A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  He shouted, and I shifted the rag of sail. The whaleboat slewed to port. There was more drift on her now. Sailhardy fought to keep her head up into the gale. Water poured

  24

  over the side. I baled. The pitch-black bird moved his grip and glared unwinkingly at me with his drunk's eyes.

  Sailhardy shouted something, and indicated the sail. The wind blew his words away, but I knew what he meant.

  Either he had funked it, or there was some danger I was not aware of. He intended to go about! I flicked the sail free.

  The whaleboat began her next sickening plunge.

  Then it was quiet.

  On every hand was the evidence of the gale's dissolute-ness. From the low level of the boat the sea was a terrifying sight. Suds and spume lay six inches deep on the jerking surface of the water. Nightingale Island soared, appeared, and disappeared as the waves obstructed our view.

  It was quiet.

  I heard the aircraft engine overhead.

  2. The Whale-Spotter

  The engine coughed. The sound was as incongruous as the presence of the hovering helicopter. Tristan is too remote from the world ever to have seen an aircraft ; the South African Air Force men I took to the island during the war were not fliers, but radio personnel.

  " Helicopter!" I exclaimed. " Where the hell it comes from, though, I wouldn't know."

  Sailhardy's strong hands were on the tiller. He guided the boat through the next crest before replying. " The main body of the storm isn't here yet," he said. " If it was, that helicopter would be blown from here to Bouvet."

  The black machine, its fat belly emphasised by orange paint, came closer. The colours gave it away: black and red, seen easiest against the ice. She was intended to operate over ice.

  " She's a whale-spotter," I said.

  Sailhardy jerked his head upwards. " I'd say it was fairly calm still at five thousand feet. Won't be for long, though."

  " That's a damn brave pilot," I said. " I wouldn't care to fly in this lot, even if it is clearer farther up."

  The helicopter manoeuvred. It was clear it had not seen

  the whaleboat.

  " She's searching," I said, puzzled. " It can't be for whales.

  25

  No factory-ship skipper would fly off an aircraft in weather like this."

  Sailhardy was anxious. " Any moment the storm will hit us. Then I don't give a fig for our chances or the helicopter's."

  The machine's movement became decisive. She started to

  drop towards the whaleboat. The pilot had seen us.

  1

  " It couldn't be searching for us," I started to say. "There were no ships at Tristan when we left the anchorage this morning."

  Sailhardy reached out and scratched the head of the strange bird. " Whatever that aircraft is about, this chick certainly brought us luck," he smiled.

  " We haven't been rescued yet," I said. "Look at the sea.

  It's one thing to have a helicopter overhead, and another to pull you up from a swell like this."

  He nodded. " We're rising and falling forty feet at a time," he said. " I reckon it can't be done."

  As if to refute him, the machine came down with a rush

  directly over our heads. Its rotors drowned speech. From a winch on its side, a rope snaked down. The pilot's judgement was superb. The rope was about three feet above the boat but slightly to one side. Before I had time to grab it, we nose-dived into the trough. The helicopter waited. We shot upwards with the next sea. My heart was in my mouth. I thought the sea would touch the Westland. I saw the pilot behind perspex. There was a rapid movement of the controls. The machine edged out of reach.

  The pilot waited his moment. So did Sailhardy. The whaleboat rose. The line snaked again. It hit one of the thwarts with a thump. I grabbed, missed, and something rushed past me. A flutter was all I was aware of. Sailhardy burst out laughing. Up our lifeline was clambering, foot over foot, the Island Cock. With remarkable speed he reached the helicopter window and dived in.

  The Westland was snatched away by a gust of wind. It

  missed us by about fifty yards on the next run.

  Sailhardy watched the south-west with growing concern "

  It hopeless," he shouted as the machine roared overhead again.

  H e w a s w r o n g . T h e p i l o t w a s r e a l l y g o o d . T h e l i n e clatter aboard. I snatched it, but Sailhardy knocked my hand away. The boat yawed wildly.

  " What the hell . .." I began. 26

  " I t ' l l t e a r y o u i n h a l f , i f y o u e v e n m a n a g e t o g e t i t around you," he replied. " The jerk as it lifts will be too much. Before they get you aboard, you'll be dead."

