A Grue of Ice

9. Metal of the Heavens

Next morning Antarctica presented a sorry sight. All night the crew, under my orders and Sailhardy's unflagging direction, had brought up on deck every available case of food, every blanket, every item of warm clothing. I had got the emergency power plant working, since the main supply from the engine-room had disappeared in the explosion. Now the deck was stacked with tons of supplies. Over everything, as I looked down from the bridge to the maindeck shortly after dawn, lay a fine patina of ice and frost. Unshaven, sleepless, and hoarse from shouting orders, I had waited for the light in order to find a platform on the ice strong enough to bear the weight of the stores. Throughout the night the ice had tightened its anaconda grip on the dying ship. Rivet by rivet, plate by plate, the life was being strangled out of her. Between decks, her dying noises seemed more than inanimate-a line of rivets would tremble first, then bulge, and then tear with a sub-human sound as the inch-thick plating buckled and burst.

In search of the ice-platform, Sailhardy and I had swung ourselves down over the ship's side at first light on to the ice. We had found it within a hundred yards of the ship. We had hammered in long ice-poles with scarlet flags to delimit the safe area; to the left and right of the area, where the ice remained precarious, we had placed a double row of smaller poles carrying orange flags. The platform was slightly longer than wide, and the sun, half obscured by flying cloud, painted it sable, mink and russet; even Sailhardy's faded, weathered anorak and balaclava were transformed to soft champagne by the diffused light. It was typical of Sailhardy that he had planted a Norse flag at half-mast in the centre of the ice-platform to honour the death of the ship.

Antarctica lay half over on her starboard side where the water, long since turned to solid ice, had poured through he hole in her side. The port wing of the bridge, connected to the enclosed section by an open lattice covered with a canvas dodger, leaned skywards away from the ice platform. The bright orange of the helicopter stood out on the ship's flensing platform. Helen was to fly it off to safety on the ice as soon it was light enough. A broken davit hung like a Narwhal's tusk, impotent. On the port, or sun's side, Antarctica's side was bronze-gold; to starboard, or the engine-room side, it was blue-black in the ship's own shadow; neither shadow nor ice could mask the seared plates and mangled corpse.

Making our way back to the ship, we had marked-again by means of flags-a safe path across the ice from the platform to Antarctica. It was hopeless, Sailhardy and I had agreed during the night, to try and remain aboard. Apart from the noise of plates and steel beams rending, everything had begun to distort at a crazy angle between decks, making doors and bulkheads death-traps, and I feared that before long the icevice would exert its pressure fore and aft as well. Already there was an ominous bulge on the maindeck below the bridge.

Throughout the previous night, Helen had remained on the bridge with me. At intervals she had brought me cups of boiling cocoa. She had talked little, and before the predawn cloud had begun to obscure the sky, the hard stars were blue points in her eyes. Following the explosion, I had brought Upton, Walter and Bjerko on the bridge, but after a time, when I saw there was no immediate danger, I had Sailhardy lock them up again. Upton had been morose, unspeaking, completely withdrawn. Apart from the trouble of guarding the men, I was glad to get rid of his sullen ill-temper. He and Helen had not spoken to each other. The disaster had had exactly the opposite effect on Pirow's temperament. He was tireless and brilliantly efficient, and during the long hours he had sat glued to his radio I had had an insight into his perverted genius. It seemed to make no difference to him that I had chained him up; action at his beloved instruments stimulated and engrossed him as he relayed to me reports on the catchers, their position on the troublesome radar and Thorshammer's signals.

The night signals were, however, of little significance after the one Pirow had passed on to me immediately after the explosion. Thorshammer had ordered Reidar Bull, Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll to seize me, Upton, Pirow and Walter. The skippers, said the message, were to rendezvous with the destroyer at Bouvet Island and hand us over.

There was nothing we could do but await their coming. We had no escape. I had told only Helen and Sailhardy what Thorshammer intended to do. What I was at a loss to understand, however, was why Thorshammer had not come 126 herself. Why order the catcher captains to arrest us? Where was Thorshammer now? What was she about that was more important? From Pirow I could get no reply. He had blamed sunspot interference on the radio, and fragments which he passed on to me were too garbled to be comprehensible.

Sailhardy, Helen and I stood on the bridge as the first burdened men started to climb down a hastily-rigged gangplank and scrambling-net, following the path of the marker flags to the platform. The wind had not risen nearly as much as I had expected, but it was enough to carry a series of fine snow-flurries and reduce visibility intermittently to a few hundred yards. I did not know where the catchers were. Nor had I any idea of the extent of the icefield. Pirow had been trying for hours to try and pin-point the catchers.

Impatiently I picked up the phone to Pirow. " Any radar contacts yet? Where the hell are those ships, Pirow? If any man can find them, you can, either by radio or radar." His tone had never varied, and it showed no traces of his shift of nearly fifteen hours. " No contacts, Herr Kapitan." A slight note of irony crept into the level voice. "I appreciate your compliment."

I wondered again how much of Kohler's unequalled success had been due to the misdirected genius at the other end of my line. We had respected Kohler, the humane if deadly hunter, but we had feared the implacable Man with the Immaculate Hand.

" Keep trying," I said. " Report the slightest sign of them to me."

" Aye, aye, Herr Kapitan."

Helen said quickly: " Let me go and look for them in the helicopter, Bruce! That would give you something definite to go on, once you knew what they were doing." I glanced at the snow-filled sky. " The only distance you are going to fly that machine is from here to the platform. By this afternoon it will be a full gale. If Thorshammer wants us, let her or the catcher boys come and get us. You're staying right here!"

" Let me do something!" she exclaimed. " Shall I fly off now?-to the platform. It is quite light enough."

" Yes," I agreed reluctantly. " For heaven's sake be careful, though. I've ordered the men to have some full fuel drums there ready to lash the machine to. Otherwise it might blow away later."

She smiled. " I've been trained for just this, you know."

" Not in the Southern Ocean," I replied.

" Bruce," she went on, " when-and if-the skippers come, what are you going to do about my father? Are you simply going to hand him over

…?"

I shrugged. " Our first problem is simply to survive. You forget, I'm in the same boat. Thorshammer wants me as much as your father and Walter. It's only my word against theirs-I'm supposed to have shot down the seaplane."

" Bruce!" broke in Sailhardy. " Perhaps this sounds a little wild, but it won't be difficult. Let us take the whaleboat, you and I. We can carry her across the ice to the sea. She's light. There are plenty of supplies. We can make Bouvet, you and I. She'll stand up to any weather."

I looked deep into Helen's strange eyes. Putting aside the fact that such an escape would brand me guilty anyway, she knew and I knew that to leave the other now was no longer possible.

I laughed it off. " You're trying to be another Shackleton or Bligh, Sailhardy. We belong in less heroic times."

" Shackleton survived seven hundred and fifty miles in and ordinary open ship's boat…" he began, " and Bouvet is less than one hundred…"

I cut him short more harshly than I intended. " You are under my orders, Sailhardy. We stay. The same goes for you, Helen. Now fly off that machine. Watch yourself." She smiled. " Aye, aye, Herr Kapitan," she mocked. I was so intent on making sure Helen took off safely from the canted deck that I did not notice the three figures emerge from a snow-flurry and make their way to the gangplank. The roar of the helicopter's rotors was over my head after a perfect take-off before I saw the crew of the Antarctica start to fall back round the gangplank.

Reidar Bull, Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll strode through the men. There was no mistaking their purposefulness, or the grim, bitter anger in their snow-streaked faces. Nor was there any mistaking the purpose of the Schmeisser machinepistol Reidar Bull held. A man was coming down the gangplank shouldering a sack, and Reidar Bull thrust him roughly to one side with an oath. Reidar Bull was big, and not unlike Walter, but now it was his hand which I noticed for the first t i m e . F r o m h i s l e f t h a n d, g r i p p i n g t h e b a r r e l o f t h e Schmeisser, three fingers were gone-at some time a faulty harpoon cable must have ripped them off. Hanssen, tall and blond, followed Reidar Bull up the side, and Lars Brunvoll, 128 black bearded, brought up the rear. The men unloading gaped. For the moment they forgot that every gallon of fuel and every tin of food they humped over the side might save a life later on.

The three skippers strode quickly up the bridge ladder to where I was. Heidar Bull shoved over the safety catch when he saw me. I had forgotten the Luger and long knife stuck in my duffel-coat belt.

Reidar Bull pointed the wicked-looking weapon at me. " Hanssen! Get those things off him! You, Brunvoll, watch the islander." He came closer to me. " Where are the others?"

I shrugged. " In irons. I'm trying to salvage what is left of this ship. I would have saved the ship herself if you three lilylivered bastards had obeyed me and brought your catchers in to keep the lead open."

Reidar Bull's savage mood seemed to be inflamed by my words. " Listen, Captain! You and this whole crooked bunch are under arrest. See? I'm taking you…"

" I know," I said shortly. " You're taking me and the others to a rendezvous at Bouvet and handing us over to Thorshammer. I heard it over the radio."

Lars Brunvoll could not keep back his anger. " The killer whale I have seen go and tear out a Blue Whale's tongue just for the sport. You are not a killer whale, but by God! it made me wonder what you are when I saw you shoot down the seaplane!"

Reidar Bull waved the Schmeisser in my face when I opened my mouth to tell them about the Spandau-Hotchkiss. Hanssen also swore threateningly. " Here in the Antarctic men die hard," he said. " However desperate you are yourself, you never call in help, if it will endanger their lives. That is the code. You know it, Captain. Your Captain Scott died like that, and the world still remembers. You, however, deliberately took life."

