Southtrap

CHAPTER NINETEEN

'Heave short!'

Ten men at the hand-operated capstan on Botany Bay's foc's'le-head bent their backs to the capstan bars. Their boots beat a treadmill pattern on the deck, a pattern which had been repeated time and again during the past two hours. They were sweating even in the icy cold. The sheep-stink from their heavy sweaters was rank and raw.

The clumsy old-fashioned anchor with its big flukes and long shaft rose to the end of the foreyard like a corpse on a hangman's gibbet. As it reached its extremity, a man watching at the rail called to me.

'Up and down, sir!'

'Hold it!' I ordered the exhausted men. I was waiting until the anchor steadied. It weighed a couple of tons. This was the tenth and — I hoped — last time I would have to order the sullen, resentful men to put their backs into the heavy task.

Two hours had passed since Ullmann had come aboard with Linn as a hostage. Wegger wasn't bluffing. He had her standing in full view on the quarterdeck while he kept guard. Ullmann was up for'ard with me and the crew. His Scorpion was over us like an evil dream. I knew how much the men had been shaken by the sight of Linn with that grim talisman of death fixed to her neck. They had seen for themselves over Kearnay and Biggs what Wegger was capable of. Although their muscles were groaning, they kept going. I could only hope against hope now that my own plan would work.

When I saw the two small drills which Ullmann had brought from the Quest to bore holes in the ice for the explosive charges I knew Wegger's plan was useless. The augurs had a diameter of about 50 millimetres or two inches and were a metre long. It was sending a boy on a man's errand to expect toys like that to make holes to accommodate charges of ten kilograms.

I told Wegger so.

His only reply had been to fix me with his cold stare and indicate Linn.

It was hopeless to try and get past him.

The cockbilled anchor — the one I had spotted at the cathead when we had first approached the windjammer — had given me my idea. I had decided to use its weight with a length of heavy steel bar fixed into the cross-piece as a kind of jumper drill. The anchor had been run out at the ship's lower yardarms on the ice-cliff side, hoisted, and then let fall. The device had worked. We were now drilling the final hole.

But would the blast free Botany Bay?'

I put the thought from me. That still figure on the quarter deck drove me afresh.

'Up and down, sir!' The man repeated. We had adapted sailing-ship parlance to cope with the situation. 'Up and down' meant that the length of cable running through the blocks on the yardarm was now equal to the distance the anchor had to fall to hit the ice.

'Stand clear! Secure the pawls!'

The men at the capstan stood back. I took a hammer and knocked out the anchor shackle. I jumped clear to avoid the wire's backlash.

The anchor plunged from the yardarm with a crash. Splinters of ice shot up as the steel dug deep.

Now it was the turn of the explosives.

'Break that anchor out — handsomely, men!'

One of the young men spat on his hands and asked me as he passed.

'Will it work, sir? How thick is the ice?'

That was exactly what I did not know, how thick the ice was which locked Botany Bay fast.

I tried to sound confident. 'We'll have the ship back in her natural element before the day's much older.'

'Heave!' — the men renewed their effort to secure the anchor.

Explosion seismology.

The phrase sprang ready-made into my mind. It seemed to come from deep in my subconscious; probably it was from some forgotten piece I'd read or heard, concerning the way scientists had calculated the depth of the ice-cap covering the Antarctic continent. They had fired small charges of explosive in holes drilled in the ice and measured the time taken for the echo to rebound from the bedrock thousands of feet below. Knowing the speed at which sound travels in ice, they were able to establish how thick the ice-cap was.

Using the same principle, I intended now to probe the underwater ice shelf which held up Botany Bay. The thought of it brought a knot into my stomach — what if I should fail? How extensive was it? All I had gathered from Kearnay was that the berg itself had tilted and the underwater shelf had lifted Botany Bay bodily as it did so. Loose ice afloat in the iceport had also consolidated, making the trap complete.

Would ten charges of ten kilograms each be enough?

First, before the actual freeing attempt, I intended by a crude imitation of the scientists' method to try and determine the thickness of the underwater shelf.

I stalked past Wegger in my preoccupation.

'Where are you off to, Shotton?'

'It's my show, isn't it?'

'It's her neck,' he retorted.

I found one of the augurs on the quarter-deck. Linn was standing, remote and strained, at the binnacle. The only concession Wegger had made was to remove the icy metal of the grenade from against her skin. It was now lashed to her shoulder.

'Bo'sun!' I called. 'Lend a hand here, will you?'

I explained quickly and tensely that I wanted three holes drilled in the ice with the augur. Wegger held the Luger on me when I requested small charges of explosive weighing only half a kilogram each and gave them only on the assurance I wouldn't ignite them myself.

The bo'sun and I went ashore. It didn't take very long to drill three holes each a foot deep, one at the stern, one amid-ships, and the third under the bow.