  " It's our only chance," I retorted heatedly. " We can't make the beach."

  The machine came right down low this time, without making any attempt to drop a line. A man with a megaphone shouted at us: " Don't you want to be rescued?"

  I left it to Sailhardy. His gale-cheating modulation would be audible. " Too risky," he yelled. " Cut a man in half."

  The helicopter rose steeply, as if in disgust. At the top of a wave Sailhardy took a sweeping glance at the south-west. He pointed the boat's nose at Nightingale.

  " It's coming up quickly," he said. " The beach is our only chance. Get that sail up—quick!"

  As the whaleboat gathered way, the helicopter dropped right down over us. The window opened again. " Get that mast down!" shouted the voice. It sounded slightly foreign. "

  Co-operate! We're taking the whole boat for a buggy-ride."

  I knocked out the wooden wedge holding the mast and thrust it under the thwart. To me anything seemed better than the break for the beach. Sailhardy shrugged. This time a second rope dropped from the rear cabin window, in addition to the one from the winch. I saw what was intended. The two ropes would have to be secured within seconds as the craft of the air and the craft of the sea came together—if their respective pilots could achieve that hair's-breadth synchronisation. Sailhardy's lean brown hands on the tiller seemed to move almost in advance of his eyes, which searched for an easier patch, a less broken wave-top.

  We rose. The helicopter hovered at an angle to our drift. At the very top of the crest, his hands tugged at the worn tiller ropes and laid the boat beam-on. She hung uncertainly, and he held her there. She did not take the next plunge, which would have torn us from the rescuers.

  The pilot's reaction was equally swift. He dropped to within fifteen feet. One rope fell aft and the other forward of the mast. I whipped mine round the metal skid of the foresail with a running knot. I couldn't see what Sailhardy was about, but if he did not succeed, the whaleboat would be upended at the next lift by the very rope I had secured, and both of us would be emptied into the water. The bow started to lift. Sailhardy's reaction times were incredible. In the few 27

  brief seconds the rope had lain within his reach, he had slipped it round the odd tiller plank which projects athwartships on all Tristan whaleboats.

  The wave dropped away. There was no sickening plunge

  as before. The boat was airborne.

  The pilot lifted the helicopter gently. The weight of the suspended whaleboat seemed to steady it, like a bee carrying a pebble pulled level with the bow. The pilot was working his winches with the same nicety of judgement he had shown in the rescue. The boat was drawn towards the aluminium belly. Within a couple of feet, the winches stopped and a window opened. We climbed through.

  A hand steadied me through the entrance. The interior

  was in maroon quilting, dark as the storm in the south-west. "

  Welcome aboard, Herr Kapitan," said the man.

  I should have remembered the cocksureness, and the slight sneer of the Germanic gutturals. His hair was blond and over-long. The steadying grip, too—that wasn't learned anywhere except in bringing a man over the side—the side of a ship, not an aircraft.

  " Thank you," I said. " It was a magnificent piece of rescue work."

&
nbsp; He shrugged and nodded forward to the cockpit. " Not me to thank," he said. " Up there."

  I parted the quilting and stood behind the pilot's seat.

  Tiny beads of sweat lay on the leather shoulders of the flying suit. The pilot did not look round. The Island Cock was perched on the compass mounting, gripping it with its over-size talons.

  I saw a pair of eyes in the rear-view mirror above the

  bird's perch.

  They were a woman's eyes.

  Women simply don't exist in the Southern Ocean. They have been known, like black icebergs. There are, it is true women's names in Antarctica—Marie Byrd Land, Edith Ronne Land, Sabrina Coast. But the women were not there.

  They were at home.

  I could not credit what I saw. I stepped forward, the thanks dying on my lips in surprise. I looked look at her, the face framed by the black leather helmet and its intercom wires.

