Antarctica Escape from Disaster

by Peter Lerangis

“Father?” Colin said. “Are you all right?”

  “Still looking,” Jack replied.

  Through the lenses now he saw only a cloudy whiteness, a distant flock of penguins resting on a small ice floe, all blurred by his tears and split by the glare of the sun.

  It was time.

  He blinked the tears away.

  The glare remained.

  And it undulated.

  It rose upward and vanished in wisps of white and gray against the blue sky.

  Jack adjusted the binoculars, teasing them out to the absolute highest magnification.

  It wasn’t glare at all.

  “Colin,” he said. “Colin, get up here.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Just get up here!”

  Colin was up the mast in seconds.

  “What do you see?” Jack asked.

  Colin took the binoculars and trained them at the horizon. “Smoke? Father, it’s smoke!”

  “Someone had to make that smoke, Colin— and it wasn’t those penguins!”

  “Those aren’t penguins.”

  Jack grabbed the glasses away. The dots on the floating disk of ice were moving in a jerky fashion, jumping. Beside them was a small rectangular object from which more dots emerged. The smoke rose from their midst.

  “It’s them!” Jack shouted. “Those are my men!”

  “I’ll be a whale’s ’ump,” Harkness said.

  “Yeeeeee-hahhhhh!” Mansfield lifted Philip off the deck.

  Jack and Colin scrambled down from the crosstrees and followed Harkness, who was running toward the deckhouse. “Cap’n! Cap’n, sir!”

  He flung open the deckhouse door. Captain Coffin sat at a small table, counting money from a weather-beaten wooden chest. “Harkness, you beslubbering clotpole! Ye made me lose count.”

  The news had spread instantly, and now both crews, Jack’s and the Nobadeer’s, gathered around the door, yammering with excitement. The dogs wound their ways among the forest of legs, yipping bewilderedly.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” Harkness said, “but Winslow ’ere ’as sighted ’is men, ’n’ they us, it appears!”

  “Yes?”

  “So with yer permission,” Harkness went on, “I’ll give the order to set sail to the southeast until we’re close enough to reach ’em by rowboat!”

  “Are ye daft or deaf, mate?” Captain Coffin said. “I’ve already given me order to come about. We be a-runnin’ half a hemisphere behind schedule, with contracts to fill, men to pay — and by now them dastardly beasts is flappin’ their tails in our gen’ral direction, larfin’ out their blowholes.”

  “But my son is on that ice!” Jack protested. “You can’t do this!”

  Coffin turned back.to his money. “I can, on my ship. Dismissed, the lot o’ yer.”

  Jack wanted to kill him. But Harkness grabbed him firmly by the arm and whispered, “Not now.”

  “Let me at ’im!” Kennedy shouted.

  “Don’t bother. We’ll turn the ship ourselves!” Mansfield declared.

  “Ha!” Fee laughed. “Ye’ll be walkin’ the plank afore ye can lock eyes on a staysail.”

  All the men shoved forward, shouting, their words jumbling together:

  “’E’s the devil, ’e is!”

  “Aw, Cap’n, ’ave a ’eart.”

  “Nay, mate, the Cap’n speaks for the good of the Nobadeer ’n’ its men!”

  “Think on it, if it be yer own son!”

  “’E ain’t got no son nor wife. What manner of woman’d ’ave ’im?”

  Harkness shoved two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. “Quiet, mates!”

  “Thank ye, Mr. Harkness,” Captain Coffin said dryly, riming through his money.

  “Cap’n Coffin’s a whalin’ man — no more, no less!” Harkness said. “Think ye that the importers ’n’ traders care if ’e leaves a dozen landlubbers to die on the ice? Nay, lads, they’re whalin’ men, too. They weighs the blubber and pays the tab, thank ye kindly. And if ye thinks men like that’d cheer a cap’n for the rescue of ’uman bein’s, if ye thinks they’d praise ’im and spread ’is fame from port to port, Nantucket to the Azores, thereby perhaps raisin’ the cash value of ’is catch —”

  Captain Coffin glanced up.

