The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (19 page)

‘Nor can the crew escape,' resumed Alfons, ‘for the ropes will capture any boat that tries to launch, and any sailor that leaps from the rail. And so a ship will drift, helpless, for many days, and not even if another ship is nearby can it come to their aid, for the ropes would clutch it as well. Men have been witnessed to go mad and raving in such straits. Others have decided that it is best to end their suffering by sinking their own vessel. But none have ever escaped. In the finish, the embrace of the Fish tightens so much that a ship will crack open, and so finally descend to the depths – but even that relief is a long time coming for the doomed crew. It is a slow, horrid way to die.'

The whale was lost in the waves now, and the men were daring to breathe again – although they still kept watch upon the waters.

‘We can only be grateful,' Alfons concluded, wiping the cold sweat from his brow, ‘that Rope Fish are rarely encountered. This is but the second I've beheld in all my fifty years at sea.'

‘And well sighted it was,' nodded Samson. ‘You have sharp eyes yet, Alfons.' Then to Dow he instructed, ‘Make your own course home, and fast
.
We seem to be clear of the thing for now, but the captain will want to be warned. The
Chloe
must not linger in the vicinity.'

So ended their final exercise. After eight days of drilling, Fidel appeared satisfied that the four crews were now ready for their duties in the Ice.

But in fact there was to be one more launch of the cutters before the arctic regions were reached; it took place five days after the encounter with the dead whale, and fifteen days out from Great Island. The ship was roused at daybreak – which came late now, at well past nine bells, so far north were they – by a cry from the crow's nest, the last cry Dow had expected to hear, out in the empty expanse of the northern ocean.

‘Land ho!'

Dow clambered topside in surprise and beheld, in the grey winter dawn, land indeed. It was some miles off the bow to the windward side – an island, narrow and low and rocky, no more than a mile long, and fenced all about with white water that warned of reefs.

Dow was still gazing at it nonplussed when Alfons, whose company was on watch, joined him at the rail.

‘A grim landfall, is it not,' said the poet. ‘Trap Island; the northernmost isle of all the isles in the world. ' Dow wondered – of
all
the isles? ‘I thought there were only four.'

‘Well, so there are. Four
large
Isles. Four
habitable
Isles. But there are many smaller islands in the wide seas besides. Dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. I don't know that anyone has ever counted them all. They are in any case mostly just barren rocks, or waterless sandbars, uninhabitable and barely worth naming. But Trap Island here is another story. Mark the reefs that extend all about it – what do you see there?'

Dow studied the island anew. It was without greenery or life that he could see, a frigid sliver of stone, its jagged shoreline washed by white water and devoid of any beach or landing. But the shoreline was unreachable anyway, so densely did reefs crowd the seas all around. To the west, on the far windward side, great ocean swells were crashing against these reefs, but in the calm of the lee side, rocky shoals were exposed above the waves. And lodged on those shoals were many jumbled shapes, black and skeletal …

They were ships, Dow realised. Wrecked ships, ancient and all broken to pieces, bereft of masts or rigging – but ships nonetheless, their remains preserved through untold years by slick shells of nicre.

‘The island's name is well given,' Alfons observed gravely. ‘A trap this place has indeed proved for many a doomed vessel over the centuries. Its lure is this: the two great currents that swirl in endless circles about the northern ocean meet, by evil chance, in these very waters – one from the east, one from the west. An unwary captain, or one beset by fog or foul weather, can thus be driven here long before he expects it, and so stray all unwitting upon the reefs. Be thankful then for Vincente's skill; he has delivered us to the lee side. It would go ill for us, to be caught windward of such shore.'

Dow gazed at the wrecks in fascination. ‘But why risk passing so close to such a place at all?' he asked.

‘Isn't it obvious? If any of the lost fleet was adrift in the northern waters, they would in time have washed up here. Vincente passes this way no doubt in search of survivors – or at the least, of wreckage.'

Dow studied the island once more. Nothing and no one moved there. A more bleak and inhospitable spot was hard to imagine.

‘Aye,' the poet added, following his gaze, ‘it would be scant reward to survive a wreck only to end up marooned on such an rock. But I've never heard, even in legend, of any survivor making it through the reefs to the Trap itself. Certainly none have ever been rescued from it.' Just then an order was called from the high deck, summoning the cutter crews, and Alfons grinned morbidly. ‘To the boats, it seems. I expected as much.'

He and Dow gathered with the others in front of the stern castle. From the Captain's Walk, Commander Fidel explained to them that the
Chloe
dared go no closer to the island, so it would be up to the cutters to make a detailed search for any sign of the lost fleet.

‘Think of it as your final drill before the Ice,' the first officer advised. ‘We're looking for any recent wreckage – but do not become wrecks yourselves. Keep to the lee of the reefs, and make no attempt upon the island. Landings have been tried there before, but if old tales are to be believed, no boat has ever won through.'

The crews – well practised now – launched their cutters and set out across the heaving sea towards the reefs. These stretched in great arcs north and south of the Trap, like talons of rock and white water, out-thrown to catch as many passing vessels as could be.

Two of the boats bore away north, but Dow's boat, and the boat commanded by Diego, bore south. It was demanding sailing, to keep close to the eastern line of the reefs without being dashed upon them. There in the lee of the Trap there was no surf crashing, but swells and chop still threatened, and foam swirled in wracks, and strange cross-currents sucked this way and that, contorted by invisible underwater chasms.

They worked their way south for perhaps an hour, peering through an ever-present mist, for the breakers on the windward side were hurling up great sheets of spray that fell again in a thin rain. They saw much wreckage jammed upon the exposed shoals – broken hulls sticking up like chewed bones stuck fast in monstrous teeth – but all of it was old, and black with ancient nicre. The reefs were a graveyard of the sea, it seemed to the searchers, but no one had been buried there in many years.

