Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  She astonished and confused him. As she methodically undressed, she suddenly seemed as coldly purposeful as a prostitute, but after the first embrace she began to tremble and made love as fiercely as though she were fighting for her life. There was no laughing together this time.…

  When he had got dressed, she picked up the gun he had left on the table and handed it to him with two hands as solemnly as though it were a religious article, and insisted on helping him to buckle his pistol belt. Suddenly she smiled. “There,” she said. “Now you look like an American folk hero, all ready to make the Indians bite the dust.”

  CHAPTER 44

  After dressing herself as an Eskimo, which apparently was her usual custom, Brit took him to Swanson’s house. They found the old man sitting in an overstuffed armchair which filled a quarter of his tiny livingroom.

  “Swan,” she said softly, “the captain here says you can visit the prisoners on the island if you want to.”

  Swanson was obviously surprised and pleased.

  “I think well of you for this,” he said to Paul in his strongly accented English. “Although you are the military authority here, I feel I still have certain unavoidable responsibilities.”

  “Dress warmly,” Paul replied. “It’s colder than you might think out there on that island.”

  “Captain, I respect you in many ways,” Swanson said, “but don’t tell me about Greenland weather. I understand it.” Before putting on his parka, Swanson served them thimble-sized glasses of Aquavit and told his native housekeeper that he would be back “in about two hours.”

  Never in his life had Paul felt so disreputable, so thoroughly contemptible, but he was still sure that he was only doing the necessary. Military leaders should not be commissioned as officers and gentlemen, he thought. They should be required to swear their willingness to lie and cheat as well as die for their country. They should be required to put a hand on the Bible and promise to do in old men, women and children if the situation required. Why should he be feeling guilty? If the Germans were occupying Greenland, they would almost certainly shoot the old man if he opposed them. Putting him on the island with the other prisoners was a damn sight more merciful.

  And it was the Germans who had created this nightmare world where it was necessary to lock up elderly saints for the very crime of saintliness, Paul thought as they trudged through the snow to the whaleboat. Hatred for the Germans was as sustaining as love, even more so sometimes. When he thought about the Germans, there was a spring to his step and he felt more alive than usual, like any young lover, or hater. If he kept on thinking about the Germans it was almost possible to forget that he was deceiving an elderly clergyman and leading him into a crowded prison camp. On the wharf several Eskimos had gathered around the whaleboat and Paul was glad that he was not taking Swanson away by force.

  Paul first stopped the boat at the end of the point where the machine gun stood and went alone into the ice shack. Williams was on duty. He was sitting on a box by the window reading a paperback book which he stuffed into his pocket as Paul entered. Paul asked him to call the Germans so that he could tell them to stay in their huts until the boat left. Walking out to the machine gun, Williams took Boats’s boatswain’s pipe from his pocket and placed it to his lips. He had not learned to blow it at all well. It gave a thin, wavering call much like Williams’s own voice, but it was still piercing enough to bring a man from each hut. Cupping his hands to his mouth, Paul told them in German that he was bringing a man to the island, and that they should all remain inside until the boatswain’s pipe sounded again.

  “Give them another blast from your pipe when I’ve left,” he said to Williams and returned to the boat.

  In the swift current it was difficult to hold the boat still at the landing place. Swanson was eager to get ashore, but too old and fat to jump to the ice. Finally Stevens and Krater had to help Brit to carry him, almost as though they were taking him against his will. Once on the island, the old man stood up and adjusted his rumpled parka.

  “Mr. Swanson, I have to say something important to you,” Paul began.

  “What?” Swanson’s benign face showed no trace of suspicion, but the wind made his eyes water.

  “It is my duty to persuade as many Eskimos as I can to help me fight the Germans. Will you help me?”

  “No!”

  “Then I am sorry to have to tell you that I am taking you prisoner. For aiding and abetting the enemy. I won’t press charges unless I have to, but I will have to keep you with the other prisoners here until we have removed all Germans from this area.”

  “That is why you have bought me here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, Brit? You helped him.”

  “Swan, I had to. I had no choice …” She was crying.

  “Yes. There aren’t many choices anymore. I’m sure we are all doing what we have to do.”

  Brit hugged him and they stood for a few seconds like the lovers they had been.

  “Now what do I do?” Swanson asked Paul.

  “Go into one of the huts. The men will come out when we leave.”

  Paul helped Brit back into the boat and they shoved off immediately, leaving the old man standing a few yards from the edge of the ice. Then Williams blew his boatswain’s pipe. The prisoners, who no doubt had wondered what was happening, poured from the huts. They ran to the old man, surrounded him, and in a few seconds the lieutenant put an arm around his shoulders. They disappeared into the middle hut together.

  “They at least will treat him kindly,” Brit said.

  “Probably. If he’s not with me, he’s with them.”

  “It’s all so simple for you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s just simple. Do you want us to take you back to the village? I have work to do aboard my ship.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the village right now. Can you take me aboard your ship? I would like to see it.”

  “I … I’m afraid I don’t like that idea.”

  “Why? Do you still think I might not be on your side?”

  “It’s not that. The men have no women here. And a ship is just no place for a woman.”

