as the missle-men say of the target at Cape Canaveral) the missing prong of The Albatross' Foot.
Sailhardy moved away from the porthole when Upton tried again to press a drink on him, and came over to me, frowning deeply. " Bruce," he said, " we can get to Tristan, even in this gale. Let's get out—now."
I submerged my own misgivings. " Why? This is a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity for me to get to Bouvet, as you know."
" Look," replied the islander. " We've been shanghaied.
Politely, but none the less shanghaied. Upton has sailed all the way from Cape Town to Tristan in order to tell you that your plankton discoveries will help him discover the breeding-ground of the Blue Whale. Fair enough—they probably will."
"Then what are you objecting to?" I asked.
" His methods, his timing, everything," he replied. " He could have written you a letter asking you to go to see him in England, or flown you there from Cape Town, for that matter. True, the letter might take six months to reach you, but six months are not important for something that has been searched for for half a century. It must have cost five thousand pounds a day to bring this ship to Tristan.
When he gets here, he sends his daughter off into one hell of a storm to find you. It all points to one thing: you must be valuable—very valuable indeed—to him."
" He told us, he could net a straight three million pounds." "
It's a big expedition, isn't it?"
Yes."
" If he finds this breeding-ground, you'd expect this factory ship to be mightly busy, wouldn't you?"
" Yes."
" Pirow and I walked through the crew's quarters when we landed, to put his gear in his cabin," he said slowly.
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" There are only enough men to cope with a moderate catch. I smelt a rat at once, so I asked the chief flenser about biomycin. Biomycin is the latest American way of preserving a whale—you know, normally the meat and fat of a whale is quite useless about eighteen hours after the kill, unless preserved with biomycin. You can then keep them up to forty hours. You'd expect them to be cutting up whales on an assembly-line basis if Upton found the breeding-ground. Yet there's no biomycin aboard, and tiny, almost skeleton, flensing crews to cut them up."
" Upton may be a bit old-fashioned in his methods . . ." I started to say.
" What have you got in that bag of yours?" Sailhardy demanded, indicating the oilskin bag which the sailor had brought from the whaleboat.
" Charts, sea-temperature readings—that sort of thing." "
What charts?"
" Admiralty charts of Tristan, Gough, the South Shetlands —
you can buy them anywhere. Oh, and an old chart and log
which came to me when Wetherbys folded up. It's about 1825. It's probably the first of the waters round Bouvet."
"Bouvet!" breathed Sailhardy.
The cabin door flew open, Pirow stood there, a radio message in his hand. It was the disciplined attitude of the man, his deference to Upton, his superior, and his taut bearing, that made me recognise him in a flash.
The Man with the Immaculate Hand!
I looked in silent wonder across the noisy room at the
man who had lured so many British and Allied ships and
men to their deaths during World War II. Carl Pirow,
radio operator of the German raider Meteor, was a very different proposition now from the oil-drenched wretch
they had brought aboard H.M.S. Scott after I had gone in with torpedoes while the Meteor's 5.9-inch salvoes blanketed my ship. I considered Pirow the most dangerous single man the war at sea had thrown up against the Royal Navy. The Man with the Immaculate Hand we called him, and the
Merchant Navy took over the nickname in awe, because
of his uncanny ability to imitate any type of ship's radio transmission. When I had started my long search for the
Meteor I discovered that every ship, whether merchantman or warship, has it own idiosyncrasies in transmitting. There are as many ways of sending as there are radio operators. I looked across at his hands—yes, they were still beautifully 58
manicured as the war-time legend recounted. It was said that Captain Kohler of the Meteor had first called him The Man with the Immaculate Hand ; the German Navy passed it on to their propoganda radio ; the Royal Navy perpetuated it as we hunted, month after month, in the Southern Ocean while the Meteor struck again and again.
A chill struck through me, even in the warm, drink-laden atmosphere of the factory ship's cabin, as I remembered the standard distress-signal I had heard so many times, often blurred and incomplete as the raider's shells smashed home, from the ships placed under my charge in the wastes of the Southern Ocean.
