A Grue Of Ice (32 page)

" Good riddance!" said Walter. " Come on, we've got work to do. Let's get down to the beach."

We scrambled down the final section to the rough shingle. The whaleboat lay where we had left her. We unroped ourselves. I looked up. From the top of the cliff the first piece of aluminium decking was starting to swing down at the end of a long rope.

Helen, Sailhardy and I started for the boat. As our boots crunched on the shingle, a tiny head rose over the side of the whaleboat. The soft, luminous eyes of the creature, no bigger than a full-grown dachshund, stared at us.

" It's a Ross seal!" whispered Sailhardy.

Neither he nor I had ever seen this rarest and most beautiful of Antarctic animals. Helen started forward. " Don't ma'am . . ." began Sailhardy, but she was already at the tiny creature. It went unhesitatingly into her arms. His mink-grey fur was slightly darker underneath than above.

She turned to me, her eyes shining. " Bruce! Look at him! See how he trusts me!"

I laughed and stroked the lovely head of the seal pup. " That is just the trouble with the Ross seal. They trust everyone. The old sealers exterminated them by simply hitting them over the head. They trust humans completely." Helen put the little creature on the beach. He walked from her to me and then to Sailhardy. He did not, like the common Southern fur seal, turn his flippers forward when he walked, and I was surprised that he did not slip on the wet rocks since the undersides of his flippers were covered in softest down. I had never before seen a seal's flippers with fur on them. He allowed us to stroke his head, but Helen

was clearly his favourite. She picked him up again and he

nestled in the crook of her arm.

" I have never seen anything so lovely," she smiled. " I'm going to take him with us in the boat. We'll take fish along for him too."

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It was the remembrance of Helen with the exquisite creature in her arms, half enveloped in her sea-leopard coat, with the backdrop of the basalt cliffs and little beach, that was to return to my mind's eye again and again in the days to come.

" Bring him along, for sure," said Walter sullenly. " He'll make good eating when the going gets tough."

" Walter!" I said quietly. " If you touch this pup, I'll kill you with my bare hands."

He raised the Schmeisser at my tone. " Keep back!" he said surlily. " You'll find you're killing the bloody thing yourself when your belly cries out for fresh meat."

A sheet of aluminium clattered on its rope over our heads. Sailhardy and I seized it as it swung in the wind against the cliffs. We found that we would probably need only four sheets to half-deck the boat both fore and after. With rope and tools we had brought down from the roverhullet, we bent, shaped, tied and fastened the aluminium to the canvas and wooden ribs. We worked all day, pausing only to unship the

cases of stores which Upton and Pirow lowered to stock the boat. By the middle of the afternoon the boat was ready halfdecked, but Sailhardy was not satisfied. I wanted to get away from the raw little beach to the roverhullet before the weather became worse. The sun was obscured and great clouds drifted round the twin peaks. From time to time squalls masked the tap of the cliff. Helen helped stack the cases of supplies out of reach of the sea in the natural corner of the cliff where Horntvedt's flagstaff was. The seal pup followed her everywhere.

Although I wished to get away, Sailhardy took a long look at the ominous weather build-up in the south-west and started in on the steering lines and the rudder. For fully an hour he flexed the supple lines through the holes, greasing and regreasing them, checking, testing again and again. He went repeatedly over the odd projection on the port side near the rudder, from which a rope ran through the sternport into a big enclosed space below the helmsman's seat. Nothing would make him hurry over his searching examination.

While he checked and Walter stamped in the growing

cold, Helen and I fished in the rock-pools with the seal pup, which joined in hauling up the codlike Notothenia fish as if it had been a game. By the time Sailhardy had

finished, we had collected a pile of about twenty, which

we stacked with the other supplies. Upton had agreed the

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previous night to taking the albatross in the boat because

of Sailhardy's insistence that the great bird would be invaluable in finding land once it could fly again—the islander reckoned it would be within a week—and so, he said, help us locate Thompson Island. Sailhardy had reinforced his argument by pointing out that in a small boat in bad weather it would be virtually impossible to take an accurate sighting. I suspected, however, that Sailhardy was more concerned with the albatross' safety than with locating Thompson Island. We had decided, too, that we could lower the bird down the cliff-side by the rope by putting the net round it again. I was well aware of Sailhardy's methods of navigation—by the

direction of a flock of petrels flying, by feeling the temperature of the sea at hourly intervals with his hand, the colour of the water, and a host of other esoteric sealore. His only manmade instrument was a kind of rough wooden backstaff by which he took angles on the stars, but never the sun. His landfalls were as good as mine.

When it made the climb to the roverhullet the wind began gusting heavily and plucked at us on the exposed rock faces. As it increased during the evening, Upton became more uneasy and morose. Almost nothing was said, but he pored over the chart after our evening meal round the stove and at intervals he opened the door and looked out. On one occasion I caught a glimpse of the catchers' lights, rising and falling. The night had a resonant, ominous background of sound from the waves thundering on the cliffs below and the wind tearing at the glacier above. I went with Upton to the door and found the albatross huddled against the front wall. I called Sailhardy and we carried him, unprotesting, through to the store-room. We did not need to tell each other how little we thought of our chances of leaving Bouvet the next day.

In the middle of the night my sailor's instinct suddenly brought me broad awake. I raised up in my sleeping-bagwe had each selected our own for the boat—and looked round. The dim light of the stove etched Walter, unshaven and with sockets of shadows for eyes, evil as he sat crosslegged with the Schmeisser across his knees ; Helen lay with her back towards me, and the yellow light made even softer the colour of her hair loose on the flap of the sleeping-bag. Pirow turned uneasily as if his mind were on the faked messages he had sent earlier in the evening to
Thorshammer;
but it was Upton's face that brought me fear and revulsion182

the pewter hue was tinged with blue, including the eyelids, as if the caesium were justifying the blue in its spectrum. Perhaps the light added to the grotesqueness, for there was no sign of age, not a wrinkle anywhere: everything was taut—it was the face of a dead man, mummified with his dreams in

his face.

