Authors: John Christopher
‘Niels! I think we’ve made it.’
Forward of the starboard bow, there was a difference. The line of ice curved away; where it should have continued there was the black emptiness of open water.
‘We are rounding it!’
‘What else?’ Olsen clapped his hands together loudly. ‘This is good fortune! We shall not clear it by more than twenty metres.’
They cleared it by less; a small, floating outcrop of ice grated harshly against the side of the ship. The current still took the
Kreya
westwards; the mist still clung to the heaving sea.
‘She roars as loudly,’ Mouritzen said. He peered through the mist. ‘Ahead – is that more ice?’
‘Where?’ Through his glasses, Olsen studied the quarter Mouritzen had indicated. Then he put the glasses down. ‘Not so lucky after all,’ he said drily.
‘It is ice.’
‘Yes, ice. We are in a lead, an inlet. The ice lies north and south of us, and the current is taking us farther in.’
‘We may get right through to clear water.’
Olsen cocked his head, listening to the noise.
‘I do not think so. This is a big field.’
‘So?’
‘We will hope to back out again,’ Olsen said, ‘when we have power.’
‘Yes,’ Mouritzen said, ‘of course, we can back out.’
He stared ahead with mingled fear and excitement and awe. Although the fog persisted the air was bright, perhaps as a result of the ice, which could now be seen to stretch away on either side of the ship. It was as though they were making up a fjord, between ice-hung shores.
The fjord narrowed rapidly. On the starboard side, Mouritzen saw a glimmering mountain, a white berg, rising from the surrounding plain; slowly it moved past them and was gone. Then they struck: the
Kreya
shuddered all along her length, and he saw the stump of the after-mast lurch against the background of white. A second, lesser impact followed the first. After that there was no more motion than that of a ship tied up in a quiet harbour.
Olsen and Mouritzen set to work together on the engines, pooling their knowledge, each bridging over, to some extent, the inevitable gaps in the other’s understanding of what had been jealously maintained as Møller’s preserve. When things appeared to be going fairly smoothly, Olsen left Mouritzen to it. There was no indication that the engines had suffered by their lengthy shutdown.
Mouritzen heard the clatter of feet on the ladder. He glanced at his watch as he looked round; by Central European time, on which the ship was still running, it was a few minutes after nine o’clock. The real time would be seven, or earlier.
It was Olsen who came down into the engine-room. Mouritzen said:
‘Nearly full pressure. How are things above decks?’
‘There is breakfast for you,’ Olsen said. ‘Bacon and sausage. I will take over here. You can send Thorsen down and I will instruct him in the controls.’
‘I could wait for breakfast. Isn’t it more important to back her out of the ice?’
‘No,’ Olsen said. ‘Not now.’ He smiled in the sharp, unyielding way which Mouritzen, from experience, knew as a sign that something had gone badly wrong and that Olsen did not wish to discuss it. ‘Get your breakfast.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Mouritzen asked.
Olsen turned to the controls, not answering him. Mouritzen stood by the foot of the ladder, waiting. After a while, Olsen said, over his shoulder:
‘I want Thorsen down here. Get him.’
Olsen spoke again when Mouritzen was half-way up the ladder. He called:
‘You can chart a way out while you’re up there, too.’
Mouritzen went out on deck without putting a coat on. Coming from the warmth of the engine-room, the bitter, damp cold was a shock. The air was lighter. It was much too early for dawn in these latitudes; the brightness must be moonlight. A film of condensation was on everything – moisture ran down the ropes and dripped from the gunwales. He took the corridor through the forecastle, and heard the sound of Katerina scratching in her cabin as he went through to the after-deck. He stopped there.
In confusion he thought at first that he had remembered wrongly – that the
Kreya
had backed into the ice instead of ramming it. But she had rammed it, all right. He stared at the heaving ice, unbroken all round the ship’s stern. There was a different explanation. The lead no longer existed; the ice had closed around them.
Towards noon the sky grew lighter, and there was a hint of sunlight in the south, but the fog did not clear. Visibility was about four hundred yards; all round the ship, for that distance, one could see the shrouded hummocks of ice, engaged in their slow, drunken, jostling dance on the surface of the waters. The impression was of immutable permanence underlaid by flux, a world poised on the surface of a bubble.
