Southtrap

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  Southtrap

  Geoffrey Jenkins

  Geoffrey Jenkins

  Southtrap

  CHAPTER ONE

  Erebus and Terror. The gates of hell. Darkness. Fear. That is what the words meant.

  I shivered. The banner which bore these names bellied in the soggy, warm wind from the ship's gangway to which one end had been tied. Then it thumped against her plating, a dull sound like a boxer's punch that hasn't landed square.

  'Erebus-Terror Cruise to Prince Edward Island and the Sub-Antarctic Regions.'

  The banner had been a tourist winner all right, ever since Captain Prestrud had brought the Quest into the Cape Town docks ten days before. I wondered whose imaginative brain in Orbit Travels had conjured up the gimmick. We could have filled the Quest's passenger accommodation three times over from the demand it had brought.

  Nevertheless, it went against my seaman's grain to dredge up the names of two great ships from their graves — unknown graves in the frozen wastes of the North-West Passage — and exploit them the way the travel agency had done. When ships die, they die. True, HMS Erebus and Terror had sailed the way we were going to sail — first to Prince Edward and Marion Islands, 2300 kilometres from the Cape and a fifth of the way to Australia, — then on eastwards to the Crozets Group, next Kerguelen, and finally New Zealand. That had been in the middle of the last century. They had been under the command of the great polar explorer, Sir James Clark Ross. They had broken open the way to the South Pole and Ross had put a ship's keel where none had ever dared before.

  I was now thinking of the ultimate dreadful fate of Erebus and Terror as I stood on the quayside awaiting a taxi to take me to the hospital. The way the banner flapped kept drawing my attention to it. This warm, sunny, mid-January morning — a slight south-easter was raising an ensign of cloud on Table Mountain — seemed a strange time to be thinking of their fate. But anyone venturing into ice automatically challenges fate as did finally Erebus and Terror, despite their double oak hulls braced with massive beams, their water-tight compartments and reinforced decks. In the end nothing could have saved them from a fearful death in the ice.

  Erebus, I seemed to recall, meant darkness. A name given to the icy regions through which the dead pass into hell. No wonder it was linked with terror.

  Now the Quest had been linked with them. And the Quest wasn't even ice-strengthened.

  I shivered.

  'Captain!'

  I had not noticed the man approach. He seemed to spring from nowhere out of the dockside clutter of cranes, bollards and hawsers. Except that you couldn't hide a man like that, as far as size was concerned.

  The sullenness and intensity of the way he addressed me took me entirely by surprise. I guessed him to be in his fifties, but it was hard to tell his age. Weather exposure or possibly whaling could have chiselled his tough features at any stage of life and his looks were not enhanced by a stubbly beard. He wore a sailor's dark rig and a cap without a badge. His gear might have been stamped with the hallmark 'Southern Ocean'.

  'Yes?'

  He had been waiting for me to respond to the 'Captain', and when I did, a curious flash appeared in his light-blue Viking eyes. It was as out of place as a lightning-strike on a clear day — and as menacing. It was gone in a moment.

  He raised his right hand in a kind of salute. If the first two fingers of the hand had not been missing, it might have been a V for Victory sign. As it was, the unnatural gap made a claw, an outsize crab's pincer, of the limb. The action and the hand were jerky and grotesque. They seemed to be activated by inner pressures.

  'Captain…?' He left the question open-ended.

  'Shotton,' I replied. 'John Shotton. And for the record…'

  He crowded me before I could finish. For some reason he appeared desperately anxious about the captain bit.

  'Captain Shotton — sir.'

  His attempt at deference didn't come off. It sounded like something he'd worked at, trying to hold down his natural truculence. He wasn't a deck-hand. He'd been used to have men obey him — at the double.

  'Wegger.'

  He introduced himself in a formal Teutonic way. From his bearing and blue eyes, however, I would have put my head on a block that he was Norwegian, like most of Quest's crew.

  'Rolf Wegger. I'm looking for a berth. Your ship — ' he jerked his head in the direction of Quest — 'is going South. I know the ice. Whalerman. Know it well.'

