A Grue of Ice

13. Thompson Island

For a moment I thought Sailhardy or Helen was striking the bottom-boards in some final convulsion of weakness.

Knock! knock! knock! -someone might have been rapping a knuckle on the underside of the boat.

Saidhardy's eyes opened and he put his ear to the gratings. I knelt down and did the same.

The islander exclaimed faintly. " It's the Tristan Knocker!" 199

" The Tristan Knocker?"

I could see his excitement, but he was so weak that he had to speak deliberately to get the words out. " It's got a scientific name in South Georgia, but on Tristan we call it the Knocker. It's a big fish, like a cod. That's the noise they make when they're courting! Look at the seal!"

The little animal had slithered across the thwart and was gazing excitedly at the sea. At any moment he would go over the side.

Upton stood over us, gaunt, wild-eyed. " What is it? What is it, you two?"

S a i l h a r d y s a t u p. " I t ' s l a n d! T h e T r i s t a n K n o c k e r spawns in shallow water. There's land-close!"

The seal pup dived over the side. It was just light enough to see in the dawn. The albatross made a point of white against the dark patch out to port which I thought to be fog. Upton's face was alive. " Land! Thompson Island!" Helen turned her face away.

" If it is the Meteor's base, I will know it," said Pirow. " You can't mistake the entrance and the headland."

Walter screwed up his eyes, but the albatross was now out of sight. " That would be the way to go, sure, but how? There' s no wind and we're too weak to row."

" Get up to the tiller, Wetherby," said Upton.

" There is no way on her…" I began.

" There will be," he replied. " I'm going to row!" Without waiting, he went forward and returned with the bag he had salvaged from the factory ship. He filled the syringe carefully. We watched, fascinated. With Walter helping, he heaved up one of the big oars into position in the thole. Gripping the oar with his right hand, he took the hypodermic in his left and thrust the point into the muscles of his right. Quickly he changed hands and repeated the strange performance.

" What the hell…?" I said.

" Caffeine," he said shortly. " Now get up to the tiller." " This is not the time to start giving yourself fancy drugs." He did not take his eyes off my face, but sat at the oar, clamping and unclamping his fingers. Then he did not seem to be able to open them any more.

He grinned. " I'm going to row this boat to Thompson Island. Caffeine paralyses the muscles. I can't take my hands off the oars. They're going to stay there until we reach Thompson Island. Steer!"

" Over there-where the albatross went?"

" Yes I "

I clambered stiffly up to the tiller seat. The boat felt lop-sided with one oar, but I brought her head round towards the dark patch. The sun came up and turned the vast amphitheatre of ice into a breathing panorama. The sea was bluegreen and calm, and my eyes could scarcely tolerate the whiteness of the barrier. We were heading away from the nearest cliffs, which rose to full view, in the direction of a belt of fog which completely blanked off the eastern and southern shores of the barrier. The seal pup sported about the boat with a Tristan Knocker in his mouth.

Pirow and Walter cooked more food, and Walter took a short trick at another oar but soon gave it up. Helen brought me some hot food and had some herself, but she looked deathly pale. Upton's stroke became weaker and weaker. Suddenly I felt a strong thrust underneath the boat. It took us quickly into the belt of fog, before I realised that the boat was in the grip of a powerful current. I felt the warmth first, and then the wetness of the fog. Upton, dragging the oar which he could not unclench, was hidden from view; the fog was so thick that Helen, only a few feet away, became a murky outline. The current swept the boat on and on. Once Helen called to me in a frightened, disembodied voice to ask where we were going. The warmth was as unexpected as the darkness. I reached down cautiously and tested the water with my ungloved hand; it too was warm, compared with the normal icy seas of the Southern Ocean.

We broke out of the fog.

Thompson Island lay before our eyes.

I identified it immediately: the low, level east point like a Blue Whale's snout was unmistakable. I had seen it with my own eyes and I had studied Captain Norris' sketches of it. The entrance sloped away abruptly and to the west was the point Norris had called Dalrymple Head. But it was upon neither of these that our eyes fixed in wonder and awe, it was upon the giant glacier which capped-to use Norris' own words the island like a nightmare caul. The strange colour made one automatically think of it as evil. It rose up two thousand feet sheer, its foot in the inner anchorage, which was still out of sight. It had none of the opaque whiteness and soft undertones of blue and green of the floating ice-continent which encircled the island and had aroused our wonder earlier: the caul was bottle-green and translucent to such a degree that one could see huge trapped boulders deep inside, its 201 heart; there was a tracery of white in a group about halfway up which looked as if it might have been the entombed skeletons of half a dozen Blue Whales. The baleful green gave it an inherent quality of malice, heightened by my realisation that the anchorage entrance of ragged basalt and pumice cliffs resembled the open jaws of a serpent. There was no sign of ice or snow on them. By contrast, the caul towered in archangelic glory and stretched away out of sight to the south. Upton, hampered by the oar, gazed speechlessly. His voice was thick when he gestured at the cliffs flanking the entrance. " Caesium! Caesium!"

Striated and grooved with white, like the stripes on a zebra's flank, were the veins of priceless ore.

I had never seen Upton so moved. The gaunt face was radiant under its patina of stubble, argyria and fatigue. " Mine!" he exclaimed. " All mine!"

The strong current swept us in towards the point like driftwood.

Pirow was smiling. The sight of Thompson Island had restored his morale. " The fleet is waiting for you, Herr Kapitan!"

