A Grue of Ice

4. The Man with the Immaculate Hand

"It is a wild night outside this anchorage," said the big man in the streaming oilskins. Upton did not seem to mind when he shook the water from his sou'wester on to the cabin's fine carpet. " The waves come forty feet high to-night."

" That's nothing new to you, Walter," Upton replied jocularly. " Or to Captain Wetherby here." He introduced us. " Gunner-Captain Walter is the finest harpooner in the Southern Ocean."

I disliked Walter at sight. He looked the sort of sailor 48 for a night like this: his great hand as he gripped mine was scaled over from the kick of the harpoon-gun, and matched his massive frame. He stank of whale and Schnapps, with an overlay of weatherproofing. He was half-shavenI was never to see him otherwise.

" So you find your man, eh, Sir Frederick?" he said. There was a suggestiveness about my mind. Upton had told me about the Blue Whale; Walter was obviously the type to carry out such a project; yet what had been imponderables to them before they found me seemed now to fit neatly – too neatly-into the pattern.

" Where are the others?" asked Upton.

" I kept them close to the Aurora all the way from South Georgia," Walter replied. " In fact, within W / T range. You know what these catcher skippers are like-they spot a whale and go chasing after it, and before you know where you are, you are chasing him. No, they'll all be in within half an hour."

" Good," said Upton. " I want to brief them as soon as they come in."

" Where is Pirow?" asked Walter.

Was I imagining it, or was there also some innuendo in the way the tough skipper said it? The question and the answer were harmless enough in themselves.

" Where do you think?" said Upton. " As always, in the radio room."

" That Pirow," said Walter thoughtfully. " He should have married a radio set." He thrust his big jaw towards Sailhardy. " Who is this, heh?"

" Sailhardy," I said. " A Tristan islander."

" Ah, hell," said the big Norwegian. " Tristan islander!

Shipwrecks and black women."

Sailhardy came across the cabin towards Walter. The only outward sign of his anger was a curious flicking of his left small finger into the palm of his hand. I knew Sailhardy's strength.

Upton intervened. " Walter doesn't mean it for you." " Sonofabitch," said Sailhardy.

"Come, boys," went on Upton. " You both need a drink."

"I told you, not for me," glowered Sailhardy.

" A Cape Horner for me," grinned Walter. " A full Cape Homer!"

Upton splashed half a glass of Schnapps and tipped a pint of stout into it.

Two more men in oilskins pushed open the cabin door. " Reidar Bull, catcher Crozet," said one.

" Klarius Hanssen, catcher Kerguelen," said the other. Their economy of words as they identified themselves and their snips was typical: to them, the ship and the skipper were synonymous. They eyed the luxurious cabin enviously. I knew what their own quarters were like: a metal box containing a hard bunk, continuously soaked through leaking bulkheads. It was better to be on the bridge.

They were naming their drinks as Lars Brunvoll arrived. " Brunvoll, catcher Chimay," he introduced himself.

" I laughed when Walter told me the name of your ship," said Upton. " Chimay-iceberg! Don't you see enough ice, Brunvoll?" The skipper was at his ease immediately. " We're still missing one, though."

". Mikklesen," said Walter. " Where is he, Brunvoll?" " He was tying up as I came over," he replied.

The door open and Mikklesen came in. He did not look, like the others, as if he had been lashed together with steel wire. He was of medium height with a thin, pinched nose and the clearest of blue eyes.

" I am Mikklesen of the Falkland," he said. " You are Sir Frederick Upton?"

He was the odd man out, just as the islands after which his catcher was named belong more to South America than to Antarctica.

At a sign from her father, Helen left. The skippers sat uneasily on the fine furnishings. Their concession to the social gathering was to open their oilskins without taking them off. They were as tough as a Narwhal's tusk. Upton did his trick with the flaming brandy and raised the metal tankard with its blue flame to them. " Skoll! To the finest whalermen in the Southern Ocean!"

Only Walter responded. The others stared selfconsciously into their drinks.

During the next few minutes I admired Upton's handling of the skippers. They were out of their element. Upton wanted them for something. They knew it, and he knew that they knew. To have put a foot wrong would have sent them all on their way.

Upton blew out the flame and gulped down the hot spirit.

They looked surprised. He grinned at them as he threw in another dollop-of brandy. " Surely I don't have to show whalermen how to drink spirits?" he asked.