" Norwegians' lives," added Reidar Bull. " Young Norwegians, who did not have your killer ways, Captain. I saw them. They flew right into your bullets. Your shooting was good-too good. Now you and your friends will pay for it.

" he glanced down at his shattered hand, as if something in his past were bringing alive again the seaplane crew's agony when the bullets went home.

" I have put these friends of mine, as you call them, in irons because they intended to kill me," I said. " Not only G.I. myself, but Sailhardy here. Look at his face, if you don't believe me."

I told them briefly about Norris' chart, Thompson Island, and what I had overheard on the Tannoy.

Reidar Bull replied with a four-letter word. The other two laughed harshly.

" I don't give a bloody damn for your fine stories-you can tell them all to Thorshammer," Reidar Bull said. " My job is to take you back to the destroyer, and I shall. We've got the catchers moored against the ice-edge about five miles from here. It will mean a slog across the ice, and I would not advise you to try any tricks. Now get down there!" He jerked the Schmeisser's muzzle towards the ice-platform. " Hanssen! Yours and Lars go and fetch the others there too. And get these gaping clots away-" indicating the crew-" I want a little talk with all the prisoners before we set off." Reidar Bull, Sailhardy and I waited fully ten minutes on the flag-marked platform for the others. When the three of us arrived, Helen swung herself slowly down from the helicopter cockpit. She said nothing. Our eyes met. In her sealeopard coat, she seemed to merge with the surroundings. The curtain of snow saved us the embarrassment of being stared at by Antarctica's crew.

Upton led, followed by Walter, Bjerko and Pirow, with Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll bringing up the rear. When Upton spotted Reidar Bull, he pushed back the hood of his bright blue weatherproof jacket, the flap of which was brilliant sky-blue and hung down on his chest like the bib under a locust's chin, and hurried towards him, smiling.

" Ah, Reidar Bull!" he exclaimed. " I am glad to see you! Yes, keep that man and the islander guarded. I knew you would come and rescue me. Now get these damn manacles off me and we'll make a plan."

Reidar Bull looked nonplussed. Hanssen and Brunvoll had obviously not told him about Thorshammer. The Norwegian's face became more sullen and angry. " You are all under arrest-no, not you, Bjerko, but you must make no attempt to help these men, do you understand?"

Upton dropped his manacled wrists slowly. His voice was full of menace. " By whose orders, Reidar Bull?" " Thorshammer's," he replied.

Upton rounded on the three skippers. " None of you has the guts of a wingless Bouvet fly," he said. " As soon as the going became a little tough, you ran off and blabbed everything to Thorshammer! Bah! You could have been rich men if you'd gone after the Blue Whales!"

Brunvoll broke in. " The hell with you and your Blue Whales! We've all had a bellyful of you, Sir Frederick. We don't know yet what you're up to, but it has ceased to include us, see? Your daughter sighted a big school of Blue Whales, but then we left them and went off at high speed into the worst ice I've ever seen. Blast your Blue Whales, and your blue ice also! All we're likely to get by staying with you is a blue arse as well."

Hanssen had his say, too. " In all our experiences, none of us has ever seen ice like this. Your fine ship's finished, and it serves you damn-well right."

Upton looked contemptuously at the blond Viking. " You're so scared, you're wearing your lucky charm."

The spur of a Wandering Albatross, mounted in silver at the base, was pinned in Hanssen's lapel. He started to finger it sheepishly, but Reidar Bull went on in a hard voice. " When we started out from Tristan, we knew we would take some risks. We knew we would come inside Norwegian territorial waters technically. That is nothing. A chance to make a little money, and a little risk on the side-that is fair enough. But the seaplane-we say Captain Wetherby, Walter, Pirow and you are bloody murderers. You're all in this together. We are turning you all in."

Upton swung on his toes. He tried his comradely charm. " Sailhardy had no part in the shooting. He was unconscious in his cabin. Let him go!"

Sailhardy's voice had an edge like the wind. " True, I was unconscious. I was unconscious because what Captain

Wetherby told you is true-they knocked me out."

Reidar Bull waved the Schmeisser. " You can go free, Sailhardy, but be careful. That is all I say. Try and help your captain and see what happens."

" If he goes, I go," retorted the islander. " If you march him to the catchers, I march too."

" Listen," I said roughly, " I'm not taking the blame for what Walter did. I didn't shoot down the seaplane. Ask the Aurora's helmsman."

" We did," said Brunvoll. "He saw you and Walter go up to the gun. He heard it fired."

" It is a weapon for two men, not one," Hanssen filled in. " Petersen the helmsman heard both the Spandau and the Hotchkiss. Two men fired that gun."

" Walter…" I started to say.

Neither Hanssen nor Brunvoll nor I are here to pass judgment," said Reidar Bull. " We are under orders-orders from a warship of my country, and we shall carry them out." Walter flicked a quick glance at Upton. " It is true I went up to the gun platform with Captain Wetherby," he said. " We crossed together from the factory ship to Aurora. It was Captain Wetherby's idea to shoot the seaplane down if it shadowed the fleet. At that time, I too agreed, but my heart failed me when I saw those poor boys come into the s i g h t s. I t o o a m a N o r w e g i a n. A m I t o k i l l m y o w n countrymen just because this English captain says so? Just for the sake of a few Blue Whales? I pull the gun harness to one side-you saw how the first burst of tracers went wide. But he is good on a gun, this captain. He is also strong. He pulls the gun round and gets in a burst with the quick-firer, the Hotchkiss. Then he tries to kill me with the same gun. He is kill-crazy. I have to shoot him with the Luger to stop this madness."

" Walter, you bloody lying bastard!" I snapped. "Reidar Bull, Brunvoll, Hanssen! These men are evil, and they are after something which is evil too. I have come to Bouvet to see what The Albatross' Foot is all about. I have no other interest."

" So," said Reidar Bull, " you are so keen on this current that you shoot down a seaplane? We are simple men, Captain Wetherby, but not as simple as that."

" It was I who pulled Walter off the gun," I protested. Their faces were hard with disbelief. "It was I who turned aside the first burst."

Reidar Bull waved aside what I was saying. " You can tell all this to Thorshammer. We are not very good men, Captain, and not very honest men, but we have seen two of our own kind killed coldly and ruthlessly. That is all we know. That is what made us signal Thorshammer." He turned to Pirow. " Get up there in the helicopter and signal Thorshammer. No tricks." He tossed the Luger across to Brunvoll. " Go with him, Lars, and see to it. Pirow, tell Thorshammer, I, Reidar Bull, have arrested the men who shot down the seaplane and will rendezvous with her at Bouvet, as arranged before." When Pirow had come across the ice to the platform, he had looked utterly worn out. Now his fatigue seemed to drop like a cloak. He shot a glance at Upton and shrugged slightly. He turned to me, showing off. " The Herr Kapitan reads Morse," he smiled. " Perhaps he will come to the door of the cockpit and assure you that I am sending the right message."

Reidar Bull looked puzzled, but agreed. I walked with Brunvoll and The Man with the Immaculate Hand to the helicopter. Helen stood back, white-faced, silent. There was a pause while Pirow, encumbered still with the manacles, went to the machine's radio.

The radio key started to clatter as he called up the destroyer.

" Reidar Bull, skipper catcher Crozet, to Thorshammer. I have under arrest the men who shot down and killed your seaplane crew. I will rendezvous with you at Bouvet as arranged."

Pirow's sending was fluent, proficient, staccato. He wasn't trying to bluff Thorshammer that he was anyone else. Why had he agreed so readily to send Bull's damning message? He was in the business as deep as Upton or myself.

Then came Thorshammer's reply.

" Thorshammer to Reidar Bull, catcher Crozet. Rendezvous at Bouvet as ordered. Part of your message not understood. Thorshammer's seaplane ran out of fuel. Crew safe on life- raft. Position approx 100 miles west of Bouvet. Am searching for fliers."

I could not believe my ears: the seaplane safe on the water, out of fuel, which I had seen go to its death under a hail of bullets from the Spandau-Hotchkiss! I was so astonished that I forgot Reidar Bull and his Schmeisser and jumped up the steps into the radio compartment. Brunvoll stood, Luger in hand, frowning, unaware of what was passing over the air.

" The seaplane!" I said incredulously to both Pirow and Brunvoll. " How can the seaplane be signalling?"

" What are you saying?" demanding Brunvoll. " The seaplane which I saw shot down?"

Pirow grinned at me. He flicked off the transmitting key, so that the tapping which followed was for my benefit alone. Gone was the German staccato. This was The Man with the Immaculate Hand, slipping into one of many guises. Now he had projected himself into being the seaplane crew, sending emergency signals from their life-raft. The dummy signal he tapped for me was fragmentary, a little breathless, just as it would sound from a couple of inexperienced fliers facing possible death on a life-raft in the wild seas. It all fell into place, then, why Thorshammer had not come to arrest us herself. Pirow, during his long period in the factory ship's radio office, must have sent off a series of faked messages purporting to come from the seaplane crew on their life-raft. He was clever enough not to have given Thorshammer time enough to get a bearing-the only man who could get a bearing on a dozen letters was Pirow himself. He must have thought up his ingenious plan while he listened to the catchers signalling Thorshammer. The destroyer was at present on her way to an imaginary position given by Pirow to pick up a seaplane crew which no longer existed. He was giving Upton and himself a breathing-space. He was also proving that Walter had committed no crime, for Thorshammer's radio log would show that the seaplane had been signalling long after she had, in fact, been shot down; moreover, Thorshammer had already indicated that there had been no signal from the plane to show she had been shot down, but that instead she had got lost, run out of fuel, come down on the water, and the two-man crew had taken to the life-raft. I saw the mettle of The Man with the Immaculate Hand. Thorshammer would then be arresting us" for an infringement of Norwegian territorial waters and hunting the Blue Whale.

