by Odo Hirsch
Captain Wrick had been at sea for over forty years, starting as a boy of eleven. His cheeks were rubbed red by the sea wind and his beard was as white as the sea spray. He had seen almost everything, and done almost everything there is to see or do at sea. He had been cabin boy, midshipman, first mate and skipper. He had sailed with spices, carried coal, traded timber and transported ambassadors on secret missions. He had been sunk, shipwrecked, captured by pirates, caught up in sea battles and driven onto coral reefs by tropical storms. He was always calm. That was his secret. He was always steady. He never threw things around in a temper and he never whooped with delight. His First Mate, Michael, who had sailed with him for seventeen years, had never heard him raise his voice. Captain Wrick had seen and done so much that there was virtually nothing left that could surprise him.
But he had never towed an iceberg. He had never even heard anyone say that they wanted to do it. It was the strangest idea he had come across for years, and it was a lot more exciting than sailing with yet another load of figs across the same seas to the same ports that he had visited a thousand times already! But could it be done? That was the question. He was curious. When this wiry man and his big friend arrived on his ship and asked if he would do it, a voice inside him said: ‘Wrick, you must find out.’
To be frank, he did not really know if it was possible, but if there was any ship that could do it, his own vessel, the Fortune Bey, was the one. The Bey had three tall masts, a stout rudder and decks of seasoned wood. The figurehead that jutted forward from its prow was in the shape of a man wearing a golden turban and a fierce moustache. Captain Wrick had sailed the Bey for years and knew every creak of its timbers. It was like an old friend and the sturdiest of companions.
The captain’s cabin was at the back of the Bey, with windows of thick glass that looked out over the rudder and the churning wake in the sea. In one corner there was a simple sailor’s hammock, where Captain Wrick slept. Near the windows there was a table covered in maps and sea charts, as well as the compass, telescope, sextant and other instruments that a captain requires. A lantern hung from a beam above the table, and the whole place smelled of beeswax and warm tobacco from the pipe that Captain Wrick smoked. He smoked it as he sat with Bartlett at the table for hours and hours on the six-week journey to the ice seas, trying to work out how to tow an iceberg. Jacques le Grand joined them whenever he wasn’t feeling too seasick, and sometimes the First Mate, Michael, came in to add his ideas, leaving the second mate to steer the ship.
At first they thought of simply throwing a great loop of rope around the iceberg and towing it like that, but everyone soon realised that the loop would slip over the iceberg’s tip as it began to melt. Then Bartlett thought of using a chain, because that would bite into the ice, but a chain would fall and sink as the ice melted. Then they thought of cutting a groove into the ice so a rope wouldn’t slip off, but of course a groove would melt away as well, and then they thought of using a chain in a groove, but that wasn’t any better … The days passed, the lantern swayed from the beam above their heads, and their ideas went round and round in circles, trying to work out how an iceberg might be towed.
Of course, that wasn’t the only problem. How large should the iceberg be? It needed to be big, because as soon as they took it into warmer waters it would start to melt. It had to last not only long enough to get back to Gozo, who would give them a melidrop, but then to make it all the way back to the Queen as well. Yet the bigger the iceberg, the more slowly they would travel and the more time it would have to melt before they finished their journey. And if it was too big, they wouldn’t be able to tow it at all.
Captain Wrick, who was an expert on everything that was known about the sea, spent whole days making complicated calculations to work out the size of the iceberg they should take. One day he concentrated on the speed of the wind, the next day it was the strength of the currents. Then there was the temperature of the water, the weight of the ship, the height of the waves, the shape of the iceberg, the amount of rain, the strength of the sun, and every time he sat down to work it out he thought of something else. Eventually he tried to put everything together in one big formula. Then he gave up.
‘We’ll have to see when we get there’ he said. ‘I think I can make a good guess of the size we can manage.’
