Pirow went to the radio. I preferred to stay with him
rather than go up forward into the unfriendly cockpit.
32
Whatever Sir Frederick Upton wanted, he had scarcely sent her on a social mission. I stood in the maroon-quilted cabin at a loss. Something gnawed at my subconscious. Pirow was talking to the catchers. I listened with half an ear, an ear grown weary over the years at Cape Town of the endless radio chatter of the ships far South. What was it? " Repeat,"
said one of the catchers Pirow was calling. " Repeat." Again,
" Repeat." His transmitting was excellent. If my mind had not been on the girl and the risk she was running, maybe I would have noticed. My subconscious told me that something was off-beat. Why did the catcher keep asking him to repeat?
I parted the quilting into the cockpit. Helen Upton was talking to Sailhardy, while she held the bucking machine with a light snaffle. My undefined uneasiness about Pirow's signalling prickled my curiosity about the girl also. What had made her become a whale-spotter in the first place? Even the Russian ships down South never use women pilots. It is the hardest life, requiring a high degree of observation and skill, plus long hours of accurate searching. She had risked her life, apparently at her father's instruction, to find Sailhardy and myself. Why? I reckoned a factory ship must cost £5,000 a day to run, and to come to Tristan, far away from the whaling grounds, meant that Sir Frederick must
really have burned money, apparently in order to find me.
Why? Hard-hearted whaling tycoons are not that interested in plankton.
" Keep well out as you come round the point before the roadstead," Sailhardy was telling her. " A sudden gust might throw us against the cliffs."
She altered course slightly and edged into the teeth of the wind. The Island Cock was back on his perch, but no longer masking the compass from her view. The van of the storm swathed the volcanic peak of Tristan. The island's water supply is born in the old crater, which, strangely, never freezes even in the hardest weather. Under the machine's belly I could see the great fields of kelp in the sea, stretching out tentacles like a mightmare octopus in the dying light. To the east, sea and sky melted into a glory of turquoise ; in the west, the great battalions of cloud came racing up.
We pulled clear of the headland by Tristan's anchorage.
A waterfall made a steel scar down the cliff-side.
" Starboard forty?" Helen Upton asked Sailhardy.
" Sixty," he said. " Every bit of sixty. The cliff will G.I.
33
completely blank out the sun in a minute. Turn sixty degrees."
She smiled wryly, the first time I had seen any animation of her face. I didn't need to be told: flying was her whole life. " Landing on instruments?"
" Aye," replied Sailhardy. " Aye, ma'am."
The sun went as we wheeled round Herald Point into Falmouth Bay, the anchorage. Helen Upton clicked on the machine's spotlight, and swung in a broad circle round the Ridge. As if in reply, floodlights splashed the factory ship's deck. She was big—every bit of 25,000 tons. I could not
imagine how we could land among the steel wires which held up the double funnel aft and the cumbersome masts. The
deck seemed a conglomeration of valves and bollards, with almost no clear space. Pipes, as thick as a man's thigh, criss-crossed the deck forward of the bridge. Among them were huge steel boxes, surmounted by matching butterfly
nuts. I could not guess what they were for.
" Carl," she said rapidly into the intercom, " tell Captain Bjerko I can't see with all those lights—they're blinding me.
Say I'm coming in from the stern. When I'm fifty yards away, put out the lights. I'll come in on the spot alone after that."
Sailhardy's knuckles were tightly clenched round the cabin stay. " Bring her into the lee of the ship, ma'am," he urged.
She looked at him swiftly and nodded. She started a wide circle past the bows. Antarctica had steam up. The two high stacks, port and starboard, belched smoke. Higher even than they were two ventilators. We lost height as we came into the vessel's lee. Then everything went black. The stacks were putting up a smokescreen equal to a destroyer's.
Luff, ma'am," urged Sailhardy.