" Come!" I said to Brunvoll. " I want you to hear this, too." I strode to the cockpit door. The circle of faces on the ice looked up at me. Helen's was troubled, anxious. " Reidar Bull!" I called. " Thorshammer has just signalled back. She says her seaplane crew is safe on the water. They were never shot down. They ran out of fuel."

" God's truth! What is this?" he roared. " Safe on the water! Am I drunk or mad?"

Brunvoll gripped my arm with a fist of iron. " I saw every one of us saw-the seaplane fall in the water, shot to ribbons by you and Walter."

" By Walter," I said steadily. I told them what I believed Pirow had done. As I did so, I saw a look of savage triumph and determination cross Upton's pewter-hued face, framed by the blue hood. Helen caught my glance and looked at her father. She half started forward, and again looked up at me. She had seen and I had seen. I was glad of the manacles on Upton's wrists, supplemented by the Schmeisser guarding him. Hansen shook his head, like a boxer clearing his mind after a blow. " I see a plane fly into a gun. I see the gun fire. I see the plane crash. Now I am told it is not so."

" The three of you have been taken for the biggest ride of your careers," I said. I told them who Pirow was. Reidar Bull's face went black. " Thorshammer won't listen to you now, after Pirow's signals. Heaven knows how long you'll have to hang around at Bouvet while she searches for that seaplane crew of hers."

Upton's voice was tense. " Tell them too, Wetherby, that there is no extradition for murder in the Antarctic. It's all in the Antarctic Treaty, which your bloody country signed, Reidar Bull. There is no treaty obligation to hand over anyone."

Reidar Bull clicked the Schmeisser as if to assure himself that it, at least, was real. " I don't know what extradition means," he replied. " I don't know what anything means any more, with bastards like you around me. All I know is that we march-now! You can take any small personal things." He gestured with the Schmeisser at Upton. " You first. What do you want?"

" Look in my desk drawer," he said. " There is an old chart. Bring it. There is a little leather bag next to it. There's a first-aid kit with a hypodermic, too. And my guarana in the liquor cabinet. That is all I want."

" You, Captain?" asked Reidar Bull.

" My sextant," I replied. " That is all." It was the sextant with which I had plotted Thompson Island.

Sailhardy came forward, his thumb flicking in its strange way against his palm. " I march because Captain Wetherby marches, Reidar Bull. You are sailors, and you each have your ship. I also have a ship. It is everything I have in the world. To a Tristan islander, it is worth more than his life, almost. I will march, but I will carry my boat."

For the first time that morning Reidar Bull's face relaxed a little. " By everything that's holy! This islander! I could almost wish he was my friend and not the Captain's!" He looked at the other two skippers. They were men who knew what it was to have one's own ship under one. There was almost no need to get their approval. " You can load it aboard my own ship," Reidar Bull went on, brusquely, as if afraid to show sentiment. " Wait! I know! Captain Wetherby can help you carry the whale-boat. It will keep him out mischief on the march." The others grinned.

" I have a small case ready," said Helen. " I packed it ready to leave last night. It is on the bridge."

In a moment, Reidar Bull's face reverted to its grimness.

" You'll stay right here, miss. Captain Bjerko will remain behind and see to the unloading of the ship. When we reach the ice-edge, I will signal on the W/T and you will fly the helicopter to the catchers. It may be very useful to us yet. You'll land on the ice by the catchers, and we'll manhandle it aboard my ship."

Helen started to protest, but he cut her short. " Hanssen!

Go and get the things they have asked for. Be quick! I want to go before the weather gets worse." He spoke to Bjerko. " We'll come back with the catchers after we have met Thorshammer at Bouvet. She ordered all three of us to come, and Aurora makes four. There'll be enough room aboard to take off Antarctica's crew. We'll be away only a couple of days. The ice won't break up before then. You'll be safe enough."

Bjerko looked dubiously at the factory ship, whose outline we could see, despite the snow flurries. " I have never seen ice like this. Come back soon. I don't like it."

Nor did I. Behind the doomed ship, where the raft of ice had broken off, it had carved the likeness of a gigantic sphinx head with defined lips and a brooding forehead. Even the neck was there, in the shape of a series of striated cliffs; almost meeting, 150 feet from the surface, was a double cantileverlike wing which was held at its base by three fluted columns, each one fifty feet in diameter.

I started to go over to Helen, but Reidar Bull waved me back. Upton infected us all with his tension. He appeared to be expecting something. Brunvoll seemed grateful to have something to do when Reidar Bull sent him back to guard

Pirow. As Hanssen emerged from the path on his return from the ship, Upton went forward quickly and took the map from him.

It was Norris' chart of Thompson Island.

Upton knelt down and spread it open on the ice. "Come here, Reidar Bull," he said authoritatively. We all gathered round. Upton spoke quickly, and there was a tic at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His fingers were shaky as he pointed to the spidery track of the old Sprightly, and Norris' position of Thompson Island. We were drawn inside the circle of his compelling personality.

" Have you ever heard of Thompson Island?" he demanded. Reidar Bull glanced at the old map. He shrugged. " Yes. I have also heard of the Aurora Islands, down in the Scotia Sea. Men have searched for a hundred-maybe two hundred – years for them. These islands exist-how do you say?-in the mind only."

The faint pink flush suffused Upton's mask. I could see he was taking a big grip on himself. The twitch at the corner of his mouth got worse.

Hanssen didn't even bother to look. " I have seen a hundred things in the Southern Ocean which could have been islands-rocks streaked with guano, icebergs covered with mud. It is not surprising that we all dream a little in these goddamned waters. Many men have dreamed, but only a few islands have been found. It is the same with Thompson Island."

" Get up!" ordered Reidar Bull. " March!" Upton squatted on his haunches still. He seemed to be losing control of his hands, they were shaking so. The manacles rattled faintly.

" Father," said Helen in an agonised voice. "Come. Thompson Island can wait."

His eyes were fever-bright. " It's waited a century and more for me," he said thickly. "Reidar Bull! Hanssen!

Thompson Island exists! Here is its position. Captain Wetherby has seen it! Seen it, do you hear? Thompson Island!" His voice rose. " Listen!" He turned the old chart over and quoted from Norris' own personal log, which with its image of blue ice was written so indelibly into my mind. " Thompson Island is nothing but perpendicular rocks and it looks like a complete cinder, with immense veins of lava which had the appearance of black glass, but much of it is streaked with white veins.' "

Reidar Bull's harsh laugh sounded like. floes grinding together. " Rubbish! Get up!"

Upton crouched on the ice like a wounded animal facing its hunters. His face was contorted. Helen had drawn back in horror at his break-up. He was keeping his last card-his real reason for wanting to find Thompson Island-in reserve still. Walter licked his lips. Thompson Island had bitten into Upton's mind and eroded it in a way which was dreadful to observe; I waited in awe at what was to follow.

" I want Thompson Island," he said, so softly that I had to crane to hear him. He looked at the three skippers. " I'll double my original offer to you if you will take me to Thompson Island." None of them replied. Upton swung round to me. " Bruce!" he said. " Bruce, you know where is is, and so do I now-take me there!"

Looking down on the mouthing figure on the ice and remembering what had happened to men in the past who had also wanted Thompson Island, I resolved to myself that no one would ever wring from me the secret of Thompson Island's whereabouts.

Upton fumbled with his pathetic little squash leather bag. " Oh God!" burst out Helen. " Bruce…"

He got it open and emptied the contents into his hand. Still crouching, he rolled the five objects across the old chart, like throwing dice.

They looked like bull's-eyes.

Upton began almost to intone. " Heavenly blue, they call it. The same colour as this ice. It's really silvery white, but it takes its name from the two heavenly blue lines in its spectrum."

Reidar Bull said something in a low voice in Norwegian to the other two skippers.

" You'll come with me now, won't you, Reidar Bull," he said, looking up expectantly, " and you, Lars Brunvoll, and you, Hanssen? The other money was chickenfeed next to this."

" What are you talking about?" demanded Reidar Bull roughly.

" You'll come then, Reidar Bull?" he went on. " You'll be the richest man in Norway."

" From that?" sneered Bull, indicating the bull's-eyes. The tic tugged at the corner of Upton's mouth and eyes as if, even now, he were reluctant to reveal his secret.

" Yes," he said. " That is caesium. It is the rarest metal in the world. It is worth two hundred pounds a pound." Caesium! The spaceage metal I

I had considered all along that it was not geographical curiosity that had driven Upton to try and find Thompson Island. Caesium had been much in the forefront when I had returned to Cambridge after the war-it is the most vital part of the fuel for, space ships and space rockets. Looking down at the dicelike objects, my mind ran back to one of the young scientists at the Cavendish Laboratories there who had become a bore and a butt over our after-dinner glass of port because of his endless conversations on the wonders of caesium: Upton was right when he said Blue Whales were nothing by comparison with it. Caesium, I had been told over the university port, was known to occur in minute quantities in only three places-a small place in Northern

Sweden, in South-West Africa, and in Kazakhstan, in the Soviet Union. Its name comes from the bright blue lines in its spectrum-Upton was probably right when he said they were heavenly blue. I wished now I could remembered more of what the Cambridge bore had had to say about it. Vaguely I recalled that it had the lowest boiling point of any metal in the alkali group, and was priceless, not only because of its scarcity, but because of the ease with which it could be made to form electrically-charged gas for fuel for space ships. It was, it seemed from what I could remember, the answer to the scientist's prayer for a space fuel-except that there was practically none of it to be had. There was also something about its extremely high ionization potential which made it possible to transmute the atomic heat of caesium directly into electric power without having to use an intermediate stage of steam boilers or turbines in the space ships.

