The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 107
Was I right to plunge them into the ice? Was I right to pursue Grandfather at the sacrifice of decency? I intend to be as harsh on myself now as I was on those people then. I was wrong. I have come up against this puzzle many times in my mind; I have told myself that I knew we were doomed, that I knew I could have given Germanicus sailing directions for any point on the compass and the end would have been the same, or worse. I remain unconvinced by this rationalization, because it is based upon an event and a decision that lacked reason. I put my desire before the high dreams left those one hundred and fifty on board King James and one hundred on board Candlemas Packet. I made a rash decision for the most good for the least number. I was no Beowulf, and knew it then—what vain romanticism—nor was I a David of Jerusalem, though I let Longfaeroe preach that imagery to reinforce my rule. I might have been doomed; I condemned those people. I might have been fated to hear the whispers of a thousand-year-dead outlaw, to converse with a pale albatross, to lose heart in a ruthless scramble for justification. That gives me no cause now, nor did it then, to drag, not plunge, to drag my people into my crimes. I was wrong.
I took my stand on the quarterdeck, and it meant that I turned my back on my people. The pride and anger in me matched that tumultuous sky of black and gray clouds above the most violent sea on earth, a steady westerly swell with thirty-foot rollers coming at us in groups of five, so that only when King James rose atop the last crest was it possible to study the horizon. The weather seemed to change hourly, a calm followed by a squall of icy rain, so that Germanicus would have to turn us to the wind to clear our lines of ice, followed by a sunburst that transformed the color of the sea from gray to ultramarine with red streaks, almost purple toward sunset. And around me, thousands of whalebirds, ice birds, shearwaters, and albatrosses, feeding off the flotsam, searching for more sizable detritus. We were not alone out there. There were large ships to the east, small ships to the west, some running under sail and alone, others under power and listing badly in the swells—either poor seamanship or badly loaded.
The wretched threw themselves into the Scotia Sea. Open boats and wreckage were indistinguishable from bergy bits and small ice floes tossed like balls by the hills of water moving in diverse direction to form momentary mountain ranges. A sudden blow at evening of one of the first few days south of Cape Horn scattered the small ships, drove us east toward the big ships. We kept Malody in sight as long as possible, then radioed rendezvous points along our sailing course, south on the sixtieth meridian. The next morning, we were all eyes for Candlemas Packet, did not find her until we passed what is called the Antarctic convergence, what the sealers called “can’t-no-more,” meaning the weather becomes dominated by the wind off Antarctica and one can no longer predict the next day s sail. The wind stiffened, from the steady thirty knots of the “filthy fifties” to well over forty knots. We ran with topsails, were most concerned with keeping our bow up to the sea and our masts free of ice. A thick, sudden snowstorm covered us with large dirty flakes, kept the crew busy clearing the deck; it continued the next day, slackening to a driving sleet.
At least, that is my memory, though I cannot be sure now of the exact order of squalls, gales, calms, ice floes, and snowstorms. We experienced no murderous blow, a possibility that is remote but not impossible in early summer. Importantly, there were more calm days than bad ones, sometimes even a glassy sea, sun-kissed and magenta. I recall we spent Christmas Day fighting fifty-foot crests and contrary winds, so that Longfaeroe had to hold his service in parts belowdecks, most too seasick to sing. We were another week in the crossing, because we had to double back to find Malody, and because Germanicus and I grew increasingly wary of the large ships that passed to the east. We listened to their radio traffic, heard many languages, bizarre codes, little substance. They seemed cargo ships; at least one of them was a warship.
I sense I am making that voyage sound sensible. It was elemental terror. Germanicus was not intimidated by the weather; he and the sealers had crossed the Scotia Sea length and breadth their whole adult lives. However, the icy blows combined with the scattered ships of wretches were too much. We surrendered to our worst expectations, for good cause.
“There, hears it?” said Christmas Muir, an incident I recall because it was my first experience with the ice continent. We could hear a rumbling, just distinguishable from the howling wind and the heavy wash of the sea. “Tol’ ye like, my ears, me and them whales, hears it. See there, the sky, lordie!”
The sky did darken, wet weather, ravaging raw cold, and a canopy of ashen clouds mixed into the fogbanks. We lost the sun. The rumblings strengthened to a low thumping. We were rolling into an oily sea of brash ice flecked with black cinders.