  “I sailed a boat across the Atlantic almost alone.”

  “I mean a warship.”

  “You’re afraid that in these clothes I might excite your men?”

  “Why do you want to see the ship so much? It’s just a trawler.”

  “No, as you said, it’s a warship with guns. Painted the way she is, she’s hard to see when she’s anchored out in the fjord, or even at the wharf. She looks like a ghost ship, all white and spectral. Maybe I want to know that she’s real, that she won’t just suddenly disappear, now that she’s all that stands between us and the Germans.”

  Taking her aboard the ship went against Paul’s instinct, but she was insistent, he of course wanted to please her, and what harm could it really do? He had a vision of the crew all whistling at her, staring and perhaps making lewd remarks, but they would not do that when a woman actually came aboard. Like Stevens and Krater now in the whaleboat, they would probably act embarrassed and stay away.

  In his guess about the conduct of the crew, Paul was right. As Brit jumped to the well deck, the men came forward thinking that she was an Eskimo, but as soon as they heard her voice, they melted away, withdrew to the forecastle, the radio shack and the engineroom, there to relish the fact of feminine presence with all kinds of speculation, but inaudible to her ears, invisible. Only Nathan came forward and with his courtly manners helped Paul to show her around the ship. She spent much time studying the big guns, touching their smooth metal almost the way she had touched Paul’s shoulders.

  “They look as though they could sink a battleship.”

  “Not today,” Paul retorted. “Let’s go to the wardroom. Nathan, could you ask Cookie to bring coffee and something to eat?”

  Cookie did them proud. In a newly starched chef’s hat he served mushroom omelettes as well as croissants and Danish pa
stries fancier than anything the Danes had available.

  “Do you always eat like this?” Brit asked in astonishment.

  “Always,” Nathan replied. “I can’t believe it myself, but it’s true.”

  “Only the Americans would be operating a fancy restaurant on a warship.”

  They laughed. The visit to the Arluk appeared to be exhilarating Brit more and more. She begged to see the engineroom, and after warning the men there, Paul let her take a peek at the great diesel engine which Chief Banes kept gleaming in the bowels of the ship.

  “How many horsepower is it?”

  “Not much for the size of the engine,” Nathan replied. “These things are built to turn very slowly with great power at low speeds for years, not to develop a lot of horses.”

  “But what is its Horsepower, compared to a car?”

  “I guess that depends on what car you’re talking about,” Paul said. “This engine is rated at about six hundred horses.”

  “Six hundred horses!” she exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Imagine a ship being towed by six hundred horses. Nothing could stop such power!”

  In some ways she seemed as naive as the Eskimos about technical devices. She had heard about depth charges and touched those on the stern racks with the same delicacy she had bestowed on the guns. “Radar” was a word entirely unfamiliar to her ears. The equipment was supposed to be secret and Paul resisted an impulse to show it to her, but he did boast that the black box could see through night and fog.

  “The old Vikings used to claim that the dragon heads on the prows of their ships could do that,” she said. “The Chinese paint eyes on the bows of theirs, but now Americans can really see through anything. Do the Germans have this?”

  She touched the gray box.

  “I don’t really know how much radar they have,” Paul said. “They’re supposed to be so good with technical stuff, I always assumed they had it all, but maybe not.”

  “Where do you live?” she asked Paul. “I mean where is your cabin?”

  Nathan said that he was needed in the radio shack as Paul led the way to his cabin. Brit stepped inside, glanced around the tiny compartment and with a smile said, “So this is the seat of power.”

  “I’ve never thought of it as that.”

  “Aren’t you aware of your power? Doesn’t it give you a good feeling?”

  “I don’t think that many captains of these fishboats have any great awareness of power. They’d be nuts if they did …”

  “Why? You have six hundred horses in your engineroom and guns enough to knock down buildings or sink ships. If you take the Germans at Supportup, you really will be in command of the whole east coast of Greenland … now that Swan’s gone …”

  “I’m more aware of responsibilities than power,” Paul said, sounding pretty stuffy even to himself. He thought her smile was enigmatic and wondered if she felt the same.

  “I like the style of your cabin, captain,” she continued. “No ornamentation at all, no bow to luxury. The way the Spartans must have lived and the old Norse chiefs.”

  “And the fishing captains.”

  She did not appear to hear him. Her eyes traveled over his narrow bunk to the sword in its brown leather case hanging over it. “How fitting,” she said. “Your only ornament a sword! Or is it an ornament? Can you kill Germans with it?”

  “It’s just a ceremonial sword really. In peacetime officers lead parades with them.”

  “Can I look at it?”

  “If you like. There’s nothing secret about a sword.”

  Reaching over the bunk, he took the sword case from its brackets and handed it to her. She rubbed it like a connoisseur of fine leather. “Can I open it?”

  “Sure.”

  Unbuckling the top, she drew out the gold-handled sword in its black, gold-trimmed scabbard. As she examined it, he felt as though he had never seen his sword.

  “I wonder where the design came from,” she said, touching the small improbable gold-colored metal sea snake that was coiled around the tip of the scabbard. Two other tiny sea snakes curved from the hand guard. Embossed in other parts of the metal were square knots, laurel leaves, a shield and an eagle on the pommel.

