A Grue of Ice

11. The Roverhullet

My dread, since the loss of the Antarctica, that Helen would attempt the impossible with the helicopter, crystallised at Sailhardy's words. The south-west quadrant of the horizon was ominously and unnaturally clear; what wild eddies would arise above Bouvet's stark cliffs, the only projection in the sea for thousands of miles, when the gale hit them, I could not guess.

" We have got to signal her to keep off!" I said. " There are certain to be some emergency flares in the roverhullet storeroom."

" Look!" he replied.

I, too, caught the flicker of light above the orange splash: the rotors were spinning.

" Quick!" I went on. " She mustn't come close. It would be suicide here." I gestured to the glacier slope behind the hut.

Sailhardy and I ran to the hut, I leading the way to the storeroom. Upton and Walter were examining the stores with satisfaction, and Pirow was busy on his knees trying to get the stove going in the outer room.

" Do you see any flares here?"

Upton's manner changed at my question, and anger started up in his eyes. " Thorshammer?"

" No," I said. " Helen is flying off the helicopter. She'll kill herself. I'm going to signal her."

Although it was dim in the store-room, I could see the brightness of Upton's eyes. He moved swiftly over to the harpoon-rack, whipped up one of the old-fashioned weapons,

and stood with it poised above his head, pointing at Sailhardy and me. " Walter! Here! You know how to use one of these things. You'll stay just where you are, Wetherby!

There will be no signalling anyone, do you understand?"

" But Helen…" I protested.

" It's not Helen alone, but the skippers as well," he replied. " They're coming to fetch us because they can't get into Bollevika by sea."

" For God's sake, doesn't your own daughter's life mean anything to you, except that you may be caught?" I exclaimed.

" She's a fine flier," he replied defensively. " She knows how to look after herself in the air."

" There's no flier born who is good enough for Bouvet's conditions," I snapped back. " Let me find some flares." Walter balanced another long harpoon from the rack in his massive fist. I had heard it said that he was one of the finest harpoonists in the Southern Ocean. " The harpoon is like a sailing-ship," he said caressingly. " There is no sailor like a sailing-ship sailor. There is no harpoonman like one trained to throw the old harpoons. There is a sense of balance I turned to the stacks of cases. I never saw Walter move, but the head of the harpoon crashed into the heavy timber within a foot of my face.

Walter stood grinning, another harpoon already in his hand. Sailhardy looked unimpressed, but Upton's face was full of admiration. I was shaken by Walter's skill.

" The skippers must have seen us through their glasses come up the pathway," said the islander. " They know we are here-right here in this hut."

" And they have the Schmeisser," I added.

Upton started to laugh. I did not like the sound of it.

" There are no windows in the roverhullet, are there, Wetherby? Are there, Sailhardy?" He didn't wait for our reply. " No one will move outside the hut-understood? Walter…" He grinned again. " How about harpooning something quite new, for a change?"

" The front door will stand wide open," Upton went on. " We'll hear the helicopter overhead. She'll come down low, but I guess Helen won't try and land right away before she sees the lie of the land. Reidar Bull will be in the machine for certain, with his Schmeisser. He won't expect a 164 harpoon to be heaved at him. He'll think he's quite safe with a gun against unarmed men."

Walter held the harpoon head-high and made a lightning dummy-throw. " By God! I like that! I like that!" he exclaimed.

" Listen, Upton!" I said. " You've already got blood on your hands. You're making things worse. It's only a matter of time before Thorshammer arrives. She can lie off the island and shell this hut into oblivion if she wishes." Upton shook his head. " She can, if she wishes," he replied. " But we won't be here. We're going to Thompson Island in the whaleboat."

" We can also go to Cape Town in the whaleboat," I said sarcastically. " It is simply sixteen hundred miles across the worst seas in the world."

There was another change in Upton's manner. He was easy and friendly, and he spoke directly to Sailhardy. " You'd sail your boat to Cape Town, wouldn't you, Sailhardy? We could stock her up. There's plenty here…"

For a moment he caught Sailhardy's imagination with his curious attractive power of drawing a person out of himself.

" We'd have to half-deck the boat against the waves," Sailhardy said, lost in the dream Upton had conjured up. " But she'd make it. Shackleton sailed seven hundred and fifty miles to South Georgia and his was only an ordinary ship's boat."

" Don't talk nonsense!" I said harshly. " Upton…" We heard the roar of the rotors. " Carl!" shouted Upton. " Come here! Don't go outside! Come here, do you hear!"

Pirow came through to the store-room, the unspoken question dying on his lips when he saw Walter with the harpoon. The hut shook as the machine came low overhead. It could not have been more than thirty feet up. The sound receded, and then returned as the machine came back from the seaward side. The sound hung overhead. The note changed. The machine was coming down. Walter tensed, and then ran quickly forward. I gestured to Sailhardy. With Walter out of the way, Upton with his harpoon by himself was not much threat, and Pirow was unarmed. Sailhardy rushed at Upton. He couldn't handle the harpoon. Sailhardy dodged an ineffectual thrust and grabbed the weapon from him. I snatched an ice-axe from the rack and rushed after Walter.

As I darted through the doorway, I saw Walter poise in his stride and lift the harpoon like a javelin-thrower. The helicopter was hanging about fifteen feet above the ground in front of the roverhullet, the nose half pointing towards the doorway. The cabin door was open and in it stood Reidar Bull with the Schmeisser at the ready.

Walter threw. The crackle of the Schmeisser came almost at the same moment, but Walter had dropped on the ground out of the line of fire and started to roll sideways. In the split second the harpoon took to reach its target, the machine dipped a few feet. It might have been that Helen saw it coming, or it might have been an eddy of wind. The harpoon trailing its short length of rope, arced, and missed Reidar Bull. The steel head and shaft crashed into the spinning rotors.

The rest followed at lightning speed.

I saw the bight of rope snick upwards as it became entangled in the rotors. One moment Reidar Bull was standing firing the automatic pistol, the next the harpoon-rope had snatched off his head. The headless trunk stood, transfixed. I never saw the head fall. The rotors gave a single flailing screech of torn metal like a shot partridge. The headless trunk and the Schmeisser spilled on the ground. A buckled rotor, still under power, bit into the rocky ground and cartwheeled the machine for about thirty yards past the roverhullet into a boulder at the start of the glacier incline. I sprinted to the wreck. Behind the perspex, I could see Helen in her sea-leopard coat slumped over the controls. My raider's glasses, which I had left behind at the factory ship, were suspended round her neck. I hacked through the window with my ice-axe. I jumped through and cut the throttle. The thumping clatter stopped. In my anxiety to get Helen clear before the machine caught fire, I forgot her safety belt. I hacked it free. There was a mark across her forehead and she was unconscious. I picked her up in my arms and staggered clear of the machine.

In front of the roverhullet stood Upton, Pirow, Walter and Sailhardy. Walter cradled the Schmeisser in his huge paws. Behind the group, blood staining the rocks, lay what remained of Reidar Bull.

I carried Helen to them. " Get the stove going," I ordered Pirow. " I don't know how badly she's hurt."

Upton was casual. " She doesn't look too bad."

" You callous bastard…" I started to say, but he ignored me.

" Walter," he went on, " don't hesitate to use it if either Wetherby or Sailhardy starts anything."

" Sir Frederick!" said Pirow. " There's a radio in the helicopter. I'm going to see if it is all right."

" Wait a moment," said Upton. " The machine could still catch fire, although it doesn't seem likely now." He went to the corpse and turned it over with his foot with a measure of cool, pleased appraisal which sickened me.

" For God's sake!" I said. "Sailhardy! Get that stove lighted, will you! And bring some blankets from the store." Upton grinned. " Throw that thing over the cliff," he told Walter. " Here, give me the gun while you do it." Walter hesitated. " Throw him over the cliff!" repeated Upton. " What are you waiting for?"

He balanced himself lightly on the balls of his feet.

Walter shook his head. " There should be some sort of prayer. After all, just now he was a man. Perhaps the Captain will say one and then I will throw him over."

"Christ!" burst out Upton. " You, Walter! A catcher skipper!"

Walter became surly. " I'd want it that way, if I was lying there, catcher skipper or no bloody catcher skipper."

" Carry on," said Upton. " There'll be no prayers while I'm around."

I did not wait to see Walter perform his grisly task. I carried Helen inside, and Sailhardy brought some blankets, in which we wrapped her. She was breathing easily, and I could not find any bones broken. Both Sailhardy and I reckoned she was merely stunned. He also brought from the store-room some pieces of wood, chopped them up, and lit a fire for our immediate warmth on a piece of metal he had also found.

At the same time he started the big stove in the centre of the room. The ice would take hours to melt off the walls.

In ten minutes she stirred. " Helen!" I exclaimed. "Helen!"

"I'll get a sleeping-bag for her and some more wood," said Sailhardy.

She sat up and threw her arms round me. " Bruce, my darling, my darling!" she sobbed. I held her, but she pulled back suddenly. " Where are your glasses? I brought them from the Antarctica."

