Southtrap

CHAPTER EIGHT

I let the special ten-year-old Cape brandy trickle slowly out of the screw-stoppered bottle into my glass. It was after dinner that same evening after we had left Africa. Captain Prestrud's cabin — my cabin, I kept telling myself, the man was dead — was hot and stuffy. I had taken off my uniform jacket, my collar was loose. At last I was alone and had a chance to think.

I stopped the brandy at three fingers, and added only a little water so as not to dilute its superb bouquet. I dropped one cube of ice thoughtfully into the drink, then another. A random thought crossed my mind, triggered off by the sight of ice. Where we were going, the fish have their own in-built anti-freeze. I sipped and the brandy warmed my blood. I sat down, sipped again. I wanted to be alone, and yet I did not want to be alone. I looked idly round Captain Prestrud's pictures on the walls, including the fjord scene of Linn's home. They would have to come down. That went also for the preserved tip of a killer whale's fin which hung like a stiff leather triangle over the desk.

I was restive. I moved towards the desk and fingered the fin. The phone rang.

'Wegger here, sir. Sorry to disturb you off duty.'

'No hassle. What's your problem?'

Those cases of explosive charges for blasting a way through the kelp for the boats when we land… I'd like your permission to re-stow 'em.'

'Aren't they safe enough where they are?'

'They're in Number Three hold, sir. I've been down checking. They're stowed above the shaft tunnel, aft the engine-room. It's pretty warm down there tonight. There's the heat from the engine-room and this hot wind. I'd like to bring the cases up to Number Two 'tween decks, where the ventilation's better. It's also easier to get at them there.' v I was to remember that comment later. At the time I endorsed the suggestion. If the hold were anything like as hot as my cabin — which had an open porthole — Wegger's was a sound idea.

'Carry on, Mr Wegger.'

Since the incident earlier in the day over the radio signal Wegger had proved himself a professional. Already the crew was functioning as a team, although I didn't care for his slave-driving methods. This was the second idea that Wegger had had for negotiating the kelp, which blocks Prince Edward like a floating reef. Before the ship had said goodbye to Cape Agulhas he had proposed that we sharpen the leading edges of the propeller on the boat we would be using — weather allowing — to land the shore parties. The sharp edges would serve as a kind of rotary knife to hack a way through the barrier. Kelp is especially thick off the landing-place at Cave Bay, in places up to 50 metres wide. Trying to row through its strangling fronds is for the birds. The idea was to blow a path through the kelp first with small charges of explosive and then negotiate it by means of the boat.

I put down the phone and reached for my drink. There was a knock at the door.

'Come in!'

It was Linn. Her black pants and champagne-coloured tunic made her look slimmer than before. At dinner she had squired the VIPs to the captain's table — my table. The Jacobsens did not put in art appearance. However, captain's tables are not my scene. I had been grateful, for once, to have McKinley around.

Now the tell-tale marks of her grief were skilfully masked by eye-shadow.

She said, 'I'm suffocating. It felt as if the walls of my cabin were closing in on me. Does it mean anything in particular, this frightful sogginess in the air?'

'It goes hand-in-hand with the south-easter. And the Agulhas Bank is one of the worst areas in the world for electrical storms.' I ushered her to a chair. 'A drink — mine's brandy.'

'No brandy, thanks. Something short.'

'Vanderhum? Might as well keep it in the Cape family.'

That will do fine.'

I fixed the drink and said, 'I'm glad you came, Linn. I was in a miscellaneous mood. I don't know where to start my thinking.'

She pulled a coin from her pants pocket and laid it between us on the desk-top. It was a Krugerrand, the South African coin which contains exactly one fine ounce of gold.

I picked it up. It was warm — warm from her groin where her pocket was, a surge of my pulse told me.

I said lightly, 'Now you're compounding my confusion.'

She eyed me over the rim of her liqueur glass. 'When the old Norsemen set out on voyages into the unknown they buried a gold coin in the step of their mast to bring them good luck. Can you find a similar place for this?'

