A Grue Of Ice (34 page)

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dead except for the occasional flicker of sound as he continued to fox
Thorshammer.
The irregular ribs and rough gratings made sleeping a hell, and the wicked chill seemed to penetrate through the waterproofing and fleece of our sleepingbags. I had stretched the ochre-coloured mainsail from the stern decking to a thwart, and under it Helen, Sailhardy and I lived, either he or I being on tiller watch. The seal pup shared Helen's sleeping-bag and brought a tiny patch of warmth in

the pervading cold. When I had called Sailhardy during the previous night and crept into my sleeping-bag, I had been desperately worried to hear her talking deliriously.

Now, in the middle of the morning, seeing her lying semicomatose, I made up my mind to carry out the plan I had formulated when I had thrown my sextant overboard—to overpower Pirow and signal
Thorshammer.
If she could find us—

and it was a big " if," in the gale—the secret of Thompson Island would still be mine, for no one would listen to Upton's ravings. I knew too, that I must act speedily. The strength was running out of me, and when taking over the

tiller from Sailhardy for the dawn watch, I saw what a toll the Southern Ocean had taken of his great strength: his eyes were sunken after the cruel watches of the past week and he had

been slow in speaking, wiping his lips with the back of his gloves to clear away the frozen saliva and mucous on the stubble of his upper lip. Upton and Walter had given up their gun-watch over Sailhardy and me—it was hardly possible in the storm—but they still watched me carefully whenever I moved from my sleeping-bag. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty. Sailhardy had been at the tiller since eight o'clock. I had heard Pirow give a brief signal when the islander had taken over, and as it was midmorning, Upton and Pirow might not suspect if they heard another after a break of several hours. I would have to muster all my strength and speed to overpower Pirow and

get off a message before they missed me. I looked down

at Helen. The ice had rimed her closed eyes, making them strangely ethereal. She broke into an incoherent mutter. I caught nothing except my name. The exquisite little seal pup peeped out from the mouth of her sleeping-bag. Up forward, there was no sign from Upton or Walter.

I inched out of my sleeping-bag and dragged myself along the gratings to Pirow's cubbyhole. It was so dim that it took me a minute to make out The Man with the Immaculate Hand.

He was sitting in front of the radio. I heard him move and I 192

jammed myself hard down on the grating. The snap of a switch followed. He became silhouetted as a weak dial light came alive. I could not see his face, but from the stoop of his shoulders it was clear that he, like the rest of us, was nearing the end of his tether. Let him start sending, I thought let him get the preliminaries done. Then I would jump him when

Thorshammer
was listening.

The weak signal started.

"Thorshammer! Thorshammer!"

It scarcely needed Pirow's skill to bluff the destroyer now. The signal was weak and faltering enough to be genuine.

Pirow threw over the receiving switch. I was surprised to hear the strength of
Thorshammer's
reply. She must be very close to come through as clear as that.

"Thorshammer to Life-raft. Personal Captain Olstad to
Lieutenant Mosby. Keep your key down. Let your batteries
run out. We are close. We will find you. Keep your key
down.".

Pirow started to exclaim in German. I slithered forward along the gratings. My left arm went hard round his windpipe. He gave a strangled gasp. With my free right hand, I locked down the transmitting key. My instinct told me something was wrong. I wrenched round. Walter was coming on hands

and knees from the bow, a flensing knife in his fist. Behind him, Upton was standing, the Schmeisser pointed.

I threw myself out of the cubbyhole, but I was still fulllength. Walter leapt to his feet at the entrance as I shot out. He paused momentarily. Perhaps even he would not kill a man lying at his feet. I jerked sideways and, jack-knifing my body, kicked his legs from under him. He was adroit. He fell heavily, twisting like a cat, and took the fall on his shoulder, but it kept his right hand under him for a moment. I grabbed for his thick beard and swung astride his powerful body. The knife-thrust would come before Sailhardy could help me. My hands clamped on his beard and I jerked his

head a couple of inches sideways. The crude skill of the Tristan boatmen had not succeeded in smoothing one of the gnarled knots in the ribs. It would serve as a garotte as efficient as anything in South America. I felt Walter's knifehand go up for the plunge. I rammed the top of his spine, where it joins the head, hard against the knot. His mouth

was wrenched wide open. Fear burst into his eyes.

" Drop that knife!"

I heard the weapon clunk against the bottom-boards. We

G.I.

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G

were within three feet of Helen. I saw that her eyes were open and she was staring, startled, at what was going on. Now is the time, I told myself savagely with the feel of the thick beard in my hands and kill-lust in my heart, to get the record straight about the shooting down of the seaplane—

from Walter's own lips.

" Walter! Say it, and say it quickly. Who shot down

the seaplane? Who ordered it?"

Helen's eyes dilated with horror and fixed on her father. I heard three clicks. -I jerked round without releasing Walter. Upton was tugging at the Schmeisser's trigger. It was pointed into my back. My fear and the explanation of the misfire were simultaneous. The firing mechanism was locked by oil which had frozen solid.

I scarcely recognised my -own voice. " Upton! You can go on clicking that blasted thing as long as you like in this weather, but it won't fire." I shoved Walter's head further back. His spine would snap in a moment. " Tell her! Tell who it was!"

" I shot it down. Sir Frederick ordered me to."

I took the knife and dragged myself upright uncertainly. I

lost my footing as the whaleboat rolled, and I crashed heavily on the thwart, the knife spinning across to Upton's feet. He picked it up. Walter pulled himself forward and crouched on his hands and knees near Upton, his face livid, unable to rise.