Sailhardy had heard, too, and was awake. It had sounded

to me like a double bass string being plucked. Both of us guessed what had happened—one of the steel cables holding

the hut had parted. The wind shook the walls and a peckle of hail rattled against them. We kicked ourselves out of our sleeping-bags and crawled across to Walter.

I spoke softly, so as not to wake the others. "That was one of the guy-ropes, wasn't it?"

Walter was on edge. " Aye, it was. I'll tell you straight, Captain, although we're on the wrong sides, I don't like this bloody wind. It'll be blowing a full gale by morning. Christ! What will it be like at sea?"

" Try and persuade your boss about that," I replied roughly. The wind carried a burst of low thunder from the breaking waves. " We won't last more than a couple of days."

" Bruce! We must rig a new rope—now! If anything else gives, the roverhullet will go over the cliff !" whispered Sailhardy. " I reckon we would be better at sea than here," he added defensively.

" Jesus!" said Walter. " Okay. See what you can do." In the store-room, we cut off a length of the thick rope which had been used for lowering the aluminium and supplies. We opened the door. The icy wind took our breath away. We drew our windbreaker hoods round our heads. The air was laden with flying spicules. We could not see, but felt our way to the corners of the hut to locate the broken stay. It was one of two in front. With expert hands, although in gloves, Sailhardy knotted one end of the rope round the iron pole in the rock and the other to the trailing end from the roof.

Upton was waiting by the stove when we returned. Helen

and Pirow were also awake.

I turned back my hood and pulled off my gloves. " Are

you still going ahead with this insane idea of yours?" I asked Upton.

" If I have to drive everyone of you down to the beach at the point of the automatic—yes."

I glanced at Helen. " You can do that, but you won't

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be able to drive a fully-laden boat into the breakers at the point of a gun," I said. " If we ever get the boat into the water, I'll tell you what will happen—she'll be smashed against the rooks by the next roller."

" Don't try and stop me, Wetherby!" he shouted. " We sail tomorrow, sea or no sea, gale or no gale!"

" Listen ..."

" I won't listen to a Wetherby!" he yelled, completely out of control. The contorted face bore no relation to the sleeping mask. " Thompson Island is mine, I tell you." There was no point in arguing, but on the rough little beach next morning, following a nightmare descent after slinging the albatross down in the net, he saw what I meant. We had loaded the boat while she lay behind the corner of the cliff. Great seas crashed on to the rocks. Under favourable conditions, lifting the boat as she was—the helicopter's radio under the stern decking added to the weight—was a job for

six men. Upton and Pirow would not hear of leaving the radio, and we had used it as ballast in the net with the albatross. The tiny seal pup, which had shared Helen's sleeping-bag in the roverhullet, had come down the pathway buttoned inside her coat. Upton raised no objection—I think he was trying to make a gesture to her.

" It is hopeless!" I said. " There's no future in going on with this nonsense, Upton. Let us get back to the roverhullet while we still can."

" Shut up, damn you!" he snapped. " I am going to Thompson Island—to-day! Get that clear."

The day was still dim, although it was mid-morning. The sun was shut out by thick driving cloud which seemed to have a ceiling lower than the cliffs. New icebergs had piled up with the gale, but there were open passages between huge rafts of ice. The roar of the surf was matched by the ice crashing and grinding.

I think Sailhardy, too, secretly admitted ,the futility of the scheme, though he didn't say so.

" There would be only one way to launch a boat in this," said Walter. " Proper davits and a ship's side."

Upton swung round on him so suddenly that the blue bib of his windbreaker, staine ' now with salt, flapped in his face. " Davits! My God! Walter—you've got it!"

" I don't see any davits," answered Walter heavily. " Look!" Upton went on excitedly. "

Up there!" 184

We looked up the cliff-side track, as if half expecting to see some davits materialise.

" The rock! The rock and overhang!" went on Upton. " Get up there, Walter, and secure two ropes on either side of the overhang—from the rungs of the ladders. They'll serve the same purpose as falls from a davit. All we have to do is run the ends round the thwarts of the whaleboat, lift and fend her clear of the cliff, and we'll get a clean launch above the waves."

The scheme seemed impossible to me. " Upton, we'll be thrown against the cliffs as soon as we touch the water." Upton snatched the Schmeisser from Walter and pointed
it
at me. " Take your choice," he said, his voice deadly with menace. " You assist, or else you can stay here—with
a
dozen bullets in you."
I
looked helplessly at Helen, who stood white-faced, silent, cuddling the seal pup. I shrugged. There was nothing I could do.

Walter scrambled up the pathway, and, more quickly than I

expected, the two ropes snaked down. Sailhardy and I ran them round the thwarts, and when Walter returned, the three of us, with Pirow helping, lifted the boat shoulder-high and secured them. The boat was suspended head-high against the cliff and, when we let her go, would swing forward about fifty feet round the second cliff which enclosed the beach from the north until she was directly below the overhang. One false move and the canvas side would be torn open. The albatross

was under the forward decking. I helped Helen in by lifting her up on my shoulders. Pirow and Upton followed, using Walter's shoulders. The two of them hauled Walter up, then Sailhardy, and last, me. We fended her off the cliff-side with the oars and inched forward until we hung free above the waves.