  “So many symbols! The sword says, ‘I am power.’ Can I take out the blade?”

  “Be careful. The point’s sharp.”

  The blade made a hissing as she drew it from the scabbard, and it glittered brightly. She laid it carefully on the chart table as she studied it, tracing with her finger the embossed eagle near the handle, more stylized laurel leaves, a fouled anchor. Turning it over, she studied a flag with a trident curiously perched on what appeared to be the mast of a square-rigger, scrolls and a pattern of stars.

  “But there are no embellishments on the last foot of it,” she said. “The point is all business. You really could kill someone with it.”

  “Not today.”

  She put the blade back into the scabbard and its brown leather case.

  “Would you give it to the enemy captain if you surrendered?” she asked.

  “Brave trawlers never surrender.” He put the sword back on its brackets over his bunk.

  “Have you ever made love here?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever had a chance?”

  “No, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. There’s nothing soundproof about this cabin.”

  “It would have a certain excitement. For me anyway …”

  “No, Brit. There are men on the bridge.”

  “Too bad. Love under the sword—has a nice ring to it.”

  “A little melodramatic.”

  “Do you know how the expression, ‘son of a gun’ got started?”

  “No.”

  “When women came aboard the old warships in the days of sail, the sailors made love to them on deck under the guns. The phrase meant a sailor’s bastard.”

  “Where do you learn such things?”

  “When I studied English at the University of Copenhagen, they had a whole course in the origin of such idioms. It was very interesting. If I should have a child by you, it would sort of be a son of a gun.”

  “Is that a clear possibility?” he asked a little nervously.

  “No. Unfortunately I can’t let myself have a son of a gun.”

  “Let’s go, Brit.”

  “Will your men be talking about my being in your cabin?”

  “It will be their chief topic of conversation for days. I’ve made them envious enough. Rank has its privileges, but they shouldn’t be flaunted.”

  “I’m glad you’re such a good captain. Are you going to take me ashore now?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there’s one thing I want to see—the galley where all that marvelous food comes from.”

  “That’s up in the forecastle, the quarters for the men.”

  “I’d like to see that too. I bet they’d like to have a woman visit, even a woman dressed like an Eskimo.”

  She was probably right about that, Paul reflected, and telephoned the forecastle from the bridge to give warning.

  The men of the Arluk quickly put pants and shirts over their long underwear when they heard a woman was about to appear in their midst, but they did not see any reason to stop what they were doing, and that was making knives out of files. Knife-making had taken the place of checkers as a forecastle diversion, and Guns had done a brisk business selling files he had bought from Chief Banes, who had stolen several sets from the wreck of the destroyer. In exchange for beer rations to be paid on the next beerbust ashore, he and Chief Banes had ground the files to a rough edge on the emery wheel in the engineroom, and now Guns was showing the men how to achieve scimitar-like perfection with whetstones provided by Cookie. In the three tiers of bunks, men lay honing a variety of picturesque daggers, dirks and curved blades. The dim light made them look like a pirate crew busy with last-minute preparations for a bloodthirsty onslaught. At the head of the table Guns, looking like Blackbea
rd himself, was fastening an ivory handle to his masterpiece of a scimitar.

  Brit’s first reaction when she saw this tableau was a sudden intake of breath. It was, Paul suspected, exactly what she expected to find aboard an American warship.

  “What are they going to do with all these knives?” she asked Paul.

  “What I’m going to do is get me a Kraut’s head and make it into a lamp,” Guns boomed before Paul could reply. “This baby can slice even the fattest neck like butter.”

  Getting to his feet, Guns demonstrated the shining arc his knife could draw in the air, almost slicing off Cookie’s chef hat.

  “You want coffee, captain?” Cookie asked after coolly ducking, as though that sort of thing happened all the time.

  “The lady just wants to see the galley, Cookie.”

  “She can look from the door. I won’t let nobody in my galley. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, captain, but even aboard ship a chef has to have rules.”

  After taking a brief peek into the cramped little galley where Cookie regularly prepared such fine meals for more than thirty men, Brit fled to the deck.

  “That’s quite a crew you’ve got,” she said as they reached the well deck.

  “I think maybe they were putting on a little show just for you.”

  “Perhaps, but I kind of get the idea that they’re not kidding either.”

  “No, they’re not,” he said.

  CHAPTER 45

  The short November day had long ago died, but enough moonlight was getting through the cloud cover to make the icy sides of the canyonlike fjord appear to glow softly, and the water of the bay and channel showed clearly as black against white. Stevens and Krater, who had the boat duty that day, sat silently in the stern as Krater steered the whaleboat toward the settlement. Paul sensed that they were angry at him because they thought he had no business keeping a boat crew out in the cold just to ferry his woman. Higher pay and fancy uniforms for an officer and a private cabin for a captain were not begrudged, but the possession of a woman in Greenland was a privilege too great to be forgiven. Although Paul told himself that a good captain should not be oversensitive to the feelings of his men, the silent backs that Stevens and Krater turned to him hurt. He found that he wanted to apologize to them, but of course there was nothing he could say.