A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

" Are you sure it's Thorshammer signalling?"

  " Yes," called Pirow. " She's telling us to keep transmitting." There was a short pause. " Now she's calling Life-raft! life-raft! Keep transmitting! Keep your key down!

  Can you hear me? Can you hear me?' "

  " Pirow," said Upton, " come out of there!" Pirow was badly shaken. " I want you to send a message, do you hear? Just the same weak sort of message you have been faking up as coming from the life-raft. You are to give our exact position."

  " Don't be crazy!" said Walter. Helen and Sailhardy joined us. " You're telling Thorshammer to come and get us—just what this bastard has been doing."

  I did not like Upton's look. " I'm telling her to come—

  not necessarily to come and get us. What is our position, Wetherby?"

  " Go to hell," I replied. " Find out the position of Thompson Island yourself."

  " No matter," said Upton. " Put the key down, as the destroyer wants, Pirow. Let her get a good bearing. Find out how far away she is and how soon she'll be here. That is very important."

  Pirow's mouth was taut. " Can I elaborate a little bit—

  technically, I mean?"

  " Do what you bloody-well like, but bring that warship here to Thompson."

  " I don't understand . . ." began Walter.

  " You :'don't have to," replied Upton. " I want you strong.

  Feed yourself up—right now. Pirow will give us an idea how soon the destroyer can be here. You have to load 5.9-inch shells into the hoist of that gun over there."

  The big Norwegian looked astonished. " You're—you're going to fight it out with Thorshammer?"

  " No." he said. He waved at the graveyard. "None of these fought it out with Meteor. I'll play Kohler's game.

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  The fjord is ranged to the yard. All we have to do is get on the gun and point it. Let Thorshammer come in on the current—Pirow will see to that. You're a harpoon-gunner, Walter. It'll be easy. The destroyer will be a sitting duck."

  " By God!" exclaimed Walter.

  I interrupted incredulously. It seemed to me the final insanity. I could see that Helen thought so too. " You can't sink a warship, Upton! You can't . . ."

  " I would sink a- whole fleet for those," he replied, pointing at the veins of caesium. " I am going to blow her out of the water. The surprise will be complete. The crew certainly won't be at action stations when she comes in on the current."

  " Don't he ridiculous," I said.

  He waved again at the caesium veins. " They said Thompson Island was ridiculous. You know, they laughed at you too, just the same way as they laughed about your Albatross'

  Foot. I believed in Thompson Island, and now I have it.

  Britain, Norway, Germany, America—they've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds searching for Thompson. No, they sneered, it did not exist. You knew it existed ; I had only my faith. I also believed in caesium—here it is."

  Pirow came out. " The batteries are very low, so I've switched off. There's enough power for only a few mare signals. Thorshammer is happy, though. She's got her bearing and she's on the way."

  " When will she be here? When, man?"

  Pirow was very certain of himself. " Nat before evening, if she had our exact position. The bearing wasn't all that good. She'll still have to search around—say in a radius of ten miles. She's certain to locate Thompson Island by radar during the night, but I guess her surprise will be so big that she won't risk coming in until daylight"

  " Food! What we want is hot food!" exclaimed Upton. "

  This afternoon we will cross the fjord to the gun. No rowing for you, Walter—Wetherby and Sailhardy will do that. I want you fit to work that gun by to-morrow morning."

  We gathered driftwood and made a big fire on the rough shingle close to the boat. Without the fire, it was warm enough to shed our heavy clothing, and by afternoon we were all feeling fitter, and I was relieved to see some colour in Helen's pale cheeks. She was very silent, however, and apart from the preparation of the food, did and said little.

  After another substantial meal at midday, we set off across 209

  the fjord to the gun emplacement. Sailhardy had taken more of a beating than I thought, and he seemed to flag at his oar very much at the end of the pull. Although the current was so powerful, it had not the grip on the shallow draught of the light whaleboat it would have had on a big ship. It was relatively easy to steer at a shallow angle across the current towards the glacier head and then use the counter-current on the emplacement side to coast down to the gun itself.