I couldn't see myself boring a hole into the Quest's utilitarian mast — it was more a crane than a mast — and attempting to conceal the coin. At today's gold price it would be a healthy lucky dip for any crewman who might spot it.

Wegger and his boat were still in my mind. 'I'll tell you what I'll do — I'll salt it away in the mast of the launch we'll be using for the shore parties at Prince Edward.'

'You're not just fobbing me off? You're not laughing at me, John?'

She seemed very small, vulnerable and so alone. She looked into her glass and added: 'The voyage came unstuck right at the start — didn't it — except for that little time on deck before the message came about Dad's death.'

So the bells had rung for her, too.

'A bad beginning can mean a good end,' I replied. 'There's no reason why the trip shouldn't go off smoothly from now on. We've got a good ship and a good crew. Everything's running like clockwork.'

'That's what you say, but do you really believe it, John?'

I side-stepped the question. 'I didn't see Captain Jacobsen at dinner. How did he take the news of your father's death?'

'Badly, I'm afraid. It was a traumatic occasion for both of us. I felt I had to be the one to break it to him.'

'You don't evade your responsibilities, Linn.'

'Mrs Jacobsen wasn't pleased — I think my news could have aggravated that heart condition of his.'

'What did he say when you told him?'

'"Now there's no point in going on" — something like that.'

'Anything else?'

'Why do you ask, John?'

'I can't get your father's last words out of my mind. Or rather, not so much his words, as what he was trying to say but couldn't. I'm quite sure he wanted to explain something about that war-time business. And Jacobsen was one of the three captains who escaped.'

Linn put down her glass. 'When you meet Captain Jacobsen you'll find he's not the talkative kind. In fact, he's pretty dour and reserved. After he said that about no point going on he just sat and stared for a long time. Then he muttered something that sounded like, "It's not far from where it all happened — the position for launching the weather buoy. About a day and a half's steaming."'

'What was he driving at, Linn?'

'I don't know. After that his face went purplish, and then very white. Mrs Jacobsen rushed for his heart pills and shooed me out.'

I poured myself another brandy. 'Does it strike you, Linn, that Jacobsen is now the last skipper alive of the three who were involved in that war-time escape? The other two — your father and a man called Torgersen — are both dead.'

She answered so softly I could scarcely hear. 'Murdered.'

'It doesn't make sense,' I went on. 'There's a gap of about thirty years between the two deaths. If they really are linked, and someone is bent on taking revenge…'

'But why, John? In God's name, why? My father never did anything wrong…'

I recalled the dying man's words about doing something which seemed right at the time. I looked at Linn's strained face and decided not to mention it. My mind went on to Captain Prestrud's final words.

'Linn, you were telling me Dina's Island is Prince Edward…'

'It was never actually called Dina's Island. The name figures on some eighteenth-century charts, that's all. Captain Cook's name for it, Prince Edward, has always been the one in general use.'

'Which adds to the puzzle, Linn. Your father's last words to me were, "Stay away from Dina's Island."'

She stared at me. 'Are you sure you heard right?'

'Quite sure. He said that very clearly. But why should he, when the whole purpose of this cruise — and apparently a life-time ambition of his own — was to get to Dina's Island, in other words, Prince Edward? And why should he call it by a name which it took you ages to unearth in the archives? How did he know the name? It doesn't add up, Linn.'

She stood up. 'Let's go on deck and get some air. These walls are beginning to close in too.'

Once we had got clear of the shelter of the lifeboat deck I took her arm to steer her towards the stern. Our eyes were not yet fully adjusted to the darkness. I kept close to the rail to avoid a newly-painted red patch on the deck.

'What's that, John?' she asked.

'They're supposed to be markings for a deck quoits court, but in fact they have an ulterior purpose.'

The outline on the deck was like a miniature helicopter landing-pad.

