“It is the worst of examples. Mr Taylor!”
“Sir?”
“Get the man down.”
Mr Taylor saluted again and hurried away. I lost sight of him almost at once, for the attention was seized by the ice which appeared, perhaps a little nearer, then vanished again. It had been a projection high up and gleaming whiter than before in what must have been the real daylight. Anderson saw it too. He looked at me and smiled that same ghastly smile which he occasionally inflicted on persons near him at moments of extreme danger. I suppose it was brave. I have always been loath to credit him with admirable feelings but neither I nor anyone—except poor, silly, drunken Deverel—has ever doubted his courage.
“Captain—can we not come round a bit farther?”
Appalled, I heard myself, heard my own voice as if it had been that of another, make the presumptuous suggestion. Captain Anderson’s smile twitched. His right fist, down by his waist, doubled itself and proclaimed to me as clearly as if it had had a mouth, How I should like to be driven into the face of this insolent passenger!
He cleared his throat.
“I was about to give the order, Mr Talbot.”
He turned away and shouted to Charles.
“Try her another point to windward, Mr Summers.”
There was renewed movement in the groups of the crew. Suddenly I remembered Mrs Prettiman and her helpless spouse. I ran quickly down to the lobby and made a rather brusque way through the little knot of passengers in the entry. Mrs Prettiman was standing between the doors of her and her husband’s cabins. She was holding the rail lightly. She saw me at once and smiled. I went to her.
“Mrs Prettiman!”
“Mr Talbot—Edmund! How is it with us?”
I pulled myself together and explained the situation as briefly as possible. I believe she paled as she realized the nearness of shipwreck but her expression did not change.
“So you see, ma’am, it is a toss-up. Either we weather the ice or we do not. If we do not we have nothing left—”
“We shall have dignity left.”
Her words confounded me.
“Ma’am! This is Roman!”
“I prefer to consider it British, Mr Talbot.”
“Oh, of course, ma’am—but what of Mr Prettiman?”
“He is still asleep, I think. How long have we?”
“No one knows, not even the captain.”
“Mr Prettiman must be told.”
“I suppose so.”
Mr Prettiman was awake after all. He greeted us with a great and, if the truth be told, unusual equanimity. I believe he had been awake for some time and with his degree of intellect it was not difficult for him to deduce from the noises and the ship’s movement that we were at some crisis. In a word, he had had time to fortify himself. In fact his first thought was to get me out of the way so that Mrs Prettiman could attend to the intimate details of his toilet!
“For,” said he, smiling into my face, “if they say Time and Tide wait for no man, how much more tyrannical is this mysterious physiology!”
I withdrew, therefore, but was buttonholed by Mr Brocklebank who had a flutter about his lips and who for the first time since the doldrums had appeared without his coach cloak. He was carrying on a quavery conversation with Celia Brocklebank careless of who might hear. As far as I could make out he was imploring her to share the couch so that they might die in each other’s arms!
“No no, Wilmot, I cannot endure the thought—it is not congenial! Besides, you have not been there since Christmas when Mr Cumbershum lent you that salubrious book!”
Meanwhile a feeble voice was whimpering from Zenobia’s cabin—
“Wilmot!! Wilmot! I am dying!”
“So are we all—I beg you, Celia!”
Has it not been said that in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions the same curious phenomenon of exacerbated sexuality occurs? But whatever the explanation, it gave me a higher opinion of my dear Mrs Prettiman’s Roman stance. I spoke with Bowles, pulled the curls of Pike’s little girls, suggested to him that a drink would be a good thing—was reminded by Mr Brocklebank there was none remaining, except, as he said, what he had obtained under the counter from Master Tommy Taylor. In fact, disappointed in his Celia he retired to the cabin to fortify himself with the bottle, abandoning Celia who showed a marked preference for my company quite suddenly, and I have no doubt that she was in train to find it congenial if I had—but Mrs Prettiman returned. I followed her. Mr Prettiman was a little propped up on pillows. He was still smiling with apparent cheerfulness.
