A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  " It is hopeless!" I said. " There's no future in going on with this nonsense, Upton. Let us get back to the roverhullet while we still can."

  " Shut up, damn you!" he snapped. " I am going to Thompson Island—to-day! Get that clear."

  The day was still dim, although it was mid-morning. The sun was shut out by thick driving cloud which seemed to have a ceiling lower than the cliffs. New icebergs had piled up with the gale, but there were open passages between huge rafts of ice. The roar of the surf was matched by the ice crashing and grinding.

  I think Sailhardy, too, secretly admitted ,the futility of the scheme, though he didn't say so.

  " There would be only one way to launch a boat in this,"

  said Walter. " Proper davits and a ship's side."

  Upton swung round on him so suddenly that the blue bib of his windbreaker, staine ' now with salt, flapped in his face. "

  Davits! My God! Walter—you've got it!"

  " I don't see any davits," answered Walter heavily. "

  Look!" Upton went on excitedly. "

  Up there!" 184

  We looked up the cliff-side track, as if half expecting to see some davits materialise.

  " The rock! The rock and overhang!" went on Upton. "

  Get up there, Walter, and secure two ropes on either side of the overhang—from the rungs of the ladders. They'll serve the same purpose as falls from a davit. All we have to do is run the ends round the thwarts of the whaleboat, lift and fend her clear of the cliff, and we'll get a clean launch above the waves."

  The scheme seemed impossible to me. " Upton, we'll be thrown against the cliffs as soon as we touch the water."

  Upton snatched the Schmeisser from Walter and pointed it at me. " Take your choice," he said, his voice deadly with menace. " You assist, or else you can stay here—with a dozen bullets in you." I looked helplessly at Helen, who stood white-faced, silent, cuddling the seal pup. I shrugged. There was nothing I could do.

  Walter scrambled up the pathway, and, more quickly than I expected, the two ropes snaked down. Sailhardy and I ran them round the thwarts, and when Walter returned, the three of us, with Pirow helping, lifted the boat shoulder-high and secured them. The boat was suspended head-high against the cliff and, when we let her go, would swing forward about fifty feet round the second cliff which enclosed the beach from the north until she was directly below the overhang. One false move and the canvas side would be torn open. The albatross was under the forward decking. I helped Helen in by lifting her up on my shoulders. Pirow and Upton followed, using Walter's shoulders. The two of them hauled Walter up, then Sailhardy, and last, me. We fended her off the cliff-side with the oars and inched forward until we hung free above the waves.

  Sailhardy and I eased the ropes loose round the stern and forward thwarts respectively. I awaited his signal. The smallest lack of synchronisation between us when we cast off would pitch us all into the sea, now rising and falling under the keel.

  Sailhardy tensed, watching sea and wind. " Let go!" he shouted.

  The boat dropped heavily into the water. Sailhardy moved quickly to the tiller and I whipped up the ochre-coloured mainsail. The boat gathered way swiftly towards an ice-lead running to the gaunt, sulphur-coloured north-westerly shoulder 185

  of Bouvet which is known as Cape Circumcision. Sailhardy then stood up on the stern decking, steering with his right foot on the tiller-head while he conned a passage through the ice.

  I turned from securing the mainsail halliard to say something to the islander. I looked aghast at the horizon, so that he too swung round to see. The bank of ragged cloud, drifting on a level with the glacier, gave the impression of a line squall, but I recognised it as the spearhead of the storm I had anticipated. There was a flurry of icy rain. Cloud segments started to writhe up and down in contorted whorls a mile wide.

  Deliberately, a cloud shape started to reach down towards the sea's surface. To the north-west, two further vast and perfectly-drawn rulers of cloud funnel, spinning on an axis a mile wide and held upright by its own gyroscopic motion.

  Then it pitched forward and lunged into the sea. A great gout of spray and ice rose. Swaying like a Bali dancer, the wedded mass of sea and cloud moved towards us. We cleared the stark cape as the water-spout crashed against the cliffs, a quarter of a mile astern of the frail boat.

  Bouvet vanished in the turmoil.

  To hide his agitation, Sailhardy became formal. " Course for Thompson Island?"

