by Kim Ekemar
The Second Day at Sea
Leaving the Strait of Magellan, by dawn the ship was sailing up the Admiralty Sound about halfway across Tierra del Fuego. The sun broke through the menacing clouds and shone on the spectacular snow-capped peaks of the Karukinka Natural Park to the delight of the passengers who had gathered in the Darwin Lounge, which was the lounge that enjoyed the best view. As previously announced, the ship now moored in Ainsworth Bay.
A voice over the loudspeakers encouraged all passengers to present themselves at the stern wearing the life vests previously issued. Counting twelve passengers at a time into the inflatable rubber boats with outboard motors, they were transferred ashore in the Zodiacs. Guided in several groups, they walked along the edge of the water until they entered a pristine sub-polar forest. A small waterfall with its rocks covered by moss hovered over a stream. Penetrating the forest further, they found a place where beavers had built a habitat. Eventually, they emerged at a peat bog. The sky had cleared considerably and the sunshine made the snow sparkle on the impressive peaks beyond. Upon their return, while lunch was being served, Stella Australis weighed anchor and continued westwards towards the Tucker Islets. Eventually, another call was heard over the loudspeakers for all to assemble at the stern. The passengers were this time taken by the Zodiacs near the shore of an islet with its rock face covered by black mussel shells. Young penguins made farcical moves to get to the water before jumping into the sea with relish. Overhead – as well as nesting on the cliff sides – cormorants, oystercatchers and many other bird species vehemently protested the intruders’ presence.
The afternoon excursion was shorter than the previous one, so, after having returned to Stella Australis, all interested passengers were invited to make a tour visiting the bridge and the machine room. Curious as always, Ricardo met up with the hostess Berenice in the Sky Lounge at 4:30 in the company of more than a dozen other interested passengers. She led them down the corridor and knocked on the door to the bridge.
Inside, the captain gave them basic information about the ship’s functions and afterwards willingly answered questions. Ahead, they could see the looming cliffs on each side of the strait as the ship sailed through it at a measured pace. In front of the outward-sloping windows, coloured screens indicated landmass in yellow and the body of water in black. Dials and buttons cluttered the console. A couple of old-fashioned-looking telephones, communicating with the engine room, completed the picture.
Next to where Ricardo stood listening to the captain proudly explaining the marvels of the ship he commanded, there lay a pristine nautical chart of the region spread out along with other documents across a table. Lifting his gaze, he saw a locked door leading out to the flying bridge, an exterior surveillance balcony of sorts, in front of which storm clouds again were rapidly darkening the sky. There was an identical door on the opposite side that also opened to the flying bridge.
After taking questions from his audience, the captain thanked them for their interest. The hostess, Berenice, led them outside to the nearest staircase, where they descended to the deck three levels below. Berenice politely held up the door to the engine room for the passengers. Ferah Tayran was the first one to enter, with Ricardo right behind her. Ferah froze. A head taller than her, Ricardo had a clear view of what had made Ferah stop.
Between the ship’s two immense engines, one man was intimidating another by shouting and pushing him against metal lockers secured to the wall. The aggressor held his victim by the lapels of his uniform with his right hand while threatening him with the other hand raised into a fist.
After yelling some threats, inaudible in the noise from the twin engines, the attacker suddenly realised that he was being watched and turned around. Ricardo shoved Ferah aside and ran forward to break up the fight. Upon discovering the passengers entering, the attacker immediately let go of his grip on the man he had attacked and quickly disappeared towards the back of the engine room. That instant, Ricardo slipped on an oil slick left unattended on the floor. As he helplessly fell down on the metal floorboards surrounding the engines, he couldn’t avoid crying out as his left foot got twisted in the process. When he was helped to his feet by concerned passengers entering in his wake, Ricardo winced as he got up and tried to put his weight on the foot, which now hurt.