  I indicated the flapping banner while my mind tried to assess him. I temporized. I might well need the man. Half an hour ago an urgent call from the hospital had summoned me from the bridge: 'Come at once,' it had said. 'Casualty Department, Groote Schuur Hospital. Captain Prestrud is badly injured.'

  This isn't a whaling cruise,' I said to Wegger. 'It's…' I fumbled. What was the Erebus-Terror Cruise? Quest certainly was not the Lindblad Explorer; she was a converted freighter-cum-passenger vessel a quarter of a century old. That didn't mean to say she hadn't been beautifully built. She had first taken the water from a Bergen shipyard. She was one of the Thor type ships. You can always sell an ageing Thor ship anywhere. The thirty passengers and scientists the Quest would carry were not going to be cosseted behind air-conditioned promenade decks sipping gin and watching Antarctica slide by from a cosy capsule. They were a keen lot. They were going for adventure. The Quest's other name in a safe, dreary world was Adventure.

  It's a special kind of cruise,' I told Wegger. 'Semi-scientific. No whales. Whaling is dead in the Southern Ocean anyway. It has been for years.'

  'I should know.' He spoke with bitter vehemence. 'I should know.'

  'Look here,' I went on. 'I'm not in a position to offer you anything now. I may know more in a couple of hours.'

  He said, 'Captain Prestrud — I heard… I mean, him being hurt and all that — does it mean the cruise is off?'

  There was a curious note in his voice, almost as if he feared to ask the question. He had a grudge against life in his eyes. The cruise — well, I couldn't answer that myself. It depended on how bad Captain Prestrud was.

  'Maybe, maybe not. If not, then I may need an officer who knows the ice. What's your experience? Qualifications?'

  The tone of his reply surprised me. It was over-eager, almost pleading.

  'All the usual certificates. Also radio. I was in catchers — until the international convention killed whaling.'

  I wondered for a moment at his mention of radio, an unusual qualification for a catcher skipper. And at his age he must have been that. I would have to take his word for a lot of what he said; Quest was due to sail the next day and there would be no time to check. Yet he seemed competent enough. Quest's second and third officers were young and inexperienced and Wegger could provide the sort of back-up I would like to see. I found myself thinking as though I were already in command of Quest, although nothing was more uncertain than that at the moment. Where in hell was that taxi? 'I'll see you aboard at eleven,' I told him. 'I'm on my way to the hospital now. I won't know any of the answers until I have seen Captain Prestrud.'

  'He's bad?'

  I eyed Wegger curiously, and couldn't help wondering how he'd heard. He was making a great effort to appear casual. I reasoned at the time that his probing about the injured skipper was due to anxiety about the job. He must have been badly on his uppers if it meant that much.

  His inquisitiveness made me clam up. 'The hospital didn't say. I didn't speak to a doctor.'

  'How come you go to Prince Edward Island?'

  The unexpected question brought me up with a start. It was full of vehemence, as if he couldn't hold it back any longer. He took a half-step towards me, the sort of step a boxer makes before a punch.

  'It's not my cruise, Wegger,' I retorted. 'I joined the Quest here only
four days ago. I didn't plan it. Orbit Travels, the travel agency, master-minded it all. Quest is due to sail the route taken by Sir James Clark Ross. Prince Edward Island happened to be his first stop from the Cape. So the Quest stops there first, too.'

  Wegger seemed undecided whether to go on or not.

  I spotted a taxi. It slowed down, as if the driver were looking for a fare. I broke away from Wegger and flagged it.

  A young man with cheeks bunkered by gingery sideburns lowered a rear window. 'The Quest…?'

  'You're here,' I said, nodding towards the ship, 'and I'll take this cab. Dump your gear at the gangway and tell one of the crew to fetch it.'

  'I'll see to it, Captain.'

  Wegger was next to me again. Despite my hurry I could see that he was now falling over backwards to be obliging.

  'You one of the meteorological team?' I asked the newcomer.

  He opened the taxi door and got out carrying a couple of long cardboard cylinders.

