The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (27 page)

But another year passed on the islet, and the boats never returned. Doubtless they and their crews were lost, caught and crushed somewhere in the ice; and only long afterwards would the crucial piece of wreckage melt free to drift in the ocean, and so be found too late by the searchers sent north by the Sea Lord.

It was now three and a half years since the
Bent Wing
had first set out, and supplies were all but exhausted, for there were no animals or birds to hunt on the isle, and few fish to be caught through holes dug in the ice. Already malnutrition and the cold had carried off many of the men, and others, never counted, had simply wandered from the camp – in delirium or in hopelessness or in crazed attempts to escape – and vanished.

But then came a new development – for the gulf started to open again. The warm current, after three year's absence, was at last beginning to flow once more, and the ice to melt. But in a final and terrible irony, the gulf was opening not to the south, the way they needed to flee, but at first only to the north. There, gaps were once more appearing between the floes.

At which point the captain, surrendering to despair at last, or perhaps to madness borne of long captivity, took one of the last two boats, and a dozen men, and set off northwards. He went – he told his second officer, who was left in command – to discover the pole.

But like the previous parties that had been sent out, he and his crew were never seen again.

The second officer was alone now, with some eighty surviving men – and one woman – in his charge. The captain had taken the official log with him, so after some weeks the second officer began his own journal. He briefly summarised their predicament, and then declared that the survivors had only one hope left: that the southern regions of the gulf would clear in time for them to send the last boat out in search of help.

But although the thawing did continue, it was too slow. Through sixty agonising days, the second officer recorded only a steady roster of deaths, his men dwindling to some fifty frozen and starving creatures, then to thirty, and then to a bare dozen, all by then much too weak to launch a boat anyway, even if the ice had cleared.

It was then that the journal ceased – presumably with the death of the second officer himself. It was unknown thus how long the last few men lingered, but even if the final clinging survivor had somehow held out for several weeks more, relief and rescue, in the form of the
Chloe,
had still been an impossible nine months away.

All this the
Chloe's
crew learned to their horror as they floated in a gulf now clear completely of floe or berg.

But it was an account that, for all the details of its despair, left the greater questions infuriatingly unanswered, for the journal made no mention, at any time, of the other two ships in the fleet, neither as fellow prisoners in the gulf, nor as rescuers who might be searching nearby. It was as if the
Bent Wing
had sailed into the gulf alone and become trapped there alone – as if, indeed, it had ventured unaccompanied to the whole region of the Unquiet Ice, and could expect no immediate help from anyone.

What could that mean?

The work of burial was completed at last, but the
Chloe
remained anchored by the shore of the island – Camp Island, the men had begun to call it – for fog had descended once more, making the night thick and blind, and Vincente gave no orders to light the ice lamps or to send out the cutters. Those same mists hid from sight the broken ship and the long rows of graves, but the presence of the dead was felt by the
Chloe's
crew even if the dead were unseen. Was the cold more penetrating than ever, here by the isle? Or did it just seem worse, given the knowledge that those hundred and forty marooned souls had endured it, night after hopeless night, for nearly four years.

Below decks, the off-watch sailors clustered around the fires and muttered in disquiet about their position. For if the
Bent Wing
had been caught here unexpectedly, then could not the
Chloe
be in its turn? There was no ice in the channel at present, maybe, but how quickly might that change? After all, it was by now forty long, slow miles back to the open sea. Maybe Vincente should turn them around and retreat, rather than risk disaster.

But at this others shook their heads disgustedly. They were Ship Kings, were they not, not fearful landsmen? And there was open water ahead yet to be explored, and the fate of their comrades in the other two ships had yet to be learned. They must go on, following the mute exhortation of the arrow built by the dead scapegoat, stone by thankless stone.

But ah – said the doubters – that was the point. She was a
dead
scapegoat. She had failed in her appointed task, for her ship had met with disaster, had it not? Thus it would be madness to heed her …

The decision, everyone knew, would be Vincente's – but it seemed that the captain too was in rare doubt. Why else would they be lying at anchor, fog or no fog, when they had pushed on regardless at all other times? Rumour had it that he was locked in his cabin, hesitating over the fateful choice that lay before him: to go home, the bearer of grim news, but to safety – or to press onwards, further into the unknown, and into danger.

Dow too pondered the choice, curled in his hammock. He wanted to press on, but it was only when he considered the alternative that he realised how badly he wanted it. For if they turned back – if the voyage was over – then what were his prospects? Life-long imprisonment on the
Twelfth
Kingdom.
Unless, that was, he could stake a claim – as he'd sworn to do when the voyage began – to a permanent position aboard the
Chloe
.

But had he staked that claim yet?

He was not at all sure …

It was with relief, then, that he woke later to find that the fog had cleared and Vincente had made his decision. When the sails were raised, the
Chloe
headed north once more, deeper into the gulf.

The cutters too were ordered out again. With the mist gone, the way forward was clearly outlined between the pale emerald gleam of the ice walls, but the water remained black, and Vincente was wary now of running aground on more unseen islets in the channel.

