Southtrap

CHAPTER THREE

It was like hearing a mummy speak from out of its wrappings. His voice was so distorted by pain and the bandages that I hardly recognized it.

'John — is that you, John?'

Yes, sir. This is John Shotton.'

I stood in the hospital ward and looked down at the figure in the bed. My comparison with a mummy persisted — the bandages which swathed his head were white, what was visible of the tanned face was off-white, and the faintly pungent, acrid smell of the medicaments was throat-catching, faintly sickly, like the odour of a mummy. The gallows-like iron thing — for patients to haul themselves upright, if they could — might have doubled for the device ancient Egyptian embalmers used for handling corpses. I could have used a brandy, even at that time of the morning.

'Is the Quest ready for sea?'

I hesitated before answering. Captain Prestrud reached out a hand and gripped my arm. I was surprised at the strength in it. Then I realized there were no injuries except on his head and face. All the damage was concentrated there.

'Is she?'

Pain dimmed his eyes, sunk deep in their sockets. He tried to focus on me past the helmet of bandages. Five minutes only, the nurse had warned. Now I realized she was being generous.

'John,' he said more strongly. 'I liked you from the moment I clapped eyes on you. You were the sort of man I needed for the Quest. An officer who could take over from me, any time, any place. Almost my second self.'

The feeling had been mutual. I had never met anyone I came to admire so much in such a short time. That was what had induced me to throw up my own ship and sign on as his second-in-command. That, and the fact that Quest was going to those far Southern seas that I longed to explore.

Before I could stumble out a reply he went on, 'I want you to take the Quest to sea tomorrow.'

That's what I've come about,' I said.

He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position. His face clouded with a spasm of agony. He fell back, eyes shut. I reached across him for the emergency bell.

He must have guessed what I was doing. He raised his arm and chopped weakly at mine.

'Leave it, John. Leave it. Give me a moment. I've got to say something to you. Alone. Quickly.'

I waited. His eyes came open again. He was breathing in sharp spurts.

'What's holding up Quest?' he gasped. 'Is Linn delayed? The buoy…?'

'Linn is due with the bulk of the passengers this afternoon,' I assured him. 'The first of the scientists came aboard just as I was leaving the ship. The Weather Bureau's buoy is due this afternoon by special trailer from up-country. I'll have everything ship-shape and Bristol-fashion and ready for sea by this evening.'

He said in a firmer voice, 'Then there's nothing to stop you sailing first thing tomorrow.'

Except — I thought, but I didn't say it — that Quest was his own ship. He had sweated and saved his whole life to buy her, and now someone else was to take over his dream.

I said gently, We can't sail without you.'

He lay silent with his eyes closed for so long that I thought he had passed out.

He spoke at last. 'Yes, I'll be missing, John. I think you know what Quest and this cruise mean to me, don't you?'

'Yes, I know.'

He went on so softly that I had to lean forward to hear. 'Sometimes a man does something which seems right at the time, seems justified by events. But it changes his whole life. It comes back and haunts him. And it snatches away what he wants most of all.'

It sounded to me as if his mind was wandering.

Suspected brain damage, the nurse had warned me outside. Could be a piece of smashed skull bone pressing on the brain. They'd have to operate. It was only has will that was keeping him conscious.

I remembered her words. I let his answer go.

He opened his eyes and fixed me. 'I want you to promise, John, that you'll take the Quest to sea tomorrow. And tell my daughter Linn that I want her to sail whatever happens to me.'

If that's the way you want it.'

'It's the way I want it.' Quest will sail tomorrow morning,' I assured him.

He gave a couple of jerky little sighs and tried to smile. His pulped lips weren't meant for smiling. I saw they'd smashed some of his teeth too.

He said, 'It was like a dream, John. You know the way the light is, far South in high latitudes, in the middle of the summer? The night was all blue and silver. The mist was on the water like ghostly icebergs — you couldn't tell which was which. There'd been snow a little while before — squalls coming in from the south-west. Then it cleared about two in the morning. The first we knew of her was her searchlight lighting up the two factory ships and the catchers all moored round her, like puppies drinking. We couldn't see her six-inch guns because the searchlight blinded us. We had a few oil lights strung in our rigging. I remember thinking how warm they looked, and how icy and deadly the searchlight was — just like the Germans.'