But it turned out that Captain Wrick did not make a good guess of the size they could manage. It had never been done before, and he had no experience. By now they had been at sea for over five weeks. They were entering the freezing ocean. The air was cold; icicles sprouted on the rigging. On deck, the sailors slipped on frozen puddles. Their breath turned to ice in the air. The sea mists reached down to the very bone and chilled the marrow, and even when the sun shone there was no warmth, but only the glitter of frost on the ship’s timbers. A few days later they began to see icebergs.
The icebergs were gigantic. They rose out of the sea like white cliffs. Captain Wrick sailed carefully amongst them, keeping as much distance as he could. Finally he made for an immense mountain of ice that stood twice as high as the ship’s main mast. He ordered the sails to be furled. A cold sun was shining and the sea was as blue and as still as freezing metal. The Fortune Bey stood motionless on the water. Captain Wrick went below with Bartlett, Jacques and Michael. Outside the cabin window, the iceberg loomed silently, reaching into the sky and dazzling the eyes with its whiteness, dwarfing everything.
‘It’ll be easier to tow than it looks,’ said Captain Wrick.
Bartlett glanced at the iceberg. It couldn’t be harder to tow than it looked—it looked impossible.
‘I’m certain,’ said Captain Wrick, ‘I’ve done all the calculations.’
The calculations were on the desk—pages and pages. But no one examined them. There was still the other problem they hadn’t solved: how would they tow it?
‘Shall we try the rope?’ said Michael.
They all gazed at the huge bulk of the iceberg. No one could imagine getting enough rope around that monster to be able to tow it.
‘The chain?’
There was the same problem with the chain.
‘You know, we used to tow whales with chains,’ said Michael, ‘when I worked on a whaling ship. We used to put the chains around their tails and—’
‘Whales?’ said Bartlett suddenly.
‘Yes. We used to put chains—’
‘What about harpoons?’
‘No, Bartlett,’ said Michael, glancing at Captain Wrick with a grin, as if to say how little explorers knew about the sea. ‘You kill the whales with the harpoons, then you drag them with chains.’
But Bartlett wasn’t listening. ‘Captain Wrick,’ he cried, ‘have we got harpoons?’
‘Bartlett, the iceberg isn’t alive. We don’t need to kill it.’
‘I don’t want to kill it. But I want harpoons. Do we have any?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Good! Let’s have them. Three. And three long chains. And we’ll need a hammer, from the carpenter—the biggest he has!’ Bartlett grinned. Captain Wrick and Michael were staring at him in confusion. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll understand soon enough,’ he said, and he turned to Jacques. ‘Come on, Jacques, that iceberg won’t wait forever!’
A boat was lowered. Bartlett and Jacques jumped in and rowed to the iceberg. The whole crew was on deck to see what they would do. And it was very simple: Jacques raised the sledgehammer and, using his enormous strength, drove the harpoons into the side of the iceberg. The ice splintered and flew as the stakes went in. Then Bartlett attached a chain to each one. Then they rowed back, bringing the other ends of the chains with them to fasten to the stern of the Fortune Bey. And now the iceberg was securely attached. The Bey was ready to tow it.
But it didn’t. For a day and a half the ship sat absolutely still in the water. Even when the breeze picked up and the sails billowed and filled with air, the Bey didn’t move an inch. It was simply unable to shift the monstrous iceberg. And so everyone
began to wonder—if the ship couldn’t move the iceberg, did that mean that the iceberg could move the ship? The answer came on the second day. The wind changed direction. The iceberg began to drift. But it wasn’t following the Bey: the iceberg was moving backwards, and the Bey was following it!
The Fortune Bey began to pick up speed. The iceberg began to rock, and every time it rocked the ship rolled wildly to the side. Captain Wrick gripped the wheel, gazing determinedly across the water. His face was calm but his lips were pressed together and they were going whiter and whiter. The iceberg rocked again and the ship pitched once more, going over almost completely on its side. The sailors held on grimly and gasped as the freezing water of the waves crashed across them.
‘Release the chains,’ Captain Wrick murmured to Michael.
‘Release the chains!’ Michael roared, and three men scrambled towards the stern.
The chains came free with a snap. They whipped loose and their ends flew into the air.