“Edmund, we have a thing or two to settle. You will of course look after Letty.”
“Of course, sir.”
“It is impossible that I should survive in the state in which I find myself. It will be next to impossible for a man in full health. But I, with this leg—therefore, when the end is upon us you must get on deck, the two of you, wrapped in as much clothing as you can wear, and make your way to the boats.”
“No, Aloysius. Edmund may do so—must do so. He is young and we are not in any way his responsibility. I shall stay with you.”
“Now, Mrs Prettiman—I shall become testy!”
“You will not, sir. Edmund will go, not I. But I would like him to hear this, for I believe he stands in much need of an example—and you know, Edmund, I am a governess! So—now”—and here her voice sank both in pitch and volume and became warmer than I at least had ever heard it—“so now I must make a solemn declaration. In the short span of our married life I have never disobeyed you and would not have done so in the future had there been one, not because I am your wife but because of who and what you are! But we have no future, I think, and I shall stay with you here in this cabin. Goodbye, Edmund—”
“Goodbye, my boy. No woman—”
“I—”
My throat was choked. Somehow I got out of the cabin and closed the door behind me. As I did so the ship became upright, another and I guess contrary wave washed over the waist and burst into the lobby. I waded to the entrance, helped Bowles to his feet and saw him return silent and soaked to his cabin, suggested to the Pike children that it was all great fun and got myself into the waist.
“Charles! How is it?”
“I have not time, Edmund. But no one has ever seen a berg like this—like that!”
He nodded to the side, then pounded up to the quarterdeck. There was a little less fog—or rather it had seemed to retreat from us. We had perhaps a quarter of a mile—I should say a couple of cables of open water visible on all sides. Once more the ice was visible fitfully; and now in dim daylight looked harder, colder, more implacable. It seemed clear that we were moving parallel to the face of the cliff and at a great speed. The speed could not be due to our motion through the water but rather to our motion relative to the ice. If the fog cleared for a few moments we seemed to race by the white cliff, but as it thickened again so our speed seemed to slow to what was owing solely to the wind. There was, it was evident, a very fast current racing by the berg from south to north and taking us with it. The sea in fact was as savagely indifferent to us as the ice!
I turned to go up to the quarterdeck. Little Tommy Taylor came down it.
“How is the purser, Mr Taylor?”
“I couldn’t persuade him to leave the boat, sir. The captain says I will have to tell him he’s under arrest.”
Tommy went forrard and I continued to the quarterdeck. Mr Benét had the watch with young Willis. The captain stood at the top of the ladder up to the poop, a hand on the rail at either side of the top. He was looking round constantly, at the fog, the glimpses of ice, the confused sea which resulted from the beating of the waves and their recoil from the cliff. As I reached the quarterdeck I heard thunderous explosions behind me where once more there was a cataclysmic fall of ice. Though it was veiled by the fog the noise of the fall was significantly louder.
“Well, Mr Benét, what do you think of Nature now?”
“We are privi
leged. How many people have seen anything like this?”
“Intolerable meiosis!”
“Understatement? Were you not some time ago the passenger who declared to all and sundry that he would not be anywhere else for a thousand pounds? Mr Willis, contrive to stand up straight and look useful even if you are not!”
“My declaration, Mr Benét, was made pour encourager les autres, as you would say.”
“And you yourself would fain die a dry death, as you would say? Hazleton, you idle bugger, you should turn a rope after you’ve cheesed it! Captain, sir!”
“Yes, Mr Benét, I see the ice. Mr Summers! Have the longboat ready to drop on the starboard beam.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
More pipes, more hurry.
“Have you noticed, Mr Benét—”
“Just a moment, Mr Talbot. Mr Summers! Willis—go after Mr Summers and tell him that Mr Talbot suggests filling the longboat with hammocks.”
“I did no such thing!”
The captain spoke behind us. It was the only time I ever heard Mr Benét receive even the shadow of a rebuke.
