Southtrap

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  And then, the over-riding thought, like the punch of the heavy bullet itself — she's dead, she's dead, she's beyond help!

  The light of day on my eyes at the entrance to the tunnel brought me to my senses. I found myself carrying Linn over my right shoulder. The torch was in my left hand. Her arms were hanging and she was limp. I had no memory of testing to see whether she was breathing. My mind was as dark as the rock passage I had just left behind.

  Get her to the fire! Get her warm! See where the bullet went in…

  The fire was barely smouldering. I put Linn down on the rounded pebbles of the beach. I cast about, grabbing anything that looked dry enough to burn. The penguins near the water's edge started to squawk. Four elephant seals remained as dormant as giant hibernating slugs.

  I returned with an armful of wood, threw it on the fire. The sight of Linn's face drove me. It was a hideous putty-blue. There was a trace of pink spume at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were half-open, unseeing.

  I couldn't spot any blood. But there wouldn't be yet, through all her thick clothing. The only sign of violence was a small tear from the Luger bullet above her left breast.

  I darted to the cliff side and plucked and tore handfuls of the rough tussocky grass for a couch. I arranged it, then laid her gently on it. The fire began picking up.

  I plucked at the strings of her parka to examine the wound. My fingers were so stiff and shaking that I could not untie them. I stopped, looking for something to cut with. Like an evil dream the thought came to me; I had no knife, nothing. Wegger had allowed us nothing.

  Then I saw his own knife at my waistband. I had no recollection at all of putting it there.

  The sight of it pulled me together. There was no point in senselessly slashing her clothing. If she were alive, she would need every scrap of protection she could get.

  I took a big grip on myself and set my fingers to untying the parka. Underneath, her jersey was water-damp but unstained by blood. There was only that hideous marker on the left breast. At the sight of it, my hands seemed to lose co-ordination. I pulled at her sweater and my hand struck something hard, metallic. I managed to get her sweater up a little further.

  Then I saw the tiny transmitter lodged in the strap of her brassiere. It had a ragged rent in its inner corner.

  Two long blue-red bullet welts radiated from it across and up her chest.

  One, about six inches long, travelled vertically in the direction of her shoulder-blade.

  The second, an ugly blue-black score, had laid open the flesh across her breastbone and then disappeared in an angry ragged hole on her right side. Blood was pouring from both wounds.

  I leant down with racing pulses, plucked away the transmitter, and put my ear against her heart.

  She was alive!

  Then I realized with a stab of unbelievable relief what had happened: Wegger's heavy 9mm Parabellum slug had smashed into the transmitter and splintered. One ragged fragment had shot upwards, making the long superficial wound to her shoulder-blade; the other had ricocheted sideways into her right side, entering her chest against the swell of her breast. That was the dangerous wound.

  For the first time I became aware of my own wound when I felt blood dripping from the vicinity of my ear and saw it splashing against her chest. I felt my neck cautiously. The tip of Wegger's knife had torn the lobe of my right ear and then travelled back as far as my hairline. It did not seem more than a flesh wound although it was throbbing painfully. I tried to staunch the blood with my handkerchief.

  I sat like that on my haunches, looking into Linn's pain-filled face. Out of reaction, the muscles of my legs and arms started to kick uncontrollably and I began to shake all over like a case of DTs. I crouched close to the fire to warm myself, getting Linn too as near the heat as I could. Cold meant death; the cold would get into her wound and kill her.

  I knew I had somehow to stop the bleeding. The flesh wound was pumping freely but it was the other — which was showing also signs of heavy bruising which I feared. I wondered whether, from the pink froth at her lips, the fragment of bullet had entered her right lung. I tested her breathing. There was not the wheezing there would have been from a lung wound. Then, to my relief, I found that the froth was coming from a gash where she had bitten her lip in agony as the bullet had hit her.

  I had nothing with which to tend or bandage her wounds. The only thing I had was my woollen shirt, which was wet. Stripping myself of it, drying and tearing it for makeshift bandages; drying my other clothes one by one and replacing Linn's with them so that she was warm and dry; and getting her own things themselves dry was an operation as freezingly breath-catching as diving into the sea itself. When it was all done and she was as comfortable as I could make her, I took stock of my situation.