  'No. Volcanologist. I'm Eric Holdgate.'

  'Look here, Mr Holdgate…'

  'Doctor.'

  'Sorry. I must get to the hospital — quick. There's been an accident. Captain Prestrud is injured.'

  His sideburns champed unhappily. 'D'you mean we may not…?'

  'I don't know what's happening yet.'

  His voice was charged with feeling. 'But I've just got to go. It's the chance of a lifetime. How else can I get' to Prince Edward Island.' Holdgate seemed more interested in volcanoes than in people. I don't think he noticed how Wegger looked. He said, as if giving a lecture, There are two distinct stages of volcanic activity discernible on Prince Edward Island. The old grey trachybasalt from the great cave definitely belongs to the first volcanic stage…'

  The taxi driver laughed, 'Jeez! I've never driven one like this before!'

  Wegger remained staring fixedly at Holdgate. The two remaining fingers of his damaged hand worked inwards towards his thumb as if they were searching for the missing bones.

  I wasn't in the frame of mind for puzzling.undercurrents. Turning to Holdgate, I snapped, 'We'd better shift your kit. Put it anywhere for now. If you want help from the ship, tell them I told you to ask.'

  'Careful with those cylinders,' he replied. 'If those instruments get smashed I'm done for.'

  The two of us humped the pile of luggage and parcels from the car. Wegger stood by, not doing a thing to help. When we had finished, Holdgate paid the driver and I got in.

  Wegger seemed to snap out of his preoccupation. 'Eleven sharp then, Captain?'

  'Yes. Ask for me on the bridge.' Addressing Holdgate, I said, 'I'll let you know about Captain Prestrud as soon as I get back.'

  He replied as if making an affirmation, 'That cave on Prince Edward is my whole life, you see.'

  I didn't see. But what I did see, as the taxi pulled away, was Wegger staring at Holdgate and clenching and re-clenching his fists.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The driver brought the taxi round in a sharp righthander so that we came close under Quest's bows. She might not have been new, but her fine-raked bow with its triple blue stripes on the white hull — typical of the Thor class of ships — gave her a timeless beauty, a look of seeking faraway seas.

  The taxi driver gestured at her figurehead — however often their names may be changed, Thor vessels are always distinguishable by the emblem depicting the god Thor with his right hand raised to cast his magic hammer.

  'You running another sideshow, Cap'n?'

  I was sitting next to him in the front seat — I never sit behind in a taxi — and he glanced at me in a slightly derisive way.

  'Come again?'

  'You're in the same place as that old sailing ship — I thought maybe they kept the same spot for the nut-ships.'

  'Quest isn't a nut-ship. Or a fun-ship. The ice isn't for that type.'

  He pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered me one, as if approving of my attitude. (You mean you didn't see that old sailer full of horrors?'

  'No.'

  A fortnight ago I'd been bringing the stout little store-ship Captain Cook in from a routine run from the Southern Ocean islands to Port Elizabeth, 700 kilometres to the east of Cape Town. I had had no idea then that soon I would be taking a ship-load of tourists and scientists the same way again. The Quest job was one of those things which come out of the blue, so easy that they seem pre-destined. Like a whirlwind romance. My comparison was spontaneous and bitter. Mine had finished in divorce.

  'I thought everyone had seen it,' said the driver.

  'I've only been here three or four days,' I replied. 'New job.'

  'That explains it.' He shook his head and laughed. 'It was good for business. I taxied half Cape Town to the ship. But the show itself was enough to give anyone the shits.'

  I remembered now. I'd seen the windjammer's picture in the paper carrying the advertisement which had brought me the Quest job. One long-distance call had practically clinched it. Captain Prestrud had told me to catch the next plane to Cape Town for a face-to-face interview. We had taken to one another at first sight. I had chucked my command of the Captain Cook and found myself first officer of the Quest in a matter of days. The windjammer the taxi driver was talking about was a modern replica of an old-time Australian convict hell-ship. She had called at the Cape on her way to Sydney.

  'Botany Bay,' I said.

  'Right, that was her name. I went for a look myself after a fare I'd brought to see her came back to the car and had hysterics.'