I looked at Upton and I knew the answer even before I asked him. " Your face… caesium?"

Some of the wild light went from his eyes. " You know caesium? Bruce, you know it? Yes," he said, touching his face. " This is the price of my knowledge of it. I told you, the metal particles pass into the skin. I know more about caesium than any man living. I worked on it-more than twenty years ago now-at a little place called Ronnskar, in Sweden, on the Gulf of Bothnia-it's quite close to the port of Skelleftea ."

I cut him short. I still couldn't see how he linked Thompson with his wonder metal. " How do you know it exists on Thompson Island? Where did those samples come from?"

" Norris took a hammer," he said. " You'll see from the log how he sent a ship's boat ashore, and they had to make a sudden dash back to the ship because of the weather. Three of those pieces of rock are Norris'. The other two are Pirow's. You see, Kohler used it as a base for Meteor. Pirow has been there, but he doesn't know where it is. Only roughly somewhere near Bouvet. Kohler never let on." The words came tumbling out in a flood.

Helen said gently, " Father, why did you go about it this way? Underhand, murder-all the rest of it?"

It only needed a hair-trigger to touch Upton off. " Thompson Island is mine!" he shouted. " I won't have any bloody governmental committees telling me where and what I should explore. That shameful Antarctic Treaty…"

Reidar Bull, Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll seemed to be at a loss. All this about caesium was going over their heads.

I asked another question to try and keep Upton on an even keel.

" Where did you get Norris' samples from?" He laughed, a strange, brittle laugh. " From the Wetherbys You see, Bruce, I bought out Wetherbys-under an assumed name, of Stewart and Co. You weren't to know-don't forget I already suspected you were the only man to have seen Thompson Island. Pirow came later when I started scratching in the German Naval Archives. Those rocks there are veined with caesium-pollucite, they call the mineral salt. Do you see what Norris' log and description of whole cliffs seamed with • caesium mean to me?"

" Enough to murder a couple of innocent men?" His laugh jarred. " Dear God, man, can't you see that nations will fight atomic wars over Thompson Island's caesium? Millions may die, not only two. They were unimportant beside this!"

I looked again at the old chart, at the five dicelike pieces of caesium rock, and at the wild eyes of the whaling tycoon. Men had suffered and died in the past to find Thompson, and now in the present the island had come back with a lure more deadly, and a threat more lethal, than anything that had gone before. As my eyes lifted they met Helen's. There was no need to formulate the, resolution in my mind never to reveal Thompson Island's whereabouts.

I turned to Reidar Bull. " The man is mad," I said harshly. " You should lock him up. Thompson Island isn't where the chart says, anyway. Remember that, Sir Frederick."

The awful pink flush suffused his face and he threw himself at me, using the manacles as a weapon. Again and again he struck at me, shouting obscenities, while Lars Brunvoll clubbed him with the butt of the Luger. It took Brunvoll and Hanssen to drag him off me.

" Judas!" he half gasped, half screamed. " You-who know-you have betrayed me! Curse all the Wetherbys, curse Bruce Wetherby…"

Helen stood back in anguish as he screamed; Pirow's face was grey. Reidar Bull's savage anger was stilled.

" Let us march," I said to Reidar Bull. " Sailhardy and will fetch the whaleboat. You can send Brunvoll along too, if you like, but there isn't anywhere for us to escape to."

Hanssen held Upton now, still mouthing threats, at me and the skippers.

When we returned, carrying the boat easily by up-ending her with the bow and stern-thwarts on our heads, the party had already formed up. There was no goodbye allowed to Helen. She stood, camouflaged in her sea-leopard coat against the snow at thirty yards, next to one of the helicopter's landingwheels. Her lips moved soundlessly to me as we moved off, Reidar Bull bringing up the rear with Schmeisser at the ready, Upton leading, with Brunvoll's Luger at his back. The whaleboat was no real burden, Sailhardy could have carried its weight alone himself, but two of us made its bulk easier to handle, especially when the wind plucked at it. The ice was hard, and we started briskly. Antarctica lay against the sick sun. The last I saw of her was when she lurched yet again, like a beaten wrestler trying to keep his shoulder off the mat.

By lunch-time, by following the markers which Reidar Bull had laid at intervals across the icefield, we came to the iceedge. The four catchers Crozet, Kerguelen, Chimay and Aurora-were moored together. Already the ice had started to trace a needlework pattern on their rigging. Unless it was cleared, they would be carrying a top-hamper which would roll them to their doom once they got outside the protection of the icefield, which damped down the great rollers of the Westerlies. Each ship had a white square on its black funnel on which was painted its name, and to the inexperienced eye all four might have been cut from the same matrix-the flared bows, the canvas-enclosed bridge, the big steam pipe running up and round the funnel, the heavy foremast with a 'crow's-nest, the long, low platform aft like a frigate's depth-charge platform. To a whalerman's eye, however, they were as individual as those of us who made up the marching party. On the march, Upton had given no more trouble. He had pulled his blue hood over his head and all we could see from behind was the hunch of his shoulders.

As we paused for a breather before making the last leg to the catchers, Pirow fell back alongside me. The greyness had not passed out of his face, and he spoke low and agitatedly, so that Reidar Bull behind could not hear.

" Herr Kapitan! " he said. " Where is the rendezvous with the destroyer-with Thorshammer?"

I was puzzled at his tone. " Why, at Bouvet," I said. " You know that already."

" Yes," he said quickly. " But where? Off the island, or where?"

" There's only one anchorage-in the south-west, at

Bollevika. That is the rendezvous."

He took my arm, as if to steady himself.

" What is it, man?" I asked, he appeared so agitated.

" The Meteor mined the approaches to the anchorage and Bollevika itself," he said.

10. Bouvet

Pirow's words released in me a wave of depression which had been mounting ever since my unspoken farewell to Helen. Along the march, the image of that lonely figure in her sealeopard coat had returned again and again. Always, however, to my mind's eye rose those strange eyes which, I was able to tell myself now, had come alive and vital-she had said it herself-through me. In seeking The Albatross' Foot, I, like Saul, had gone in search of asses and found instead a kingdom. Now the full reaction of that empty farewell set in. I knew, as I considered the prospect before me, that there would be little chance of meeting her again. Reidar Bull had made it quite clear that, although not a prisoner like ourselves, she would not be free to come and go. If she disobeyed Reidar Bull and stayed at the Antarctica, she was courting disaster; if she could locate Thorshammer, she could fly to the destroyer and tell her story-but would they believe her any more than Reidar Bull and the others did? The fact that she was Upton's own daughter made her suspect. The thought of my own future brought me despair: as far as the Royal Society was concerned, I was probably done for.

Mere suspicion of what I was supposed to have done would be enough for that august body to finish with me-and The Albatross' Foot. In the light of what had happened, it would appear as if the whole story of The Albatross' Foot had been simply a cover for dubious activities in the Southern Ocean along with Upton and his gang. What action would Thors- hammer take. when Reidar Bull handed us over, as he had every intention of doing? I could not see Pirow's deception about the seaplane crew being more than a temporary red herring. Short of Walter confessing, I could see no way out. Upton, Walter and Pirow's crime was an infringement of Norwegian waters-mine was murder, if things went the way they were going. The thought of Helen waiting for me to become conscious after I had fallen off the Spandau-Hotchkiss into the sea, and the strange, deep look in her eyes when I told her what had really happened, made my prospects more agonising. She believed me ; Sailhardy believed me; but the events which had enmeshed me in shooting down the seaplane were as complex as those which had brought me to Bouvet, doorway to Thompson Island.

Automatically I felt for my sextant case, which I had hung from my belt. Inside that sextant case lay the secret of the whereabouts of Thompson Island. It was no more than a notch on the vernier, the scale for reading the altitude of the sun and stars. It would mean nothing, in someone else's hands. I intended Thompson Island to stay unknown.

The frost crackled on my gloves as I crunched them together. The four catchers lay off the ice-edge, steam rising from their funnels like frost-smoke. Had I only known that Kohler had mined the approaches to Bouvet, I might have caught him months earlier. I had sent a damaged ship to anchor temporarily at Bouvet-and all I had heard from her again was a stifled, desperate message: " Underwater explosion

…" and then no more. A day later another merchantman had been sunk a thousand miles away and I had rushed off on a wild goose chase. I had assumed from the two widely separated sinkings that Kohler was working with a U-boat in my waters. Now I knew it was a mine. One might, I suppose, call Bollevika an anchorage, but really there's scarcely any holding ground for an anchor: Lars Christen' sen's ship, under the most favourable conditions, had had to steam backwards and forwards slowly for a whole month waiting for the shore party to return, since she was unable to obtain anchorage at Bollevika, which lies open to the gales and seas which sweep in endlessly from the south-west quarter.

Pirow must have wondered from my long silence if I d i s b e l i e v e d h i m, f o r h e w e n t o n q u i c k l y: " T h e H e r r Kapitan Kohler mined the South African coast as far as the hundred-fathom line. Meteor carried ninety-five mines. We used eighty off South Africa. Then we came to Bouvet. We used the other fifteen at Bouvet."

" We must tell the skippers right away," I said. " God!

Fifteen sea-mines in the Bollevika anchorage!"

"Yes, Herr Kapitan," he said sombrely. " And you know what the approaches will be like."

" I haven't been closer than twenty miles, but I can guess," 143

I said. When I had seen Bollevika, the icebergs made a belt round the island, broken here and there by zigzag open leads of water. Heaven help the crew of any ship mined under those conditions, I thought. What would be the consequences if it happened to be Thorshammer?

