“Then put somebody else in charge,” I suggested. “Captain Eide, for instance.”
He looked up at me quickly. His small eyes were narrowed. I could see the battle going on inside him—pride against prudence. “No,” he said. “No. He must learn to handle things himself.”
He paced up and down. He didn’t say anything. The silence in the cabin was the sort of silence that is audible. I could see the conflict working in the man. With sudden decision he went to the door. “I’ll have Eide report independently,” he threw over his shoulder.
I went up on to the bridge. The sea was a heaving mass in the dreary half light. I stood there for a moment, watching the heavy weight of water surging white across the bow every time the little ship plunged. An albatross wheeled over the mast. Its huge wings were still as it planed into the wind. The air was bitterly cold. A thin film of ice was spreading on the windbreaker so that the canvas was stiff and smooth to the touch. I went into the wheelhouse and looked at the barometer. “No good,” said the bearded Norwegian at the wheel. He was right. The glass was very low and still falling. “The sommer she do not kom, eh?” His bearded face opened in a grin. But there was no answering humour in his blue eyes.
The door flung back and Judie entered, the wind blowing her in with a swirl of sleet. She shut the door with difficulty. “The weather looks bad,” she said. Her face was pinched and cold.
“We’re getting into high latitudes,” I reminded her.
She nodded bleakly. I offered her a cigarette. She took it, and as I struck a match to light it for her I saw that her hand was trembling slightly. She gulped in a lungful of smoke and then asked, “Was that message from Eide?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What did it say?”
I told her.
She turned and stared out through the window. The sea was cold and grey, a tumbled mass of water, barely visible, yet seeming to crowd its menace right into the wheelhouse. She didn’t speak for some time, and when she did she startled me by saying, “I feel scared.”
“It’s just the weather,” I said.
She dropped her cigarette and ground it out violently with her heel. “No. It’s not the weather. It—it’s something I don’t understand.” She turned and faced me. “I should just be feeling wretched because he’s dead. It should end there—with sorrow. But it doesn’t.” And then she said again, “I’m scared.”
I stepped forward and took her hand. It was cold as ice. “It’s rotten for you,” I said. “But there’s no need for you to worry. Things will sort themselves out when we reach the Southern Cross.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel as though that’s just the beginning.” She looked up at me. Her grey eyes were deeply troubled. “Walter knows something—knows something that we don’t.” Her voice trembled. She was overwrought.
“Why should Howe know anything we don’t?” I said. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not imagining things,” she answered violently. “I’m seeing things for the first time.”
I didn’t say anything and we stood there for some time, quite silent. She didn’t attempt to withdraw her hand from mine. But there was no contact between us. Then she suddenly jerked her hand away, pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and offered me one. “Is this the farthest south you’ve ever been?” she asked, her voice controlled and a little abrupt.
“Yes,” I said and raised my other hand to show I was still smoking. “But I’m not new to ice. When I was twenty I went on a university expedition to South East Greenland.”
“So. You are an explorer?” She took one of her cigarettes and I lit it for her. “But you’ll find it very different down here. The land mass of the South Pole makes it much colder.”
She took a long pull at the cigarette and added, “But it’s unusual for the pack to be so far north at this time of the year. It’s like it was in the summer of 1914 when Shackleton came down here in the Endurance.”
“I was in Oslo just after the war,” I said. “I went over to Bygdoy and saw the Fram. I think that must be the best exhibition of Polar exploration in the world.”
“Yes. I like it, too. We are very proud of the Fram.”
The conversation languished there, so I said, “I suppose this is your first trip into the Antarctic?”
“No,” she replied. “Not my first. When I was eight years old my father brought me with him to South Georgia. My mother had just died and we had no home. Bernt was one of the skytters at Grytviken. I was there about two months. Then he sent me to friends in New Zealand. He said it was time I learnt English. I learned my English in Auckland. I was there a year and then he took me back with him at the end of the next season.”
“Is Grytviken in South Georgia?” I asked.
“Yes. There are shore stations there. I made three or four trips with my father in his catcher.”