  " Steer north-east by a half east," I ordered.

  12. Under Parry's Arc

  For three days Sailhardy scarcely left the tiller. Our estimate of the time we would take to reach the locality of Thompson Island as marked on Norris' chart had been hopelessly astray. Four hours for eighteen miles to Nightingale from Tristan, we had reckoned, and therefore we had given ourselves about a day and a half at the outside for the forty-five miles from Bouvet to Thompson. The storm had decreed otherwise.

  From the time Bouvet had disappeared, sea and wind had made our lives a freezing wet hell. How many times Sailhardy's skill had saved the boat during the night I do not know, but I had witnessed it at least half a dozen times during the daylight hours. Several times the islander had had to drag the boat's bows round to face the gale in order to ride it out without being swamped, before putting her back on course

  —as best he could—for Thompson Island.

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  By dead reckoning, I considered that the whaleboat must

  have reached the approximate vicinity of Thompson Island on the chart. My noon sight was almost due—for what it was worth in the bucking boat. There was a vast drift of storm cloud, through which there was an occasional glimpse of sun.

  This was the position sight which I hoped would persuade Upton that there was no Thompson Island where the chart said. Upton, Sailhardy, Walter and I were in good shape, but I was worried about Helen. The wild gyrations of the boat had exhausted her, and she was very silent. Pirow had sent off more faked life-raft signals to Thorshammer, and on the first day after leaving Bouvet, had told us with a grin that the catchers had signalled Thorshammer telling of our escape, adding that we stood no chance in the wild weather. Thorshammer had replied, Pirow said, that her chief concern was to find the life-raft: the destroyer refused to accept the catchers' repeated assertions that the signals were faked.

  I crawled along the rough grating on the bottom of the boat to Pirow's cubbyhole, where my sextant was stored away from the prevailing wetness. I gave the thumbs-up sign to Sailhardy, sitting steering. His right shoulder and arm were caked with congealed ice and the accumulated spicules round his hood seemed to carve deeper the lines of his strong face.

  He grinned back.

  Upton jumped to a sitting position on the forward thwart.

  He shot a glance round the empty sea. Visibility was about a mile. " Is it time, Wetherby? Are you going to shoot the sun now?"

  I paused and showed him the time. " In a quarter of an hour.

  At our voices, Walter, who was still in his sleeping-bag, pulled himself out and looked round. " You could pass by bloody Thompson Island and never see it in this."

  " Shut up!" snapped Upton. " We're close, and if we have to beat round in circles for a week, I'll find it. What about that bird—is he showing any signs of wanting to fly?"

  The albatross was clinging like a figurehead to the decking in the bows. He was picking up strength daily. We had fed both the seal pup and the bird on the fish we had caught, and the albatross had accepted it docilely. Walter shook his head glumly. " If land were close, he'd be wanting to be off—and there's not a sign of it."

  Upton became more agitated. " We're looking after the 187

  damned thing too well. It's no wonder he doesn't want to leave when every home comfort is laid on for him."

  I took my sextant from its case and wiped the fogged eyepieces. A flurry of fine sleet and snow blocked out the sun. I stood, straddled by the amidships thwart, trying to k
eep my balance. The horizon swung rapidly.

  I took the instrument from my eyes. " It's hopeless, Upton."

  He grabbed the Schmeisser from Walter. " Get on with it! Get on with it!"

  I looked at Helen. Up to that moment, I think, she still thought there was some remote hope for her father. Now she saw him as a madman trying to force the sun to shine at pistol-point. Her head sank forward so that her chin rested on the seal pup's head.

  I shrugged. " What do you expect me to do—manufacture a sun and a horizon?"

  " You're stalling, Wetherby 1 You know the answers, and by God! I'm going to get them out of you!"

  " Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " There's a break coming—

  quick !"

  The islander's keen eyes had detected a gap in the flying wrack. I rammed the eyepiece to my eye, one finger on the vernier scale. For a brief moment a sallow light appeared while I battled to keep the horizon glass steady. My fingers twiddle the micrometer screw. Then the flying cloud obscured the sun.