Helen Upton laughed—and the laugh sounded as if it had
not been used for a long time. " Sailor!" she exclaimed. "
I can't lull an aircraft." But her hands were already busy at the controls. We followed the smoke downwind, and then pulled clear. She made a new approach to the factory ship. The machine neared the stern. The slipway grating through which whales are hauled was picked up by the bright floodlights. It looked as ominous as Traitors' Gate at the Tower of London. I felt my breath draw in as we came in low.
The lights cut. The helicopter spotlight stabbed out. We would never get through the rigging to the patch of clear deck.
" Bring her head round a little, ma'am," breathed Sail-34
hardy. He shot a glance the way we had reached the a n c h o r a g e . " T h e r e ' s a b i g g u s t c o m i n g . " H e r h a n d s answered him. The two were in complete accord. It was the master in one element responding to the master in another, the sea and the air.
She pulled the stick back hard and whipped the throttle wide: We scraped past one of the high ventilators, circling again.
" Jesus!" whispered Pirow.
" Carl!" called the girl in a level voice. "Tell Captain Bjerko to light the flensing platform only. I'll try there, this time."
Pirow's radio key chattered as we swept round again.
Again, too, the nerve-tearing approach from the stern. The wind was stronger now. It must have been gusting fifty knots or more. Traitors' Gate came up to meet us. The machine canted as Helen Upton lifted the port side, the side with the boat lashed to it, high. The tail, too, was high. I heard Sailhardy's intake of breath. We slid crabwise round the middle gantry like a wounded dragonfly. A peckle of rain blurred the perspex. It was too late to pull away this time.
We were committed. The starboard wheel touched the deck.
The boat side and tail remained high. She gunned the rotor at the tail. It swung slowly, deliberately, into the wind. She placed it delicately, so delicately I scarcely felt the bump, on one of the big steel boxes. She let the boat side of the machine cant gently to the deck, flicking the throttle. We stood square on the rain-slicked deck.
She sighed softly, and rested her hands for a moment on the now-dead controls. Men were already lashing the machine to the big bollards.
I licked my lips. " You have to miss only once," I said.
She sat there, immobile, not speaking.
" I reckon she was rolling twenty degrees each way,"
Sailhardy pondered. " You were magnificent, ma'am."
The strange eyes seemed to be filled with the hard glare of the floodlights. " Carl," she said, " take Captain Wetherby to my father. He wants him urgently. And Sailhardy." We climbed on to the heaving deck. She made no attempt to rise as we left.
" Careful !" said Pirow. " A factory ship has more places to break your neck than any other ship I know."
The powerful lights threw everything into taut relief. Above my head a huge piece of curved, grooved iron looked bigger 35
than it really was. It had a hook with projections, and was secured to the gantry by hawsers as thick as my arm.
When we reached the bridge companionway I remembered my things in the boat. " There are some of my instruments and charts in the boat," I told Pirow. " I'll go back for them.
Tell Sir Frederick I'll be right along."
I swung myself up into the cockpit. I stopped short. Helen Upton was clinging on to the central cabin stay, half in and half out of her seat. Her face was as white as the floodlights.
She was trying to pull herself on to her feet. The Island Cock stared at her.
I went forward. " Take it easy !" I said, lowering her into the seat. " I'm not surprised, after that landing."
Her eye
s were full of pain. " Why did you have to come back and see me?" she half-choked. " Why did you have to see me?"
" That landing . .." I began.
She waved me quiet. " It wasn't the landing," she got out, biting her lips. " It's me. Don't be polite. You've seen me." "I don't understand," I said.
She spoke so softly I could scarcely hear. "The winches. I forgot. Usually I use one of them to haul me up after a long spell of flying. It gets my hip, you see. There's a bullet in it. I just limp a bit ordinarily. When the flying is tough, it gets me. Once I'm on my feet, I'm all right. I always send everyone away."
" Your father shouldn't allow you."
" He doesn't know, and won't know, unless you tell him,"
she replied. " He must not know. Never. Help me up, please."
