Southtrap

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  My look was meant for an up-and-downer to put him in his place. It stopped at his left jacket pocket. It was heavy and sagging, the way a pocket sags when you carry a gun.

  'Miss Prestrud is naturally shocked,' I retorted levelly. 'She has gone below.'

  He took a step towards me in that same uncontrolled way as he had done ashore. If I had to hit him, it would have to be hard and once only — before he could get the Luger.

  The ship can't turn back now,' he said. 'We've got the drifter buoy…'

  'I am well aware of the implications, Mr Wegger, and of our commitments to the Global Research Programme.'

  An icebreaker would have come up short on the ice in my voice. Wegger didn't.

  'You've slowed the ship before you know what she intends to do…'

  It was lucky for him that the bridge phone rang. Petersen answered and held it out to me as if it might bite.

  'John?' said Linn. 'Can you come down to the cabin, please?'

  She might have been calling from the South Pole, she sounded so far away.

  I pushed past Wegger and went down to her.

  Linn was sitting at the desk on the wing-chair. Her eyes looked dark, very different from how they had looked out on deck only a little while before.

  I said gently, 'Linn?'

  She responded with only a faint tremor in her voice. 'An inquest can take a long time, can't it, John?'

  'It can, Linn. The police have to carry out their investigations first. Suspects, and all that. Then there are all the legal processes which have to be put in motion.'

  She looked at me squarely. 'And the medical.'

  'A post-mortem can be a long and tricky business when you've got the implications of…' I couldn't say it. I had liked Captain Prestrud too much.

  'Quest could be at Kerguelen before… before — ' she hesitated a little — 'before they finished that side of things.'

  'It might be even further. We may well reach New Zealand in time for you to fly back for the official enquiry.'

  'I hadn't pictured things as clearly as that yet.'

  'Quest belongs to you now, Linn. The decision whether or not the cruise goes on is yours.'

  She shook her head. The action loosened tears which hung on her cheek.

  'You have a stake in Quest, too, John. Not a material share maybe, but nonetheless very real.'

  This woman would read and understand me better than any of the others had done, I found myself thinking. Including the one I had married. Or those who had provided me with bed-comforts. Because she understood the Southern Ocean with her heart.

  'Thank you, Linn. I won't forget that,' I answered lamely.

  She got up, paced across the cabin, and then swung round and faced me. Her words came with a rush, 'For my part, the cruise goes on.'

  That's for my part too, Linn.'

  She came back to the desk and slumped in the chair as if the effort of making the decision had exhausted her. 'I'll have to tell Captain Jacobsen. He was Dad's dearest friend.'

  I went to the phone next to her. As I picked up the instrument, I put my lips for a moment against her hair. She didn't look up, but brushed a hand across her eyes.

  'Bridge,' I said. When the connection was made I continued, 'Mr Petersen, full ahead, if you please. Same course. And is Mr Wegger still there?'

  'Yes — I mean, aye, aye, sir.'

  Tell him to come to my cabin.'

  'Very good, Captain — I mean, sir.'

  It scarcely seemed a moment before Wegger entered. I stood next to Linn's chair. The controlled intensity of the man seemed to radiate, around him like a ship's electrical field in the sea. It was as if he were balancing on the balls of his feet, ready for anything.

  I dropped the formal 'mister' in addressing him, now that no other member of the crew was about.

  'Wegger,' I said, 'you had no right to be doing anything in the radio shack. Signals — especially those marked personal — are for my eyes only.'

  'I told you before that I knew about radio. I'm interested in the Quest's equipment. I was only looking around.' Then he added with a note in his voice I didn't care for: 'And I don't like being bawled out, especially in front of a woman.'

  'Miss Prestrud happens to be the new owner of the Quest.'

  'Is that supposed to make a difference?'

  I kept my cool. 'Miss Prestrud has decided to proceed with the cruise in spite of her father's death.'

  The ugly lightning flashed in his pale eyes. And, like real lightning, it seemed to bring an instant relaxing of tension in the big body clad in nondescript uniform.