Obediently, they up-ended their glasses.

He raised his tankard. " To the Blaahval."

Here it comes, I thought, with that toast to the Blue

Whale.

"Blaahval!" echoed the Norwegians.

" Captains," Upton began. " Peter Walter has asked you to come and join me here at Tristan to talk business." They eyed him silently. I could see they were not impressed – you don't get men to voyage two thousand miles in partial radio silence just to talk business, not ordinary business. Mikklesen broke in. " Sir Frederick, before we go further, who is paying for our fuel to get here?"

" I am," Upton replied. " You will draw all food, fuel and supplies-liquor if you like-from this ship. Anything you want." They murmured approval.

Then Upton played it rough, the knockdown for rough men. He gestured at me. " The professor here has found it. He knows where the Blue Whale breeds."

Each turned and eyed me with a long, appraising look, as if searching an uncertain horizon. That, mixed with a kind of iconoclastic wonder. I started to speak, but Upton went on: " You captains will hunt the Blue Whale with me in its very breeding-ground."

Hanssen said thickly, " Where is it, Sir Frederick?" Upton laughed and punched him on the shoulder. " You bastard, Hanssen!" He turned to the others. " He says to me, where is it? Just like that! The greatest mystery of all time for whalermen, and he says, where is it."

He'd got his audience. The Norwegians roared with laughter.

Sailhardy whispered to me: " Bruce! Let's get out of this set-up. It's all wrong."

Upton didn't miss his cue with us, either. " Only the professor knows," he told them. " You see, he has been a captain in the Royal Navy. You know what they are. They never talk."

Mikklesen's eyes were so clear they were devoid of expression. "Captain Wetherby, of H.M.S. Scott?" he asked. " Yes."

"The man who sank the raider Meteor?"

"Yes."

" They still talk about it when men get together," he said. He came over and shook my hand. " I was close, east of Bouvet, in my Falkland. I heard the signals. They 51 were clear, not in code-he was a clever one, that Meteor. The twisting and the turning! He yapped over the air like a mongrel in a fight. From your ship there was-nothing. Then silence. I knew you had got him then."

Upton was abstracted. I became a punch-line in his act. " Captain Wetherby, Distinguished Service Order," he said. " A professor of the sea in peace-time and a man of death in war-time."

It was so sentenious that I nearly laughed in his face. The captains did not think so. Solemnly, each shook me by the hand.

Upton went on. "Captain Wetherby knows, and he has promised to take us there."

" What is it worth, Sir Frederick?" asked Hanssen.

"This ship will hold about two hundred and twenty thousand barrels of oil," he replied. " That's worth about three million pounds."

Mikklesen chipped in. "To you, yes, Sir Frederick. But not to the men who will do the work."

" There's a hundred thousand pounds net for each of you in this," Upton went on. " Net. I'll pay all expenses, and as I said. I provide all fuel, all equipment." He didn't wait. " Bull?"

Bull nodded quickly.

" Hanssen?"-" Aye."

" Brunvoll?"-" Yes."

" M ikklesen? "

The skipper of the Falkland hesitated for a moment. I thought he might be going to refuse. He did not look at Upton, but at some point on the great map near Bouvet, as if it could help him to a decision. "I have never had so much money," he replied slowly.

" T h a t ' s n o t a n a n s w e r, " j o k e d U p t o n. " Y e s? " H e didn't wait, but started to fill up the glasses, talking rapidly. " This calls for a celebration. We sail in the morning. Keep close to the factory ship. Pirow will pass my orders to you on the W/T."

Mikklesen waited until his glass was full. "It is not as easy as that, Sir Frederick," he said.

The other skippers stared at Mikklesen in surprise.

" We agree to go with you-if so, where? It might be anywhere between here and Australia-or beyond."

Upton frowned. " It is not as far as that. A couple of thousand miles. You have my assurance on that."

Mikklesen shook his head. " I sweated for twenty years to buy my own ship. There must be safeguards."

" The safeguards are one hundred thousand pounds in cash," snapped Upton.

" Is this a legal or an illegal expedition?" pressed the Viking-eyed man. " Will I lose my ship? Why ask us to rendezvous at Tristan? I have never heard of whalers gathering here before." He said pointedly: " Why didn't you bring your nice big ship and meet us where we belong, in South Georgia?"

" I had to meet Captain Wetherby here…" Upton began. " Listen," I interrupted. " Forget Captain Wetherby. The war has been over a long time."

