A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  " Aye," said Reidar Bull. " But I won't send Aurora's crew. They had no hand in it."

  " Easy," said Hanssen. " If we sail to-night, we can be off Bouvet to-morrow morning. We'll transfer Aurora's crew 144

  at the approaches. She won't need a full crew to take her in.

  Walter can manage the engines for a couple of miles. Captain Wetherby will find no problems in sailing a ship."

  " I don't like the idea of letting Captain Wetherby have a ship," grumbled Brunvoll. " Anything can happen—a squall, a patch of fog, and—poof—when we look, the sea will be empty and Aurora will have disappeared. If anyone needs to be guarded, it is the English captain."

  " We'll guard him all right," said Hanssen with a grim smile. " We'll unship that hellish gun on Aurora. I'll have it rigged forward on my harpoon platform. It'll only take a couple of hours. Kerguelen can sail maybe half a mile astern of Aurora as we approach the Bollevika anchorage.

  If any tricks are played, they'll get a double stream of lead—

  the way the seaplane did."

  It was no use arguing with' men in their savage mood. I

  turned to Pirow. " Can you remember—even vaguely—

  how Captain Kohler mined Bollevika? Did he lay a definite pattern, taking a bearing on something ashore?* Was it a regular line? Have you any idea at what intervals Meteor dropped the mines overboard?"

  Pirow shuddered. " No, but I remember how Herr Kapitan Kohler laughed after we had mined the Agulhas Bank, off

  South Africa. We came close inshore towards a big lighthouse, which the fools had left burning—in wartime! We started mining from the hundred-fathom mark, and zigzagged shore-wards. ' If anyone ever finds the plot of these mines, it is more than I would know,' Captain Kohler said. He did the same at Bouvet. The mines were also set to float at any depth."

  I was not as concerned as Pirow. I knew that Kohler must have used the German " Y " type mine, which was fitted with a self-destroying device should it break loose. To lay his mines deep, as he must have done at Bouvet and off South Africa, he also must have used a very light mooring-wire, and the odds were that Bouvet's heavy seas had since loosened the moorings, and that the mines had destroyed themselves. My mind raced ahead: if I could get hold of Aurora . . . but I would want Sailhardy and his whaleboat.

  I looked at the islander. " You hear what Pirow says, Sailhardy. I can't ask you to come, in the face of that. I'd like your boat, though."

  Sailhardy smiled faintly. " Were they Y' type mines, Bruce ?"

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  " Yes," I answered. The skippers looked suspicious.

  Mines and mining were above their heads.

  " I'd come, even if they weren't," he replied.

  Reidar Bull shook his head. " I don't like a man going just because of his captain."

  " There's no need to worry about me if Aurora strikes a '

  mine," replied Sailhardy. " The man you should have on your conscience right now is Captain Wetherby. He did not shoot down the plane."

  Brunvoll was unimpressed. "I'll follow your Kerguelen into Bollevika, Hanssen. We must all take bearings and check Aurora's course—we don't want to be mined ourselves through carelessness."

  " We could send the helicopter in ahead as a spotter . . ."

  began Reidar Bull.

  " Leave Miss Upton out of this," I said roughly. " You bastards are very fond, it seems, of playing around with other people's lives while you sit safe on your arses. I know what Bouvet weather can be fog, gales, high seas, damn-all visibility. Leave her out of it, I say! You couldn't spot a mine moored at depth from a helicopter anyway, and particularly in these seas."

  " It is strange to see a man who can get behind a gun and kill like you have done, becoming so concerned over anyone," sneered Reidar Bull. " You shouldn't keep your soft side for women only."

  I had to see Helen again. Reidar's Bull's remark brought home how curiously she had come to be allied in my own mind with the Southern Ocean. Twenty years previously, on a night as wild as the Creation, I had taken my squadron of warships past Cape Horn into the Drake Passage and its mountainous seas. La Mer—I could not think of it without hearing Trenet's voice singing the song of that name. Now the wild threnody sobbed at some inner part of me when I thought of our unspoken farewell. At the moment, Meteor's mines seemed unimportant beside my wish to see her.

  Helen's face was before my mind's eye. " I couldn't give a seal's burp for your plan to save your skins and make us into a lot of guinea-pigs," I said harshly. " I'll take Aurora in.