  " Blast! blast! blast!" burst out Upton. " Did you . . . ?" "

  Yes," I replied. " I got a fix. Not too bad, in these appalling conditions."

  " Where is Thompson Island—which way?" he demanded, without a thought for intricacies of a navigator's calculations.

  It showed the state of his mind. I did not reply, but put down the sextant on the thwart and started to work out our position.

  " Give me the chart," I said to Upton.

  He pulled the parchment from his windbreaker and handed

  it to me. I made a little cross on it. I felt I had to go through with the useless charade. It was idle trying to explain to Upton the errors and difficulties of using an outdated chart.

  " There," I said. " We are now one mile to the north of Thompson Island."

  I looked at Helen as her father swung round and scanned

  the sea to starboard. She was sobbing gently.

  " Bring her about!" he ordered Sailhardy. Despite the 188

  danger of the sea catching us beam-on, the islander manoeuvred the boat. The whaleboat was now trying to work across the run of the sea and the wind. One could only guess speed, but I let half an hour pass.

  We reached the position where Thompson Island was supposed to be.

  As far as the eye could see, the sea was a turmoil of blowing spindrift under a blanket of cloud.

  " According to my calculations, we're sailing over the solid land of Thompson Island at this moment," I said.

  The irony in my voice brought him to me. " It's another filthy Wetherby trick!" he screamed. " It's a trick, I tell you!

  You bastard!" He thrust the Schmeisser against my chest.

  " Father ! Don't!" Helen stumbled over, but he thrust her aside roughly.

  " What have you done with Thompson Island?" he shouted. "

  Thompson Island! Thompson Island! . .

  He was so beside himself that I don't think he consciously grabbed the sextant, but despite the fact that he was unaware of its workings he picked it up and tried to read the fix I had made.

  He stiffened. When he spoke, the hysteria was gone and in its place was a coldness which was more deadly. " Why,"

  he asked, " would a man make a notch on his sextant, Wetherby? Why, Walter, I ask you as a navigator of sorts too, why would a man file a little notch?"

  " Let me see," said Walter. Upton handed him the sextant ; his eyes never left my face.

  " What does it mean, Walter? Read it! Would the position of the notch be anywhere near here?"

  " I'm not the bloody Captain, and I need time for a thing like this," said Walter sullenly. " This is a fancy instrument, too."

  Upton was frighteningly quiet. " You've got a minute to tell me whether the notch indicates Thompson Island, Wetherby."

  It was Walter's fumbling with a type of sextant he had never handled before that reaffirmed in my mind my resolution that I, and I alone, would keep the secret of Thompson Island. I could almost sense Helen's and Sailhardy's shock as I pretended to acquiesce.

  " Yes," I said. " That is the position of Thompson Island."

  Helen gazed at me, wide-eyed. " Here, let me show you." Walter, unthinkingly, handed me the instrument. I was

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  barely a jump ahead of Upton. " Walter!" he shouted. "

  Don't .. ."

  He was too late.. I took the sextant and tossed it overboard.

  It was fully two minutes before Upton spoke, in a strangled voice. " In God's name, what did the notch in the sextant say, Walter? What is the real position of Thompson? Where is Thompson Island?"

  " I dunno. I hadn't a chance to see. I don't know my way round a fancy thing like that sextant. The island can't be so far from here, though, because the notch lay close to his reading to-day."

  Upton's hands were shaking so that I thought he would

  fire the Schmeisser involuntarily. " Where did your notch show Thompson Island to be, Wetherby? Where, man, where?"

  I laughed harshly. " Look around you, Upton! It's not here, is it? And while I live, you won't find out either."

  He levelled the Schmeisser at me. " You'll take me there! I say, you'll take me . . ."

  I cut him short. " We're in the middle of damn-all in as bad a storm as I've seen. It may get worse. If you've any sense left, you'll tell Pirow to signal Thorshammer now—

  now, do you hear, and try and have her pick us up while

  there's still time."

  " Never!" he said. " In the space of a few minutes you have become the most valuable person in the world to me. You, and you alone, know where Thompson Island really is."

  Heaven help us if he should find out that Helen knew, I thought.

