The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (30 page)

The sail room was situated in the forecastle, and was a jumbled space of stacked canvas and long workbenches. It was deserted with the ship at anchor, and unheated, but it opened directly to the main deck. The six men – each bundled so heavily as to be barely recognisable to each other – waited in the shadows while Dow stood on watch at the half-open door, peering out.

The
Chloe
seemed safely somnolent. Lamps glowed dimly here and there in the rigging, haloed by the mist, and one or two figures could be glimpsed huddled at watch posts, their breaths plumes of steam. High above, the red and green glows still shimmered against the sky, but below, the fog remained a dense cloak about the ship. But even with the fog's help, Dow could not imagine how they would bring the boat alongside unobserved – let alone climb down to it. The stealth required would be impossible.

Then he noticed a figure moving haltingly along the railing. It was Nell – but what she was doing? She would move a few steps, stare out seemingly at the mist, then move a few steps more. It wasn't until Dow noticed that one of her hands trailed oddly over the side that he realised what was happening. She had untied the boat from the stern, and slowly, as if merely wandering along the main deck rail, she was dragging it forward.

Dow had to smile. The nerve of the girl! She reached the foot of the forecastle, surreptitiously made the rope fast there, then came over to him, and together they slipped back into the sail room.

‘Even so,' Dow whispered, ‘we'll never get the eight of us down the side without being seen. Or heard.'

‘Yes we will.' She was half a head shorter than anyone in the room, and was almost on tiptoe with anticipation. ‘All we have to do is wait for the next wave to come – it shouldn't be long now – and in all the rush and noise, no one will hear a thing as we climb down.'

She'd thought of everything.

So they waited. The time stretched on, and every now and then Dow peered anxiously out to the main deck, but no watchmen came their way, and no chance wanderer happened upon them.

At last, he sensed that the
Chloe
was moving slowly beneath them, swinging on its anchor chain. ‘Do you feel it?' Nell whispered, her breath hot in his ear. ‘It's very close now. In the last few minutes before a wave comes, a current always begins to flow
into
the chasm.'

Dow nodded. Hidden by the fog, the waters of the gulf were streaming silently in through the rift's mouth, like an inhalation of breath. Dow held his own, waiting. And then it began, the same eerie whistling, louder and more uncanny than ever – and following it, the growing roar of the approaching wave, barrelling through the icy narrows. It was invisible from Dow's vantage point, but the thunder was unmistakable as it collapsed outwards into the channel. The
Chloe
lurched and lifted its bow into the surge, swinging back hard against the anchor.

‘Move!' Nell hissed, and then the eight of them were through the door and hastening across the deck to the rail. In a few instants the first man – it was Alfons, a purloined oar in his hand – was over the side and shinnying down the rope to the boat. The little craft was bumping alarmingly against the hull as the water churned by, but so were many sizeable chunks of floating ice, so perhaps even now no one would take notice. Swiftly the other five rowers followed, each man with his own oar, and some also toting ropes or lamps, and one a small anchor. Then it was only Nell and Dow left topside.

Which was when a voice enquired, ‘What in all the seas are you men up to there?'

They spun. A bundled figure was approaching questioningly from the direction of the stern castle – an officer. But even as the man came up he unwrapped his hood, and Dow saw to his partial relief that it was Samson. The young lieutenant stared down in bafflement at the boat, and then at the two figures by the rail. Moved by some intuition, Dow said nothing but opened his own hood to show his face. Nell did the same.

Samson studied them both. Several times his lips moved as if he was going to speak, but each time something stopped him. Dow waited. There was no reason to hope that the Samson would understand what they were trying to do, or that he would allow it. And yet he knew, too, that Samson – for all that they'd never discussed it – felt indebted to him, because of the landing on Trap Island. The lieutenant's standing on the
Chloe
had risen immensely since then, and Dow had said nothing to gainsay the impression that it had been Samson's idea all along. But they each knew the truth.

Or maybe it was Nell's presence that made the difference. Or maybe Samson really did understand, all in a glance, what was happening. For in the end he only shook his head warningly, just once, as if to say
I was never
here, and never saw you,
then he turned and walked away.

Already the peak of the surge had passed, and the heaving waters of the gulf were settling once more. Nell slipped over the side and down the rope, and Dow followed. Johannes was pushing the boat away from the hull even as Dow lighted in the stern. His first impression, as he took the tiller, was that the
Bent Wing 2
was a cold boat – the boat of a dead crew, and still rimmed with ice from its last resting place on Camp Island.

But it was whole, and it was a cutter of the same design that Dow had already piloted. He turned it smoothly, and under the soft strokes of the oarsmen, they set off through the fog towards the ice wall.

10. THE INNER SEA

T
hey rowed in darkness, for they did not yet dare light any lamps, though no cry or alarm came from the ship as it sank away behind in the mist. Ahead, the ice cliffs rose and rose until Dow had to tilt his head back as far as it could go just to see the upper rim, a high edge against the shimmering sky. Then the rift emerged through the fog, a black fracture extending up the shadowed wall. Its mouth was somehow narrower up close than it had looked even from afar, its sheer jaws vibratingly taut, as if they might snap shut at any moment.

Nell was sitting at Dow's side in the stern seat. She pulled forth her hourglass and held it up in the dark. ‘One hour,' she said to the crew. ‘Row without fear for one hour – and we'll see what we see.'