“Then you’re quite an experienced whaler,” I kidded her.
“No,” she said. “I’m not like Gerda Petersen.”
“Who’s she?” I asked.
“Gerda is the daughter of Olaf Petersen,” she answered. “Olaf was once mate on my father’s catcher when he was at Grytviken. Gerda and I are the same age. We used to play together when we were at Grytviken. But she’s tough. She’s more like a man. This is her second season with our company. Her father says he’ll make her the first woman skytter in Norway.”
“She must be tough,” I said.
She laughed. “Poor Gerda. She’s not very beautiful, you know. She ought to have been born a boy. She’s passed all her exams. She could be master of a ship, like women are in Russia. But she prefers to come south as her father’s mate. His men worship her. She may not be very beautiful, but I think she’s very happy.”
A sudden gust of wind hit the wheelhouse. The ship heeled and dipped violently. I caught a glimpse of the white sheet of spray flung up by the bows as they crashed into a wave, felt the whole ship tremble. The door burst open and the coxs’n came in. Judie said, “I think I’ll go below now.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I want to get some sleep before the storm breaks.” I told the coxs’n to wake me if it got worse and took Judie below. I saw her to her cabin. Below decks the movement of the ship seemed much more violent. I was very conscious that the worst was yet to come. “I’ll introduce you to Gerda,” Judie said as I held the door of her cabin open for her. “She’s very fat and very jolly—and you’ll like her.” She gave me a quick smile. “I hope you’ll have enough clothing,” she said. “It’ll be cold up on the bridge when dawn comes.”
“Fortunately Sudmann and I are about the same size,” I said. I wished her good night and closed the door. Back in my own cabin, I took off my boots and climbed into my bunk with my clothes on.
For a long time I lay awake, listening to the straining of the ship, sensing the growing pressure of the wind and seas, and all the time wondering about the factory ship still two thousand miles sou’west of us.
The full force of the storm hit us just after four in the morning. I woke to sudden consciousness, feeling the weight of the water holding us down. The struggle of the ship against the fury of the elements was there in every sound of her—in the creaking of the cabin furniture, in the jerk and shudder of the engine, in the staggering movement of her as she plunged and climbed, plunged and climbed. I could feel the steel of the cabin walls bending under the strain. She was like a live thing fighting for breath.
I rolled out of my bunk and fumbled for my sea boots. The coxs’n came in as I was dragging on my oilskins. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went out again. Outside the full force of the wind hit me, thrusting me against the rail, taking my breath away. Seas rolled green over the after-deck. I hauled myself up to the bridge. The short night was over. But the dawn was a grey half darkness. The coxs’n had headed her up into the wind. The waves seemed mountains high, their tops a hissing whirl of spindrift. And the sleet drove parallel with the wavetops, a wild, dri
ven curtain of darkness.
I won’t attempt to describe those next eight days. They were eight days of unrelieved hell for everyone on board. Sometimes it rained. More often it just blew. The weight of the wind varied, but I doubt whether it ever dropped below Force 6. It was from the south-west, varying about two points either side. The sea was like a mountain range on the move. There wasn’t a dry place in the ship. Nearly everyone was seasick. In all those eight days we only saw the sun once, and that was a watery gleam that flashed out for a few minutes through a vent in the storm wrack. I ceased to think about the object of our journey, or about the Southern Cross; I ceased to think about anything but the ship. My mind was a blank of sleeplessness in which the safety of the ship was the only tangible idea.
I saw hardly anything of the others. I was up on the bridge most of the time. Bland came up twice, his heavy features blue with cold and the exhaustion of seasickness. Each time he asked for our position. The man had a driving purpose which was accentuated by the knowledge of his illness. His interest in life had narrowed down to an urgent desire to reach the Southern Cross as soon as possible. He was impatient at our slow progress, impotently angry at the elements. I remember him standing there on the bridge and shaking his fist at the sea and shouting, “Damn you! Damn you!” as though curses could subdue the wind. Some ice had formed on the rungs of the bridge ladder. He slipped as he went down, and a wave, bursting against the side of the ship, nearly swept him overboard. He was wet through and badly shaken. He didn’t come up to the bridge again.