The Fortune Bey lurched for a while longer. The gigantic iceberg continued to drift. Soon it was far away, with the harpoons still in its side, like three tiny needles sticking into the vast bulk of an elephant’s skin.
Chapter 11
ICEBERGS FLOATED ALL around, like gigantic white beasts asleep in the water. When would they awake? In the sunlight their whiteness sparkled, dazzling the eyes. When there was a mist they emerged like the silent ghosts of sunken ships. On clear nights the moonlight slipped off them as if they were made of green glass.
For a week the Fortune Bey sailed amongst the slumbering white giants. The sailors huddled in their cabins or drank mugs of scalding tea in the galley. Only those who were needed for a job went above deck. Water froze and the air was icy. Captain Wrick began to wonder whether the time had come to sail out of the freezing seas, admitting defeat. The icebergs were enormous, they could never hope to tow them. Always there was the danger of seeing one too late in a fog, or of being thrown against one by the wind. And sooner or later there would be a storm. Then the silent, white beasts would awaken. The wind would howl and their great white bodies would pitch and shudder in the waves, crushing anything that crossed their paths.
It happened that night. A claw of ice tore at the heart of the Fortune Bey.
It began with a terrible screeching, as if the very timbers of the Bey were in agony. Captain Wrick sat bolt upright in his hammock. Bartlett and Jacques le Grand awoke with a jolt. All over the ship, sailors opened their eyes in the darkness, their stomachs knotted at the sound. They jumped up and ran out of their cabins, not even stopping to throw on their shirts, pouring up the stairs and onto the freezing deck, where they stopped, aghast, at the sight that met their eyes: a wall of ice standing in the mist not more than a mast-length from the side of the boat, and the Bey scraping across the long jagged shelf of ice that stretched underwater.
The screeching went on and on. The Bey was moving slowly. The ice scratched and tore at it. The sailors stood transfixed, as if unaware that they were freezing, as if the noise itself nailed them to the spot. Then all at once Captain Wrick’s voice was heard, calm, steady but desperate, ordering the men across. Across! Across to the other side of the ship, where their weight might help to dip the Bey and release it from the ice. Men ran, slipping and sliding over the frozen deck. Bartlett and Jacques ran as well with all the Desperation in their bodies. ‘Across! Across!’ came Captain Wrick’s voice, and now it was close to them, because he had run across as well, with every sailor that was on the ship.
Still the timbers of the Bey shrieked. Now the men could only listen and watch, waiting for the Bey to pass the iceberg and hoping they would still be afloat at the end of it. They stared at the wall of ice as the ship moved slowly along it. Every screeching of the timbers was like a knife plunging into their bellies. Some held their breath, some mumbled prayers. None dared to look away from the iceberg, as if it held them all in its power.
The screeching stopped.
Suddenly there was silence. It seemed so deep that it could scarcely be real.
The Bey pitched, rolled a little, then straightened.
Still hardly anyone dared move. What would happen now? The iceberg had disappeared into the mist from which it came. Was the ship filling with water under their feet? What was left of the timbers of the Fortune Bey? The Bey’s life did not end that night. The ship was wounded, but not killed. They found a small leak near the prow, and the carpenter repaired it. The sturdy timbers of the Fortune Bey had saved them all. But if the water had been a couple of inches shallower, or if the ice had been a tiny bit more jagged, or if the Bey had not dipped when the men moved to the side, then the entire bottom of the ship would have been left behind. This time it had survived. But if they stayed in the freezing seas, Captain Wrick knew, another of the white beasts would eventually claim it.
That morning, Captain Wrick told Bartlett and Jacques le Grand that he was turning back. He didn’t say it sadly or happily. He said it in his usual calm, steady way, just as he had told Bartlett that he would take him in the first place. Bartlett nodded. There was no point arguing. Captain Wrick had said that he would try to get an iceberg, and he had tried his best. There was no point offering him more of the Queen’s rubies and gold coins to persuade him to change his mind.
Jacques didn’t try to persuade him either. After all, if they didn’t get an iceberg, they could finally forget all about this ridiculous idea of taking a melidop to the Queen.
