Free Antarctica by Peter Lerangis Page A

fortress wall.
    Even the dogs, restless and dazed from the voyage, had no scamper in their souls.
    Where a section of the wall had collapsed, a steep, gravelly path led farther inland. But no one was particularly interested in exploring.
    The Iphigenia was intact, resting in the westernmost part of the cove. The Horace Putney ’s hole was big but reparable. And Flummerfelt had located a sturdy spar in one of the boats, large enough for a new mast.
    They were lucky.
    Colin hoped the other boats had been, too. He kept his eye out to sea, hoping for their appearance any minute. Everyone suspected the worst, so no one dared speak about them.
    As Kennedy sawed wood, O’Malley fired up a Primus stove to boil seal’s blood.
    There would be no shortage of that. The bay was dotted with the domes of a few dozen seals, distinguishable from the rocks because their heads bobbed.
    “Aw, no!” Kennedy threw down his saw in disgust and gestured toward the water. “Look!”
    Cranston gasped in mock horror. “It’s an ocean! And here I thought I was back on Lake Ronkonkoma!”
    “The tide is coming in, you fools!” Kennedy shouted. “We must have pulled in at dead low.”
    The joking stopped.
    No one had noticed any high-tide line here. It was one of the first things a sailor looked for on a beach, a telltale strip of seaweed and detritus high up the beach that marked the farthest edge of the tide. If no line existed, you assumed you’d arrived at high tide.
    But because algae and fish were so sparse here, the line wasn’t easy to spot. Now Colin saw it, a slight but definite darkening at the base of the cliff.
    Which meant that in a few hours the entire cove would be underwater.
    “Come on, let’s lift her up the path,” Mansfield said.
    The men tipped the Putney upright and threw in the tools, wood, and stove. When they were done, they spaced themselves around the boat, Father to Colin’s left and Philip to his right. “Heave … ho-o-o-o!” Jack called out.
    It wasn’t as heavy as Colin had expected.
    “Hey, easy there on port!” called Rivera from the other side. “You don’t know your own strength, kid.”
    “Sorry!” Philip exclaimed.
    “Not you,” Windham said. “Colin.”
    As the men walked carefully across the slippery rocks, Dr. Riesman yelled from above: “There’s a ridge up here! A cave, too.”
    The footing was treacherous over the loose rocks. At Father’s command, the men turned and began climbing sideways to the incline, for stability. Sanders and Rivera each tumbled once, almost upsetting the balance. Philip fell twice to little effect.
    Talmadge and Dr. Riesman met them at a long plateau, about ten feet wide, that looked like a kind of fault line between two halves of the ice cliff.
    As they set the boat down, Colin eyed the cave. It was triangular and deep, rent between two slanted, massive ice formations.
    Rivera was already heading for it. “I’ll scout out the lodgings.”
    “What for?” snapped Kennedy.
    “Shelter,” Rivera replied. “Warmth. We may need it.”
    “We’re settin’ up a guest house here?” Kennedy asked.
    “Wyman, please …” Father said.
    “We’re going to unstep this mast, slap on a new one, and put in, and it ain’t going to take that long,” Kennedy said. “I was raised on a farm — we worked until the job was done.”
    “Kennedy, you’ll love it in here!” Rivera called out from the cave mouth. “It smells like a barn.”
    “Oh, do save me a spot,” Philip murmured.
    “If we need to, we can always turn these babies upside down and use ’em as shelters,” Kennedy said. “Side by side, the Putney and the Iphigenia ’ll be at least the size of a twenty-man tent.”
    The Iphigenia.
    Colin ran toward the path. He heard the crunch of running footsteps behind him. At the top of the incline he glanced down into the cove. The wind had picked up, raising six-foot breakers on the shore.
    The tide was half in, and the Iphigenia was no longer on solid