The White South

by Hammond Innes

  “For God’s sake,” I said wearily, “get on with your damned book, can’t you—or go to bed. I’m tired.”

  “I’m going to sit here asking you questions until I find out what happened,” he answered obstinately.

  “The conversation was private. It was between Bland and myself.” I closed my eyes.

  “But it was about Nordahl’s disappearance, wasn’t it?” He hesitated and then said, “You know I’ve a right to know. You’ll probably be surprised at this. But I’m related to Bernt Nordahl.”

  “Yes, I know,” I answered. “But my conversation—”

  “You know?” he interrupted on a note of sudden anger. “How do you know? Who told you?”

  “Colonel Bland.”

  “He would.” He sounded bitter. He was silent for a moment. Then he got up and began rummaging in one of his bags. “And knowing I’m his son, you still won’t tell me what Bland said?”

  “No,” I answered. I was thinking that if I told him what Bland had said, I would no longer be a free agent. I’d no longer be able to make a bargain with Bland if I wanted to. And my mind stopped with a jolt on that thought. I realised suddenly that I was in fact seriously considering the proposition he’d made. My sense of justice wouldn’t accept that. And yet there was Judie. I was no longer tired now. I was wide-awake, my mind facing up to the problem, thinking of Judie and what the future would be for her if Bland was brought to trial.

  “Perhaps this may help you to decide.” I looked up to find Howe standing over me. He had a gun in his hand. I sat up quickly and he laughed. “It’s all right, Craig. I’m not threatening you.” He sat down, turning the gleaming nickel of the pistol over and over in his hand. “Life doesn’t mean very much to me,” he said quietly, and the sudden steadiness of his voice compelled attention. “I’ve nothing much to lose, you see. And this—” he held up the pistol—“this could be a way out. I know why Erik Bland wanted to see you. It’s just as I said. They think they can hush the whole thing up provided they square you. What did he do—threaten you through Judie?”

  “How did you guess?” I asked in surprise.

  “Because I know the sort of bastard Erik Bland is.” The word bastard had a violence on his lips that I’d never noticed in it before. “I suppose he offered to trade Judie for your silence?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He laughed suddenly. “If he knew the whole story nothing would induce him to part with Judie.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Because Judie is the South Antarctic Whaling Company. She controls it now—not Bland. My job in Capetown wasn’t only to sell Nordahl’s South African holdings on a certain day. With the profits I was to buy out three of the larger shareholders in the South Antarctic Company. Before we left Capetown, Nordahl held 57 per cent of the shares in the company. They don’t know that—yet.” And he chuckled quietly to himself. Then suddenly he was silent, his eyes searching my face. “You like Judie, don’t you?”

  He didn’t put it as bluntly as Bland had done, but I knew what he meant. I think I hesitated. But I’d no longer any doubts on the matter. “Yes,” I said. “I’m very fond of her.”

  He nodded slowly as though it confirmed something that he was already satisfied about. “If Erik Bland were dead, would you marry her?”

  I stared at him then, trying to read his mind. “The situation doesn’t arise,” I said and my voice sounded harsh.

  “It could arise,” he said, tapping the gun against the palm of his hand. “Well. Would you?”

  “I can’t answer that,” I said.

  “But you’d want to?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He nodded. “And that was the threat Bland held over you, wasn’t it?” His head had jerked forward and he was gazing at me intently. “Judie’s happiness against your silence?”

  I didn’t answer and he suddenly got up. “All right,” he said. “I just wanted to know what the situation was. Thank God I persuaded her to go across to Hval 5.” He stood then, looking down at me for a moment, then he turned away, slipping the gun into his pocket. “Bernt Nordahl’s interest in life was the South Antarctic Whaling Company.” He walked slowly across to the door. “He’d have liked you, Craig. Good night.” And he was gone, closing the door behind him.

  I lit a cigarette and lay there in the half light that filtered in through the porthole, trying to understand the mind of the man. He wasn’t mad. Of that I was certain. There was a cold, relentless sanity about him. And he wasn’t entirely sane either.