She pulled off the flying helmet. Against the stark light and storm-darkened night, her hair could not have been more effectively posed. It was fair and short and curly, dented round her forehead with the pressure of the leather. I put an arm round her. She leaned heavily against me for the first steps along the deck and then walked slowly, with a slight limp, past the bridge to a large chartroom-cum-office.
Behind the desk sat a man. A light was at his left shoulder, etching the features.
His face was made of metal.
36
3. The Secret of the Blue Whale
Incredulity, mixed with revulsion, stopped me as I saw the grey mask. The effect was more startling when he rose and the pewter crinkled into a smile. I could see the laughter-lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. There seemed to be no division between the line of his strangely-coloured forehead and his short, curly grey hair. He was short and stocky, with a sailor's eyes. The change from what I thought would be a deadpan into a warm welcoming smile left me at a loss.
Helen kissed his cheek. " Well, Daddy, I found your man."
He took my hand and shook it cordially. " I've spent a lot of time and money on you, Bruce. I'm glad to have you safely aboard."
His immediate use of my Christian name did not offend me, as it would have with almost anyone else.
" Your daughter did a magnificent piece of rescue work," I said. " I scarcely expected to see the inside of a warm ship's cabin to-night."
He glanced keenly at me. " From what I know, I don't think a night at sea in an open boat would hold much terror for you. Good girl, Helen. I knew you'd find him."
She did not seem to hear. The eyes, so filled with distress in the cockpit, were composed. They were even warm through taking on the colour of the cabin's panelling. Her unspoken attitude was that split-second timing and consummate skill were all in the day's work. It was clear that Upton expected little less than that.
I fumbled for something to say. The mask disconcerted
me.
He laughed. " It gets you down the first time, doesn't it? I never notice it any more. Mine is no beauty, but you should have seen the chap with the silver pan! My God! He shone like a balloon-sputnik!"
" I'm afraid I don't understand . . ." I faltered. I looked to Helen for help. She was busy rubbing oil off the back of her left hand. She might as well not have been there, she was so remote from our conversation.
" Of course you don't," said Upton in his rapid-fire way. "
You can have the medical term for it if you like—argyria. I got it from fooling around with rare metals in Sweden.
37
What happens is that the metal actually passes into your system. The doctor chappie with the silver face had been using silver nitrate. He was so self-conscious. We were in the same sanatorium in Stockholm."
My eyes had accustomed themselves to the light. The cabin was as distinctive as the man. One whole wall was
taken up by a map of Antarctica, and no ordinary map.
It was in relief, and the land contours had been demar-cated by intricately inlaid pieces of whalebone. The long spur of Graham Land, which juts out from the ice continent towards Cape Horn, was exquisitely fashioned.
As eye-catching as the map itself were scale models of the ships which had opened up the South. They had been
carved by a master: replicas of clumsy eighteenth-century British men-o'-war ; of tough British sealers, the originals of which had oaken planks thick enough to withstand pack-ice and roundshot ; of the finer-lined New Bedford whalers ; of the first steamers, aided by sails ; of the armoured ice-breakers of to-day. They clustered mainly round where I had operated from during the war, for Graham Land was the
first part of the continent proper to be found. Near my base at Deception was an old brig, and I could read her name—
Williams. It was in her that Captain William Smith discovered the South Shetlands in 1819. It was Captain Smith who raced to Chile to a British naval officer, Captain Shireff, who realised that the Drake Passage was the key to naval power between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It had been true in Napoleon's time ; it had been true in my lifetime, too. I had guarded that passage for two years.
Near my old base, too, was a tiny American brig named Hersilia. James P. Sheffield had sailed from Connecticut to look for a dream—the legendary, fabulous islands called the Auroras. He failed. But his young second mate, Nat Palmer, made history by being the first man to put a foot ashore on the Antarctic mainland. A Britisher, Captain Bransfield, holds the distinction—a few days only before Palmer—of being the first man to sight and chart the coast of the Antarctic mainland.