The day, such as it was, did not last long. By five o’clock on the uncorrected time, dusk was closing in, narrowing the confines of their ice-bound world. The long night lay ahead of them.
But the atmosphere on the
Kreya
was one of relief, not apprehension. There was calm, after stormy seas, and the solid shapes of the ice reminded them of land; they could almost imagine being locked in some wintry port. A very great difference was made by the fact that, with the engines running again, there was warmth, and adequate light. They could have hot showers, and Mrs Simanyi was able to prepare meals on stoves that kept their heat, and stayed on a level plane. Lunch, like breakfast, was a scrappy affair, taken as people found opportunity, but for the evening meal they all sat down together, with Olsen at his accustomed place at the head.
During the bad weather, only Olsen, Mouritzen and Josef Simanyi had continued to shave when they could, but now Stefan and Thorsen had greeted the return of easily available hot water by themselves returning to clean-shaven states, and Stefan had carefully trimmed his little moustache. Mouritzen, sitting opposite Jones, was surprised to see that he had retained his beard. He was the more surprised in that it was not a particularly good beard; it was coarse and grey in patches and was of uneven luxuriance. In other respects, Jones was clearly conscious and careful of his appearance, and he was, after all, a man in love with a much younger wife.
It was Mrs Simanyi who commented on it.
‘So you keep your beard, Mr Jones? You will be the sailor, or the patriarch, maybe?’
Sheila answered for him. ‘I persuaded him to keep it.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘I’ve always had an ambition to be married to a bearded man.’
She looked nervous, Mouritzen thought, and Jones himself looked embarrassed. But that was understandable, particularly since they were English. He addressed himself to what was before him.
‘This is good soup, Mama,’ he said.
During the last week they had all learned to address her, as her family did, by the affectionate diminutive.
‘In winter,’ she said, ‘if the soup is good, everything is good.’
‘We will keep you on the
Kreya
,’ Olsen said. ‘We have never had so good a cook.’
She smiled widely. ‘And what do my family do?’
‘They can stay also. Even the bear. We will teach her to be a deck-hand. I have trained men with less sense than a bear has.’
Sheila said: ‘Perhaps we could all stay. Do we have to sail her back to Copenhagen?’
Olsen lifted his eyebrows. ‘Would you stay in an ice-field for ever? What happens when fuel runs out, and food?’
‘Not in the ice-field. Sail her round the world, perhaps.’
‘The company,’ Olsen said, ‘is generous and like a father, but I think they will want their ship.’
‘She is lost!’ Josef said. ‘She was sunk in the storms in the North Sea. Like the other two
Kreya
s, she lies at the bottom of the sea. Captain, I know what we will do! We will make a flag of the skull and bones, and turn pirate.’
‘We are well armed for that,’ Olsen said drily. ‘We have fists, and the bear has claws. We will inspire terror.’
Stefan said to Annabel: ‘And you, Annabella – do you wish to be a pirate?’
‘No, thank you.’ She looked up. ‘Girls aren’t pirates.’
‘Ah, no,’ Josef said. ‘Better she will be a little Hollander, with wings on her bonnet, and wooden shoes, watching the wind blow the mill.’
Annabel shook her head. ‘Mamma says I’m going to be Danish instead.’
There was a ripple of amusement and interest. Mary tried to shush her and then, realizing she was only making matters worse, broke off in some confusion.
Mouritzen said: ‘Yes, she will be a little Dane. And I am to be her Pappa. True, Annabel? You will have me for a father?’
‘Yes.’ She considered him. ‘It was Mamma who decided, but I like you, too.’
Mrs Simanyi leaned across to Mary: ‘That is good. I am very glad. You will be happy; I know that.’
Olsen said: ‘I have lived with Niels for two years. I express my sympathies, Mrs Cleary. But we must celebrate on his account, anyway. Jorgen, is there any champagne?’
Thorsen shook his head. ‘No champagne.’
‘But there is Schnapps – that is certain. We will all have Schnapps, and Annabel will have Apfelsaft maybe. See to it, Jorgen.’
Nadya said: ‘Congratulations, Mary. And you, Niels. I hope it will be a happy marriage.’
Olsen jerked his head up. ‘If you are impatient, I will wed you now. It is something I have not done yet. And it will go well in the log, along with the other disasters.’
Mrs Simanyi said reprovingly: ‘Only the selfish think badly of marriage.’