  The eyes were the strangest and the most beautiful I had ever seen. They were the colour of the sea, I thought. Later, I knew they were not. Like the South African flower which ha g no colour in itself, but takes its turquoise from the

  28

  refraction of white light within its own heart, so hers reflected what she was seeing—the sea, and the angry storm. The pupils were, like the central spot of that same strange flower, almost green-black by virtue of some other intriguing juxtaposition of fabric and light.

  " Please take that bird off the compass," she said. "

  be flying on instruments alone in a moment."

  The modulation in Sailhardy's voice was an acquired

  control. I felt the same about hers. Why, I could not guess.

  I gripped a metal stay with one hand and prised the bird off the compass. She looked past me, weighing up the storm.

  I was at a complete loss. " This bird is terribly lucky . . ."

  I started to say.

  " There is no such thing," she replied. " Judgment is everything."

  " To pick us up like that—your judgment was spot-on,"

  I said.

  Her eyes looked at the sea, and through them the sea looked back at me. There was no warmth in them. " So was your boatman's," she replied.

  " Sailhardy and I are most grateful."

  " Sailhardy!" she said. " What a name! You can practically smell tar in the rigging."

  Sailhardy balanced himself with his sailor's grace in the small cabin. She turned to him. " You know these waters well?"

  " I do, ma'am," he replied.

  What are our chances against that lot?"

  The islander shrugged. " It depends—on you, ma'am."

  " Carl!" she called. He came through to the cockpit. "

  What's it like back there in the anchorage? What does the factory ship say?"

  " Starting to roll. Like a drunken fiddler's bitch."

  " That's what I thought," she said. She jerked her head towards me. " Captain Wetherby. Carl Pirow, radio operator. Oh—

  and Sailhardy. Boatman."

  Her staccato, offhand manner grated on me.

  " We're now all known to one another—except one,"

  said.

  " Helen Upton," she said, as if it were no more important than the piece of metal she held in her hand. " Whale-spotter."

  She craned forward. " What is that over there—about two hundred and seventy degrees? Inaccessible Island?"

  " Yes, ma'am," replied Sailhardy.

  29

  " Thank you, Sailhardy," she said. She looked at him for the first time. " Sailhardy—what? Obviously the Royal Navy wants formal introductions."

  " That's all, ma'am," he replied. " Just Sailhardy." "

  You must have a surname," she said.

  " Sailhardy—no more," replied the islander.

  She shrugged. " It's enough, I suppose."

  His eyes shifted, embarrassed, away from hers to the horizon. He stiffened. " Ship!" he exclaimed. He screwed up his eyes. " A small one. Maybe a catcher."

  " Your eyes are as good as your boatmanship," she said.

  That's praise indeed from Helen Upton, I thought. She was as impersonal as the instruments around her.

  " It must be one of them making for the rendezvous,"

  said Pirow.

  " See if you can get her on the blower, Carl," she said. "

  Ask where the others are."

  To me, the horizon was blank. " I don't see a thing," I said.

  She pulled my arm and pointed. Her heavy woollen sweater did not smell bitter of sheep grease, like a man's, but there was that curious, shut-off mustiness which all garments acquire in the South. The setting sun dyed the onrushing banks of cloud. Against them,, Inaccessible Island took on an even more sinister air. Its flat, black silhouette seemed to cower away from the coming onslaught. By contrast, Nightingale's cliffs were splashed with great patches of early summer pelargoniums, incongruously bright in the last light. I saw no ship. Then I caught what might have been the flash of a tunny's dorsal fin—or a catcher.

  " It could be . . ." I said dubiously.

  " Come, come, Captain Wetherby," she said. She might have said it the same way if one of the rotors had failed her. "

  Are you as sceptical about your oceanic discoveries?"

  Captain Wetherby! Herr Kapitan! Oceanic discoveries!

  She knew who I was, and she must have an idea of what I

  was doing off Tristan. My sarcasm bounced off her impersonal air, but it left me vaguely uneasy about how much she knew.

  " I'm an expert on water-fleas," I said.

  " Is that oceanography or limnology?" she asked.

  Bruce Wetherby, ex-Royal Navy, holder of the Royal Society's Travelling Studentship in Oceanology and Limnology 1 What was a whale-spotter doing out in weather like 30

  this searching for someone whose interest was as abstruse as mine?