“It will keep some of them busy, Mr Benét, and is appropriate at this time. But you might inform the passengers in general terms that they are still advised not to interfere in the running of the ship!”
Having delivered this relatively mild rebuke to his favourite, the captain retired to the taffrail as if he was embarrassed by his own words. Benét turned to me.
“You heard that, Mr Talbot?”
“I said nothing about hammocks! Nor do I know why the longboat is to be got ready unless it is to ensure the escape of the more valuable persons, in which case—”
“There are no valuable persons, Mr Talbot. We shall all die together. The longboat is to persuade people that something is being done. It is to be a fender between us and the ice—”
“Will that do any good?”
“I think not.”
Willis came back.
“Mr Summers says to thank Mr Talbot, sir.”
“You are looking green, my lad. Cheer up! When it comes, it will be quick.”
“Benét! The ice is nearer—look!”
“We have done what we can. Captain sir. Do we drop the boat?”
“Not yet.”
Suddenly the ice was there, close. I could look at nothing else. To my eyes the cliff seemed monstrously high. It was uniformly undercut along the base and the water near it was full of huge fragments which had fallen and which were the immediate danger. I heard the captain shout some Tarpaulin order and saw the longboat drop over the starboard side—saw the thick painter snub as the pull of the water came on the boat. The ice, now gleaming dully white and green, was behaving preposterously. We had swung even farther to the north—I suppose an unordered and involuntary movement made by the men at the helm—and if our heading had been anything to go by should have been moving markedly away from the cliff. But it was evident even to my untutored eye that we were not doing so. For the effect of the earth’s rotation which is said to cause that perpetual current round the Antarctic Ocean should have moved the ice as much as it moved us. But for whatever reason, it was not doing so. We were feelingly approaching the ice as Alcyone had approached us, beam on or even quarter on. Nor could our sails account for our two movements—the one to the north, the other towards the east and the ice.
I make all this sound too coldly rational! How many times since those dreadful hours have I started up in my bed and willed a change in our remembered circumstances! But then, as I clung to the windward side of the vessel, I had no rational appreciation of what was happening, only the incomprehensible sight of it! How to explain the disorganized fury of the sea, the towers, pinnacles, the bursts of water that had replaced those steadily marching billows which had swung under and past us for so many days together? For now it seemed that those billows were flung back at us. Columns of green water and spray climbed the ice cliff and fell back from it. Wind against wind, wave against wave, fury feeding on itself—I tried to think of my parents, of my Belovéd Object, but it would not do. I was a present panic, an animal in the article of death. The ice was above us! Ice fell, leapt up monstrously from beneath the foam, and still we swept in towards that hideous, undercut and rotten wall. Some of our sails were slack and beating, some filled the wrong way round and yet we hurried towards and along the wall fast as horses might have drawn us. If there was anything regular about our situation it was in the explosive falls of ice from the walls of this mortal and impregnable city! Then I recognized that Nature—the Nature which Miss Chumley so rightly detested—had now finally gone mad. For hours we had been thrust sideways towards the cliff of ice downhill, as Mr Benét had once said, and at a coaching speed. Now the ice, as if to demonstrate its own delirium, was performing the impossible. It was rotating round us. It appeared astern, then swung round past us and went by way of the bows where it had come from. It repeated the action, then drew in alongside to starboard. Among all the noises of that situation I heard the longboat crack like a nut. I do not know if the coup de grâce was given the boat by a floating block of ice or the cliff itself. There was a green road of smooth water close under the ice, only interrupted when the cliff above us spilled some incalculable weight. The blocks that had fallen into the road of green water were going with us at the same speed, crashing and crumbling where they jostled each other or the side of the cliff. A block fell and took a stuns’l off the outer edge of some sail on the mainmast and dropped, comfortably wrapped as it were, the stuns’l yard fluttering behind it like a feather. Another, the shape and more than the size of Lady Somerset’s fortepiano, came sideways forward of the mainmast and took the front half of Mr Jones’s boat with Mr Jones and Mr Tommy Taylor attached and shot with them through the larboard rail.
