's quarters, I offer up a silent plea for him to be there.

I hear his voice and nearly drop the phone with relief. “Keller, it's me.” Before he can say anything else, I blurt out, “There's something I need to tell you. I didn't have time on Deception Island.”

“I know,” he says. “I didn't mean to pressure you with that ring. I know marriage wasn't ever in your plan, and I—”

“It's not that,” I say, talking quickly, aware, as ever, that we
never have enough time. “I really didn't want to tell you this on the phone.” I take a breath and stutter it out. “I'm—I'm pregnant.”

I hear only static, and I wait for a moment, then say, “Keller?”

Nothing.

My stomach turns over. While I've assumed that he'd be happy with the news, maybe I'm wrong.

I think of the
Australis,
heading south—surely she'd have turned around by now, but even so, the sat phone connection could be dicey. I hang up and make the call again. This time, I can't get through at all, and I slam the phone down.

I look at my watch and sigh—I'm supposed to be at dinner by now. I try calling one more time. Reluctantly I give up and head for the dining room, where the only empty seat is next to Kate and Richard. Richard still wears a seasickness patch behind his ear.

“Until this trip, I had no idea there were so many different types of ice,” Kate says. “It's like the Eskimos having a hundred different words for snow.”

“That's just a myth, Kate,” Richard says.

“What?” she says.

“It's an urban myth,” he says. His face looks flushed, and he keeps blinking his eyes, as if trying to focus. “Any credible linguist will tell you that the Inuit language may have a number of different ways of referring to snow, but it's basically no different than in English, where we have wet snow, powder, sleet, slush, blizzard, and so on.”

Kate only looks at him, and Richard's flush grows deeper, the set of his jaw a little more stubborn. He reaches for the
wine bottle in the center of the table and fills Kate's glass. I realize then that Richard doesn't know about the baby, that Kate hasn't decided what to do about her pregnancy.

I try to change the subject. “In May and June,” I say, “when the continent is preparing to shut ships like ours out for the winter, you can actually hear the ice crystals forming, if you listen closely enough. It almost sounds like the water is singing.”

“Really?” Kate says. “I'd love to be here to see that. Or rather, hear it.”

“It's interesting, the way you personify nature,” Richard says, looking from me to his wife.

“It beats objectifying nature,” Kate retorts.

“And that's what I do?”

Kate presses her lips together, her eyes shooting Richard a look that says,
Not here, not now
.

“We all objectify nature to some extent, don't we?” says a man sitting across the table. “I mean, if we didn't feel some sort of distance, we wouldn't be able to build houses, or put gas in our cars, or turn on the lights. Not to mention food. You can't think of pigs when you eat bacon or you just don't eat.”

“Well, according to my wife, we should treat all these animals as humans,” Richard says. “Whales and penguins and even krill.”

“Kate has a point,” I say, in as friendly a way as I can manage. I'm not sure whether my arguing with Richard is better than Kate arguing with him, but it doesn't feel quite as uncomfortable. “Animals are no less valuable to this planet than humans.”

“Of course they are. There's a hierarchy involved.”

“A hierarchy developed by humans,” I say. “Take sharks, for
example. Most people think of sharks as nothing more than props in a horror movie. But they may well be extinct in the next few decades, and they're the ones that have been keeping the marine ecosystem in balance for four hundred million years. Once they're gone, everything changes.”

“It sounds like your idea of a perfect world would be free of people altogether.” Richard's face is crimson, and his left eye is twitching. He rubs his hands across his eyes.

“That's not such a bad idea.” This comes from Kate, murmured so low I almost miss it.

“Why does that not surprise me?” Richard says, his voice tinged with bitterness.

“Stop it, Richard,” she says quietly. She pushes her chair back.

Richard grabs her arm. “Wait.”

Kate tries to free herself from his grip, but Richard rises to his feet, upending his chair and tipping a couple of full wineglasses as he pulls her up with him. I look again at the medicated patch behind Richard's ear and know something's very wrong. I scan the room, catching Thom's eye. I can't tell what he's seen, but he reads my expression and pushes his chair away from the table, ready to come over if I need him to.

I'm standing up myself when the ship turns hard to port, catching us all by surprise. I grip my chair as plates slide off the table into people's laps and as the servers, barely managing to stay on their feet, try to keep their trays from crashing to the floor. Spilled wine is spreading across the tablecloth like a bloodstain. Glenn runs past us out of the dining room.

I turn back to Kate and Richard—Richard is on the floor, using one of the chairs to stand. Kate isn't helping him.

“What happened?” someone asks. “Have we hit something?”

“No,” I say. “We've turned around.”

Thom is next to me by now, and when I look at him, he nods, a sickening confirmation that he, too, knows why.