Mikklesen smiled. " No, Captain. Seas and wars do not forget their captains." He confronted Upton. " Have you a permit from the International Whaling Association?"

Upton was on the defensive. " I will explain more to you…"

Mikklesen pressed on. " Do we fish where we should not? What country's waters, eh? Is this a second Onassis and the Olympic. Challenger? Will we also be bombed and arrested?"

" There is a territorial limit of two hundred miles which has been laid down which is completely unreasonable and no nation would really adhere to it if…" said Upton. Mikklesen certainly was on the ball. " So we fish in my own country's territorial waters?" he asked with a thin smile. " We fish for the thing every Norwegian whalerman has dreamed of since he first heard the crash of a harpoongun, or since he fiensed his first whale? The breeding-ground of the Blue Whale?"

Upton tried again. " Technically, I say, we will be inside territorial waters. With the knowledge I have, I cannot risk a maritime court action; it would give everything away."

" It is Bouvet, is it not, Sir Frederick? Not so, Captain Wetherby? Inside Norwegian territorial waters, off Bouvet?"

" It is Bouvet, blast you " roared Upton. " But, by God, Mikklesen, you can search until you are as blue as a Blue

Whale, but you won't find the breeding-ground-not without Wetherby! "

Mikklesen's answer was quick. " That I know. Every season for thirty years I have sailed near Bouvet. I have never found it. I try every time."53

Walter broke in. " We are fishermen, and two hundred miles for a territorial limit is damn stupid. Twelve miles maybe."

The other captains, except Mikklesen, grunted approval.

" We are hunters," went on Walter. " We hunt where the game is. You cannot draw lines across the ocean and say, keep out. Where would we be if the British did what Norway has done, and kept us away from South Georgia and the South Shetlands?"

" We Norwegians first thought of the breeding-ground," Mikklesen retorted angrily. "It belongs to Norway, even if two hundred miles is a stupid limit, and as a whalerman I agree that it is."

Upton saw his opening. " You are a hunter first, or a patriot first, Captain Mikklesen? Will Norway offer you a hundred and twenty thousand pounds like I will?"

" A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?" echoed Mikklesen. " A moment ago it was a hundred thousand pounds."

Upton did not sense his mistake with Mikklesen in bidding up. I did, and Mikklesen's grudging agreement should have warned Upton. " That's the new price," he laughed. " So that everybody feels quite happy."

" This secret belongs to Norway, not to one man or one expedition," said Mikklesen doggedly.

" I thought more of your spirit of enterprise," said Upton. " Does that mean you are not joining us?"

" I'll come," he replied sullenly. " For a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Now I must get back aboard my ship." He gave me a further long glance, as if to satisfy himself he had really seen someone who had located a secret so precious to Norway, and went.

" Some of these boys like jam on it," laughed Upton. He turned to me. " He'll feel differently once he sees the sea red with dead whales. They just cannot resist it, you know." Mikklesen's departure lifted the air of tension over the gathering. I had heard of the drinking prowess of South Georgia whalermen, but even so, the way they downed their Cape Homers astonished me. But then, they were also drinking dreams of their?120,000. Upton became one of them as the strong liquor and his camaraderie loosed their tongues.

"… Fanning Ridge," Walter was booming. "It's the best landmark on South Georgia as you come up from the south-west. Damn me, I've seen it from as far away as fifty miles on a clear day."

" Nonsense," said Lars Brunvoll. " Why come from the south-west, anyway?"

Walter let out an oath. " I wouldn't have been coming at all, if it hadn't been for the emergency huts the Americans put up on Stonington Island."

" Stonington Island?" Hanssen echoed. " That's to hell down the Graham Land peninsula, way in Marguerite Bay!"

" Too true," Walter replied. " I was caught by one of those violent gusts which come down the glacier near Neny Island."

" In other words," smiled Upton, " you thanked God and the Norwegians who first set up the emergency depots they call roverhullets throughout the Antarctic and its islands."

