Mark picks it up and the beak goes again and he puts it back in the sheltered corner where he found it. He gets me to sit in the snow by the bird while he tracks down William who’s studying snow petrels on the continent. The bird presses itself into the corner away from me. I move away from it. William arrives and says hello my fellow and picks it up with swift, sure hands. He spreads its wings wide one after the other and feels carefully along their span. He can’t find anything wrong. He tells us to throw it overboard and see how it goes. I say it can’t fly. He looks at me dubiously.

‘You want to look after it?’

I don’t. I’ve got too much work to do. I say yes. William tells me to get some raw seafood from Henry the cook.

Night. The bridge. Just Max, Jack and me, and Ivan, the officer on watch. The room’s lights are off. The bridge’s circumference seems to have shrunk about us in the almost-dark. We stand close. Our skin’s coloured a soft green by the glow from the computers and radar screens. I feel drawn into the comfortable stillness. We look out into the night. Two spotlights are high on the bow. They’re like World War Two searchlights sending long, shining paths ahead of us. Snow speeds horizontally like bullets through their brightness.

‘No other ship I know has headlights,’ says Ivan, his voice sudden in the dark. ‘Every other ship is in darkness at night, so it can see any other lights around it. But not us. In Antarctica we have to be able to see the ice. That’s why we have headlights, Fin. Oh, look, the radar says an iceberg. Maybe . . . half an hour away.’

Ivan points to a blip of green on the screen. It’s the first iceberg of the voyage. Ivan’s bemused at our excitement. The blip moves slowly towards the centre of the screen. The ship surges ahead in the blackness. Max ducks downstairs to get his camera. He returns as Jack begins yelling and pointing.

A bump in the distance, port side. Ivan traps the berg and holds it, theatrically, in the spotlight. The ship veers and comes up close. The cliff of ice reminds me of passing a tanker. The weather has sculpted turrets and hollows and spires. The berg’s a ghostly lime-green in the light. It’s so still. So utterly, terribly lifeless. I feel as though the ship’s an intruder in this strange, other world that we have no right to be in.