  The sight of the gun filled me with dismay. It was a magnificent 5.9-incher, mounted in a concrete emplacement about twenty feet above the level of the fjord on a shelf of rock. Concrete had also been poured over the rock at water-level to provide a landing-stage, in which were sunk several metal mooring rings. Helen bit her lips when she saw the gun and cast me a glance of apprehension ; Sailhardy looked strained and reserved, but Upton and Walter were jubilant.

  We tied up and Walter and Upton jumped ashore, Walter guarding us with the Schmeisser while Upton investigated. It was clear to me that a destroyer, even ready for action, would fight a one-sided battle against the gun. Upton ran back to us down the concrete steps from the gun itself, carrying a Czech pistol he must have found in the arsenal.

  "Come on, Wetherby! Come and have a look! Thorshammer's in for the surprise of her life!"

  There was no doubt about that. On the firing platform I

  realised again what a genius of a gunnery officer Kohler must have had. For a moment as I stared along the sights of the weapon I remembered what Kohler's guns had done to H.M.S. Scott before I could get close to sink him with torpedoes: one of the 5.9-inch shells had gone through the starboard boiler while her whole 30,000 horsepower was thrusting her in for the kill, and she went over to starboard with a list which drew the awe and admiration of the Simons-town Dockyard when eventually I made my stricken way through the Roaring Forties to Cape Town. One boiler-room and the after messdeck were full of water and dead men, and at times the starboard gunwale was awash. I remembered, too, how when Kohler's superb salvo crashed home into the vitals of my ship, I automatically ordered Sailhardy, on the torpedo tubes, to fire all torpedoes into the sea " set to sink " before we ourselves were blown up by them. His voice had been steady over the phone back to the bridge: he had asked me to lay H.M.S. Scott broadside to her target and to let him fire them at the enemy rather than into the sea. Water pouring in, 210

  H.M.S. Scott had swung beam-on to the wild sea. Sailhardy, like Nelson's gunners at Trafalgar, had fired over open sights on the roll of the sea. Two of his salvo four torpedoes had sent Meteor reeling to the bottom of the sea.

  I dragged myself back into the present. Kohler's gunnery genius had rigged an effective hand-hoist for the heavy shells, which meant that firing them was easy. There was a complete set of calibrated ranges according to the speed of the current and the physical features of the fjord. The headland was sketched next to its range—oddly enough in yards and not metres-9,300. Where the cliff started to ascend from the entrance there was a patch of pumice like a brick kiln: it was marked as such on the range chart-8,000 yards.

  I did not want to see any more. Thorshammer's fate was sealed once she came round the headland into the fjord. I went back to the boat without speaking. Walter inspected the gun while Upton guarded us, and then Pirow removed

  the radio from the cubbyhole and spent the best part of an hour rigging it at the rear of the gun.

  The journey back to the warm side of the fjord was easy: we drifted down the slack counter-current on the glacier side towards the entrance and then rowed into the strong current, which carried us down past the ships' graveyard to our original landing-beach with its steam jets.

  We collected more driftwood and lit a big fire. The sun's last light made the glacier-caul more evilly green than before. Darkness fell. The stars themselves looked baleful, reflecting off the glacier. We ate anot
her huge meal and lay in our sleeping-bags. Upton had told us to be ready to leave for the gun before dawn. Walter, who seemed to have regained much of his strength, sat by the blaze with the Schmeisser. I lay awake, turning endless futile schemes over my mind. I fell into an uneasy sleep.

  The air of unreality of the fjord—the gun, and the destroyer coming to her doom—was heightened when Upton woke us: the Southern Lights lit the fjord in blue and violet and glittered off the glacier-caul, dominating everything. Sailhardy and I rowed like sleep-walkers. Helen drew her hood over her face when the chill of the glacier struck us. I could not see her eyes, but I felt inwardly that they too must have taken on the unreal light of our surroundings. Pirow was talkative, tense, back in his war-time role of The Man with the

  Immaculate Hand ; Upton and Walter eagerly discussed ranges and speed of loading. The afternoon before, they had 211

  slid one of the long naval shells into the breech and swung the muzzle of the weapon from one range to the next, according to the calibrations. Then they had set it on the headland target. All that was left to do now was to pull the firing lanyard when Thorshammer appeared.

  The whaleboat eased alongside the landing stage.