  “ — well, then, ye don’t know whalin’ men, do ye? When they finds out the cap’n turned ’is taffrail to the only starvin’ wretches on the entire godforsaken continent, leavin’ ’em to shout ‘Please rescue us, don’t let us die!’ afore they wither to a lonely, needless end — why, they’ll praise the name of Captain Rhadamanthus Coffin for choosin’ the want of a whale over the lives of ’is fellowmen.”

  “Aye!” Coffin’s eyes were murderous. He stood, resting his fists on his table. “Aye, I’m a whalin’ man, all right. But ye have a lesson to l’arn in the ways of godliness, Harkness.”

  “Why, Cap’n,” Harkness said, “I was merely givin’ the men yer own account of the matter, thereby savin’ ye the odious task —”

  “I can handle me own odorous accounts,” Captain Coffin snapped. “And I know whalin’ men a far sight better’n ye do. Trim the sails and we’ll head southeast, men! We won’t leave here without those wretches! Dismissed!”

  Smack. Harkness pulled the deckhouse door shut with a barely disguised smile of triumph. “’E’s a bit eccentric.”

  The men raced to the deck, hollering and praising the name Harkness.

  As Jack climbed the mast again with Colin, the crew bellowed a raucous sea chantey.

  Jack stood on the crosstrees and held the binoculars steadily.

  Twelve … thirteen … fourteen.

  “I count fourteen men,” Jack said. “Some dogs, too. They have a tent. They made one of the lifeboats into a shelter — I don’t see the other one.”

  “There were fifteen, Father,” Colin said.

  Jack couldn’t make out any of the men’s faces, but their silhouettes were sharpening. “Hayes. No mistaking him. There’s Robert. Nigel, I think —”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Nigel? I believe so—”

  “My brother! Is my brother alive?”

  Jack nearly dropped the binoculars.

  He felt himself lighten. He had to hold extra tight to the mast for fear he’d float away.

  The figure who’d been stoking the fire elbowed his way through the group and began waving furiously.

  Jack didn’t need to see the face. He could recognize Andrew’s shape a thousand miles away.

  He gave Colin the binoculars. “Here, son, see for yourself.”

  28

  Andrew

  February 27, 1910

  “HERE!” ANDREW SHOUTED. “WE’RE here!”

  “They know we’re ’ere, you fool!” Nigel shrieked. “’ERE’.”

  Tears ran down Oppenheim’s cheeks. “It’s not a mirage, it’s not a mirage, it’s not a mirage, oh, Lord, it’s not a mirage.”

  Rowf-rowwf-rooooooowwww! howled Socrates and his pack.

  “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow …” Petard murmured.

  “My Lo-o-ord, what a momin ,” Lombardo sang. “When the su-u-un begi-i-ins to shi-i-ine!”

  Nigel was dancing a Scottish reel, pulling Robert along with him. Kosta was on his knees holding up a bewildered Panagiotis, doing a Greek dance.

  “Ee-hah!” Dr. Montfort shouted.

  “A little more from the diaphragm, doctor,” Captain Barth said.

  “YEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAHi”

  “Now, that’s a sailor!”

  A whaling ship. It wasn’t Chappy Walden’s barque, it was a whaling ship. How did it get here? What was it doing so close to Antarctica? Where was Walden?

  What did it matter? They could have come on the backs of mermaids for all Andrew cared.

  The ship had hove to, and now a lifeboat was heading their way through the brash and pudding ice. As it approached, Andrew could make out the people on board.

  He didn’
t recognize the barrel-chested sailor with the bushy red beard. But he knew the other two.

  He nearly ran off the ice to greet them. They were alive. Alive and waving and smiling!

  “Colin!” he shouted. “Father!”

  “Avast, sailor!” Jack shouted.

  When they bumped up against the shore, all Andrew had to do was open his arms. Colin and Jack leaped off the boat and wrapped him fore and aft with an embrace that smothered and crushed and utterly exhilarated him.

  “You’re all right! You’re all right!” Colin said over and over, his words high-pitched and soupy with emotion.

  Jack yanked Andrew loose and swung him around until his feet left the ground, exactly the way he’d done it when Andrew was a child.

  And as soon as he was set down, Andrew felt himself rising again — this time with Colin and Jack — lifted by Siegal and Petard and Brillman and Stimson and Bailey and Hayes and Dr. Montfort and Lombardo and Kosta and Robert and Nigel and Oppenheim and Captain Barth. All of them with a strength and assurance that their depleted bodies had reserved just for this occasion.