  'Good.' His left hand went to his pocket and unconsciously smoothed it as if wanting — now — to conceal the gun. He took a grip on himself and said formally to Linn, 'My condolences, Miss Prestrud. I am sure your father would have wished us to go on.'

  'You happened to be a party to a confidential signal, Wegger,' I told him. 'It's to remain confidential, do you understand? We don't want a shadow over the trip, for the sake of the passengers.'

  He replied readily, too readily, 'Of course, sir.'

  'I intend to carry on with my lectures and the tour part of it as if nothing had happened,' Linn added. That's the way we want it.'

  I didn't miss the way she said 'we'.

  Wegger's whole bearing appeared to have changed abruptly. He said in the half-servile way which had grated on me when he had asked me about the job, 'I'm sorry I was a bit sharp on the bridge, sir. You see, this voyage is very important to me and if it had been called off…' He let it hang for a moment and then added, as if his words needed further explanation: 'When you've been out of a job for a long time a berth like this means everything. If there's anything I can do — in my watch off if necessary…'

  Thanks,' I replied. 'I'll keep that in mind.' What I had in mind, though, was that I would like to frisk him and see whether his Luger was loaded.

  As he left, I felt the engines picking up their running speed. Linn wasn't with me when the Quest rounded the twin peaks and the majestic cliffs of Cape Point and dug her bows deep into the swells of the freshening gale. She missed the sight that she had dreamed of, that mariners ever since Ptolemy had dreamed of. Later in the afternoon, however, she came up on to the bridge and stood silent, watching as the low, hummocky spit of gale-blasted land that is the extremity of the continent of Africa hove into view and then began to disappear astern. I made Cape Agulhas my departure-point along the 20th parallel which intersects it.

  The Quest headed South, and there was no more land between us and the Pole.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I let the special ten-year-old Cape brandy trickle slowly out of the screw-stoppered bottle into my glass. It was after dinner that same evening after we had left Africa. Captain Prestrud's cabin — my cabin, I kept telling myself, the man was dead — was hot and stuffy. I had taken off my uniform jacket, my collar was loose. At last I was alone and had a chance to think.

  I stopped the brandy at three fingers, and added only a little water so as not to dilute its superb bouquet. I dropped one cube of ice thoughtfully into the drink, then another. A random thought crossed my mind, triggered off by the sight of ice. Where we were going, the fish have their own in-built anti-freeze. I sipped and the brandy warmed my blood. I sat down, sipped again. I wanted to be alone, and yet I did not want to be alone. I looked idly round Captain Prestrud's pictures on the walls, including the fjord scene of Linn's home. They would have to come down. That went also for the preserved tip of a killer whale's fin which hung like a stiff leather triangle over the desk.

  I was restive. I moved towards the desk and fingered the fin. The phone rang.

  'Wegger here, sir. Sorry to disturb you off duty.'

  'No hassle. What's your problem?'

  Those cases of explosive charges for blasting a way through the kelp for the boats when we land… I'd like your permission to re-stow 'em.'

  'Aren't they safe enough where they are?'

  'They're i
n Number Three hold, sir. I've been down checking. They're stowed above the shaft tunnel, aft the engine-room. It's pretty warm down there tonight. There's the heat from the engine-room and this hot wind. I'd like to bring the cases up to Number Two 'tween decks, where the ventilation's better. It's also easier to get at them there.' v I was to remember that comment later. At the time I endorsed the suggestion. If the hold were anything like as hot as my cabin — which had an open porthole — Wegger's was a sound idea.

  'Carry on, Mr Wegger.'

  Since the incident earlier in the day over the radio signal Wegger had proved himself a professional. Already the crew was functioning as a team, although I didn't care for his slave-driving methods. This was the second idea that Wegger had had for negotiating the kelp, which blocks Prince Edward like a floating reef. Before the ship had said goodbye to Cape Agulhas he had proposed that we sharpen the leading edges of the propeller on the boat we would be using — weather allowing — to land the shore parties. The sharp edges would serve as a kind of rotary knife to hack a way through the barrier. Kelp is especially thick off the landing-place at Cave Bay, in places up to 50 metres wide. Trying to row through its strangling fronds is for the birds. The idea was to blow a path through the kelp first with small charges of explosive and then negotiate it by means of the boat.