Judie came up once and I was angry with her, telling her to keep to her cabin. I think I threw some bad language at her. I was too wrought up to know what I said. It had the desired effect and she didn’t come up again. But after that every morning one of the crew brought up a flask of brandy. “Fra fru Bland.” I was grateful to her for that.
Bonomi was the only one of the passengers who was a daily visitor on the bridge. He was suffering badly from seasickness, but he’d struggle up each day with his camera, regardless of the danger, and take pictures of the storm. His greeting was invariably the same: “It is turn out nice again—yes?” And his monkey-like face, green under the olive tan, would crack in a wide grin. Once I asked him about Doctor Howe. “Is he sick?” I asked.
“He is sick, of course,” he answered. “But what is sickness to a man who drink two bottles of whisky a day? He is incredible, that man!”
In a way the storm was a good thing. There was no more trouble with the Sandefjord man. The crew were fully occupied with the weather. This, according to the old hands, was quite unprecedented. It was much colder that it should have been and the gale prolonged itself out of all expectation. But by the 14th we were in 53.42 S. 24.65 W. some 500 miles east of South Georgia. Daylight was now virtually continuous throughout the twenty-four hours. Visibility fortunately was not too bad for on the 15th we sighted our first iceberg. And shortly after the evening meal the masthead lookout reported land on the port beam. This was the first of the Sandwich Group. It was the only glimpse we got of it as the storm clouds closed in and heavy, icy rain reduced visibility to a few miles.
Our course was still S. 47° W. and we began to sight icebergs regularly, some of them big, towering masses of ice, pinnacled and ramparted like floating forts. One we passed must have been fully three miles long with a completely flat top except for one steep and sudden mass like the superstructure of a ship. It bore, in fact, a striking resemblance to a monstrous aircraft carrier coated in ice.
I was constantly up on the bridge now for we were closing the last position we had received from the Southern Cross. We should have been in radio telephone communication—the R/T sets had a radius of 400 miles or more. But early in the storm our aerials had been brought down and it had been impossible to re-rig.
On the night of the 16th the gale got worse than ever. Heavy, freezing rain brought visibility down to almost zero and in the half light around midnight I reduced speed. Shortly afterwards the lookout called down, “Isen” I rang for slow ahead and a few moments later caught the white glimmer of ice ahead. It wasn’t a berg. It was our first taste of loose pack. The floes were small and broken—the thawing fringe broken from the pack ice farther south and flung north-eastward by the storm. The coxs’n shook his head gloomily. “Nefer haf I seen the ice up here in sommer.”
I turned the ship westward and remained at slow ahead. Early that morning the wind suddenly veered to the south and died away to a gentle breeze. The clouds drifted away astern and we saw the sun clearly for the first time in eight days. It was low on the horizon and had little warmth. But it was wonderful just to see it. The sky was blue and the world looked suddenly cheerful. But the sea remained a mountainous, heaving mass and despite the blue of the sky it had a peculiar, cold green colour. Away to the south a glimmer of white showed the fringe of the loose pack ice. Through bleary eyes I watched the sun climb quickly up the sky. Soon everything was steaming.
Then gradually the sun’s light paled. The warmth died out of it and the blue gradually faded from the sky. A damp cold gripped the ship. The horizon faded. The distant line of white that marked the ice became blurred and then vanished, merging into what looked like a low strata of cloud at sea level. Then the sun vanished altogether. The colour drained out of everything. The scene became a flat black and white picture. It was cold, like an etching. Then the sharpness of it faded as the fog rolled over us, enveloping us in its chill, soundless blanket.
We kept at slow ahead with lookouts in the bow and at the masthead. I was taking no chances with icebergs, though in that brief glimpse of the ice-littered sea to the south I had seen no sign of any.