Olsen raised a finger at her. ‘You are a good Catholic, Mama. Were the saints selfish?’
‘The saints thought well of marriage for others.’
‘I do also.’
‘And you are no saint!’
‘That does not come in the question. Ah, there we are.’ Thorsen was getting out
akvavit
glasses and filling them. ‘By custom, I do not drink. But today I have brought the
Kreya
safe into her ice harbour and beyond that there is a betrothal. That is something to drink to. Ladies and gentlemen, to the health and happiness of the Mouritzens all!’
They drank, and Nadya pushed her glass towards Thorsen.
‘Fill mine again, Jorgen,’ she commanded him. ‘That was quickly drunk.’
As usual, Mouritzen was desperately tired when he lay down in his bunk, but for a time he lay awake, listening to the noises outside. There was a difference, he thought, a more purposeful rhythm, and a greater preponderance of the grinding of ice against the metal sides of the ship. Perhaps the ice was breaking up again. Maybe in the morning there would be a way clear for them to back or nose out to the open sea. The screws had been run from time to time so that they should not ice up, and the jury-rudder had been lifted clear. It only needed the ice to break up, and they would be all right.
Olsen woke him at 6 a.m., Icelandic time; he had adopted this the previous day from a rough estimate of the sun’s position through the mist. Mouritzen sat up in his bunk. The growling and groaning outside continued.
‘No way clear yet?’ he asked.
Olsen shook his head. His face was drawn with fatigue and darkly shadowed – his beard grew quickly. The euphoria of the previous day was markedly absent; but tiredness would account for that.
‘Nothing yet,’ he said. ‘See that I am called at ten.’
‘You need more sleep than that.’
Olsen smiled, closing one eye. ‘Four hours is enough. There is coffee in the thermos.’
Mouritzen drank his coffee and then stepped out on to the quarter-deck to look around. He felt a breeze from the east, and saw that the mist was beginning to swirl and eddy, instead of lying flat and motionless over the ship. A wind would blow the fog away. And it might help to break up the ice.
By eight most of the mist was gone, and the breeze was strong enough to lift the
Kreya
’s flag from time to time. Several of the others went out on deck to look about them. There was moonlight and faint starlight, and in the south there was the early glow of dawn. All round there was the ice, a landscape of low-lying, jagged shapes, peaked with the more massive outlines of bergs. In this light it was desolate, chilling the heart equally with the flesh. They stared for a time, and talked in whispers, and then, one by one, they went in.
Gradually the glow in the south brightened. When Mouritzen called Olsen at ten, it had turned to sunrise. The two men stood together and watched the red disc lift above the far horizon.
‘There is water there, I think,’ Mouritzen said.
‘Yes.’
‘And to the east. A mile, do you think?’
‘You are not used to gauging Arctic distances. Three miles more likely.’
‘The ice has settled more. It makes less noise.’ Olsen nodded. ‘If this wind strengthens, will it scatter the ice to the east – open a way?’
‘See to the engines,’ Olsen said. ‘I do not trust Thorsen with them.’
When Mouritzen came up again, the sun had lifted clear of the ice. The sky was red all round it, turning to green and blue higher up towards the zenith. The pack-ice was spotted and stained with crimson, and those pools touched by the sun’s rays were bright and bleeding red. Where the sun did not penetrate, the water was a deep blue-green. It looked colder and purer than any water Mouritzen had ever seen.
There was some free water on the port side of the
Kreya
. Josef was there, reddened by the sunrise, patiently fishing. Stefan stood near him, whistling through his teeth. He called to Mouritzen:
‘This is better, Niels. I think I will go skating on the ice. Is that permitted?’
Mouritzen grinned. ‘You must have the Captain’s permission to take part in sports. I will ask him for you.’
On the bridge, he said to Olsen: ‘Stefan wants to go out on the ice. Do you permit it?’
Olsen was preoccupied. He listened for a while, as though making sense of what Mouritzen had said. Then he shook his head.
‘No. It would not be safe. If the fool got into trouble, we would have to rescue him.’
Mouritzen looked towards the east. ‘No break yet.’
Olsen said: ‘Look. The other way.’
To the west the ice-field stretched away with no hint of open sea – but there was something else. At its limits, lifting white crests into the deep blue sky, there were mountains – range on range of them, as far as the eye could see.