Ricardo was given assistance to reach the ship doctor’s small reception area. After inspection, Dr Bautista told him in a calm and assuring voice that, fortunately, there was nothing broken and that he had merely sprained his ankle. A couple of days of avoiding leaning on it would ensure a quick recovery – a few days, no more, he promised. Meanwhile, he was sorry to say, Ricardo shouldn’t venture ashore on excursions but instead remain on board resting his foot.
*
After dinner, a majority of the passengers chose to have coffee or drinks to round off their meals. By now, the capricious weather had made the clouds disappear and showed stars dotting the night sky. The passengers sitting at tables close to the windows admired the moonlit mountains covered by snow that they were sailing by. Not much later, the view was replaced by gusts of wind that caused clouds to block out the moon and the stars.
“I couldn’t help overhearing what you told our hostess yesterday, you know, when we checked in”, Ricardo heard Charlie address Mohraki, who both shared a table near to his. “I understand you were in a traffic accident recently that affected you so badly that you won’t be able to walk without a cane for months to come. Do you mind telling us what happened?”
“No, I don’t mind”, Mohraki replied, although he did so marking his response with considerable reluctance, Ricardo noticed. Ricardo shifted his gaze to his dinner companion. Crenshaw was sipping a whisky in silence, his thoughts apparently concerned with something more important than striking up a conversation.
“A couple of months ago, I rented a motorbike”, Mohraki continued. “It was raining, and I lost control of it when entering a curve. My knee took most of the impact when the bike fell over and I hit the street. Some convalescence time is necessary according to my doctors, and although the process has been frustratingly slow, I tell myself that I’m improving each day that goes by.”
He stopped to drink some water after swallowing two pills, and went on to sheepishly explain that he had to take them because of his heart condition.
“You were fortunate nothing worse happened to you in that accident”, Charlie commiserated. “I can tell you what happened to me and my brother when we went riding once –”
“I’m not sure I’m going ashore on tomorrow’s excursion”, Crenshaw interrupted Ricardo’s eavesdropping. “The climate reminds me too much of the English weather at its worst.”
He nodded at the rows of windows lining the lounge, just as sleet-laden gusts began hammering the windowpanes.
“Well, as for myself, I’m left with no other option than to remain on board”, Ricardo answered, while wondering why on earth Crenshaw had decided to take the cruise if he disapproved of the weather. “I’m unable to make any excursions with this sprained ankle of mine. The doctor said I’ll be fine in two or three days if I rest, but by then, of course, the trip will be over.”
“Leila, I don’t feel so good”, Mohraki suddenly croaked loud enough for Ricardo to hear.
Mohraki pushed his chair away from the table and began clearing his throat loudly. The eyes of all the other dinner guests turned in his direction. His face was taking on an excessive blush, Ricardo noticed. His granddaughter, concerned, got up and hit him on the back with her tiny fist. His coughing didn’t abate. Two of the waiters hurried to stand next to him, unsure of what to do. Mohraki waved at them not to bother, as if he were all right. Leila gave him a glass of water, which he barely sipped. Instead, his eyes began to flutter, and then he threw up twice while doing his best to hide the result in his napkin.
Hurriedly, Leila led him out of the dining room. The waiters looked bewildered. The chef came out from the kitchen and, with an apologetic look on his face, studied the dinner
guests, concerned in case anyone else would become sick.
The conversation at the tables picked up again. At the table Alfredo Carbonara and his family involuntarily shared with Antanias and Ferah, Carbonara was on one hand displeased sharing the table with these complete strangers – he had expected this to be an intimate, family-oriented cruise with his sons and in-laws, but instead he now saw himself trapped by the pushy Lebanese dominating the dinner conversation. On the other hand, he found Antanias’s companion Ferah extremely attractive – décolletage and all – and in return she hadn’t been shy about her apparent appreciation of him. It had been a year since his wife had passed away, and of late he had found himself longing for female companionship.
