The Princess of the Bottom of the World (Episode 4): Antarctica, Ho!

By Dan Linehan

Provocative, edgy, humorous, racy, thought-provoking, and full of wonder all describe The Princess of the Bottom of the World, a seven-episode series of multimedia novellas focusing on the natural world and international adventure.

Though a work of fiction, The Princess of the Bottom of the World is based on the author’s true adventures to Antarctica and the surrounding regions, time living abroad in Argentina, work with science and engineering, and nearly two decades of professional writing about the only world that we can call home.

About Episode 4:

The sights and sounds continue to amaze. On an active volcanic island in Antarctica, orderly penguin highways provide access back and forth between mountainsides and shores. Days later, the Sun seems to defy gravity. But Scott’s excitement and wonder are tempered by unimaginably high temperatures and other evidence of the rapid changes in Antarctica.

Time runs out when the voyage ends. Cassandra must sail again, and Scott must continue his expedition on dry land. The episode contains photos and connects to an online Multimedia Traveling Companion that includes additional photos, video footage, and more behind-the-scenes materials.

Praise for The Princess of the Bottom of the World:

“I loved going on the journey with Scott and the group. I was brought so close to the land and the wildlife by Scott’s descriptions, which can only be accomplished by someone with a heart invested in them. This beautiful travelogue swept me away.” —Mary Ackerman (nurse practitioner and book club member)

“I especially like Melina and Cassandra, who were both hard working, smart, personable, independent, risk takers, passionate, uninhibited, playful, and lived in the moment.” —Connie Clark (dean of health sciences and book club member)

“This is a great story! It was an adventure from the start! I like Scott, young and old, for his gumption and romanticism and resourcefulness and adventuresomeness, his humor and playfulness, his combination of regard for safety and protocols with his occasional interest in ignoring those very things. I like his sensuality and brains.” —Mary Rakow (author and editor)

“The Princess of the Bottom of the World reads like a collaboration between Paul Theroux, Rachel Carson, and Robert James Waller.” —Dan Bergmann (scientist and educator)

“Scott’s narrative voice is compelling, and imparts so much personality that I felt like I had gone on the expedition with him. And I was definitely craving Malbec (one of my favorite wines, too) the entire time!” —Deborah Steinberg (writer and editor)

“It’s really wonderful how strongly you express Scott’s emotions and excitement over every glacier. And all his descriptions are so vivid, right down to the feathers of the black-browed albatross. Whew, it’s a powerful ending and I am still crying!” —Gail Cheeseman (cofounder of Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris)

About the series:

Scott Sullivan must travel to the coldest and most remote place on Earth to warm his heart to love. He journeys to Antarctica and other distant regions to study and write about wildlife and environmental issues. For far too long he has put his personal life on ice.

Nothing could have prepared him for the spellbinding beauty and heart-wrenching reality he encounters. During the voyage he befriends a quirky crew member who begins the melting process on his heart. In his search to better understand the world, he unexpectedly finds a better understanding of himself.

But at the end of the voyage, Scott and Cassandra are forced to go their separate ways. When a shipwreck draws them back together, Scott makes his own course correction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Linehan
• Release date: May 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463365519

Dan Linehan

In 2000, Dan Linehan switched careers from scientific researcher and engineer to fulltime writer and editor. Focusing on creativity, education, and outreach using multiplatform storytelling, he is widely published—in many forms of writing that include poetry and fiction—and has won awards for his work. Video, photography, and other visualizations often play important roles.He has authored two highly illustrated nonfiction books that cover historical and technological aspects of aerospace and space tourism, Burt Rutan's Race to Space: The Magician of Mojave and His Flying Innovations (Zenith Press, 2011) and SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History (Zenith Press, 2008), which has a foreword by science fiction legend Sir Arthur C. Clarke.Dan has worked for a film studio, a literary journal, a national laboratory, and leading educational publishers. As a writer, he explored Antarctica and the surrounding regions from 2006 to 2007 and lived in Argentina from 2013 to 2014.

Book preview

Praise for The Princess of the Bottom of the World

I loved going on the journey with Scott and the group. I was brought so close to the land and the wildlife by Scott’s descriptions, which can only be accomplished by someone with a heart invested in them. This beautiful travelogue swept me away.

—Mary Ackerman (nurse practitioner and book club member)

I especially like Melina and Cassandra, who were both hard working, smart, personable, independent, risk takers, passionate, uninhibited, playful, and lived in the moment.

—Connie Clark (dean of health sciences and book club member)

This is a great story! It was an adventure from the start! I like Scott, young and old, for his gumption and romanticism and resourcefulness and adventuresomeness, his humor and playfulness, his combination of regard for safety and protocols with his occasional interest in ignoring those very things. I like his sensuality and brains.

—Mary Rakow (author and editor)

"The Princess of the Bottom of the World reads like a collaboration between Paul Theroux, Rachel Carson, and Robert James Waller."

—Dan Bergmann (scientist and educator)

Scott’s narrative voice is compelling, and imparts so much personality that I felt like I had gone on the expedition with him. And I was definitely craving Malbec (one of my favorite wines, too) the entire time!

—Deborah Steinberg (writer and editor)

"In my preschool classroom, nature plays a big part of the curriculum. I was pleased to see that you included some stories that reflected Scott’s childhood interest in nature. We need to work hard to cultivate young children’s interest in nature so they will become better caretakers of our planet. So after reading The Princess of the Bottom of the World, I’ll be working on how to appropriately include climate change in the curriculum."