  In the next few days he worked steadily at his book. He no longer brooded. He worked all day and far into the night as though he had not too much time in which to complete it. And he was more natural, more cheerful than I’d seen him at any time since I’d known him. Occasionally he’d come up on to the bridge for a breath of air and stand there, cracking jokes with Gerda and watching everything with the excited interest of a small boy. Gerda reacted strangely, like a mother given an ugly duckling to rear. In a rough, good-natured way she fussed over him. I even found her mending a tear in one of his shirts on the day we had to put back to the factory ship to refuel. I made some crack about it being unusual for the mate of a catcher to take up darning in her spare time and she flew into a temper and told me to mind my own business. It was the only time I ever saw her put out. Afterwards she was sweetness itself to me, but I didn’t make the same mistake again when I saw her mending a pair of socks that I knew weren’t her own.

  It was on the 6th February that we refuelled. Whale had suddenly become scarce. The catchers were out in a wide sweep, some of them as much as 200 miles away from the Southern Cross. Hval 5 had just reported a pod 150 miles to the north-east and we were directed to steam in that direction. Early on the 7th we got two about 100 miles away from the factory ship and radioed for a towing ship. Tauer III answered our call. The clouds had come down very low. They were dirty, ragged wisps driving before a rising sou’wester. The glass was rapidly falling and visibility was reduced to little more than a mile.

  Throughout the rest of the day we steamed slowly north-eastwards, searching. But a cold, stinging rain was driving across the ship, and this, combined with the spray driven from the breaking wavetops, made it impossible for us to see the spout of a whale even if there were any about. The cry of Isen came more and more often from the wretched lookout, perched in the tonne at the bucking masthead. Sometimes it was an iceberg. More often it was a floe half hidden in the breaking waves. Gerda ordered a lookout in the bows as well and her foresight was justified when we narrowly missed a “growler”—a large platform of ice almost submerged. “I think we must find shelter,” she shouted to me. “It is very bad.”

  I nodded. The movement of the ship was becoming more and more violent as the wind rose to gale force. I realised the necessity of having a lookout in the bows. But I was getting concerned for the man’s safety. He had lashed himself to the end of the catwalk, but the bows were buried at times so deep in the waves that he seemed to be up to his waist in water. I felt the catwalk itself might be torn out of the ship.

  “Isen.” There it came again, that frightening cry from the tonne. We peered through the murk of a rain squall, waiting. And then suddenly it emerged out of the storm wrack—a great wall of ice with breakers flinging water into the driven clouds. The helmsman swung the wheel before my order had even reached him. The catcher turned and we ran parallel to the ice wall, where it stood out of the raging sea on the edge of visibility. “I think we find shelter here,” Gerda shrieked to me.

  The berg was a huge one. We must have gone nearly two miles before we turned the edge of it. But it was quite narrow and in a few minutes we had turned northwestward and were cruising along in comparatively calm water. I ordered stop, and the sudden cessation of the engine was noticeable only in the absence of vibration. We drifted quietly, the wall of ice just visible to port, the little ship lifting and dropping away again as the long swell of the gale rolled under her.
It was queer, there in the lee of the iceberg—an unnatural calm in the midst of chaos. There was hardly any wind, yet we could hear the gale screaming over our heads and in the intervals between rain squalls we saw the ragged clouds driving pell-mell towards the north-east. And over and above the howling fury of the wind we could hear a deep rumble like a heavy artillery barrage—giant waves battering at the farther side of the iceberg. “I hope she do not capsize,” Gerda said to me. “It has been known in a gale. If she is top heavy and the wind get hold of her—” She didn’t finish, but I could imagine the roaring tidal wave of water that would be set up by that huge mass, as large as Lundy Island, rolling over in the sea.

  It was in these conditions, an hour later, that we received the SOS. I climbed out of deep sleep like a drowning man coming to the surface to find Gerda shaking me violently.

  “You must get up please, Duncan. There is an SOS. One of the catchers is in difficulties.” Her face looked white and strained. “I think we are the nearest ship.”

  I swung myself off the bunk. “What catcher is it?” I asked.