"Yes," I said gently. " They were round your neck and I have them."

" The helicopter, Bruce! Did it catch fire?"

" No," I said. " But it will never fly again." I told her briefly about Reidar Bull.

She seemed paler. " That means we can't get off this island."

Upton came in. " Yes, indeed we shall. With bits of your helicopter, if not with the whole." He seemed scarcely concerned about her.

Geoffrey Jenkins

A Grue Of Ice

Walter followed, Schmeisser in hand.

" What the hell are you talking about now?" I asked.

" Get this clear, Wetherby," said Upton. " I am going to Thompson Island in Sailhardy's whaleboat. So are you-all of us, in fact. I need you to navigate. I need Sailhardy to sail it." He indicated the Schmeisser. " Beyond that, I have no use for you. Remember that."

Sailhardy came back.

" Sailhardy! You have the material now to half-deck your boat. There's all the aluminium you need. How long will it take?"

Sailhardy put down the wood and looked at me for support.

" A day, maybe. Two, provided the weather doesn't get much worse. We'll have to carry the aluminium down to the beach, and that will be quite a job."

Helen listened in disbelief. " Father!" she said quietly.

" You have cause so much misery already. Drop this idea of yours about Thompson Island. What we need most is warmth, shelter, civilisation."

He burst out laughing. Pirow returned, carrying the helicopter's radio. " Hear that, Carl,! My daughter wants warmth and civilisation! We've got everything we need for the moment here, and Thompson Island is forty-five miles away. Do you think I would give up now?"

Helen recoiled and sat silent. We would make the boat voyage, all right, I told myself, but when he had failed to find Thompson Island, I could then try and locate Thorsham- mer and give ourselves up. We would be in no shape for anything else, after a few days in an open boat in a Southern Ocean storm.

Pirow was jubilant. "The radio is undamaged. I'll show you. I'll fetch the batteries and aerial wire." He looked sid eways at Upton. " It's a long time since Thorshammer heard from the seaplane crew of hers. I'd better get on the air before the destroyer starts to lose heart and comes to Bouvet to keep her rendezvous with the catchers."

" And us," said Walter grimly.

" And us!" echoed Upton. " Three days until we leave!

You can string the destroyer along for that length of time, can't you, Carl? After that they can send a whole fleet to Bouvet, but they won't find us."

" Don't you think the catchers were watching us through their glasses?" I said. "They saw the whole business. They'll see us leave in the whaleboat, too."

" So what?" said Upton. " They dare not risk coming into the Bollevika anchorage because of the mines. Let them see us go! The weather's getting worse, and that'll hide us too. Clear weather is quite exceptional here-you know that, and I've read Kohler's reports."

" Yes," I said. " The same goes for Thompson Island."

" Don't try and fob me off before we ever get there," snarled Upton. " Fog or-no fog, storm or no storm, we sail in three days' time."

Pirow came back and connected the batteries and aerial, which he looped outside over a metal stay-rope. The light was going and the dimness added to the weird air inside the icelined walls as Pirow, imitating the seaplane crew, began his probing, tentative tapping on the radio. We all huddled round the stove, except Walter, who stood far enough away to prevent Sailhardy or me from tackling him. Helen, half propped up among her blankets and a sleeping-bag, looked graved and troubled.

The faltering weak signal went out from the long fingers.

Again, I had to admire the uncanny skill of The Man with the Immaculate Hand. He clicked over the transmitting switch, paused, listened; his fingers fiddled almost like separate thinking entities among the dials.

" Is Thorshammer answering?" Upton asked. Pirow waved him silent. The yellow light of the kerosene burners, hollowing his eye-sockets, sketched his remoteness from our group. Suddenly he stiffened, his left hand reaching automatically for the switch, the right for the transmitting key. His next signal faltered more than the first.

Then he smiled and broke the tension. "Tharshammer says, keep that key down-keep keying! She wants a fix!

She must get a fix to establish the life-raft's position!"

" Are you sure you gave her enough?" Upton asked. Pirow ignored him, but dummy-tapped with the key switched off, smiling at me.

" QQQ… QQQ.. I am being attacked.."

" That is enough, is it not, Herr Kapital? Only three letters."

I got up and strode outside. The tension in the roverhullet, Upton's over-bright eyes, the agony in Helen's and the barbaric Walter brandishing the automatic pistol, had got me down. It was bitterly cold on the tiny plateau before the hut. Sunset saw-edged the west. I focused my powerful glasses on the catchers' silhouettes. Yes, there they were, lights on, Crozet's reflecting from the iceberg to which she was moored. There was a frightening immensity of silence. There was a fresh breeze, gusting up to about twenty-five knots, I reckoned, but still the storm from the south-west had been far longer in coming than either Sailhardy or I had anticipated. It would accordingly be the worse when it did come. Thinking of the whaleboat's chances in the great seas, I shuddered: Upton's plan seemed more insane than ever.

Next morning Upton woke us early. We had all slept round the stove, Upton, Pirow and Walter taking shifts to stand guard. We had broken open cases of stores and Sailhardy had prepared a meal, which we had eaten by the light of lanterns from the store-room. Helen looked tired and fell into a broken sleep. In the middle of night there had been a sound which had seemed to me like the glacier falling on the roverhullet, but it had in fact been only the inner coating of ice on the walls crashing down. When Upton called next morning, the room was warm and comfortable.

" We're going to strip some big pieces of aluminium off the helicopter and take them down to the beach," he said decisively. " That should take us the best part of to-day. To-morrow Sailhardy and Wetherby will half-deck the boat while the rest of us get supplies down to the beach. On the third day we sail."

Some of my previous night's introversion was with me still when I thought of the puny boat and the great seas. " Weather permitting," I added.

" Weather or no weather," he replied. "You can make up your mind about that."

" And we sail down the channel into the waiting arms of the catchers," I went on.

Upton laughed. " Come, Wetherby. You're not as dumb as that."

So he had not missed the other ice-leads to the north and north-east.

Helen interrupted. " I'm helping Bruce and Sailhardy. It is my helicopter, after all."

I could not see how Sailhardy and I were to carry big sheets of aluminium down the cliff-side, especially in the wind. We would be snatched off the pathway before we had gone five hundred feet. There was also the problem of negotiating the ladder section.

I started to object, but Upton stopped me. " You obviously haven't taken a close look at the stores. The Norwegians brought a winch up here with them. They must have hauled the sections of the hut up with it. There's enough rope to rig a windjammer. Here is some, already thawing."

Two big coils lay close to the fire and the film of ice was melting.

Upton went on: "You'll also see that Christensen's men drilled some bolt-holes in the rock. A few sheets of light metal won't be any worry "

He was right. After Sailhardy and I, using ice-axes to prise loose the rivets, had stripped off several large sheets from the helicopter to deck the bow and the stern of the whaleboat, it became obvious it would be simplicity itself to lover them down the cliff face by hand, without resorting to the winch, which Walter was busy rigging, while Upton kept watch with the Schmeisser. Helen was shaky when we began, but seemed to pick up her strength as the day progressed. By mid-afternoon we had ripped the metal skin from a large undamaged section to the rear of the cockpit and had stacked it ready for lowering to the beach next day. I had seen Helen smile for the first time since landing on Bouvet when Sailhardy insisted on chopping loose her seat in the cockpit and putting it in front of the fire in the roverhullet. Either Walter or Upton had kept guard from the front of the hut while we worked, and Pirow had occupied himself with the radio and preparing meals. There was not only quantity among the stores, but a wide variety which would have kept a marooned party from boredom for months. When Sailhardy, Helen and I returned to the roverhullet for our midday meal, Upton had selected and stacked a pile of cases to provision the whaleboat. The were also a couple of alpine-type light-weight stoves to heat things in the boat. To me the cases looked woefully few. Upton had asked Sailhardy how long it would take to sail the forty-five miles from Bouvet to Thompson

Island. The islander replied that it had usually taken about four hours to cover the eighteen miles from Tristan to 171

Nightingale-perhaps a day to a day-and-a-half's hard sailing to Thompson. The wind and run of the sea would be behind us. Knowing there would be no Thompson Island, I had persuaded Upton to take supplies for about ten days, which I considered might be enough if we had to beat back to Bouvet in the teeth of the gale. We were also taking the helicopter's radio and my hope was that after a week in the whaleboat in a blow, everyone would be only too glad to surrender themselves to Thorshammer-if we could locate her, or she us. The project seemed riskier, whatever way I thought about it.

Sailhardy wrenched the last sheet of metal skin loose from the helicopter. He smiled at Helen. " Well, ma'am, I suppose it's better than using sea-elephant hide to half deck the boat with."

She mocked him gently. " So that's what you had in mind for your epic voyage from Bouvet to the Cape!"

