A Grue Of Ice (38 page)

I threw all my strength against the long oar. I straightened from the first punishing stroke and froze. Walter stood on the emplacement, the Schmeisser raised chest-high. Sailhardy had seen too, and tugged at his oar to make the whaleboat yaw. It was a powerful stroke, but it was not enough. Helen rose in agonised slow-motion. The front of her right shoulder was polka-dotted as the heavy bullets tore through flesh and the sea-leopard coat. She slumped back. Then she reached to grip the tiller with her left hand underneath the useless right arm. Another burst tore the water round the boat. I tugged desperately at my oar to get out of range, and at the end of the stroke, whipped up the mainsail. Its faded ochre inched us out of range of the Schmeisser.

As I straightened, I heard a noise which I thought was the blood racing past my eardrums because of my effort at the oar. I paused, uncertain. It Sounded like distant gunfire. Then
Meteor's
gun sounded as if it had been fired right under our stern. The shell screamed across the fjord.

" Pull!" yelled Sailhardy. " Pull! Help the
sail!" "
Helen . . ." I began.

" Leave her for a moment—pull! Oh, my God!"

The director-tower behind
Thorshammer's
bridge mushroomed with
a
direct hit. It was a curious nodule-shaped projection, and it seemed to hold still for a moment before becoming one in a wild tangle of steel masts and tracery of the search radar.

I jumped on to the thwart and screamed helplessly at the gun emplacement. " Walter! Upton! You bloody, bloody fools! Stop it, you crazy bastards ! Stop . . . !"

I looked square into the muzzle of the gun. I drew back, waiting for the ear-splitting crash—then the blast threw me fulllength on the bottom gratings. I lifted myself to see the heavy armour-piercing shell shear through
Thorshammer's
modem, enclosed bridge. In the silence following the burst I heard the clang as
Thorshammer's
gongs sounded " action 214

stations ". It was too late. The destroyer yawed, sagged, and yawed again as she swung out of control. With a grinding

crash she cannoned into the side of the
Kyle of Locha!sh.
At the same moment, her twin 4.5-inch guns opened up. The shells bounced off the armour plate of the glacier a thousand feet above Upton's head. The destroyer canted further, biting into some unknown obstacle against the old liner's side. Her next pair of four-five shells screamed high over the glacier. They were so wide that it was clear to me what was going on —

the director-tower and bridge was a holocaust of stinking cordite fumes and roasting flesh ; the guns in the forward

turret were firing aimlessly by local control.

We were almost half-way across the fjord and the wind

gripped the whaleboat's mainsail: she was sailing fast.

" Lay the boat alongside
Thorshammer,"
I ordered. " Get further down the fjord, and then swing into the strong current. She'll sweep down on
Thorshammer
by herself." We shipped the oars. I was first at Helen's side, but the islander's hands as he prised hers from the tiller were gentle. Blood dripped down her sleeve on to the steering-arm.

" Stop my father!" she whispered. " Go back—do anything, but stop this senseless killing!"

I eased her on to the gratings, but I seemed to be choking

with the heat. The wind filling the sail seemed hot, too.

" Listen!" said Sailhardy incredulously. " Gunfire!" From the southern side of the island came the sound of heavy guns. The concussion swelled, boomed, reverberated down the fjord.

" Oh God!" whimpered Helen as another savage scream from the emplacement ended in a burst of flaring metal and tinctured smoke from
Thorshammer.

Then I saw. The sea by the entrance started to boil. Helen lay unconscious against me, her blood staining my

hands and jacket. I pointed to the water. " Sailhardy Tunny!"

Before he could reply, there was another rumble of heavy

gunfire from the southern side of the island.

" The Albatross' Foot!" he burst out. " The other prong of The Albatross' Foot!"

I saw how The Albatross' Foot joined forces with the Thompson Island millrace and swept in to the head of the

glacier where it must plunge into some gigantic subterranean fissure. I dipped my hand override. It was warm.

215

Sailhardy shook his head, as if to clear it. " That isn't gunfire we're hearing from beyond there—the ice is breaking up!"

To produce sound like that, I told myself hurriedly, vast

fields of ice must be shattering under the impact of the warm Albatross' Foot. Any moment the glacier would start to disintegrate. But would that solid caul break up quickly enough to put a stop to Upton's madness?

I made a lightning decision. " Lay the whaleboat alongside, Sailhardy! Come with me!" Another shell screamed across the fjord from Upton's gun

and burst on the old liner's superstructure.
Thorshammer's
twin Bofors, situated aft the steel latticed emergency conning position, chattered ineffectually. They couldn't bear on Upton's gun, and it showed what a sorry state her fire-control was in. Sailhardy laid the boat alongside the landward side of the destroyer. I scrambled over the low bulwarks. She had taken a frightful beating. There seemed to be bodies everywhere. The bridge was a shambles. Sailhardy passed me Helen's limp body. I guessed right that the wardroom had been turned into an emergency casualty station. I pushed past the orderlies and wounded men and put Helen down on the wardroom table, which was serving as an operating table. I did not wait for the doctor's astonished outburst. I pointed silently to the row of bullet-holes in her shoulder. He began to swear angrily, but I turned and raced back to Sailhardy on deck.

An officer was standing behind the forward turret, shouting. Half his uniform jacket seemed to have been burned off his shoulders and his cap was gone. Dazed men dragged themselves towards what seemed to be the only orderly musteringpoint on the ship, while others helped and half supported the wounded towards the wardroom companionway from which I had emerged.
Thorshammer
was afire aft, but the worst damage was above our heads on the bridge and fire-control.

No one took any notice of Sailhardy and me, except a young sub-lieutenant who stood on the steel wing of the emergency conning position towards the stern and shouted at us as we squeezed through
a
narrow opening between it and a deck boiler-room ventilator.

