The Penguin's Graveyard

The
Penguin’s
Graveyard

"Not long now” growled Berny, the marine engineer, as he stepped into the Antarctic air from the bridge of the icebreaker ship, the Polar Bare.

The ship surged through the bitter wind, ripping up the thin ice as she pushed steadily toward the place marked on the navigation chart with a messy black cross.

Berny pulled his coat tight and shuffled next to the first mate, Conor, who leant against the bulkhead squinting into the white mist through binoculars.

“Aye", Conor agreed, "It’s getting hotter… look there”. He motioned toward the thermometer display panel attached to the bulkhead.

Berny looked at the gauge, tapped it with his finger tip. The temperature had been rising slowly but steadily. It read minus 1.8 degrees celcius. “She’s coming up, alright”, he said. "I can almost taste the penguin liver soup."

It began to rain. In the polar wind this felt like shotgun pellets against their faces. Berny and Conor shifted into the bridge where it was warm.

On the bridge the deckhand, Rove, was yabbering excitedly at the Captain who was seated in front of the wheel, staring blankly ahead.

“Rove draining the steam out of your whistle again?”, Conor muttered to the Captain.

Rove was youngish, a bit ugly, scrawny with a mole on his chin. He stepped back from the Captain like a boy caught red-handed.

“Just putting forward my view of things,” Rove said defensively.

“A view that hasn’t changed since the hundredth time you squealed it. Still squeamish about knocking off a few penguins are you, boy?”

“I’m good for a few - you know that of me - but not a few million!”

“Not a few million!” repeated the Captain, coming alive. He shifted around in his chair which made sqeaking noises as he moved. “Nowhere near a million. No. Never. Not. My view's the same as before”, he said, waving his hand at the picture on the chart table. “Two, maybe three hundred thousand at the most. Little, fat, plump livered, penguins."

Captain leaned around in his seat, poking his fat body at Rove first, then rotating to view Berny and Conor at close range.

“Harrr!”, the Captain splurted bits of saliva in the first mate’s face. “There’s precious less than an million little penguins left anyway."

Conor snarled disgusted by the bits of spittle from the Captain’s mouth. He clapped the binoculars on the chart table and moved toward the companionway ladder. He paused a second to look at Rove, then went below.

When Conor had gone, Rove, leant to the Captain again. He started talking rapidly. "You know I never had no problem to do the walrus or the little seals, I always done the lot. All of them. I was there when they did the last of the big whales, even. Bagged me-self some dolphins too, back in the beginning of it all. You know all that… but to take the last of the penguins – like all in one go – like Conor’s got planned – it can’t be right. I got to stand against it”.

He stopped, realizing that he had been overheard.

Rove looked up as Berny stepped onto the companionway ladder and descended to the Galley to join Conor. They locked eyes for a few seconds before Berny moved beyond view.

Released from Berny’s stare, Rove started panting deeply. He looked to the Captain, who stared distantly into the whiteness of the Antarctic rainstorm as though he had heard and seen nothing.

Rove flicked his eyes to the thermometer gauge on the instrument panel. Below the ship, the seawater temperature was minus 1.8 degrees celcius and getting warmer.

He stumbled to the chart table. There, on top of the dog-eared chart of the Antarctic ice sheets, lay the stolen satellite photograph. This photograph was the sole justification for the ocean trip.

Rove picked up the picture, turned to get some lamp light fully on it.

In the picture was an ice floe, a white blob with a patch of comparatively warm water in the middle. On the edges of the ice were countless tiny black dots. Maybe a million, maybe only two or three hundred thousand.

Rove trembled as he remembered the little dolphins from the Gulf of Mexico that he and Conor had captured and butchered while the Captain kept watch.

He shuddered as he remembered watching the last of the freshwater dolphins from the Indian River being craned off the back deck of the Polar Bare and into waiting trucks for a distant and lucrative market.

And he sweated and groaned as he squinted at the photograph and considered what he would soon be forced to do to the last penguins in the world in that distant icy graveyard.