Camp Island itself soon fell behind, its sad relics and graves lost from sight, much to the relief of the crew – but in fact one poignant reminder of the disaster followed with them: the last of the
Bent Wing
's boats. The
Chloe
had eight boats of its own, but not knowing into what difficulties he might be sailing, Vincente had seen no sense in leaving a perfectly sound craft behind, and so ordered this ninth boat to be recovered from the snow. There was no space for it on the main deck, however, so the craft – the
Bent
Wing 2
– was attached by a line to the
Chloe's
stern, and trailed after them now like a forlorn pet. Or, as some gloomily noted, like an omen of ill luck.

But nothing delayed them for the present; the ship crept on, the channel winding slowly back and forth in great reaches. They encountered no other isles, nor any sign that other humans had passed this way before them. The
Chloe's
bell marked the sunless hours dolefully, and after fourteen such hours they were, by the officers' reckoning, thirty miles further along, and now fully seventy from the open ocean. At which point another bank of fog marched out of the night, and Vincente, in his new caution, recalled the boats and ordered the anchor dropped.

The word was given that the crew should sleep while they might. The blackness was complete around the ship, and the men obediently hunkered in their hammocks, but few found rest, for out of that blackness came varied trills and groans and anguished cracks from the ice walls, loud as cannon fire in the still night, snapping any sleeper wide awake. And at one point there occured a peculiar surge and bubble in the waters of the channel, a southward rush in its flow, that sent the ship swinging slowly on its chain, as lookouts stared vainly into the dark, unable to find a cause.

But the mists lifted at last, and once more the
Chloe
raised anchor and sent out the cutters, and crept on in the slow airs. That day, their fourth in the gulf by the timekeeper's log – for without sunrise or stars there was no other way to tell – was one of arctic surreality. A formless mass seemed to hang in the sky, as if immense falls of snow were descending silently from above, never to reach the sea, or even the high rim of the ice cliffs.

And yet beneath this canopy the gulf seemed to have some internal lustre, so that its waters glowed with subtle shades of blue and black. An uncanny quiet held over all, broken only by the crackle of frozen canvas, or by sharp reports from the walls. But every now and then another surge of water would come hurrying down the channel, though nothing still could be seen to explain it.

After a further twelve hours of this, the word from the Great Cabin was that they were now some ninety five miles from the sea. The gulf, though it had narrowed somewhat in that distance, showed no signs of closing. So the question was again being broached – how far might it be to the pole? No captain of old had ever measured the breadth of the ice cap exactly, even those who had sailed full circle around it. Nevertheless, current wisdom held that it could not be much more than three or four hundred miles across. At some point, then, if the gulf stayed open, the middle of the ice cap must be reached. It might be as close – some suggested hopefully – as fifty miles away.

Fifty miles to the pole! Even the naysayers among the crew looked up with a glint in their eyes at that. To think that such a legendary place was so nearly in reach, and with open water still ahead!

The prospect revived flagging spirits, even when fog settled again, and the
Chloe
was forced to anchor for another sleepless night – disturbed repeatedly by the mysterious surges in the channel, each strong enough to set the ship rocking – before raising sail once more.

But progress became only stranger now, for in addition to the creaks and groans of the ice, there came intermittently a whistling sound, echoing out of the north between the high walls, faint and yet profound, as of a great wind heard from afar, eerie and unsettling to the ear. What it could be, no one could guess. And not only did surge currents continue to come rushing down the gulf, streaming south for a quarter of an hour or so before slowing, it was also noted that sometimes the water in the channel would reverse itself and started to run
north
, subtly but surely hurrying the ship onwards.

The grim whisperers below decks started up once more. The ghostly whistling, the inexplicable ebbs and flows in the channel – they were warnings of something dire ahead, pole or no pole. And worse, rumour from the high deck spoke of disturbing readings from the compass. The iron needle had begun to grope blindly about its dial, bereft of its magical abilities. Where then, asked the whisperers, was north now? Did the gulf even lead that way still, or was it twisting about upon itself? Perhaps they were already ensnared in some icy maze. They must surely turn around now and flee!

Dow – as he steered the
Chloe 4
during yet another long and cheerless stint leading out with their ice lamp – found himself staring with near desperation up to the sky. If only the stars were visible, then they could be sure of their course. But the veil of cloud might have been fixed in this part of the world, so little did it change, a greenish pall forever cold, featureless and without comfort.

And yet, just as their patrol was due to end, something did manifest in the sky for Dow and his crew to behold. Not stars, but something far more baffling. For a strange glow began to leap up, flaring red against the green underside of the clouds, its source seeming to lie north, away and beyond the high rim of the ice cliffs.

Watchers on the
Chloe
had observed it too, Dow learned when he was back on board. And at first, reassuring murmurs ran about the ship, for after all, such lights were not unheard of. Did not the old tales speak of exactly such a glow glimpsed beyond the ice, proof perhaps of lands and cities existing beyond the Wall, in the warm seas at the pole? But the whisperers were doubtful. The lights came from no city, they said. They were only a phantom glow, a mirage, drawing the ship on to its ruin.

Then a more fell portent took shape in the northern sky – if north it truly was. A vast figure formed there, looming above the ice walls. It was made, no doubt, only of cloud or whirling snow, but its appearance was of some immense manlike thing, or the shadow of such a being, cast hugely against the sky by a light behind it. Its head stared down at them blindly, but one great arm seemed to beckon, urging the
Chloe
onwards, as coldly as might a hangman urge on the condemned man to the noose. And from the depths of the gulf ahead the terrible whistling rose again, closer than ever now, the moan of a hurricane wind, even though all about the ship was still.