  “They fly through the air with the greatest of eeeease,” Lombardo sang. “Those daring young Winslows upon the high seeeeeas …”

  They danced — holding the Winslows aloft to that bleat of a voice — until Kosta yelled “Hasàpiko!” and they were on the ice again, arm in arm, following Kosta as he leaped and gyrated despite his toeless feet, in a gravity-defying dance that could have gone on all day.

  Harkness climbed on shore, shaking his head. “Barmy,” he said. “Completely barmy.”

  Andrew, Colin, and Jack dropped their arms. They looked at one another silently, then at the whaler.

  “Ohhh, no, ye don’t,” said Harkness, backing toward the boat.

  Andrew yanked him into line, into the dance, against his bitter protests.

  Part Six

  Home

  29

  Colin

  September 22, 1910

  “MUM,” PHILIP WHISPERED. “OH, Mum …”

  The woman on the dock looked like Philip. She was trim and a bit slouched, in the way of People Who Owned Things. Her dress was dark green and of a conservative cut, and beneath her fashionably tilted hat was a stubborn but mournful smile.

  She saw Philip and waved, a cupped hand swiveling demurely from side to side.

  “She’s overwhelmed,” Philip said, sniffling. The London harbor was all noise and motion, sailors hauling sacks over the wooden docks, gap-toothed vendors hawking meat pies and bread, pubs shaking with the noise of laughter and chantey-singing. Beyond the port, the streets trailed off into the fog, in narrow curves lined with tidy brick buildings.

  It was a brand of madness at once more chaotic and more inviting than the cold, brutish docks of New York.

  The Nobadeer was equipped with a radio, and Captain Coffin had sent word of the ship’s arrival. A dock had been cleared, and two steam tugboats had puttered out to greet them. Coffin intended to stay as briefly as possible.

  “Now get yer carcasses outa here as soon’s we set the plank,” Captain Coffin growled. “Ye’ve already a-wasted me time enough so’s I can kiss away a decent two months’ profits.”

  “Yes, it was delightful for us, too,” Philip said.

  “What about the money you promised us — a thousandth lay, was it?” Colin said.

  “It’s questions like that’ll nip a promisin’ young life in the bud,” the captain replied.

  The crew of the Nobadeer swarmed over the deck, letting out the halyards, racing up into the rigging, and furling the sails for a smooth docking. Colin admired their skill. A five-masted square-rigged vessel — now that was a challenge. Someday it would be fun to sail one.

  One by one the men of the Mystery gathered by the bulwark. Colin felt his father’s left arm on his shoulder. “Shreve would have loved this scene.”

  “As would Nesbit,” Captain Barth said, gripping the gunwale.

  “We’ll have to inform their next of kin,” Andrew suggested.

  “What will we tell them?” Colin asked.

  “That two good men gave their lives in the highest pursuit of their calling,” Captain Barth replied softly.

  “Look at them all,” Lombardo said, shaking his head in amazement. “It looks so easy, don’t it — life?”

  Mansfield’s eyes were misty. “I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”

  “Strange,” Petard said, “it scares me more than that iceberg did.”

  “Nothing will ever be the same,” Dr. Riesman said. “Working a job, going to the market, falling asleep at night — how can anything seem important after what we’ve seen?”

  “And what we’ve conquered,” said Sanders.

  “Conquered what?” Kennedy grumbled. “It conquered us.”

  “No,” Colin said gently. “You’re wrong about that.”

  “We survived,” Ruskey reminded him. “That’s a victory.”

  “Because of luck, that’s all,” Kennedy said.

  “Is it luck for one man to hope when the rest have given up?” Captain Barth asked, looking pointedly at Andrew.

  “For a landlubber to row a boat out of a maelstrom?” Colin said.

  “For a father and son to quest for men who’ve almost certainly died,” Philip added, “all the while knowing they’ve missed their rescue boat?”

  “Ship,” Mansfield said.

  Brillman laughed. “Sounds more like stupidity.”

  “There’s a fine line between stupidity and faith,” Petard said.

  “If Pop hadn’t been lucky enough to find this whaler,” Kennedy said, “it would have been stupidity.”