  But only if you let me see Miss Upton again before we sail."

  I turned on Pirow. " Pull yourself together, man. If we strike a mine, you won't know what hit you, anyway."

  He smiled wanly. " I wish I could detect them by radio."

  Reidar Bull dropped the barrel of the Schmeisser a little.

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  " You are a brave man, Captain Wetherby. Mikklesen said so, too. War has no place in peace, though. I could almost wish it had been Walter who had shot down the seaplane.

  " Am I to see Miss Upton?" I demanded.

  He looked inquiringly at the other skippers. " Very well, Captain. We have nothing to lose, and you may have something to gain by it. To-morrow at the approaches to Bollevika —

  who knows?"

  I remembered Bollevika, lit on a dark winter's afternoon by the fragile, strange luminosity of the solar flares which wince and bicker across the Southern Ocean from Cape Horn to the Great Ross Barrier, and my occasional sight of the ice-cliffs and towering peaks while the breakneck lightning of the blue magnetic flare twitched from mountain peak to turbulent sea.

  " Bollevika—who knows?" I echoed. " Will you signal Miss Upton to come now from the factory ship?"

  He nodded. " March—to the catchers!"

  The party trudged wearily across the remaining distance to the ice-edge. Reidar Bull shouted orders to the crews to dismantle the Spandau-Hotchkiss, while he himself went aboard the Crozet to signal Helen. He left Brunvoll to guard us with the Schmeisser. Upton refused to be drawn into any conversation and merely grunted when Brunvoll or Hanssen spoke to him. He and Walter were still shackled. I was grateful for it, since I feared another outburst on the heels of his morose fit. Walter tried to be ingratiating to our captors, and Pirow retained his terrified attitude, as if it were already certain that Aurora would strike one of the mines.

  Once he edged close to me. " Herr Kapitan," he said in a low voice. " Thompson Island has a safe anchorage, and there are warm springs. You know where the island is . . ."

  " Shut up!" snapped Brunvoll. " I don't want any whispering, particularly between you two!"

  I waited. I had scarcely any regard for the activity round me as lights were rigged on Aurora's and Kerguelen's decks, as well as heavy tackles to lift the gun into position from one to the other. We were too far away to hear the crews talking, but once or twice I saw grim glances being cast in the direction of the party. It was clear that they shared the skippers' repugnance at what I was supposed to have done.

  My ears were attuned to hear Helen's approach ; at length when the familiar roar of the rotors hung over the ships and 147

  shore party, it took away, at least for me, some of the forlorn and desolate air of the scene: the men and the ships seemed so puny alongside the great expanse of ice; the very wind seemed to be holding back its violence in preparation for an onslaught against us. I reckoned the temperature must be anything up to thirty degrees below freezing. We stamped and beat our arms to keep warm. Upton's and Walter's shackles, secured outside their thick gloves so that the icy metal would not burn them, clinked dismally.

  The helicopter landed next to us. Helen cut the engine.

  " You can have half an hour," said Brunvoll. " Then everyone goes aboard. After we've rigged the gun, the men still have to get that machine lashed aboard the Crozet."

  He waved the Schmeisser. " Don't get any ideas of making a sudden break in the helicopter, althou
gh where the hell you'd go to, I wouldn't know."

  I swung myself up into the machine and went forward to

  the cabin. It was warm inside. The light from the loading-lamps threw Helen's face into sharp relief. She was wrapped in the sea-leopard coat. We looked at each other without saying a word. We were insulated from the world outside. I could not even hear the men working on the gun.

  Helen broke the long silence. " It couldn't have ended like that, could it, Bruce?"

  I shook my head. Her face was taut and the eyes were never lovelier.

  " No," I said. " But it could end another way to-morrow." I told her about Meteor's minefield. For a while she did not reply, then she reached out and took my gloved hand

  in. a grip that revealed her feelings. " If it were not for you, Bruce, I think at this moment I would hate the Southern Ocean and all its works. It never relaxes, never gives, does it? Yet it's a part—perhaps more than half—of you, isn't it?

  Because of that, I can't hate it."

  I leant over and kissed her lips lightly. I saw the pattern of a down-horizon solar flare explosion in her eyes.

  " No!" she burst out. " They shan't do it, I tell you!"

  She reached for the throttle switches. " They shall not, not while I can get you away."