" Torpedoes . . ." I started to say to Sailhardy, but he pulled me forcibly to the deck
as
another shell came towards the stricken destroyer. It was a trifle high, however, and plunged through the twisted wreckage of the radar scanner,

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bursting prematurely above the old liner. Her steel sides

rang like a bell.

We sprinted for the quadruple torpedo-tubes on the port side facing across the fjord. Together we swung round the sawnoff snouts. The islander sighted them on the gun emplacement.

" Belay there!" I ordered.

He looked at me, astonished.

" Bring them to bear ten degrees astern—on the glacier," I added.

" Bruce . ."

The thunder of the great barrage of ice drowned the noise of the next 5.9-inch shell. The glacier-caul had started to split. The translucent bottle-green suddenly became pocked with

white, like a car's windscreen shattering. Thousands of tons of ice started to move—but would they move quickly or far enough to stop Upton's murderous fire, I asked myself.

The answer lay under Sailhardy's hand.

" Bearing ten degrees astern," he said. " Target bears. Glacier head bears—steady 1 "

" Fire one!" I ordered.

Sailhardy threw over the tipping lever. The sharp slap of the firing charge was lost in the thunder of the icebarrage. The sibilant cylinder of death slipped into the water.

" Fire two!"

No need to tell Sailhardy to spread them to case the entire head of the glacier.

" Fire three!"

Then, " Fire four!"

No concussion reached us as the warheads burst against

the glacier head, the thunder of the ice swamping all sound. Four columns of water rose like spouts from a Blue Whale in tribute to the islander's marksmanship. The glacier, now disintegrating, had clamped itself between two separate land masses, although Norris' sketches had shown only one. Fissures ran up the ice cliffs like a boarding party, frosted white leaping to the summit of the green glacier. The ice wavered, hung, wavered, and then thousands of tons crashed down on to the gun emplacement.

I left Sailhardy looking at the debacle. I skirted the forward gun turret, from which the crew had emerged and were gazing in awe-struck silence at the opposite shore. The officer in charge seized me by the hand and started to exclaim 217

in Norwegian, gesturing towards the glacier head and the torpedo-tubes. I shook myself free of his congratulations and made my way to the crowded wardroom.

Helen was lying on the table, her eyes closed. The surgeon

put the finishing touches to the bandages round her shoulder and armpit.

" Is she .

?"
I
started to say.

She smiled and opened her eyes at the sound of my voice.

The doctor smiled. " Not too serious—nothing vital has been touched," he said in English. " She has been very lucky indeed. It's a new one on me to have to attend a woman who has been shot up."

As
I
spoke to the doctor a man in uniform came over from a bunk. His head was in bandages and his left arm in

a sling. " Why have the four-five stopped firing? Did that sonofabitch knock out the forward turret too? Why has everything stopped?"

I
saw his rings of rank. " Captain Olstad?"

" Yes!" he snapped. " Who the hell are you? What is happening on deck?"

The doctor taped down the
last of Helen's bandages. I
picked her up to carry her to a bunk.

" It's quite a story, which I think you should hear," I said. " Don't worry, there won't be any more shells from the gun across the fjord."

The young sub-lieutenant I had seen on the emergency conning position clattered down the companionway, saluted, and spoke rapidly in Norwegian to Olstad, indicating me.

I
put Helen down gently, but she clung to me. Olstad came and sat at the foot of the bunk. Helen propped herself against my shoulder.

" Who are you"' he demanded. " How do you and another civilian understand about firing torpedoes?"

I
told him who I was. " The other civilian, as you call him, was once the finest torpedo-man afloat."

" Bruce," said Helen. " My father . . ." She looked round the crowded wardroom, overheated now by the steam tubes

which ran round it and the crowd of men who lay, sat or stood waiting their turn with the doctor. A boy minus a hand sobbed hysterically and a seaman, hideously burnt about the eyes, screamed through the morphia which had been hastily administered.

" Oh God!" she exclaimed. "These are the living, but 218

how many are dead? Bruce darling, why is the gun silent? What . . . ?"

" The glacier started to topple on to the emplacement," I said. " To stop the slaughter here, I hastened it with four torpedoes."

She hid her face.

Olstad said savagely: " Who were the murderers who crippled my ship and killed my men without provocation? In God's name, why was it done—it is not war I "

" Have you ever heard of Thompson Island?"
I
asked. Olstad's face reflected his incredulity. "Thompson Island! You mean .

. . ?"

" Exactly," I said. " This is Thompson Island. The man who opened fire on you had an obsession about it."

I told him how Upton had come to Tristan and had

implicated me in his schemes when he found out I had Norris'

chart. Olstad's face went hard when I told him how Walter had shot down the seaplane, and how The Man with

the Immaculate Hand had strung him along with the faked signals. While I spoke, the doctor and his orderlies dressed, bandaged and drugged the wounded, who were laid on

mattresses on the floor. Olstad nodded in silent wonder when I explained the mystery of The Albatross' Foot and how it had caused the break-up of the glacier across the fjord. He looked keenly at me when I said I had sighted Thompson Island during the war, and shook his head over the rejection by the Admiralty and the Royal Society of my discovery of light refraction and its bearing on the true position of Thompson Island. Sailhardy came in and his face lighted
to
see Helen sitting up.

Olstad looked from Sailhardy to me in unconcealed

admiration. " We Norwegians have always loved a voyage into the unknown. We have preserved the Kon Tiki raft in a museum. If ever another boat deserves to be kept, it is your whaleboat. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have made a trip like that in an open boat in such a storm

and survived. With your permission, I would like to take the whaleboat back to Norway with me. To-morrow we