‘All right,’ Bartlett said to the captain. ‘But it’s still possible we’ll find an iceberg that’s the right size.’
‘I’m not going to look for any more, Bartlett. We’re turning back.’
‘No, but we could find one on the way.’
Captain Wrick smiled. ‘It’s not very likely, you know. But if we do find one, we’ll take it. I didn’t risk my ship for nothing, Bartlett. I want one as much as you.’
‘I know.’ Bartlett got up.
‘Where are you going?’ asked the captain.
‘To the crow’s nest.’
‘There’s someone there already, Bartlett. Stay here where it’s warm.’
Bartlett shook his head. There was always someone in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast, but it was a monotonous job and the lookouts did not necessarily pay as much attention as they should. For example, they could easily miss a medium-size iceberg that was far away on the horizon, where it would look no bigger than a dot.
Bartlett left the cabin. He climbed the mast. He was beginning to think he had been wrong about getting a melidrop. He thought it would require only Inventiveness, but last night they had also needed Desperation to survive. Now Bartlett had a feeling that it would require Perseverance as well.
Chapter 12
FROM THE CROW’S nest, the sea looked like a vast blue plate, dotted with gigantic white icebergs in every direction. Bartlett looked down and saw Captain Wrick on the bridge, spinning the wheel with both hands. Bartlett felt the mast sway. The Fortune Bey was turning. The sailors had been sent aloft and now they were out on the yardarms, working at the rigging. Like a host of butterflies opening their wings, one after another, the sails dropped open, flapped, and snapped stiffly as the breeze filled them. The Fortune Bey began to gather speed.
From now on, Bartlett gazed only into the distance, scanning the ocean ahead.
After a couple of hours the lookout was replaced by another sailor.
He brought a mug of hot tea, which he carried in one hand as he climbed the rope ladder up the mast. The tea helped warm Bartlett up. High in the crow’s nest, the wind was even more freezing than on deck, and not even a scarf could keep your nose from turning to ice. It was so cold that each lookout stayed for only two hours before being replaced. But Bartlett persevered. Throughout the day the lookouts came and went while Bartlett scanned the horizon.
The next day he was back in the crow’s nest, and he was there again the following day, and on the day after that. By now the Fortune Bey wa
s leaving the freezing seas behind. The air was not so bitingly cold, the water no longer froze on the deck. There were fewer and fewer icebergs, but each one that Bartlett saw was still too large to tow. On the next day he did not see a single one.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Captain Wrick at dinner that night, ‘but we did try.’
Jacques le Grand shrugged his shoulders. He was sick of being cooped up in a cabin. He was sick of the salty air. He was sick of being too seasick to eat and of eating mouldy ship’s food when he wasn’t. He wanted to get his feet on dry land, a good meal in his belly and a plan for some real exploration in his head. Back to the Alps—that would be good enough for him!
Bartlett didn’t say anything. There was nothing for Captain Wrick to be sorry about. And as far as he was concerned, no one had stopped trying. At least, he hadn’t.
The next day Bartlett was back in the crow’s nest and he was there the following day as well, and every day for the next week, even though they were already back in a warmer climate and some of the sailors had started taking off their shirts when they were working on deck. Altogether he would probably have spent the whole journey back, all six weeks of it, in the crow’s nest, if not for the fact that on the morning after that, as he was scanning the ocean, he noticed something unusual: a tiny white dot on the horizon.
At first he wasn’t sure if his eyes were playing tricks. Staring at the ocean for day after day, it was possible that you began to see things. He looked away, looked back, blinked, looked away again, but whenever he looked back the white dot was still there. And as they sailed towards it, it was getting bigger. By the middle of the afternoon there was no longer any doubt: it was an iceberg, floating far from the freezing seas.
Bartlett dropped down the mast as fast as his limbs would take him. He found Captain Wrick in his cabin and a moment later he was on deck with his telescope to his eye. He gazed for a full minute at least. Then he turned to Bartlett with a real grin on his face. Michael, who was watching, was quite shocked at seeing so much joy in his captain’s expression.