I really think that Sailhardy was sold on the idea-if only as a thought-of making the voyage to the Cape. He was serious immediately. " You must not forget, ma'am, that on Tristan, the first, and maybe some of the beet whaleboats were made of sea-elephant hide stretched over wooden ribs. Three or four sea elephants would give us enough hide to do the job."

" Where do you propose to find sea elephants on Bouvet?" she asked.

He pointed at the blockhouse shape of a small island which lay at the southern entrance to Bollevika. " I'd bet you, ma' am, that you'd find some there."

" There aren't any animals on Bouvet!" she exclaimed. " Or insects. Or plants."

" You're wrong, ma'am," he replied. "If you look hard, you'll see penguins on that little island. I smelt them as we came in. I'm sure there are seals round on the sheltered side of the island." He waved his hand beyond the glacier.

" If we are very lucky, we might see a Ross seal-they're supposed to breed on Bouvet," I said. " It is the most beautiful creature in the Southern Ocean, and its eyes are quite wonderfully affectionate."

Helen laughed again. " How you two stick up for your Southern Ocean in every way!"

Sailhardy was carried away. " If there are Adelie penguins down there, ma'am, then I don't need Bruce for a navigator. The Adelie is the best pilot in the Antarctic. We on Tristan know he steers by the stars and the sun, and if I were making for Cape Town, he'd be the pilot I would choose."

She shook her head, but I backed Sailhardy. " The Americans down at McMurdo Sound thought the Adelie's navigation was just one of those stories. They carried out a test. They ringed and marked five Adelies and flew them two thousand miles away. A year later the five walked back into their rookery at McMurdo. Don't laugh!"

Sailhardy touched her leopard-seal coat. " That is the creature you want to be afraid of, ma'am. He's wicked, through and through. He's the colour of dirty snow and his head looks like a huge snake's."

" I don't want to hear any more," she smiled. " You've convinced me. The job's done and we can't move anything until to-morrow. I want Bruce to take me for a walk up the glacier slope."

" I'll put this sheet on the pile, then, and get both of you some crampons and an ice-axe," replied Sailhardy. He looked up the long incline, scattered here and there with boulders cemented into the ice. " You won't be able to go far up, ma'am."

" I don't want to go far," she replied. " All I want to do is to get away from this feeling of being watched all the time. Will you tell that oaf with gun?"

Sailhardy grinned and went off. Helen pulled back the hood from her hair. In the pale sun it was golden.

" Bruce," she said when the islander was out of earshot, " all this has a dreadful inevitableness about it. No one seems to be doing anything."

I nodded towards Walter. " That automatic pistol would cut anyone in half with a burst. We must pretend to fall in with the idea of leaving the island, under pressure."

"For God's sake! Not here-they might hear you!" she said. " Thompson Island…"

" Yes," I replied. " I want to talk to you about Thompson Island. Up there, where no one can possibly hear."

Sailhardy returned with an ice-axe for me and crampons for our shoes. He started to be jocular, but he too lapsed into silence when he saw our faces. Not speaking, Helen and I trekked up the slope. Above us towered the massive cone of the Christensen glacier. A rag of cloud about the peak made me uneasy about the storm which had been so tardy in coming. There was a bank of low cloud against the sun, and

I wondered if the reason for the relatively light wind so far 173 from the south-west meant a blow not from that quarter but from the north-west. A north-westerly cyclone meant a heavy swell from the same direction, which would throw up a tumbled sea to make our voyage to Thompson Island all the more hazardous; worst of all, however, would be the low cloud and poor visibility which went with it.

About half a mile above the roverhullet, Helen and I found our further path blocked by a face of ice which rose for about two hundred feet sheer. We leaned against a big rock. I handed her my glasses. The view was stupendous. She studied the catchers for a long time, and then cased the whole quadrant of sea and ice to the north-west, the north and the north-east, until her view was obstructed by the glacier.

" Looking for Thompson Island?" I joked.

She dropped the binoculars to the length of their lanyard. She gestured to the north-east. " It's not there, is it, Bruce, despite the chart?"

" No," I said. " It's not there at all. You could not see it in its real position, from here, even if it were clear. The glacier is in the way."

Her eyes were a mixture of pale gold, white and green from the sun, the sea and ice. " You mean, Thompson Island is south of Bouvet, not north at all?"

" Yes, Helen. Not north, or north-north-east, despite what the chart says. South. Rather, south with a little east in it. Better men than your father, with better ships than a whaleboat, have searched every inch of the waters north, north-east and north-west of Bouvet for Thompson Island. You know with what results."

" But south! How can that be? How?"

" Sit down," I said. " It's a long story. But before I tell you it, remember one thing-caesium. Remember your father also. And remember I could not tell you this except…"

" Except that I know it was not you who shot down the seaplane," she replied. She pulled off one glove for a moment and held my glasses with her bare hand. " I have to love inanimate, sometimes violent things, to come to the heart of Bruce Wetherby. A pair of raider's binoculars, a compass of the sea-that's the way it is. Nothing static, nothing restful, always something at war with ice or warmth or life."

" In that you can include Thompson Island," I said.

" Why are you telling me about Thompson Island?" she went on. " Why? After all, I am his daughter."

" Because," I said simply, " I believe that within a week we will all dead in an open whaleboat."

" One week!" she echoed. " One week of-us." I leaned forward and kissed her lips. " It will have to do for a lifetime."

Her voice was unsteady. " Sailhardy thinks the same?"

" No. He secretly cherishes a hope that one day he will make a greater open boat voyage than Shackleton, or even

Bligh of the Bounty. That blinds him. The sea is his friend, never forget, not his enemy. Forty-five miles to Thompson

Island is nothing to him."

" Except that it is not forty-five miles and there is no Thompson Island where the chart says," she said. She faced me. " Bruce, why, why, are you doing this thing? Why not take him to Thompson Island? Let him have it, even if it sends him completely… completely… unstable. .. when he finds that his caesium and all the rest of it is a dream."

" It is not a dream," I said.

" It… is… not… a… dream? I heard myself what you said to him about the caesium! Myself!"

" It is because I believe that there is caesium on Thompson Island that I am telling you this," I said slowly. " Thompson Island must never be found-never! You know what caesium means to our present-day world. A full-scale atomic war could be fought over Thompson Island."

" So you are prepared to sacrifice your own life and the lives of five other people?"

" Yes," I said. " Unless I can persuade your father when we are nearing the end of our tether to give ourselves up to Thorshammer-if we can find her." I began: " Thompson Island lies…"

She held her hand, now gloved again, over my mouth. "

Bruce, my darling, are you sure you want to tell me this? Quite, quite sure?"

" It is an act of faith," I replied. " Thompson Island lies sixty-five miles to the south-south-east of Bouvet."

It was minutes before she replied, and her voice was so soft I could scarcely hear the words. " Now I can ask how you alone know this."

"If you look on the vernier scale of my sextant-that is, the scale that's used for reading the angle of the sun and the stars-you'll see there is a little notch clearly filed. That is the latitude of Thompson Island. No one has ever searched for it there."

"But why…?"

" During the war I made what I considered a major discovery about the Antarctic. Light rays bend greatly in the Antarctic's cold air. You get refractions. You cannot take an accurate sighting."

" I don't understand-what are you trying to say?"

" The peculiar quality of light rays bending makes the positions of distant objects greatly distorted. In other words, the sextant lies. It puts the sun and the stars, on which we rely for navigation, out of position. I discovered that there is a consistent error of one hundred and ten miles too far north. Therefore instead of being forty-five miles to the northnorth-east of Bouvet, it is sixty-five miles to the south-south-east.

"

She wrinkled up her eyes in a puzzled way which brought to my eyes all the loveliness that had lain dormant for so long.

" I don't understand the logistics of what you're saying, although I accept it, Bruce. But what I can't understand is why, when everyone was wrong, including Norris when he first fixed the position of Thompson Island, that error should not have remained constant-in other words, even if it was marked at such and such a position and strictly it was wrong, why couldn't everyone else, making the same error because of light refractions, get there all the same?"

" The same thought struck me," I said. " Your assumption is that an old-time sealer was capable of getting an accurate fix, and that Bouvet's position itself was known."

" Bouvet itself?"

" I drew a map superimposing the various positions where Bouvet has been plotted," I replied. " There are at least four from reliable sources, and three from less reliable. To say that Thompson lies forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet doesn't mean a thing. In fact, I found on checking that the man who discovered Bouvet, the Frenchman Captain Bouvet de Lozier, first was supposed to have sighted land somewhere near where Norris said Thompson lies."

She laughed. " I'll bet you shot Bouvet's position down in flames too!"

I grinned back. " Yes, I did. You see, Bouvet based his longitude on the Cape Verde Islands, not on

Greenwich." 176

" I told you so!" she said delightedly. " But what about the oldtime sealers you were starting to tell me about?" I caught her mood. " Two important things: I spent months checking and rechecking logs and sealers' sighting reports in the Southern Ocean among old Wetherby's records. Briefly, it was nothing for a sealer to be out ten minutes in latitude under the most favourable conditions of weather, sun and stars. Their longitude really had them beaten, though. Don't forget, even during the Napoleonic wars, the only British warships which carried chronometers-essential for determining longitude-were the commanders of convoys. It was only four years after Napoleon's death that Norris found Thompson Island. After months of research, I found one could more or less rely on any old whaler being out about a degree and a half in longitude-say, ninety miles."