" Reidar Bull!" I called. " Come here!" The big Norwegian, suspicious and with the Schmeisser at the ready, came across to us. I outlined what Pirow had told me.

Reidar Bull's reaction took me unawares. " Christ!" he exclaimed angrily. " Must I now be frightened by some bloody fairy-story about mines which you two naval types c o n c o c t? H a n s s e n! B r u n v o l l! " T h e o t h e r s j o i n e d u s. " Listen to this. We mustn't keep the rendezvous at Bouvet because-so our German friend now tells us-his ship mined t h e a p p r o a c h e s t o B o l l e v i k a d u r i n g t h e w a r! I s a y – nonsense!"

" It is true," retorted Pirow angrily. " There are fifteen deep-sea contact mines."

Lars Brunvoll's temper had not improved with the long hike across the ice. " So the first person you run to tell is the English captain, heh? Is he in command of this party? Why must he know first, heh?"

" Because it is a scare-story they have thought up between themselves," said Reidar Bull. " I don't believe a word of it." Hanssen grinned. " We don't need to believe or disbelieve, Reidar Bull. We can prove it quite easily."

" What do you mean?" asked Bull.

" Let us send Aurora on ahead of our own ships," he said. " If Pirow's story is a lie, which I think it is, then no harm will come of it. If it is not…" he shrugged-" it is just too bad. Good riddance, I say."

Pirow was as white as the moment he had come on the factory ship's bridge and saw the blue icefield. " I was there -

I know the place is mined!" he exclaimed. " Don't be such damned fools!"

" These men are as slippery as the Great Ice Barrier," interrupted Brunvoll. " We may be damned fools, but we are not criminal maniacs," he went on. " Yes, send Aurora in with the lot of them aboard, and we'll see what happens. If she blows up, our own ships will still be safe."

" Aye," said Reidar Bull. " But I won't send Aurora's crew. They had no hand in it."

" Easy," said Hanssen. " If we sail to-night, we can be off Bouvet to-morrow morning. We'll transfer Aurora's crew 144 at the approaches. She won't need a full crew to take her in. Walter can manage the engines for a couple of miles. Captain Wetherby will find no problems in sailing a ship."

" I don't like the idea of letting Captain Wetherby have a ship," grumbled Brunvoll. " Anything can happen-a squall, a patch of fog, and-poof-when we look, the sea will be empty and Aurora will have disappeared. If anyone needs to be guarded, it is the English captain."

" We'll guard him all right," said Hanssen with a grim smile. " We'll unship that hellish gun on Aurora. I'll have it rigged forward on my harpoon platform. It'll only take a couple of hours. Kerguelen can sail maybe half a mile astern of Aurora as we approach the Bollevika anchorage. If any tricks are played, they'll get a double stream of lead the way the seaplane did."

It was no use arguing with' men in their savage mood. I turned to Pirow. " Can you remember-even vaguely how Captain Kohler mined Bollevika? Did he lay a definite pattern, taking a bearing on something ashore?* Was it a regular line? Have you any idea at what intervals Meteor dropped the mines overboard?"

Pirow shuddered. " No, but I remember how Herr Kapitan Kohler laughed after we had mined the Agulhas Bank, off

South Africa. We came close inshore towards a big lighthouse, which the fools had left burning-in wartime! We started mining from the hundred-fathom mark, and zigzagged shorewards. ' If anyone ever finds the plot of these mines, it is more than I would know,' Captain Kohler said. He did the same at Bouvet. The mines were also set to float at any depth."

I was not as concerned as Pirow. I knew that Kohler must have used the German " Y " type mine, which was fitted with a self-destroying device should it break loose. To lay his mines deep, as he must have done at Bouvet and off South Africa, he also must have used a very light mooring-wire, and the odds were that Bouvet's heavy seas had since loosened the moorings, and that the mines had destroyed themselves. My mind raced ahead: if I could get hold of Aurora… but I would want Sailhardy and his whaleboat.

I looked at the islander. " You hear what Pirow says, Sailhardy. I can't ask you to come, in the face of that. I'd like your boat, though."

Sailhardy smiled faintly. " Were they Y' type mines,

Bruce?"

" Yes," I answered. The skippers looked suspicious. Mines and mining were above their heads.

" I'd come, even if they weren't," he replied.

Reidar Bull shook his head. " I don't like a man going just because of his captain."

" There's no need to worry about me if Aurora strikes a ' mine," replied Sailhardy. " The man you should have on your conscience right now is Captain Wetherby. He did not shoot down the plane."

Brunvoll was unimpressed. "I'll follow your Kerguelen into Bollevika, Hanssen. We must all take bearings and check Aurora's course-we don't want to be mined ourselves through carelessness."

" We could send the helicopter in ahead as a spotter…" began Reidar Bull.

" Leave Miss Upton out of this," I said roughly. " You bastards are very fond, it seems, of playing around with other people's lives while you sit safe on your arses. I know what Bouvet weather can be fog, gales, high seas, damn-all visibility. Leave her out of it, I say! You couldn't spot a mine moored at depth from a helicopter anyway, and particularly in these seas."

" It is strange to see a man who can get behind a gun and kill like you have done, becoming so concerned over anyone," sneered Reidar Bull. " You shouldn't keep your soft side for women only."

I had to see Helen again. Reidar's Bull's remark brought home how curiously she had come to be allied in my own mind with the Southern Ocean. Twenty years previously, on a night as wild as the Creation, I had taken my squadron of warships past Cape Horn into the Drake Passage and its mountainous seas. La Mer-I could not think of it without hearing Trenet's voice singing the song of that name. Now the wild threnody sobbed at some inner part of me when I thought of our unspoken farewell. At the moment, Meteor's mines seemed unimportant beside my wish to see her.

Helen's face was before my mind's eye. " I couldn't give a seal's burp for your plan to save your skins and make us into a lot of guinea-pigs," I said harshly. " I'll take Aurora in. But only if you let me see Miss Upton again before we sail." I turned on Pirow. " Pull yourself together, man. If we strike a mine, you won't know what hit you, anyway."

He smiled wanly. " I wish I could detect them by radio." Reidar Bull dropped the barrel of the Schmeisser a little.

" You are a brave man, Captain Wetherby. Mikklesen said so, too. War has no place in peace, though. I could almost wish it had been Walter who had shot down the seaplane.

" Am I to see Miss Upton?" I demanded.

He looked inquiringly at the other skippers. " Very well, Captain. We have nothing to lose, and you may have something to gain by it. To-morrow at the approaches to Bollevika – who knows?"

I remembered Bollevika, lit on a dark winter's afternoon by the fragile, strange luminosity of the solar flares which wince and bicker across the Southern Ocean from Cape Horn to the Great Ross Barrier, and my occasional sight of the ice-cliffs and towering peaks while the breakneck lightning of the blue magnetic flare twitched from mountain peak to turbulent sea.

" Bollevika-who knows?" I echoed. " Will you signal Miss Upton to come now from the factory ship?"

He nodded. " March-to the catchers!"

The party trudged wearily across the remaining distance to the ice-edge. Reidar Bull shouted orders to the crews to dismantle the Spandau-Hotchkiss, while he himself went aboard the Crozet to signal Helen. He left Brunvoll to guard us with the Schmeisser. Upton refused to be drawn into any conversation and merely grunted when Brunvoll or Hanssen spoke to him. He and Walter were still shackled. I was grateful for it, since I feared another outburst on the heels of his morose fit. Walter tried to be ingratiating to our captors, and Pirow retained his terrified attitude, as if it were already certain that Aurora would strike one of the mines. Once he edged close to me. " Herr Kapitan," he said in a low voice. " Thompson Island has a safe anchorage, and there are warm springs. You know where the island is. .."

" Shut up!" snapped Brunvoll. " I don't want any whispering, particularly between you two!" I waited. I had scarcely any regard for the activity round me as lights were rigged on Aurora's and Kerguelen's decks, as well as heavy tackles to lift the gun into position from one to the other. We were too far away to hear the crews talking, but once or twice I saw grim glances being cast in the direction of the party. It was clear that they shared the skippers' repugnance at what I was supposed to have done.

My ears were attuned to hear Helen's approach; at length when the familiar roar of the rotors hung over the ships and 147 shore party, it took away, at least for me, some of the forlorn and desolate air of the scene: the men and the ships seemed so puny alongside the great expanse of ice; the very wind seemed to be holding back its violence in preparation for an onslaught against us. I reckoned the temperature must be anything up to thirty degrees below freezing. We stamped and beat our arms to keep warm. Upton's and Walter's shackles, secured outside their thick gloves so that the icy metal would not burn them, clinked dismally.

The helicopter landed next to us. Helen cut the engine.

" You can have half an hour," said Brunvoll. " Then everyone goes aboard. After we've rigged the gun, the men still have to get that machine lashed aboard the Crozet." He waved the Schmeisser. " Don't get any ideas of making a sudden break in the helicopter, although where the hell you'd go to, I wouldn't know."

I swung myself up into the machine and went forward to the cabin. It was warm inside. The light from the loadinglamps threw Helen's face into sharp relief. She was wrapped in the sea-leopard coat. We looked at each other without saying a word. We were insulated from the world outside. I could not even hear the men working on the gun.

Helen broke the long silence. " It couldn't have ended like that, could it, Bruce?"

I shook my head. Her face was taut and the eyes were never lovelier.

" No," I said. " But it could end another way to-morrow." I told her about Meteor's minefield. For a while she did not reply, then she reached out and took my gloved hand in. a grip that revealed her feelings. " If it were not for you, Bruce, I think at this moment I would hate the Southern Ocean and all its works. It never relaxes, never gives, does it? Yet it's a part-perhaps more than half-of you, isn't it? Because of that, I can't hate it."