Upton's eyes were bright. He seemed in better shape than any of us. " I should say thank you to this frozen gun," he said slowly as I gasped for breath. " I forgot for a moment that you are the only person who knows the secret of Thompson Island. Don't be a bloody fool again and waste your strength. I want it all for Thompson Island."

" T h o m p s o n I s l a n d ! F o r G o d ' s s a k e , U p t o n ! ' Y o u r daughter's not going to last . . ."

" But you are," he said. " You are the one person who matters to me. We will find Thompson Island—together." My weary brain made a hurried calculation. Assuming

that we had travelled directly due south-east from the Norris chart position of Thompson Island, we might well, in the past three days, have covered the one hundred and ten miles which separated the false and the true positions of the island. In my weak state, and for Helen's sake, I was almost tempted to try and find the warmth and the good anchorage Pirow had spoken of—how many days ago now? How I could locate the

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island without my sextant I did not know, but Sailhardy

might be able to, with his strange methods of natural navigation. Bouvet, with its well-stocked roverhullet, was a better proposition if we could find it again than an unknown anchorage, but at that moment I would have welcomed any

shelter away from the storm. But I did not intend Upton to

know how near I was to agreeing to find Thompson Island.

" You were mad to leave Bouvet," I said. " Listen, had Thompson Island been where Norris had charted it, what could come of finding it? There could be all the caesium in the world, but you couldn't take it away in this little boat. You might find it, but you would have had to give its position away in order to be rescued."

Upton's answer underlined the state of his mind. " You're wrong, Bruce. There's a whole fleet of ships waiting at Thompson. We wouldn't need to be rescued." He laughed to himself. " You can take your pick when we get there—you can have
a
liner,
or
a freighter, or a tanker, just what you wish."

There
was
no point
in
going on with talk of that kind. I crawled into my sleeping-bag to try and get some rest before taking the afternoon watch from Sailhardy. Upton stood grinning down at me, and then he too stumbled forward out

of reach of the ice-sharpened file of wind. I fell into a broken, uneasy state which was half sleep and half semi-consciousness. Towards midday I drew Helen's head into the crook of my arm. She did not wake, but mumbled something which I could not follow. I feared for the coming night.

Sailhardy, too, must have passed out at the tiller, for half the afternoon was gone when I heard him slither down the decking and shake me. His articulation was thick and the

long vowels seemed to have difficulty in getting past his cracked lips. He tried to say something, but gave it up and instead
gave a
curious, stiff and unnatural wave of his arm at the sea and the wind. It was a gesture of surrender. I was aware of a life-sapping lethargy in my limbs and arms. Why

not, I argued, leave the whaleboat to it own devices with the rudder lashed rather than forsake the warmth and shelter of my sleeping-bag for the raw hell of the tiller seat? Better to let the boat broach to and sink, for none of us, I felt sure, would see the next day out. I chafed Helen's hands, which

was as cold as a corpse's ; the seal pup provided a tiny patch of warmth. I watch Sailhardy, eyes shut, drag himself half into his sleeping-bag and then fall full-length on the gratings. 195

I sat upright. It took me about five minutes to kick myself clear of my own bag. Forward, Upton and Walter lay like dead men. There was silence from Pirow's cubbyhole. The only sign of life was the albatross near the two men in the bows, which was moving his wing as if exercising it.

I slipped across the ice-covered metal decking to the tiller and undid the lashing, which Sailhardy had secured before, I felt sure, taking his last watch below. I crouched as the thin lances of frozen spray stabbed at my back on the gale. For an hour I tried to keep my seared, burning eyes on the waves and steer the boat away from the worst. I remembered the quality of the light starting to change. My soggy mind told me night was at hand, but I had no will or strength left to call Sailhardy or unclamp my gloved hand from the

steering-arm. The whaleboat drove on, racing down each long roller, heaving laboriously up the next, while all the time the gale ice-blasted my back, hood and arms with flying granules.

It was my sailor's instinct alone and nothing to do with

my will which perked me to semi-consciousness. Later I was to know that about six hours had passed.

The whaleboat lay in a calm sea of diaphanous white light. The fury of the Westerlies was dead.

The silence was more unnerving than the storm.

My hand, clamped on the tiller, no longer swung, corrected, swung, to keep her stern to the waves. The wind was gone, I told myself, because I had died at my post. It was a dead light, too: not the dayless, nightless coloration of the past week, but a diffused, whitish light, tinged with blue. I glanced at my watch. It was after midnight. I saw where the light was

coming from. Then a series of immense flares laced the sky in green, flame, blue and violet—the Southern Lights! One wing rose up like a scarlet and violet scimitar from the direction of the South Pole and brandished
its
wild glory across the unreal sky. The flares outlined the dome of the heavens, one moment rising in bursting splendour along sky-paths like the spokes of a wheel, the next receding towards the Pole in a petulant bicker of light. Never, however, did they lose their colours, and the broken cloud which passed across the face of the
Aurora
enhanced rather than diminished the grandeur. I looked round me unbelievingly, for there was no ice on the water and, still in the absence of the Southern Lights, there was a whiteness being reflected from something which I could not see. The albatross stood like a figurehead on

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the bow decking, flexing and re-flexing his damaged wing and gazing ahead.

My first thought was for Helen. With the boat lying still, I could get one of the alpine stoves going and give her something hot. I prised my numb hand from the tiller and straightened my cramped limbs. It took me ten minutes of rubbing and banging my arms and legs before I could leave my position.

" Helen!" I said, shaking her. She lay without moving. She was breathing shallowly and the drawn face, with the Antarctic's white beauty mask over it, sent a tremor of fear through me. " Helen!" I tried to kiss her, but all I felt was the crackle of ice and the skin tearing from my lips.