North Star

by Hammond Innes

  ‘That is why I was able to get an improved charter rate.’

  ‘No crew will stand for it. Three months out there –’

  ‘Johan says they agree. I have offered a bonus of course.’

  ‘And the engineers?’

  ‘Per is already discharged. Some burns, that is all. Duncan has two cracked ribs. I saw him at the hospital last night.’

  ‘And he undertakes to keep those engines running for three months?’

  She nodded, a little defiantly I thought. ‘Yes, he does.’ I forebore to mention that it was a failure of the engines that had lost her the ship, but she must have guessed what was in my mind for she said quickly, ‘Duncan was away sick for almost a month. Per Kalvik, the assistant engineer, is not so good, He is a young man and on his own he do not maintain the engines properly.’ And she added ‘Duncan has never been away from the ship before, not since we install the new engines.’

  She had it all worked out, the crew, the engineers, everything, quite prepared to ignore the fact that under the terms of the agreement we had to provide a replacement if for any reason I was forced to run for shelter. But when I pointed this out to her, she flared up at me: ‘It is you who arc raising difficulties, nobody else. Fuel and stores, anything you want, is to be delivered free of any transport charge by the supply ship, and I have arranged for the transportation of men on leave by helicopter from the rig, also free. Since you will not be fishing you will need less crew. Minimum crew for stand-by boats is six – captain, mate, chief engineer, assistant engineer, cook and one deckhand. You, Duncan and Johan will not get relief.’ She had been talking very fast. Now she stopped abruptly, standing staring at me, her manner suddenly awkward. ‘It is a very difficult situation, between us. We do not know anything about each other. And this agreement –’ She made a motion of her hand towards the document. ‘As soon as I sign, then you are the mortgagee and I am in your hands. Even the loan I arrange – it is made to you, not to me. He insists on that.’

  It was certainly an odd arrangement and the division of any profits left to us. ‘I imagine you will require some sort of an agreement drawn up between us,’ I said.

  She didn’t seem to hear me, her head turned to the window, gazing out at the water. ‘These business men are very clever.’ There was a long pause, and then suddenly she was facing me again. ‘Two complete strangers. And they have hung us round each other’s neck.’ She smiled, a gleam of humour that was gone in a flash. ‘Well, there it is. Neither of us can argue, we have no money.’ She pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘I agree. We shall need to have an agreement. But not now. Later.’ And she began writing in the alterations.

  She wrote fast, as though by concentrating on the words she could relieve the tension and frustration that was in her, initialling each alteration as she made it and signing the copies at the bottom. Then she pushed the whole lot over to me. When I had signed she said, ‘Johan is living on board. I suggest you do the same now.’

  ‘And the crew?’

  ‘They are at the Seaman’s Mission, available whenever you want them.’ She collected the papers together and put them in the envelope. ‘Now if you are ready, we will pick up your things and I will drive you down to the boat.’

  3

  It took me four days to complete the welding of a steel patch. The biggest problem was rigging a secure platform on which to work in the cramped space between the starboard engine and the hull. After that it was a question of following each tide down as the water poured out of the engine-room through the rent in the hull. The job was slow and dirty, and though we had spring tides, the last six inches or so of steel sheet had to be left unwelded. It was on the Tuesday morning, just as Johan and two of the crew were holding the first sheet in position and I was spot-welding it to the hull plates, that Sandford arrived.

  No doubt he called my name several times before he tapped me on the shoulder. The arc of the welding torch made a hell of a row in the confined space of the engine-room. I swung round, the arc sputtering in my hand so that I nearly knocked him off the single plank we had rigged as a walkway from the ladder. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘That mortgage. I’m told you own it.’ He had to yell to make himself heard. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’

  I turned back towards the hull plating. With the tide falling, and the sheet not yet fixed, this was no time for interruptions. His hand gripped my shoulder. ‘How much do you want?’

  I pushed my visor up. ‘Talk to Mrs Petersen,’ I said. ‘She’s the business brains.’ His eyes, bright in the spotlight, reminded me of the way his mother had looked when she thought there might be money in my visit.

