"What happened?" the German captain asked.
"Who knows? Ice. Storm. I'm not about to go down there to find out! I'd advise you to exercise caution as well. But Germans! First in Austria, then Czechoslovakia, now Antarctica! Such ambition! I expect we'll meet again?"
"Only if you stay in these waters," Drexler said.
"Oh, we'll stay. These waters are home to us now." Jansen let his gaze flicker from German to German again, looking each of them squarely in the eye. "But then you already know that." He winked, stood, and clomped back to his waiting launch. "Merry Christmas!" he shouted again from the boat, waving as it rose and fell in the swells.
The German officers gathered on the bridge wing and watched the Norwegian whaler swing away.
"Like an animal peeing to mark his territory," Drexler assessed.
"He's probably saying the same thing about us," Feder remarked.
"God willing we'll be the first, not the last, of Third Reich explorers he meets down here," Heiden said. "He'll find more Germans than he likes and will have to adjust to it. Become an ally or an enemy."
"Better the former."
Heiden turned. The comment came from Fritz, pulling watch duty on the bridge.
"You speak from experience, Mr. Eckermann?"
"Yes, sir. Fished with them in '31. There's a bit of the Viking left. Best not to cross them, especially when it comes to boats and fish."
"And best for them not to cross us," Drexler said.
"Yes, the Norwegians are about to experience true competition," the captain agreed.
"And I wonder what happened to the Bergen?"
"I suspect Antarctica swallowed it."
The clouds darkened as they continued steaming south. The wind picked up. Snow began scudding across the deck and the temperature dropped, signaling their approach to the southern continent. The ship began to roll heavily and Hart stood lookout for icebergs, observing them pass like dark fortresses in the gloom. The weather continued foul for the brief night, the following day, and into a second night, while the ice grew steadily thicker. Christmas morning dawned with the ship pushing through thin pack ice, broken into floes the size of houses. It was loose enough that they could shoulder the ice aside, occasionally driving headlong into a floe and splintering it, cracks racing away from the bow of the ship. The ice rasped and banged against the hull. Drexler and Feder joined Hart on deck, watching the spectacle.
On some of the floes giant-sized seals snoozed, content on their mattress of snow. They obviously belonged here. "Crabeater seals, most of them," Greta told the men at the rail. "They get their name from eating krill."
"They look awkward."
"Not in the water," Greta said, smiling.
Drexler gathered some snow from the deck and threw a snowball at one. It raised its head and opened its mouth, giving a grawkkk as it yawned a sleepy protest. Then it wiggled forward into the water and slipped away like a dying note of music.
"Jürgen," she scolded, "you shouldn't harass them."
"They're just seals, Greta. Slugs of the ice."
"Jump in the water and swim next to them and we'll see who looks like the slug," she jested. "They've adapted to this place in ways we can only envy."
Drexler harrumphed. "Yes, they can swim, but they simply exist. They are passive, meek, dim."
"You wouldn't say that if you encountered a leopard seal."
"Oh?"
"They're spotted, ten feet long, weigh as much as four men, and have huge jaws full of sharp teeth. They can move faster than any of us and snatch us in a minute. They prey on penguins and seals."
Drexler laughed. "Well, I'm not a penguin, and I'm not going to lose any sleep over a seal. I do admire the way you love these animals, Greta. But I'm more concerned about the future of our species."
She looked miffed. "Someday you'll meet a leopard seal, Jürgen, and then you'll see."
"Someday." He shrugged.
The ship broke into clear water again, dark and cold. Now the passing bergs were tall and sharp like small jagged mountains. They passed a cluster of penguins standing on one, some sliding comically down the ice like children on a slide.
Christmas dinner was festive, lit by the warm glow of candlelight. Heiden was in a good mood about their progress. Feder became first amusingly and then annoyingly drunk. Schmidt sat in a corner, chain-smoking his cigarettes and content to just watch the others. It appeared there were no presents but Hart passed out intricately knotted key or watch chains he'd tied from thick cord. Greta's was inked red and green. When he presented it her cheeks were flush from the libations and her eyes shining with the excitement of being in such an exotic spot for the holiday. She lit up as if he'd given her a necklace and, leaning forward, quickly pecked him on the cheek. "I'm embarrassed I have nothing for you!" she whispered in his ear. Then she slipped away.
Drexler watched, fingering his own key chain. "Very thoughtful, Hart. It's good you're finding time for clever crafts. I don't have anything for you either but I do" — and here he raised his voice— "have something as well for our female pioneer."
She turned, smiling in surprise.
"Alone of her gender but not alone in our hearts," said Drexler with a bow. "To Greta for her tolerance of this rude company" — they laughed— "I present this gift." He pulled a wrapped package from behind a chair and handed it to the biologist. She blushed.
"Jürgen, you know you shouldn't single me out this way." She carefully unfastened the bright wrapping and peeked when it was half off. "It's a book!" More paper came off. The Germans clustered around. "A book about whales!"
"Not poetry, perhaps, but better than the one about paramecia," Drexler joked.
"But from you, Jürgen?"
"He picked it out in Hamburg," Heiden said. "Too timid to buy a romance, so he headed for the biology section." The Germans laughed.
"I figured I couldn't go wrong, getting you something connected with your specialty," Jürgen said sheepishly. "When I saw the title, Lords of the Ocean, it seemed like the right choice."
Greta nodded, her eyes moist. "You devil. You are more intrigued by them than you dare admit!" She grasped the back of his neck and kissed him, quickly, on the lips. The assembly roared with appreciation. "Thank you." She looked at him shyly, grasping the book to her breast. Jürgen smiled.
Hart watched from the shadows.
The next morning there was a watery dawn of gray light. As the sun climbed higher the wind dropped and the overcast began to break. The Schwabenland was in a lead of cold black water between two masses of pack ice, picking its way slowly southward. More silver-colored seals lounged on the ice floes, indeed looking from a distance like giant slugs. Maybe Drexler had a point.
Then the clouds on the horizon slowly spun away to reveal a harder shape. A chain of white mountains rose from the sea, the snow on them so thick and immaculate it looked like a wall of sugar.
"Antarctica," Hart announced to the Germans.
CHAPTER NINE
Antarctica was like a dream that stung. Part of it seemed soft and hallucinatory: the gauzy shimmer of downy white peaks reflected in a cobalt sea, vast icebergs drifting out of a cold fog, the ethereal gloom of crevasses sunk like blue wounds into crumpled glaciers. Yet the continent was hard as welclass="underline" the blaze of reflected light that dazzled the eyes, the bitter cold that seared the nose and throat, or the rime of ice on railings and deck. Nose hair froze, lips cracked, and even the blinked moisture of an eye could become sticky from the chill. During a gale the wind could become so bitter that it would seem to suck all oxygen away with it, yet on a still day the sunny radiance could leave one's body glowing while standing on a slab of ice. Most of all there was the clarity of the air. The ordinary slight humid haze of temperate lands was wholly absent and distant mountains stood revealed in incredible detail. Instead of sharpening perception this clarity seemed to confuse it. The mind lost its common reference points and the landscape seemed less real, not more. Antarctica was as vivid as fantasy, as substantial as reverie. Hart had fallen in love with it the first time. He found he still feared it as well.