First, the frightened " QQQ "-" I am being attacked . . ."
invariably followed by " rout "—" I am being shelled by a warship . . ."
I jerked myself back into the present and crossed the room to Pirow. I looked at him steadily. " Is that a message from Seekriegsleitung, that it's so urgent?"
For a moment his glance faltered as I dropped into the jargon of the operational staff of the German Navy High Command, and then he laughed. " I wondered how long it would be before you recognised me, Herr Kapitan."
There was a spurt of anger behind the pale eyes which made the calm poise of the master technician-faker more sinister. "It was no thanks to that stupid clot of a radio operator of yours that you came in with the torpedoes.
The last thing Kapitan zur See Kohler said to me was, I wonder if the British torpedoes will run true? Ours always gave trouble."
" Bruce!" said Upton peremptorily. He drew me aside. "
Here!" He thrust the signal into my hand. He wasn't drunk. The caffeine in his strange tipple offset the effects of the alcohol. The pink flush of anger was there, though.
I read the signal, written in Pirow's neat, post-office handwriting.
" Urgent. Repeat Urgent. Mikklesen skipper whalecatcher 724/004 Falkland to Norwegian destroyer Thorshammer via Tristan da Cunha meteorological station. British Sir Frederick Upton has discovered breeding-ground blue whale. Inside Norwegian territorial waters vicinity Bouvet Island. Upton has no permits. Expedition factory ship and four Norwegian catchers starting ex Tristan dawn to-morrow. Suggest appro-priate action."
Under it was the reply. "Thorshammer to Mikklesen.
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M e s s a g e a c k n o w l e d g e d . H e a d i n g a l l p o s s i b l e s p e e d f o r Tristan. Await my orders there."
Upton jerked his head at the group of captains. " Walter!"
Walter read it slowly. " The bastard!" he started to say. "
The bloody, two-faced bastard . . ."
" Shut up!" snapped Upton in a low voice. " Keep those boys drinking. Carl, come to the radio office. We've got plenty of time, and the Southern Ocean is a big place."
Pirow gave his half-smile, •half-sneer. " Except that Thorshammer is about twenty miles away—just the other side of Nightingale Island."
"How do you know?" rapped out Upton.
"I got a D/F bearing on her," said The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " She'll be here in an hour."
Thorshammer's message threw my doubts into sharp relief.
Either I would go now with Upton, or get ashore with no hope of ever seeing Bouvet. The presence of The Man with the Immaculate Hand had shaken me. What was a brilliant, if perverted, radio operator like Pirow doing with an expedition like this? You don't need radio to hunt whales, and wireless traffic in the Antarctic, as I knew from my long vigil at Cape Town listening to it, consisted mainly of weather reports and catchers' reports, all of it deadly dull. Pirow was there for some sinister purpose, that I knew. Was it his master-talent in deception that Upton wanted, or some knowledge from his days aboard the Meteor? In either event, the Blue Whale story was simply a cover ; but a cover for what? On the surface, one could not fault Upton's story, except that it was a little too slick. Even the lack of biomycin on board was not decis
ive—whalermen are naturally conservative and slow to adopt new ideas: but why did Upton want me so
urgently? What knowledge, or part-knowledge, did I share with Pirow, assuming that the Blue Whale story was a fabrication or a blind? Despite the risk, I knew what I had to do: I must assume command and go. The knowledge of what Upton, Pirow and Walter were really about might prove my justification if the Norwegians caught me.
I turned to Upton. " We can't talk here. Let's get to Pirow's office." Upton started to object when Sailhardy came too, but I waved it aside. We skirted the bridge to get to the radio office. I was struck by the radio set.
It was a powerful instrument, and the tuning dials were twice the size of any I had seen. Upton, Pirow, Sailhardy, and I crowded into the small space.
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" Sir Frederick," I said. " I now have a condition for coming to Bouvet. I must have sole and complete command
of this ship, and the catchers must operate under my orders."
Upton shot a quick glance at Pirow. " I'll be damned!
Why this sudden assumption of responsibility?"
