Only one or two complained. Most bore the ordeal stoically. Some were actually excited at experiencing a real adventure. Two of the Aussie husbands, big men who had made their fortune as partners in a construction firm, teased their wives and cracked sarcastic jokes to keep everyone’s spirits up. They seemed as unconcerned as if they were waiting to board a plane. They were all good people in their twilight years, Maeve thought. It would be a shame, no, a crime, if they were to all die in that icy hellhole.
Her mind wandered, and she vaguely envisioned them all interred under the rocks with the Norwegian explorers and the British whalers. A delusion, she reminded herself firmly. Despite the fact that her father and sisters were violently hostile toward her, she could not bring herself to believe they would deny her proper burial in the family plot where her ancestors rested. And yet she knew it was a distinct possibility that her family would no longer admit that Maeve was of their own flesh and blood, not after the birth of her twin boys.
She lay there, staring at the fog that formed in the cavern from the heavy concentrated breathing, and tried to picture her sons, now only six years old, watched over by friends, while she earned badly needed money with the cruise line. What would become of them if she died? She prayed that her father would never get his hands on them. Compassion never entered into his reckonings. People’s lives mattered little to him. Nor was money a driving force. He considered it merely a tool. Power to manipulate, that was his passion. Maeve’s two sisters shared their father’s callousness toward others. Fortunately, she took after her mother, a gentle lady who was driven to suicide by her cold and abusive husband when Maeve was twelve.
After the tragedy, Maeve never considered herself part of the family. None of them had forgiven her for leaving the fold and striking out on her own under a new name with nothing but the clothes on her back. It was a decision she had never regretted.
She awakened, listening for a sound, or rather the lack of it. The wind was no longer whistling into the tunnel from outside. The storm was still brewing, but there was a temporary break in the frigid wind. She returned and roused the two Australian contractors.
“I need you to accompany me to the penguin rookery,” she told them. “They’re not hard to capture. I’m breaking the law, but if we are to stay healthy until the ship returns, we must put nourishment in our stomachs.”
“What do you think, mate?” boomed one of the men.
“I could use a taste of bird,” replied the other.
“Penguins aren’t candidates for gourmet dining,” Maeve said, smiling. “Their meat is oily, but at least it’s filling.”
Before they left for the rookery, she prodded the others to their feet and sent them to steal wood from the whaling station to build a fire. “In for a penny, in for a pound. If I’m going to jail for killing protected creatures and destroying historic property, I might as well do a thorough job of it.”
They made for the rookery, which was about two kilometers around the point encircling the north part of the bay. Though the wind had died, the sleet made their way miserable. They could hardly see more than three meters in front of them. It was as though they were looking at everything through a sheet of water. Sight was even more difficult without goggle. They were wearing only sunglasses, and the drifting sleet blew in around the rims of the lenses and caked their eyelashes. Only by keeping close to the edge of the water did they maintain a sense of direction. They added twenty minutes to the hike by not walking across the point as the crow flies, but at least the detour prevented them from becoming lost.
The wind howled in again, biting into their exposed faces. The thought of them all trekking to the Argentinean research station crossed Maeve’s mind. But she quickly dismissed it. Few would survive the thirty-kilometer journey through the storm. Better than half the aged tourists would quickly perish along the way. Maeve had to consider all prospects, the feasible and the impractical. She might make it. She was young and strong. But she could not bring herself to desert the people who were depending on her. Sending the big Aussie men who trudged beside her was a possibility. The nagging problem as she saw it was what would they find when they arrived?
What if the Argentinean scientists had died under the same mysterious circumstances as the members of her own party? If the worst had occurred, then the only hard incentive for reaching the station was to use their powerful communications equipment. The decision was agonizing. Should she risk the two Australians’ lives in a hazardous trek, or keep them at hand to help her care for the old and the weak? She decided against going for the research station. Her job did not involve putting the passengers of Ruppert & Saunders in life-threatening situations. It seemed inconceivable that they had been abandoned. They had no choice but wait it out until rescue came, from whatever source, and exist the best way they could until then.
The sleet had slackened, and their vision increased to nearly fifty meters. Overhead, the sun appeared as a dim orange ball with a halo of varied colors like a round prism. They rounded the spur of rock encompassing the bay and curved back to the shoreline containing the penguin rookery. Maeve did not relish the thought of killing penguins even as a means to stay alive. They were such tame and friendly creatures.
The Pygoscelis adeliae or Adelie penguins are one of seventeen true species. They sport a black-feathered back and hooded head and a white breast and stare through beady little eyes. As suggested by fossils found on Seymour Island, their ancestors evolved more than forty million years ago and were as tall as a man. Attracted to their almost human social behavior patterns, Maeve had spent one whole summer observing and studying a rookery and had begun a love affair with this most delightful of birds. In contrast with the larger emperor penguin, the Adelies can move as fast as five kilometers an hour and often faster when tobogganing over the ice on their chests. Give them a funny little derby and a cane to swing, she often mused, and they could have waddled along in a perfect imitation of Charlie Chaplin.
“I believe the bloody sleet is slackening,” said one of the men. He was wearing a leather cap and puffing on a cigarette.
“About damned time,” muttered the other, who had used a scarf to wrap his head, turban-style. “I feel like a damp rag.”
They could clearly see out to sea for nearly half a kilometer. The once glasslike sea was now a turmoil of whitecaps agitated by the wind. Maeve turned her attention to the rookery. As far as she could see was a carpet of penguins, over fifty thousand of them. As she and the Hussies walked closer, it struck her as odd that none of the birds stood on their little feet, tail feathers extended as props to keep from falling over backward. They were, scattered all about, most lying on their backs as if they had toppled over.
“Something’s not right,” she said. “None are standing.”
“No fools those birds.” said the man in the turban. “They know better than to stand against blowing sleet.”
Maeve ran to the edge of the rookery and looked down at the penguins lying on the outer edge. She was struck by the absence of sound. None moved nor showed interest in her approach. She knelt and studied one. It lay limp on the ground, eyes staring sightless at her. Her face was stricken as she looked at the thousands of birds that showed no sign of life. She stared at two leopard seals, the natural predator of penguins, whose bodies washed back and forth in the small surge along the rock-strewn beach.
“They’re all dead,” she muttered in shock.
“Bloody hell,” gasped the man in the leather cap. “She’s right. Not one of the little buggers is breathin’.”
This can’t be real. Maeve thought wildly. She stood absolutely still She could not see what caused the mass death, but she could feel it. The crazy idea that every living thing in the rest of the world had died from the mysterious malady suddenly struck her mind. Is it possible we’re the only ones left alive on a dead planet? she wondered in near panic.
The man with the scarf-turban wrapped around his head bent over and picked up a penguin. “Saves us the trouble of having to slaughter them.”
“Leave them be!” Maeve shouted at him.
“Why?” the man replied indignantly. “We’ve all got to eat.”
“We don’t know what killed them. They might have died from some sort of plague.”
The man in the leather cap nodded. “The little lady knows what she’s talking about. Whatever disease killed these birds could do us in too. I don’t know about you, but I don’t aim to be responsible for my wife’s death.”
“But it wasn’t a disease,” the other man argued. “Not what killed those little old ladies and that sailor lad. It was more like some fluke of nature.”
Maeve stood her ground. “I refuse to gamble with lives. Polar Queen will be back. We haven’t been forgotten.”