  His voice was unsteady. " You would not have thrown away the sextant if you had not believed in the caesium, would you, Bruce?" He became almost imploring. " Bruce, I know about caesium and you know about Thompson Island. We could be a great team. . . ." He saw the look in my face and his eyes became hard. " Very well, then. We search. We'll search the sea for Thompson Island."

  I saw that he meant it, despite the weather. I knew, too, how many expeditions with specially equipped ships had searched thousands of square miles of these self-same waters for Thompson Island, all without succes. A search in the tiny whaleboat would result in one thing only—death within a few days. If I set course—with the loss of the sextant, 190

  I would have to rely on Sailhardy's methods of navigation —

  to pass near Bouvet, we might be able to regain the roverhullet. I felt sure that in the exhausted state we would find ourselves in then, Upton would be forced to lie up, and I could try and get a signal off to Thorshammer. I was firmly resolved as before, not to reveal the whereabouts of Thompson. I was gravely concerned at Helen's weak state, and a search which I knew in advance to be futile would bring tragedy.

  " No," I said. " We do not search. It would be suicide.

  Sailhardy will have to navigate—his own way."

  " You mean ... 7" breathed Upton.

  I turned away from the overwrought face to the islander. "

  Steer south—with a little east in it."

  Sailhardy looked keenly at me, and then, without a word, brought the whaleboat round to the course. The gale seemed to be mounting in fury and we were driven forward by a tiny storm staysail, no bigger than a man's shirt, which I rigged.

  The whaleboat tore to the south and east—towards Thomp-

  son Island.

  By afternoon it was a full fifty-knot blow, near the top of the Beaufort wind scale. If we could have hove-to we would have, but there was nothing to be done but try and keep afloat. For three days the whaleboat raced like a frightened animal before the gale. There was no stopping, guiding or holding it. Sailhardy and I shared the tiller watches. Sitting in the high stern, the wind threw against our baths, as we huddled over almost double, a volley of ice, snow and frozen spray with the Sten-gun-like insistence of a Spanish dancer's heels. At times I found myself sobb
ing at the remorseless beat, the long bursts of the fusillade, until I thought I could endure no longer ; then would come a merciful lull, only to be followed by a further savage volley scything everything before it. I was barely conscious of bits of ice, growlers and small bergs storming past in the uncertain light, which seemed to vary between pale green by day and complete blackness by night. Wherever the spray settled it froze, until our faces, the mast, thwarts, gratings and canvas sides were coated. The motion of the boat prevented any heating, and the meals were sorry affairs scooped with fingers out of cans. Walter and Upton shared the forward decked-in section with the albatross, and Pirow was in the stern section with the radio. It was dark inside his cubbyhole and he might have been

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  dead except for the occasional flicker of sound as he continued to fox Thorshammer. The irregular ribs and rough gratings made sleeping a hell, and the wicked chill seemed to penetrate through the waterproofing and fleece of our sleeping-bags. I had stretched the ochre-coloured mainsail from the stern decking to a thwart, and under it Helen, Sailhardy and I lived, either he or I being on tiller watch. The seal pup shared Helen's sleeping-bag and brought a tiny patch of warmth in the pervading cold. When I had called Sailhardy during the previous night and crept into my sleeping-bag, I had been desperately worried to hear her talking deliriously.

  Now, in the middle of the morning, seeing her lying semi-comatose, I made up my mind to carry out the plan I had formulated when I had thrown my sextant overboard—to overpower Pirow and signal Thorshammer. If she could find us—

  and it was a big " if," in the gale—the secret of Thompson Island would still be mine, for no one would listen to Upton's ravings. I knew too, that I must act speedily. The strength was running out of me, and when taking over the tiller from Sailhardy for the dawn watch, I saw what a toll the Southern Ocean had taken of his great strength: his eyes were sunken after the cruel watches of the past week and he had been slow in speaking, wiping his lips with the back of his gloves to clear away the frozen saliva and mucous on the stubble of his upper lip. Upton and Walter had given up their gun-watch over Sailhardy and me—it was hardly possible in the storm—but they still watched me carefully when-ever I moved from my sleeping-bag.