Wreckage

"He came right back here," you say.

"He had to," William agrees. "He didn't take any firewood. In the winter, you need fuel of some sort, if only to melt water to drink or to thaw out your food."

"But here he had all the wreckage from the ship," you say. "Wood and canvas and rope. It would still be here on top of the ice."

"And what happened then?" Claudia asks.

William stares out at the landscape. "Well, in the spring, the ice would break up, eh? And the ship would go down, or be carried out to sea with the ice pack."

"Right," Claudia says. She looks out the window at the bay, the walls of ice, the cliff face dead ahead. "Might we take a walk?"

An Access Excellence Science Mystery sponsored by Genentech, Inc.
Copyright © 1997 Genentech, Inc.; all rights reserved.