My Last Continent(89)

“About four.”

“In the afternoon?” It feels as though I’d slept for more than a couple of hours.

“No, morning,” she says. “You slept through the night. You really needed it.”

“All night?” I’d slept for more than twelve hours. The Australis would be underwater by now, her fuel leaking. Finding any more survivors would be more than we could hope for.

I struggle again to sit up. “How’s the rescue going?”

Susan looks as though she hasn’t slept at all, her eyes puffy and barely open, her mouth taut with tension.

“We’re still at Detaille,” she says. “There’s a flotilla of ships out there now.”

“So why aren’t we heading north?”

She pauses. “They’re still looking for two people.”

This could only mean one thing. “You mean two of our people.”

She nods.

“Who?”

But she doesn’t say anything.

“Who, Susan?”

“One is Richard Archer.”

I’m not surprised by this, but I feel a pang of sympathy for Kate. I wait for Susan to speak again, and when she doesn’t, I ask, “Who’s the other one?”

“Why don’t you rest a bit more?” she says.

“Susan, just tell me.” When she doesn’t, I answer my own question. “It’s Keller, isn’t it?”

She nods.

I feel something inside me sink and drown.

“They’re looking for him now, Deb. Everyone is, crew from all the ships.” She pauses. “They’ll find him.”

I reach out and clutch her hand. “You’ve got to get me out there. Wrap up this leg and shoot me full of whatever you have to. I need to be out there looking.”

“Deb,” she says. “You can barely walk.”

“He saved me,” I say. “You can’t just let me sit here and do nothing.”

Susan’s eyes begin to water.

I try to breathe, try to stay calm. But I know the odds.

I turn away from Susan and shut my eyes. I hear the rumble of Zodiacs outside, the occasional petrel cry. Then I feel the ship tremble, hear the engines come alive. This means they’re preparing to leave, with or without Keller, with or without Richard. I can tell by the vibrations that they haven’t fixed that damaged propeller. The ship feels shaky, unwhole.



A PHYSICAL PAIN envelops me so fully I can hardly tell where it’s coming from. Susan offers me acetaminophen, but I shake her off. Even something stronger wouldn’t help—even if I had no body at all, I’d feel the shock and tremble of all that we’ve lost. At least without medication, I can focus on something: every ache, every twinge, every throb.

Kate makes us tea, and we wait together, taking turns looking helplessly out the porthole. The Cormorant’s engines are running, but we’re still at anchor. Rescuers have already pulled hundreds of bodies from the water, and the decks of the British and Russian icebreakers that have arrived to help are lined with corpses. And when Glenn and Nigel appear at the cabin door, their expressions grave and focused on Kate, I know instantly that Richard is now among them.

I watch Kate’s face lose its color. Though it’s hard for me to walk, I insist on accompanying her as she follows Glenn and Nigel to a Zodiac. She takes my arm, as if to help me, but I can feel her shaking. Glenn tells us that a Russian team found a Zodiac grounded on a sheet of ice, with two frightened Australis passengers inside. Not far away, the Russian crew discovered a body, buoyed by his life preserver.

When we board the icebreaker, they take us into a room. Richard’s body lies stretched on a makeshift table. He wears a life jacket stamped with the tour company’s logo. His face is a whitish blue, his skin slick and waxy. Kate reaches out to touch his face. “At last,” she murmurs to me, “he looks almost relaxed.”

In the Zodiac on the way back to the Cormorant, she asks Glenn the question I’m not able to ask myself: “What about Keller?”

“Nothing yet,” Glenn says.

“But you’ll keep looking?”

“We need to head back soon,” Glenn says, his eyes meeting mine. “But the others are going to keep looking, yes.” For the first time, I hear Glenn’s voice waver, on the edge of breaking.

“Then I’m staying, too,” I hear myself say. Glenn doesn’t answer, but I feel his hand on my shoulder, and he keeps it there until we return to the Cormorant.

Back on board, Kate brings me a bowl of soup, which I can’t eat. Amy comes by to see me, but I can’t talk. I press my face to the glass of the porthole, where I continue to stare out at the water—dirty with brash ice and with debris from the wreck, from the rescue operations—and think of all it has taken.