I confess I was totally nonplussed. It was clear that Hanslip was shooting to kill and we needed time to think and to consult, the revolver in my duffel-coat notwithstanding. I was no shot, least of all with a hand-gun. ‘Come on,’ I said, waving to Nat to follow.
We ran back down towards the beach, shouting for the others to wait but we were too late, the boats were all pulling hard for the ship, not easing until the large bergy-bits were between them and the island. By which time a bullet had ricocheted off a rock close to us and both of us lay flat on our faces.
I remember Nat swearing and my own heart hammering. A silence followed then Nat said, ‘well the Hasselblad’s good and properly fucked.’ A big chap, he’d fallen heavily on top of the camera and smashed the lens and done goodness knows what other damage.
For a long moment we lay there staring stupidly at one another then Nat said, ‘did someone say Hanslip’s got four rifles?’
‘Yes, I think so… and I’ve got this…’ I pulled out the revolver Alan Tomkins had pressed on me.
‘That’s something, I suppose, but to my mind if we are not outnumbered, we’re still out-gunned.’
I don’t know for how many minutes we lay there, caught in the web of fear and indecision, but a further gunshot found us pressed to the ground until Nat observed, ‘I don’t think that went anywhere near us…’
There was a sudden scream, the noise of a man in terror and I knew intuitively that Hanslip was in trouble himself. I got up and at a low lope ran up the low slope with Nat close behind me.
The White Island stretched ahead of us, stark and bare of any vegetation except coloured lichens on the rocks and boulders and on the far side of a fast-flowing rivulet of melt-water the remains of an extemporised tent stood. I do not know of what it was constructed, presumably the balloon fabric, or how those three desperate men had contrived to carry it from the wreckage of their balloon gondola. It was an equal mystery as to how this extemporised shelter had withstood decades of Arctic gales, I really have no very clear memory of any of these details largely because what we found inside, or underneath, for I think the whole thing had collapsed, etched itself on the mind to the exclusion of other details…
You know four years ago I would have needed a stiff drink before telling you the rest of this but, after the horrors of the North Atlantic, what we saw that afternoon seems now to be but overture and beginners…
Anyhow the three Swedish adventurers, or what remained of them, lay there in conditions one can only describe as squalid. There were some syringes lying about and one of them was wrapped in what remained of the Swedish flag. It was clear they had shot themselves full of something - opium we supposed later, for there was precious little evidence of food, tinned or otherwise, though a bear’s skeleton lay about twelve feet away, so it was clear that they had sustained themselves for a while on that. There were two smooth-bore Remingtons lying nearby to show how. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Other bears had been at them, of course; in fact a great deal of them had been clearly eaten by polar bears, Arctic foxes or Burgomeister gulls, but one corpse - we had no way of knowing one from another - had his thigh muscles carved smooth and the offending knife lay beside one of the cadavers’ right hands – or what remained thereof. It looked as though one of them had expired and the other two had decided to eat him; perhaps they had drawn lots and dispatched the wretch – it was all conjecture, but Nat put the name to it and it almost coloured the very air we breathed and we found it choking.
‘Cannibalism,’ he said in a low voice. There were the remains of a small cooking fire just outside the collapsed tent. The whole thing was utterly pathetic and preserved in that odd way the polar regions retain the past for years after the event..
The poor devils had partly decomposed, thawing out a bit each summer, but the smell was not unduly offensive and in fact their state of preservation – given their mauling by bears and so forth - was remarkable. Nevertheless, I found myself gagging and Nat was retching. Both of us had to turn away, whereupon we heard the noise, a low keening, a strangely sad, plaintive sound, rather, I thought, like that made by seals when they haul themselves out of the sea on a rock and beguiling enough to convince the mariners of old that they were hearing the song of the sirens.
Nat was less of a romantic, ‘What the fuck…?’ he said, but we knew the source of the dirge, for that is what it was. Hanslip wasn’t far off. We turned our attention away from the sad wreckage of the three Swedish adventurers’ expedition and Nat began to inch forward.
‘Careful, Nat,’ I recall saying. ‘He can’t be far away and I think there are bears about.’