  “Hval 5.”

  “My God!” I said and pulled on my boots. “Have they given their position?”

  “Ja.”

  “Get the chart then. Bring it to the wireless room. I’ll be there. What’s happened to her?” I asked.

  “Damaged her rudder—possibly her propeller,” she answered as she hurried out.

  I put on my oilskins and slid down the ladder to the after-deck. I was thinking of Judie. A catcher with rudder and screw damaged would be at the mercy of the storm. When I reached the second mate’s cabin, I found Raadal huddled over the radio. “The operator on the Southern Cross tell all vessels east and north of the factory ship they must stand by their radios,” he said in his thick English. “It is Gerda who hear the SOS. She is on watch and she listen as always at the hour.” I glanced at the clock above his bunk. It was five past one.

  The door flung back and Gerda came in. Howe was close behind her. “I have work him out,” she said, spreading the chart across Raadal’s bunk. “This is their position—66.25 S., 3348 W. And we are about here. We are not more than forty miles distant.”

  “Have you given the Southern Cross our position?”

  “Ja. They have the positions of all the ships in this area.”

  I turned to the door, my mind suddenly made up. “Raadal. When the Southern Cross comes on the air again, tell them that we are going to the assistance of Hval 5.”

  He nodded. “Ja hr. Kaptein.” I was half out of the door when he called me back. The radio was crackling and a voice was saying—“Ullo-ullo-ullo, Syd Korset. Hval Fern anroper Syd Korset.”

  I saw Howe stiffen and lean forward. Gerda, too, was straining forward, a set expression on her face.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  Howe silenced me with an impatient movement of his hand. A spate of Norwegian was pouring out of the radio. All of them—Raadal, too—were listening intently. Finally came three quick whistles and the radio went dead as the speaker signed off.

  “What was he saying?” I demanded.

  But no one seemed to hear me. Howe was staring at Gerda. She turned to Raadal. “Send Kaptein Craig’s message, Hans,” she ordered. “We must go there immediately.”

  I caught hold of her shoulder and spun her round. “Do you mind telling me what’s happened?” I demanded.

  “They have been driven on to some ice. Kaptein Larvik is injured. They are afraid the ship will not last long.”

  I seized the chart from the bunk. “You stay by the radio, Raadal.” I slammed out of the cabin, leaving Gerda and Howe staring at each other and ran to the bridge. “Half ahead!” I ordered the helmsman. “Steer north-east.” I dived down the ladder to my cabin and worked out the course. Back on the bridge again I ordered N.55 E. and sent a lookout to the bow. Gerda joined me then. She still seemed dazed. She said something, but it was lost in the wind. We were moving out of the shelter of the iceberg now and sheets of stinging spray were lashing across the bridge as we ran before the full force of the gale.

  Death seemed suddenly very close to us. As I stared out into the rain-driven murk, all I saw was Judie’s face and Hval 5 being hammered against a wall of ice. And I shouted ugly words into the wind because I didn’t dare order more than half speed.

  VI

  “ISEN! ISEN!” THE cry was from the masthead. The lookout at the end of the catwalk signalled to starboard. The helmsman swung the wheel. The flat surface of a floe slid by, glimmering grey in the half light. Then the messboy came hurrying along the after-deck, clinging like a monkey to the life-line that had been rigged. He reported that Hval 5 was still afloat but in danger of being trapped between two icefloes.

  Shortly afterwards Howe came up. “They’re all right so far,” he shouted to me. “I’ve been talking to Dahle, the first mate. He says they’ve been holed by the ice, but he thinks the pumps can handle it for a time at any rate. Eide has just been on the radio. He confirms your decision to go to Hval 5. We’re the nearest boat. Tauer III has been ordered to stand by at her present position. But she hasn’t acknowledged the order.

  “Do you think they’re in trouble, too,” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Isen! Isen!” Another change of course. Another floe. Gerda tugged at Howe’s sleeve. “Walter! Do you think we shall reach them in time?” She screamed the question at him, yet her voice barely reached me.

