Stefán Máni - The Ship

Sæli is standing in the middle of the radar mast up on the roof of the wheelhouse, attempting to reconnect the aerials for the radio. He hooks his left arm around the frame of the mast and exposes the ends of the cut wires by cutting off their insulation with his pocketknife and scraping salt and residue off the copper. Then he tries to work out which wire is supposed to attach to which, twists them together and winds insulation tape around them.

He’s wearing a thick parka and windproof trousers because the weather has been getting steadily colder over the past few days. His fingers are red and stiff with cold, but Sæli is so engrossed in his task that he hardly notices.

However, when a black shadow falls on the roof of the wheelhouse he loses his concentration, looks up and –

‘CHRIST ALMIGHTY!’

Sæli is so startled that he almost loses his balance, but a moment before the soles of his shoes slip off the slick metal he comes to this senses and throws his arms around the radar mast like a little child running to his mother’s embrace.

What should he do? The shadow moves over the ship and suddenly the sun disappears behind –

He has to warn the captain! He has to –

Sæli moves along the mast, stretches out his right arm and uses the blade of the knife to force open the lid of a break-out box on the outside of the mast, just above his head.

Which wire is…? And which ones are live?

There is a blow to the ship as the bottom collides with –

Boom, boom, boom…

Hurry!

He loosens two blue wires and two yellow ones, using the point of his knife as a screwdriver, then he switches the wires and screws them back on.

Suddenly the foghorn wails.

MBAHHHHHHH!!

The noise is so deep and so loud that the mast vibrates like a gigantic brass instrument.

Saturday, 1 December 2001

Every day is like the day before, never-ending, empty and boring, and that’s how time is going to pass or stand still forever, right?

Until the last of them succumbs to starvation or an accident, right?

And then they would sail on and on and on as phantoms in a ghost ship until the curse was lifted from them, right?

Until the curse was lifted from him , that is, right?

As in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by that eighteenth-century Englishman Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Right?

Jónas is sitting on the edge of his bed in his starboard cabin on E-deck, staring at nothing, with his rosary between his fingers.

The curse…

No, he hadn’t killed an albatross, lucky bird of seafarers, like the sailor in the poem; rather, he struck his wife in the head with a hammer and buried her body on the beach before joining the ship.

She who had been the mainstay of his life, if not the ship itself…

The ship.

What should he do? Nothing? Take his own life? Or wait for a sign from above?

‘The Lord is my shepherd, my strength, my light,’ he murmurs.

My light…

He is wearing nothing but a brown bathrobe; his hair is dirty and unkempt, and his eyes are cloudy and swollen after several days without sleep. His left wrist is bandaged. It’s still quite sore after his fall, but the broken bone has healed.

But what does the condition of your body matter, when your soul is writhing in the fires of hell?

‘The fires of hell,’ mutters Jónas, blinking his tear-filled eyes. He rubs the black beads of the rosary, which are beginning to lose their colour, and watches it swing back and forth.

Where is it all going to end? And when? Will the ship sink before they die of disease or hunger or will divine providence direct it…

Boom, boom, boom …

What was that?

Jónas straightens his back and listens.

Silence.

Is he imagining things or is it getting colder in –

MBAHHHHHHH!!

Jónas clenches the fingers of his right hand around the rosary and crawls on his knees onto the bed.

The foghorn!

He pulls the curtains aside and puts his ghostly face against the icy glass. What he sees is so dreadful and at the same time so beautiful that he doesn’t know whether to despair or rejoice.

‘Oh my God,’ whispers the second mate, crossing himself with trembling fingers. ‘It’s happening!’

The Almighty is watching him. Of course He’s watching him! He’s been called to meet Him…

13:31

The captain wakes in his chair when the bottom of the ship hits something.

Boom, boom, boom…

‘What was that?’ Guðmundur Berndsen wonders aloud. He sits up straighter in the chair, shakes off the chill of his catnap and yawns as he rubs the sleep from his bloodshot eyes.

Did the ship just…?

MBAHHHHHHH!!

When he hears the foghorn the captain comes to life with such a jolt that he almost loses that life at the same moment.

His mind goes empty, his eyes bulge and his heart contracts into a hard knot.

He looks out the salt-covered windows and sees white.

‘HOLY MARY!’

The captain turns on the bow thruster, then he turns the ship to port and just barely manages to avoid a collision with an iceberg the size of an eight-storey building.

13:45

He has turned off the foghorn and climbed down from the radar mast.

Silence.

Sæli stands at the front of the wheelhouse roof and looks across the Weddell Sea, which is covered with broken ice as far as he can see. The ocean is dark blue and so cold it moves like syrup. There are a few dozen metres between the icebergs, but that space gets narrower as they get closer to Antarctica. The wind is picking up out of the north-west. There’s a whirlwind in the offing.

Antarctica!

‘Shit!’

The distance is overwhelming and unendingly white and its breath is cold…

Tuesday, 11 December 2001

Per se stranded two days ago in the Weddell Sea in east Antarctica, not far from the rocky coast and just under a hundred kilometres north of the double-peaked granite mountains that are part of the massive mountain range that towers over the awe-inspiring landscape. The approximate position of ship and crew, plus or minus two degrees, is:

72°S 16°W

Since east Antarctica is the largest part of the continent, as well as the part that few have explored, the survivors might just has well have been marooned on the planet Pluto. There is virtually no likelihood of running across other sentient beings in this largest ice desert on earth.

A month without a gale or a year without a whirlwind exist only as statistical possibilities in Antarctica. Along the Princess Martha Coast the average temperature is minus 20°C in winter and minus 2°C in the summer.

The atmospheric pressure is always high and there’s a gale wind every third day of the month; it snows two days out of three all year round; there are, on average, thirteen days of fog each month; heavy winds blow across the ice for up to 300 days a year, and life-threatening whirlwinds can hit any time.

Every once in a while, though, a kind of ring of light will form around the sun or moon beyond the clouds, and this is a sign that the storms are about to abate. Then it won’t be long before the spine-tingling calm, the bone-white ice and the awesome mountains interlock to form one vast frozen silence that both paralyses and enchants, terrifying and invincible…