A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  would make anchoring impossible.

  I had just opened my mouth to give Sailhardy an order,

  when the mine exploded.

  Auroras port side was torn wide open.

  Stunned and deafened, I could not for a moment believe

  that it had actually happened. My mind could not credit that plating, decks, beams and rivets had been dissociated from 152

  all that they had been part of, seconds before--the very fabric of Aurora. A ragged chunk of metal sang and rang in the steel wall at the back of the bridge like an Apache's arrow. It had passed clean between Sailhardy and me. It would have taken off one of our heads had its path been a foot either side.

  Aurora started to roll towards the brash sea. A gout of water rose up from her side and then smashed down bringing chunks of ice clattering on the tilting deck. From beneath our feet came the sound of frames rending.

  It was Sailhardy who saved us. I saw that he was shouting, although his voice came faint to my stunned senses. " Quick!

  The whaleboat! She's going so quickly, we'll be trapped!"

  He grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust me down the bridge ladder. I stumbled over to the whaleboat and, fumbled, half-dazed, at the lashings. Above my head, the blocks swung loose as the mast sagged. Walter came running from the engine-room hatchway as if he were drunk. Even in my confused state, I saw he was carrying a heavy wrench and a flensing knife. He slashed at the ropes holding the whaleboat. Sailhardy reappeared, half thrusting, half carrying, Upton and Pirow. Upton appeared the least dazed of us all, except Sailhardy. He slid his little first-aid bag over his arm decisively as he too plucked at the lashings.

  I snatched the last rope free of the winch, tearing my hand on a rough rowlock. I scarcely noticed. Aurora's flared bow, harpoon gun and forward engine-room telegraph had been pushed back by the explosion to the line of the fo'c'sle ventilators. A heavy barrel from one of the starboard winches rolled past us as she prepared to plunge for the last time. Sailhardy, Walter and I pulled the whaleboat to the side.

  Pirow stood like a man concussed and Sailhardy had to thrust him into the boat, so incongruously gay in its bright Tristan colours, yellow, blue and white. Upton and Walter jumped in after us.

  " Fend her off, Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " Aurora's coming right over on us!"

  I p u s h e d t h e b o a t c l e a r w i t h o n e o f t h e l o n g o a r s .

  Sailhardy did likewise. We pulled away as the catcher leaned over.

  Walter also grabbed an oar. The three of us gave a couple of strong sweeps out of range of the dying ship's last . roll. Then Sailhardy took the high tiller, whose steering arm he had not had time to ship properly, leaving us at the oars.

  Aurora rolled over and disappeared. There was a muffled 153

  explosion as her boilers blew up, but we were well clear. She had gone down in about four minutes.

  Walter stood up and looked at the fast-disappearing patch on the sea which marked Aurora's grave. " She was a fine ship, as good as they come," he said.

  The other catchers had come to a stop. Kerguelen's bows started to swing away from the whaleboat in the grip of the sea.

  Sailhardy glanced astern at the catchers and called to me. "

  Get the sail on her, Bruce. We'll beat back to Kerguelen into the wind. The passage is wide enough to tack."

  The islander's words goaded Upton into action. Dropping his first-aid bag, he rose quickly, snatched the knife from Walter, and in a flash was at the tiller. He held the long blade at the islander's throat.

  " Beat back be damned," he said thickly. " Take her into the anchorage. We're going to land."

  I looked at the great cliffs unbelievingly. Only one party had ever got ashore at Bouvet—Lars Christensen's. That was in weather conditions which have never been repeated.

  " Land!" I exclaimed. " Upton! You must be crazy!

  You can't land on Bouvet!"

  There was a sandless parody of a beach at the foot of the cliffs soaring up to the Christensen glacier. Seas, with no land between them and South Georgia, threw themselves against the rocks.

  Upton's eyes were as hard and distant as our chances of survival if we tried to make the beach. " Walter! Stop drivelling over that bloody ship of yours! Take that wrench and don't hesitate to use it on them if they try any games."