South of the Antarctic Circle
(66°33
'
S)

A
ccording to international maritime law, a passenger ship must be capable of launching all survival craft, fully loaded with passengers and crew, within thirty minutes of the captain's sounding of the abandon-ship signal.

But there's a difference between being theoretically capable of a task and accomplishing it. No matter how many times crew members go through the drills, even if they take into account the possibility of rogue waves and tipped icebergs, they can't predict how long it might take to guide twelve hundred passengers and four hundred crew from a wounded ship in ice-choked waters below the Antarctic Circle, where lifeboats may have nowhere to float.

Nobody can know. It has never happened—until now.

I stand next to Amy among the hastily assembled expedition staff and crew on the bridge, where Glenn is giving us another briefing. As he'd told us earlier, the
Australis
has struck a submerged object, likely ice, in the Gullet and is taking on
water. Glenn and Captain Wylander have been coordinating rescue efforts with the Argentinian Coast Guard, the Chilean Navy, and two other cruise ships.

The
Australis
has not yet given the abandon-ship signal, and this gives me hope. The
Cormorant
is the closest ship, and we're ten hours away—ten very critical hours—but the
Australis
still has electrical power, and her captain estimates she'll stay afloat for another twelve hours, depending on weather conditions.

All of us, of course, have received emergency training, in everything from CPR to evacuating the
Cormorant
. But putting together a rescue plan for a sinking ship of sixteen hundred, without knowing what the conditions will be like until we get there, is next to impossible. The
Cormorant,
nearly at capacity, can safely take on no more than two hundred people.

Of course, not every ship that strikes ice is destined to sink; a seaworthy cruise liner is equipped with life preservers of her own: airtight bulkheads, bilge alarms, compartment seals, escape tubes. When all safety measures perform as intended, a debilitated ship may list at an odd angle for days or even weeks without sinking.

Yet the
Australis,
we're learning now, has suffered extensive damage. “Apparently there was a serious malfunction in two of the bulkhead doors,” Glenn says. “The failures occurred when they were stuck in fast ice and tried to force their way out. The next closest ship is another eight hours behind us.”

Which means that for the next eighteen hours, the
Cor­morant
is the
Australis
's only real hope.

“Any casualties?” Nigel asks.

Glenn says simply, “Yes.”

I try to stand still, to breathe evenly. I know that when it comes to the rescue efforts, I don't have the luxury of choosing which life is more important than the next, not when so many are in danger. But I also know that the minute we have the
Australis
in our sights, only one person will matter.

We've already cordoned off a section of the lounge, now a mini–triage center supplied with blankets and first-aid equipment, and it's time to let the passengers in on the news. As we head down the steps to the lounge, Amy leans close and speaks into my ear. “He'll be fine,” she says. “If anyone can handle something like this, it's Keller.”

The rest of the packed, overheated lounge looks as if it's ready for any regular presentation, with one exception: the silence. The passengers wait, their nervous eyes focused on Glenn as he explains the situation. They remain calm, passive, probably because they're in a bit of shock themselves.

“As a precaution,” Glenn concludes, “all guests will be required to wear life jackets from this point forward, around the clock. Guests will no longer be permitted on the bridge, in the fitness room, or on the rear deck, where we will be staging search-and-rescue efforts.”

Search and recovery
is far more likely; as much as I want to remain optimistic, I've been in these waters and in this weather long enough to know what it can do—to boats as well as to passengers. I picture the listing
Australis
and wonder where Keller had been when it hit. Had he been on the phone with me at the time; was that why we'd lost our connection?

“I know this is not what any of you signed up for,” Glenn says, “but I urge you to remain in your cabins as much as pos
sible. I know many of you have medical expertise and other skills we'll need, and we may call on you. But for now, you need to keep yourselves safe and out of the way.” He draws in a breath. “Finally, and I know this is another of many inconveniences you'll experience over the next few days, I'm going to request that everyone agree to take on an additional passenger or two, if possible, in your cabin. You can double up with one another or take on someone from the
Australis
.”

Glenn signals to the staff, and I get into place as we begin the emergency lifeboat drill, the same one we'd gone through the first night on board, in the Beagle Channel. It seems much longer than a week ago—back then, everyone was laughing and taking photos as they put on their frumpy orange life jackets, excited as they anticipated the Drake and what awaited them beyond. I remember thinking that this would be a long journey, but for entirely different reasons.

Now the passengers are somber as they put on their jackets and assemble at their muster stations. I stand at my station, unable to make eye contact with anyone. Nature and I have always gotten along, or so I'd believed; we've had a good relationship of mutual respect and understanding. But perhaps I've had little to fear from nature because for so long it's always been only me. As the
Cormorant
hurtles south, I feel anxiety knitting closed my throat. As every Antarctic traveler knows, once you begin to fear the ice, the relationship changes forever.