" What I can't understand is why you didn't tell the Admiralty all this when you were pressing your point about having seen Thompson Island."

I shrugged. " I was laughed practically out of the Admiralty down the Horse Guards Parade," I said. " I could see it in their faces-crackpot! Prove it, they kept on saying. It was just that opportunity I was asking for. One gentleman in the Hydrographic Department told me pointedly that it would throw every map ever made of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic into the wastepaper basket, and such waste could not be afforded. I remember his words still: ' Empiricism versus absolute knowledge, Captain Wetherby. We prefer absolute knowledge '."

" It may sound silly, but how did you arrive at the true position of Thompson Island, when your sextant lied, along with all other sextants?"

" By taking four different sextant sightings of the stars not the sun-to balance the refraction errors four ways." I said. " Norris was not…"

" Bruce!" she interrupted quickly. " Bruce! Look!" She pointed up the incline to where the slope resumed beyond the barrier of ice. Leaning over was the unmistakable snakelike head of a sea-leopard. Unless there was some way round and down, however, we were in no immediate danger.

" We must get back to the roverhullet and warn them," I said. The massive head and shoulders swayed backwards and forwards as if seeking some way down.

Suddenly, from high above towards the summit of the glacier, a white object detached itself.

I thought at first it was a chunk of ice. " Look, Helen. There's something diving down on the sea-leopard!"

It was a giant bird, his neck outstretched. He plummeted down like a Stuka dive-bomber. He could not be making for the sea-leopard, I told myself quickly-there must be some other prey we could not see on the ledge where the animal stood.

" Albatross!" exclaimed Helen.

The diving bird was upon the sea-leopard. He ballooned his wings to avoid hitting the snakelike head, but it was too late. We saw a flash of light as a claw lashed out. There was a burst of white feathers, and the white warpaint of the albatross was stripped down to the red flesh underneath. I could almost see the effort of the bird's neck muscles as he tried to lift himself. He would have made it, except for a projecting saw-edge of cliff. Wounded, he could not pull himself clear. He crashed into the glacier ice and came tumbling down in an untidy heap among the rocks at our feet.

Helen started to run towards the albatross, which rose up to a crouching position. He craned his fine neck and tried to rise. Across his left wing was a long tear from the sealeopard's claws. Bruce, we must help him…" she began, but she stopped at the look in my face and the ice-axe in my hand.

" No," I said gently. " No, Helen. Five minutes ago he was an adventurer who could have flown from here to the South Pole and back. Now he is a heap of feathers." I moved forward to administer the coup de grace. " He'll die slowly if we leave him, but quickly and mercifully if I do it. He must die, either way."

Helen's eyes were full of pain. I raised the ice-axe. As I did so, the albatross swung his neck round in the exquisitely beautiful motion which is the act of courtship of the great wanderer of the seas, a grace worthy of a Fonteyn. I lowered the ice-axe and looked at Helen. She went forward and examined the half-extended wing.

I went closer. I expected a savage slash from the strong beak. It did not come, but instead the albatross stood swaying his head.

" I'll come back with Sailhardy," I said. "We'll bring some ropes and get the bird down to the hut. At the beach tomorrow we can catch some fish for him-there are bound to be some left behind in the rock-pools when the tide recedes. We mustn't wait here much longer."

We hurried to the roverhullet as quickly as our crampons and the ice-slope would allow. Sailhardy was delighted at the thought of saving the albatross; rather than ropes he brought a fishing-net which had been thawing in front of the hut on the rocks. Walter, with the gun, did not hinder us.

At the ice-cliff, Sailhardy and I found the great bird still crouching. It was a matter of minutes to put the net round it. Together we carried it back and set it free in front of the hut as sunset closed on our second night on Bouvet.

At first light next morning Upton began preparations for lowering the aluminium sheets to the beach. Sailhardy, Helen, Walter and I set off down the cliff-side track, the Norwegian bringing up the rear with the automatic. Even at the ladder, down which I helped Helen hand over hand, there was no chance to jump Walter. The descent was easy this time with ropes secured to the upper rungs; Walter came down them with the agility of a cat. For the last section of the descent, I roped Helen to myself in front and to Sailhardy behind. About three hundred feet above the beach Sailhardy stopped and called " Look! The catchers are launching a boat!"

Helen stood hard back against the rock face, away from the fearful drop.

I trained my glasses on the ships. " The crazy idiots!

What are they trying to do?"

Walter tapped the Schmeisser. " Coming to get us. I don't see Lars Brunvoll just sitting waiting."

Sailhardy pointed at the seas breaking heavily on the rocks and the beach. " No one could land from an ordinary ship's boat in that."

" The sea is the same for sailing to-morrow," I said grimly. " We have a Tristan whaleboat," replied Sailhardy.

" My God!" exclaimed Helen, watching the white-capped rollers race across the anchorage.

The islander looked with a curious mixture of satisfaction and awe. " It will be easier when we get into the open sea, ma'am. True, the boat will pitch a lot, but she's small enough not to stretch from wave to wave. That helps quite a bit." I focused the glasses on Chimay, Brunvoll's catcher. " Boat away!"

The tiny thing pulled hard from the ship's side with two 179 men at the oars on either side. The man at the tiller could have been Brunvoll, but I was not sure. The boat rode clear of the catcher's lee and disappeared in a welter of spray. I saw it capsize and the five men were flung into the water. " She's over!"

" They'd better haul them out of the water-quickly!" exclaimed Sailhardy. " They won't last long in this cold." The catcher steamed in what seemed slow motion to the struggling men and I saw some being hauled aboard.

" Good riddance!" said Walter. " Come on, we've got work to do. Let's get down to the beach."

We scrambled down the final section to the rough shingle. The whaleboat lay where we had left her. We unroped ourselves. I looked up. From the top of the cliff the first piece of aluminium decking was starting to swing down at the end of a long rope.

Helen, Sailhardy and I started for the boat. As our boots crunched on the shingle, a tiny head rose over the side of the whaleboat. The soft, luminous eyes of the creature, no bigger than a full-grown dachshund, stared at us.

" It's a Ross seal!" whispered Sailhardy.

Neither he nor I had ever seen this rarest and most beautiful of Antarctic animals. Helen started forward. " Don't ma'am…" began Sailhardy, but she was already at the tiny creature. It went unhesitatingly into her arms. His mink-grey fur was slightly darker underneath than above.

She turned to me, her eyes shining. " Bruce! Look at him! See how he trusts me!"

I laughed and stroked the lovely head of the seal pup. " That is just the trouble with the Ross seal. They trust everyone. The old sealers exterminated them by simply hitting them over the head. They trust humans completely." Helen put the little creature on the beach. He walked from her to me and then to Sailhardy. He did not, like the common Southern fur seal, turn his flippers forward when he walked, and I was surprised that he did not slip on the wet rocks since the undersides of his flippers were covered in softest down. I had never before seen a seal's flippers with fur on them. He allowed us to stroke his head, but Helen was clearly his favourite. She picked him up again and he nestled in the crook of her arm.

" I have never seen anything so lovely," she smiled. " I'm going to take him with us in the boat. We'll take fish along for him too."

It was the remembrance of Helen with the exquisite creature in her arms, half enveloped in her sea-leopard coat, with the backdrop of the basalt cliffs and little beach, that was to return to my mind's eye again and again in the days to come.

" Bring him along, for sure," said Walter sullenly. " He'll make good eating when the going gets tough."

" Walter!" I said quietly. " If you touch this pup, I'll kill you with my bare hands."

He raised the Schmeisser at my tone. " Keep back!" he said surlily. " You'll find you're killing the bloody thing yourself when your belly cries out for fresh meat."

A sheet of aluminium clattered on its rope over our heads. Sailhardy and I seized it as it swung in the wind against the cliffs. We found that we would probably need only four sheets to half-deck the boat both fore and after. With rope and tools we had brought down from the roverhullet, we bent, shaped, tied and fastened the aluminium to the canvas and wooden ribs. We worked all day, pausing only to unship the cases of stores which Upton and Pirow lowered to stock the boat. By the middle of the afternoon the boat was ready halfdecked, but Sailhardy was not satisfied. I wanted to get away from the raw little beach to the roverhullet before the weather became worse. The sun was obscured and great clouds drifted round the twin peaks. From time to time squalls masked the tap of the cliff. Helen helped stack the cases of supplies out of reach of the sea in the natural corner of the cliff where Horntvedt's flagstaff was. The seal pup followed her everywhere.