I leant over and kissed her lips lightly. I saw the pattern of a down-horizon solar flare explosion in her eyes.

" No!" she burst out. " They shan't do it, I tell you!" She reached for the throttle switches. " They shall not, not while I can get you away."

I knocked her hand away and pointed. Brunvoll had the Schmeisser ready pointed.

" Before the rotors got going, Helen, there'd come a burst from that," I said. " Don't think that Reidar Bull, Hanssen and-Brunvoll don't mean it. They do."

" There's a ghastly pattern of things which has caught us up," she exclaimed heatedly. " Here's an ocean as big and as empty of humans as any in the world, and yet it's a human mesh that's taking you away from me."

" The mesh your father wove," I said.

" I know, I know," she went on. " But you and I realise that my father isn't the whole cause."

" Thompson Island," I said.

" Thompson Island!" she said brokenly. " God! How I hate the sound of that name!"

" This moment together is borrowed time," I said gently. " It's running out."

" I'll fly patrol over Aurora to-morrow," she said. "If she's mined, I'll pick you up, like before."

" No, Helen. You know you can't take off from a small catcher's deck pitching in the sort of sea we'll run into at Bouvet."

She buried her face in her hands. " What do you think I' ll feel when I watch Aurora go in towards Bollevika? You… My father, Bruce-we could still get him well again with treatment."

Brunvoll gestured from below. Helen's face was full of anguish: I kissed her and she clung to me for a moment.

Then she took my hand and put it over the compass platform.

" If Suzie Wong has a ghost, let it come and guard Bruce Wetherby's luck," she said. I looked deep into her eyes again and then went aft and jumped down on to the ice. At the head of Aurora's gangplank, as we filed aboard, I turned and looked back. I could just make out the shadow of the sealeopard coat against the perspex window. Upton, Walter, Pirow, Sailhardy and I were locked into one small cabin. Shortly after nightfall the catchers sailed for Bouvet and the Bollevika approaches.

I had thought that once we were alone, there would be a fresh outburst from Upton against me. It did not come. I spent an uneasy night, almost grateful for the guard outside the door, lest Upton's mania should return. He took the sole bunk in the small cabin for himself and covered his head with the blue hood. Sailhardy and I huddled on the floor together for warmth; Pirow and Walter exchanged a few words. I cut Walter short when he tried to speak to me. By drawn Aurora was pitching heavily, and I wondered how the transfer of the crew was to take place. Pirow again spoke anxiously about Meteor's mines before dropping off into an exhausted sleep: it was like going into an ambush, knowing it had been laid, for to me the mine is the assassin, the thug: the torpedo, by contrast, is the hunter and it pits its skill against range and angle, against water salinity, depth, and the chance of a sudden variation of course by its quarry.

Shortly before midday Aurora's engines began to slow. It was impossible to see outside as the porthole was frosted over. There were several sharp alterations of course and then a heavy thump against Aurora's side. I realised what the ice-wise catcher captains were about. They were mooring Aurora alongside a small iceberg with another of the catchers in order to transfer the men.

The cabin door opened. Brunvoll came in, carrying the Sphmeisser. His heavy clothing was streaked with ice. With him was another burly Norwegian.

Brunvoll grinned without humour. " We're about ten miles off Bouvet. You can now have the pleasure, Captain, of seeing whether our friend's story about the mines is correct."

" For the last time, Brunvoll, listen!" protested Pirow. " The place is thick with mines!"

" So you said before," he replied. He handed the other man a key and said something. He went forward and unclicked Walter's and Upton's manacles.

Upton's eyes were hard. "Brunvoll! The first score I have to pay is with Wetherby. The second is with you. Remember that."

Brunvoll shrugged. " Get up on deck, all of you. And remember, Captain, that Kerguelen with the SpandauHotchkiss will be only a quarter of a mile behind you. You'll see when you get on deck, there's no sea-room. There's an open-water passage leading into the Bollevika anchorage, zigzag and half frozen. There are icebergs jumbled together everywhere."

It was no use arguing. " Brunvoll," I said, " if we are mined, are the boats ready to use?"

"Yes," he replied brusquely. " I had them checked last night. The falls are all running freely. Also, the whaleboat is lashed across the winches by the foremast." He spoke to Sailhardy. " You don't have to go with this lot, you know."

" Nor does Captain Wetherby," said Sailhardy.

" On to the bridge, then," replied Brunvoll.

The skippers had done what I thought. Aurora was held against a small berg by a couple of ice-anchors, with Kerguelen 150 immediately astern. Two men stood in the Spandau-Hotchkiss harness and pointed the wicked weapon at Aurora. Moored alongside Kerguelen was Brunvoll's ship Chimay, and half a mile astern, pitching heavily in the open water, was Crozet. I half-closed my eyes against the sudden onslaught of frozen spindrift carried along by the wind. It was upon Crozet that my attention fixed. On her forward catwalk was lashed the helicopter. The orange stood out clearly in the wild morning. Helen would be aboard her, I told myself.

I looked about me with fear in my heart. Ahead, scarcely visible, was a mound which looked like a gigantic iceberg. It was Bouvet. We were still too far to distinguish detail clearly, except the soaring twin peaks, capped with ice. The sea was thick with ice and icebergs. Open water, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, made a winding passage between the ice towards the grim island.

Brunvoll ushered us ahead. " Walter," he said, " get down to the engine-room. The rest of you stay here." There was a cluster of about a dozen men, Aurora's crew, filing aboard Kerguelen. Two had remained to cast off the ice-anchors.

"It's all yours, Captain," said Brunvoll. " You'll have to steam slowly, because of this." He gestured at the ice. " When you reach Bollevika, anchor a quarter of a mile offshore. I'll come aboard again."

He lifted a hand in the direction of the gun in Kerguelen's bows. The twin barrels pointed straight at us. One of the gunners raised a hand in reply. Brunvoll and the tough Norwegian then backed down the bridge ladder, as if still afraid we would do something, even in the face of the two weapons. I cupped my hands. " Cast off," I shouted to the men at the ice-anchors. I rang for " slow ahead ". Aurora moved slowly clear, heading towards Bouvet.

Our course was dictated by the open water through the ice. I could not have manoeuvred, even if I had wished.

Aurora pitched more heavily than I would have expected, which meant that the ice was loose and the sea itself had not frozen. Kerguelen followed, and, in line ahead, Chimay and Crozet.

When we had covered about five miles, a squall swept across the sea. It cleared, and I saw Bouvet close. The cliffs might have been the savage black conscience of the Southern Ocean itself. The pale sunlight inched into the awe-provoking sky with the tenacity of the orange lichens which stained the stark cliffs near the water's edge. The great twin volcanic 151 craters of Christensen and Posadowsky threw up their icecovered heads three thousand feet to left and right; away on the left the cliffs, instead of being sombre basalt, were a strange sulphur colour. Running down from the twin glacier cones was a fantastic wall of solid ice, and where the cliffs became vertical, which I guessed was at a height of about 1, 500 feet, the ice rose sheer out of the sea to join with the glaciers high above. The ice took its blackness from the cliffs, Which it parasitised. Here and there was an eroded headland with fingerlike projections of rock, which reached out as if in supplication to the brutal face of the Westerlies; where the sea and the ice had made rocklike arches, they contorted themselves in strychnic agony. The Southern Ocean might have chosen its colours for the grim island in the same way as some old painters used to grind up Egyptian mummies for pigment when portraying scenes of death. Bouvet stood at bay, shoulder to the great winds, without a chink in its black armour, almost without light except at the edge of the flagcloud flapping at the summit of the twin peaks, its edges pale orange-white. There must have been fifty or sixty icebergs jammed on one of the outlying reefs of Bollevika, so that it was almost impossible to see the line of the coast. Bouvet stood before us-wild, evil, at war endlessly with the mighty undulations which threw themselves against the cliffs from the water below, and the winds above which sometimes even the anemometer cannot measure.

Sailhardy was at the wheel. I glanced at the echo-sounder. Twenty-five fathoms. I took a quick bearing on a headland on the port bow. That was where Christensen's party must have erected an emergency depot, or roverhullet, as they called it, stocked with provisions and fuel. I wondered if such a hut, however well built and shored up, could ever have survived the gales of thirty-odd years. Bollevika anchorage itself lay slightly away to starboard, but I thought I might have to do what Christensen's ship had done during the whole month his party had been ashore-steam back and forth at slow speed, because the gales and rollers from the south-west. would make anchoring impossible.

I had just opened my mouth to give Sailhardy an order, when the mine exploded.

Auroras port side was torn wide open.

Stunned and deafened, I could not for a moment believe that it had actually happened. My mind could not credit that plating, decks, beams and rivets had been dissociated from all that they had been part of, seconds before-the very fabric of Aurora. A ragged chunk of metal sang and rang in the steel wall at the back of the bridge like an Apache's arrow. It had passed clean between Sailhardy and me. It would have taken off one of our heads had its path been a foot either side.

Aurora started to roll towards the brash sea. A gout of water rose up from her side and then smashed down bringing chunks of ice clattering on the tilting deck. From beneath our feet came the sound of frames rending.

It was Sailhardy who saved us. I saw that he was shouting, although his voice came faint to my stunned senses. " Quick!

The whaleboat! She's going so quickly, we'll be trapped!" He grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust me down the bridge ladder. I stumbled over to the whaleboat and, fumbled, half-dazed, at the lashings. Above my head, the blocks swung loose as the mast sagged. Walter came running from the engine-room hatchway as if he were drunk. Even in my confused state, I saw he was carrying a heavy wrench and a flensing knife. He slashed at the ropes holding the whaleboat. Sailhardy reappeared, half thrusting, half carrying, Upton and Pirow. Upton appeared the least dazed of us all, except Sailhardy. He slid his little first-aid bag over his arm decisively as he too plucked at the lashings.