I turned to look at him. The boat was swept round the headland into a long fjord.

" See!" he said.

Canted against the northern bank of the anchorage was a liner. I did not need to see her name. That Clyde-built silhouette was as familiar to me as London Bridge. For months I had studied it-the streamlined funnel set further aft than was usual during the war, and the peculiar derricks forward. The liner's picture had hung in the chartroom of H.M.S. Scott. The liner's last agonised signal, outward bound to Melbourne in 1942, was fresh in my mind:

" QQQ-QQQ-QQQ-45° South, 10° West-liner Kyle of Lochalsh-am being attacked by unknown ship."

Before my eyes, in Thompson Island's harbour, lay the Kyle of Lochalsh.

A little further down the fjord, half-beached, was the tanker Gronland. Rommel never knew that Kohler had won one of the Afrika Korp's battles in the frozen fastnesses of the Southern Ocean. The loss of fifteen thousand tons of aviation spirit and diesel oil she was carrying to the Middle East had reduced still further Britain's hold there. Gronland had vanished while under my charge. The tanker's heavy feeder hoses were still over the side. I saw now the source of Kohler's apparently unlimited supplies of fuel.

Another of Kohler's victims was tied up alongside the Gronland, a Liberty ship whose deck cargo of tanks and lorries looked absurdly new in the bright light inside the fjord. She too had disappeared without trace far to the south of the Cape of Good Hope.

They were my ships and Kohler's ships in the fjord. I shared neither Upton's elation nor Pirow's satisfaction, and my thoughts were reflected by the pain in Helen's eyes. The natural harbour would, I foresaw, be a perfect stagingpost for aircraft travelling from Cape Town to Sydney via the South Pole, and a strategic base of the first order for flying patrol over the vital sea route round the Cape. But I felt a surge of despair at the sight of the caesium veins. Upton's personal battle had ended in triumph, but the world's struggle over this hidden island of incalculable wealth would end in chaos. Yet, I told myself as we were drawn further in to the fjord, Helen and I alone were still the repository of the secret of the island's position. I eyed Upton. If I could get hold of the Schmeisser…

There were a score of other ships scattered about the anchorage. Some of the names I could read, others not. The beautiful Danish training sailing ship Kobenhavn was there: her disappearance in the Southern Ocean without trace before the war with a crew of sixty cadets had been a sea mystery as deep as the loss of the Marie Celeste. Near the Kobenhavn was the Berwick, one of the great teak fliers which had broken all records from Calcutta to London in the 1860s. A big iron-sided windjammer was broken in half across a reef. In addition, stacked like fragments of corpses in a mortuary, were ships' masts, teak and oaken timbers, figureheads, stanchions, cabin doors, big old-fashioned teak binnacles with Kelvin compasses and oil sidelights; broken oars, harness casks, whole deck-houses; a long mainyard pointed skywards as if it had been dropped from a plane, the footropes and gaskets still in position.

Overwhelmed by the sight, I steered automatically for the far end of the fjord, where I could see jets of steam in the rocks, spurting from some underground volcanic source. The glacier was more impressive close up: where the tongue of the ice entered the water it was sharp, not smooth and rounded as one would expect from the wash and weathering

of the current. It would be warm where the steam jets were, I told myself, and all of us needed warmth. Upton did not speak, but stared like a man in a dream at the caesium seams as we slid along with the current.

Pirow waved as we passed the Groniand. "Look, Herr Kapitan-it was you in H.M.S. Scott that made us slip those hoses and get away to sea so quickly."

The Man with the Immaculate Hand. The fine ships were as much his victims as Kohler's.

I brought the whaleboat into the shallows, sliding to a standstill against a rough beach of basalt and pumice. A jet of steam blew from a fissure in the rocks twenty feet above our heads. I seemed to be choking with warmth, and I pulled off my gloves. I jumped uncertainly over the side to secure the boat. As I felt land under my sea-boots, a wave of emotion and weakness almost overcame me. I threw a bight of rope round a rock to moor the boat. A tiny springtail-the wingless fly of Antarctica-settled on my hand. I had thought never to see a land creature again.

I picked Helen up and carried her ashore, bringing the sleeping-bag for her to lie on. I had to assist Sailhardy.

" Walter!" said Upton. " Bring me some hot water and see if we can get my hands loose." The palms must have been raw from the rowing, but he seemed oblivious of pain. " Take the Schmeisser, you bloody fool-I don't want Wetherby to get hold of it at this stage." His eyes were hard. " You won't be as lucky this time, Wetherby. The oil will have unfrozen by now in the gun."

Pirow clambered out too, and stood next to me. He looked down the fjord. " Liebe Gott!" he said huskily. " It is good to be back!" There was pride, arrogance and a touch of triumph in his ashen face.

The undamaged state of the ships-Kohler's victims-puzzled me. There had never been any hint from Kohler's signals in the German war records that he had used Thompson Island as his base. It was clear that Kohler had kept Pirow in the dark as to the name and position of this Southern Ocean base. The German sea fox had done the same to his own Oberkommado der Marine. In two years he had sent the High Command only half a dozen short messages listing his amazing successes. He, like Pirow, believed that while you kept off the air while raiding, you lived.

" Did you send boarding parties and bring the ships in afterwards?" I asked Pirow.

He shook his head. " The Herr Kapitan Kohler was a sailor like yourself. He used what the Southern Ocean gave him. Why risk the Meteor in action when your ships would come to him here in the fjord?"