Clustered round the long peninsula, too, were other ships with strange names: Vostok and Morny, Russian, among the first ever in those waters ; Captain Cook's immortal H.M.S. Resolution which got nearer to the coast of West Antarctica than any ship since ; Astrolabe and Zelee, French ; 38
H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, British ; Shackleton's Endurance, a pitiful wreck crushed in the ice.
In the Weddell Sea, that great bite out of Antarctica which adjoins Graham Land, was shown the epoch-making penetration a hundred and forty years ago by the British Captain James Weddell in his little ship lane. No ship has ever navigated the Weddell Sea as far as Weddell in the same longitude. Weddell was amazed that there was no ice at all almost within sight of the ice continent. The intrepid captain turned back in clear seas ; all subsequent attempts to pierce the thousands of square miles of solid ice have failed. The map showing Weddell's historic voyage—in clear seas which should have been ice—brought the reason home to me right then: The Albatross' Foot!
The storm made the factory ship lean at her anchors.
Drake Passage! The Golden Hind, Sir Francis Drake's flagship, was on the map, fighting her way round Cape Horn.
There was almost a physical resemblance between the man
in front of me and the famous Elizabethan. I wondered if Drake had found his tiny cabin aboard the Golden Hind big enough for his spirit. This wasn't, for Upton's.
" Sit down," he said. He couldn't seem to get the words out quickly enough. " There's not another map like that anywhere. Are you wet? Get him a drink, Helen. She hauled you up out of the boat?"
I could go along with Upton, I thought. I didn't know what he wanted me for, but among the tough-charactered men the Antarctic throws up, Upton stood out.
Helen went across to the drinks cabinet. " Captain Wetherby believes it was luck. He had a strange bird with him. It hasn't got any wings, and he says Nightingale Island is the only place in the world where they're found. The rescue was a matter of luck."
There was an odd self-rejection about her. I interrupted. "
It wasn't luck—it was spot-on, skilled judgment. She rescued the whole boat. What's more, her landing with it lashed to the side out there on the flensing platform was masterly.
Lucky for me, since all my instruments and charts are in the boat."
He looked at me keenly. " They're safe, these things of yours?"
" Y e s , " I r e p l i e d . " I w e n t b a c k t o s e e a f t e r w e h a d landed."
39
Helen stood with the drink in
her hand, her eyes fixed on me. They were alive with distress. She was begging me not to say what happened.
" It's a strange bird," she said in an even voice. " It makes little appeal at first. It has no flight." She splashed more spirits into the glass without taking her eyes from me. " I don't expect it sings. Perhaps somewhere there is a message in its disdain and isolation."
I could not fathom her. " Ask Sailhardy," I said. " I'll go and fetch my things from the boat."
Upton shook his head. He pressed a button on his desk. A sailor came in. He spoke rapidly to the man in Norwegian. "
Can't lose personal property," he said. In the same jerky way, he clicked off the desk lamp and put on the general cabin lights. It was all Southern Ocean and luxury. A chunk of baleen held down the charts he had been studying ; the central chandelier was made of four seal skulls skilfully matched and joined ; his chair was sealskin stretched over dark timber.
Pirow came in with Sailhardy. Upton nodded perfunctorily at the islander. " When will the gunner-captain boys be here?" he asked Pirow.
Pirow grinned. " All of them in time for a drink. You can bet on that. They're about as tough a bunch as you could hope to meet in a month's sail round South Georgia."
Helen stood with the drink she was pouring for me in her hand. Upton went across to the cabinet. A heavy gust of wind shook the factory ship. I felt uncomfortable. She just stood there with the drink. " I'm glad we got in before that started," I said.
" I had a good pilot," she addressed herself to Sailhardy.
" Sailhardy?" asked Upton, his hand on a glass. The islander did not seem to hear him. He was as far away as Helen. I think he half regretted not being out in the gale.
Upton repeated the invitation. Sailhardy shook his head. "
I like a drink, but food is more important on Tristan. One is only tantalised by alcohol."
Upton shrugged. He took my drink from Helen. " Water in your brandy? I've just come from the Cape. Full cellar of your national drink."
A Grue Of Ice Page 4