  I knocked her hand away and pointed. Brunvoll had

  the Schmeisser ready pointed.

  " Before the rotors got going, Helen, there'd come a burst from that," I said. " Don't think that Reidar Bull, Hanssen and- Brunvoll don't mean it. They do."

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  " There's a ghastly pattern of things which has caught us up," she exclaimed heatedly. " Here's an ocean as big and as empty of humans as any in the world, and yet it's a human mesh that's taking you away from me."

  " The mesh your father wove," I said.

  " I know, I know," she went on. " But you and I realise that my father isn't the whole cause."

  " Thompson Island," I said.

  " Thompson Island!" she said brokenly. " God! How I hate the sound of that name!"

  " This moment together is borrowed time," I said gently. "

  It's running out."

  " I'll fly patrol over Aurora to-morrow," she said. "If she's mined, I'll pick you up, like before."

  " No, Helen. You know you can't take off from a small catcher's deck pitching in the sort of sea we'll run into at Bouvet."

  She buried her face in her hands. " What do you think I'

  ll feel when I watch Aurora go in towards Bollevika?

  You . . . My father, Bruce—we could still get him well again with treatment."

  Brunvoll gestured from below. Helen's face was full of anguish: I kissed her and she clung to me for a moment.

  Then she took my hand and put it over the compass platform.

  " If Suzie Wong has a ghost, let it come and guard Bruce Wetherby's luck," she said. I looked deep into her eyes again and then went aft and jumped down on to the ice. At the

  head of Aurora's gangplank, as we filed aboard, I turned and looked back. I could just make out the shadow of the sea-leopard coat against the perspex window.

  Upton, Walter, Pirow, Sailhardy and I were locked into one small cabin. Shortly after nightfall the catchers sailed—

  for Bouvet and the Bollevika approaches.

  I had thought that once we were alone, there would be a fresh outburst from Upton against me. It did not come. I spent an uneasy night, almost grateful for the guard outside the door, lest Upton's mania should return. He took the sole bunk in the small cabin for himself and covered his head with the blue hood. Sailhardy and I huddled on the floor together for warmth ; Pirow and Walter exchanged a few words. I cut Walter short when he tried to speak to me. By drawn Aurora was pitching heavily, and I wondered how the transfer of the crew was to take place. Pirow again spoke anxiously about

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  Meteor's mines before dropping off into an exhausted sleep: it was like going into an ambush, knowing it had been laid, for to me the mine is the assassin, the thug: the torpedo, by contrast, is the hunter and it pits its skill against range and angle, against water salinity, depth, and the chance of a sudden variation of course by its quarry.

  Shortly before midday Aurora's engines began to slow. It was impossible to see outside as the porthole was frosted over. There were several sharp alterations of course and then a heavy thump against Aurora's side. I realised what the ice-wise catcher captains were about. They were mooring Aurora alongside a small iceberg with another of the catchers in order to transfer the men.

  The cabin door opened. Brunvoll came in, carrying the Sphmeisser. His heavy clothing was streaked with ice. With him was another burly Norwegian.

  Brunvoll grinned without humour. " We're about ten miles off Bouvet. You can now have the pleasure, Captain, of seeing whether our friend's story about the mines is correct."

  " For the last time, Brunvoll, listen!" protested Pirow. "

  The place is thick with mines!"

  " So you said before," he replied. He handed the other man a key and said something. He went forward and unclicked Walter's and Upton's manacles.

  Upton's eyes were hard. "Brunvoll! The first score I have to pay is with Wetherby. The second is with you.

  Remember that."

  Brunvoll shrugged. " Get up on deck, all of you. And remember, Captain, that Kerguelen with the Spandau-Hotchkiss will be only a quarter of a mile behind you.

  You'll see when you get on deck, there's no sea-room.

  There's an open-water passage leading into the Bollevika anchorage, zigzag and half frozen. There are icebergs jumbled together everywhere."

  It was no use arguing. " Brunvoll," I said, " if we are mined, are the boats ready to use?"

  "Yes," he replied brusquely. " I had them checked last night. The falls are all running freely. Also, the whaleboat is lashed across the winches by the foremast." He spoke to Sailhardy. " You don't have to go with this lot, you know."

  " Nor does Captain Wetherby," said Sailhardy.