The men nodded and bent their backs to their oars – perhaps because, facing sternwards, they couldn't see the chasm gaping as awfully as could Dow. He knew he should speak here, as he'd planned; he should demand they halt and then study the rift for at least a few last moments, and consider what they were about to do. But he found he had nothing to say – or at least nothing that didn't sound craven – and so they slid forward without any discussion at all, and the towering maw closed about them.

Immediately it was warmer, strange though that seemed with the ice cliffs pressing only a few yards off on either hand. But the darkness now became impenetrable, and so Dow did then call a halt, so that they could light their lamps. These were not whale-oil lamps, only regular ship's lanterns – but in the frozen confines they gave better illumination than might have been expected, for their light was reflected, glinting, by the ice all about, as if the chasm was eager to display itself.

It was an unnerving sight. The sea between the cliffs was black, and fog curled above it like steam. The current was still running outwards, the last of the flood, but only gently now, undulating against the ice walls, where nicre crackled softly. Forward, the chasm bent away to lose itself in shadows, and overhead the cliffs rose into darkness; the sky – three miles above – hidden, so that it seemed the walls met together, and the boat floated in a great tunnel rather than a rift open to the air.

They rowed on, at a steady but cautious pace, for the oarsmen must not exhaust themselves. Dow steered lightly as the chasm twisted and turned. Soon the entrance had disappeared behind them, and the effect was not even of a tunnel anymore, but rather of an ice cave, a long, low chamber without any entrance or exit – a white prison. At his side, Dow could feel, even through their heavy clothes, that Nell was trembling.

Was she afraid?

Was Dow himself?

All he could say for sure was that he was aware – in a manner indeed that reminded him of the maelstrom – of being faced with something that was too outsized for human capacity. Yes, the
Bent Wing 2
and its crew might venture down this chasm for a time, but he did not think they would be able to endure it for long. The weight of the ice above them was too great; the pressure of it, barely leashed, ached palpably in the air. And if that wasn't enough, there was the threat that any moment a sudden piping wind might blow and a great wave rise to smash them in the narrow space. Nell's reassurances about such things seemed all but meaningless now.

But they rowed on, the chasm winding somewhat but holding its course, while the sand of the scapegoat's hourglass dwindled slowly through its funnel. Dow forced himself not to watch it constantly.

Nothing blocked them, and nothing hindered them, but their nervousness only grew. The chasm, for all its stark quiet, was never at rest. From time to time sharp detonations cracked out from the walls like musket shots, followed by weird fusillades of echoes that would run up and down the rift mockingly. Or the silence would be broken by a sudden loud splash from ahead or behind, beyond the range of the lamplight; the sound of ice falling in deadly chunks from the walls, although nothing could ever be seen. And occasionally great rumblings seemed to shake the entire chasm, making the water dance and ripple, and they would wait in dread in case a wave should rise.

Worst of all there came finally, from high above, a sound like shrieking laughter, and then the rattle and crash of something huge breaking free maybe a mile overhead, to drop careering between the cliffs. They all crouched in terror in their seats, waiting for the impact – but all that reached them long moments later was a spray of pulverised ice, falling like snow.

‘Monsters of the deep,' moaned Alfons, barely daring to straighten again as the crystals swirled. He stared fearfully up into the blackness. ‘We are being warned – the Ice does not want us here.'

No – thought Dow – a human heart and mind could never be at peace in such a place. It was not that the chasm was evil or unnatural, for all that it was easy to imagine malice or some monstrous influence there
,
but like the maelstrom it was so
preternatural
that a man could visit it only fleetingly and fearfully, and then must either flee again or go mad.

‘How long,' he demanded of Nell, when the flurry cleared, for she had put the hourglass away some while ago. The faces of the rowers too turned to her, their skin a sickly shade in the lamplight. Surely, those faces seemed to say, the hour must almost be up. Surely they should turn back now – for why press on? They had been willing to chance this endeavour, but the ice was too much for them. The chasm had no end, and no survivors from the lost fleet had ever come here – or if they had, they had long since died in some distant dead end, lost and alone and driven insane by the rift's tortures.

Nell hesitated, but at last withdrew the glass and held it up. Not half its sand had yet run through. The men stared slack jawed. So slowly did the sand seem to be trickling down the funnel that Dow for a vexed moment was convinced that Nell had tampered with the device.

‘On,' she said, but the word came out a fearful whisper, amplified tauntingly by the ice walls. Her eyes creased in anger, and she sat up to speak more clearly, defying the echoes. ‘What are we, to fear mere snowstorms and noises? On – for half an hour more yet.'

Dow couldn't tell just then if he hated or admired the scapegoat. Did she truly still see a purpose in this voyage, or was it only stubbornness? And yet the men bowed their heads and resumed their strokes, and Dow steered on, if for no other reason than not to be shamed by her.

Oh, but how slowly the time passed, and how little progress they seemed to make, for as they crept forward they were forever at the centre of their own circle of light, the shadows retreating ahead of them, and the shadows following on behind. They might have been but a few hundred yards from where they'd begun – but they knew too that this wasn't so, that already the way back was long, and overhung with potential disaster.

There had been little enough speech in the boat before the ice fall – now there was none. And the longer the silence drew out, the louder the unheard throb and pulse of pressure sounded inside Dow's head. Were the walls bowing inwards from the weight above them? He felt he could no longer trust his eyes. But even as he opened his mouth – to say what, he didn't know – he felt a puff, suddenly, of warmer air on his face.

It was gone again in an instant, but it had been quite real. Distracted from his fear, Dow pulled off a glove and tested the water with a finger. It was milder than ever – cold still, but far now from freezing. The source of its heat, of the whole warm current, must lie very near.