They reached the southernmost extent of the shoals – a good five miles from the island – and turned back. They were searching still, but more and more Dow found himself staring ahead to the Trap as it drew close. How strange it was to think that here was a land upon which no man had ever set foot. Not that there was any earthly reason a man would
want
to; it was a bare place, windswept and wet, and all its approaches were sharp with teeth. On the other hand, it was the only safe and stable refuge in all these miles of tormented seas, and if a man had to choose between the Trap and drowning …

And then Dow saw it, a flicker of white, a motion against the dark stone. Then it was gone. He blinked and stared again. Nothing. No – there! In a dark crevice that opened near the blunt crown of the island, the flicker again. It was an arm – an arm waving, lifted above a parapet of stone. There was a man there! Sheltering in the crevice, and too weak maybe with hunger and thirst to stand, but signalling with his last strength.

‘Lieutenant!' Dow cried, and pointed.

Samson stared. The white flicker came once more.

‘A castaway!' declared Alfons from the bow, having turned to look. ‘A poor wretch caught upon the Trap!'

They all stared now, but the arm did not reappear, and Samson shook his head, doubtful. ‘It's impossible, surely. No one has ever survived a wreck and the reefs to make safe haven on the island.'

Dow said, ‘No one before, maybe. But that doesn't mean it can't ever be done. See – there are channels between the rocks, paths that a man might follow and not drown, if he was swimming for his life.' He gave Samson a look. ‘Paths that a boat too might follow …'

‘You can't be thinking—'

‘Excellency,' urged Alfons, ‘if a man is there, he must be rescued. He can only have come from the lost fleet.'

‘Enough, seaman.' Samson studied the island pensively, half a mile away now – but a half mile that was all surging white water and the broken-glass scatter of reefs and rocks. Then he raised his voice to hail the other boat, some distance ahead. ‘Lieutenant Diego!'

Diego looked back, and called, ‘Samson?'

‘We think we spied a signal from the island!'

Diego turned in surprise to look at the Trap. Dow stared too, but the arm did not wave again. And yet it
had
waved, of that he was certain. He'd even seen that the man's shirt sleeve was ragged and torn, and extended only to the elbow. Perhaps the poor soul had expended himself to signal just that once, and was now insensible, on death's very doorstep.

‘I see nothing,' shouted Diego.

‘It was there,' was Samson's stubborn response.

The two cutters now drew to within a dozen yards of each other, sails slackened, and wallowing in the swell. ‘Even if it was – what help can we give?' demanded Diego. ‘It's impossible to land upon the island, and we're forbidden to try. Such was Fidel's order.'

Samson hesitated. ‘I thought it to be advice rather than an actual order. And if Fidel knew a man was there …'

Diego was frowning across the water. ‘It was an order. We will proceed back to the
Chloe.
You can report whatever it is you think you saw then, if you want. But for now I suggest you follow me.'

Alfons gave a disgruntled mutter. ‘Hark at his
follow
me.
If it was him on that forsaken rock, he'd forget all about orders quick enough.'

Samson glanced reprovingly at the poet, but then bit his lip and studied the island once more.

‘Well?' Diego called impatiently.

Samson shrugged. ‘Go ahead – we'll follow you home.'

Diego nodded brusquely and turned away, and soon his boat was cutting off for the
Chloe,
hove-to in the distance. Samson watched them go, then said with soft urgency, ‘What about it, men? Shall we dare the reefs? It's not something I'd order you to do.'

The six sailors exchanged looks, then the poet spoke up humbly. ‘Begging your pardon, Excellency, but what does Mr Amber think? No disrespect to your command, but he was the one who rode the whirlpool, was he not? And that was a worse fix than these waters.'

Samson frowned, then nodded. ‘Aye, I'll concede it was at that.' He turned to Dow. ‘So then – Mr Amber?'

Dow nodded eagerly, his thoughts already leaping beyond the reefs to the moment when they would find the dying man, the look that would be on his face as he realised he was going to live after all … ‘Very well then,' Samson ordered, ‘lower the sail and deploy the oars. Mr Amber, you have the helm. Quickly now.'

‘Aye, boys,' added Alfons, ‘and fear no reef. That old ice bird didn't call Mr Amber into the north just to have him die on a lump of rock!'

In moments they'd furled the sails and were rowing swiftly towards the white water. At the tiller, Dow studied the many channels that threaded between the reefs, searching for the right path through the maze. But now that he was in charge, his confidence wavered. There were paths yes … but did any lead all the way to the Trap? The island seemed further off suddenly. And even if he reached it, would he be able to land there safely? Or was he rashly – arrogantly – leading his crew to disaster? Alfons and the others might believe in omens like the albatross, but omens couldn't steer a course.

Then Dow shook his head, throwing off such doubts the way a dog shakes off water. He was not mistaken. The reefs, he reassured himself, were simply not as impassable as they first looked. It was just that the myth of the Trap's invulnerability had grown over the centuries into a fact that could not be questioned – when all it had needed was a fresh eye like his, ignorant of history, to see that a way might be found.

And yes – he spied it clearly now, a series of channels twisting between the shoals; a path to the island. Currents surged wickedly along its length, but one thing the great whirlpool had indeed taught Dow was to not be overawed merely by the sight of rushing water.

‘We're going in,' he warned the others. ‘Row steady for now, and then hard as you can when I call for it.'

Samson laughed, high and nervous. ‘Diego has just noted our course, it seems. He does not look happy.'