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Low, slanted sunlight lit a rugged mountain range where the wind had
scoured the snow from the rock. Icebergs, and islands deep in snow, marched
on the rim of the sea. An undulating field of pack ice was reaching out
from the coast, moving with the wind. Had they escaped the black catamaran
at last, only to be trapped at the bottom of the world?
Jim looked over his shoulder. Hustle was plodding warily under staysail
and reefed main somewhere off the Antarctic Peninsula--a finger of the
polar continent that pointed across the Drake Channel toward South America.
It was a disorienting, ever-shifting world of float ice, drifting packs,
towering bergs and pressure ridges thrust up like gothic castles. The
barometer was falling. The weather fax showed a blizzard pounding up from
the South Pole. At the moment, the sky was crystal clear, the sea oddly
calm. But the wind was rising as it seemed to whenever the Antarctic sky
cleared.
Nor did he believe that they escaped. He felt in his bones that the McVays
were still searching. It was like he had developed an internal radar that
sensed the catamaran. Twice it had saved them, given them a jump on the
pursuit. But now, two grim weeks and sixteen hundred miles south of Cordi's
snug farmhouse in the Falkland Islands, Hustle was running out of ocean. |