" It was the Scots who started the idea, on Laurie Island, in the South Orkneys, sixty years ago…" began Reidar Bull. I stood aside as the argument developed, as only sailors and whalermen can argue. Mikklesen's shrewd formulation of the illegality of the proposed expedition worried me. There could be no doubt that, in terms of the Antarctic Treaty, which twelve of the major powers with possessions and interests in Antarctica, including Britain, the United States and Norway, had signed, we were infringing Norwegian territorial waters. If we were caught, Upton might buy or talk his way out of trouble, but for me it would be different. I, a Royal Society researcher, would acquire a life-long stigma for throwing in my lot with an expedition whose one and only purpose was gain, Upton's gain. In fact, the whole business could lead to a small shooting war if Norway got tough. That is exactly what had happened when Onassis allegedly flouted the two-hundred-mile offshore whaling limit declared by Peru, Ecuador and Chile in 1954. His Olympic Challenger expedition, as Mikklesen had pointed out, had been bombed by the Peruvian Air Force and seized by the Peruvian Navy. That had created a major diplomatic incident, and the ships had been released only on payment of ?1,000,000 indemnity by Lloyd's.

The breeding-ground of the Blue Whale was far more important to Norway than Onassis' mere infringement of whaling limits. That was where the parallel between the Olympic Challenger expedition and Upton's ended. Had the Olympic Challenger had on board an oceanographer like me who could have nailed down a killer-current the Peruvians call El Nino-a warm, less saline stream which blitzes the life-flow of the Peru Current and kills fish, whales and seabirds by the million off the coast of South America-the knowledge in itself would have been worth that?1,000,000 indemnity many times over.

The Albatross' Foot represented a mighty challenge. What, I asked myself as the catcher skippers grew more noisy, if a similar challenge had been rejected by the man who, only since World War I, had revolutionised all ideas on the great Gulf Stream itself? He was laughed to scorn

– but he proved his theory. Until ten years ago the United States was unaware that yet a second great Gulf Stream, known as the Cromwell Current, swept in to its shores, this time from the Pacific; again, it was one man's persistence, pitted against all contemporary scorn, which proved that a 250-mile-wide column of water, equal to the flow of the Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Yellow and Congo Rivers together multiplied several thousand times, washed the Pacific coast of the United States.

Here, at my fingertips, lay the possibility of a discovery as great as either of these, if not greater. The whole of the world's whaling industry would be affected by knowledge of my current. That, I argued with myself, could bring conservation on a global scale of the disappearing schools of whales in the Southern Ocean, even if Upton killed off a few hundred in pinning down that knowledge for me.

There was, too, a vital military aspect of The Albatross'

Foot. In H.M.S. Scott I had sunk a U-boat deep in the Southern Ocean toward the ice. She had surfaced before she sank, and I recovered her log. For submarines, knowledge of water temperature and salinity is vital. I had been surprised at the data the log had shown of the area where I now knew The Albatross' Foot must be: it was a picture of current and counter-current, of rapid temperature changes in the boundary layer between surface water and the main body of the sea itself, which we oceanographers call the " thermoc-line ". A study of the waters round Bouvet would yield new and invaluable operational information for atomic submarines guarding the vital sea route round the Cape of

Good Hope.

How else but through Upton would I ever get near Bouvet? It had been difficult enough to persuade scientists at the Royal Society to let me investigate the Tristan prong of The Albatross' Foot; no government or scientific organisation would be prepared to spend tens of thousands of pounds on an expedition to the wild waters of Bouvet merely to test an unsubstantiated theory. The answer was: Upton's expedition must not be located. To me that meant only one thing-I must take command. Sailhardy and I knew every trick of the Southern Ocean. We had learned it the hard way. I grinned a little wryly to myself now that the decision had been formulated: I was deliberately seeking out the worst seas in the world, among whose fogs I would hide the factory ship and catchers from whatever ships Norway might have there while I sought within my " circular area of probability " ( as the missle-men say of the target at Cape Canaveral) the missing prong of The Albatross' Foot.

Sailhardy moved away from the porthole when Upton tried again to press a drink on him, and came over to me, frowning deeply. " Bruce," he said, " we can get to Tristan, even in this gale. Let's get out-now."

I submerged my own misgivings. " Why? This is a oncein-alifetime opportunity for me to get to Bouvet, as you know."

" Look," replied the islander. " We've been shanghaied. Politely, but none the less shanghaied. Upton has sailed all the way from Cape Town to Tristan in order to tell you that your plankton discoveries will help him discover the breedingground of the Blue Whale. Fair enough-they probably will."

"Then what are you objecting to?" I asked.