‘That’s bloody obvious…’ We were both in a high state of tension but then Nat saw the rifle. ‘He’s left one of them here.’ Nat wriggled towards the Lee Enfield and drew back the bolt. ‘There’s one shot at least,’ he said, his voice now low and his tone determined.
We both began to edge forward on our bellies, approaching a second low rise in the land. It is surprising how little one can see when pressed to the ground but Nat suddenly hissed: ‘There he is!’
I spotted him at almost the same instant, off to our left. He was down on all fours his body swaying from side-to-side, apparently oblivious to our presence.
‘Oh, God…’ It was all too obvious why he had abandoned his interest in taking pot-shots at us. He was staring at a large polar bear which had clearly already mauled him, for we could see blood pouring from his head and face. But he had scored a hit on the bear, which was also bleeding. Alongside me Nat brought his Lee Enfield up to his shoulder. My heart was in my mouth; I hoped there were no other bears about, for if Nat only had one shot, while it might knock down the wounded animal I didn’t hold out much reliance on my expertise with a revolver as helping.
The Lee Enfield cracked beside me and the bear’s head went sideways with the impact. The great beast swayed for a moment then fell sideways, stone dead.
Cautiously we got to our feet. As we moved forward Hanslip stared at the dead bear, then turned and saw us approaching, both with guns in our hands. I don’t know what we expected except it was not this wreckage of a man cringing at our feet. He looked up at us the tears streaming down his face, the left cheek of which was half torn away, the blood fairly pouring onto a small patch of scurvy grass; his bare hands were blue with cold, I remember, inconsequentially.
I heard Nat murmur ‘Jesus Christ’ and thought we must get this half-man, half wild-beast back to the ship as soon as possible, before more bears, attracted by the smell of blood, caught us out.
Hanslip tried to say something but his mutilated mouth prevented anything comprehensible from emerging. Nat thought it was something like ‘you left me to die…’ but I couldn’t say for certain.
‘We’re going to get you back to the ship, sir,’ I remember saying as Nat and I both took him under an armpit and got him half to his feet. Somehow, unmolested by bears, we half-dragged, half-carried him over the broken ground until the beach lay before us.
About fifty yards off the gig was approaching with Crichton in it and as we lay our burden down just short of the tideline, Crichton was beside Hanslip with his bag.
‘The Mate sent us back in for you, sir,’ Harris explained as we stood aside, alternately casting glances over our shoulder for bears, whilst Crichton ministered to his charge.
‘What about the deck-boy?’ I asked.
Harris shook his head. ‘Not looking good, sir. He’s lost a lot of blood despite the tourniquet.’
Crichton was having a sort of meaningless conversation with Hanslip. I heard him say something like: ‘I think so, Henry, don’t you…’
Then Hanslip meekly held out a wrist and Crichton shoved the clothing back as far as it would go. I watched the poor bastard’s eyes close and an expression of profound relief cross his face as Crichton shot him full of morphia or opium or something similar.
‘Let’s have that stretcher,’ Crichton snapped as he applied a field dressing to
Hanslip’s mauled face.
Once back at the ship we left Crichton to his patients in the sick-bay and Nat and I stopped Alan from calling a conference in the ward-room and took him into my cabin, Nat following. The door was secured and Alan asked: ‘Well? What in the name of God happened?’
‘Well the prediction by the clairvoyant was right…’
‘I know that,’ he said curtly, ‘as for the rest, everyone’s being very coy.’
I avoided Nat’s eyes. ‘That’s because I told the five men who actually saw the Swedes to keep their traps shut…’
I didn’t get any further; there was a violent banging on the door which Nat opened to see a furious and white-faced Sykes demanding to know what had happened to his precious Hasselblad.
‘I fell on it,’ Nat said simply. ‘It’s smashed to smithereens, the lens has gone…’
‘You bastard! You did it deliberately…’
‘No, I didn’t. But I was going to. As it happened it was an accident. I’m sure you have it insured. Now, if you don’t mind…’ Nat shut the door in Sykes’s face and we stood in silence as we listened to Sykes railing in the ward-room about the arrogance of ship’s officers.