Although I wished to get away, Sailhardy took a long look at the ominous weather build-up in the south-west and started in on the steering lines and the rudder. For fully an hour he flexed the supple lines through the holes, greasing and regreasing them, checking, testing again and again. He went repeatedly over the odd projection on the port side near the rudder, from which a rope ran through the sternport into a big enclosed space below the helmsman's seat. Nothing would make him hurry over his searching examination.

While he checked and Walter stamped in the growing cold, Helen and I fished in the rock-pools with the seal pup, which joined in hauling up the codlike Notothenia fish as if it had been a game. By the time Sailhardy had finished, we had collected a pile of about twenty, which we stacked with the other supplies. Upton had agreed the previous night to taking the albatross in the boat because of Sailhardy's insistence that the great bird would be invaluable in finding land once it could fly again-the islander reckoned it would be within a week-and so, he said, help us locate Thompson Island. Sailhardy had reinforced his argument by pointing out that in a small boat in bad weather it would be virtually impossible to take an accurate sighting. I suspected, however, that Sailhardy was more concerned with the albatross' safety than with locating Thompson Island. We had decided, too, that we could lower the bird down the cliff-side by the rope by putting the net round it again. I was well aware of Sailhardy's methods of navigation-by the direction of a flock of petrels flying, by feeling the temperature of the sea at hourly intervals with his hand, the colour of the water, and a host of other esoteric sealore. His only manmade instrument was a kind of rough wooden backstaff by which he took angles on the stars, but never the sun. His landfalls were as good as mine.

When it made the climb to the roverhullet the wind began gusting heavily and plucked at us on the exposed rock faces. As it increased during the evening, Upton became more uneasy and morose. Almost nothing was said, but he pored over the chart after our evening meal round the stove and at intervals he opened the door and looked out. On one occasion I caught a glimpse of the catchers' lights, rising and falling. The night had a resonant, ominous background of sound from the waves thundering on the cliffs below and the wind tearing at the glacier above. I went with Upton to the door and found the albatross huddled against the front wall. I called Sailhardy and we carried him, unprotesting, through to the store-room. We did not need to tell each other how little we thought of our chances of leaving Bouvet the next day.

In the middle of the night my sailor's instinct suddenly brought me broad awake. I raised up in my sleeping-bagwe had each selected our own for the boat-and looked round. The dim light of the stove etched Walter, unshaven and with sockets of shadows for eyes, evil as he sat crosslegged with the Schmeisser across his knees; Helen lay with her back towards me, and the yellow light made even softer the colour of her hair loose on the flap of the sleeping-bag. Pirow turned uneasily as if his mind were on the faked messages he had sent earlier in the evening to Thorshammer; but it was Upton's face that brought me fear and revulsion182 the pewter hue was tinged with blue, including the eyelids, as if the caesium were justifying the blue in its spectrum. Perhaps the light added to the grotesqueness, for there was no sign of age, not a wrinkle anywhere: everything was taut-it was the face of a dead man, mummified with his dreams in his face.

Sailhardy had heard, too, and was awake. It had sounded to me like a double bass string being plucked. Both of us guessed what had happened-one of the steel cables holding the hut had parted. The wind shook the walls and a peckle of hail rattled against them. We kicked ourselves out of our sleeping-bags and crawled across to Walter.

I spoke softly, so as not to wake the others. "That was one of the guy-ropes, wasn't it?"

Walter was on edge. " Aye, it was. I'll tell you straight, Captain, although we're on the wrong sides, I don't like this bloody wind. It'll be blowing a full gale by morning. Christ! What will it be like at sea?"

" Try and persuade your boss about that," I replied roughly. The wind carried a burst of low thunder from the breaking waves. " We won't last more than a couple of days."

" Bruce! We must rig a new rope-now! If anything else gives, the roverhullet will go over the cliff!" whispered Sailhardy. " I reckon we would be better at sea than here," he added defensively.

" Jesus!" said Walter. " Okay. See what you can do." In the store-room, we cut off a length of the thick rope which had been used for lowering the aluminium and supplies. We opened the door. The icy wind took our breath away. We drew our windbreaker hoods round our heads. The air was laden with flying spicules. We could not see, but felt our way to the corners of the hut to locate the broken stay. It was one of two in front. With expert hands, although in gloves, Sailhardy knotted one end of the rope round the iron pole in the rock and the other to the trailing end from the roof.

Upton was waiting by the stove when we returned. Helen and Pirow were also awake.

I turned back my hood and pulled off my gloves. " Are you still going ahead with this insane idea of yours?" I asked Upton.

" If I have to drive everyone of you down to the beach at the point of the automatic-yes."

I glanced at Helen. " You can do that, but you won't be able to drive a fully-laden boat into the breakers at the point of a gun," I said. " If we ever get the boat into the water, I'll tell you what will happen-she'll be smashed against the rooks by the next roller."

" Don't try and stop me, Wetherby!" he shouted. " We sail tomorrow, sea or no sea, gale or no gale!"

" Listen…"

" I won't listen to a Wetherby!" he yelled, completely out of control. The contorted face bore no relation to the sleeping mask. " Thompson Island is mine, I tell you." There was no point in arguing, but on the rough little beach next morning, following a nightmare descent after slinging the albatross down in the net, he saw what I meant. We had loaded the boat while she lay behind the corner of the cliff. Great seas crashed on to the rocks. Under favourable conditions, lifting the boat as she was-the helicopter's radio under the stern decking added to the weight-was a job for six men. Upton and Pirow would not hear of leaving the radio, and we had used it as ballast in the net with the albatross. The tiny seal pup, which had shared Helen's sleeping-bag in the roverhullet, had come down the pathway buttoned inside her coat. Upton raised no objection-I think he was trying to make a gesture to her.

" It is hopeless!" I said. " There's no future in going on with this nonsense, Upton. Let us get back to the roverhullet while we still can."

" Shut up, damn you!" he snapped. " I am going to Thompson Island-to-day! Get that clear."

The day was still dim, although it was mid-morning. The sun was shut out by thick driving cloud which seemed to have a ceiling lower than the cliffs. New icebergs had piled up with the gale, but there were open passages between huge rafts of ice. The roar of the surf was matched by the ice crashing and grinding.

I think Sailhardy, too, secretly admitted, the futility of the scheme, though he didn't say so.

" There would be only one way to launch a boat in this," said Walter. " Proper davits and a ship's side."

Upton swung round on him so suddenly that the blue bib of his windbreaker, staine ' now with salt, flapped in his face. " Davits! My God! Walter-you've got it!"

" I don't see any davits," answered Walter heavily. " Look!" Upton went on excitedly. "

Up there!" 184

We looked up the cliff-side track, as if half expecting to see some davits materialise.

" The rock! The rock and overhang!" went on Upton. " Get up there, Walter, and secure two ropes on either side of the overhang-from the rungs of the ladders. They'll serve the same purpose as falls from a davit. All we have to do is run the ends round the thwarts of the whaleboat, lift and fend her clear of the cliff, and we'll get a clean launch above the waves."

The scheme seemed impossible to me. " Upton, we'll be thrown against the cliffs as soon as we touch the water." Upton snatched the Schmeisser from Walter and pointed it at me. " Take your choice," he said, his voice deadly with menace. " You assist, or else you can stay here-with a dozen bullets in you." I looked helplessly at Helen, who stood white-faced, silent, cuddling the seal pup. I shrugged. There was nothing I could do.

Walter scrambled up the pathway, and, more quickly than I expected, the two ropes snaked down. Sailhardy and I ran them round the thwarts, and when Walter returned, the three of us, with Pirow helping, lifted the boat shoulder-high and secured them. The boat was suspended head-high against the cliff and, when we let her go, would swing forward about fifty feet round the second cliff which enclosed the beach from the north until she was directly below the overhang. One false move and the canvas side would be torn open. The albatross was under the forward decking. I helped Helen in by lifting her up on my shoulders. Pirow and Upton followed, using Walter's shoulders. The two of them hauled Walter up, then Sailhardy, and last, me. We fended her off the cliff-side with the oars and inched forward until we hung free above the waves.

Sailhardy and I eased the ropes loose round the stern and forward thwarts respectively. I awaited his signal. The smallest lack of synchronisation between us when we cast off would pitch us all into the sea, now rising and falling under the keel.

Sailhardy tensed, watching sea and wind. " Let go!" he shouted.

The boat dropped heavily into the water. Sailhardy moved quickly to the tiller and I whipped up the ochre-coloured mainsail. The boat gathered way swiftly towards an ice-lead running to the gaunt, sulphur-coloured north-westerly shoulder 185 of Bouvet which is known as Cape Circumcision. Sailhardy then stood up on the stern decking, steering with his right foot on the tiller-head while he conned a passage through the ice. I turned from securing the mainsail halliard to say something to the islander. I looked aghast at the horizon, so that he too swung round to see. The bank of ragged cloud, drifting on a level with the glacier, gave the impression of a line squall, but I recognised it as the spearhead of the storm I had anticipated. There was a flurry of icy rain. Cloud segments started to writhe up and down in contorted whorls a mile wide. Deliberately, a cloud shape started to reach down towards the sea's surface. To the north-west, two further vast and perfectly-drawn rulers of cloud funnel, spinning on an axis a mile wide and held upright by its own gyroscopic motion. Then it pitched forward and lunged into the sea. A great gout of spray and ice rose. Swaying like a Bali dancer, the wedded mass of sea and cloud moved towards us. We cleared the stark cape as the water-spout crashed against the cliffs, a quarter of a mile astern of the frail boat.