  " Come on, Walter! Come on, Pirow !" said Upton. He turned to me. " You three stay right here in the boat, see?

  We're going to be busy as soon as it's light, but don't try -

  anything,

  anything, do you hear?"

  " Do you expect me to sit here with hands folded if the Thorshammer returns your fire?" I asked.

  " She won't," he said confidently. " You're quite safe."

  Helen dropped back the hood of her sea-leopard coat. "

  Father, for the sake of . . ."

  He turned his back and said harshly to Pirow: " Call out Thorshammer's signals, and yours to her."

  In the silence, the boots of the three men clumped up the concrete steps to the gun. I heard the radio come alive. Pirow repeated Thorshammer's signals in a low chant.

  " DR—I am coming to your aid."

  " Shall I reply, Sir Frederick?" he asked in his normal voice.

  In the silence, Upton's voice was clear. " How soon will it be light, Walter?"

  Half an hour, maybe."

  " Light enough to fire?"

  " Aye, I can see the outline of the headland already."

  Across the fjord the tracery of old masts and the silhouettes of the dead ships were starting to show against the first light, which unobstructed by the low entrance to the anchorage, unlike the glacier end where we were, which was still in blackness.

  Upton's voice was exultant. " Bring her in, Carl! Bring her in!"

  " Life-raft," stumbled The Man with the Immaculate Hand. "

  Mosby to Thorshammer. Cannot send much longer."

  The transmission rose, fell, ebbed—weakness, a surge of 1

  strength, then exhaustion.

  " Hold on, hold on!"

  Pirow was calling out Thorshammer's signals.

  " Taking bearings on this transmission."

  I could almost see Pirow grinning at his eat-and-mouse

  game.

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  " Can't last much !onger . . ." he tailed off. Then, like an exhausted man taking a grip of himself: "Are you close, Thorshammer?"

  T h i c k f o g . R a d a r s h o w s l a n d o r b i g i c e b e r g . K e e p sending. Keep sending."

  Upton broke in: " Say it is ice, not land, Pirow. She mustn't be warned. She must not know anything until she comes round the paint on the current."

  Pirow resumed his chant while he transmitted: " Ice.

  No !and. Clear visibility here."

  " Strong current," came back Thorshammer. " Are you experiencing same?"

  Upton's voice came back, jubilant. " We've gat her, Carl!

  We've got her, Walter! She's in the fog-belt, caught by the current!"

  I stood up and shouted. "Upton! Stop this madness!

  Stop ..."

  His face was livid as he leaned over the edge of the firing platform. " Shut up, do you hear! Shut up!" He pointed the pistol at me. " You've outlived your usefulness. . . ."

  " Sir Frederick!" called Pirow. " She's saying, ' put your key down, put your key down!' Do I?"

  The interruption diverted Upton's attention and saved my life. " For God's sake how long will she take in the grip of the current to get here?" he asked, disappearing from view.

  " About twenty minutes, I guess," replied Pirow.

  " Lock the key down!" said Upton. The chatter of the key turned to a continuous failing note as the power ran out.

  He continued to forget me in the intensity of waiting.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Suddenly Sailhardy raised his head. " Bruce! There's a wind! Feel!"

  The dawn wind began to steal off the cold glacier side of the fjord towards the warm, current side.

  " I'll cast her off—you get that sail up damn quick," he whispered. To Helen, who was white and drawn, he went on, " You must take the tiller, ma'am, while Bruce and I get her clear with the oars. Right?"

  She nodded, and glanced apprehensively at the gun. The three men were out of sight.

  " Bruce!" hissed Sailhardy. " My God! Look!"

  Thorshammer burst round the point, crab-wise, half out of control. Her turbines were fighting the relentless current. She was not being much more successful against it than

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  Kohler's victims. As a gunnery target, the elongated profile could not have been better.

  " Cast off ! Cast off !" In my anxiety I raised my voice.

  Sailhardy freed the painter, but he too knew that they must have heard me up above. He thrust the tiller into Helen's hands while I grabbed one oar and he another. " Steer towards Thorshammer, ma'am! Zigzag, Bruce! You first, me second!"