I snatched the last rope free of the winch, tearing my hand on a rough rowlock. I scarcely noticed. Aurora's flared bow, harpoon gun and forward engine-room telegraph had been pushed back by the explosion to the line of the fo'c'sle ventilators. A heavy barrel from one of the starboard winches rolled past us as she prepared to plunge for the last time. Sailhardy, Walter and I pulled the whaleboat to the side. Pirow stood like a man concussed and Sailhardy had to thrust him into the boat, so incongruously gay in its bright Tristan colours, yellow, blue and white. Upton and Walter jumped in after us.

" Fend her off, Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " Aurora's coming right over on us!"

I pushed the boa t clear with one of the long oars. Sailhardy did likewise. We pulled away as the catcher leaned over. Walter also grabbed an oar. The three of us gave a couple of strong sweeps out of range of the dying ship's last. roll. Then Sailhardy took the high tiller, whose steering arm he had not had time to ship properly, leaving us at the oars.

Aurora rolled over and disappeared. There was a muffled explosion as her boilers blew up, but we were well clear. She had gone down in about four minutes.

Walter stood up and looked at the fast-disappearing patch on the sea which marked Aurora's grave. " She was a fine ship, as good as they come," he said.

The other catchers had come to a stop. Kerguelen's bows started to swing away from the whaleboat in the grip of the sea.

Sailhardy glanced astern at the catchers and called to me. " Get the sail on her, Bruce. We'll beat back to Kerguelen into the wind. The passage is wide enough to tack."

The islander's words goaded Upton into action. Dropping his first-aid bag, he rose quickly, snatched the knife from Walter, and in a flash was at the tiller. He held the long blade at the islander's throat.

" Beat back be damned," he said thickly. " Take her into the anchorage. We're going to land."

I looked at the great cliffs unbelievingly. Only one party had ever got ashore at Bouvet-Lars Christensen's. That was in weather conditions which have never been repeated.

" Land!" I exclaimed. " Upton! You must be crazy!

You can't land on Bouvet!"

There was a sandless parody of a beach at the foot of the cliffs soaring up to the Christensen glacier. Seas, with no land between them and South Georgia, threw themselves against the rocks.

Upton's eyes were as hard and distant as our chances of survival if we tried to make the beach. " Walter! Stop drivelling over that bloody ship of yours! Take that wrench and don't hesitate to use it on them if they try any games." He thrust the knife closer against Sailhardy's throat. " The beach!"

For a long moment the islander did not speak. I could see the mania mounting in Upton's over-bright eyes.

I had to break the silence. " Can you bring the boat in, Sailhardy?"

" The problem is not to bring her in, Bruce, but to hold her off the rocks once we get there."

Upton jerked out his words. " Get going, do you hear?

Get the sail on her quick, before the catchers do anything!" " You can't.. •" I started to say

" I shall," he retorted. " You thought you'd make all the running on Thompson Island, didn't you, Wetherby? Now I'm going to tell you something. We are still going to

Thompson Island."

" What in?" I asked.

" In this whaleboat," Upton said tersely. His words tumbled over one another. " I've got Norris' chart, here." He tapped his windbreaker. " Thompson is only forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet. Christensen's party put up a hut on Bouvet. We'll take stores from that. We'll slip away before Thorshammer comes."

I saw he meant it. The risks of the wild scene ahead were nothing to him in the face of his dream. He might force me to take him forty-five miles north-north-east of Bouvet, but we would not find Thompson Island there. I was inflexible in my own mind that Thompson Island's secret would remain mine. So Upton, too, knew of the roverhullet on Bouvet, one of the chain of emergency depots which have been laid round the palette of Antarctica, which the Norwegian skippers had started to argue about that first night aboard Antarctica when they were drinking hard. Looking at the ice-masked island, I hoped for the sake of the five of us that the roverhullet was still there.

" Get the foresail on her!" snarled Walter.

I tugged at the halliards, and the little rag, bright ochrecoloured, stood out like a board as it picked up the Westerlies. Sailhardy stood up, cocking a foot on the tiller to steer her while he conned his way through the ice. The boat gathered way. From Kerguelen came a long, ripping burst of fire. Upton jumped on a thwart and shouted obscenities at the catcher. The whaleboat was too low a target to bit, however, even for an expert marksman.

His blue windbreaker hood fell back and he waved the knife at the catcher. "Come on, you cowardly bastards!" he yelled. " Come and get yourself bloody-well mined!

Come on!"

Pirow seemed to have regained his morale. "The Herr Kapitan Kohler did us a favour, really. The catchers won't dare come into Bollevika now!"

The whaleboat picked up speed rapidly. It was impossible to see where the burst from the Spandau-Hotchkiss had gone. Sailhardy zigzagged round and through the ice, never losing his main objective, the small beach below the cliffs. The sea darkened as we neared the island. From the lowness of the boat, the cliffs appeared more massive: they were scored and striated, notched and grained, by the wind and the ice. The whaleboat swept in to within a cable's length of the shore. A long swell boomed past while Sailhardy held her in check, coming round in a broad reconnoitring circle. I saw the flat tabletop rock when the backwash recoiled from the cliff. I started to say so, but Sailhardy had also spotted it.

" We're going in-now!" he called. The curious modulation in his voice made it clear above the thunder of the waves against the cliffs.

He flicked a glance over his shoulder and selected his roller. He dropped to a sitting position by the tiller. He swung the stern into the comber, plumed with white ice and blowing spindrift. Half-way to the flat rock, I whipped the sail off her. She scarcely lost way, the thrust of the swell was so great. Sailhardy gestured to me with his left hand: he was about to lay her broadside on her port beam. One moment we were in deep water, the next against the cliff. The rock lay exposed.

" Jump!" shouted Sailhardy. " Jump! Out! Out! Out!

Don't let her side touch, for God's sake!"

I was first out over the bow. Almost at the same moment, Sailhardy leapt over the stern. Our heavy boots scrabbled for purchase on the rock as we held her, and the other three sprang clear. Without pausing, Sailhardy and I lifted the boat bodily out of the water and staggered over the broken rocks to the cliff face, out of the reach of the sea.

The beach on which we found ourselves was not much bigger than a tennis court. It was easy to see we had come to the one and only landing-place, for where the rock formed a natural corner, out of direct reach of the sea and the wind, a flagstaff had been driven into the face of the cliff, so that it projected at an angle. The flag and the rope had long since gone, and the block at the top was rusted black. Under it was a weathered inscription in Norwegian and English:

"Captain Harald Horntvedt, master of the Norvegia, formally took possession of Bouvet Island in the name of

Norway on this first day of December, 1927, and at this spot hoisted the flag of that country in due assertion of Norway's claim and sovereignty."

Upton read it and laughed. He seemed nearest the way I had known him first. " The bastards!" he said without rancour. " They got here first, all right, and the British Government a year later waived all claims to Bouvet. But," 156 he added, and his voice was hard, " no one said anything about Thompson Island."

My objective at the moment was to try and find the depot hut. From the water-marks high above our heads, it was plain that the beach became submerged in a gale.

Sailhardy spotted the piece of board first. It had been fastened with iron spikes into the cliff on the left, or northern edge of the beach, where a headland jutted into the sea. It said simply: " Roverhullet ". A faded arrow pointed to what might have been a man-made path, running zigzag up the cliff-side's confused mixture of glaciated rock and ice. I lost sight of it near a formidable projection, a veritable fortress of ice as big as the Tower of London, high above our heads.

" We've somehow got to climb the cliff," I said. " Roverhullet should be at the top-if it hasn't been blown away. It is quite likely that parts of the path have been swept away by rockfalls since the Norwegians were here. Sailhardy and I will make a reconnaissance."

" Will you hell!" said Upton. " All you'd have to do would be to roll a few rocks down on our heads, or block the path. Without the depot, we'd be dead in three days and you know it."

" Yes," I replied. " I know it. I also know how desperate our position is, even if we find the hut. If you had any sense, you' d get back to the catchers as quickly as the whaleboat would take us."

" There's enough rope in the boat to lash the five of us together," said Upton. " You, Wetherby, will lead. Then Pirow, between you and Sailhardy. If he slips, there will be two good men to hold him. Then me, and Walter in the rear."

Sailhardy looked anxiously at the sky. " If it come up a full gale, the sea will sweep this beach. The boat will be lost." Upton smiled mirthlessly. " That boat is as valuable to me now as it is to you, Sailhardy. Get it up into the corner by the flagstaff, and weight her down with stones. If the path isn't too rough, you and Wetherby might carry the boat up to the top later. After all, the Norwegians must have transported a whole depot hut and stores to the top." I looked up at the grim cliffs and shuddered. The Norwegians had made the climb later in the season, when there was less ice. We did not have even an ice-axe to cut steps up the glacier should it become necessary.

I had an idea. " Bring the rowlocks from the boat," I called to Sailhardy, who had already started, with great care, to weight down the boat with some of the big boulders the place was littered with. " We may find them useful higher up as pitons. That wrench of yours may be wanted as a hammer yet, Walter."

The prospect of the climb seemed to have cowed the big Norwegian. Perhaps he was suffering from delayed shock from the mine, too. He surveyed the vague pathway gloomily. " One man slips, and the rest go with him," he said. " Better we climb unroped on our own."

" No!" retorted Upton. " Get that rope round us, Sailhardy." I took the six rough, horseshoe-shaped rowlocks. They were so cold they would have seared the flesh if my hands had not been gloved. The rope was perhaps thirty feet long. Sailhardy tied and tested each knot carefully.