" You can make up your mind, and it will have to be quick," I said. "Thorshammer can't be here in an hour with this sea running. She can't make more than fifteen knots. I know. Thorshammer is one of the new British Whitby class they sold to Norway. She's big—every bit of two thousand tons. Even so, I feel sorry for anyone in her to-night. It'll be coming green right up to the bridge. Western Approaches stuff. But she'll catch you before you ever see Bouvet."
" Unless you are in command," he said. He didn't wait.
H e p i c k e d u p P i r o w ' s t e l e p h o n e . " B r i d g e ! " h e s a i d . "
Captain Bjerko! From now Captain Wetherby will take over command of this ship. You will act on his orders, and give him the fullest co-operation." He turned to me. "
Satisfied?" I nodded. " Get on with it, Carl! Do something about it!"
Pirow looked at me with that half-smile. " I have your permission, Herr Kapitan?" I nodded, and he sat down at his transmitting key.
The thoughtful pause with the hand held high was pure Rubinstein. It was not a gesture to the three of us who stood round him at the key. It was the thought-mustering prelude of the artist. He was projecting himself into his medium. The left hand came down by the side of the key with the thumb and first finger splayed, the third and fourth slightly crooked. The right hand felt delicately for the key, live now as he put on the transmitting switch. He paused and looked up at me." " It was a South African who sent Mikklesen's message," he said. " He sent breeding-grond '
instead of breeding-ground '. He was an Afrikaner—he spelled ` ground ' as it is spelt in Afrikaans. One must therefore send like an Afrikaner—deliberately, thoroughly, one must search out in his make-up the essential puritan, and one must manifest it in one's sending."
He depressed the key. I read the Morse as he sent.
Carl Pirow as such was no more. This was The Man with
the Immaculate Hand, and these were the hands of a superb, corrupt artist.
" Mikklesen to Thorshammer, via Tristan meteorological station. Upton and catchers up-anchoring."
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The old thrill of the chase welled up inside me, despite my forebodings.
" The course, Herr Kapitan! The course! I must not break or they will guess!"
Deception course. The lay-out of Tristan da Cunha and the anchorage rose to my mind's eye. Thorshammer was approaching from the south-west. I must blanket her radar behind the cliffs which towered along the line of Hottentot Gulch at the back of the settlement. Blanket her to give my fleet a flying start, and then double back. I would keep the catchers with the factory ship inside the kelp line round by Jew's Point and Blacksand Beach—that would put the island and its peak between Thorshammer and us until I could run the factory ship straight at him in the storm. I would break out from the southern tip of the island just as he started to come by Anchorstock Point on the other side towards the roadstead —
he'd never think of using his radar to scan the south when he believed his quarry to the north and east. In this weather, I could slip past him within half a mile.
" Three hundred degrees," I said.
Pirow tapped out the figures. " You and I would have made a great team, Herr Kapitan."
" Finish that the way Mikklesen might," I added.
" Am awaiting your further orders. Anchored in nine fathoms off Julia Reef. Julia Point bearing 174 degrees."
Upton was visibly excited. " Walter must know, but not the others," he said.
" They're risking their necks, just the same as Walter . . ." I began.
" They won't, if they know there's a warship only twenty miles away. I need those skippers. They'll simply evaporate if they hear about Thorshammer."
All my doubts came rushing in. Upton's concealment of
the danger underlined the importance of his mission.
" Very well," I said slowly. " But they won't be very thrilled at up-anchoring in a blow like this."
" Thrilled or not thrilled, they'll do just what I tell them.
Any special briefing for them, Bruce?"
" I'll leave the explaining to you—as much as you care to explain," I said. " I want them to keep in my lee, about a quarter of a mile apart on the port quarter of the Antarctica.
We'll sneak past Thorshammer not very far from where Helen rescued Sailhardy and me. If I know anything about the radar scanner of the Thorshammer class, he won't want 62
to swing it more than is necessary in this wind. There must be no sudden opening up of the catchers' engines. They'll give a sudden spurt of flame in the darkness if they do. The convoy will work up speed gradually—nine knots at first, then eleven for twenty minutes, and then up to the maximum we can make into the gale."