  He chuckled and drew heavily on his cigarette without taking his hands off the wheel.

  'My oath, you should have seen this doll! Well dressed, young — well, maybe not too young, but still making the running, if you know what I mean.' He leered at me. 'Comes back to this very car, flops down in the back, starts to gulp and sort of hiccup. Then she says, in a kind of high voice like I've never heard before. "They were cutting his balls off in there, that's what."

  "Pull yourself together, lady," I says. "They're only wax figures like Madame Tussaud's in London — they're not real."

  Then she looks at me and sort of gasps with the tears runnin' down her cheeks. "That's what's eating me," she kind of moans. "That it wasn't real."'

  He took his eyes from the road. 'Women!'

  He went on: 'So that's why I went and had a look-see myself. Of course, that doll was imagining things. What she saw was a kind of group — whadderyercallit?'

  Tableau?'

  That's it. Kind of tableau showing how the convicts were put in a salt bath when they first came aboard and were scrubbed with long brushes by the guards. The doll saw it her own way. My oath, she was carrying a load of sex!'

  He shook his head again at the vagaries of the opposite sex.

  'Was it as bad as that — the rest of the waxworks show, I mean?'

  I'll say. It really gave you the heebie-jeebies seeing what they did to those convicts down under in the early days — guys wearing neck-irons, guys locked in tiny cells where they couldn't sit, stand or kneel. Floggings, torture — you name it, they did it in those old hell-ships. You could see it all the way it was in Botany Bay.'

  'Now she's on her way to Australia?'

  'Left just before your ship came in. That's why I asked, are you another nut-show? The showbiz guy who owns Botany Bay must have coined a packet.'

  We were approaching the dock entrance gates and he waved towards Cape Town's main street running in the direction of Table Mountain.

  The guide who showed us round the hell-ship said Cape Town just escaped being made a convict settlement and they named Adderley Street after the guy who had it stopped. Maybe that's why all the locals went to see what they'd escaped. Jeez, when I think what they did to those poor sods!'

  I was interested in Botany Bay. I've sailed in all types of modern yachts and schooners, but never in a square-rigger.

  The owner — did he intend to sail her to Australia?'

  'Not him. The sho
w loaded him with dollars. He's still living it up at the Mount Nelson Hotel. He'll fly to Australia, and pick up another packet when Botany Bay goes on show there. He's got a crew do the dirty work of shifting the ship. Young guys. A dozen or so.

  'That day I went to see for myself I heard one of 'em talking to the skipper. "Tom," he says, "the sooner we get to sea, the better. I can't take this circus much longer."

  "Nor me," the skipper tells him. "But it'll all be different in the Roaring Forties. You'll get all the sailing you want there." Nice guy, I thought.'

  I said, 'They'll get all the sailing they want in the Roaring Forties, all right.'

  'Know those parts, Cap'n?'

  Know them! I've seen the gale-gusts come through the channel between Prince Edward and Marion hitting one hundred and twenty knots, the sea a tormented hell of corrugated water with waves fifteen metres from trough to crest, and the ice spicules spraying like automatic fire on the wind.

  'Yes, I know them.'

  He glanced sharply at me, and slowed for the dock check-point.

  'Something wrong, Cap'n?'

  'I was thinking of Botany Bay down those parts. A sailer. It's a bastard. You have to be tough to survive.'

  We halted at the entrance to have our papers cleared. Then the driver pulled away into the open street beyond, making for the big roundabout on the foreshore which would lead us to the hospital on the mountain slope dominating the city.

  'That guy was — the one you were speaking to by the ship.'

  The driver was not unobservant, 'for all his blabbermouth.

  'You know him?'

  'Not to say know exactly. But he's been hanging around ever since Quest came in — he must sleep on the docks.'

  I had a sudden flash of insight. 'Do you always do the dock run?'

  He was cautious. 'What makes you ask?'

  'I wondered if you took Captain Prestrud anywhere last night. He finished up in hospital.'

  The man's chumminess froze. I could have kicked myself for having mentioned it.