When we were about to start, Pirow bowed formally and shook me by the hand. It was clear that he thought our last moments had arrived. " I wish you luck in the lead, Herr Kapitan. I wish it for myself, too."

I shrugged and we set off up the ill-defined path. After the first thirty feet it widened and, although steep, was not dangerous. We trekked up and up through the moraine.

Pirow behind me started to blow heavily. I raised my hand and called a halt, lifting my eyes for the first time from the pathway. My head reeled. Fully five hundred feet below were a series of rock-pools, beyond the headland which masked the beach. One slip of the boot on the narrow track would have sent any of us crashing to a fearsome end. Far out to sea, beyond the line of the icebergs, I could see the three catchers. My heart lifted at the orange splash on one of them-it was the helicopter aboard Crozet. The thin line of ships stood blockade across the open lead of water. How

Upton proposed to get past them in the whaleboat was beyond me.

We paused for five minutes, not speaking. Then on and up.

The ascent became steeper and slippery. The wind on the exposed face plucked at our clothing. The weather was clearer, which was a bad sign, for it meant that the wind was coming hard off the ice. After another few hundred feet, I found myself gasping the raw air, which rasped like a file in my throat. Behind me, each man had pulled his hood as close to 158 his face as he could. On Walter's beard I could see the icicles where his breath had condensed and frozen.

We struggled on. Round a bend, the pathway ran dead. It was clearly defined and ended against the side of the huge fortress of rock which I had noticed from below. The enormous rock overhung the cliff and the pathway. Like everything higher up, it was coated with a veneer of ice. I edged closer. Then, beneath the six-inch patina of ice, I saw a steel ladder set into the rock, leading beyond an overhang twenty feet above my head.

" Walter!" I called. " Bring that wrench, or pass it up here. There's a ladder under the ice. Ill try and chip it free." I steadied myself and the wrench was passed cautiously from hand to hand, each man fearing he might slip and take a death-plunge. The height seemed to smooth out the rollers. I swung the heavy wrench against the ice. It bounced back. I might have been striking the rock itself. I struck again. The solid head of steel splintered into fragments. The cold had made it as brittle as glass.

I faced about, precariously. " Upton! Do want to go on with this crazy climb any further? You're risking everyone's lives."

The cold and the exertion had flushed his face that strange pink, as if his anger were permanently engraved in it. " Either you go on, or you come back… into this!" he replied. He waved the knife. " Hammer the rowlocks into the ice, and climb up on them. Get going!"

" Bruce!" broke in Sailhardy. " Let me go! I…" But I had already started to untie the rope from my waist.

Pirow's face was pinched. " If you fall, don't fall on me, for God's sake!" he mouthed. " Don't go, Herr Kapitan." In reply, I hammered the first crude rowlock cautiously into the ice with the shaft of the wrench a few feet above the pathway level. I swung myself up, one foot across its broad horseshoe. Nothing else stood between me and the drop to the sea a thousand feet below. Carefully, and not using much force, so as not to shatter the wrench shaft or the rowlocks, I hammered in another. Using the rowlocks as pitons I reached twelve feet, where the rock overhang began. Through the ice, clear as plate-glass, I could see the rungs Christensen's men had clamped into the rock. Even assured of the ladder's safety, each load carried to the summit must have been a hair-raising experience.

I hung on a piton set below the overhang, looking for a suitable place to drive in the next. Somehow the rungs of the ladder seemed clearer. I balanced on one leg and drove in the next rowlock.

The ice stripped off the overhang like orange peel. The rungs had been clearer because here the ice was only a couple of inches thick.

My gloves clutched empty air. I started to fall. The wrench and piton clinked on the ice and shot downwards towards the rocks and sea. My foot slid off the piton. As I slipped sideways, I grabbed in frantic terror. My right hand closed over one of the newly-exposed rungs. At the same moment my left fingers groped, found, and clasped. My feet swung wide away from the rock face, over the sea below. I cast one desperate glance beneath. The four men were staring at me with as much horror as I myself felt. There was only one thing I could could do: I swung myself sideways and made a desperate clutch at the rung up. My hand closed round it. I hung for half a minute before repeating the manoeuvre. The muscles in my arms started to kick. I knew they would only last another few minutes. I edged still one rung higher and then pulled my body in against the cliff, resting my toes on the shelf of ice, about six inches wide, where it had peeled away. Slowly, painfully, I pulled myself up until my feet as well as my hands rested on the iron ladder: The sweat froze on my face as it formed. Great gasps from my lungs. I would have fallen if I had looked down. The ladder continued at a gentler angle once it was round the bulge of the overhang, and brought me out to a shallow plateau, from which the pathway continued to the summit, now clearly visible about five hundred feet farther up. I could not see the others because of the overhang, and although I heard Sailhardy shouting, the wind blew the words away. I tried shouting back, but it was futile. For perhaps a quarter of an hour I rested and recovered my nerve, and then stumbled up the easier gradient to the summit.

I dragged myself over the top. Fifty yards from the edge, up a gentle path, was a wooden hut, heavily shored and stayed against the gales. Lars Christensen's men had built the roverhullet well. The hut was big enough for a dozen men, and there was an outbuilding which I guessed must be a store-room. Each corner of the structure, as well as the roof, was guyed to steel posts driven between fissures of the rock. In front was an iron flagstaff, which had been bent double like a sapling by the gales. I wished I had the Luger as I moved slowly towards the roverhullet. Its lack of windows added to its air of utter desolation. The backdrop of the massive Christensen glacier made it appear puny. The front door was held by four big sliding bolts, unlocked, which were heavily greased. I slid them back and threw open the door. It was eerie and halfdark and for a moment I wondered whether I would find inside some ghastly corpse like the one the famous explorer, Sir James Clark Ross, had found in the Kerguelen Islands in the 1840s-a man with a bottle in his hand, terror in his eyes, and gigantic footprints leading up to him..

I put such thoughts from my mind and stepped inside. It was hard to see, and there was that curious smell of frozenness which only the Antarctic can produce. The walls were flasked-lined with ice. There was a big stove in the centre of the first room, and a notice in Norwegian and English said:

" This hut is for the use of distressed seamen. There are stores, provisions, fuel and other necessaries in the store-room beyond. Please put back whatever is not used."

I went through two more rooms and had to bend down to enter the store-room. When I saw the piles of sleeping bags, blankets, cases of kerosene lamps, and a host of paraphernalia so essential for survival in the Antarctic, I remembered that Christensen had originally planned to establish a weather station on Bouvet but had abandoned the thought after seeing the wildness of the place.

In a rack, heavily greased, were a number of ice-axes, pitons, skis and old-fashioned throwing harpoons, each with a length of rope attached to the shaft. There were coils of thick rope, hundreds of feet of it, but before it could be used it would have to be thawed out. I noted with approval that all the boxes-and indeed the joints of the hut itself-were all dovetails and dowels. There was not a nail to be seen. These men had known their job, for in the Antarctic, wood changes its nature and the cold dries it out so that nails lose their withdrawal resistance.

I took four ice-axes and one of the harpoons, whose steel shaft must have been six feet long, and some pitons. My immediate task was to bring the party past the ice-ladder to the hut. We could make the path and ladder usable later on, but for the moment they would have to cut steps in the ice as far as the exposed rungs from which I had hung. I stood at the top of the cliff and looked out at the distant G.I. 161 catchers before starting down the track. Crozet was apart from the others. I watched in puzzlement, for I thought I could see her moving, since the orange of the helicopter showed against the general whiteness. Whatever she was about, it needed Sailhardy's eyesight to see. All I could distinguish was that Crozet was much nearer the ice than the others, who remained in the centre of the channel.

Then I saw. Radiating like spokes from a wheel hub, there were a number of other open passages between the ice to the north and north-east, converging on the towering northern cliffs of the island. They would be useless for a ship to negotiate, but for the whaleboat…

I craned over the cliff and looked down, ramming the harpoon's blade firmly in a crack of the rocks to hold. My altitude above the sea gave the effect of an aerial photograph of the ice below. A number of fissures in the ice-belt followed the contours of the island; in other words, there were small open channels running round Bouvet which would easily take the whaleboat into one of the wider channels to the north, and so avoid the catchers, which lay to the southwest. Upton could not miss seeing them either. I made my way slowly and cautiously down the path back to the great fortress rock and the ice-ladder. I climbed over the overhang, carrying two ice-axes, and shouted. Sailhardy's voice, tense with relief, came back. Crouching on the last exposed rung, I handed the axes down, and felt them being seized by invisible hands. I climbed back to the top of the overhang, with its dizzy drop to the sea.

For about fifteen minutes I heard the clunk of ice-steps being cut, and then Sailhardy, grinning, hauled himself alongside me.

" Bruce, boy!" he exclaimed. " I thought you were a goner that time! Is there a hut?"

I told him about the roverhullet and the supplies. " There's enough there to last us a year or more."

It was also Upton's first question when he appeared next. He seemed in great spirits when I told him about the hut. Despite the height, he swung himself up and down on his toes in impatience to be off. Pirow looked like a ghost and Walter was sullen. All of them were blue with the cold and it was not until we neared the top that some colour came back into Pirow's face.

Upton, Walter and Pirow made straight for the hut, but I held back, touching Sailhardy's arm.

" I want you to take a look at the catchers," I said. "I left my glasses behind in the factory ship. Crozet is easy to pick out because of the helicopter. It seems odd that she's against the ice."

Sailhardy took a long look. " It's not so strange," he said quietly. " She's doing exactly what Aurora did to get a steady platform. She's tied up to an iceberg."

" You mean…"

" Why should she want a steady platform?" he asked. " She's going to fly off the helicopter."