  He thrust the knife closer against Sailhardy's throat. " The beach!"

  For a long moment the islander did not speak. I could see the mania mounting in Upton's over-bright eyes.

  I had to break the silence. " Can you bring the boat in, Sailhardy?"

  " The problem is not to bring her in, Bruce, but to hold her off the rocks once we get there."

  Upton jerked out his words. " Get going, do you hear?

  Get the sail on her quick, before the catchers do anything!" "

  You can't .. •" I started to say

  " I shall," he retorted. " You thought you'd make all the running on Thompson Island, didn't you, Wetherby? Now

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  I'm going to tell you something. We are still going to

  Thompson Island."

  " What in?" I asked.

  " In this whaleboat," Upton said tersely. His words tumbled over one another. " I've got Norris' chart, here."

  He tapped his windbreaker. " Thompson is only forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet. Christensen's party put up a hut on Bouvet. We'll take stores from that. We'll slip away before Thorshammer comes."

  I saw he meant it. The risks of the wild scene ahead were nothing to him in the face of his dream. He might force me to take him forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet, but we would not find Thompson Island there. I was inflexible in my own mind that Thompson Island's secret would remain mine. So Upton, too, knew of the roverhullet on Bouvet, one of the chain of emergency depots which have been laid round the palette of Antarctica, which the Norwegian skippers had started to argue about that first night aboard Antarctica when they were drinking hard. Looking at the ice-masked island, I hoped for the sake of the five of us that the roverhullet was still there.

  " Get the foresail on her!" snarled Walter.

  I tugged at the halliards, and the little rag, bright ochre-coloured, stood out like a board as it picked up the Westerlies.

  Sailhardy stood up, cocking a foot on the tiller to steer her while he conned his way through the ice. The boat gathered way. From Kerguelen came a long, ripping burst of fire.

  Upton jumped on a thwart and shouted obscenities at the catcher. The whaleboat was too low a target to bit, however, even for an expert marksman.

  His blue windbreaker hood fell back and he waved the knife at the catcher. "Come on, you cowardly bastards!"

  he yelled. " Come and get yourself bloody-well mined!

  Come on!"

  Pirow seemed to have regained his morale. "The Herr Kapitan Kohler did us a favour, really. The catchers won't dare come into Bollevika now!"

  The whaleboat picked up speed rapidly. It was impossible to see where the burst from the Spandau-Hotchkiss had gone.

  Sailhardy zigzagged round and through the ice, never losing his main objective, the small beach below the cliffs. The sea darkened as we neared the island. From the lowness of the boat, the cliffs appeared more massive: they were scored 155

  and striated, notched and grained, by the wind and the ice.

  The whaleboat swept in to within a cable's length of the shore.

  A long swell boomed past while Sailhardy held her in check, coming round in a broad reconnoitring circle. I saw the flat tabletop rock when the backwash recoiled from the cliff. I started to say so, but Sailhardy had also spotted it.

  " We're going in—now!" he called. The curious modulation in his voice made it clear above the thunder of the waves against the cliffs.

  He flicked a glance over his shoulder and selected his roller. He dropped to a sitting position by the tiller. He swung the stern into the comber, plumed with white ice and blowing spindrift. Half-way
to the flat rock, I whipped the sail off her. She scarcely lost way, the thrust of the swell was so great. Sailhardy gestured to me with his left hand: he was about to lay her broadside on her port beam. One

  moment we were in deep water, the next against the cliff. The rock lay exposed.

  " Jump!" shouted Sailhardy. " Jump! Out! Out! Out!

  Don't let her side touch, for God's sake!"

  I was first out over the bow. Almost at the same moment, Sailhardy leapt over the stern. Our heavy boots scrabbled for purchase on the rock as we held her, and the other three sprang clear. Without pausing, Sailhardy and I lifted the boat bodily out of the water and staggered over the broken rocks to the cliff face, out of the reach of the sea.