But we were now, it seemed, to be introduced even more intimately to the cliff, which arranged itself along our larboard side, careful, as it were, not to touch us.
We were, to use Tarpaulin once more, making a sternboard, or more intelligibly, we were going backwards faster than we had ever gone forwards! The cliff, dropping a few thousand tons of ice by our larboard bow, threw that off to starboard as a boy might thrust a model boat with his foot.
It was a crisis of helplessness beyond seamanship. My brain went. I saw a mélange of visions in the ice which swept past me—figures trapped in the ice, my father among them. A cave opened with an eye of verdure at the other end of it.
The last spasm of our ordeal came upon us. The ice moved violently and disappeared before our eyes and we raced downhill! It seemed the final sinking, the end of everything.
*
Only the sinking did not come. We were, it appeared, upright in a windless sea to the east of which a clear white day had spread. Around us in the water, blocks of ice lay still.
I straightened up from my crouched position, unstuck my hands from the rail. Along the decks, people were beginning to move again, but slowly as if they could never be too cautious. We were, after all, turning very slowly in the water. The sails were rustling.
Someone forrard shouted a sentence and there were bellows and screams of laughter and, after that, silence again. I never found out what the joke was or who had made it.
To the west of us lay the yellow fog with here and there a dull gleam of ice in it, some increasing distance away, courtesy, it seemed, of that same circumpolar current which for so many days had been bringing us to the east.
People began to talk.
(19)
It will save trouble if I insert here part of a communication made to me by a member of my old college who wishes to remain anonymous. However, the reader is assured that my old and learned acquaintance is the final court of appeal in matters of hydrology and associated -ologies.
Your description would be well enough for a fiction in the wild, modern manner! Was there not a demented woman screaming curses from the top of your “ice cliff”? Or was there perhaps an impassioned Druid imprecating y
our vessel before he threw himself down? I much fear it is all too highly coloured for a respectable geographer and if you do find someone rash enough to publish your descriptions I must insist on remaining unnamed! The effect of travel on the young, as I have only too often had to notice, is deplorable. It narrows the immature mind to a set of disjunct but gaudy impressions like the window of a print shop! Fortunately, as a man who has had the sense never to travel farther from his place of birth than the metropolis and who for many years has found a college a world in itself, I am able to lend an objective mind to the problems of terrestrial behaviour.
My good sir! If your ice cliff was a hundred feet high it extended seven hundred feet below the surface of the water. That may seem a great deal to you; but my information is that the waters at that latitude are far deeper. It is clear, then, that your cliff was aground and you have discovered a reef to which you should give your name at once if you care for that sort of exhibition. Granted (for a moment) a reef with your monstrous lump of ice on it, the following would be a plausible conjecture. Your ship was hurried towards it by wind and current, only to find as she approached that the current was deflected to the north along the face of the ice, then swirled round the northern end as a chip of wood might be whirled round a corner in the gutter. The constant falls of ice are plausible too, for your berg was far north and would be quite rotten.
I come to the major point. If your berg was so long, so vast that it even affected the weather, then it must have stretched so far south that it would be more like a floating continent than a patch of ice! You probably do not realize that an “ice cliff” of necessity implies land on which snow can accumulate, glaciers form and at last slide slowly into the sea where they may set off on such a voyage of destruction as you describe. In fact it implies a vast continent lying over and round the South Pole! As I have spent the greater part of my adult life perfecting a proof that such a continent is geographically impossible you will not expect me to accept your account as other than that of someone tried beyond endurance by a voyage as long as any in the memory of man. I would here (were you sufficient of a geographer to follow the argument) explain my “Principle of Orbital Balance and Reciprocity”. Better I think to present you with an argument suited to a layman. I have shown by a simple calculation of the volume of ice contained in your cliff that its formation must date from several thousands of years previous to the creation of the world in the spring of the year four thousand and four B.C.! Pray, when next you write, offer my humble duty to your Lady Mother and her excellent spouse.