  " Limnology," I replied, taken aback. " Water-fleas mean water is getting old. You never find them in young water.

  Oceanwise, too, there are water-fleas. It means seas are old."

  She started to shrug it off. As her left shoulder lifted and she moved slightly in her seat, a flicker of pain passed across her face. Her voice was toneless. " You're wasting your time in the Southern Ocean, then. It's old already.

  The Americans say it's a hundred million years old."

  Rain drummed on the perspex like a Spanish dancer's heels. Her hand on the controls seemed to have the same economy of motion as Sailhardy's on the tiller ropes. " Carl,"

  she said quickly, " get aft and lash that whaleboat securely.

  You, too, Captain Wetherby. Winch it right up so it's as high as it will go." She turned incisively to Sailhardy. " How deep is that boat of yours? I don't want it hanging below the undercart as I come in to land."

  " Four feet—and some, maybe five," he replied.

  " Might make it," she said, as if it didn't_ really matter. "

  If it comes to the worst, I'll dump it."

  " No, ma'am!" Sailhardy burst out. " Not my boat!"

  She put on the instrument lights and ran her eyes over them carefully. She flicked a sharp glance at him. She had heard the protest in his voice. " Right, then, I'll try and land with that damn great thing hampering me. There'll be a heaving deck, and you've heard that the factory ship is rolling heavily. It won't be child's play."

  I hesitated before going to the winches. The whaleboat seemed scarcely worth it, even if was everything in the way of riches that Sailhardy had.

  " It's a captain's decision," I said to her. " If it's going to mean four people's lives, then jettison it."

  The eyes seemed as uninviting as the cold sea. "I am the captain," she said curtly. "My decision has been made. I land with Sailhardy's boat lashed to the machine."

  I started to reply. She overrode it. " Carl—get aft and lash the boat. This isn't a warship's bridge, Captain Wetherby, and I can't force you to help. But it does lessen the risk if you do."

  " Thank you, ma'am," said S
ailhardy softly. She would be his friend for life.

  " Miss Upton," I said, " I have every faith in your ability after the way you rescued us." 31

  " Then get aft and do what I ask," she snapped. " Carl!"

  She turned away as if I had been so much supercargo. "

  When you have done, tell my father I have Wetherby. In

  one piece. Uninjured. Ask him if I should try and find the other catchers and bring them in to the rendezvous."

  " I don't know who your father is, or what he wants with me," I said angrily. ' Tell him I have Wetherby ' .

  !"

  She banked sharply and cut my words short. " Ask him yourself," she said. " He sent me to find you, and find you I did. My job is done when I deliver you to him aboard the Antarctica."

  Pirow said, as if it were remarkable not to know: " Sir Frederick Upton is the biggest whaling man in the business.

  You must have heard of him."

  "I haven't," I replied. " And I can't imagine why he should want to send his daughter out in one hell of a storm to bring in someone who was doing nothing more than look for plankton."

  I almost missed her aside: " Water-fleas."

  " Ma'am," said Sailhardy, " the storm will last for days.

  You must get back to your base, now. As hard as you can."

  She seemed disposed to listen to him. "Even if I located every catcher of the five, there's not much I could do to bring them to the anchorage," she pondered. " Tell my father, Carl, I'll be coming straight back. Ask him to have Captain Bjerko hold the factory ship as steady as he can in the anchorage."

  I went aft with Pirow. The whaleboat was swinging from

  the two ropes and bumping against the fuselage. We drew the boat up as far as we could. It did not lie under the belly of the machine as the winches were higher up than the level of the landing wheels. I thought of the heaving deck of the factory ship anchored in Tristan's open roadstead and shuddered. It would need all Helen Upton's skill to land. As I saw it, she would have to come in keeping the starboard side, the side opposite the boat, lower than the port side so as not to smash the keel against the deck. At the same time she would have to hold the tail high and keep it so. I looped a length of rope round one of the rough thwarts and pulled the boat hard against the side of the machine. Pirow did the same. The boat's destiny had now become one with the helicopter—and ours.