  The afternoon was far gone. The cave's entrance, which faced east, was now almost in full shadow. The penguin colony had been swelled by other individuals which had swum up to the beach. They stood chattering and making tentative sallies towards the fire. The elephant seals were still quiescent. The wind had dropped and I was surprised to see that there were no more whitecaps out to sea. It had the makings of a rare calm evening.

  It didn't need a doctor to tell me Linn was a hospital case. The fragment of bullet would have to be removed from her chest. That meant an operating theatre. The nearest hospital was over 2000 kilometres away, on the Cape mainland.

  Had the GARP network heard our signals? If it had, how could I communicate further? Marion Island had powerful radio weather transmitters but I had no boat to get there. Nor had the weather station a boat. The channel is so dangerous that all boats are banned.

  I ruled out Marion Island.

  I found Linn's smashed-transmitter. If it had worked previously, it did so no longer. Its intricate circuitry had been wrecked by the bullet.

  The only method I could visualize of getting Linn out was by helicopter. A helicopter-carrying destroyer would take five days to reach Prince Edward from its Cape base. How — if the authorities were immediately made aware of her plight — would I keep Linn alive until then?

  She had to have food. I had to have food.

  Previous Prince Edward Island survivors — including Wegger — had kept themselves going on elephant seals; their meat for sustenance, their blubber for fuel, their hides for boots and even to patch boats. They were the readiest source of food in addition to birds, birds' eggs and the native vegetable, Kerguelen cabbage.

  I eyed the group of elephant seals on the beach in front of me and made up my mind immediately. I'd never killed an elephant seal, but I knew how it was done. I hurried to the sleeping group and picked up a large stone. It was over in a moment. I was glad that the brute hadn't opened his saucer-like limpid eyes before the stone crashed home on his protruding snout. I dragged the carcase back to the fire and set to work with Wegger's knife, first slicing off the thick layer of blubber and setting it aside for burning.

  Then I realized that I had nothing to cook with.

  There was the litter of broken pots and tins inside the cave entrance. Most of the stuff was so rusty as to be useless. The big sealers' pots were designed for whole carcasses and moreover had holes rusted through them. I earmarked a couple of beer-cans for blubber lamps. I sloshed over to the spring to wash them out and have a drink of water myself. My foot touched something else solid in the water. It was a 15cm shell-case, brass, unrusted. British? German? I picked it out of the water — it would make an ideal cooking-vessel. There was no time to puzzle how it came there. I hurried back to the fire.

  'John! John!'

  Linn's eyes were conscious but they were glazed with pain. Her voice was so faint that for a moment I wondered whether I'd imagined her call.

  I dropped the shell-case and went down on my knees by her couch.

  She tried to lift herself and fell back as the agony of the wound gripped her.

  'John! Darling! It's dark — where am I? It's warm — my chest — '

  I t
ook her shoulders and held her gently so that she would not attempt to move again. I leaned down and put my lips to hers.

  'Everything's fine, Linn, my darling. You're going to be all right. There's nothing more to worry about.'

  Her shock returned with her consciousness.

  'He — he shot me — my chest…'

  I stroked her hair and noticed that she was warmer than I had anticipated. I feared it might be feverishness.

  'You've got a bullet in you — only part of a bullet, my darling. You're still on Prince Edward. I'll get you out safely.'

  Fear started into her shadowed eyes. 'Where are we, John? Where on Prince Edward? Where is her 'We're at the cave entrance, Linn. Forget Wegger. He won't worry us any more.'

  There was a note of despair in her whispered question, 'John — please — I don't understand — the shot, the gold, Dina…'

  I sat and told her as the sun disappeared but the long light remained over the sea and on the golden bastions over our heads.

  When I had done, she said, 'Did the bullet finish the transmitter, John?'

  'Yes, Linn. I'm afraid so. It's useless now. But it saved your life.'