  I threw all my strength against the long oar. I straightened from the first punishing stroke and froze. Walter stood on the emplacement, the Schmeisser raised chest-high. Sailhardy had seen too, and tugged at his oar to make the whaleboat yaw. It was a powerful stroke, but it was not enough. Helen rose in agonised slow-motion. The front of her right shoulder was polka-dotted as the heavy bullets tore through flesh and the sea-leopard coat. She slumped back. Then she reached to grip the tiller with her left hand underneath the useless right arm.

  Another burst tore the water round the boat. I tugged desperately at my oar to get out of range, and at the end of the stroke, whipped up the mainsail. Its faded ochre inched us out of range of the Schmeisser.

  As I straightened, I heard a noise which I thought was the blood racing past my eardrums because of my effort at the oar. I paused, uncertain. It Sounded like distant gunfire. Then Meteor's gun sounded as if it had been fired right under our stern.

  The shell screamed across the fjord.

  " Pull!" yelled Sailhardy. " Pull! Help the sail!" "

  Helen . . ." I began.

  " Leave her for a moment—pull! Oh, my God!"

  The director-tower behind Thorshammer's bridge mush-roomed with a direct hit. It was a curious nodule-shaped projection, and it seemed to hold still for a moment before becoming one in a wild tangle of steel masts and tracery of the search radar.

  I jumped on to the thwart and screamed helplessly at the gun emplacement. " Walter! Upton! You bloody, bloody fools! Stop it, you crazy bastards ! Stop . . . !"

  I looked square into the muzzle of the gun. I drew back, waiting for the ear-splitting crash—then the blast threw me full-length on the bottom gratings. I lifted myself to see the heavy armour-piercing shell shear through Thorshammer's modem, enclosed bridge. In the silence following the burst I heard the clang as Thorshammer's gongs sounded " action 214

  stations ". It was too late. The destroyer yawed, sagged, and yawed again as she swung out of control. With a grinding crash she cannoned into the side of the Kyle of Locha!sh.

  At the same moment, her twin 4.5-inch guns opened up. The shells bounced off the armour plate of the glacier
a thousand feet above Upton's head. The destroyer canted further, biting into some unknown obstacle against the old liner's side. Her next pair of four-five shells screamed high over the glacier.

  They were so wide that it was clear to me what was going on —

  the director-tower and bridge was a holocaust of stinking cordite fumes and roasting flesh ; the guns in the forward turret were firing aimlessly by local control.

  We were almost half-way across the fjord and the wind

  gripped the whaleboat's mainsail: she was sailing fast.

  " Lay the boat alongside Thorshammer," I ordered. " Get further down the fjord, and then swing into the strong current.

  She'll sweep down on Thorshammer by herself."

  We shipped the oars. I was first at Helen's side, but the islander's hands as he prised hers from the tiller were gentle.

  Blood dripped down her sleeve on to the steering-arm.

  " Stop my father!" she whispered. " Go back—do anything, but stop this senseless killing!"

  I eased her on to the gratings, but I seemed to be choking with the heat. The wind filling the sail seemed hot, too.

  " Listen!" said Sailhardy incredulously. " Gunfire!"

  From the southern side of the island came the sound of heavy guns. The concussion swelled, boomed, reverberated down the fjord.

  " Oh God!" whimpered Helen as another savage scream from the emplacement ended in a burst of flaring metal and tinctured smoke from Thorshammer.

  Then I saw. The sea by the entrance started to boil.

  Helen lay unconscious against me, her blood staining my

  hands and jacket. I pointed to the water. " Sailhardy Tunny!"

  Before he could reply, there was another rumble of heavy gunfire from the southern side of the island.

  " The Albatross' Foot!" he burst out. " The other prong of The Albatross' Foot!"

  I saw how The Albatross' Foot joined forces with the Thompson Island millrace and swept in to the head of the glacier where it must plunge into some gigantic subterranean fissure. I dipped my hand override. It was warm.

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  Sailhardy shook his head, as if to clear it. " That isn't gunfire we're hearing from beyond there—the ice is breaking up!"

  To produce sound like that, I told myself hurriedly, vast fields of ice must be shattering under the impact of the warm Albatross' Foot. Any moment the glacier would start to disintegrate. But would that solid caul break up quickly enough to put a stop to Upton's madness?