The Ice Child Read Online Free Page B

of a Polar Ocean. They had gone confidently north, planning to winter in the Chukchi Sea, believing that, where the Kuro Siwo Current met the Gulf Stream, the ocean would part, the ice would change to warmer water, and that there would be a straight path directly to the Pole.
    They chased the dream for three years, and became finally stuck in ice in 1881. On June 11 that year the Jeanette ’s hull suddenly began to murmur—very soft and low at first—as soft as a baby’s cry. Then, the ship began to grunt, like a human being receiving a blow to the solar plexus, over and over again.
    John murmured in his sleep now, as if he himself were transfixed.
    At four in the afternoon the ice suddenly pressed against the port side, jamming the ship hard on starboard. The Jeanette immediately keeled over to sixteen degrees, and the starboard ceiling opened over an inch between the beams, and De Long ordered the starboard boats down, and hauled away from the ship onto the ice floe.
    The ice, meanwhile, was coming in the port side, raising the port bow and forcing the starboard bow down. In the engine room they saw that the Jeanette was breaking in two down its center, and water was pouring into the starboard coal bunkers. On deck the work of off-loading the dogs and foodstuffs went on with a silent desperation, every man momentarily expecting the ice to move again and the ship to split in two. She was warped, twisted like wet paper, the bolts barely withstanding the pressure, the deck slipping to a twenty-degree list, and sliding unstoppably underwater.
    Then, suddenly, at five, the ice moved like a locomotive.
    The spar deck buckled, and the crew was ordered to take everything—clothing, bedding, books, and provisions—off. As they ran, another broadside collided with the hull, and the ship filled fast with water. It tilted to thirty degrees, and the last of the men got down, trying to pull the whole of the ship’s freight clear.
    The Jeanette hung in the half-light, suspended in its death throes. The crew could hear it, as if it were breathing—its dying voice echoing around them.
    She went finally down at four in the morning.
    They stood on the floe and watched while the smoke-pipe top flooded and while the yardarms, which had been so far over that they had rested on the ice, righted themselves. Jeanette went down almost upright, as if she had wanted to raise her head up as she died and look around her for the last few seconds.
    John could almost feel it—almost feel the cold water flooding the timber. Feel the great gulf of ice collapsing over her. For a second, ice flowed through his own bloodstream and invaded his senses. With a tremendous effort he willed himself from her.
    He walked away in his dream, following the bear’s track, seeing how it mingled, occasionally, with his father’s own footprints. He looked at the long gray-and-white miles of the floes, and he shut his eyes tight, so painfully tight that it caused flecks of color, a starburst of blues and oranges, a sprinkling of fireworks. When he opened them, he caught a faint halo around the sun. The cold penetrated his body, through every inch of skin and bone.
    He looked around once, to stare at the ghost of the Jeanette , the ship that could not be there again in this world. But perhaps he was not in this world.
    “Dad!” he called. “Dad …”
    His voice went barreling away across the ice, silenced in seconds. Thin trails of blowing snow, more like vapor than flakes, were already wiping away the tracks of both the bear and his father. The idea rushed in on him that he was lost, truly lost. He had vanished into the same empty gulf that his father had traveled before him, and there was no way back. No path. No guide. No exit.
    He had an urgent desire to lie down on the ice itself.
    “John,” a voice said.
    He was aware of his naked arm.
    “John,” she repeated.
    And slowly he opened his eyes.
    Amy Wickham was looking at him.
    She had her hand on his