“Then what?” Murdock replied. “A man won’t last ten minutes in these waters.” He shook his head with irritation, then said, “Fine. Go ahead and give the men some hope. I’ll let you know when I think this tub is about to go down, and you can assemble the men on the ladder. At least they’ll have something to hang on to for the ride to perdition.”

At the entry hatch, Bojorquez had listened to the exchange, then resumed his hammering on the locked latch. By now, he knew it was a futile gesture. The tiny hammer was proving worthless against the hardened steel. Hours of pounding had gouged only a small notch in the lock spindle. He was many hours, if not days, away from wearing into the lock mechanism.

Between whacks, he looked over at his fellow captives. Cold, hungry, and downcast, they stood assembled, many staring at him with hopeful desperation. Surprisingly, there was little trace of panic in the air. Their emotions frozen like the cold steel of the barge, the captive men calmly accepted their pending fate.

Chapter 73

73

THE NARWHAL’S TENDER WAS PERILOUSLY OVERLOADED. Designed to hold twelve men, the boat easily accommodated the fourteen crewmen who had evacuated the ship. But the extra weight was just enough to alter her sailing characteristics in a rough sea. With choppy waves slapping at her sides, it was only a short time before a layer of icy water began sloshing around the footwells.

Stenseth had taken hold of the tiller after a laborious effort to start the frozen motor. With a pair of ten-gallon cans of gasoline, they had just enough fuel to reach King William Island. But Stenseth already had an uneasy feeling, realizing that they would have to march in the footsteps of Franklin’s doomed crew if they were to reach safety at Gjoa Haven.

Leery of swamping the boat, the captain motored slowly through the whitecapped seas. Fog still hung heavy over the water, but he could detect a faint lightening of the billows as the brief Arctic night showed signs of passing. He refrained from turning directly east toward King William Island, holding to his word to make a brief search for Pitt and Giordino. With next to no visibility, he knew the odds of locating the submersible were long. To make matters worse, there was no GPS unit in the tender. Relying on a compass distorted by their nearness to the magnetic north pole, Stenseth dead reckoned their way back to the site of the shipwreck.

The helmsman estimated that they had collided with the icebreaker some six miles northwest of the wreck site. Guessing at the current and their own speed, Stenseth piloted the boat southeast for twenty minutes, then cut the motor. Dahlgren and the others shouted out Pitt’s name through the fog, but the only sound they heard in reply was the slap of the waves against the tender’s hull.