  ‘I have. I saw her last night.’

  ‘Then you know the answer.’

  ‘She isn’t the mortgagee.’

  I glanced at my watch. Just over an hour of tide to go. I turned my back on him, pulling the visor down and flicking the jet full on. He shouted something at me as I bent to my welding again, the bearded face of Johan watching with his big hands on the plate, dangerously close as the gobs of molten steel flew out. I forgot about him then, my mind concentrated on the job.

  Before the tide was up again I had the whole plate welded, except for the last six inches which had still been underwater at the bottom of the tide. It was late afternoon then and we went up to the bridge, the four of us sweating and tired and dirty. ‘You want tea?’ Johan asked as we reached the top of the ladder and felt the cold air of the deck.

  ‘No, beer I think.’

  ‘Ja. Beer.’ His blond beard, all grimed with oil and slightly singed, cracked open in a grin. ‘Beer for me also. Lars? Henrik?’ The two seamen nodded and he sent Lars to raid the pantry. We had left our jerseys in the bridge and we entered to find Sandford seated in the skipper’s chair, a pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray behind the wheel housing. ‘I’ve been watching the tide on the rocks. Thought you wouldn’t be able to work down there much longer.’

  I pulled on my jersey, chilled now with the sweat drying on me. ‘You been waiting here all the time?’

  He nodded. ‘Can’t discuss business with a man waving a welding torch in my face.’

  ‘There’s no business to discuss,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ He swivelled the chair as though enjoying the feel of being in the master’s seat. ‘I’ve been thinking. It was clever of you. I never thought of buying the mortgage. Nor did any of us. There were five of us turned up at the auction yesterday morning, all of us with money to bid for her, and nobody was exactly pleased when they told us it was off.’ He lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he had just finished and stubbed the old one out in the ashtray. ‘Can we go somewhere where we can talk?’

  ‘I’m living on board,’ I told him. ‘If you want to talk it will have to be here.’ Lars appeared with four cans of beer.

  Sandford got to his feet. ‘Come into the master’s cabin then. We can talk there.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ I said. But he insisted and in the end I followed him. ‘Well, what is it?’ I said as we faced each other alone with the door closed.

  ‘It took me most of yesterday to find out just how you’d fixed it.’

  ‘I didn’t fix it.’

  ‘No, it was that oil man Fuller. But you’re the mortgagee and I’m willing to buy you out.’

  ‘It’s all tied up with the charter agreement.’

  ‘I know that. But it suits my plans. I’ll give you a thousand – cash. So long as you get her floated.’

  Within two minutes he had raised his offer to fifteen hundred and I wondered why. Cash meant he knew all about fiddling tax. It wasn’t only that I was suspicious; it went against the grain. And when I asked him who would skipper her, he said he had his own man and a crew as well.

  ‘You’d still have to complete the charter,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Of course.’

  It didn’t make sense. ‘What’s behind your offer?’

  He laughed. ‘I told you. I ne
ed a ship. And this is the only one available.’ And he added, ‘Fifteen hundred isn’t a bad offer just for getting her afloat and towed into Bressay Sound.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘Money doesn’t mean very much to me.’ And it was true. If I had stayed in the States I could have had all the money I wanted, but not on my terms. And what the hell is life about if you don’t live it on your own terms? But to explain that to Sandford, who had inherited a solid streak of peasant greed from his mother, would be like explaining Marxism to a Hull trawler owner. I pulled the door open. ‘I need another beer,’ I said.

  He stood for a moment uncertainly. But he knew it was no good. ‘I thought you were clever.’ His voice reflected his disappointment. ‘You’re just a bloody fool,’ he said angrily. And then, as he was going out, he turned and asked me why, after all these years, I had come to Shetland making enquiries about my father? ‘You never knew him. You never cared what happened to him. Why now?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ I said and I pushed him out into the gangway, ordering Henrik to take him ashore in the work boat we now had alongside. Gertrude Petersen arrived shortly afterwards with a meal she had prepared at home, and when I told her what had happened, she said, ‘I don’t like that man. I don’t like the people he employs. Last December, when we are stormbound in Burra Firth for two days, we are in the hotel and there is this Irish behind the bar – he make trouble for Johan.’ She didn’t say what trouble, but there was a slight flush on her face as she added, ‘It is the last time we drink in his hotel.’