Shortly after ten Bland himself came up on to the bridge. Eight days of enforced idleness and little food had made a great difference to him. His face was leaner. The bluish tinge had gone and the mottled veining of his skin was not so noticeable. His movements were quicker too, and his eyes more alert. “What’s our position?” he asked. His tone was crisp. The personality that had driven the man to the top in his own world was there in his voice.
“Fifty-eight south, thirty-three west,” I told him. I took him into the wheelhouse and showed him the position on the chart—roughly 200 miles west of South Thule the southernmost point of the Sandwich Group.
“We ought to be able to get the Southern Cross on the R/T,” he said.
“Sparks is rigging a new aerial now,” I told him. “I’ll let you know as soon as he makes contact.”
He nodded and went out on to the bridge. He stood for a while, staring out into the fog. He stood like that for several minutes, his big hands, encased in fur gloves, gripping the ice-stiff canvas of the windbreaker. Suddenly he swung round on me. “I’ve been mixed up in whaling for the last twenty-five years,” he said. “I’ve never heard of summer conditions as bad as this.”
I made the same remark that Judie had made eight days before—that it was the sort of conditions that Shackleton experienced in the Endurance in 1914. He gave a grunt. “This isn’t a damned polar expedition,” he growled. “This is business. See any whale this morning?”
“None,” I said.
“Where’s Howe?”
“I haven’t seen him since the storm started,” I replied.
He turned and barked an order in Norwegian to one of the crew.
The man looked at him. It wasn’t exactly insolence. But the man’s manner was sullen as he said, “Ja,” and crossed the bridge to the ladder.
Bland spoke to him sharply. The man’s face darkened. “Ja—hr. direktör,” he muttered and slid down the ladder to the deck below. Bland said something violent under his breath and walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. He stood there alone, peering out over the side, until Howe appeared.
Howe looked thin as a wraith beside the squat bulk of the company’s chairman. He had a weak growth of beard that looked untidy on his queer face and his eyes were bloodshot. But he was sober. Standing in front of Bland he seemed nervo
us as though, without liquor inside him, he found it difficult to face the man. “For the last four years Nordahl has employed you as a scientist,” Bland rumbled, his small eyes looking the other up and down with marked distaste. “Now it’s up to you to justify that appointment. Conditions out here this summer are abnormal. The last report we had from the Southern Cross spoke of few whales. We’ve seen none. By tomorrow morning I want a report from you on the probable movement of whale in these conditions.”
“I understood you to say I was no longer employed by the company.” Howe’s voice had developed a slight stutter. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down under his scrubby beard.
“Forget it,” Bland said. “You were drunk. I shall assume you didn’t know what you were saying. Your continued employment will depend on your usefulness to the company. Now get to work. I want a full report first thing tomorrow morning.”
Bland turned on his heel. Howe hesitated. I knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Bland that it was unfair to expect the impossible, that the very abnormality of the conditions made it so. He was being blackmailed and he knew it. Bland wanted whales. Howe was to produce them, like a conjurer, or be sacked. His Adam’s apple jerked violently once or twice. His mouth opened and then suddenly closed. He turned and stumbled past me to the bridge ladder.
Shortly afterwards Bland went below. An hour later, Bonomi called up to me to say that the radio was working. I left the coxs’n on the bridge and stumbled wearily down to the deck below. My eyes were bleary with lack of sleep and the strain of staring into days of wind and sleet and the morning’s impenetrable blanket of fog. Bland and Judie were both in the wireless room. Judie had dark circles of strain under her eyes. But her smile of greeting was warm and friendly. “You must be dead,” she said.
“The daily flask of brandy was a great help,” I said.
She looked away quickly as though she hadn’t wanted to be thanked. Bland turned his big head towards me. He had taken off the little fur cap with the ear flaps that he’d been wearing and his mane of white hair was rumpled. He looked like a rather surprised owl. “Just trying to get the Southern Cross on the R/T,” he said. “We’ve been speaking to the Haakon—one of the Sandefjord factory ships. She’s got eight whale in the last ten days. Now she’s steaming south towards the Weddell Sea. Hanssen, the master, says he’s never known conditions like this. He’s about three hundred miles west-sou’west of us.”
The White South Page 7