—Pat Padilla (teacher and book club member)

It’s really wonderful how strongly you express Scott’s emotions and excitement over every glacier. And all his descriptions are so vivid, right down to the feathers of the black-browed albatross. Whew, it’s a powerful ending and I am still crying!

—Gail Cheeseman (cofounder of Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris)

The Princess of the Bottom of the World

Episode 4: Antarctica, Ho!

by Dan Linehan

Over the years working on The Princess of the Bottom of the World, I've had help in many ways from many people. Thank you all! I wish to dedicate this work to poet and writing instructor David Gitin. His teaching and guidance allowed me to emerge as a writer. I miss my good friend.

List of Episodes

Episode 1: Journey to the Bottom of the World

Episode 2: Islands of Penguins

Episode 3: Glaciers, Bones, and Ghost Towns

Episode 4: Antarctica, Ho!

Episode 5: Patagonia and the World of Waterfalls

Episode 6: Course Corrections

Episode 7: When the Journey Never Ended

Book Video Trailer

The Princess of the Bottom of the World

Though a work of fiction, The Princess of the Bottom of the World is a seven-episode multimedia serial novel based on the author’s true adventures to Antarctica and the surrounding regions, time living abroad in Argentina, work with science and engineering, and nearly two decades of professional writing about the only world that we can call home.

This episode is best read with an image capable reader. Photos in high resolution are available online by visiting the Multimedia Traveling Companion, which also includes additional photos, historical video footage, and more behind-the-scenes materials. It is also linked to tags in the text: [p] for photos, [s] for songs, and [v] for videos.

The series is not intended for all ages. Episodes can contain strong language, mature situations and themes, and/or sexual content.

Cover photo by Dan Linehan

Cover and logo designs by James Linehan

Spanish translation assistance by Gisela Zunino (Buenos Aires)

Publication Acknowledgments

Excerpts: Beagle Channel, Buenos Aires, The Other Side of the Comet, and Hit Play (Homestead Review, 2015); Grytviken (Porter Gulch Review, 2015); Surfing on Rocks of Ice (Catamaran Literary Reader, 2015); An International Scene (Ping-Pong, 2015); and Fish, Frogs, and Alluvial Fans (Caustic Frolic, 2019).

Poems: Cats and Dogs (Monterey Poetry Review, 2007); Constellations (installation at Residencia Corazón, La Plata, Argentina, 2013); and Beagle Channel and Trece Fuegos (Homestead Review, 2007).

Photographs: Sunset in Beagle Channel and Street Art in Buenos Aires (Homestead Review, 2015); Dog in Ushuaia (Monterey Poetry Review, 2007); Elephant Seals and Zodiacs (Hilltromper, 2015); and Whale Tail (Otter 501: A webStory, 2012).

Version E4.11

Copyright 2019–2020 by Dan Linehan. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, given away to other people, or shared in any other electronic manner. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Diners of shrimp-like, red krill, gentoo penguins [p] with down-coated chicks nest on the freezing rocks at Booth Island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. (Photo by Dan Linehan)

Praise

Title Page

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Emperor Adrift

Chapter 2: Natural Law on Ice

Chapter 3: Penguin Highways of Deception Island

Chapter 4: Constellations in Irish

Chapter 5: Bone Stones and Rock Thieves

Chapter 6: Una’s Tits and the Reappearing Sun

Chapter 7: A Bad Sir

Chapter 8: Topless in Antarctica

Chapter 9: Abandon Land

Chapter 10: Malbec and Empanadas

Chapter 11: Vanquish the Drake

Chapter 12: Not My Birthday but I'll Take It

Map: The Voyage

Map: Antarctica

Index and Multimedia Traveling Companion

About the Series and Episodes

Author Bio and More Info

1 / An Emperor Adrift

A juvenile emperor penguin [p], the largest species of penguin, is far from its distant home way to the south. But on a small ice floe in the Southern Ocean, north of the Antarctic Peninsula, it has found a friendly pair of chinstrap penguins. Not long after the ship encountered them, all three penguins dropped to their bellies, slid into the water, and swam off together. (Photo by Dan Linehan)

DAY 19: SOUTHERN OCEAN

Where we’d landed at Shingle Cove in the South Orkneys yesterday, icebergs dumped by the surrounding glaciers had amassed within the protected waters of Iceberg Bay. But once in the open ocean, the icebergs we encountered grew in size while diminishing in number. That changed when I woke up. Now it was impossible to draw a straight line in any direction from the Southern Aurora and not hit an iceberg in our vicinity. They were as much a part of the ocean as waves. And as with snowflakes, no two icebergs were ever the same. During midmorning the wind blew more than 20 miles per hour and the temperature dropped below 40ºF, without wind chill considered. The ship moved at 10 miles per hour, but as more and more icebergs coalesced in front of the ship, the speed dropped to 3 miles per hour.

We encountered our first tabular iceberg [p]. Flat-topped and block-shaped, it was, Ron estimated, over 1 mile long, 300 feet above the waterline, and 1,500 feet below it. This one iceberg—the size of a small island—was about as long as twenty of our ships lined up end-to-end. All the surrounding icebergs had broken off from Antarctica. Others we passed with similar dimensions were also easy to navigate around. But soon there were icebergs we didn’t avoid.

Given such a strong wind, the water was surprisingly calm. The ship hardly tossed and turned. Icebergs dampened some of the wave action and also sapped energy from the wind. I stopped into the bridge to check the radar [p], and green blips covered both screens.

As afternoon approached, blue started to peek through the overcast sky, the wind died down, and it became comfortable heavy-jacket weather. So I spent a lot of time at the bow [p] watching icebergs come close