  I forgot about Sandford after that. We lived by the tide, our heads aching after every shift, falling into our bunks as soon as we had fed and sleeping until the alarm woke us. And when, in the early hours of the Friday morning, it was done and we began pumping, I just stood there on the deck staring at the dark shadow of the hills, feeling utterly exhausted. I was like a surgeon who has performed a difficult operation. All I wanted now was for the patient to live, and so identified had I become with the ship that I felt it was a part of me.

  We breakfasted late to the racket of the pump, and afterwards Gertrude drove me to Halcrow’s yard. They were behind schedule, and with the drilling contractors screaming for their supply ship, the trials were set for Sunday afternoon. That gave us two clear days. We got the anchor out on the port beam, with the chain linked by a big block and tackle to the trawl winch hawser, then at low water on the Saturday morning, with the Land-Rover hitched to the tail end of the purchase guy, and all of us pulling, some of the locals as well, we managed to roll her about 12 degrees. This list to port was just sufficient to bring the whole patch clear of the water at the bottom of the tide. But it still took two tides to cut the plate edges of the hull, beat out the dents and weld the last six inches of the patch. Even when that was done the pump could only just hold its own.

  ‘We’ll have to slip and patch her properly from the outside,’ I told Gertrude as we stood that evening in the engine-room, the sound of the pump drumming at the deck overhead and the water gurgling in the bilges. She didn’t argue. On the port side the floor gratings ran down into water. Even when we had released the purchase tackle and the trawler was floating upright on the top of the tide, water sloshed and gurgled over the gratings as the ship moved in the wind, dancing to a slight swell coming in round the end of the spit. She knew the hull had to be absolutely watertight if we were to keep the sea in all weathers for three weary months.

  All this time the wind had been westerly and the water in the voe quiet under the lee of mainland. Now the forecast was for changeable weather, the last of the depressions moving away towards Iceland and a High coming in behind it, with a Low over France. That slight swell was a warning of northeasterly winds. Duncan appeared at my side and stood sniffing the air as though he, too, sensed the change. He was a dour man with a long nose and a sandy moustache. The hospital had discharged him the previous afternoon and he had been down in the engine-room ever since cleaning the place up with the help of his assistant, Per, and the youngest member of the crew, a big bull of a boy known as Sperm. ‘Pump holding?’ I asked him.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the engines?’

  ‘They’ll no get her oot o’ here, if that’s what you mean.’

  So we just had to hope Jim Halcrow would risk bringing the supply ship right in on the tide. ‘Mrs Petersen told you the parts you ordered have arrived by air?’ He nodded and I asked him how his ribs were.

  ‘Strapped so tight I can’t hardly breathe. But it’s the electrics I’m worried aboot. That pipe to the cooling system is nothing by comparison. It could be the dynamos will have to be stripped doon, or even replaced, and God knows what’s happened to the wiring.’ He sniffed again at the breeze coming in down the voe. ‘Ach weel, I’ll get back doon again noo. That bluidy boy dinna ken the difference between an oil line and a fuel pipe.’

  ‘You’d better get some sleep,’ I told him.

  ‘A week in that bluidy morgue – what the hell ye think I been doing?’ And he disappeared into the night, heading for the door to the engine-room, his left arm held awkwardly to his body.

  It was still only a breeze when dawn broke. But by 09.00 it had strengthened to Force 4 and there were waves breaking on the seaward side of the spit. We grounded shortly afterwards, the keel bumping on boulders. The grating and clanging lasted almost half an hour. All we could do after that was wait, and hope that the wind wouldn’t increase before high water, which was at 16.05.