  'So nobody knows where we are?'

  I had tried earlier to talk myself out of that one: now Linn's urgency placed the problem squarely in front of me.

  The GARP communications set-up has had days and nights to plot our position and follow our course. I'm sure that the search is on at this moment. They'll come — soon, Linn.'

  'You won't let them take me without you, my love, will you?'

  'Never, Linn.'

  The flames crackled, the remaining elephant seals started shifting and grunting, and the penguins moved closer, standing their distance like well-dressed undertakers' assistants.

  After a while she said, 'I'm dying, aren't I, John?'

  Her question sent the cold fear sweeping across my heart. I tried to sound reassuring.

  'No, Linn. The bullet was a soft-nosed one. It splintered. I don't think the fragment is deep. If it were in your lung you wouldn't be able to breathe properly or speak. A doctor with a probe would have it out in no time.'

  She moved and then cried out in pain. It was her answer.

  Later, she seemed to sleep after I had fed her the unappetizing mixture I'd brewed in the shell-case. I had some myself. It tasted oily and fishy. You get used to it, Wegger had said. I was still in my Prince Edward Island apprenticeship.

  Night came, the half-dark of the Antarctic summer night.

  I built a second fire just inside the cave entrance where it was dry and laid another bed in shelter for Linn as well as one for myself next to it. She did not fully wake but squirmed in agony when I carried her to it. I tried cushioning her head in my arms but she could not get comfortable, so I went and sat guard on my own heap of bed-grass.

  I must have slept, for it was darker when I woke. It felt like half an hour but it was, in fact, nearly four hours. I went to the water's edge for more wood. It was a night as beautiful as Captain Prestrud's dream. The same pale opalescent blue was on the water and over the sea. Far out, a white iceberg seemed to hang like a star in space.

  It was also fine enough to be able to see the all-night electric lights of Marion's weather station if I went up to higher ground.

  I checked Linn. She was still asleep, breathing faster and more shallowly.

  I hurried up the landslide pathway from our beach to the flat plateau above the cave. From its southern extremity I could detect a luminescence in the sky where I knew Marion must lie. But my direct view was hidden by a highland on the shore facing the channel. I dared not go further and leave Linn.

  I hurried back to her.

  She opened her eyes when I approached.

  Her voice was so far gone that I had to bend right down to hear.

  'John darling — our time together was so short, wasn't it?'

  'It was a lifetime to me, my dearest.'

  She shut her eyes and tried to smile, but the pain twisted her mouth. She drew in her breath sharply.

  'I want you to promise me something, John.'

  'Anything, Linn.'

  'I want you to bury me in the Southern Ocean, here at Prince Edward. I want you to conduct the service.'

  'No need to talk like that, my darling. You'll pull through, never fear.'

  'I know I'm dying.'

  In my heart I dreaded she was right. Her fever had been growing all the time. Her pulse was fluttering like a bird and her breathing was worse.

  She took my hand. I was appalled at how hot it was.

  'I'll love you always, John.'

  Her eyes closed and cut short my reply. She didn't speak again.

  I sat with her hand in mine, staring into the fire. After a while my thoughts switched from Linn to the grim chamber of death at our backs — and the gold. How, I asked myself, could the authorities have remained in ignorance of the hoard and have informed the three skippers that it was in safe-keeping in the vaults of the Federal Bank in the United States? I turned over every aspect, thinking back to try and find the answer. I tried to recall everything Captain Prestrud and Jacobsen had said in my attempt to throw light on the mystery.

  Then I sat upright, wide awake, remembering something in Captain Jacobsen's letter to me. The Allied Commission had informed the skippers that the gold had been in transit via the port of Bergen. I racked my brains for his exact words — 'this was obviously a mistake since we knew it was Narvik!'

  Bergen! That was the key to the mystery! Bergen is 1000 kilometres from Narvik. The Free Norwegian Fleet had seized the gold in Narvik and had made off to the Antarctic with it. Later it had been hidden in the great cave. Wegger had said that the British cruiser's boat had never landed, and I had seen for myself that the gold hoard had remained undisturbed. The fact that the Nazis had sent a raider and a pocket battleship to Antarctica proved that the gold had come from Narvik, not Bergen.

