The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 84

Georgia. The people of Gaunttown withdrew inside themselves. The only warmth seemed one’s own heart, but then, even the pulse rate slows in the ice and dark, as if frazil ice were forming in the blood. It had been dreary before; with the pack sealing us from open water, it became morbid. By the middle of July, winter upon us, the siege was complete, a white desert for at least one hundred miles to the northwest, perhaps fifty to the northeast. The ships in Cumberland Bay were in continual jeopardy from the ice islands that spun by. If one of them had turned with the current and loomed down on Gaunttown, it could have crushed everything afloat, perhaps more. One ice island, fifty miles long and five wide, did ram the windward shore about forty miles north of Gaunttown, sending rumbles through the ridge each time the current heaved it up against the underwater rocks. It was fanciful to imagine, though there were those that did, a fleet of those monsters closing on South Georgia, horn-tipped and ninety miles long, to gouge away our ark of hornstone.

The melancholy of being icebound wore easiest on the sealers, like Christmas Muir and Peggs, wore hardest on the families. Elephant Frazer ordered strict rationing, confiscated several private stockpiles, arrested and imprisoned some black marketeers, for fear that the pack would not fully recede with the next summer’s heat, might return for the next twelve years as in the sealers’ tale. That was not credible, neither were the black-ice islands that emerged from the pack in July.

“I knew’d it, I mostly did,” said Christmas Muir. “It’s that Satan’s Seat. I told ye, matey. Ye can still hear it growlin’ if ye got ears like mine, underwater like, them black giants, like pieces of Hell, I tell ye, and don’t forget that ram’s head. Him’s got notions, bad ’uns.”

I accompanied Germanicus on a march north soon after, to inspect the fort that had been built to guard the main pass through the island, thirty miles northwest of Gaunttown. Germanicus regretted the excessive precautions the Volunteers demanded against the beasties, the plague, the unseen, and was unusually disconsolate about the future. We camped off a humpbacked ridge west of the central mountain range, in a shepherd’s hut, that, because of the pass, gave us a good view to the southwest. On the first clear morning, we took a work break to have a look at the black ice, more soot-colored, really, streaked gray, black bergy bits broken off. We were too far from where they must have originated—about one thousand miles—for them to have been starkly black against the white.

“I don’t make much of that gab about that volcano,” said Germanicus. “The Southern Ocean be as full of wild talk as whales. I grew up with it. I remember as a wee boy hearin’ Dad tell Samson where Antarctica comes from. Dad said, once upon a time, long afore, before Jesus, there was a great kingdom at the South Pole. No ice blanket then, jes’ cold and grand. It was ruled by three kings, Beach, Lunach, and Maleteur. It was filled with hairy elephants and black diamonds. The folk lived off the sea and worshiped Jehovah, like us. King Beach, loneliest of the three kings, loved an albatross and had a daughter with her. This princess weren’t beautiful, nor clever, nor good. She wanted to live with ice birds, and she hated men, mostly, except when they made love to her. She called that ‘flight.’ She taunted every young man she could because they couldn’t fly. She taunted special King Lunach’s son and King Maleteur’s son. Well, she also must have sported with them, because she had this child, a boy, soon enough. Her dad was shamed and sealed her up in a palace, a palace made of black diamonds and whalebones. He didn’t know who’d fathered his heir. He thought on his spite and decided to hold a banquet. He had the bairn cut up into meat for pies and fed them pies to the men he figured had defiled his daughter and the honor of his kingdom. They ate hearty and went out for a stroll along a glacier, as was their way with full guts. King Beach told them there what he’d done. They were angry. It weren’t because he’d made them eat a bairn in pies. That was their custom in times of famine, to eat the small and weak. They were angry because he suspected all of them when only one was guilty. They went on screamin’ at him, ‘Mod, mod, the bleddy mon be mod.’ That weren’t all of it. It happened that no one of them could admit to being the bairn’s father, since they’d all been with the princess, flying and the like. They were disgusted with themselves. They got worked up and killed King Beach and offered themselves to the princess as her husband. They understood that the man she chose was the man guilty of causing all the fuss and must be killed. The princess cursed them for eatin’ her bairn and killin’ her dad. She thought on her spite and one day called them altogether and named them all as her husband to be. This was daft, and they laughed at her stupid revenge. The princess went back to her palace of black diamonds and white bones and called upon Jehovah to avenge her. Jehovah was angry at the misery these men had caused, and granted the princess’s prayer, though she’d never prayed before. He destroyed all three kingdoms with fire and brimstone. With volcanoes, I expect. Jehovah covered the ruin with an ice sheet for eternity. Jehovah then thought on his judgment and what he’d done, made a cold and grand kingdom into a frozen ruin, and he was sorry. He promised he wouldn’t ever again send the fire and the ice to punish wickedness. He turned the men that was left into seals,