  But by then I had something else to worry about. Gertrude arrived just as we were completing the lifting of the anchor and she came aboard as soon as the work boat had dropped the anchor and chain under the bows. ‘Jim Halcrow says he will bring the supply ship in whatever the weather. He has the power and the manoeuvrability, also he draws much less than we do. But he needs to know the exact time you expect to be afloat.’

  ‘Tell him we’ll be bumping the bottom at about 15.35 and clear to tow off any time after 16.00.’

  She nodded. ‘Okay. I tell him that.’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘There was a man at the yard this morning. He was making enquiries.’

  We were standing in the starboard bridge gangway, watching the crew heaving in on the anchor chain, the trawler lying still now and the hills behind a diorama of shifting light as the clouds scudded over. An island scene, and all so peaceful that the industrial world I had lived in seemed unreal. ‘What sort of a man?’

  ‘A police inspector, but in plain clothes.’

  Not Bob Scunton then or the other man. That was something. Unless this inspector insisted on my going back to Hull. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Just enquiring about you. What you were doing.’

  ‘Did he ask you any questions?’

  ‘No. He did not need to. He had already talked to me the previous day.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Taing.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked at me then. ‘Why do you think? I don’t want to distract you.’ And she added, ‘He will see you when the ship is afloat and lying off the yard.’

  God! What a practical, soulless woman she was, not caring a damn about anything but her trawler.

  ‘What is it about?’ she asked. ‘You have done something?’

  I looked at her, feeling suddenly cold and hard inside. Was this what a whaling station did to you? She had been brought up in the stench of the flensing deck, and her father had rubbed his hands with glee and said it smelled of money. She had told me that herself, laughing, and I had seen her in my mind as a young girl with the guts and urine of dead whales spilling out at her feet, and her father beaming and rubbing his hands. ‘A little girl was nearly killed,’ I said.

  ‘And you were involved?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why is this inspector here from London?’

  ‘Better ask him,’ I said, and went down the ladder to
give a hand for’ard.

  Gertrude Petersen left shortly after that. The warps were all ready aft, the anchor stowed and the chain flaked neatly on the foredeck, heaving lines and fenders handy. Nothing to do after lunch but watch the tide making and the sea slowly building as the wind increased – and think about what happened next, why they should have sent an inspector from London. In the privacy of my cabin I poured myself a stiff whisky. I should have been worrying about the tow. Instead, I was thinking how hard she was, my mind going back to the problem that had been with me ever since that night in Hull. A local matter surely, not something for Scotland Yard. Unless … But I shied away from the thought. It was just a matter of intimidation. Intimidation that had got out of control. I must concentrate on that. Did I identify the men or not? That was all that mattered.

  Johan poked his head round the door. ‘We can see the tug now. It is steaming out in the bay. Fixed courses, so he is making speed trials.’

  I followed him into the bridge, relieved to get away from my thoughts. The sky had cleared, the whitecaps in the bay bright in the sun. The supply ship was just turning at the extremity of her northward run up by Stany Hog. The high superstructure for’ard and the flat run aft certainly gave her the look of a tug. She completed the turn and started south. The time was 14.55. Less than an hour to go. I went all round the ship with Johan, checking that everything was ready and that each man knew what he had to do. Then I went back to the bridge and tested the loudhailer. No sign of the ship. She was lost to view behind the dune-like hills of Ward of Brough.

  Ten minutes later she poked her bluff fendered bows round Cunning Holm islet, moving slowly now, coming in on her echo-sounder. A few minutes and she was in full view, turning and pointing her bows straight at us. And at almost the same moment I felt a slight lift to the deck under my feet, heard the first faint rumble of the keel knocking on boulders. She came in very slowly, feeling her way, until her bows were level with the spit. She hung there for a while, her engines throwing a froth of water for’ard along her sides as she maintained station against the wind funnelling down the voe. I could see Jim Halcrow seated at the controls high up in the little glass wheelhouse, Gertrude Petersen beside him. He put a microphone to his lips and loud across the water came his query – ‘Are you off the bottom yet?’