“This way,” Kazinski said, disappearing into the hatchway. Michael waited for Hirsch to go through, then followed. The passageway was so narrow it was tough to maneuver with the huge duffel—especially as it contained his camera equipment, painstakingly packed to protect against breakage; the camera and gear were in metal cases at the core, further insulated by all his clothing wrapped around them. But the bag was damn heavy, as a result.
“The Constellation,” Kazinski was saying, “is among the largest icebreakers in the Coast Guard fleet. She weighs just over thirteen thousand tons, and she runs on half a dozen diesel engines and three gas turbines. We’re carrying over one million gallons of fuel. At full throttle, she can muster seventy-five thousand horsepower and travel through open water at seventeen knots. In high seas, she has a maximum roll of ninety degrees.”
What, Michael wondered, would that feel like? He’d seen some heavy weather off Nova Scotia, and been caught in a squall in the Bahamas, but he’d never been on an icebreaker in an Antarctic storm.
“Any chance of that?” Hirsch asked. “Rolling ninety degrees, I mean?” He didn’t sound like he’d be looking forward to it.
“You never can tell,” Kazinski said, stepping over the threshold of another hatchway, then warning, “Watch your step there. Summer seas are not as bad as winter down here, but it’s still Cape Horn. Anything can happen, at any time. Watch your step again.”
He took them down another short flight of metal steps, and the portholes suddenly vanished: Michael figured that they had just descended to below water level. Even the air became closer and danker. Fluorescent tubes in the ceiling flickered, and as they continued to make their way toward the stern, the vibrations in the floor got stronger. So did the noise.
“And here we are,” Kazinski said, ducking into a cabin door. “Home sweet home.”
When Michael and Darryl followed him in, there was barely room for the three of them to stand. There were two narrow bunks attached to opposite walls, with striped woolen blankets pulled military tight; a flat metal tray was folded down from the wall between them. There was one overhead light fixture, burning brightly in a frosted globe, and a plywood door that led to the head; Michael could smell the mildew.
“Is this the deluxe cabin?” Michael joked, and Kazinski laughed.
“Yes, sir. We save this one for visiting dignitaries only.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Good decision there. Last two berths on board, sir.”
Darryl, fortunately, didn’t seem to mind, either. As soon as Kazinski left, he unzipped one of his bags and started tossing some things onto the bunk on the right. “Say,” he said to Michael, stopping for a second, “did you want that one?”
Michael shook his head. “It’s all yours.” He slung his backpack off his shoulder and onto the cot. “But if they leave us chocolates on our pillows at night, I want mine.”
While Darryl unpacked, Michael dug out one of his digital cameras—the Canon S80, good for down-and-dirty wide-angle shots—and went up on deck. The Constellation had left the dock, and was passing slowly southeast down the Beagle Channel, named after HMS Beagle, the very ship that had carried Charles Darwin into those waters in 1834. The air temperature wasn’t bad, maybe thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees, and since the ship was still in a relatively protected waterway, the wind was mild. Michael was able to get off a few shots without worrying about gloves and without his fingers going numb. He probably wouldn’t be using these for the piece anyway, but he always liked to have a few photos recording every important phase of his trip. He used them as memory aids when it came to the writing part, and it never failed to surprise him that something he remembered one way would show up quite differently when he looked at the photos. The mind could play a lot of tricks on you, he had learned.