" His methods, his timing, everything," he replied. " He could have written you a letter asking you to go to see him in England, or flown you there from Cape Town, for that matter. True, the letter might take six months to reach you, but six months are not important for something that has been searched for for half a century. It must have cost five thousand pounds a day to bring this ship to Tristan. When he gets here, he sends his daughter off into one hell of a storm to find you. It all points to one thing: you must be valuable-very valuable indeed-to him."

" He told us, he could net a straight three million pounds." " It's a big expedition, isn't it?"

Yes."

" If he finds this breeding-ground, you'd expect this factory ship to be mightly busy, wouldn't you?"

" Yes."

" Pirow and I walked through the crew's quarters when we landed, to put his gear in his cabin," he said slowly. 57

" There are only enough men to cope with a moderate catch. I smelt a rat at once, so I asked the chief flenser about biomycin. Biomycin is the latest American way of preserving a whale-you know, normally the meat and fat of a whale is quite useless about eighteen hours after the kill, unless preserved with biomycin. You can then keep them up to forty hours. You'd expect them to be cutting up whales on an assembly-line basis if Upton found the breeding-ground. Yet there's no biomycin aboard, and tiny, almost skeleton, flensing crews to cut them up."

" Upton may be a bit old-fashioned in his methods…" I started to say.

" What have you got in that bag of yours?" Sailhardy demanded, indicating the oilskin bag which the sailor had brought from the whaleboat.

" Charts, sea-temperature readings-that sort of thing." " What charts?"

" Admiralty charts of Tristan, Gough, the South Shetlands – you can buy them anywhere. Oh, and an old chart and log which came to me when Wetherbys folded up. It's about 1825. It's probably the first of the waters round Bouvet."

"Bouvet!" breathed Sailhardy.

The cabin door flew open, Pirow stood there, a radio message in his hand. It was the disciplined attitude of the man, his deference to Upton, his superior, and his taut bearing, that made me recognise him in a flash.

The Man with the Immaculate Hand!

I looked in silent wonder across the noisy room at the

Geoffrey Jenkins

A Grue Of Ice man who had lured so many British and Allied ships and men to their deaths during World War II. Carl Pirow, radio operator of the German raider Meteor, was a very different proposition now from the oil-drenched wretch they had brought aboard H.M.S. Scott after I had gone in with torpedoes while the Meteor's 5.9-inch salvoes blanketed my ship. I considered Pirow the most dangerous single man the war at sea had thrown up against the Royal Navy. The Man with the Immaculate Hand we called him, and the

Merchant Navy took over the nickname in awe, because of his uncanny ability to imitate any type of ship's radio transmission. When I had started my long search for the

Meteor I discovered that every ship, whether merchantman or warship, has it own idiosyncrasies in transmitting. There are as many ways of sending as there are radio operators. I looked across at his hands-yes, they were still beautifully 58 manicured as the war-time legend recounted. It was said that Captain Kohler of the Meteor had first called him The Man with the Immaculate Hand; the German Navy passed it on to their propoganda radio; the Royal Navy perpetuated it as we hunted, month after month, in the Southern Ocean while the Meteor struck again and again.

A chill struck through me, even in the warm, drinkladen atmosphere of the factory ship's cabin, as I remembered the standard distress-signal I had heard so many times, often blurred and incomplete as the raider's shells smashed home, from the ships placed under my charge in the wastes of the Southern Ocean.

First, the frightened " QQQ "-" I am being attacked…" invariably followed by " rout "-" I am being shelled by a warship.. ."

I jerked myself back into the present and crossed the room to Pirow. I looked at him steadily. " Is that a message from Seekriegsleitung, that it's so urgent?"

For a moment his glance faltered as I dropped into the jargon of the operational staff of the German Navy High Command, and then he laughed. " I wondered how long it would be before you recognised me, Herr Kapitan." There was a spurt of anger behind the pale eyes which made the calm poise of the master technician-faker more sinister. "It was no thanks to that stupid clot of a radio operator of yours that you came in with the torpedoes. The last thing Kapitan zur See Kohler said to me was, I wonder if the British torpedoes will run true? Ours always gave trouble."

" Bruce!" said Upton peremptorily. He drew me aside. " Here!" He thrust the signal into my hand. He wasn't drunk. The caffeine in his strange tipple offset the effects of the alcohol. The pink flush of anger was there, though.

I read the signal, written in Pirow's neat, post-office handwriting.