Sprinkling the conversation with anecdotes from his colourful life in the Middle East, Antanias did his utmost to steer the talk towards cattle raising and beef prices. It soon became obvious to Carbonara that Antanias had no idea whatsoever about either subject. He wondered why the Lebanese kept returning to these topics, and decided he would request a different, smaller table the next day with space sufficient enough to only include the members of his family. Before finishing the thought, however, he was distracted by a seductive movement that Ferah made as she reached for the salt.
CHAPTER 4
A Shot on the Ship
Overnight, Stella Australis sailed around the western end of Tierra del Fuego to eventually enter the Beagle Channel. As the morning light reluctantly lit up the threatening black clouds hovering above the ship, the captain ordered his crew to drop anchor on the eastern side of the Pia Fiord. After checking the weather forecast and the ship’s navigation instruments, he decided to authorise the planned excursion to the glacier. In his experienced evaluation, there was bad weather lying ahead, but not until much later that afternoon. By then, they would be sailing through the Glacier Alley towards Cape Horn.
After lunch, all passengers were requested to be ready wearing their life vests for departure at two o’clock sharp. Of the ninety-two passengers, eight did not join the afternoon’s excursion to visit the glacier. Of the thirty-six officers and other members of the crew, twenty-two remained on board to either prepare dinner, be on standby for the manoeuvring of the ship or because they had been allowed time off.
The outside midday temperature was just above freezing. At the lecture on the previous day it had been explained that, curiously enough, in this region it was extremely unusual for the temperature to dip below minus seven degrees Celsius on any day of the year. One by one, the inflated rubber Zodiacs took off in the direction of the shore for the visit to the glacier. The crew on the first Zodiac to land jumped out to accommodate a metal gangplank that would facilitate the passengers safely going ashore. Led by the guides, each group trudged up the hill along the established path surrounded by the Arctic pine forest until they arrived at a vantage point in front of the imposing, blue-tinted glacier. This colour, one of the guides explained, was due to the purity of the uncontaminated water that had remained frozen in the glacier for millennia. To stress his words, that moment a large block of thousand-year-old ice broke off with a thunderous sound before it fell into the sea with a splash.
*
The phone on Captain Abasolo’s desk rang. It was his second-in-command, Ernesto Paniagua, calling from the bridge.
“Captain, could you come up and have a look at the weather situation?” Ernesto asked him. “It’s changing more rapidly than we anticipated.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
On his way up to the bridge, the captain ran into the Turkish woman who he vaguely remembered as Ferah something. She began complaining about the deplorable service since the Zodiacs hadn’t been willing to wait another five minutes while she was finishing getting dressed. Captain Abasolo listened impatiently to her explanation that she was a slow dresser due to the arthritis that was beginning to develop in her hands. Eventually, he managed to put in a word, promised to look into a way of improving issues like the one she had presented and excused himself before escaping towards the bridge.
The wind is rising and veering northwest, Captain Abasolo observed once he had entered the command centre and could observe the bay and the channel. With the ice floes continuing to stack up, this will make it more difficult for the Zodiacs to reach the ship when they come back. I should cross the bay to make it less difficult for their return.
He ordered Ernesto to weigh anchor and told him to instruct the chief engineering officer to only start up one of the ship’s two engines. The distance was less than a mile, and he judged that the power from one engine would be more than sufficient for the short distance. There was nothing else he could do, he decided, and departed to return to his cabin that also served as his office. He left his second and third officers, Ernesto and Ari – both trusted professionals – in charge of commanding the bridge.
*
Six of the eight passengers who still remained on board had made themselves comfortable in the Darwin Lounge on the uppermost deck, with its spectacular view of the surrounding scenery. In the distance, they had seen how the Zodiacs had zigzagged between the ice flows that the glacier had calved. The American couple, Charlie and Evelyn Bright, were sitting near one of the large panorama windows, loudly discussing the view and the probability of further foul weather. Charlie had a whisky on the rocks in his hand, which rested on the armchair. She was sipping on a vodka martini. It was clear that they both preferred to watch the scenery from their armchairs rather than expose themselves to the inconveniences of nature.