Bouvet vanished in the turmoil.

To hide his agitation, Sailhardy became formal. " Course for Thompson Island?"

" Steer north-east by a half east," I ordered. 12. Under Parry's Arc

For three days Sailhardy scarcely left the tiller. Our estimate of the time we would take to reach the locality of Thompson Island as marked on Norris' chart had been hopelessly astray. Four hours for eighteen miles to Nightingale from Tristan, we had reckoned, and therefore we had given ourselves about a day and a half at the outside for the forty-five miles from Bouvet to Thompson. The storm had decreed otherwise. From the time Bouvet had disappeared, sea and wind had made our lives a freezing wet hell. How many times Sailhardy's skill had saved the boat during the night I do not know, but I had witnessed it at least half a dozen times during the daylight hours. Several times the islander had had to drag the boat's bows round to face the gale in order to ride it out without being swamped, before putting her back on course

– as best he could-for Thompson Island.

By dead reckoning, I considered that the whaleboat must have reached the approximate vicinity of Thompson Island on the chart. My noon sight was almost due-for what it was worth in the bucking boat. There was a vast drift of storm cloud, through which there was an occasional glimpse of sun. This was the position sight which I hoped would persuade

Upton that there was no Thompson Island where the chart said. Upton, Sailhardy, Walter and I were in good shape, but I was worried about Helen. The wild gyrations of the boat had exhausted her, and she was very silent. Pirow had sent off more faked life-raft signals to Thorshammer, and on the first day after leaving Bouvet, had told us with a grin that the catchers had signalled Thorshammer telling of our escape, adding that we stood no chance in the wild weather. Thors- hammer had replied, Pirow said, that her chief concern was to find the life-raft: the destroyer refused to accept the catchers' repeated assertions that the signals were faked.

I crawled along the rough grating on the bottom of the boat to Pirow's cubbyhole, where my sextant was stored away from the prevailing wetness. I gave the thumbs-up sign to Sailhardy, sitting steering. His right shoulder and arm were caked with congealed ice and the accumulated spicules round his hood seemed to carve deeper the lines of his strong face. He grinned back.

Upton jumped to a sitting position on the forward thwart.

He shot a glance round the empty sea. Visibility was about a mile. " Is it time, Wetherby? Are you going to shoot the sun now?"

I paused and showed him the time. " In a quarter of an hour.

At our voices, Walter, who was still in his sleeping-bag, pulled himself out and looked round. " You could pass by bloody Thompson Island and never see it in this."

" Shut up!" snapped Upton. " We're close, and if we have to beat round in circles for a week, I'll find it. What about that bird-is he showing any signs of wanting to fly?"

The albatross was clinging like a figurehead to the decking in the bows. He was picking up strength daily. We had fed both the seal pup and the bird on the fish we had caught, and the albatross had accepted it docilely. Walter shook his head glumly. " If land were close, he'd be wanting to be off-and there's not a sign of it."

Upton became more agitated. " We're looking after the damned thing too well. It's no wonder he doesn't want to leave when every home comfort is laid on for him."

I took my sextant from its case and wiped the fogged eyepieces. A flurry of fine sleet and snow blocked out the sun. I stood, straddled by the amidships thwart, trying to keep my balance. The horizon swung rapidly.

I took the instrument from my eyes. " It's hopeless,

Upton."

He grabbed the Schmeisser from Walter. " Get on with it! Get on with it!"

I looked at Helen. Up to that moment, I think, she still thought there was some remote hope for her father. Now she saw him as a madman trying to force the sun to shine at pistol-point. Her head sank forward so that her chin rested on the seal pup's head.

I shrugged. " What do you expect me to do-manufacture a sun and a horizon?"

" You're stalling, Wetherby 1 You know the answers, and by God! I'm going to get them out of you!"

" Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " There's a break coming quick!"

The islander's keen eyes had detected a gap in the flying wrack. I rammed the eyepiece to my eye, one finger on the vernier scale. For a brief moment a sallow light appeared while I battled to keep the horizon glass steady. My fingers twiddle the micrometer screw. Then the flying cloud obscured the sun.

" Blast! blast! blast!" burst out Upton. " Did you…?" " Yes," I replied. " I got a fix. Not too bad, in these appalling conditions."

" Where is Thompson Island-which way?" he demanded, without a thought for intricacies of a navigator's calculations. It showed the state of his mind. I did not reply, but put down the sextant on the thwart and started to work out our position.

" Give me the chart," I said to Upton.

He pulled the parchment from his windbreaker and handed it to me. I made a little cross on it. I felt I had to go through with the useless charade. It was idle trying to explain to

Upton the errors and difficulties of using an outdated chart.

" There," I said. " We are now one mile to the north of Thompson Island."

I looked at Helen as her father swung round and scanned the sea to starboard. She was sobbing gently.

" Bring her about!" he ordered Sailhardy. Despite the 188 danger of the sea catching us beam-on, the islander manoeuvred the boat. The whaleboat was now trying to work across the run of the sea and the wind. One could only guess speed, but I let half an hour pass.

We reached the position where Thompson Island was supposed to be.

As far as the eye could see, the sea was a turmoil of blowing spindrift under a blanket of cloud.

" According to my calculations, we're sailing over the solid land of Thompson Island at this moment," I said.

The irony in my voice brought him to me. " It's another filthy Wetherby trick!" he screamed. " It's a trick, I tell you!

You bastard!" He thrust the Schmeisser against my chest.

" Father! Don't!" Helen stumbled over, but he thrust her aside roughly.

" What have you done with Thompson Island?" he shouted. " Thompson Island! Thompson Island!..

He was so beside himself that I don't think he consciously grabbed the sextant, but despite the fact that he was unaware of its workings he picked it up and tried to read the fix I had made. He stiffened. When he spoke, the hysteria was gone and in its place was a coldness which was more deadly. " Why," he asked, " would a man make a notch on his sextant, Wetherby? Why, Walter, I ask you as a navigator of sorts too, why would a man file a little notch?"

" Let me see," said Walter. Upton handed him the sextant; his eyes never left my face.

" What does it mean, Walter? Read it! Would the position of the notch be anywhere near here?"

" I'm not the bloody Captain, and I need time for a thing like this," said Walter sullenly. " This is a fancy instrument, too."

Upton was frighteningly quiet. " You've got a minute to tell me whether the notch indicates Thompson Island, Wetherby."

It was Walter's fumbling with a type of sextant he had never handled before that reaffirmed in my mind my resolution that I, and I alone, would keep the secret of

Thompson Island. I could almost sense Helen's and Sailhardy's shock as I pretended to acquiesce.

" Yes," I said. " That is the position of Thompson Island." Helen gazed at me, wide-eyed. " Here, let me show you." Walter, unthinkingly, handed me the instrument. I was barely a jump ahead of Upton. " Walter!" he shouted. " Don't…"

He was too late.. I took the sextant and tossed it overboard. It was fully two minutes before Upton spoke, in a strangled voice. " In God's name, what did the notch in the sextant say, Walter? What is the real position of Thompson? Where is Thompson Island?"

" I dunno. I hadn't a chance to see. I don't know my way round a fancy thing like that sextant. The island can't be so far from here, though, because the notch lay close to his reading to-day."

Upton's hands were shaking so that I thought he would fire the Schmeisser involuntarily. " Where did your notch show Thompson Island to be, Wetherby? Where, man, where?"

I laughed harshly. " Look around you, Upton! It's not here, is it? And while I live, you won't find out either." He levelled the Schmeisser at me. " You'll take me there! I say, you'll take me…"

I cut him short. " We're in the middle of damn-all in as bad a storm as I've seen. It may get worse. If you've any sense left, you'll tell Pirow to signal Thorshammer now now, do you hear, and try and have her pick us up while there's still time."

" Never!" he said. " In the space of a few minutes you have become the most valuable person in the world to me. You, and you alone, know where Thompson Island really is."

Heaven help us if he should find out that Helen knew, I thought.

His voice was unsteady. " You would not have thrown away the sextant if you had not believed in the caesium, would you, Bruce?" He became almost imploring. " Bruce, I know about caesium and you know about Thompson Island. We could be a great team…" He saw the look in my face and his eyes became hard. " Very well, then. We search. We'll search the sea for Thompson Island."