" What do you mean?"

" The current," replied The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " It is deep and powerful-you want to see what happens to a ship in its grip. It is no ordinary current, Herr Kapitan-you see the vessels it has brought in from the ocean to this graveyard."

" A current is not that powerful."

" No, Herr Kapitan, it is not. Further out it is a strong current which will bring a derelict in and all the sort of stuff you see here. But near Thompson Island it becomes a killer. It sweeps in past the entrance on the side of the fjord where we are now, and then… Look!" He pointed at the foot of the glacier. There was a great swirling eddy. " It seems to nosedive there. We lost a boat's crew trying to investigate it closely. On the other side of the fjord the countercurrent is weak by comparison. The Herr Kapitan had his anchorage there, and he always entered the fjord on the counter-current side."

" You mean, you just sat here…"

He held out his hands. " The ships came because I signalled them. Sometimes it was a fake distress call, sometimes…" he grinned-" an order from the officer commanding the South Shetlands Naval Force-you, in other words, Herr Kapitan Wetherby. It was merely necessary to bring them into the fog-belt, where the current becomes so powerful, and it did the rest. It brought them in like lambs to the slaughter."

" The Kyle of Lochalsh was armed with six-inch guns," I said.

He nodded across the fjord. " You have-not noticed Meteor's gun emplacement over there. We unshipped one of our 5.9 inch guns and mounted it-on that side so that we could cover the enemy as he was swept along this side of the fjord. We had every inch of the fjord taped for ranges. Resistance would have been suicide."

I was filled with foreboding listening to Pirow's boasting. The weapons and victims of our war seemed so insignificant beside the potential in the rock seams above our heads.

Walter was massaging Upton's hands with warm water. I carried Helen to the stream of warm, sulphur-smelling water where it cut through the pumice on its way to the fjord.

I shifted some lumps of pumice to make a support for her back.

" What is my father going to do now?" she asked. My own anxiety was reflected in her voice.

" He talked about ships-and here they are," I said. " But you can't sail away without a crew in any of them, even assuming that they are in any shape after all these years."

" Listen!" she said.

Pirow was talking animatedly. We were slightly higher than the boat where the stream began up the slope. " The Herr Kapitan Kohler thought the 5.9-inch gun in the emplacement was better technically than those Harwood had at the Battle of the River Plate," he enthused. " But Kohler always marvelled at the English rate of fire. That gun is automatic on the ranges-every inch of the fjord is tabulated. You simply can't miss."

Upton got his hands free. He gave them a quick glance and then turned to Walter. " Could you load a gun like that?"

Pirow interrupted. " There is no need to pick up the shells. There is a hoist which brings them right to the breech."

" Christ!" said Walter. " All this sounds as if you're planning a war."

" I've got my island, and I've got the means to defend it," went on Upton, stretching himself.

" There's a big magazine under the gun," went on Pirow. " When Meteor put to sea, a gun crew was left behind except the last time, in order to engage H.M.S. Scott. There are probably some small-arms, too."

" Bruce!" whispered Helen. " It gets worse, not better. You must get to the radio and signal Thorsharnmer. I'm desperately afraid of what he is up to."

Sailhardy came slowly over to us. " Did you hear, Bruce?" " Yes."

" Will that gun be of any use after all this time?" Hope started into Helen's face. Sailhardy did not wait for my reply. " It must have a film of rust inside the barrel. If Upton tries to fire it, he'll blow himself to pieces." I shook my head. " If the gun had been on this side of the fjord, the warm side, I might have been hopeful. There aren't any warm springs over there. The temperature is polar near the glacier. Things don't rust in the dry Antarctic cold.

Just after the war the Americans found a shotgun at least fifty years old in a camp by the Ross Sea. The barrel was still burnished bright." Upton, Walter and Pirow came ashore and walked stiffly along the beach, Upton flexing his fingers.

" Bruce!" said Helen eagerly. " Here is your moment!

Look, they're all three wrapped up in what they're saying. The radio is in the boat. Signal Thorshammer!"

" Be quick, boy!" Sailhardy exclaimed. " Watch that gun, for God's sake! I'll shout if they turn!"

I raced, stumbling on the rough pumice, to the whaleboat. I threw myself under the decking to get at the radio. I clicked over the switch. There was still some power left in the batteries. I fiddled for a moment with the tuning dials and took the first frequency which dropped into my mind-24 metres Raider's frequency.

" Dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dot-dot-dot!-SOS! SOS! I flicked over the receiving switch, holding one earpiece against my head and listening with my other ear for the tell-tale crunch of boots on the shingle.

I cast round desperately. I wasn't a skilled operator like Pirow and probably the signal was weak. I must get through to Thorshammer, give our position, and warn her about the current and the gun.

In my anxiety, my war-time code signal came to me. It was all I could think of.

"GBXZ," I tapped.

No reply, I switched frantically to the 18-metre band. " GBXZ-to all British warships."

I clicked over. The reply was loud and clear.

"DR. DR-am coming to your aid. Keep transmitting for D IF bearing.

VKYI."

"Thorshammer! Beware… life-raft…" I missed Sailhardy's shout. It was Walter who tore at me, sending the headphones spinning. Pirow was there too, clutching at me as if I had outraged his precious radio. Walter pulled me half out of the cubbyhole on to the gratings. I thrust him aside. He wasn't that strong yet.