Brent Crenshaw passed them by on his way to the bar. He was carrying a large, padded camera bag on his shoulder.
“Hey, Crenshaw, I would have thought that you’d want to be out there with your fancy equipment!” Charlie called out, pointing over his shoulder at the glacier. “Aren’t you missing an opportunity for some nice pictures up close?”
Crenshaw smiled at him, condescendingly.
“I have just the lens for that sort of job”, he replied and patted his camera bag. ”It’s a six-hundred-millimetre lens that will do the trick from the ship just as well as any smartphone up close.”
Before turning back to his drink and watching the scenery, Charlie’s eye caught a glimpse of Leila sitting not far behind him. She was tapping away on a tablet.
“Where’s your grandpa, Leila? Is he still feeling unwell?” Charlie asked, standing up.
Reluctantly, she looked up from the game she was playing on her tablet.
“Yes, he was kept awake all night with vomiting, and now he’s asleep.” Her French accent had a lilting accent that made her English sound charming.
“Yeah, it’s a pity to be on an expensive cruise like this and get sick.”
Leila ignored him and returned to her game. Charlie started another of his endless conversations with his wife, whose contributions mostly consisted of nods and grunts.
The Middle Eastern couple, Ferah and Antanias, were chatting near the bar when Crenshaw reached it. They stopped talking as soon as he came within hearing distance and watched him suspiciously. Instead of looking at them, Crenshaw studied the wall clock. It showed 2:48 p.m. The bartender, asking, glanced at him. The Turkish woman got up and walked provocatively across the lounge before disappearing out of sight.
“Can you give me a beer, please”, Crenshaw requested.
The bartender, Miguel, complied before he excused himself and told Crenshaw that nature called and that he’d be back shortly. Moments after he had left, the American couple rose to get their drinks refreshed. When he saw that the bar had been left unattended, Charlie loudly made a comment about the poor service and the terrible weather before insisting to his wife that they should return to their cabin.
“Inshallah, the weather will improve before tomorrow when we’re due for Cape Horn”, she muttered back. “But let’s have a cigarette outside before we go down.”
Charlie nodded and they both left the lounge to step out into the open area at the stern. The Le
banese passenger, Antanias, who had lingered to finish his drink after his companion had left, emptied the remainder in his glass and disappeared downstairs.
Crenshaw took his bottle of beer, walked over to a nearby table with his camera equipment bag and sat down. After gulping down half of the bottle’s contents, he got up and walked over to the windows that faced the glacier. Crenshaw peered outside at the dramatic clouds that seemed to promise that the weather would get worse and seemed to hesitate. He quickly finished the rest of his bottle, picked up his camera bag and walked towards the exit. When he passed Leila, he saw her turn off her tablet and leave it next to her on the sofa.
As Crenshaw left the lounge, the returning bartender stepped to one side to allow him to pass down the stairs. A couple of minutes later, Charlie and Evelyn reappeared in the lounge and went downstairs after crossing the lounge. Now alone with the bartender, Leila moments later felt the slight vibrations from the ship’s engine, indicating that the vessel had begun to move.
*
After the captain had left, Ernesto called the engine room and repeated the captain’s order to Vicente, the chief engineering officer. Next, he called Francisco to order him to weigh anchor. A few minutes later, Vicente returned the call.
“Just so you know – I’ve been trying to locate Segundo to assist me”, Vicente said, “but, although he should be on standby, I can’t find him. Now, since Segundo isn’t available despite supposedly being on duty, and to be able to comply with the captain’s orders, I’ve instructed Francisco to help me with starting engine number one as soon as the anchor is secured.”
“Duly noted, Vicente”, Ernesto replied grimly. “I approve of your decision, so go ahead with the assistance of Francisco. I’ll inform the captain of this situation later.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. It showed 3:07 p.m.