I saw that he meant it, despite the weather. I knew, too, how many expeditions with specially equipped ships had searched thousands of square miles of these self-same waters for Thompson Island, all without succes. A search in the tiny whaleboat would result in one thing only-death within a few days. If I set course-with the loss of the sextant, 190

I would have to rely on Sailhardy's methods of navigation – to pass near Bouvet, we might be able to regain the roverhullet. I felt sure that in the exhausted state we would find ourselves in then, Upton would be forced to lie up, and I could try and get a signal off to Thorshammer. I was firmly resolved as before, not to reveal the whereabouts of Thompson. I was gravely concerned at Helen's weak state, and a search which I knew in advance to be futile would bring tragedy.

" No," I said. " We do not search. It would be suicide. Sailhardy will have to navigate-his own way."

" You mean… 7" breathed Upton.

I turned away from the overwrought face to the islander. " Steer south-with a little east in it."

Sailhardy looked keenly at me, and then, without a word, brought the whaleboat round to the course. The gale seemed to be mounting in fury and we were driven forward by a tiny storm staysail, no bigger than a man's shirt, which I rigged.

The whaleboat tore to the south and east-towards Thompson Island. By afternoon it was a full fifty-knot blow, near the top of the Beaufort wind scale. If we could have hove-to we would have, but there was nothing to be done but try and keep afloat. For three days the whaleboat raced like a frightened animal before the gale. There was no stopping, guiding or holding it. Sailhardy and I shared the tiller watches. Sitting in the high stern, the wind threw against our baths, as we huddled over almost double, a volley of ice, snow and frozen spray with the Sten-gun-like insistence of a Spanish dancer's heels. At times I found myself sobbing at the remorseless beat, the long bursts of the fusillade, until I thought I could endure no longer; then would come a merciful lull, only to be followed by a further savage volley scything everything before it. I was barely conscious of bits of ice, growlers and small bergs storming past in the uncertain light, which seemed to vary between pale green by day and complete blackness by night. Wherever the spray settled it froze, until our faces, the mast, thwarts, gratings and canvas sides were coated. The motion of the boat prevented any heating, and the meals were sorry affairs scooped with fingers out of cans. Walter and Upton shared the forward decked-in section with the albatross, and Pirow was in the stern section with the radio. It was dark inside his cubbyhole and he might have been dead except for the occasional flicker of sound as he continued to fox Thorshammer. The irregular ribs and rough gratings made sleeping a hell, and the wicked chill seemed to penetrate through the waterproofing and fleece of our sleepingbags. I had stretched the ochre-coloured mainsail from the stern decking to a thwart, and under it Helen, Sailhardy and I lived, either he or I being on tiller watch. The seal pup shared Helen's sleeping-bag and brought a tiny patch of warmth in the pervading cold. When I had called Sailhardy during the previous night and crept into my sleeping-bag, I had been desperately worried to hear her talking deliriously.

Now, in the middle of the morning, seeing her lying semicomatose, I made up my mind to carry out the plan I had formulated when I had thrown my sextant overboard-to overpower Pirow and signal Thorshammer. If she could find us and it was a big " if," in the gale-the secret of Thompson Island would still be mine, for no one would listen to Upton's ravings. I knew too, that I must act speedily. The strength was running out of me, and when taking over the tiller from Sailhardy for the dawn watch, I saw what a toll the Southern Ocean had taken of his great strength: his eyes were sunken after the cruel watches of the past week and he had been slow in speaking, wiping his lips with the back of his gloves to clear away the frozen saliva and mucous on the stubble of his upper lip. Upton and Walter had given up their gun-watch over Sailhardy and me-it was hardly possible in the storm-but they still watched me carefully whenever I moved from my sleeping-bag. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty. Sailhardy had been at the tiller since eight o'clock. I had heard Pirow give a brief signal when the islander had taken over, and as it was midmorning, Upton and Pirow might not suspect if they heard another after a break of several hours. I would have to muster all my strength and speed to overpower Pirow and get off a message before they missed me. I looked down at Helen. The ice had rimed her closed eyes, making them strangely ethereal. She broke into an incoherent mutter. I caught nothing except my name. The exquisite little seal pup peeped out from the mouth of her sleeping-bag. Up forward, there was no sign from Upton or Walter.

I inched out of my sleeping-bag and dragged myself along the gratings to Pirow's cubbyhole. It was so dim that it took me a minute to make out The Man with the Immaculate Hand.

He was sitting in front of the radio. I heard him move and I 192 jammed myself hard down on the grating. The snap of a switch followed. He became silhouetted as a weak dial light came alive. I could not see his face, but from the stoop of his shoulders it was clear that he, like the rest of us, was nearing the end of his tether. Let him start sending, I thought let him get the preliminaries done. Then I would jump him when

Thorshammer was listening.

The weak signal started.

"Thorshammer! Thorshammer!"

It scarcely needed Pirow's skill to bluff the destroyer now. The signal was weak and faltering enough to be genuine.

Pirow threw over the receiving switch. I was surprised to hear the strength of Thorshammer's reply. She must be very close to come through as clear as that.

"Thorshammer to Life-raft. Personal Captain Olstad to Lieutenant Mosby. Keep your key down. Let your batteries run out. We are close. We will find you. Keep your key down.".

Pirow started to exclaim in German. I slithered forward along the gratings. My left arm went hard round his windpipe. He gave a strangled gasp. With my free right hand, I locked down the transmitting key. My instinct told me something was wrong. I wrenched round. Walter was coming on hands and knees from the bow, a flensing knife in his fist. Behind him, Upton was standing, the Schmeisser pointed.

I threw myself out of the cubbyhole, but I was still fulllength. Walter leapt to his feet at the entrance as I shot out. He paused momentarily. Perhaps even he would not kill a man lying at his feet. I jerked sideways and, jack-knifing my body, kicked his legs from under him. He was adroit. He fell heavily, twisting like a cat, and took the fall on his shoulder, but it kept his right hand under him for a moment. I grabbed for his thick beard and swung astride his powerful body. The knife-thrust would come before Sailhardy could help me. My hands clamped on his beard and I jerked his head a couple of inches sideways. The crude skill of the Tristan boatmen had not succeeded in smoothing one of the gnarled knots in the ribs. It would serve as a garotte as efficient as anything in South America. I felt Walter's knifehand go up for the plunge. I rammed the top of his spine, where it joins the head, hard against the knot. His mouth was wrenched wide open. Fear burst into his eyes.

" Drop that knife!"

I heard the weapon clunk against the bottom-boards. We were within three feet of Helen. I saw that her eyes were open and she was staring, startled, at what was going on. Now is the time, I told myself savagely with the feel of the thick beard in my hands and kill-lust in my heart, to get the record straight about the shooting down of the seaplane from Walter's own lips.

" Walter! Say it, and say it quickly. Who shot down the seaplane? Who ordered it?"

Helen's eyes dilated with horror and fixed on her father. I heard three clicks. -I jerked round without releasing Walter. Upton was tugging at the Schmeisser's trigger. It was pointed into my back. My fear and the explanation of the misfire were simultaneous. The firing mechanism was locked by oil which had frozen solid.

I scarcely recognised my -own voice. " Upton! You can go on clicking that blasted thing as long as you like in this weather, but it won't fire." I shoved Walter's head further back. His spine would snap in a moment. " Tell her! Tell who it was!"

" I shot it down. Sir Frederick ordered me to."

I took the knife and dragged myself upright uncertainly. I lost my footing as the whaleboat rolled, and I crashed heavily on the thwart, the knife spinning across to Upton's feet. He picked it up. Walter pulled himself forward and crouched on his hands and knees near Upton, his face livid, unable to rise.

Upton's eyes were bright. He seemed in better shape than any of us. " I should say thank you to this frozen gun," he said slowly as I gasped for breath. " I forgot for a moment that you are the only person who knows the secret of Thompson Island. Don't be a bloody fool again and waste your strength. I want it all for Thompson Island."

" Thompson Island! For God 's sake, Upton! ' Your daughter's not going to last…"

" But you are," he said. " You are the one person who matters to me. We will find Thompson Island-together." My weary brain made a hurried calculation. Assuming that we had travelled directly due south-east from the Norris chart position of Thompson Island, we might well, in the past three days, have covered the one hundred and ten miles which separated the false and the true positions of the island. In my weak state, and for Helen's sake, I was almost tempted to try and find the warmth and the good anchorage Pirow had spoken of-how many days ago now? How I could locate the island without my sextant I did not know, but Sailhardy might be able to, with his strange methods of natural navigation. Bouvet, with its well-stocked roverhullet, was a better proposition if we could find it again than an unknown anchorage, but at that moment I would have welcomed any shelter away from the storm. But I did not intend Upton to know how near I was to agreeing to find Thompson Island.

" You were mad to leave Bouvet," I said. " Listen, had Thompson Island been where Norris had charted it, what could come of finding it? There could be all the caesium in the world, but you couldn't take it away in this little boat. You might find it, but you would have had to give its position away in order to be rescued."

Upton's answer underlined the state of his mind. " You're wrong, Bruce. There's a whole fleet of ships waiting at Thompson. We wouldn't need to be rescued." He laughed to himself. " You can take your pick when we get there-you can have a liner, or a freighter, or a tanker, just what you wish."

