At five the next morning the snow ceased. The wind remained, but we were no longer hemmed in by the blanket of the snowstorm. We could see, and the sight that met our eyes was truly terrifying. The icebergs were not six miles away and they were bearing down upon us, churning the ice up before them like giant bulldozers. I gave the order to load the sledges. I had biscuit tins broken up and the tin nailed to the outside of the boat round the bows. This was to save the woodwork from being pierced or damaged by sharp edges of ice, for I was determined to take the boat with me. The boat was our only hope of safety. Without the boat we were doomed.
Whilst these preparations were going on Gerda and I went out on skis to reconnoitre the route to the floe-berg. The snow was deep and crisp. Our skis slid easily along the surface of it. It took us only a few minutes to reach the floe-berg—a journey that had taken Kalstand and I over an hour the day before. It was incredible. It seemed no distance at all. But though the snow was all right on skis, I wondered how it would be for the men on foot. The smooth carpet of white covered everything—all the flaws and honeycombs and areas of rotten ice. I was afraid the weight of the boat would soon find the bad patches.
When we got back the steward had breakfast ready. It was the best meal we had. I had told him to use anything he liked from the stores we were leaving behind. We were ready to leave shortly after ten. Bonomi bustled about taking pictures. “I must have pictures of everything,” he said. “The camp of the disaster, the trek, the boat, everything. When we are back, everyone will say, ‘Bravo! Bravo! Aldo Bonomi, he has done it again.’”
That was how we came to call the place Disaster Camp. The man was unbelievable. He had come across to us with a rucksack on his back and his camera slung round his neck. Do you think that rucksack contained so much as a change of socks? Not a bit of it. It was full of unused film for his camera.
Before we started he insisted on taking a group picture, all of us standing in front of the stores we were abandoning. It was just as he was taking this photograph that Howe seized my arm and pointed towards Tauer III. A line of figures was winding slowly through the broken contours of the ice. Somebody raised a cheer and in an instant the men were all shouting and waving excitedly. The fools thought it was a rescue party from the Southern Cross. I counted seventeen men—seventeen black dots moving against the dead white of the snow. I turned on my crew and shouted at them to be quiet. “It is the crew of Tauer III.” The cheering wavered and died. I saw the light of hope leave their eyes. Their faces looked suddenly white and pinched under their beards. The deckboy, Hans, began to cry. The dry sobs that shook him were audible, even above the howl of the wind—it was as though the sudden fear in the men’s hearts had been translated into sound. Gerda went to him and put her arm round him, comforting him. We waited like men frozen by the cold as the crew of Tauer III approached.
They were dragging improvised sledges piled with stores. But they had no boat with them. I searched the long, straggling line with my glasses. Vaksdal was leading. His big, Viking figure was unmistakable. With only one man to help him, he was pulling one of the sledges. I searched down along the line, peering at each man’s face. Most of them I could recognise from the brief period I had been in command of them. But I was searching for one face and I did not find it. The full complement of a towing vessel was sixteen men and two deckboys. There were only seventeen. Erik Bland was not with them.
As they reached our camp, Vaksdal came towards me. His eyes avoided mine. “The men wish to be under your command, Kaptein Craig,” he said harshly.
I ordered my steward to get the stove alight and prepare hot food for them. Then I turned to Vaksdal. “Where’s Bland?” I asked him.
“He remain with the stores,” he answered. He was shifting uneasily on his big feet.
“Why?” He did not answer me and I added, “Why have you abandoned him?”
“Because the men wish it,” he answered. His voice was sullen and angry.
“The men wish to abandon their captain?”
“Ja. Also he do not wish to come with the men. He wish to stay. He ask Keller and me to stay, too.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because the men wish to leave.”
“And you left Bland to die in the ice alone?”
The man’s face was sullen. “He would not come. He wish to be left.”
“You’re the first mate, are you?” I asked him.
“Ja.”
“You assumed command?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Because the men refuse to do what Bland tell them. They say it is Bland’s fault, that it is not an accident. They are angry and they do not obey orders. They are Tönsberg men.” He said it as though that explained everything.
“Did you take the view that Bland deliberately rammed my boat?”
“No. He would not do that, not here in the ice. No whaler would do a thing like that. It is true what Frϕken Petersen say, that he send the helmsman below, but it is for some cocoa. It is also true that our radio is mysteriously out of order. These are things that will have to be cleared up at the enquiry when we get back to the Southern Cross. But I do not—”
“The Southern Cross is gone,” I interrupted him.
“Gone? I do not understand.”
“She got caught in the ice in an attempt to reach us. She is sunk.” I looked round at the ring of faces, listening open-mouthed. They looked scared and disheartened. “Gerda,” I said. “Get these men to work. I want all the sledges lashed together, nose to tail.” Then I turned back to Vaksdal. “So you are in command of these men?”
“Ja.”
“When did you assume command?”
“When it is clear to me that the men will not obey Kaptein Bland.”
“Then it was your decision to abandon Bland.”
“That is not true. The men wish to leave Bland, and also Bland wish to stay.”
“But you say you were in command?”