I tamped the charges home and lit a short length of fuse for each. Ullmann had joined Wegger, — two gun barrels followed every movement I made.

'I'm going below-decks,' I told the man. 'Fire these charges at three-minute intervals. Take cover behind the bulwarks when you do so. They're only small charges but they'll throw up splinters.'

I ordered the rest of the crew to stand clear, explained to Wegger what, I was about and went below. He eyed me speculatively but did not interfere.

I hurried below. The only light in the dark interior was a dim kerosene lamp which hung from a beam.

A figure behind bars reached hands at me, his face contorted.

I stopped with an oath. I had quite forgotten Botany Bay's cavalcade of horrors.

This was a tableau of the dreaded 'tiger's den' — and it looked it. Behind the bars was the waxwork figure of a man, stripped to the waist. A great weal from the cat-o'-nine-tails oozed make-believe blood. The first figure which had caught my attention supplicated through the bars like a caged wild animal.

I spared the tableau a passing glance and hurried on.

These were only waxworks. The living horrors walked the deck above.

At the ship's side I put my ear against the teak planking. The subsequent crash of the charge nearly deafened me. I had forgotten in my tense state that ice is such a good conductor of sound that you can hear a man speak through it at a distance of 100 metres.

Apart from an odd creak or two, the test told me nothing.

There was three minutes to go to the next shot.

I took the oil lamp from its gimbals and made my way down a central gangway amidships, specially built to show the displays of convict imprisonment on either hand. I began to sympathize with the Cape Town taxi driver's hysterical girl.

The second explosion followed. This time I kept my ear a short distance from the planking. Even so, there was a marked difference. The concussion reverberated, heavy and thudding, unlike the first smacking whiplash. Its message was plain — here the ice was solid.

The third shot, which I tracked in the ship's bluff bow, was the lightest of the three. What the tests had established was that the ice was thickest under Botany Bay's keel amidships, and thinnest in the bow and stern. She could well have been balanced with the underwater shelf acting as a fulcrum.

I returned to the deck past Wegger who had stood guard in the central gangway.

'Well?' he demanded when we reached the deck.

I avoided looking in Linn's direction.

'I don't rightly know,' I replied. I didn't, in point of fact.

'Get on with the job and stop fooling round,' he rapped out.

For the actual release attempt itself I took the final ten-kilogram charge and climbed overside under the gun muzzles to position it. I had laid the other charges previously while the crew took breathers at the capstan. I tamped it home with a length of spar. I measured an identical length of fuse to the other nine.

Now for the acid test.

'Hands to charges!' I called. One man per charge in order to have a simultaneous blast. The fuses were long enough to give everyone ample time to shelter below.

I raised my hand.

'Ready, men? Right! Light fuses!'

The matches went down.

'Everyone below!'

Wegger, Ullmann, Linn and I sheltered together near the chamber of horrors tableau. The crew kept to themselves.

We waited.

My watch said nearly nine o'clock. In the interval before the explosions were due I wondered about Smit and the other two weathermen. There was no way now that the launch could take place on schedule at ten o'clock 110 kilometres distant.

Then the hull kicked, kicked again. Even I wasn't expecting the size of the explosion. It was like a ragged broadside, the charges exploding irregularly within seconds. There was a heavy thump nearby as part of a waxwork display collapsed, and a rattle of ice falling on the main deck, followed by the heavier sound of a block or spar which had been dislodged from the rigging.

From under our feet came a grinding, rending, tearing sound. Botany Bay might have been dragging across a reef. It lasted only seconds.

Then everything went quiet.

The deck remained at its previous list.

Botany Bay was still fast.

I had failed.

I threw a desperate glance at Linn. The light was too dim to see what was in her eyes. Equally desperate was my rush of thought to try and jump our watch-dogs. Wegger, Ullmann — either one of them would get me even if I managed to grab the other's gun. I wouldn't stand a chance.

My voice sounded as harsh as the grinding ice.

'Let's get up on deck and see.'

Wegger fell back a pace or two and whispered something to Ullmann. The nerves at the base of my stomach were stretched to breaking-point.

We emerged on deck. The charges didn't seem to have done much beyond dig a few man-sized holes. The force of the explosions had dissipated mainly upwards and the main and topgallant yards were all askew as a result, like a slovenly crew's work.

The only thing that I registered in my numb dismay was that the wind had changed. Also, the berg had slewed further and the wind was now filtering through the entranceway and was stirring the protected water of the iceport.

I had to have time! Time to think, time to work out something else before the two started on Linn.

I said the first thing that sprang to mind. 'I'm going up aloft — I want to inspect the ice from high up…'

Before Wegger could reply I swung myself into the lower port shrouds. The ratlines to the maintop seemed to stretch upwards never-endingly. The ship in its ice cradle remained rock-steady.

