The grey, ice-encrusted bow of the Vanguard slammed into a eight-foot pack ice floe at eighteen knots, sending a sound like a cannon shot through her iron hull.
Cold sea spray froze mid-air, raining down across the forward quarterdeck like handfuls of shattered glass. We were fifty-six degrees south, deep within the roaring latitudes of the Drake Passage, where the Southern Ocean boiled into fifty-foot swells under a heavy leaden sky.
On the open bridge wing, Prince Bastian stood wedged between the iron gunwale and the heavy brass telegraph casing.
His dark wool coat was stiff with ice, his leather gloves frozen to the railing as he peered through his long brass marine glasses into the swirling grey fog ahead. His dark eyes remained calm, sharp, and immovable, tracking the jagged outlines of massive blue icebergs drifting like shadow fortresses through the mist.