“Ja.” His voice was sullen and his tongue flicked across his lips.
“Who is your second mate?”
“Keller.” He nodded to a short, stout man with a woollen cap.
I called him over. “Do you speak English?” I asked him.
“Ja, hr. Kaptein.”
“Why did you abandon Bland?”
“The men demand that we—”
“Damn the men!” I shouted at him. “The two of you were in command, yet you did exactly what the men wanted. You are forthwith relieved of your commands and revert to ordinary seamen, both of you.”
Vaksdal took a step towards me. “You cannot do this” he growled.
“I can and I will,” I answered him. “You’re neither of you fit to command.”
Vaksdal’s eyes blazed. “You dare to say that!” he shouted. “You who have not served one season in the Antarctic. You know nothing and you tell us what we should and should not do. I have been eight voyages to the Antarctic. I know what is right.”
“You know what is right, do you?” I said. “You assume command of a crew cut off in the ice, and you abandon your boats. How do you think you’re going to get to safety without your boats?”
“I did not know the Southern Cross is sunk.” He was looking at the ground, shuffling his feet angrily in the snow.
“Did it never occur to you that the Southern Cross might not be able to reach us? Were you planning to just sit on your bottoms and wait to be rescued? Abandoning your captain when you believed him innocent of the men’s charges is tantamount to mutiny. Abandoning your boats shows that you’re not fit to command in these circumstances, either of you. You are now relieved of your commands. If you have anything to say, hold it for the enquiry when we get back.” I turned on my heels then and went over to Gerda. “Get all the men together. I want to talk to them.”
“But Duncan, it is too cold for talk now,” she said.
“They’ll be colder if they die out here,” I answered. “And that’s wh
at will happen if we don’t scotch this trouble right at the start. I want another mate—one of the Hval 4 men. Who do you suggest?”
“Kalstad.”
“Good.”
She paraded the men then and I spoke first to the men of Tauer III. I told them that what they’d done was equivalent to mutiny. That unless they obeyed their officers they would never get out of the ice alive. I told them what had happened to the Southern Cross, that we were now entirely on our own. I then appointed Kalstad a mate, in command of the Tauer III crew, and announced that I had relieved Vaksdal and Keller of their commands.
One of the men interrupted me. He was the coxs’n of Tauer III and he started on a denunciation of Bland.
“That is no reason for abandoning him,” I answered. “He will stand trial when we get back. You have no right to take the law into your own hands, which is what you have done in abandoning him. Moreover, you have abandoned your boats, too. And without them you have no chance of reaching safety.” I then asked for volunteers from the Hval 4 crew to go back and bring in Bland and the two boats.
Every man of them volunteered—even the two injured men and the boy, Hans. I was proud of them and I remember that my voice felt choky at this display of confidence in me. The coxs’n of Tauer III stepped forward a little shamefacedly then and asked if his men might not volunteer.
But I shook my head. “You’ve done one trek today. My men are fresh.” I ordered Gerda to get the sledges moving as soon as the Tauer III men had fed. “When you have set up the new camp and the men are rested come back with a dozen volunteers to help us bring in the boats.”
Gerda nodded and began running out ropes from the sledges. I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was Howe. “Bring back the boats, Craig,” he said. “But for God’s sake leave Bland there.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“He’s a murderer,” he said. “You know that. Bring him back and you give him a second chance. Let him find his own way out—if he can without any boats.”
But I shook my head. “I can’t do that,” I repeated.
“My God!” Howe said. “If you bring him back I’ll have to kill him. I’ve sworn I will. I’ve sworn to avenge my father. But I don’t want to do it—not now. You see, there’s Gerda—” He hesitated awkwardly and then said, “Why not let the ice do it? Please. To bring him back will make so much unhappiness. Gerda is already frightened for her father. And if I kill Bland—”
“No,” I said. “And you’re not going to kill Bland either. When I’ve brought him back and if these icebergs don’t finish us, I’ll try him by a summary court here on the ice, and if he’s convicted of deliberately ramming us, he’ll be put to work as an ordinary seaman pending trial when we get back to civilisation.”
Howe stared at me. “You damned fool!” he said. He was almost crying, he was so worked up. “You’re not in the Navy now. This is the Antarctic. That man’s killed my father. He’s caused the loss of three ships and endangered the lives of over four hundred men. Can’t you realise that he’s better dead? If you bring him back he’ll fight to kill us all and get put alone. You heard what Vaksdal said. He wanted to be left there. Well, if he wants to be left—”
“If he wants to be left,” I said, “then I’ll not force him to come. There, will that satisfy you?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but Gerda came up then. “Everything is ready for us to go,” she said.
“Fine,” I replied. “And don’t forget to come back for us. It’s going to be a hard trek with two boats.”
“I won’t.”
“Good luck then.”
“Thank you. And be careful, Duncan,” she added. “You are a nice man and it would not be good if we lose you.” And with that she stretched up and kissed me.
I collected my volunteers, leaving only the two injured men and Hans and Howe of the Hval 4 crew with Gerda, and we set out west along the sledge tracks that led towards the black hulk of Tauer III.