‘Go on,’ Alan Tomkins prompted me. I told him about the state of the Swedish encampment, the syringes and the evidence of cannibalism. ‘On the grounds that none of this adduces to the honour of the Swedish nation I thought it right and proper to limit the number of people who knew anything about it. In the end, it is not up to me, but it seemed that there, on that island, with Hanslip running amok, we had our hands full. As this was largely a goodwill mission it seemed to me best to draw a veil over the whole sorry episode, especially as Hanslip had shot the deck-boy…’
‘While the balance of his was disturbed,’ Alan finished the sentence for me.
‘Yes, certainly, but how is that going to play out if it is made public that old Southmoore sent a ship up into the Arctic under the command of a known madman.’
‘Was he known?’
‘There wasn’t to be a quack on board until someone had second thoughts.’
‘True,’ Alan conceded.’
‘The Second Mate’s right, sir,’ Nat said.
Tomkins blew out his cheeks. I shall need to talk to Crichton but if you are suggesting that we hush the whole matter up, how the hell are we going to keep the crew from talking?’
‘I doubt they will be a problem,’ I said. ‘Once we get home and primed with our version of events they’ll split to the four winds and no-one will take much notice of the odd yarn…’
‘Our version of events?’ Tomkins was rueful rather than outraged, ‘and what is that going to be, eh?’
‘We should mention Hanslip’s alcoholism mental instability, blaming it upon stress and shell-shock from the late war. Being Hanslip he went off exploring on his own hoping to be the first to accomplish tour mission, taking the deck-boy – he probably wanted his doggie, you know how he was about these things – and they ran into bears attracted to the beach by our scent. A bear got to the boy then Hanslip was attacked. He completely lost his nerve, got himself mauled, he’s got the marks to prove it if he survives…’ I paused a moment and then added somewhat brutally, ‘and now you’re really in command and you’ll be writing the report of proceedings.’ I was a bit brutal.
‘Hm,’ Tomkins said after digesting my suggestion. ‘How the hell did you think all that through?’
I shrugged. ‘How else are we going to present it?’
‘And what about the Blavatskoya thing?’
I shrugged again. ‘Let’s just go home,’ I remember saying. I expect it was delayed shock after the tension of our adventure but I do recall feeling that I really did not care about Madame Blavatskoya and that the whole enterprise was an exercise in condescension and futility. The fact that a clairvoyant had worked out that we would find the three Swedish bodies on Kvitøya was probably not so very far-fetched. As was well-known, Nansen had discovered polar drift and the clairvoyant’s prediction did not mean that every – or any – family bereaved by the horrors of the last war were going to be able to speak to their lost kith and kin.
‘Would you like me to muster all hands and get the encampment broken-up?’ Nat had asked. Alan appeared to consider the matter then looked at my cabin clock. It registered five to three. ‘That’s afternoon,’ he said, ‘though it seems like far later. Yes, muster the hands and get all the boats we can man to withdraw all the gear as quickly as possible. We’ll gather in the wardroom when the work’s done…’
‘Job and finish, sir?’ asked Nat, using the phrase that meant no break until the task was accomplished.
‘Job and finish,’ Alan confirmed. ‘And try and bring the guns back,’ he added hopefully.
There followed several hours of relentless activity. Nat, armed with his Lee Enfield and backed-up by Harris with what had been Hanslip’s rifle, went in search of the other guns and picked them all up without revisiting the Swedish encampment and drawing Harris’s attention to it, partially hidden as it was. Twice, Nat told me later, polar bears had appeared, attracted by our smell, no doubt, but a judicial gunshot or two had scared them off.
The rest of us toiled on the beach to dismantle the camp and, with the last of the boats full of gear, we were soon pulling away from the stony beach for the last time. I looked back once, just before the large bergy-bit closed the view of the tideline and saw it as I see it now in my mind’s eye, a remote, almost inaccessible stretch of Arctic wilderness, best left to the bears and the foxes, the ptarmigans and the hares and whatever creatures are better suited to inhabit it than man.
