January, 10, 1910
“SHE’S STOVE IN,” ANDREW murmured.
“We can see that,” Colin said.
“Translation of stove in?” Philip asked.
“Cracked open,” said Nigel. “Like your head’ll be if you keep asking stupid questions.”
“We may have helped the starboard-side floe by relieving port-side pressure,” Jack said.
Colin struck at the ice column. The other men joined him with renewed force.
Nigel was at his right. “We’ll never cut frew this!”
“Oh, it’s a big boat,” Philip said as he pounded with his shovel. “It’ll survive.”
“Ship, you block’ead, not boat,” Nigel snapped. “And it’s a she,”
“It’s made of wood,” Philip said. “Wood cannot be female.”
“You inherited yer brain from yer pa’s side, then?”
“Nigel, run along and start a mutiny amongst the penguins —”
“Will you knock it off and get to work?” Colin shouted.
The ice was tilted upward at a forty-five-degree angle. It had bent the wooden planking enough to push through the outer layer.
The planks were made of greenheart. Greenheart was like steel, Father had said. And with two feet of solid oak and Norwegian mountain fir behind it, the hull was supposed to be indestructible.
But wood was wood. Under enough pressure greenheart splintered, too.
“Harder! Harder!” Colin yelled, bringing his pick down sharply, sending hunks of ice hurling into the air.
“Hey, John Henry, put down that hammer,” drawled Wyman Kennedy’s voice. “You ’n’ me’s got a job to do.”
Kennedy was the ship’s carpenter, a North Carolinian with a sense of humor so sharp you could scrape paint with it. He was standing behind Colin with Captain Barth and the ship’s machinist, Horst Flummerfelt.
“The hole’s beneath the waterline,” Barth explained. “When the ice gives way, the water’ll pour in.”
“Your pops wants you to help me find some wood and build us a cofferdam to seal off the hull,” Kennedy said. “Let’s go.”
Colin followed Kennedy to the gangplank. They scrambled up the side and over. From the deckhouse, Kennedy began pulling out planks of wood. “It’s got to be watertight,” he said. “No cuttin’ corners.”
Kennedy worked fast and talked fast. They nailed planks together, fitted joints, reinforced corners. When the contraption was done, Kennedy began drawing curved diagonal lines down the sides of the walls. “Cut along here, so we can fit the thing to the hull.”
“Aren’t you going to measure the angle against the hull?” Colin asked.
“Don’t need to,” Kennedy said. “A good doctor knows his patients.”
CRRRRRRACK!
The sound was like a cannon shot. The ship jolted sideways. Colin fell to the deck.
“Evacuate ship!” Father’s voice cried out. “Get Lombardo, Kosta, and Oppenheim out of there!”
“Aye, aye!” Colin scrambled to his feet. Racing ahead of Kennedy, he went down into the afterhold.
Kosta was on the floor, grimacing with pain, his cane lying next to him. “Pos épatheh?”
“Ella!” Colin said. It was one of the few Greek words he knew. Come.
He helped Kosta up. As they walked haltingly back to the ladder, Kennedy tried to lift the snoring Lombardo.
Oppenheim, still rocking, let out an explosive cackle. “He sleeps. Yeah, verily, he sleeps while the kingdom burns.”
“Oppenheim, follow us!” Colin commanded. “You’re the only healthy one here.”
Sort of, he thought.
He and Kosta emerged abovedecks into the sun. Robert, the African expatriate they’d picked up in Buenos Aires, reached toward Kosta and lifted him as if he were a basket of fruit, then gently lowered him over the gunwale, into the arms of waiting crewmen.
Colin turned and helped Lombardo up the ladder. Oppenheim took a little more prodding.
When the ship was clear, Jack quickly divided the men into three teams. “Mansfield, your men stay here and keep at the ice. Rivera, you’re salvage. Your team unloads all four lifeboats, then grabs whatever it can — spare masts, sails and spars, cofferdam, mess and carpentry equipment, wood, rope, and canvas — just drop it in the snow. Move fast and be ready to bolt if Captain Barth or I give the signal to evacuate. Colin, you get a team to find the tents and cots and set up camp. We’ll stay out here until the pack blows out. Now, go!”
Within minutes, Colin’s team had unloaded supplies and was hammering stakes in the ice. Robert and Brillman designed new tents on the fly, stretching sailcloth and canvas over two-by-fours because the real tents had been lost by Andrew and his expedition.
Andrew struggled to help out, but he couldn’t lift anything without wincing.
“The infirmary tent first,” Colin commanded. “Three cots.”
“Two,” Andrew said. “I don’t need one.”
“Just in case.”
“The worst is behind me, Colin.”
“It’s not always about you. Three cots. In case of emergencies.”
The men set to work and finished the cots quickly, two of them especially wide — for Lombardo’s girth and for Kosta’s habit of curling up with his dogs.
Father poked his head through the tent flap. “Good job on the camp, fellas. What’ll we call it?”
“Camp … Ice!” Flummerfelt suggested eagerly. “’Cause of all the ice.”
“Brilliant,” murmured Sam Bailey.
“Death Valley,” Oppenheim said.
“Camp Perseverance,” Andrew suggested.
Father smiled. “Like it, Andrew! You’ve always had a way with words.”
“Thanks, Pop.”
Colin set to tightening the lines. He couldn’t bear to look at Andrew’s smug little face.
Ease up, Colin told himself. Andrew had been through enough. He’d almost died in the snow.
He deserved compassion and sympathy.
So why, in the middle of this mess, was it so easy to hate him?
Because Andrew was so good, that was why. Good at words, at mathematics, at pleasing people. He had read everything and could talk rings around Colin. And why not? He’d grown up with books on his shelves and time on his hands, Andrew Douglas of Beacon Hill in his big brick house near the Boston Common, surrounded by the swells of high society.
He hadn’t grown up worrying whether there’d be enough heat to last the Alaskan winter. Whether Mother would return from her Arctic journeys.
Whether life was possible after she didn’t return. After the sea took her.
Being an Anglo, Father could pack up and return to his land. But Colin would always be away from home. Running from painful reminders of her. Never fitting in.
Here in Antarctica he was surrounded by reminders — the sky and the snow and the constant summer sun and the icy waters.
Clever Andrew could never know that.
Colin left the tent. Outside, O’Malley had set up two stoves and was cooking some blubbery meat with Stimson. Rivera and his crew were dumping enormous piles of rigging and spare wood over the Mystery’s stern bulwark, far from the feverish chopping of Mansfield and his team. The hole was now clear of ice, but the ridge was still thick, pressing hard against the lower part of the hull. Kennedy and Flummerfelt had taken up work on the cofferdam once again.
It was an act of great optimism, Colin thought.
Father was helping drag Rivera’s pile away from the ship. Colin ran over to help, grabbing one end of a thick column of polished oak, no doubt a spare mizzenmast.
Captain Barth approached from the bow, his face grim and furrowed. “We’re going to have to divert men to starboard,” he said. “The pack is blowing in. It’s encroaching again on the other side. The gap’s our only hope, and it’s just about closed —”
GRRRRROMMM!
Mansfield jumped away from the hull.
Kennedy and Flummerfelt stopped work on the cofferdam.
Colin felt his stomach twist. He looked up toward the source of the noise.
The Mystery’s foremast wasn’t in its usual place. Not quite. Its crosstrees were angled to starboard, as if it were turning to take a peek at the horizon.
“God save us,” Captain Barth muttered.
“GET THE MEN OUT OF THERE!” Father shouted. “NOW!”