When their yacht hits an iceberg, four friends suddenly find themselves fighting for survival. Having already detoured south to collect scientific samples, they then have to try and sail north to safety. With a hole in the hull and insufficient fuel in the pump, they are blown far off course, until they are wrecked on the Antarctic coast, on Scullin Monolith.

Their only hope of survival is to make the one-hundred-mile trip to the scientific base of Mawson Station. En route they not only have to compete with the inhospitable Antarctic weather and terrain, lack of food and sickness, they also have to outrun and outwit two illegal diamond miners hellbent on murdering them.