The Map of the Sky by Félix J. Palma Read Free Book Online Page B

they weighed anchor, fatally delayed the voyage. By the time they had passed the South Sandwich Islands heading forBouvet Island, even the lowliest kitchen boy knew they would be lucky to arrive before the end of summer. However, the voyage had involved great expense, and they had gone too far for the option of turning back to be feasible. And so Captain MacReady had resolved to continue until they reached the Kerguelen Islands, in the hope that the sailors’ rabbit’s-foot charms would prove effective in the polar circle. Heading southwest at eleven knots in a fair wind, they had soon found themselves dodging the first icebergs, which seemed to guard the Antarctic coastline like hostile sentinels. They navigated the channels between the icebergs and the pack ice, pounded by fierce hailstorms, making good headway without further incident, until they realized from the expanse of solid ice almost covering the water that the long Antarctic winter had arrived in mid-February that year, much earlier than usual. Even so, they forged on with naïve zeal, trusting in the double hull of African hardwood with which Reynolds had insisted the old whaling boat be reinforced. It was a long and arduous struggle, which came to be fruitless when at last the indestructible pack ice closed in around them. Captain MacReady proved resourceful in a crisis: he gave the order to scatter hot coals on the encroaching ice to melt it more quickly, and to furl the topsails. He even sent a gang of men down armed with spikes, shovels, pickaxes, and any other sharp tools they could find in the hold. He did everything in his power except try to push the vessel himself, like a god of Olympus. But all that activity did not succeed in rendering their situation less dire. They were doomed from the moment they ventured onto that sea strewn with icy snares, perhaps from the moment Reynolds had planned the expedition. And so, no longer able to move forward, the Annawan became gradually hemmed in by sea ice until she was stuck fast in the immensity of the Antarctic, and the crew had to accept their situation, like warriors accepting defeat, as the ice encroached hourly upon the narrow channel of water behind them, crushing any hopes they had of survival.
    When they had managed to clamber off the ship, which was slightly tilted to her starboard side, MacReady ordered one of his men to climbto the top of the nearest iceberg and report what he saw. After hacking out a few steps in the ice with a pickax, the lookout peered through his brass spyglass and confirmed Reynolds’s fears: for them, the world was now no more than a vast frozen desert spreading in all directions, dotted with mountain peaks and icebergs. A white expanse without shelter or refuge, it rendered them instantly insignificant. Whether they lived or died was of no consequence in the face of that immensity, cut adrift from the world.
    Two weeks later their situation was no better. The stubborn ice holding the Annawan prisoner had not yielded an inch. On the contrary, they could only deduce from the alarming groaning sounds the ship’s hull made that the ice was wrapping itself even more tightly around it. It would be eight or nine months, perhaps even longer, before the return of summer, when the ice would begin to melt, and then only if they were lucky, for Reynolds had heard many similar stories in which the long-awaited thaw never came. In fact, once Man ventured into those icy domains, however experienced he was, everything became unpredictable. The expedition Sir John Franklin had led in 1819 to map the north coast of Canada, for example, had not been able to rely on a kind fate. The wretched explorers had spent so long in the ice that Franklin had been forced to eat his own boots as the only way of staving off extreme hunger. Although, unlike some of the others, he at least had made it home. Reynolds looked down uneasily at his frost-covered boots and wondered whether their names would also be