A Grue Of Ice (27 page)

Sailhardy was at the wheel. I glanced at the echo-sounder. Twenty-five fathoms. I took a quick bearing on a headland on the port bow. That
was
where Christensen's party must have erected an emergency depot, or roverhullet, as they called it, stocked with provisions and fuel. I wondered if such a hut, however well built and shored up, could ever have survived the gales of thirty-odd years. Bollevika anchorage itself lay slightly away to starboard, but I thought I might have to do what Christensen's ship had done during the whole month his party had been ashore—steam back and forth at slow speed, because the gales and rollers from the south-west . would make anchoring impossible.

I had just opened my mouth to give Sailhardy an order,

when the mine exploded.

Auroras
port side was torn wide open.

Stunned and deafened, I could not for a moment believe

that it had actually happened. My mind could not credit that plating, decks, beams and rivets had been dissociated from

152

all that they had been part of, seconds before--the very fabric of
Aurora.
A ragged chunk of metal sang and rang in the steel wall at the back of the bridge like an Apache's arrow. It had passed clean between Sailhardy and me. It would have taken off one of our heads had its path been a

foot either side.

Aurora
started to roll towards the brash sea. A gout of water rose up from her side and then smashed down bringing chunks of ice clattering on the tilting deck. From beneath

our feet came the sound of frames rending.

It was Sailhardy who saved us. I saw that he was shouting, although his voice came faint to my stunned senses. " Quick!

The whaleboat! She's going so quickly, we'll be trapped!" He grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust me down the bridge ladder. I stumbled over to the whaleboat and, fumbled, half-dazed, at the lashings. Above my head, the blocks swung loose as the mast sagged. Walter came running from the engine-room hatchway as if he were drunk. Even in my confused state, I saw he was carrying a heavy wrench

and a flensing knife. He slashed at the ropes holding the whaleboat. Sailhardy reappeared, half thrusting, half carrying, Upton and Pirow. Upton appeared the least dazed of us all,

except Sailhardy. He slid his little first-aid bag over his arm decisively as he too plucked at the lashings.

I snatched the last rope free of the winch, tearing my hand on a rough rowlock. I scarcely noticed.
Aurora's
flared bow, harpoon gun and forward engine-room telegraph

had been pushed back by the explosion to the line of the fo'c'sle ventilators. A heavy barrel from one of the starboard winches rolled past us as she prepared to plunge for the last time. Sailhardy, Walter and I pulled the whaleboat to the side. Pirow stood like a man concussed and Sailhardy had to thrust him into the boat, so incongruously gay in its bright Tristan colours, yellow, blue and white. Upton and Walter jumped in after us.

" Fend her off, Bruce!" called Sailhardy. "
Aurora's
coming right over on us!"

I p u s h e d t h e b o a t c l e a r w i t h o n e o f t h e l o n g o a r s . Sailhardy did likewise. We pulled away as the catcher leaned over. Walter also grabbed an oar. The three of us gave a couple of strong sweeps out of range of the dying ship's last . roll. Then Sailhardy took the high tiller, whose steering arm he had not had time to ship properly, leaving us at the oars.

Aurora
rolled over and disappeared. There was a muffled 153

explosion as her boilers blew up, but we were well clear. She had gone down in about four minutes.

Walter stood up and looked at the fast-disappearing

patch on the sea which marked
Aurora's
grave. " She was a fine ship, as good as they come," he said.

The other catchers had come to a stop.
Kerguelen's
bows started to swing away from the whaleboat in the grip of the sea.

Sailhardy glanced astern at the catchers and called to me. " Get the sail on her, Bruce. We'll beat back to
Kerguelen
into the wind. The passage is wide enough to tack."

The islander's words goaded Upton into action. Dropping his first-aid bag, he rose quickly, snatched the knife from Walter, and in a flash was at the tiller. He held the long

blade at the islander's throat.

" Beat back be damned," he said thickly. " Take her into the anchorage. We're going to land."

I looked at the great cliffs unbelievingly. Only one party had ever got ashore at Bouvet—Lars Christensen's. That was

in weather conditions which have never been repeated.

" Land!" I exclaimed. " Upton! You must be crazy!

You can't land on Bouvet!"

There was a sandless parody of a beach at the foot of the

cliffs soaring up to the Christensen glacier. Seas, with no land between them and South Georgia, threw themselves against the rocks.

Upton's eyes were as hard and distant as our chances of survival if we tried to make the beach. " Walter! Stop drivelling over that bloody ship of yours! Take that wrench and don't hesitate to use it on them if they try any games." He thrust the knife closer against Sailhardy's throat. " The beach!"

For a long moment the islander did not speak. I could see the mania mounting in Upton's over-bright eyes.

I had to break the silence. " Can you bring the boat in, Sailhardy?"

" The problem is not to bring her in, Bruce, but to hold her off the rocks once we get there."

Upton jerked out his words. " Get going, do you hear?