" Urgent. Repeat Urgent. Mikklesen skipper whalecatcher 724/004 Falkland to Norwegian destroyer Thorshammer via Tristan da Cunha meteorological station. British Sir Frederick Upton has discovered breeding-ground blue whale. Inside Norwegian territorial waters vicinity Bouvet Island. Upton has no permits. Expedition factory ship and four Norwegian catchers starting ex Tristan dawn to-morrow. Suggest appro- priate action."

Under it was the reply. "Thorshammer to Mikklesen. 59

M e s s a g e a c k n o w l e d g e d. H e a d i n g a l l p o s s i b l e s p e e d f o r Tristan. Await my orders there."

Upton jerked his head at the group of captains. " Walter!" Walter read it slowly. " The bastard!" he started to say. " The bloody, two-faced bastard…"

" Shut up!" snapped Upton in a low voice. " Keep those boys drinking. Carl, come to the radio office. We've got plenty of time, and the Southern Ocean is a big place." Pirow gave his half-smile, •half-sneer. " Except that Thorshammer is about twenty miles away-just the other side of Nightingale Island."

"How do you know?" rapped out Upton.

"I got a D/F bearing on her," said The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " She'll be here in an hour."

Thorshammer's message threw my doubts into sharp relief. Either I would go now with Upton, or get ashore with no hope of ever seeing Bouvet. The presence of The Man with the Immaculate Hand had shaken me. What was a brilliant, if perverted, radio operator like Pirow doing with an expedition like this? You don't need radio to hunt whales, and wireless traffic in the Antarctic, as I knew from my long vigil at Cape Town listening to it, consisted mainly of weather reports and catchers' reports, all of it deadly dull. Pirow was there for some sinister purpose, that I knew. Was it his mastertalent in deception that Upton wanted, or some knowledge from his days aboard the Meteor? In either event, the Blue Whale story was simply a cover; but a cover for what? On the surface, one could not fault Upton's story, except that it was a little too slick. Even the lack of biomycin on board was not decisive-whalermen are naturally conservative and slow to adopt new ideas: but why did Upton want me so urgently? What knowledge, or part-knowledge, did I share with Pirow, assuming that the Blue Whale story was a fabrication or a blind? Despite the risk, I knew what I had to do: I must assume command and go. The knowledge of what Upton, Pirow and Walter were really about might prove my justification if the Norwegians caught me.

I turned to Upton. " We can't talk here. Let's get to Pirow's office." Upton started to object when Sailhardy came too, but I waved it aside. We skirted the bridge to get to the radio office. I was struck by the radio set. It was a powerful instrument, and the tuning dials were twice the size of any I had seen. Upton, Pirow, Sailhardy, and I crowded into the small space.

" Sir Frederick," I said. " I now have a condition for coming to Bouvet. I must have sole and complete command of this ship, and the catchers must operate under my orders." Upton shot a quick glance at Pirow. " I'll be damned!

Why this sudden assumption of responsibility?"

" You can make up your mind, and it will have to be quick," I said. "Thorshammer can't be here in an hour with this sea running. She can't make more than fifteen knots. I know. Thorshammer is one of the new British Whitby class they sold to Norway. She's big-every bit of two thousand tons. Even so, I feel sorry for anyone in her to-night. It'll be coming green right up to the bridge. Western Approaches stuff. But she'll catch you before you ever see Bouvet."

" Unless you are in command," he said. He didn't wait. H e p i c k e d u p P i r o w ' s t e l e p h o n e. " B r i d g e! " h e s a i d. " Captain Bjerko! From now Captain Wetherby will take over command of this ship. You will act on his orders, and give him the fullest co-operation." He turned to me. " Satisfied?" I nodded. " Get on with it, Carl! Do something about it!" Pirow looked at me with that half-smile. " I have your permission, Herr Kapitan?" I nodded, and he sat down at his transmitting key.

The thoughtful pause with the hand held high was pure Rubinstein. It was not a gesture to the three of us who stood round him at the key. It was the thought-mustering prelude of the artist. He was projecting himself into his medium. The left hand came down by the side of the key with the thumb and first finger splayed, the third and fourth slightly crooked. The right hand felt delicately for the key, live now as he put on the transmitting switch. He paused and looked up at me." " It was a South African who sent Mikklesen's message," he said. " He sent breeding-grond ' instead of breeding-ground '. He was an Afrikaner-he spelled ` ground ' as it is spelt in Afrikaans. One must therefore send like an Afrikaner-deliberately, thoroughly, one must search out in his make-up the essential puritan, and one must manifest it in one's sending."