There was no point in going on with talk of that kind. I crawled into my sleeping-bag to try and get some rest before taking the afternoon watch from Sailhardy. Upton stood grinning down at me, and then he too stumbled forward out of reach of the ice-sharpened file of wind. I fell into a broken, uneasy state which was half sleep and half semi-consciousness. Towards midday I drew Helen's head into the crook of my arm. She did not wake, but mumbled something which I could not follow. I feared for the coming night.

Sailhardy, too, must have passed out at the tiller, for half the afternoon was gone when I heard him slither down the decking and shake me. His articulation was thick and the long vowels seemed to have difficulty in getting past his cracked lips. He tried to say something, but gave it up and instead gave a curious, stiff and unnatural wave of his arm at the sea and the wind. It was a gesture of surrender. I was aware of a life-sapping lethargy in my limbs and arms. Why not, I argued, leave the whaleboat to it own devices with the rudder lashed rather than forsake the warmth and shelter of my sleeping-bag for the raw hell of the tiller seat? Better to let the boat broach to and sink, for none of us, I felt sure, would see the next day out. I chafed Helen's hands, which was as cold as a corpse's; the seal pup provided a tiny patch of warmth. I watch Sailhardy, eyes shut, drag himself half into his sleeping-bag and then fall full-length on the gratings.

I sat upright. It took me about five minutes to kick myself clear of my own bag. Forward, Upton and Walter lay like dead men. There was silence from Pirow's cubbyhole. The only sign of life was the albatross near the two men in the bows, which was moving his wing as if exercising it.

I slipped across the ice-covered metal decking to the tiller and undid the lashing, which Sailhardy had secured before, I felt sure, taking his last watch below. I crouched as the thin lances of frozen spray stabbed at my back on the gale. For an hour I tried to keep my seared, burning eyes on the waves and steer the boat away from the worst. I remembered the quality of the light starting to change. My soggy mind told me night was at hand, but I had no will or strength left to call Sailhardy or unclamp my gloved hand from the steering-arm. The whaleboat drove on, racing down each long roller, heaving laboriously up the next, while all the time the gale ice-blasted my back, hood and arms with flying granules.

It was my sailor's instinct alone and nothing to do with my will which perked me to semi-consciousness. Later I was to know that about six hours had passed.

The whaleboat lay in a calm sea of diaphanous white light. The fury of the Westerlies was dead.

The silence was more unnerving than the storm.

My hand, clamped on the tiller, no longer swung, corrected, swung, to keep her stern to the waves. The wind was gone, I told myself, because I had died at my post. It was a dead light, too: not the dayless, nightless coloration of the past week, but a diffused, whitish light, tinged with blue. I glanced at my watch. It was after midnight. I saw where the light was coming from. Then a series of immense flares laced the sky in green, flame, blue and violet-the Southern Lights! One wing rose up like a scarlet and violet scimitar from the direction of the South Pole and brandished its wild glory across the unreal sky. The flares outlined the dome of the heavens, one moment rising in bursting splendour along sky-paths like the spokes of a wheel, the next receding towards the Pole in a petulant bicker of light. Never, however, did they lose their colours, and the broken cloud which passed across the face of the Aurora enhanced rather than diminished the grandeur. I looked round me unbelievingly, for there was no ice on the water and, still in the absence of the Southern Lights, there was a whiteness being reflected from something which I could not see. The albatross stood like a figurehead on the bow decking, flexing and re-flexing his damaged wing and gazing ahead.

My first thought was for Helen. With the boat lying still, I could get one of the alpine stoves going and give her something hot. I prised my numb hand from the tiller and straightened my cramped limbs. It took me ten minutes of rubbing and banging my arms and legs before I could leave my position.

" Helen!" I said, shaking her. She lay without moving. She was breathing shallowly and the drawn face, with the Antarctic's white beauty mask over it, sent a tremor of fear through me. " Helen!" I tried to kiss her, but all I felt was the crackle of ice and the skin tearing from my lips.

I found one of the stoves and a can of soup. I lit it and its tiny circle of warmth was more comforting to me than the great blazes which danced across the sky.

Sailhardy lay still. He was still alive, but only just. There was a stir from forward and Upton sat up in his sleeping-bag. He looked at me, the sky and the sea, in disbelief. He crawled over to me. " Why isn't there ice on the water, Bruce?" His use of my Christian name was an indication of his own distress. His sunken eyes became alive. " Thompson Island! You've brought me to Thompson Island!"

I tried to laugh, but the cold held my jaw. " I have not the remotest idea where we are. I couldn't give a damn for Thompson or any other mystery at the moment. All I want is some hot food."

I propped Helen's head against me and gave her a spoonful of hot soup. She took it, uncertainly, and her eyes remained closed. The seal pup stared inquisitively. I filled the spoon again and drank from the can myself, and then passed it over to Upton. I felt the warm life of it flood inside me. He passed the can back, three-quarters empty. " Get another couple of cans-in there," I said, indicating the stern cubbyhole. He was back quickly and heated them while I tried to get Helen to take some more.

" Try and get some down Sailhardy's throat," I told him. " He's pretty near finished."

Helen opened her eyes. The glazed look of delirium was gone. " What is it, Bruce? Did you find Thompson Island?" The way she said it made the name sound like a curse.

" I don't know where we are," I said. " I don't see land. All I know is that it's calm and the sea is free of ice. I can't even account for the light."

I gave her more hot soup and did the same for Sailhardy.

It must have been an hour before he was fully conscious, and he seemed very weak and lethargic. Upton roused both Walter and Pirow, who looked like a ghost. We brought out the second alpine stove and cooked our first hot meal in a week. It was nearly dawn by the time we had finished.

The light began to change almost imperceptibly. The hemisphere-reaching flares of the Southern Lights drew back into their icy matrix. The whole upper lobe of the sky became one great sweep of light in a huge arch which stretched, not north and south like the Southern Lights, but east and west. The gigantic tracery was faint and white, although there seemed to be a background of rising colour.

It was something I had scarcely hoped ever to see-the rare Parry's Arc. It seemed a fitting glory for our deliverance, if indeed deliverance it was.

I told Helen what it was, and she sat up. The faint white of Parry's Arc began to be laced with brilliant reds, scarlets, greens, violets and blues; then the arc itself became double in a breathtaking display of ethereal pyrotechnics, and spread itself across the whole sky, the arc elongating itself into an ellipse which seemed to stretch from the Weddell Sea to

Australia.

" My God!" called Upton front the bows.

The light from Parry's Arc was bright enough to reveal the awesome spectacle as far as the eye could see:, the whole horizon to windward was a gigantic mass of ice-bergs, between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet high. Behind them, still higher-higher than the cliffs of the great Ross Barrier itself-reached a wall of ice. We lay in a bay, probably fifty miles across, of ice. Perhaps five miles astern, on our starboard quarter, the north-western cliff of floating ice continent-it was scarcely less than that-thrust a squared buttress into the Southern Ocean. Under the uncertain light, it was impossible to tell where it began and ended, and out to port there seemed to be a patch of heavy fog.

I realised then that we were in the presence of the phenomenon which had first enabled Norris to see Thompson Island, and seventy years later, Captain Fuller and, the third recorded time, myself. In cycles of seventy years a great continent of ice builds up along the shores of the Antarctic mainland, detaches itself, and drifts northwards-toward Thompson and Bouvet Islands. Any big icefield will clear visibility, but it took all of a continent of ice to clear the fog-shrouded 198 shores of Thompson Island, which lay in the heart of the Southern Ocean's weather machine. To back up what I now knew was one of the secrets of Thompson Island, I remembered that when the Japanese had conducted aerial surveys of the Antarctic coastline directly to the south of Bouvet, they were surprised to find that they bore little resemblance to Lars Christensen's air photographs of three decades previously. And I was struck by the coincidence that in the same year that Captain Fuller saw Thompson Island, three famous clippers, including the Cutty Sark, had reported passing clean through a continent of ice-she had used those words in her log to describe it-and all three had barely escaped destruction. I rose to my knees and looked round the horizon. But the great flare of Parry's Arc which had lit the distant ice barrier faded, and it was impossible to see much. We were all too weak and too overcome by the sight to do anything but stare.

Sailhardy croaked: " Look at the albatross, boy!" The bird was balancing himself above the cutwater with his wings wide. The last starlets, reds, golds, blues and violets of Parry's Arc made a tracery across their whiteness. For a moment he hung on, uncertain, flapping his wings. Then he launched himself, dipped for a moment towards the water, picked up, wheeled round the whaleboat twice, and struck off towards a point beyond the port bow.

There was a commotion at my feet and I looked at Helen's sleeping-bag. The seal pup was fighting to kick himself free. The little animal shot out of the mouth of the bag. He leapt on to the thwart next to me and stood with his head cocked, every muscle tense.

Someone was knocking on the bottom of the boat.