  The beach on which we found ourselves was not much bigger than a tennis court. It was easy to see we had come to the one and only landing-place, for where the rock formed a natural corner, out of direct reach of the sea and the wind, a flagstaff had been driven into the face of the cliff, so that it projected at an angle. The flag and the rope had long since gone, and the block at the top was rusted black. Under it was a weathered inscription in Norwegian and English:

  "Captain Harald Horntvedt, master of the Norvegia, formally took possession of Bouvet Island in the name of Norway on this first day of December, 1927, and at this spot hoisted the flag of that country in due assertion of Norway's claim and sovereignty."

  Upton read it and laughed. He seemed nearest the way I

  had known him first. " The bastards!" he said without rancour. " They got here first, all right, and the British Government a year later waived all claims to Bouvet. But,"

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  he added, and his voice was hard, " no one said anything about Thompson Island."

  My objective at the moment was to try and find the depot hut. From the water-marks high above our heads, it was plain that the beach became submerged in a gale.

  Sailhardy spotted the piece of board first. It had been fastened with iron spikes into the cliff on the left, or northern edge of the beach, where a headland jutted into the sea. It said simply: " Roverhullet ". A faded arrow pointed to what might have been a man-made path, running zigzag up the cliff-side's confused mixture of glaciated rock and ice. I lost sight of it near a formidable projection, a veritable fortress of ice as big as the Tower of London, high above our heads.

  " We've somehow got to climb the cliff," I said. " Roverhullet should be at the top—if it hasn't been blown away. It is quite likely that parts of the path have been swept away by rockfalls since the Norwegians were here. Sailhardy and I will make a reconnaissance."

  " Will you hell!" said Upton. " All you'd have to do would be to roll a few rocks down on our heads, or block the path. Without the depot, we'd be dead in three days—

  and you know it."

  " Yes," I replied. " I know it. I also know how desperate our position is, even if we find the hut. If you had any sense, you'

  d get back to the catchers as quickly as the whaleboat would take us."

  " There's enough rope in the boat to lash the five of us together," said Upton. " You, Wetherby, will lead. Then Pirow, between you and Sailhardy. If he slips, there will be two good men to hold him. Then me, and Walter in the rear."

  Sailhardy looked anxiously at the sky. " If it come up a full gale, the sea will sweep this beach. The boat will be lost."

  Upton smiled mirthlessly. " That boat is as valuable to me now as it is to you, Sailhardy. Get it up into the corner by the flagstaff, and weight her down with stones. If the path isn't too rough, you and Wetherby might carry the boat up to the top later. After all, the Norwegians must have trans-ported a whole depot hut and stores to the top."

  I looked up at the grim cliffs and shuddered. The Norwegians had made the climb later in the season, when there was less ice. We did not have even an ice-axe to cut steps up the glacier should it become necessary.

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  I had an idea. " Bring the rowlocks from the boat," I called to Sailhardy, who had already started, with great care, to weight down the boat with some of the big boulders the place was littered with. " We may find them useful higher up as pitons. That wrench of yours may be wanted as a

  hammer yet, Walter."

  The prospect of the climb seemed to have cowed the

  big Norwegian. Perhaps he was suffering from delayed shock from the mine, too. He surveyed the vague pathway gloomily. " One man slips, and the rest go with him," he said. " Better we climb unroped on our own."

  " No!" retorted Upton. " Get that rope round us, Sailhardy."

  I took the six rough, horseshoe-shaped rowlocks. They

  were so cold they would have seared the flesh if my hands had not been gloved. The rope was perhaps thirty feet long.

  Sailhardy tied and tested each knot carefully.

  When we were about to start, Pirow bowed formally and

  shook me by the hand. It was clear that he thought our

  last moments had arrived. " I wish you luck in the lead, Herr Kapitan. I wish it for myself, too."

  I shrugged and we set off up the ill-defined path. After the first thirty feet it widened and, although steep, was not dangerous. We trekked up and up through the moraine.

