The Snow Queen by Eileen Kernaghan Page B

hammock, listening fearfully to the grinding and grating and thudding of the ice. Now and then the ship’s timbers groaned, and the vessel shuddered like a wet dog. Before dawn the noise had grown to a steady thunder. Feet pounded into the fo’c’sle. Lanterns bobbed and weaved in the dark as the watch roused the rest of the crew.
    Gerda rolled to the fo’c’sle deck and fumbled for her boots and coat. Ritva was still asleep, cocooned in her hammock with her blanket pulled over her head. Gerda shook her by the shoulder till she stirred, groaned, and sat up.
    â€œWhat do you want?” snarled the robber-maid, clawing her hair out of her eyes.
    â€œGet up — we all have to get up. I think we’re abandoning ship.”
    Someone held up a lantern close to Gerda’s face. She blinked in its sudden glare. “Here, get moving, you two — get out on deck.” All around her Gerda could hear orders being shouted, things being shifted, the scrape of heavy objects across the boards.

    Gerda and Ritva paused for a moment at the top of the ladder to ease their aching shoulder muscles and catch their breath.The wind had died, but the air was bitter cold, searing its way into their lungs. Everywhere on the foredeck stood bundles of fur garments, bedrolls, oil lamps, cartons of canned goods, muskets and harpoons. All the galley equipment — pots, pans, kettles — had been stacked nearby. The crew were dragging the last boxes of equipment and sacks of provisions from below decks. Gerda looked up, saw that the sails and rigging were coated in frost. The sun was a faint pink stain on the horizon.
    And then she saw the ice — a greyish-green jumble of walls and slabs and ridges, rising level with the rails and stretching as far as the eye could see. Amidships snow was piling up above the rails, and as she watched, the whole loose powdery mass toppled over onto the deck. She clung to Ritva in terror as their ship was ground and squeezed and twisted, and her shrieking timbers torn apart. The Cecilie’s bow shot up in the air, her stem was wrenched sideways as though caught in a gigantic vise.
    â€œGet to work,” someone shouted at them, and startled out of their panic, they took hold of a sack between them and dragged it over the rails, onto the ice.
    Just then the ship gave a kind of groan and listed further onto her side. Abruptly Ritva let go of the sack, and without a word turned and raced back to the ship.
    Long anxious moments passed. At every creak of the timbers Gerda’s stomach twisted itself into a tighter knot. Another minute, she thought . . . one minute more and I will go after her.
    And then Ritva reappeared, leading the old reindeer over the tilted railing onto the ice. He was trembling, and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, but he seemed unhurt.
    â€œOh, praise Heaven,” cried Gerda, running to meet them. Without stopping to think, she threw both arms around Ritva. “I was so afraid you’d got trapped.” She felt Ritva stiffen, heard her hiss a warning, and remembering that she was no longer Gerda Jensen, but a cook’s boy, she dropped her arms and hastily stepped back.
    â€œWe nearly didn’t get out,” said Ritva. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “One side of the hold is caved in, and it’s a wonder this poor old brute wasn’t crushed as flat as a hearth-cake.”
    She tickled Ba absent-mindedly behind his ears to calm him. Snorting, he rubbed his nose against her cheek.

    By afternoon the ship was all but stripped of supplies. Everything, including three large sledges and two of the boats, had been carried out onto the ice, and canvas tents were thrown up.
    Gerda was too exhausted to spare much thought for tomorrow. She ate the bread and butter and chocolate that was passed around, drank the whey milk the cook had warmed over a blubber lamp.
    How could she have imagined the Captain was joking when he talked of