" He got off a message and the key is locked!" exclaimed Pirow. " God alone knows what he's said."

Upton stood by the boat. " Have you switched it off?" Pirow nodded. He turned to me. " What did you say to the destroyer?"

" The hell with you," I retorted. "Anyway, Thorshammer is coming for you. She's got the bearing now she's been asking for so often."

" Get in there," Upton told Pirow. " See what Thorsham- mer is saying. Call it out while we watch Wetherby." In a moment Pirow called. " I can't understand. She's saying GBXZ '. That is the British war-time code-' to all British warships'. And now-' Da-coming to your assist- ance '."

" Are you sure it's Thorshammer signalling?"

" Yes," called Pirow. " She's telling us to keep transmitting." There was a short pause. " Now she's calling Life-raft! life-raft! Keep transmitting! Keep your key down! Can you hear me? Can you hear me?' "

" Pirow," said Upton, " come out of there!" Pirow was badly shaken. " I want you to send a message, do you hear? Just the same weak sort of message you have been faking up as coming from the life-raft. You are to give our exact position."

" Don't be crazy!" said Walter. Helen and Sailhardy joined us. " You're telling Thorshammer to come and get us-just what this bastard has been doing."

I did not like Upton's look. " I'm telling her to come not necessarily to come and get us. What is our position, Wetherby?"

" Go to hell," I replied. " Find out the position of Thompson Island yourself."

" No matter," said Upton. " Put the key down, as the destroyer wants, Pirow. Let her get a good bearing. Find out how far away she is and how soon she'll be here. That is very important."

Pirow's mouth was taut. " Can I elaborate a little bit technically, I mean?"

" Do what you bloody-well like, but bring that warship here to Thompson."

" I don't understand…" began Walter.

" You:'don't have to," replied Upton. " I want you strong. Feed yourself up-right now. Pirow will give us an idea how soon the destroyer can be here. You have to load 5.9-inch shells into the hoist of that gun over there."

The big Norwegian looked astonished. " You're-you're going to fight it out with Thorshammer?"

" No." he said. He waved at the graveyard. "None of these fought it out with Meteor. I'll play Kohler's game. 208

The fjord is ranged to the yard. All we have to do is get on the gun and point it. Let Thorshammer come in on the current-Pirow will see to that. You're a harpoon-gunner, Walter. It'll be easy. The destroyer will be a sitting duck."

" By God!" exclaimed Walter.

I interrupted incredulously. It seemed to me the final insanity. I could see that Helen thought so too. " You can't sink a warship, Upton! You can't…"

" I would sink a-whole fleet for those," he replied, pointing at the veins of caesium. " I am going to blow her out of the water. The surprise will be complete. The crew certainly won't be at action stations when she comes in on the current."

" Don't he ridiculous," I said.

He waved again at the caesium veins. " They said Thompson Island was ridiculous. You know, they laughed at you too, just the same way as they laughed about your Albatross'

Foot. I believed in Thompson Island, and now I have it. Britain, Norway, Germany, America-they've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds searching for Thompson. No, they sneered, it did not exist. You knew it existed; I had only my faith. I also believed in caesium-here it is."

Pirow came out. " The batteries are very low, so I've switched off. There's enough power for only a few mare signals. Thorshammer is happy, though. She's got her bearing and she's on the way."

" When will she be here? When, man?"

Pirow was very certain of himself. " Nat before evening, if she had our exact position. The bearing wasn't all that good. She'll still have to search around-say in a radius of ten miles. She's certain to locate Thompson Island by radar during the night, but I guess her surprise will be so big that she won't risk coming in until daylight"

" Food! What we want is hot food!" exclaimed Upton. " This afternoon we will cross the fjord to the gun. No rowing for you, Walter-Wetherby and Sailhardy will do that. I want you fit to work that gun by to-morrow morning."

We gathered driftwood and made a big fire on the rough shingle close to the boat. Without the fire, it was warm enough to shed our heavy clothing, and by afternoon we were all feeling fitter, and I was relieved to see some colour in Helen's pale cheeks. She was very silent, however, and apart from the preparation of the food, did and said little.

After another substantial meal at midday, we set off across 209 the fjord to the gun emplacement. Sailhardy had taken more of a beating than I thought, and he seemed to flag at his oar very much at the end of the pull. Although the current was so powerful, it had not the grip on the shallow draught of the light whaleboat it would have had on a big ship. It was relatively easy to steer at a shallow angle across the current towards the glacier head and then use the counter-current on the emplacement side to coast down to the gun itself.

The sight of the gun filled me with dismay. It was a magnificent 5.9-incher, mounted in a concrete emplacement about twenty feet above the level of the fjord on a shelf of rock. Concrete had also been poured over the rock at waterlevel to provide a landing-stage, in which were sunk several metal mooring rings. Helen bit her lips when she saw the gun and cast me a glance of apprehension; Sailhardy looked strained and reserved, but Upton and Walter were jubilant. We tied up and Walter and Upton jumped ashore, Walter guarding us with the Schmeisser while Upton investigated. It was clear to me that a destroyer, even ready for action, would fight a one-sided battle against the gun. Upton ran back to us down the concrete steps from the gun itself, carrying a Czech pistol he must have found in the arsenal.

"Come on, Wetherby! Come and have a look! Thors- hammer's in for the surprise of her life!"