  Pirow behind me started to blow heavily. I raised my hand and called a halt, lifting my eyes for the first time from the pathway. My head reeled. Fully five hundred feet below

  were a series of rock-pools, beyond the headland which masked the beach. One slip of the boot on the narrow track would have sent any of us crashing to a fearsome end. Far out to sea, beyond the line of the icebergs, I could see the three catchers. My heart lifted at the orange splash on one of them—it was the helicopter aboard Crozet. The thin line of ships stood blockade across the open lead of water. How

  Upton proposed to get past them in the whaleboat was beyond me.

  We paused for five minutes, not speaking. Then on and up.

  The ascent became steeper and slippery. The wind on the

  exposed face plucked at our clothing. The weather was clearer, which was a bad sign, for it meant that the wind was coming hard off the ice. After another few hundred feet, I found myself gasping the raw air, which rasped like a file in my throat. Behind me, each man had pulled his hood as close to 158

  his face as he could. On Walter's beard I could see the icicles where his breath had condensed and frozen.

  We struggled on. Round a bend, the pathway ran dead. It

  was clearly defined and ended against the side of the huge fortress of rock which I had noticed from below. The enormous rock overhung the cliff and the pathway. Like everything higher up, it was coated with a veneer of ice. I edged closer. Then, beneath the six-inch patina of ice, I saw a steel ladder set into the rock, leading beyond an overhang twenty feet above my head.

  " Walter!" I called. " Bring that wrench, or pass it up here. There's a ladder under the ice. Ill try and chip it free."

  I steadied myself and the wrench was passed cautiously from hand to hand, each man fearing he might slip and take a death-plunge. The height seemed to smooth out the rollers. I swung the heavy wrench against the ice. It bounced back. I might have been striking the rock itself. I struck again.

  The solid head of steel splintered into fragments. The cold had made it as brittle as glass.

  I faced about, precariously. " Upton! Do want to go on with this crazy climb any further? You're risking everyone's lives."

  The cold and the exertion had flushed his face that strange pink, as if his anger were permanently engraved in it. " Either you go on, or you come back . . . into this!" he replied. He waved the knife. " Hammer the rowlocks into the ice, and climb up on them. Get going!"

  " Bruce!" broke in Sailhardy. " Let me go! I . . ."

  But I had already started to untie the rope from my waist.

  Pirow's face was pinched. " If you fall, don't fall on me, for God's sake!" he mouthed. " Don't go, Herr Kapitan."

  In reply, I hammered the first crude rowlock cauti
ously into the ice with the shaft of the wrench a few feet above the pathway level. I swung myself up, one foot across its broad horseshoe. Nothing else stood between me and the drop to the sea a thousand feet below. Carefully, and not using much force, so as not to shatter the wrench shaft or the rowlocks, I hammered in another. Using the rowlocks as pitons I reached twelve feet, where the rock overhang began.

  Through the ice, clear as plate-glass, I could see the rungs Christensen's men had clamped into the rock. Even assured of the ladder's safety, each load carried to the summit must have been a hair-raising experience.

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  I hung on a piton set below the overhang, looking for a

  suitable place to drive in the next. Somehow the rungs of the ladder seemed clearer. I balanced on one leg and drove in the next rowlock.

  The ice stripped off the overhang like orange peel. The rungs had been clearer because here the ice was only a couple of inches thick.

  My gloves clutched empty air. I started to fall. The wrench and piton clinked on the ice and shot downwards towards the rocks and sea. My foot slid off the piton. As I slipped sideways, I grabbed in frantic terror. My right hand closed over one of the newly-exposed rungs. At the same moment my left fingers groped, found, and clasped. My feet swung wide away from the rock face, over the sea below. I cast one desperate glance beneath. The four men were staring at me with as much horror as I myself felt. There was only one thing I could could do: I swung myself sideways and made a desperate clutch at the rung up. My hand closed round it. I hung for half a minute before repeating the manoeuvre. The muscles in my arms started to kick. I knew they would only last another few minutes. I edged still one rung higher and then pulled my body in against the cliff, resting my toes on the shelf of ice, about six inches wide, where it had peeled away.