You may think it odd in that setting and amongst a bunch of tough men of whom she was in command, that Gerda should have kissed me. Perhaps the feminine element is out of place in the Antarctic. It certainly seems so as I write and I was tempted to leave it out. But I am setting down everything as it happened. Gerda was a mate in charge of men. But that did not mean that she hid the woman in her. Her method of handling men was quite different from a man’s method. Yet all I can say is that if ever I am in as tough a position again, I’d give my right hand to have Gerda as my second-in-command. Her endurance was a constant spur to the rest. She’d shame them and coax them all in one and under her leadership they could achieve the impossible. As for the kiss—it was an open expression of her wish that we should return safely and accepted as such by the men. In fact, I not only had her kiss on my lips to encourage me but a cheer from the men of Tauer III. Only Vaksdal watched us sullenly as we left the camp and I hoped I had not made a permanent enemy of him, for he was a man I thought would prove useful.
We took with us three of the harpoon forerunners, our boat anchor and block and tackle. The snow had been packed down by the Tauer III sledges and the going was good, with the exception of one bad patch of honeycombed ice round which I managed to find a way. With the wind on our backs we made the trip in just over half an hour.
The camp itself was completely obliterated by snow. Only the sledge tracks running up to it and ceasing marked its position for us. As we neared the camp we could see the ice grinding at the wreck of Tauer III. The rusty sides of the ship stood up black and sheer above the floes, blotched here and there with white patches of snow. The ice was riding up on the farther side, and though we could not hear it, we could see that the steel plates were being broken under the stress. Beyond the ship the ice seemed in constant motion. It would lie dormant for a while, a lumpy plain of white, then suddenly a floe would heave up, showing jagged green teeth, or a great slab of ice would pop out of the snow as though ejected as indigestible by some giant sea monster.
From an ice hillock I looked beyond Tauer III to the line of icebergs. The nearest was not three miles away—a huge, wedge-shaped cliff of ice ploughing into the pack, turning it up on either side like the bow wave of a huge battleship held motionless in the still of a camera picture. But it was only motionless if you glanced at it quickly. I stood there for a moment, staring at it, and saw that it was moving all the time. Thick floes were being crushed and churned back. I thought of the survivors of the Southern Cross. The icebergs must have ploughed their way right across the position where the factory ship had foundered.
There was a chill in my stomach as I slid down into a trough of the ice on my skis, glad to have the sight blotted from my view. I felt there was no hope. Strive how we might, we were doomed to the same death as the men of the Southern Cross. The advance of the icebergs was slow but inevitable, like the Day of Judgment. I tried to grin cheerfully at the men, but my lips seemed frozen. I made some crack about the ice—I don’t remember what, but it seemed a hollow mockery. The men laughed and I thought—My God, they’ve got guts. I found myself praying God to give me strength. In that illimitable waste of storm-swept ice I felt the smallness of man and He seemed nearer to me then than ever before, nearer even than that time when I’d steamed away from the convoy in my corvette, one of a screen of tiny ships thrown out to halt the Bismark.
As my skis slid along the sledge tracks into the Tauer III camp, Erik Bland emerged from a sail-cloth tent pitched in the lee of some packing cases. “It’s you, Craig, is it?” he said as I stopped just short of him. His voice was thick and he was swaying slightly. “What do you want?”
I was well ahead of the men and for the moment we were alone. “I’ve come for you,” I said. “I think you know why.”
“I suppose you think I rammed you deliberately?” His eyes had a glazed look and his face was white and mean under the dark stubble of his beard. He was very drunk. “Well, what if I did? You can’t prove it. You can’t prove anything. If that bloody lit
tle bastard Howe hadn’t fired that harpoon—”
“You’d be out of the ice by now, reporting that there was no way through. Is that it?”
“You think you’re clever, don’t you?” he sneered. “Well, I’ll beat you yet—all of you.”
“Better get your things together, Bland,” I said. “You’re coming back with me.”
“To have you rig another little court of enquiry?” He laughed. “Oh, no. I’m staying here.”
“You’re not taking the easy way out like that,” I told him. “You’re coming back with me to stand trial. If we ever get out of the ice I think you’re going to find yourself responsible for a lot of deaths.”
“I’m not responsible for what the ice does,” he answered. “You can’t prove anything. It was an accident. And don’t imagine I’m going to die. I’m not taking the easy way—” He stopped then, peering out across the snow. He’d seen the men. “So you’re so damned scared of me you bring a dozen men with you.” His eyes were suddenly narrowed. He was fighting to sober himself up.
“I didn’t bring the men in order to persuade you to come back with me,” I said. “I brought them because I’ve come for the boats Vaksdal was fool enough to leave behind.”
“The boats! You leave the boats alone!” He stared at me a second and then swung round and lunged into the tent. Like an idiot, it never occurred to me what he was after until he came out carrying a gun. “You leave the boats alone!” he screamed at me. He was tugging at the bolt, which was jammed with frozen snow. “As long as I have the boats, I’ve got a chance.”
The White South Page 21