There was no doubt about that. On the firing platform I realised again what a genius of a gunnery officer Kohler must have had. For a moment as I stared along the sights of the weapon I remembered what Kohler's guns had done to H.M.S. Scott before I could get close to sink him with torpedoes: one of the 5.9-inch shells had gone through the starboard boiler while her whole 30,000 horsepower was thrusting her in for the kill, and she went over to starboard with a list which drew the awe and admiration of the Simonstown Dockyard when eventually I made my stricken way through the Roaring Forties to Cape Town. One boiler-room and the after messdeck were full of water and dead men, and at times the starboard gunwale was awash. I remembered, too, how when Kohler's superb salvo crashed home into the vitals of my ship, I automatically ordered Sailhardy, on the torpedo tubes, to fire all torpedoes into the sea " set to sink " before we ourselves were blown up by them. His voice had been steady over the phone back to the bridge: he had asked me to lay H.M.S. Scott broadside to her target and to let him fire them at the enemy rather than into the sea. Water pouring in,

H.M.S. Scott had swung beam-on to the wild sea. Sailhardy, like Nelson's gunners at Trafalgar, had fired over open sights on the roll of the sea. Two of his salvo four torpedoes had sent Meteor reeling to the bottom of the sea.

I dragged myself back into the present. Kohler's gunnery genius had rigged an effective hand-hoist for the heavy shells, which meant that firing them was easy. There was a complete set of calibrated ranges according to the speed of the current and the physical features of the fjord. The headland was sketched next to its range-oddly enough in yards and not metres-9,300. Where the cliff started to ascend from the entrance there was a patch of pumice like a brick kiln: it was marked as such on the range chart-8,000 yards.

I did not want to see any more. Thorshammer's fate was sealed once she came round the headland into the fjord. I went back to the boat without speaking. Walter inspected the gun while Upton guarded us, and then Pirow removed the radio from the cubbyhole and spent the best part of an hour rigging it at the rear of the gun.

The journey back to the warm side of the fjord was easy: we drifted down the slack counter-current on the glacier side towards the entrance and then rowed into the strong current, which carried us down past the ships' graveyard to our original landing-beach with its steam jets.

We collected more driftwood and lit a big fire. The sun's last light made the glacier-caul more evilly green than before. Darkness fell. The stars themselves looked baleful, reflecting off the glacier. We ate another huge meal and lay in our sleeping-bags. Upton had told us to be ready to leave for the gun before dawn. Walter, who seemed to have regained much of his strength, sat by the blaze with the Schmeisser. I lay awake, turning endless futile schemes over my mind. I fell into an uneasy sleep.

The air of unreality of the fjord-the gun, and the destroyer coming to her doom-was heightened when Upton woke us: the Southern Lights lit the fjord in blue and violet and glittered off the glacier-caul, dominating everything. Sailhardy and I rowed like sleep-walkers. Helen drew her hood over her face when the chill of the glacier struck us. I could not see her eyes, but I felt inwardly that they too must have taken on the unreal light of our surroundings. Pirow was talkative, tense, back in his war-time role of The Man with the

Immaculate Hand; Upton and Walter eagerly discussed ranges and speed of loading. The afternoon before, they had 211 slid one of the long naval shells into the breech and swung the muzzle of the weapon from one range to the next, according to the calibrations. Then they had set it on the headland target. All that was left to do now was to pull the firing lanyard when Thorshammer appeared.

The whaleboat eased alongside the landing stage.

" Come on, Walter! Come on, Pirow!" said Upton. He turned to me. " You three stay right here in the boat, see? We're going to be busy as soon as it's light, but don't try anything, anything, do you hear?"

" Do you expect me to sit here with hands folded if the Thorshammer returns your fire?" I asked.

" She won't," he said confidently. " You're quite safe." Helen dropped back the hood of her sea-leopard coat. " Father, for the sake of…"

He turned his back and said harshly to Pirow: " Call out Thorshammer's signals, and yours to her."

In the silence, the boots of the three men clumped up the concrete steps to the gun. I heard the radio come alive. Pirow repeated Thorshammer's signals in a low chant.

" DR-I am coming to your aid."

" Shall I reply, Sir Frederick?" he asked in his normal voice.

In the silence, Upton's voice was clear. " How soon will it be light, Walter?"

Half an hour, maybe."

" Light enough to fire?"

" Aye, I can see the outline of the headland already." Across the fjord the tracery of old masts and the silhouettes of the dead ships were starting to show against the first light, which unobstructed by the low entrance to the anchorage, unlike the glacier end where we were, which was still in blackness.

Upton's voice was exultant. " Bring her in, Carl! Bring her in!"

" Life-raft," stumbled The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " Mosby to Thorshammer. Cannot send much longer." The transmission rose, fell, ebbed-weakness, a surge of 1 strength, then exhaustion.

" Hold on, hold on!"

Pirow was calling out Thorshammer's signals.

" Taking bearings on this transmission." I could almost see Pirow grinning at his eat-and-mouse game.

" Can't last much! onger…" he tailed off. Then, like an exhausted man taking a grip of himself: "Are you close, Thorshammer?"

Thick fog. Radar show island or big iceberg. Keep sending. Keep sending."

Upton broke in: " Say it is ice, not land, Pirow. She mustn't be warned. She must not know anything until she comes round the paint on the current."

Pirow resumed his chant while he transmitted: " Ice. No! and. Clear visibility here."

" Strong current," came back Thorshammer. " Are you ex- periencing same?"

Upton's voice came back, jubilant. " We've gat her, Carl!