Get the sail on her quick, before the catchers do anything!" " You can't .. •" I started to say

" I shall," he retorted. " You thought you'd make all the running on Thompson Island, didn't you, Wetherby? Now

154

I'm going to tell you something. We are still going to

Thompson Island."

" What in?" I asked.

" In this whaleboat," Upton said tersely. His words tumbled over one another. " I've got Norris' chart, here." He tapped his windbreaker. " Thompson is only forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet. Christensen's party put up a hut on Bouvet. We'll take stores from that. We'll slip away before
Thorshammer
comes."

I saw he meant it. The risks of the wild scene ahead were nothing to him in the face of his dream. He might force me to take him forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet, but we would not find Thompson Island there. I was inflexible in my own mind that Thompson Island's secret would remain mine. So Upton, too, knew of the roverhullet on Bouvet, one of the chain of emergency depots which have been laid round the palette of Antarctica, which the Norwegian skippers had started to argue about that first night aboard
Antarctica
when they were drinking hard. Looking at the ice-masked island, I hoped for the sake of the five of us that the roverhullet was still there.

" Get the foresail on her!" snarled Walter.

I tugged at the halliards, and the little rag, bright ochrecoloured, stood out like a board as it picked up the Westerlies. Sailhardy stood up, cocking a foot on the tiller to steer her while he conned his way through the ice. The boat gathered way. From
Kerguelen
came a long, ripping burst of fire. Upton jumped on a thwart and shouted obscenities at the catcher. The whaleboat was too low a target to bit, however, even for an expert marksman.

His blue windbreaker hood fell back and he waved the knife at the catcher. "Come on, you cowardly bastards!" he yelled. " Come and get yourself bloody-well mined!

Come on!"

Pirow seemed to have regained his morale. "The Herr Kapitan Kohler did us a favour, really. The catchers won't dare come into Bollevika now!"

The whaleboat picked up speed rapidly. It was impossible to see where the burst from the Spandau-Hotchkiss had gone. Sailhardy zigzagged round and through the ice, never losing his main objective, the small beach below the cliffs. The sea darkened as we neared the island. From the lowness of the boat, the cliffs appeared more massive: they were scored

155

and striated, notched and grained, by the wind and the ice. The whaleboat swept in to within a cable's length of the shore. A long swell boomed past while Sailhardy held her in check, coming round in a broad reconnoitring circle. I saw the flat tabletop rock when the backwash recoiled from the cliff. I

started to say so, but Sailhardy had also spotted it.

" We're going in—now!" he called. The curious modulation in his voice made it clear above the thunder of the waves against the cliffs.

He flicked a glance over his shoulder and selected his roller. He dropped to a sitting position by the tiller. He swung the stern into the comber, plumed with white ice and blowing spindrift. Half-way to the flat rock, I whipped the sail off her. She scarcely lost way, the thrust of the swell was so great. Sailhardy gestured to me with his left hand:

he was about to lay her broadside on her port beam. One

moment we were in deep water, the next against the cliff. The rock lay exposed.

" Jump!" shouted Sailhardy. " Jump! Out! Out! Out!

Don't let her side touch, for God's sake!"

I was first out over the bow. Almost at the same moment, Sailhardy leapt over the stern. Our heavy boots scrabbled

for purchase on the rock as we held her, and the other three sprang clear. Without pausing, Sailhardy and I lifted the

boat bodily out of the water and staggered over the broken

rocks to the cliff face, out of the reach of the sea.

The beach on which we found ourselves was not much bigger than a tennis court. It was easy to see we had come

to the one and only landing-place, for where the rock formed a natural corner, out of direct reach of the sea and the wind, a flagstaff had been driven into the face of the cliff, so that it projected at an angle. The flag and the rope had long since gone, and the block at the top was rusted black. Under it

was a weathered inscription in Norwegian and English:

"Captain Harald Horntvedt, master of the
Norvegia,
formally took possession of Bouvet Island in the name of

Norway on this first day of December, 1927, and at this spot hoisted the flag of that country in due assertion of Norway's claim and sovereignty."

Upton read it and laughed. He seemed nearest the way I

had known him first. " The bastards!" he said without rancour. " They got here first, all right, and the British Government a year later waived all claims to Bouvet. But," 156

he added, and his voice was hard, " no one said anything about Thompson Island."

My objective at the moment was to try and find the depot hut. From the water-marks high above our heads, it was plain that the beach became submerged in a gale.

Sailhardy spotted the piece of board first. It had been fastened with iron spikes into the cliff on the left, or northern edge of the beach, where a headland jutted into the sea. It said simply: " Roverhullet ". A faded arrow pointed to what might have been a man-made path, running zigzag up the cliff-side's confused mixture of glaciated rock and ice. I lost sight of it near a formidable projection, a veritable fortress of ice as big as the Tower of London, high above our heads.

" We've somehow got to climb the cliff," I said. " Roverhullet should be at the top—if it hasn't been blown away. It is quite likely that parts of the path have been swept away by rockfalls since the Norwegians were here. Sailhardy and I will make a reconnaissance."