I have spent so many days on the open sea that the island seems to me to have a dark, painful beauty about it.

It's so narrow and high that it looms up from the frozen sea like a tower. The rock is visible only in a few places; by and large it's covered with ice. Like a cold Arctic cornucopia, the ice spills over the edge of the bowlshaped top and down the steep sides. A spit is protruding through the sea toward the Kronos: the Barren Glacier. If we could see the other sides, we'd see sheer rock faces, ravaged by crevasses and avalanches.

The wind is blowing off the island, a north wind, avangnaq. This crystallizes into another word, and at first there is only the internal sound, as if it were spoken by someone else, someone inside me. Pirhirhuq, snowstorm weather. I shake my head. We're not in Thule; the weather is different here. My exhausted system is creating phantoms.

"Where will you go afterward?" He gestures around the deck and at the open water. At the motorboat over at the edge of the ice.

"Be my guest, Miss Smilla."

Now that he drops all pretense of courtesy, I realize that it has never really been part of him. It belongs to Tork. Along with the justice on board. Lukas has never been anything but a tool.

He starts walking away from me. He, too, is a loser. He has nothing more to lose, either. I let the heavy metal slip down into my pocket. Before, in the infirmary, I could have shot Maurice. Maybe. Or maybe I consciously didn't take off the safety.

"Jakkelsen," I say as Lukas is leaving. "Verlaine killed Jakkelsen, and Tørk sent the telegram."

He comes back. He stands next to me, staring out across the island. He stays there, his expression never changing, as I talk. At one point the outlines of several large birds tear away from high up on the slopes of ice: migratory albatrosses. Lukas doesn't notice them. I tell him everything, from the beginning. I don't know how long it takes. When I'm done, the wind has died down. The light also seems to have shifted, although I couldn't say exactly how. Now and then I glance over at the door. No one appears.

Lukas has lit one cigarette after another. As if lighting up, inhaling, and then exhaling the smoke must be done with great meticulousness each time.

He straightens up and gives me a smile.

"They should have listened to me," he says. "I suggested that they give you an injection. Fifteen milligrams of a strong tranquillizer. I told them you would escape. Tørk was against the idea."

He smiles again. This time there is madness in his smile. "It's almost as if he wanted you to come. He left the rubber raft behind. Maybe he wants you to go ashore."

He waves at me and says, "Duty calls," as he walks off. I lean on the railing. Tørk is somewhere in the low fog banks where the ice floats out to sea.

Far below there is a white wreath. Lukas's cigarette butts. They're not bobbing up and down; they're lying perfectly still. The water they're floating in is still black. But it's no longer shiny. It's covered with a dull membrane. The sea around the Kronos is about to freeze over. The clouds overhead are being sucked up into the heavens. The air is completely still. The temperature has dropped at least fifteen degrees in the last half hour.

Nothing seems to have been touched in my cabin. I get out a pair of short rubber boots and put my kamiks in a plastic bag.

The mirror reveals that my nose isn't particularly swollen. But it's sitting crooked, pressed too far to one side. In a moment he's going to start diving. I remember the steam in the photo. The water is probably 50° or 55°F. He's only human. It's not much. I know that from my own experience. Yet you always try to keep yourself alive. I put on my thermal pants, two thin wool sweaters, and my down jacket. From my box I take out a wrist compass and a flat canteen. And a woolen blanket. Sometime long ago I must have been preparing for just this moment.

All three of them are sitting down; that's why I don't spot them until I'm actually up on deck. The air has been let out of the rubber raft; it's a gray blanket of rubber with yellow markings, lying flat against the aft superstructure.

The woman is squatting down. She shows me her knife.

"I let the air out with this," she says.

She hands it back to Hansen, who's leaning against the davits.

She stands up and comes toward me. I have my back to the ladder. Seidenfaden follows her hesitantly.

"Katja," he says.

None of them is wearing outdoor clothes. "He wanted you to go ashore," she says.

Seidenfaden puts his hand on her shoulder. She turns around and slaps him. One corner of his mouth splits open. His face looks like a mask.

"I love him," she says.

Her remark isn't directed at anyone in particular. She comes closer.

"Hansen found Maurice," she says, as if in explanation. And then without transition she adds, "Do you want him?"

I've seen it before, the domain where jealousy and insanity run together, erasing reality.

"No," I say.

I move backward and bump into something that won't budge. Urs is standing behind me. He still has his apron on. Over it he's wearing a fur coat. In his hand is a loaf of bread. It must have just come out of the oven; in the cold it's surrounded by a halo of dense steam. The woman ignores him. When she reaches for me, Urs places the bread against her throat. She falls onto the rubber raft and stays there. The burn appears on her throat like film being developed, with marks from the ridges on the bread.

"What should I do?" Urs asks me. I hand him the mechanic's revolver. "Can you buy me some time?" I ask. He looks thoughtfully at Hansen. "Leicht," he says, "no problem."

The pontoon bridge is still out. As soon as I see the ice, I realize that I've come too early. It's still too transparent to bear my weight. I sit down on a chair to wait. I prop my feet up on the cable box. This is where Jakkelsen once sat. And Hansen. On a ship you're continually crossing your own tracks. Just as you do in life.

It's snowing. Big flakes, qanik, like the snow on Isaiah's grave. The ice is still so warm that the flakes melt on it. If I stare at the snow long enough, the flakes don't seem to be falling but rather growing up from the sea, rising to the sky to settle on the top of the rock tower above me. At first the snow is six-sided, newly formed flakes. After forty-eight hours the flakes break down, their outlines blur. By the tenth day, the snow is a grainy crystal that becomes compacted after two months. After two years it enters the transitional stage between snow and firn. After three years it becomes neve. After four years, it's transformed into a large, blocky glacial crystal.

It wouldn't survive more than three years here on Gela Alta. By that time the glacier would push it out to sea. There it would break up and float outward to melt, disperse, and be absorbed by the sea. And then someday it would rise up as newly formed snow.

The ice is grayish now. I step down onto it. It's not good. Nothing is much good anymore.

I stay in the shelter of the ship for as long as possible. At one point the ice is so thin that I have to make a detour. They probably wouldn't see me, anyway. It.has started to grow dark. The light is drifting away; it was never very bright in the first place. I have to crawl the last ten yards on my stomach. I put the blanket on the ice and squirm my way forward.

The motorboat is tied up at the edge of the ice. It's empty. The shore is still three hundred yards away. A kind of stairway has formed here where the submerged part of the glacier has thawed several times and then frozen up again.

What's overpowering me at the moment is the smell of earth. After so long at sea, the island smells like a garden. I scrape away the layer of snow that's about fifteen inches thick. Underneath are remnants of moss and withered Arctic willow.