He depressed the key. I read the Morse as he sent. Carl Pirow as such was no more. This was The Man with the Immaculate Hand, and these were the hands of a superb, corrupt artist.

" Mikklesen to Thorshammer, via Tristan meteorological station. Upton and catchers up-anchoring."

The old thrill of the chase welled up inside me, despite my forebodings.

" The course, Herr Kapitan! The course! I must not break or they will guess!"

Deception course. The lay-out of Tristan da Cunha and the anchorage rose to my mind's eye. Thorshammer was approaching from the south-west. I must blanket her radar behind the cliffs which towered along the line of Hottentot Gulch at the back of the settlement. Blanket her to give my fleet a flying start, and then double back. I would keep the catchers with the factory ship inside the kelp line round by Jew's Point and Blacksand Beach-that would put the island and its peak between Thorshammer and us until I could run the factory ship straight at him in the storm. I would break out from the southern tip of the island just as he started to come by Anchorstock Point on the other side towards the roadstead – he'd never think of using his radar to scan the south when he believed his quarry to the north and east. In this weather, I could slip past him within half a mile.

" Three hundred degrees," I said.

Pirow tapped out the figures. " You and I would have made a great team, Herr Kapitan."

" Finish that the way Mikklesen might," I added.

" Am awaiting your further orders. Anchored in nine fathoms off Julia Reef. Julia Point bearing 174 degrees." Upton was visibly excited. " Walter must know, but not the others," he said.

" They're risking their necks, just the same as Walter…" I began.

" They won't, if they know there's a warship only twenty miles away. I need those skippers. They'll simply evaporate if they hear about Thorshammer."

All my doubts came rushing in. Upton's concealment of the danger underlined the importance of his mission.

" Very well," I said slowly. " But they won't be very thrilled at up-anchoring in a blow like this."

" Thrilled or not thrilled, they'll do just what I tell them. Any special briefing for them, Bruce?"

" I'll leave the explaining to you-as much as you care to explain," I said. " I want them to keep in my lee, about a quarter of a mile apart on the port quarter of the Antarctica. We'll sneak past Thorshammer not very far from where Helen rescued Sailhardy and me. If I know anything about the radar scanner of the Thorshammer class, he won't want 62 to swing it more than is necessary in this wind. There must be no sudden opening up of the catchers' engines. They'll give a sudden spurt of flame in the darkness if they do. The convoy will work up speed gradually-nine knots at first, then eleven for twenty minutes, and then up to the maximum we can make into the gale."

Pirow's receiver started to chatter.

" Thorshammer to Mikklesen. Keep me informed. Heavy weather makes interception difficult. Will use searchlights and starshells. Keep clear of Upton's fleet."

" Will he, hell," I growled. Maybe the Southern Ocean brings out the essential man, the eternal hunter; for all the ennui, the frustration, of the long intervening years of study and research, fell away. I had a ship under me; I was at sea on a night as wild as the Creation. Upton must have managed the skippers, and from the bridge I saw the half-drunken, truculent men make their way by dinghy to their ships, and in less than half the time it would take Thorshammer to intercept us, my small fleet was at sea.

The gale hit us with a vicious left hook as we swung clear of Stonyhill Point, the southern extremity of the island, and took the full force of the storm after the shelter of Tristan's lee. The Kent clearview screen in front of the big bridge telegraph seemed to check for a moment in its quick, orbit. The only light was the main engine revolution indicator – out of sight of whatever searching eyes there might be in Thorshammer. The squadron was blacked out on my orders to the mystification of the skippers. I was not used to such luxury on a ship's bridge. The nine large windows exposed one to the eyes of the night, and every time the fancy clock which struck the time by ship's bells gave its melodious chime, I jumped. I went over to the telegraph on the port wing of the bridge and rang for more revolutions: the Ray's patent revolution indicator quickened its tempo.

W e m a d e f o r T h o r s h a m m e r. I s p o k e t o t h e l o o k o u t through the telephone by the starboard doorway. " See anything, lookout?"

The coarse voice came back. " Nothing, sir. Niks. Niks at all."

I double-checked on the bridge to see that everything was in order. " I'm glad I'm not on a destroyer's bridge to-night," I said to Upton. " Raw steel; raw sub-zero."

