"I'm coming in for you," he apprised Pitt.
"Stay clear," Pitt ordered. "You can't feel it up there, but the air turbulence this close to the precipice is murderous."
"It's suicidal to wait any longer. If you jump now I can pick you up."
"Like hell-" Pitt broke off in horror as the Polar Queen was caught broadside by a giant comber that rolled over her like an avalanche. For long moments she seemed to slide toward the cliff, nearer the frantic turmoil swirling around the rock. Then she was driving forward again, her icebreaker bow burying itself under the wave, the foaming crest curling as high as the bridge, spray streaming from it like a horse's mane in the breeze. The ship descended ever deeper as if she were continuing a voyage to the bottom far below.
The torrent came with a roar louder than thunder and flung Pitt to the deck. He instinctively held his breath as the icy water surged over and around him. He clung desperately to the pedestal of the control console to keep from being swept over the side into the maelstrom. He felt as if he had dropped over a towering cascade. All he could see through his face mask was a billow of bubbles and foam. Even in his arctic dry suit the cold felt like a million sharp needles stabbing his skin. He thought his arms were being pulled from their sockets as he clung for his life.
Then Polar Queen struggled up and burst through the back of the wave, her bow forging another ten meters to port. She was refusing to die, game to fight the sea to the bitter end. The water drained from the bridge in rivers until Pitt's head surfaced into the air again. He took a deep breath and tried to stare through the downpour of water that splashed back from the black rock of the cliffs. God, they seemed so close he could spit on them. So close that foam thrown upward by the horrendous collision of water against rock rebounded and fell over the ship like a cloudburst. The ship was abeam of the chaos, and he eased back on the stern thruster in an attempt to quarter the surge.
The bow thruster dug in and shouldered the forward part of the ship into the flood as the stern screws thrashed the water into foam, pushing her on an angle away from the vertical rock face. Imperceptibly, but by the grace of God, her bow was edging out to sea.
"She's coming about!" Giordino yelled from above. "She's coming about!"
"We're not out of the woods yet." For the first time since the inundation, Pitt had the luxury of replying.
He warily eyed the next sequence of waves that came rolling in.
The sea wasn't through with the Polar Queen yet. Pitt ducked as a huge sheet of spray crashed over the bridge wing. The next comber struck like an express train before colliding with the backwash from the last one. Bludgeoned by the impact from two sides, the ship was tossed upward until her hull was visible almost to the keel. Her twin screws rose into the air, throwing white water that reflected the sun like sparks of a fireworks pinwheel. She hung suspended for a terrible moment, finally dropping into a deep trough before she was struck by the next breaker in line. The bow was jerked to starboard, but the thruster battled her back on course.
Again and again the cruise ship heeled over as the waves rolled against the sides of her hull. There was no stopping her now. She was through the worst of it and shook off the endless swells as though she were a dog shaking water off its coat. The hungry sea might take her another time, but more likely she would-end up at the scrappers thirty or more years from now. But this day she still sailed the brutal waters.
"You pulled it of! You really pulled it off!" shouted Giordino as though he didn't believe his eyes.
Pitt sagged against the bridge-wing railing and felt suddenly tired. It was then he became conscious of a pain in his right hip. He recalled striking against a stanchion that supported a night light when he was immersed by the giant wave. He couldn't see under the dry suit but he knew that his skin was forming a beautiful bruise.
Only after he set the navigation controls for a straight course south into the Weddell Sea did he turn and gaze at the pile of rock that towered above the sea like a jagged black column. There was an angry look about the cold face of the precipice, almost as if it were enraged at being cheated out of a victim.
The barren island soon became little more than a pile of sea-ravaged rock as it receded in Polar Queen's wake.
Pitt looked up as the turquoise helicopter hovered over the wheelhouse. "How's your fuel?" he asked Giordino.
"Enough to make Ice Hunter with a few liters to spare," Giordino answered.
"You'd better be on your way, then."
"Did you ever stop to think that if you board and sail an abandoned ship into the nearest port you'd make a few million bucks from the insurance underwriters on a salvage contract?"