I went up hand-over-hand to the maintop. Then up to the top-mast shrouds. Then on to the cross-trees. It was only when I was nearly up the topgallant shrouds that I got a grip on myself and slowed down — to think.

I felt the slender spar give a shudder. I threw one arm about the topgallant backstay to steady myself. My heart leapt. Was the hull, now looking like a toy more than 25 metres below me, starting to loosen? Or was it simply the over-strained mast starting to give at last?

Was it wind?

I climbed higher up the mast above the level of the iceberg's summit. The south-wester smacked me in the face.

My view was down, deckwards. The ice was green-white round the stern and bow and opaque amidships. That bore out what my elementary 'seismic charges' had indicated — thin ice there.

Next I looked up, seawards. My eyes filled with moisture from the wind and I ducked down to avoid it. I caught a distant glimpse of the Quest standing off, pitching and rolling.

I tried again. My first incredulous thought was that somehow our iceberg had doubled its size, for almost on top of it was a second iceberg. Breakers climbed high up its side, exploding soundlessly in a welter of white. The second berg's tabular top was big enough to land a helicopter squadron on.

It was heading for us with a kind of slow malevolent purpose like an old-time battleship going in to break the enemy's line but holding its fire until it was alongside the enemy.

I realized what would happen when the two bergs collided. I cocked a knee in the ratlines and locked both my arms round the backstay to prevent myself being shaken off.

'Stand by under for your lives!' I yelled at the deck.

Almost at once the inevitable happened.

Tens of thousands of tons of ice, propelled by a 30-knot wind, swung and struck the buttress next to me.

I ducked. Impact and thunder came almost simultaneously. The concussion was stunning enough to be heard half across the Southern Ocean.

My topgallant mast whipped like a fishing-rod taking a strike.

The mast lashed towards the ice-cliff. I thought I would be pitched headlong against it despite my hold.

Its supporting shrouds and stays made an agonized groaning, straining noise. The ropes tautened, tautened, tautened. How far to breaking-point? I could detect stretch — and I blessed the rigger who had used manila instead of wire.

Then the two bergs rebounded.

The mast whipped again, this time in the opposite direction. From the hull came the most dreaded of all sounds to a sailor's ear — a sound like timbers being torn apart.

But it wasn't Botany Bay's timbers.

It was the ice.

The ice immediately round the ship's sides started to break off. Loose blocks porpoised to the surface. Next, it seemed to me, the underwater shelf rose and took the ship under her lee beam and lifted her bodily — the collision had snapped off the shelf from the parent berg and it was rising to the surface, pushing the ship with it.

Under its thrust, Botany Bay's first movement was still further over to starboard, the iceberg side. I clung on. Any moment I feared the mast would shatter at the cross-trees and pitch me to death. Then the dizzy pendulum stopped short. The mast reversed its traverse. It rotated away to the lee beam in a long sickening arc. But it was a swing whose pivot was water, not ice! 'She's free! She's loose!' I shouted — but I couldn't hear my own voice above the uproar.

All round the ship the ice cracked, exploded and shattered in long cracks radiating from the hull. The noise was louder than gunfire. On the quarterdeck I spotted Linn, Wegger and Ullmann all hanging on to the big double wheel. On the main deck men with their feet sliding under them hung on for dear life to any rope they could find.

All round the sea boiled. The ship was half-lifted, half-pushed sideways. Then she went over until her port life-boats touched the ice-cluttered sea.

I hung on like a fly on the ceiling.

Would she ever come upright?

She did, swinging almost lazily on to an even keel.

I knew that I had to get her clear at once. At any moment there could be a second collision between the two icebergs. It would drive the jagged pieces of ice floating round the vessel like battering-rams through her timbers.

I threw a final look seawards. Floes of smashed ice were scattered all round the great berg, and the sea boiled and broke. The tens of thousands of tons of table-top was rocking slightly in the aftermath of the collision. That alone showed how stupendous it had been.

I took the quickest — and most dangerous — route to the deck. I went down, boots and hands, via the backstay. It took only seconds.

My mind had formulated its plan when I had felt the wind up aloft in the rigging. Down here it was still no more than a catspaw, not enough to power her big lower sails but Strong enough aloft for her uppermost sails.

'Hands to the braces!' I shouted. 'Break out the main and fore royals! Slap it about, men! All hands!'

They went automatically to their stations like a stunned gun crew after a near miss by a shell. They reacted like automatons, too.

The yards came round. Four men — two would have done — shinned aloft and broke out the small topmost sails.

Collecting the drifting motor-launch on the way, Botany Bay clawed her way with nerve-shattering slowness through the ice, bumping and thumping, until we were at last in the safe open water of the iceport.