  I put down the phone and reached for my drink. There was a knock at the door.

  'Come in!'

  It was Linn. Her black pants and champagne-coloured tunic made her look slimmer than before. At dinner she had squired the VIPs to the captain's table — my table. The Jacobsens did not put in art appearance. However, captain's tables are not my scene. I had been grateful, for once, to have McKinley around.

  Now the tell-tale marks of her grief were skilfully masked by eye-shadow.

  She said, 'I'm suffocating. It felt as if the walls of my cabin were closing in on me. Does it mean anything in particular, this frightful sogginess in the air?'

  'It goes hand-in-hand with the south-easter. And the Agulhas Bank is one of the worst areas in the world for electrical storms.' I ushered her to a chair. 'A drink — mine's brandy.'

  'No brandy, thanks. Something short.'

  'Vanderhum? Might as well keep it in the Cape family.'

  That will do fine.'

  I fixed the drink and said, 'I'm glad you came, Linn. I was in a miscellaneous mood. I don't know where to start my thinking.'

  She pulled a coin from her pants pocket and laid it between us on the desk-top. It was a Krugerrand, the South African coin which contains exactly one fine ounce of gold.

  I picked it up. It was warm — warm from her groin where her pocket was, a surge of my pulse told me.

  I said lightly, 'Now you're compounding my confusion.'

  She eyed me over the rim of her liqueur glass. 'When the old Norsemen set out on voyages into the unknown they buried a gold coin in the step of their mast to bring them good luck. Can you find a similar place for this?'

  I couldn't see myself boring a hole into the Quest's utilitarian mast — it was more a crane than a mast — and attempting to conceal the coin. At today's gold price it would be a healthy lucky dip for any crewman who might spot it.

  Wegger and his boat were still in my mind. 'I'll tell you what I'll do — I'll salt it away in the mast of the launch we'll be using for the shore parties at Prince Edward.'

  'You're not just fobbing me off? You're not laughing at me, John?'

  She seemed very small, vulnerable and so alone. She looked into her glass and added: 'The voyage came unstuck right at the start — didn't it — except for that little time on deck before the message came about Dad's death.'

  So the bells had rung for her, too.

  'A bad beginning can mean a good end,' I replied. 'There's no reason why the trip shouldn't go off smoothly from now on. We've got a good ship and a good crew. Everything's running like clockwork.'

  'That's what you say, but do you really believe it, John?'

  I side-stepped the question. 'I didn't see Captain Jacobsen at dinner. How did he take the news of your father's death?'

  'Badly, I'm afraid. It was a traumatic occasion for both of us. I felt I had to be the one to break it to him.'

  'You don't evade your responsibilities, Linn.'

  'Mrs Jacobsen wasn't pleased — I think my news could have aggravated that heart condition of his.'

  'What did he say when you told him?'

  '"Now there's no point in going on" — something like that.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Why do you ask, John?'

  'I can't get your father's last words out of my mind. Or rather, not so much his words, as what he was trying to say but couldn't. I'm quite sure he wanted to explain something about that war-time business. And Jacobsen was one of the three captains who escaped.'

  Linn put down her glass. 'When you meet Captain Jacobsen you'll find he's not the talkative kind. In fact, he's pretty dour and reserved. After he said that about no point going on he just sat and stared for a long time. Then he muttered something that sounded like, "It's not far from where it all happened — the position for launching the weather buoy. About a day and a half's steaming."'

  'What was he driving at, Linn?'

  'I don't know. After that his face went purplish, and then very white. Mrs Jacobsen rushed for his heart pills and shooed me out.'

  I poured myself another brandy. 'Does it strike you, Linn, that Jacobsen is now the last skipper alive of the three who were involved in that war-time escape? The other two — your father and a man called Torgersen — are both dead.'

  She answered so softly I could scarcely hear. 'Murdered.'