We've got her, Walter! She's in the fog-belt, caught by the current!"

I stood up and shouted. "Upton! Stop this madness!

Stop…"

His face was livid as he leaned over the edge of the firing platform. " Shut up, do you hear! Shut up!" He pointed the pistol at me. " You've outlived your usefulness…"

" Sir Frederick!" called Pirow. " She's saying, ' put your key down, put your key down!' Do I?"

The interruption diverted Upton's attention and saved my life. " For God's sake how long will she take in the grip of the current to get here?" he asked, disappearing from view.

" About twenty minutes, I guess," replied Pirow.

" Lock the key down!" said Upton. The chatter of the key turned to a continuous failing note as the power ran out.

He continued to forget me in the intensity of waiting.

Ten minutes passed.

Suddenly Sailhardy raised his head. " Bruce! There's a wind! Feel!"

The dawn wind began to steal off the cold glacier side of the fjord towards the warm, current side.

" I'll cast her off-you get that sail up damn quick," he whispered. To Helen, who was white and drawn, he went on, " You must take the tiller, ma'am, while Bruce and I get her clear with the oars. Right?"

She nodded, and glanced apprehensively at the gun. The three men were out of sight.

" Bruce!" hissed Sailhardy. " My God! Look!" Thorshammer burst round the point, crab-wise, half out of control. Her turbines were fighting the relentless current. She was not being much more successful against it than Kohler's victims. As a gunnery target, the elongated profile could not have been better.

" Cast off! Cast off!" In my anxiety I raised my voice. Sailhardy freed the painter, but he too knew that they must have heard me up above. He thrust the tiller into Helen's hands while I grabbed one oar and he another. " Steer towards Thorshammer, ma'am! Zigzag, Bruce! You first, me second!"

I threw all my strength against the long oar. I straightened from the first punishing stroke and froze. Walter stood on the emplacement, the Schmeisser raised chest-high. Sailhardy had seen too, and tugged at his oar to make the whaleboat yaw. It was a powerful stroke, but it was not enough. Helen rose in agonised slow-motion. The front of her right shoulder was polka-dotted as the heavy bullets tore through flesh and the sea-leopard coat. She slumped back. Then she reached to grip the tiller with her left hand underneath the useless right arm. Another burst tore the water round the boat. I tugged desperately at my oar to get out of range, and at the end of the stroke, whipped up the mainsail. Its faded ochre inched us out of range of the Schmeisser.

As I straightened, I heard a noise which I thought was the blood racing past my eardrums because of my effort at the oar. I paused, uncertain. It Sounded like distant gunfire. Then Meteor's gun sounded as if it had been fired right under our stern. The shell screamed across the fjord.

" Pull!" yelled Sailhardy. " Pull! Help the sail!" " Helen…" I began.

" Leave her for a moment-pull! Oh, my God!"

The director-tower behind Thorshammer's bridge mushroomed with a direct hit. It was a curious nodule-shaped projection, and it seemed to hold still for a moment before becoming one in a wild tangle of steel masts and tracery of the search radar.

I jumped on to the thwart and screamed helplessly at the gun emplacement. " Walter! Upton! You bloody, bloody fools! Stop it, you crazy bastards! Stop…!"

I looked square into the muzzle of the gun. I drew back, waiting for the ear-splitting crash-then the blast threw me fulllength on the bottom gratings. I lifted myself to see the heavy armour-piercing shell shear through Thorshammer's modem, enclosed bridge. In the silence following the burst I heard the clang as Thorshammer's gongs sounded " action 214 stations ". It was too late. The destroyer yawed, sagged, and yawed again as she swung out of control. With a grinding crash she cannoned into the side of the Kyle of Locha! sh. At the same moment, her twin 4.5-inch guns opened up. The shells bounced off the armour plate of the glacier a thousand feet above Upton's head. The destroyer canted further, biting into some unknown obstacle against the old liner's side. Her next pair of four-five shells screamed high over the glacier. They were so wide that it was clear to me what was going on – the director-tower and bridge was a holocaust of stinking cordite fumes and roasting flesh; the guns in the forward turret were firing aimlessly by local control.

We were almost half-way across the fjord and the wind gripped the whaleboat's mainsail: she was sailing fast.

" Lay the boat alongside Thorshammer," I ordered. " Get further down the fjord, and then swing into the strong current. She'll sweep down on Thorshammer by herself." We shipped the oars. I was first at Helen's side, but the islander's hands as he prised hers from the tiller were gentle. Blood dripped down her sleeve on to the steering-arm.

" Stop my father!" she whispered. " Go back-do anything, but stop this senseless killing!"

I eased her on to the gratings, but I seemed to be choking with the heat. The wind filling the sail seemed hot, too.

" Listen!" said Sailhardy incredulously. " Gunfire!" From the southern side of the island came the sound of heavy guns. The concussion swelled, boomed, reverberated down the fjord.

" Oh God!" whimpered Helen as another savage scream from the emplacement ended in a burst of flaring metal and tinctured smoke from Thorshammer.

Then I saw. The sea by the entrance started to boil. Helen lay unconscious against me, her blood staining my hands and jacket. I pointed to the water. " Sailhardy Tunny!"

Before he could reply, there was another rumble of heavy gunfire from the southern side of the island.

" The Albatross' Foot!" he burst out. " The other prong of The Albatross' Foot!"