  Jack shook his head. “There is no luck, Kennedy. There is only holding on long enough to outlast death.”

  Colin smiled and extended two fists. “Hail the conquering heroes, then.”

  “All hail!” Andrew shouted, putting his fists on his brother’s.

  The men drew a tight circle and instantly filled it with wiry arms and ragged sleeves. “HAIL!”

  Kennedy shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

  The fists gave way to open arms, and the men began embracing one another, vowing pledges and promises.

  Lombardo was blubbering. “You saved my life. I don’t know how I’ll repay you all.”

  “Just show us it was worth the trouble,” Kennedy remarked. “Get a job.”

  “I want every address,” Ruskey said. “I’ll write you all and send you prints.”

  “Lifetime free medical examinations for all of you and your families,” Dr. Montfort offered. “Five-five-five Broadway, sixth floor.”

  “We’ll all stay in touch,” Hayes said. “Always. We’re family.”

  “Brothers of the Mystery!” Cranston shouted. “Forever!”

  Colin realized he loved them all. He believed the promises were sincere, and he felt a bond that would be painful to break.

  But he suspected that after the landing, after contact with people, the return to routines and schedules and schooling, everything would change. All the promises and memories would gather in a dusty corner like a jewel too cumbersome to wear, only rarely to be brushed off and seen once again in vivid light.

  As Colin turned back to the shore, he noticed four uniformed policemen around Mrs. Westfall, looking up sternly at the ship.

  He glanced at Philip. “Are they waiting for you?”

  “I figured something fishy was up with him,” Talmadge remarked.

  Philip nodded. “Yes. I robbed a bank. I took a flier on a stupid prank that went sour. That is why I was sent on this trip. My mother is Horace Putney’s sister. She sent me to him to avoid prosecution. He, in turn, blackmailed your unsuspecting father into taking me on this trip.”

  “I knew all of that,” Jack said.

  “You did?” Philip asked.

  “I pieced it together. And you know what? I’ll be ever grateful to your uncle.”

  “You redeemed yourself in my eyes … deck rat,�
� Captain Barth said with a smile.

  “Why don’t you just return the money, no hard feelin’s?” Windham asked.

  “I can’t,” Philip said. “It went down with the Mystery.”

  “We can throw a block while you break for the open field,” Ruppenthal suggested.

  “No,” Philip said firmly. “I couldn’t hide from this in Antarctica. No civilized place will be easier. I will give myself up. What punishment could be worse than what I’ve just been through?”

  “Listening to Lombardo sing?” Flummerfelt said.

  “Having to look at Nigel every day,” Kennedy chimed in. “Say, where is that two-legged warthog, anyway?”

  Nigel was nowhere to be seen. “Probably in the fo’c’sle,” Mansfield said, “flensing money from some poor underpaid whaler in a poker game.”

  As the Nobadeer was pulled into the dock’s wood pilings, the dockworkers rolled a sturdy, rope-railed gangplank to the hull. The dogs raced down first, followed by Kosta, grabbing tight to the railings and shouting, “Prosecheh, paithàkia!”

  Philip was the next to step onto the plank. “Farewell,” he said. “You are all cordially invited to my execution.”

  Colin followed him down, then Jack, Andrew, and Captain Barth. The other sailors nearly pushed themselves overboard trying to crowd onto the steps — all but Ruskey, who’d gone belowdecks to find his camera and film.

  At the dock, Philip walked to his mother, who was now crying. He put his arms around her and held her for a long time, whispering into her ear, while the policemen kept a respectful distance.

  Finally his mother said, “Philip, these are Constables Mudge, Lamston, and Pickering.”

  Mudge was well fed and self-satisfied, with a beard so thick it could hide a small pet. Lamston stood tall and erect, his nervous features twitching a well-waxed handlebar mustache that shone even in the fog. Pickering had a baby face, quizzical and amused, and his hat barely fit atop his thick blond locks.

  Philip turned to them with his hands outstretched.

  “No handcuffs at your age,” said Constable Mudge. “We trust your mum. The other mums have been very helpful to us.”

  “Other mums?”

  “Guess you ’aven’t seen the newspapers,” said Constable Lamston. “They pulled your pals by their ears into the police station. Photos made the front page. Not exactly seasoned criminals, you might say. Recovered all the money.”