Free The Curse of the Ice Serpent by Jon Mayhew Page B

light.
    ‘What on earth?’ Georgia whispered beside him.
    Towering mountains of ice surrounded them, smaller ones rising and falling with the sea. Flat ice floes, broken into chunks, clunked against the wooden hull of the Nautilus . A cold wind moaned over this desolate scene.
    ‘The beast must have dragged us further north than we thought,’ Borys said, shivering. ‘In all the excitement, I didn’t even notice.’
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ Georgia said, her breath clouding her face.
    ‘It’s too cold,’ Dakkar muttered, shaking himself.
    ‘Come back down into the Nautilus ,’ Borys said, putting an arm around Georgia. ‘The cold is dangerous. You have to treat it with respect. Stay up here too long without protection and you will surely die.’
    The warmth of the sub welcomed Dakkar as he slid down the ladder back inside. Borys looked grimly out of the porthole at the white crust that covered the sea’s surface.
    ‘This is bad,’ he said and pursed his lips.
    ‘But surely all we need to do is set a course further south and we can pick up our original course,’ Dakkar said.
    ‘It’s not that easy, Dakkar,’ Borys said. ‘The turtle brought us deep under the ice floes and we must navigate back out of them. It’s late in the year so the floes are beginning to thicken and freeze together. We might not be able to break through them.’
    ‘But we can go under them,’ Georgia said. ‘That’s how we got here.’
    ‘This is true,’ Borys agreed. ‘But what if we can’t surface because of the ice? What if we lose our way? There can be no navigation errors in the Arctic.’
    They climbed down into the body of the Nautilus and went into the front cabin to consult the charts.
    ‘By my calculations we’re here,’ Borys said, stabbing the compasses into the map at a point west of Greenland.
    ‘How can that be?’ Dakkar wondered. ‘We weren’t dragged for that long surely?’
    ‘That creature is huge and powerful,’ Borys said, tracing a finger over their supposed route. ‘One stroke of its mighty flippers would be enough to propel us a great distance.’
    ‘We’ll make better time if we travel underwater,’ Georgia said.
    ‘But we must proceed with caution,’ Borys said, tapping the compasses on the table. ‘The ice floats on the surface but we could easily collide with the body of an iceberg that lies beneath the surface.’
    Frost formed on the glass of the portholes, hardening into ice so that the view outside blurred and glazed. Sharp crackling sounds snapped through the hull of the sub.
    ‘We had better submerge,’ Borys murmured. ‘The Nautilus is freezing. The extremes of temperature may crack her portholes or if any leftover water in the hull freezes it may burst the planks.’
    Dakkar hurried up to the captain’s seat and opened the ballast tanks. Slowly the Nautilus began to sink. More bumps and bangs resounded through the craft. Dakkar could just make out ice cracking from around the hull as they sub­­merged.
    Another few minutes and we might have been frozen in , he thought. The water bubbled around him and he gasped.
    ‘It’s so clear!’ Georgia said, appearing beside him. ‘And even in this cold, fish still swim!’
    They stared out as the Nautilus went deeper, marvelling at the shoals of brown fish that swarmed along the bottom of the sea. Above them, the ice formed a ceiling of blue-white.
    ‘Look!’ Borys lamented down the speaking tube. ‘So many fat fish and we can’t catch any for our dinner!’
    Dakkar allowed himself a smile, partly because the idea of Borys keeping lookout for icebergs through the portholes below reassured him.
    ‘Why are we going so slowly?’ Georgia said, frowning out into the water.
    ‘Look over there,’ Dakkar said, pointing to a distant white mass to the port side of the craft. ‘If we strike something like that, we’re done for.’
    ‘Or like that,’ Georgia said, pointing to another. ‘Or that!’
    Dakkar felt the blood drain