I saw how The Albatross' Foot joined forces with the Thompson Island millrace and swept in to the head of the glacier where it must plunge into some gigantic subterranean fissure. I dipped my hand override. It was warm.

Sailhardy shook his head, as if to clear it. " That isn't gunfire we're hearing from beyond there-the ice is breaking up!"

To produce sound like that, I told myself hurriedly, vast fields of ice must be shattering under the impact of the warm Albatross' Foot. Any moment the glacier would start to disintegrate. But would that solid caul break up quickly enough to put a stop to Upton's madness?

I made a lightning decision. " Lay the whaleboat alongside, Sailhardy! Come with me!" Another shell screamed across the fjord from Upton's gun and burst on the old liner's superstructure. Thorshammer's twin Bofors, situated aft the steel latticed emergency conning position, chattered ineffectually. They couldn't bear on Upton's gun, and it showed what a sorry state her fire-control was in. Sailhardy laid the boat alongside the landward side of the destroyer. I scrambled over the low bulwarks. She had taken a frightful beating. There seemed to be bodies everywhere. The bridge was a shambles. Sailhardy passed me Helen's limp body. I guessed right that the wardroom had been turned into an emergency casualty station. I pushed past the orderlies and wounded men and put Helen down on the wardroom table, which was serving as an operating table. I did not wait for the doctor's astonished outburst. I pointed silently to the row of bullet-holes in her shoulder. He began to swear angrily, but I turned and raced back to Sailhardy on deck.

An officer was standing behind the forward turret, shouting. Half his uniform jacket seemed to have been burned off his shoulders and his cap was gone. Dazed men dragged themselves towards what seemed to be the only orderly musteringpoint on the ship, while others helped and half supported the wounded towards the wardroom companionway from which I had emerged. Thorshammer was afire aft, but the worst damage was above our heads on the bridge and fire-control.

No one took any notice of Sailhardy and me, except a young sub-lieutenant who stood on the steel wing of the emergency conning position towards the stern and shouted at us as we squeezed through a narrow opening between it and a deck boiler-room ventilator.

" Torpedoes…" I started to say to Sailhardy, but he pulled me forcibly to the deck as another shell came towards the stricken destroyer. It was a trifle high, however, and plunged through the twisted wreckage of the radar scanner,

bursting prematurely above the old liner. Her steel sides rang like a bell.

We sprinted for the quadruple torpedo-tubes on the port side facing across the fjord. Together we swung round the sawnoff snouts. The islander sighted them on the gun emplacement.

" Belay there!" I ordered.

He looked at me, astonished.

" Bring them to bear ten degrees astern-on the glacier," I added.

" Bruce.."

The thunder of the great barrage of ice drowned the noise of the next 5.9-inch shell. The glacier-caul had started to split. The translucent bottle-green suddenly became pocked with white, like a car's windscreen shattering. Thousands of tons of ice started to move-but would they move quickly or far enough to stop Upton's murderous fire, I asked myself.

The answer lay under Sailhardy's hand.

" Bearing ten degrees astern," he said. " Target bears. Glacier head bears-steady 1 "

" Fire one!" I ordered.

Sailhardy threw over the tipping lever. The sharp slap of the firing charge was lost in the thunder of the icebarrage. The sibilant cylinder of death slipped into the water.

" Fire two!"

No need to tell Sailhardy to spread them to case the entire head of the glacier.

" Fire three!"

Then, " Fire four!"

No concussion reached us as the warheads burst against the glacier head, the thunder of the ice swamping all sound. Four columns of water rose like spouts from a Blue Whale in tribute to the islander's marksmanship. The glacier, now disintegrating, had clamped itself between two separate land masses, although Norris' sketches had shown only one. Fissures ran up the ice cliffs like a boarding party, frosted white leaping to the summit of the green glacier. The ice wavered, hung, wavered, and then thousands of tons crashed down on to the gun emplacement.

I left Sailhardy looking at the debacle. I skirted the forward gun turret, from which the crew had emerged and were gazing in awe-struck silence at the opposite shore. The officer in charge seized me by the hand and started to exclaim 217 in Norwegian, gesturing towards the glacier head and the torpedo-tubes. I shook myself free of his congratulations and made my way to the crowded wardroom.

Helen was lying on the table, her eyes closed. The surgeon put the finishing touches to the bandages round her shoulder and armpit.

" Is she. ?" I started to say.

She smiled and opened her eyes at the sound of my voice.

The doctor smiled. " Not too serious-nothing vital has been touched," he said in English. " She has been very lucky indeed. It's a new one on me to have to attend a woman who has been shot up."

As I spoke to the doctor a man in uniform came over from a bunk. His head was in bandages and his left arm in a sling. " Why have the four-five stopped firing? Did that sonofabitch knock out the forward turret too? Why has everything stopped?"

I saw his rings of rank. " Captain Olstad?"

" Yes!" he snapped. " Who the hell are you? What is happening on deck?"

The doctor taped down the last of Helen's bandages. I picked her up to carry her to a bunk.

" It's quite a story, which I think you should hear," I said. " Don't worry, there won't be any more shells from the gun across the fjord."

The young sub-lieutenant I had seen on the emergency conning position clattered down the companionway, saluted, and spoke rapidly in Norwegian to Olstad, indicating me.

I put Helen down gently, but she clung to me. Olstad came and sat at the foot of the bunk. Helen propped herself against my shoulder.

" Who are you"' he demanded. " How do you and another civilian understand about firing torpedoes?"