  Yet the Allied Commission had ten million dollars in Danzig gold still in its safe-keeping. The only possible solution was that there had been two shipments of Danzig gold of equal size, one consignment via Narvik and the other via Bergen.

  I reasoned further that such confusion could be due to the destruction of records during the Nazi Blitzkrieg on Poland and to wartime conditions in general. And, after all, the Allied Commission could point to a gold hoard of similar value in its own possession. Theirs, I knew now, was the Bergen shipment; the Narvik shipment still lay in a pyramid behind me in the darkness, guarded by the bodies of Wegger and the enigmatic Dina.

  I must have fallen asleep from mental as well as physical exhaustion after working it out, for I was jerked awake by a roaring noise. As I surfaced I thought the sea had risen and was thundering on the beach.

  But it wasn't in the sea.

  It was in the air.

  It was a plane., The rocks themselves seemed to shake as it passed over the cave at zero feet.

  I jumped up and stumbled to the water's edge but I was too late to see anything beyond a big double tail disappearing behind McAll Kop as it travelled northwards.

  I could have wept. The look-outs aboard the plane must have concluded that the cave was deserted. I cursed myself for having fallen asleep.

  The fire — surely an alert crew would have spotted the fire even though it had burned low?

  I sprinted back to it, gathering more wood on my way. I deliberately chose some which was wet in order to make smoke.

  I threw armfuls on to the embers and blew it up. The time was a little past seven o'clock. The sun was already showing in the east over the horizon — it looked like becoming that rarest of things, a fine day on Prince Edward.

  The smoke started to swirl skywards. I hastily checked Linn. Her drawn face was dreadful in the new light but her pulse was still going. I could scarcely bear to hear her gasping for breath.

  To signal the plane and make myself visible as well I would have to get myself on the plateau above the cave. I could hea
r the sound of its engines in the direction we had made our nightmare march. I guessed it was casing the coastline for survivors.

  My eye fell on the smashed transmitter lying near the fire. The ruse had worked! I found myself taking the plane's arrival almost for granted. It had worked!

  I blessed the bashed little box, snatched up a burning faggot and an armful of wood, and sprinted for the plateau.

  The sky was empty,' there was no engine sound any more.

  I tried to tell myself that the great central highland and its craters was enough to shut it off. I revolved a full circle, searching. I had no eyes for the noble sight of the Golden Gate, its twin bastions of yellow strata soaring from their base of grey lava, or for the palette of colours — greys, blacks, greens, yellows, blues, opals — which the sun had drawn from the grim little island.

  Now the smoke from my new fire was also rising in the still air.

  Then the plane came in unexpectedly from the south, from the Marion Island side.

  The great heavy Shackleton maritime reconnaissance aircraft skimmed the seaward bluffs and came towards me, manoeuvring to pass at mast-level between two nearby craters. Slung under the plane's belly was a sea-rescue lifeboat; the nose bristled with radio and radar antennae.

  It came so low over me that the thunder of the four big propellers and the blast from the open exhausts beat like a drum on my chest. Simultaneously, a small parachute exploded in the slipstream and came spiralling into the tussocky grass which fronted the Golden Gate's bastions.

  The plane dodged between the craters and disappeared.

  I sprinted to the parachute package. The canister was bigger than I had at first thought. It was marked, in bold letters on four sides, 'Emergency survival package. Open here'.

  I tore it open. There were blankets, tins of soup and food, matches, a solid-fuel stove, and what looked like medical supplies.

  There was also a small walkie-talkie. There was a tag attached to it which read. 'To operate…'

  I didn't need to be told how. I got it going and clapped the receiver to my ear.

  The voice, unnaturally loud, was chanting in the way radio operators have. 'Shackleton S for Skua, Shackleton S for Skua! Do you hear me? I repeat, do you hear me? Reply, reply…'