Southtrap

CHAPTER FIVE

Several hours later after lunch, I was alone in the Captain's cabin. I felt even more of an intruder than in the chartroom earlier. Captain Prestrud had left his imprint upon the place, even in the short time he had owned Quest. A big roll-top desk, old-fashioned and friendly, contained a mixture of official and private papers and photographs. A smoked pipe and tobacco jar and an unfinished letter all pointed to a man who had gone out and meant to come back. But I couldn't help doubting Captain Prestrud would ever return.

I could still sense his warm presence. It was here that I had had my interview for the Quest job. The ship's documents were now my immediate concern. For the sorting and clearing of the desk with its personal possessions I decided to await Linn's arrival. Among his books I noted Captain Benjamin Morrell's autobiographical Voyage to the Antarctic, dating back a century and a half. After its publication Morrell had been dubbed a liar but in the course of time his accounts were confirmed by others. I made a mental note to check if he mentioned Dina's Island.

Dina's Island — the chart. Why had Wegger attached so much importance to it?

It was a question I had asked myself a score of times while sorting out all the things that needed doing to get the Quest ready for sea. I had asked him point-blank as he stood there staring at the chart: What was it that had shaken him so?

It had got me really rattled. Wegger had come aboard trailing as much tension as a primed hijacker's grenade and then this business of the chart. I was on the point of revoking my offer of the job. He sensed this, and had explained quickly that he had been serving in Teddy, a supply tanker to the Norwegian Antarctic whaling fleet at the outbreak of World War II. It was just that the unexpected sight of a chart from his first ship had touched a nostalgic chord of memory.

It sounded phoney. I told him so.

He then said that the Teddy had been captured and burned early in the war by a German raider and that it had moved him to see this tangible relic of her all these years later.

Wegger looked to me as sensitive as those Antarctic fish which don't need haemoglobin in their blood, they are so tough.

'What raider?' I asked.

With the third finger of his wrecked right hand he had stabbed the. name hand-printed on the chart. Atlantis.

But he couldn't — or wouldn't — offer an explanation for that last name, Siberien, or the date, or any possible connection with the other German raider Pinguin.

He was saved from further cross-examination by McKinley bursting in to say that the clutch on a derrick winch loading Number 3 hatch, between the bridge and the stack, had stripped. With it out of action, we'd never get to sea in time.

If I had my doubts about Wegger in one respect, I had no reason to question my judgment of him as a seaman in the next few hours. He personally took on the job of repairing the clutch — which even I considered to be a shore workshop job — and laboured at it, stripped and sweating in the hot wind, driving his squad as mercilessly as an old-time bucko mate until the job was done. When I was sure loading had been resumed, I made my way for'ard along the deck past the lifeboats — painted red for emergency sighting in the ice — to check the Captain's cabin. As the Quest's new captain the cabin was now mine.

I left the desk and opened the ship's safe with the combination numbers I had discovered in a drawer. The Quest's documents were all there, together with the wages for the crew. I riffled through the papers. Everything was in order.

Under a ledger I found a folding leather case, the sort of frame which is intended to house portrait photographs. I opened it. One half was empty: the other revealed a picture of one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She was young, dark, and her eyes seemed a little heavy. There was about her a timeless loveliness, a heart-stopping quality, and at the same time an almost unnatural stillness, a curiously blank expression in the eyes. She wore a sealskin jerkin with a high Cossack-like collar. I couldn't make out any more details.

I knelt down to get more light on the picture, but it didn't help. The photograph itself was poor. It looked as if it had been shot through glass with an electric flash.

Could this enigmatic face possibly be that of Linn Prestrud, now our tour leader? 'What are you doing with my father's belongings?'

As I spun round to face her, my mental tumblers fell into place as surely as those of the safe's combination: it wasn't Linn Prestrud's portrait that I held. It was she who stood in the doorway. Hers was an animated face by contrast with the picture's — somewhat puzzled, a little angry, maybe. Jet-lag after her 6000-mile flight from Europe showed round her green-grey eyes; she held her head back in a way which I was always to associate with her. She looked about twenty-five. Blue slacks with a blue-and-white striped top enhanced her slim figure. Her top blouse button was undone.

I felt at a disadvantage down on the floor, like a kid caught stealing jam. I said nothing and got to my feet.

She pushed aside a drift of corn-gold hair which was falling across her right temple.

'Who are you?'

'John Shotton. You must be Linn Prestrud.'

