Thom makes a few attempts to ask about Dennis, and when I meet his questions with silence, he stops asking. We both know what lies ahead—an investigation, paperwork, corporate lawyers, questions from the family—and I don’t want to go through it any more than I need to.
Six days later, Thom and I break camp and ready ourselves for the weeklong journey back. Once we are on the boat, the distractions are plenty, and the hours and days fly past in seminars and lectures. The next thing I know, we are a day away from the Drake Passage.
I wander around the ship, walking the passageways Dennis walked, sitting where he must have sat, standing where he may have stood. I’m with a new group of passengers now, none of whom would have crossed his path. A sleety rain begins to fall, and I go out to the uppermost deck, the small one reserved for crew. As we float through a labyrinth of icebergs, I play with Dennis’s wedding ring, which he’d left on the floor of my tent. I wear it on my thumb, as I did when I’d first found it, because that’s where it fits.
It’s probably because of this vantage point that I see her—an emperor penguin in the distance, standing alone atop an enormous tabular iceberg. It’s uncommon to see an emperor this far north, and a good field guide would announce the sighting on the PA—the passengers aren’t likely to get another chance to see an emperor.
But I don’t move. I watch her as she preens her feathers, as she senses the sounds and vibrations of our ship and raises her head—an elegant, gentle pirouette in our direction. It feels as though she’s looking directly at me, and in that moment we are mirror images of each other, lone figures above the vastness of all this sea and ice. She’s so far from her breeding grounds that for a moment I wonder whether she’s lost, but when she looks away and turns back to her feathers, I sense instead that she is feeling leisurely, safe, enjoying a rare moment of peace before returning home.
ONE WEEK BEFORE SHIPWRECK
The Drake Passage
(59°39'S, 61°56'W) Thom and I stand together on the rear deck, watching the Australis moving in the distance like a time-lapse image of a drifting iceberg: slow, massive, inevitable. In one of the articles I’d read about the ship, a spokesman for the parent cruise company had bragged about how the Australis would cruise to every last inch of the planet, that no place was off-limits to a ship this invincible. It reminded me of what people once said about the Titanic.
The last disaster down here happened a few years ago, when a small tourist ship sank fourteen hours after colliding with an iceberg. That ship was lucky enough to be within an hour of another boat, and small enough that all her passengers could be rescued—but of course thousands of gallons of fuel were spilled, coating the penguins, destroying their waterproof feathers.
I tighten my grip on the railing. “It just drives me insane to see that ship down here. Maybe Glenn can nail them on some IAATO violation or something.”
“I doubt it,” Thom says.
I sigh. “What good is an association that’s supposed to protect this place from cruise ships if membership is voluntary?”
Thom doesn’t answer; this conundrum frustrates us all. Back in the early nineties, when the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators was founded, only six thousand travelers a year visited Antarctica—now it’s closer to forty thousand. That alone makes our instincts to protect the continent seem futile—not to mention the fact that there’s no such thing as an Antarctic coast guard.
And nothing yet has prevented the cruise-bys: the ships that come down just so their passengers can say they’ve been. I’d complained about it to Keller the last time I saw him, which wasn’t long after I’d read yet another story about the fancy new Australis. He’d tried to make the point that our Cormorant passengers are no different—they are simply able to pay more for the luxury of a small expedition with scientists and Antarctic experts on board, and all passengers sign liability waivers no matter what ship they’re on. We’d argued about it, but in a way, of course, he’s right. We’re all at risk down here because every day we venture into the unknown.
Thom pushes away from the railing. “I’ll go up to the bridge,” he says. “See what I can find out.”
I nod. A nausea spreads through me that is far worse than seasickness, far worse than the guilt of taking our own hundred tourists to shore. Down here, ships look after one another—but how do you look after a ship that’s more than ten times the size of your own?