Pirow's receiver started to chatter.
" Thorshammer to Mikklesen. Keep me informed. Heavy weather makes interception difficult. Will use searchlights and starshells. Keep clear of Upton's fleet."
" Will he, hell," I growled. Maybe the Southern Ocean brings out the essential man, the eternal hunter ; for all the ennui, the frustration, of the long intervening years of study and research, fell away. I had a ship under me ; I was at sea on a night as wild as the Creation. Upton must have managed the skippers, and from the bridge I saw the half-drunken, truculent men make their way by dinghy to their ships, and in less than half the time it would take Thorshammer to intercept us, my small fleet was at sea.
The gale hit us with a vicious left hook as we swung clear of Stonyhill Point, the southern extremity of the island, and took the full force of the storm after the shelter of Tristan's lee. The Kent clearview screen in front of the big bridge telegraph seemed to check for a moment in its quick , orbit. The only light was the main engine revolution indicator —
out of sight of whatever searching eyes there might be in Thorshammer. The squadron was blacked out on my orders to the mystification of the skippers. I was not used to such luxury on a ship's bridge. The nine large windows exposed one to the eyes of the night, and every time the fancy clock which struck the time by ship's bells gave its melodious chime, I jumped. I went over to the telegraph on the port wing of the bridge and rang for more revolutions: the Ray's patent revolution indicator quickened its tempo.
W e m a d e f o r T h o r s h a m m e r . I s p o k e t o t h e l o o k o u t through the telephone by the starboard doorway. " See anything, lookout?"
The coarse voice came back. " Nothing, sir. Niks. Niks at all."
I double-checked on the bridge to see that everything was in order. " I'm glad I'm not on a destroyer's bridge to-night," I said to Upton. " Raw steel ; raw sub-zero."
" What if Thorshammer spots us?" asked Upton.
" She won't," I replied.
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" No," said Pirow, who glanced at his sleeked hair in the reflection of the small light. " She won't. Not with Captain Wetherby in command."
The bridge phon
e rang. " Lookout, sir. Aurora coming in very close."
" Tell her to sheer off," I told Pirow. " Make quite sure the signalling lamp doesn't point Thorsharnmer's way." He smiled thinly at my precaution, superfluous to someone like himself. Antarctica yawed and trembled under a violent squall. Sailhardy, whom I had ordered to the small brass wheel, held her beautifully. The Chernikeef log chuckled to itself. We waited, silent, tense.
They say the eyes see best ten degrees off centre. Mine
caught -the tell-tail flicker of light away to starboard. It wasn't a ship.
Sailhardy spun the wheel. It seemed ages before Antarctica started to come round.
" Get my night glasses from the cabin—quick!" I told the Norwegian quartermaster whose place Sailhardy had taken. Upton handed me the bridge binoculars. I took one look at the name. " Standard British glasses are useless at night," I said. " I wonder how many ships were sunk during the war through not seeing a raider because of poor glasses."
The man returned and handed me my own.
Pirow smiled at Upton. " Raider's glasses! Zeiss. Sevenfold magnification. They took months to perfect a single pair of binoculars for one of our raider captains. The Herr Kapitan Wetherby has all the answers."
The night drew in under their power, but I could not trace the momentary light which had alerted me. I opened one of the bridge windows. " We are in raiders' waters," I said. "
Meteor used to rendezvous with Neptune off Tristan.
U-boats, too. I almost surprised one. His oil hoses were still in the water." Gale-impelled rain deluged through the opening.
" Ice!" said Sailhardy. " Ice! I smell it. Ice, Bruce, very close."
" I smell it, too," said Helen. I had not heard her come to the bridge.
The gale held an indefinable smell. There is nothing like it anywhere else: not in Arctic ice, even. In the Southern Ocean the smell of it passes into men's clothing ; the lookout in the swaying barrel on a catcher's mast knows that faintly wet, indescribable smell as his deadliest enemy and the companion of his labours.
A Grue Of Ice Page 7