Her glance went over my grubby uniform. 'What are you doing prying into my father's things?'

A line that ran from the right-hand comer of her mouth showed how tired and tense she was.

I said quietly. 'You've had a long flight. Sit down and I'll order some coffee. Then I'll explain what I'm doing here and we'll work out things together.' I dreaded the moment when I would have to break the news about her father.

'Together? I don't even know who you are.'

'Until this morning I was the first officer. Your father hired me.'

She gave me a long searching look which came to rest on the photograph in my hand.

'What is that photograph you're stashing away in the safe?'

I held it out without replying and she came close. She had the dry, closed-in smell of jet travellers — upholstery, deodorants, the sterile accoutrements of high altitudes.

'Lovely face,' she said. 'But something odd about it.'

'I've never seen her before,' I told her. 'I've just found it tucked away in your father's safe.'

'That makes two of us.' She held the photograph sideways to get more light, as I had done.

'It's out of focus, or something,' she said.

'Or something. It must be your father's. I'd say it was rather precious to him too, to keep it locked away in a safe.'

I went to the desk and rang the chief steward. 'I want two cups of coffee and some sandwiches. In the Captain's cabin. Right away.' I listened to his reply for a moment. 'I don't give a damn whether or not twenty passengers have just come aboard. I want that coffee here quick.'

Linn Prestrud said, 'Anyone would think you were captain of this ship.'

I took the photograph from her and put it back in the safe.

'They'd be right,' I said. That's just what I am. And it's just what I want to talk to you about.'

I sat her down in a well-worn leather easy-chair and took Captain Prestrud's revolving desk-chair myself.

'Cigarette?'

'Thanks. I don't smoke.'

I couldn't see anything of her father in her features but she had something of his controlled warmth. I found it very attractive.

I said slowly, 'Your father has been injured and he is in hospital…' I gave her a quick run-down on the situation. She listened in shocked silence: when I told her the extent of his head injuries her fingers went to the undone blouse button and subconsciously fastened it, as if trying to shut out the bad news. As I proceeded to tell her the whole story, her eyes misted. I was relieved when the steward arrived with the coffee and sandwiches. I poured her a cup of strong coffee. Her hand trembled as she took the cup. She refused a sandwich.

As soon as the man was gone she said, 'I must get to the hospital right away.'

'I'm afraid there's nothing you can do at the moment,' I said gently. 'I received a call from the hospital just before you arrived. He's in a deep coma now, and they don't expect him to come out of it — not at least until after the operation. He should be in the operating theatre at this moment.'

'I must go just the same. My God, he's my father!' she said, choking with emotion.

I put a hand on her shoulder and told her of my last conversation with him a couple of hours ago. I told her that her father had made me promise to sail on schedule whatever happened to him. I also told her of his last request and my promise to tell her she must sail on Quest as arranged.

Quietly, she picked up her bag, asked me to call a taxi, and said she would be back as soon as she could. She gulped the last of her coffee, and was gone.

When she returned, a couple of hours later, her eyes red with tears, she came straight to my cabin and sat down in the chair she'd occupied earlier. She gave a deep sigh, and apathetic smile.

'I don't know what to call you,' she said. 'I can't really call you Captain…'

'John will do,' I said. 'It's because of your stake in what is basically your father's dream that I want to talk to you.'

'Meaning?'

I was grateful to be deflected from the emotional aspect. She was taking the crisis well.

'What worries me is that I may have promised your injured father something that I had no right to promise.'

'Meaning?' she said again in a voice as faraway as Prince Edward Island.

'I gave your father an assurance that I would take Quest to sea tomorrow on schedule to launch the drifter buoy and balloon. You are as much part of this cruise as he was. I think the decision ought now to be yours.'

'He must have trusted you very much to have asked you that,' she said.

'For the record, I greatly admire and like your father.

But I feel like an actor stepping into someone else's part. I haven't the same motivations.'

She once again fiddled with the top button of her blouse. 'You may think so, John. But when you mentioned the Southern Ocean jut now you talked in quite i different voice. My father must have noticed it too. That's why he asked you to step into his shoes.'

There's no glamour down there in the ice, Linn, whatever the Orbit Travels' sales talk might have been. It's an icy hell which breaks men's bodies as well as their spirits. Prince Edward Island is nothing but one twin of a volcanic peak which had the nerve to stick its head out into the storms. If you want to see what a mere few thousand years of gales can do to solid rock you want to take a look at the western cliffline of the island where it faces the winds. It's the windpipe of the world, down there. Your ship can lie off for a month waiting for one day calm enough to land — if her engines can take it. I've known a destroyer's turbines at full revs unable to make headway of one knot against the wind. I know. I've been there.'