  'It doesn't make sense,' I went on. 'There's a gap of about thirty years between the two deaths. If they really are linked, and someone is bent on taking revenge…'

  'But why, John? In God's name, why? My father never did anything wrong…'

  I recalled the dying man's words about doing something which seemed right at the time. I looked at Linn's strained face and decided not to mention it. My mind went on to Captain Prestrud's final words.

  'Linn, you were telling me Dina's Island is Prince Edward…'

  'It was never actually called Dina's Island. The name figures on some eighteenth-century charts, that's all. Captain Cook's name for it, Prince Edward, has always been the one in general use.'

  'Which adds to the puzzle, Linn. Your father's last words to me were, "Stay away from Dina's Island."'

  She stared at me. 'Are you sure you heard right?'

  'Quite sure. He said that very clearly. But why should he, when the whole purpose of this cruise — and apparently a life-time ambition of his own — was to get to Dina's Island, in other words, Prince Edward? And why should he call it by a name which it took you ages to unearth in the archives? How did he know the name? It doesn't add up, Linn.'

  She stood up. 'Let's go on deck and get some air. These walls are beginning to close in too.'

  Once we had got clear of the shelter of the lifeboat deck I took her arm to steer her towards the stern. Our eyes were not yet fully adjusted to the darkness. I kept close to the rail to avoid a newly-painted red patch on the deck.

  'What's that, John?' she asked.

  'They're supposed to be markings for a deck quoits court, but in fact they have an ulterior purpose.'

  The outline on the deck was like a miniature helicopter landing-pad.

  'I don't like the colour of Quest,' I told her. 'White's all right for a fine-weather cruise. Nice and yachty, like in the magazines. But it's too near the colour of ice. If this ship ran into trouble down South she'd be mighty hard to spot by air search. I'm hedging my safety bets — this red patch and the Quest's red lifeboats combined would be visible from a search plane twenty kilometres away.'

  She shivered and was silent.

  We went aft. At the rail by the jackstaff above the stern a bare-footed man in crumpled running shorts and towel singlet was getting ready to throw so
mething overboard. It looked like a hooped butterfly net with a bottle wedged in its end, and it had a weight attached.

  He said, without preliminary, 'We're travelling much too fast for me to collect anything, really. But I go on hoping.' He pitched the thing untidily over the side and gestured at the water.

  'That's what I'm after.'

  Little globes of luminosity were passing along the ship's side beneath the water. The Quest appeared to be skimming on ballbearings of warm light.

  'Nothing very unusual, but they never fail to thrill me-jelly-fish.'

  He straightened up and laughed. A stray wisp of hair couldn't hide his receding hairline.

  They say all oceanographers are nuts. Or is it oceanologists? I never know. Maybe I am. But you can't live in the presence of great mysteries without some of them rubbing off on you. I'm Toby Trimen.'

  He tugged at the dip-net and gave a small whoop. 'Got him!'

  Deftly he swung the net clear of the ship's side and manoeuvred it upright. Then he rummaged inside the muslin-like material and towing bridles and untied the tapes that held a collecting-jar in position at its rear, and showed us the bottle containing the sea-creature. It looked like a beautiful pale pink toadstool, except that it had trailing tentacles. It was all aglow.

  'Noctiluca — light of the night,' Toby Trimen said. 'Poor thing! He's still trying to get orientated after what I've done to him.'

  Linn smiled at his enthusiasm. 'Did he tell you.that?'

  Toby made a gesture which took in the whole sea as far as the South Pole. His eyes were as limpid as new ice.

  'It's not sea or ice or creatures but a wonderful — an enormous wonderland,' he said. 'It's so full of wonders that it makes me breathless. Look, our jelly-fish is getting orientated. He's got the most wonderful built-in gadget inside him to tell which way up he is. Just like a plane's blind-flying instruments — would you believe it?'

  He saw from our polite amusement that we didn't. He plucked the jelly-fish delicately out of the bottle and continued, 'Inside this umbrella, which is his top, is his self-righting gear. When he tilts, there's a small ball which rolls around inside and touches nerves which automatically stabilize him. It's a miracle in itself. If you were an atheist, you'd be cured if you knew just half of the master plan there is among the creatures in these seas.'