" What if Thorshammer spots us?" asked Upton.

" She won't," I replied.

" No," said Pirow, who glanced at his sleeked hair in the reflection of the small light. " She won't. Not with Captain Wetherby in command."

The bridge phone rang. " Lookout, sir. Aurora coming in very close."

" Tell her to sheer off," I told Pirow. " Make quite sure the signalling lamp doesn't point Thorsharnmer's way." He smiled thinly at my precaution, superfluous to someone like himself. Antarctica yawed and trembled under a violent squall. Sailhardy, whom I had ordered to the small brass wheel, held her beautifully. The Chernikeef log chuckled to itself. We waited, silent, tense.

They say the eyes see best ten degrees off centre. Mine caught -the tell-tail flicker of light away to starboard. It wasn't a ship.

Sailhardy spun the wheel. It seemed ages before Antarctica started to come round.

" Get my night glasses from the cabin-quick!" I told the Norwegian quartermaster whose place Sailhardy had taken. Upton handed me the bridge binoculars. I took one look at the name. " Standard British glasses are useless at night," I said. " I wonder how many ships were sunk during the war through not seeing a raider because of poor glasses." The man returned and handed me my own.

Pirow smiled at Upton. " Raider's glasses! Zeiss. Sevenfold magnification. They took months to perfect a single pair of binoculars for one of our raider captains. The Herr Kapitan Wetherby has all the answers."

The night drew in under their power, but I could not trace the momentary light which had alerted me. I opened one of the bridge windows. " We are in raiders' waters," I said. " Meteor used to rendezvous with Neptune off Tristan. U-boats, too. I almost surprised one. His oil hoses were still in the water." Gale-impelled rain deluged through the opening.

" Ice!" said Sailhardy. " Ice! I smell it. Ice, Bruce, very close."

" I smell it, too," said Helen. I had not heard her come to the bridge.

The gale held an indefinable smell. There is nothing like it anywhere else: not in Arctic ice, even. In the Southern Ocean the smell of it passes into men's clothing; the lookout in the swaying barrel on a catcher's mast knows that faintly wet, indescribable smell as his deadliest enemy and the companion of his labours. 64

We did not have to wait. The night was torn by a splendour of white light. The incandescent burst was man-made. Thorshammer had also seen what I had glimpsed. She had promised to use starshells.

The great iceberg was in two dimensions. It must have been two or three miles long and a thousand feet high. From Antarctica's bridge it was strange and beautiful under the slowly-descending parachute of the starshell. Towards its left-hand extremity, as if superimposed forward of the main body of the tabular berg, was a gigantic anvil soaring nearly its entire height; it seemed almost disembodied from the rest. Disembodied in colour, too: anchored for half a mile in a solid platform over which the sea spouted, it was deep green; where the blade of the anvil flared it was yellow, almost amber at the summit. The island of ice embayed itself near the right-hand cliff and I could see in the ephemeral light a tiny lake of blue water, dominated by fluted, grooved cliffs on either side. The weather face of the stupendous berg was hard and clear; the lee was blurred by a tumble of disintegrating spicules of ice, feathering their way on the gale.

" My God!" exclaimed Upton. Then he remembered Thorshammer. "She'll see us! Turn away! Turn away!"

" No," I retorted. " She's on the other side of the berg. It will block out anything this side."

" She can't miss us with her radar," Upton said.

Pirow disagreed. " That berg is breeding enough radar angels to fox anyone."

" Radar angels?" he asked.

" The ice, especially when it is disintegrating, produces all sorts of unaccountable echoes on a radar," he said. " We call them angels."

The starshell was doused. Darkness clamped down.

Helen was still next to me. " It is the sort of thing one remembers all one's life. I didn't know icebergs came so far north."

" It was probably ten times that size off Cape Horn," I said.

From the starboard wing of the bridge I stared astern. Of Thorshammer there was no sign, not even a funnel glow by which to pick her up in the blackness. I came back and shut the window.

" Signal the catchers with the Aldis," I told Pirow. " Steer. .." I checked in my mind-" steer one hundred degrees. 65

Eight knots." Helen was shivering. Sailhardy spun the wheel. My order had told him everything.

" Steady as she goes."

" Aye, aye, sir."

Antarctica plunged southwards.

" One hundred degrees," said Helen. " Destination? I looked deep into her eyes.

" Bouvet Island."