'And you've always gone back.'

I looked into her eyes. Tiredness and grief had receded. They were alive. She had Captain Prestrud's Southern Ocean genes in her.

I went on: 'You must face the fact that your father could die. Today. Tomorrow. Any time. And Quest will belong to you. It's your decision.'

'No,' she said, 'it's not mine alone. It's your decision too. You made up your own mind — and promised my father. But before I make my own decision, there are things I want to know which you haven't yet told me.'

I said, somewhat defensively, 'I've given you all the facts.'

'Facts — but not your impressions. Or your mental reservations.'

I lit another cigarette. So intent had I been on our conversation that I had stubbed out my first, half-smoked, in the ashtray.

I said, 'In the Southern Ocean you can be making your way through seas where you know there shouldn't be ice. Where there can't be ice. But you get a feel, a hunch that it's around. It's often too late even if you can smell it. Your ship's on it before you can put your helm hard over. That's how I feel about this cruise. There's ice about — but I don't know where.'

She looked at me wonderingly. 'You're a strange sort of man for a ship's captain,' she said.

I tried to laugh it off. 'Fanciful, you mean? Let's forget it. For a cruise like this you need a strong ship and strong men and we've got both.'

'No,' she said. 'We can't forget it. You're so worried about the Quest's cruise, and I want to know why.'

'You're going to laugh at this,' I said slowly. 'I'm superstitious. Doesn't fit in the space age, does it? But there it is. I don't like starting a voyage on a Friday.'

She leaned forward impulsively as if to touch my arm, and then withdrew.

That's not the whole of it,' she said. 'A skipper like you wouldn't be put off by superstition alone.' Still I tried to fence. I didn't want to voice my fears.

'Quest's a fine ship but she's old, and above all she isn't ice-strengthened. The later Thai ships that went up the St Lawrence seaway were ice-strengthened. It's very important. Without it a bergy bit on a dark night could tear open the plating as if it were brown paper. Don't forget we've got the lives of thirty passengers and scientists at risk.'

'I don't forget. Go on.'

Rather to my own surprise I did go on. 'There's another thing that's worrying me. It's the man I hired today as first officer. His name's Rolf Wegger. He's the right type, he's got all the right qualifications and he's already proved what he can do. With your father out of action it's essential I should have the right kind of support. There's no doubt that he can give it, but there's something about him I don't understand and don't like.'

'What's the matter with him?'

'I wish I knew. Little inconsistencies — things that don't ring true. He's as tough as they come and yet the sight of some old tanker's name written on a chart threw him into a flat spin. He said it made him feel nostalgic. Then there's Prince Edward Island. He says he's not been there for years but he seems to have some sort of obsession about it.'

It sounded lame and I could see she wasn't impressed. She said, 'Aren't these pretty nebulous grounds for anxiety? Especially at this late stage of things?'

'All I know is, I smell ice. Dangerous ice.'

She stood up. 'Thanks for taking me into your confidence, John. As far as I'm concerned the decision's already been made. As you promised my father, the Quest sails tomorrow.'

I felt as if I had lost her. 'I also promised your father that the dinner he'd planned to mark the anniversary of some wartime escapade he was involved in would go ahead without him.'

Linn said, 'Oh yes, I'd forgotten Captain Jacobsen. He was with Dad at the time. The dinner's for him, too. He'll have to be told about this business. He was on the plane with me.'

'Do you know anything about your father's war-time adventures?' I asked.

'Not very much. He didn't talk about them. I only know he escaped with two other catchers when the Antarctic whaling fleet was captured by a German surface raider.'

'So you don't know any details? Nothing about something he did and later felt guilty about? Nothing about a torpedo?'

'Did he tell you this himself?' she asked quietly.

'Yes, but he may have been delirious. He was in and out of a coma,' I replied. 'That's why I hesitated about my promise to him.'

She came so close that I could see the tiny golden flecks in her eyes. 'He said something else that's eating you, didn't he? Something you haven't told me?'

'Not your father,' I answered, 'but the doctor. He said your father's injuries had been caused by being pistol-whipped.'

Before she could reply, there was a knock at the door and Wegger came in.