As we came alongside we were met with the news that the deck-boy had died. It was the Bosun who broke it as we clambered over the rail; there were tears in his eyes, I remember. ‘He was my sister’s boy,’ he said simply. I had had no idea…
Anyway, there was a huge tureen of ham and pea soup on the wardroom table. The smell of it brought some warmth back into our bodies and Alan insisted we all had a tot in memory of the lad. ‘To little Jamie,’ he said, and I realised that apart from seeing his name on the crew list as ‘J.M. Dell,’ I had taken scant notice of the boy, but Alan had and that was typical of the man.
More personally cheering was Alan’s news that he had spoken to Crichton and the Doc had agreed with me. Nothing was to be gained by revealing what we had found of the Swedes, he had told Alan, and he had reached very much the same conclusion as had I when it came to establishing the legitimacy of Blavatskoya’s claim. He was, after all, a man of science. I said as much to Alan who smiled wryly.
‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a man of science, Ned,’ he said, ‘and he served as a quack in an Arctic whaler, but it didn’t stop him believing in fairies.’
‘Touché,’ I remember responding, adding, ‘but the Doc doesn’t come out of this as squeaky clean, you know.’
Alan considered this for a moment and then shook his head. ‘You’re an ingenious bastard,’ he said to me with half a smile.
That evening, with Hanslip secured in his cabin and a seaman posted outside with orders to call one of the Mates and the Doctor if he heard anything, the rest of the senior ship’s staff – including all the super-numeraries, The Courier’s boys and the boffins – assembled in the wardroom.
Alan Tomkins punctiliously read out the entry he had made in the Alert’s Official Log-Book. He had more-or-less followed my advice, setting down a version of events that seemed to him kinder to all concerned. Not mentioning the complete mental break-down of the Master, but that on landing he had unwisely wandered off in search of any sign of the Swedish expedition with the Deck Boy as his runner, only to encounter polar bears, one of which attacked and mortally wounded young Dell whilst he himself suffered a grievous mauling. Tomkins went on to say that Commander Hanslip’s condition rendered him unfit for service and that under such circumstances, he, Alan Tomkins, was taking command of the auxiliary barque Alert. He carefully copied the number of his Certificat
e of Competence and signed the Certificate of Registry to the same effect. Able Seaman John Harris, being in possession of a Certificate of Competence as Second Mate was promoted to Acting Third Mate.
The he quietly asked: ‘Do any of you dissent from this account?’
I looked at Hardacre and Sykes. They were clearly unhappy with the situation they found themselves in and Hardacre said shortly, ‘yes; it’s a pack of lies.’
Alan’s face flushed. He could expect obedience from Nat and myself, even a degree of compliance from the scientists, but with the newshounds it was a very different matter. It was Nat who came to Alan’s rescue.
‘That’s droll coming from a journalist,’ he said drily.
‘I’m not going to let sleeping dogs lie,’ Hardacre persisted and Sykes added: ‘As for you, you bastard, you sabotaged my camera.’
‘I told you it was an accident,’ Nat maintained coolly.
‘What d’you think, Doc?’ Hardacre asked Crichton, appealing to the chief non-nautical man on board. The Doctor had been even more withdrawn since leaving the beach and seemed to suddenly shrink as all eyes turned on him for a final judgement.
‘I agree with our new Captain,’ Crichton said simply, adding with a deep flushing, ‘and I have the ear and the confidence of Lord Southmoore…’ Not even I had thought of that clincher, but I could tell that neither Hardacre nor Sykes were going to take all this lying down. However, for the moment Crichton held the advantage and asked Tomkins, ‘It’s proper to put a diagnosis in the Official Log is it not?’
‘Er, yes,’ Alan responded, the tone of his voice cautious.
‘Well, it may be asked why Commander Hanslip went off on his own. I think you used the verb “wandered,” did you not, sir?’
‘I did,’ Alan replied.
‘Well then if you sign the log entry, I will witness it and that Commander Hanslip had been suffering from tarassis…’
‘What the hell is that?’ asked Hardacre incredulously.
‘Male hysteria, Mr Hardacre. A new word for your journalistic vocabulary, no doubt.’
Cold Truth Page 10