I told him who I was. " The other civilian, as you call him, was once the finest torpedo-man afloat."

" Bruce," said Helen. " My father…" She looked round the crowded wardroom, overheated now by the steam tubes which ran round it and the crowd of men who lay, sat or stood waiting their turn with the doctor. A boy minus a hand sobbed hysterically and a seaman, hideously burnt about the eyes, screamed through the morphia which had been hastily administered.

" Oh God!" she exclaimed. "These are the living, but 218 how many are dead? Bruce darling, why is the gun silent? What.. .?"

" The glacier started to topple on to the emplacement," I said. " To stop the slaughter here, I hastened it with four torpedoes."

She hid her face.

Olstad said savagely: " Who were the murderers who crippled my ship and killed my men without provocation? In God's name, why was it done-it is not war I "

" Have you ever heard of Thompson Island?" I asked. Olstad's face reflected his incredulity. "Thompson Island! You mean. ..?"

" Exactly," I said. " This is Thompson Island. The man who opened fire on you had an obsession about it."

I told him how Upton had come to Tristan and had implicated me in his schemes when he found out I had Norris' chart. Olstad's face went hard when I told him how Walter had shot down the seaplane, and how The Man with the Immaculate Hand had strung him along with the faked signals. While I spoke, the doctor and his orderlies dressed, bandaged and drugged the wounded, who were laid on mattresses on the floor. Olstad nodded in silent wonder when I explained the mystery of The Albatross' Foot and how it had caused the break-up of the glacier across the fjord. He looked keenly at me when I said I had sighted Thompson Island during the war, and shook his head over the rejection by the Admiralty and the Royal Society of my discovery of light refraction and its bearing on the true position of Thompson Island. Sailhardy came in and his face lighted to see Helen sitting up.

Olstad looked from Sailhardy to me in unconcealed admiration. " We Norwegians have always loved a voyage into the unknown. We have preserved the Kon Tiki raft in a museum. If ever another boat deserves to be kept, it is your whaleboat. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have made a trip like that in an open boat in such a storm and survived. With your permission, I would like to take the whaleboat back to Norway with me. To-morrow we must have a ceremony in honour of Thompson Island. We will hoist flags and fire guns."

I made my decision. " Captain Olstad: there is a function which you as captain are empowered to perform. I ask that it should have priority over any ceremonial."

The Norwegian looked surprised at my tone. " The safety of my ship and the welfare of my crew is my first consideration, I am afraid, Captain Wetherby. Any request must be subsidiary to that. Thorshammer is a job for a dockyard. It will take months to make her seaworthy. Here I am, stuck in an unknown harbour, thousands of miles from anywhere…"

" You have overlooked the four catchers," I replied. " Signal them to come here. I'll give you the position. Warn them to approach from the south-east, like Kohler used to do, otherwise they'll be in trouble at the entrance to the fjord. You can leave a skeleton crew to look after Thorshammer while the catchers take us to Cape Town. You can arrange assistance from there."

" That is excellent," he said. He grinned suddenly. " It is going to take a hell of a lot of explaining, though. What is your request, Captain Wetherby?"

I took Helen's hand in mine. " You are entitled to perform a marriage service, are you not?"

Olstad's face broke into a boyish grin. " By heavens,

Captain! -you and this lady?"

Helen's eyes were luminous as Parry's Arc. At my words, she sat upright, the sea-leopard coat falling from her wounded shoulder, leaving it and her neck bare.

Olstad shook us both by the hand. " This will be good for Thompson Island! A wedding to mark its rediscovery!

It will be good for the morale of my crew, too. There is still some sad work to be done burying those poor lads lying on deck."

A massive peal of thunder, more distant now, shook the ship as the ice-barrage continued to the south of the island. Olstad's face went tense, but relaxed when he realised it was not gunfire. " I would like to hear about your trip in your own words," he said to Sailhardy.

I interrupted wryly, " What he really wanted was to sail from Bouvet to Cape Town."

" The hardship, the storm…" Olstad started to say. Then he shrugged. " Upton must have been mad rather than obsessed to have done all this merely in order to discover one useless little island."

A cold stab went through me remembering the veins of caesium ore. Something of what I was thinking must have been in the minds of Helen and Sailhardy, too. They both watched me as I stayed silent. Who, I asked myself, except

Upton with his highly specialised knowledge shared by per220 haps four other scientists in Sweden and Cambridge, could identify the veins for what they were-pollucite, Upton had called it-the bearers of the world's most priceless metal? Who among ordinary scientists was capable of placing pollucite and caesium? If we kept silent, who would know-I myself had seen a score of islands in the Southern Ocean streaked white from other causes. The savage current and perpetual fog-belt made access itself to Thompson Island hazardous into the bargain. Once the first flush of its rediscovery had passed, would Thompson Island not sink back into oblivion again-provided the secret of the caesium were kept?

" Useless?" I echoed.

Olstad shrugged again. " Perhaps it has some value as a harbour for whalers, but what else, with the risks? Bouvet is close, but few catchers use its anchorage."

I was about to say something about global strategy, the importance of the Cape of Good Hope sea route, and flights over the South Pole, but I saw the look in Helen's eyes.

" Yes," I said slowly. " Thompson Island seems to have only a certain limited value as a whalers' harbour."

Sailhardy inclined his head as if listening to the distant ice.

Helen reached up and touched my arm. " Old John

Wetherby would have liked it that way," she said.