Brain damage. Bone pressing on the brain. Yes, I'd seen that blue mystic light in the middle of the short Antarctic summer's night. Like a dream. Captain Prestrud in his delirium had recaptured its beauty. I wondered whether I had just made a promise to a man so sick that I shouldn't hold myself to it.

I got up to go for help. The windows in front of me showed a great sunlit view of far mountains; on my left were the sea and shipping of Table Bay. It was beautiful — and real. But Captain Prestrud's scene had the haunting quality of unreality.

I moved to the door and his voice went on: '… I often wished I'd met Pinguin's captain. Kruder was first of all a sailor and a man. Only secondly a Nazi. He went down with HK-33 when the British caught up with her.'

Pinguin — HK-33! One of the great surface raiders of World War II! Kapitan zur See Kruder, the legend!

I turned back from the door. I simply had to hear what Captain Prestrud had to say, however incoherent it might be.

His eyes opened when he sensed me back at his side.

'Do you know what a quisling is, John?'

He looked very bad: I knew I ought to go for help.

'I've heard the word,' I said.

'The quislings were the Norwegians who betrayed us to the Nazis.' He tried to smile but winced instead.

'We got him, Torgersen, Jacobsen and I. He came strutting aboard us with the raider's boarding party. He didn't learn those manners from Kruder. But he'd done his traitor's job and he was feeling proud of himself.'

It was like trying to piece together the bits of a jigsaw when you didn't know what the master-pattern was.

'Who was he, Captain Prestrud?'

He replied, very wearily. 'Kruder had three radio operators aboard the Pinguin. Two were German. The third was Norwegian — he had a German mother. He was the only one who understood the R/T chatter (between us Norwegian catcher skippers. It was he who homed Pinguin on us. We never knew Pinguin was near until she broke through the mist with her search-light on and her guns trained on us. She snapped up die lot — two factory ships and eleven catchers. The whole whaling fleet. Not a shot fired. That was the way Kruder planned it. No loss of life…'

The quisling…' I prompted.

He lay back, silent, and I was afraid that the nurse would appear before he'd told me more. I'd been there i shade over five minutes.

'He killed Torgersen for it later,' muttered Captain Prestrud. 'He got a life sentence for the murder. John, you must promise me that the anniversary celebration will go on in Quest even though I'm not there…'

What happened!' I demanded in a low voice. I thought I heard someone outside the door. 'What happened, Captain Prestrud!'

He blinked in a dazed manner. 'Maybe I… we… shouldn't have done it. But it seemed right at the time. It was war.' He appeared to get a grip on himself. 'The quisling came aboard at the head of the Nazi boarding party. Torgersen knocked him down. We took him with us.'

'You were captured, Captain Prestrud. Remember? You and the entire Norwegian whaling fleet.'

'I kept warning the others we weren't safe, even deep down there in the ice,' he muttered. 'That's why we had the torpedo ready, night and day. It came down the greasy whale slip as easy as easy.'

I turned away. He was mouthing words that made no sense.

Then came a laugh so startling that I turned back to the bed.

'We escaped, the three of us — Torgersen, Jacobsen and I. In our catchers. We went right past Pinguin, under her guns. Kruder didn't fire. He wasn't the sort to open up on little catchers.' He laughed again. 'He ordered me on the R/T, "Turn back or be sunk." I just said, "Can't. Engine stuck" — and I went ahead. Torgersen and Jacobsen covered me on both flanks so that Pinguin wouldn't spot the torpedo…'

The door opened and the nurse made an imperative gesture with her head. 'Out!'

Captain Prestrud opened his eyes. Perhaps he saw me, perhaps not. But he knew I was there, because he called out urgently, desperately: 'John! Stay away from Dina's Island!'

The nurse was advancing on me. I hurried through the doorway.

Two doctors, a younger and an older, gave way for me as they were entering.

I said to the older man, 'He's in a bad way. He's been mugged.'

He said, 'I know. I examined him earlier. He wasn't mugged. He was pistol-whipped.'