  “Yes,” he shouted back. But I wasn’t so sure. It depended on how much ice lay between them and us. I was feeling pretty scared. I’d never taken a ship into ice before. I cursed Bland for putting me in command of a catcher and in the same breath thanked God that I’d be the one to reach Judie first.

  “Isen! Isen!” I reduced speed to slow ahead. The ice was all round us now. A sudden jar ran through the ship and there were a number of sharp, staccato cracks and then the grinding of ice along the sides. I stopped the engine, peering into the glimmer of white ahead. Then a squall came. It was sleet this time, not rain, and it blotted out everything. We lay there, drifting slowly forward, ice all round us. The sea was much less now. As though she read my thoughts Gerda said, “There is much ice, I think. It is holding down the sea.”

  Half an hour went by whilst we lay there, waiting for the sleet to pass. The water froze on our oilskins. It was bitterly cold and every now and then there was the horrible grating sound of ice against the steel sides of the catcher. But the weight of the wind was lessening. The sleet no longer drove horizontal with stinging violence. It came down in straight lines, making the dull gleam of the deck plates dance. Then suddenly all was quiet. And with the passing of the sleet, an immense silence seemed to brood over us, as though we had drifted into a vacuum. “It is getting lighter,” Gerda said, and her voice, raised against the wind that was no longer there, seemed unnaturally loud.

  Visibility was increasing and we could see that we’d fallen foul of a small huddle of icefloes. We watched the black rearguard of the rain sweep north-eastward and as it went it showed us more and more ice. Behind us the low clouds were dark and louring as though heralding another storm. But ahead they were a dazzling white, their torn bellies mirroring the ice below, picking it up in a blinding light. I backed the catcher carefully out of the icefloes and headed her at half speed into the ice blink. A little group of Emperor penguins huddled on a floe watched us go, bowing sedately as though to hide the joy they felt at our departure in diplomatic etiquette.

  The ice blink was criss-crossed by dark lines and we scanned it, reading it like a map, searching for the most suitable lead. As we approached the loose pack the ice blink mapped for us a narrow lead like a long tendril that ended at the broad line of a much wider lead running north-east, and we headed for this. The ice closed round us, a flat, broken plain of dazzling white that heaved to the swell like ground moving under the impact of an earthquake. In the distance a large berg towered like a smal
l mountain. Another, smaller one, showed against the dark background of the clouds behind us. It looked like a sailing ship, hull down and driving under every stitch of canvas.

  I didn’t dare move from the bridge now. Gerda or Howe were constantly in Raadal’s cabin and they kept me informed of all radio messages. Hval 5 reported the propeller shaft cracked and rudder almost ripped from its seating. They were attempting to clear it and rig a jury rudder. With the passing of the storm they were no longer in imminent danger of being crushed. They reported a wide lead running sou’west and passing within half a mile of their position.

  “I hope to God that’s the lead we’re making for,” I said to Howe, who had brought me this piece of information. The lead we were following was narrowing rapidly now. Another mile and it had petered out into a litter of small floes. I took the wheel myself and at slow ahead twisted and turned through the narrow channels. From the bridge we could no longer see the lead we were making for. I had to work on the instructions of the masthead lookout.

  The channels were becoming narrower and narrower. Sometimes I had to stop the engine altogether, the ship’s sides practically scraping the ice. Fortunately the edges of the floes were fairly smooth. The comparative warmth of the sea at that time of the year had smoothed off the sides except where they had been broken up in the storm. At times I had barely steerage way on the ship.

  Soon we could see the broad lead from the bridge. But between us and it the pack seemed to huddle closer in a protective bank. I turned the edge of a floe into a narrow gap and jerked at the engine-room telegraph. I had turned into a cul-de-sac. The gap just petered out. And there, not two hundred yards ahead of us, was the dark water of the lead. As we drifted towards the flat sheet of ice that barred our progress, I went to the side of the bridge and leaned out, gazing aft along the length of the ship. The gap we had come up had almost closed behind us, the floes on either side having been sucked together by the movement of the ship. There was no question of going astern. We should have damaged our rudder, possibly sheered the blades off our propeller.