  " On to the bridge, then," replied Brunvoll.

  The skippers had done what I thought. Aurora was held against a small berg by a couple of ice-anchors, with Kerguelen 150

  immediately astern. Two men stood in the Spandau-Hotchkiss harness and pointed the wicked weapon at Aurora. Moored alongside Kerguelen was Brunvoll's ship Chimay, and half a mile astern, pitching heavily in the open water, was Crozet. I half-closed my eyes against the sudden onslaught of frozen spindrift carried along by the wind. It was upon Crozet that my attention fixed. On her forward catwalk was lashed the helicopter. The orange stood out clearly in the wild morning. Helen would be aboard her, I told myself.

  I looked about me with fear in my heart. Ahead, scarcely visible, was a mound which looked like a gigantic iceberg. It was Bouvet. We were still too far to distinguish detail clearly, except the soaring twin peaks, capped with ice. The sea was thick with ice and icebergs. Open water, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, made a winding passage between the ice towards the grim island.

  Brunvoll ushered us ahead. " Walter," he said, " get down to the engine-room. The rest of you stay here." There was a cluster of about a dozen men, Aurora's crew, filing aboard Kerguelen. Two had remained to cast off the ice-anchors.

  "It's all yours, Captain," said Brunvoll. " You'll have to steam slowly, because of this." He gestured at the ice. " When you reach Bollevika, anchor a quarter of a mile offshore. I'll come aboard again."

  He lifted a hand in the direction of the gun in Kerguelen's bows. The twin barrels pointed straight at us. One of the gunners raised a hand in reply. Brunvoll and the tough Norwegian then backed down the bridge ladder, as if still afraid we would do something, even in the face of the two weapons.

  I cupped my hands. " Cast off," I shouted to the men at the ice-anchors. I rang for " slow ahead ". Aurora moved slowly clear, heading towards Bouvet.

  Our course was dictated by the open water through the

  ice. I could not have mano
euvred, even if I had wished.

  Aurora pitched more heavily than I would have expected, which meant that the ice was loose and the sea itself had not frozen. Kerguelen followed, and, in line ahead, Chimay and Crozet.

  When we had covered about five miles, a squall swept

  across the sea. It cleared, and I saw Bouvet close. The cliffs might have been the savage black conscience of the Southern Ocean itself. The pale sunlight inched into the awe-provoking sky with the tenacity of the orange lichens which stained the stark cliffs near the water's edge. The great twin volcanic 151

  craters of Christensen and Posadowsky threw up their ice-covered heads three thousand feet to left and right ; away on the left the cliffs, instead of being sombre basalt, were a strange sulphur colour. Running down from the twin glacier cones was a fantastic wall of solid ice, and where the cliffs became vertical, which I guessed was at a height of about 1, 500 feet, the ice rose sheer out of the sea to join with the glaciers high above. The ice took its blackness from the cliffs, Which it parasitised. Here and there was an eroded headland with fingerlike projections of rock, which reached out as if in supplication to the brutal face of the Westerlies ; where the sea and the ice had made rocklike arches, they contorted themselves in strychnic agony. The Southern Ocean might have chosen its colours for the grim island in the same way as some old painters used to grind up Egyptian mummies for pigment when portraying scenes of death. Bouvet stood at bay, shoulder to the great winds, without a chink in its black armour, almost without light except at the edge of the flag-cloud flapping at the summit of the twin peaks, its edges pale orange-white. There must have been fifty or sixty icebergs jammed on one of the outlying reefs of Bollevika, so that it was almost impossible to see the line of the coast. Bouvet stood before us—wild, evil, at war endlessly with the mighty undulations which threw themselves against the cliffs from the water below, and the winds above which sometimes even the anemometer cannot measure.

  Sailhardy was at the wheel. I glanced at the echo-sounder.

  Twenty-five fathoms. I took a quick bearing on a headland on the port bow. That was where Christensen's party must have erected an emergency depot, or roverhullet, as they called it, stocked with provisions and fuel. I wondered if such a hut, however well built and shored up, could ever have survived the gales of thirty-odd years. Bollevika anchorage itself lay slightly away to starboard, but I thought I might have to do what Christensen's ship had done during the whole month his party had been ashore—steam back and forth at slow speed, because the gales and rollers from the south-west .