'I don't like the colour of Quest,' I told her. 'White's all right for a fine-weather cruise. Nice and yachty, like in the magazines. But it's too near the colour of ice. If this ship ran into trouble down South she'd be mighty hard to spot by air search. I'm hedging my safety bets — this red patch and the Quest's red lifeboats combined would be visible from a search plane twenty kilometres away.'

She shivered and was silent.

We went aft. At the rail by the jackstaff above the stern a bare-footed man in crumpled running shorts and towel singlet was getting ready to throw something overboard. It looked like a hooped butterfly net with a bottle wedged in its end, and it had a weight attached.

He said, without preliminary, 'We're travelling much too fast for me to collect anything, really. But I go on hoping.' He pitched the thing untidily over the side and gestured at the water.

'That's what I'm after.'

Little globes of luminosity were passing along the ship's side beneath the water. The Quest appeared to be skimming on ballbearings of warm light.

'Nothing very unusual, but they never fail to thrill me-jelly-fish.'

He straightened up and laughed. A stray wisp of hair couldn't hide his receding hairline.

They say all oceanographers are nuts. Or is it oceanologists? I never know. Maybe I am. But you can't live in the presence of great mysteries without some of them rubbing off on you. I'm Toby Trimen.'

He tugged at the dip-net and gave a small whoop. 'Got him!'

Deftly he swung the net clear of the ship's side and manoeuvred it upright. Then he rummaged inside the muslin-like material and towing bridles and untied the tapes that held a collecting-jar in position at its rear, and showed us the bottle containing the sea-creature. It looked like a beautiful pale pink toadstool, except that it had trailing tentacles. It was all aglow.

'Noctiluca — light of the night,' Toby Trimen said. 'Poor thing! He's still trying to get orientated after what I've done to him.'

Linn smiled at his enthusiasm. 'Did he tell you.that?'

Toby made a gesture which took in the whole sea as far as the South Pole. His eyes were as limpid as new ice.

'It's not sea or ice or creatures but a wonderful — an enormous wonderland,' he said. 'It's so full of wonders that it makes me breathless. Look, our jelly-fish is getting orientated. He's got the most wonderful built-in gadget inside him to tell which way up he is. Just like a plane's blind-flying instruments — would you believe it?'

He saw from our polite amusement that we didn't. He plucked the jelly-fish delicately out of the bottle and continued, 'Inside this umbrella, which is his top, is his self-righting gear. When he tilts, there's a small ball which rolls around inside and touches nerves which automatically stabilize him. It's a miracle in itself. If you were an atheist, you'd be cured if you knew just half of the master plan there is among the creatures in these seas.'

He put the jelly-fish back in the bottle and held up his hands like a showman. They were all aglow from handling the creature. Then he bent down and scrawled 'Quest' on the deck with the luminous slime, straightened up again, and grinned at us.

'D'you see the jelly-fish's trailing tentacles? At the base of each one there's a group of cells which is sensitive to light. If I once start on the mysteries of phosphorescence you'll… you'll…' he was at a loss for words. 'It's what scientists don't know about it that's even more wonderful still. The photophores — those are the light-giving mechanisms on sea creatures — are so engineered, so perfectly planned…'He shook his head like a diver coming up from a deep dive. 'It's a miracle. They've found out that the light's produced by a substance called luciferin plus oxygen reacting in the company of an enzyme named luciferase…'

He laughed back his own exuberance. 'See why they say we oceanographers are nuts? Why, even the krill are packed with wonders. They're those tiny creatures which are the basic diet of whales. Their sex-life is the most delicate and lovely thing I know — the male has a special very complex little hand complete with minute fingers, and with this he takes a little flask of sperm to the female during courtship…' He turned away, as if he realized he was over-reaching himself, and pitched the jelly-fish carefully into the sea.

Then he resumed in a much more matter-of-fact voice. 'With conditions like these tonight, we could get a superb display of phosphorescence. But it seems to need a sort of trigger to set the whole sea alight. If you suddenly switch on a ship's radar, for instance, it's enough to do it. No one knows why it does, but it does.'

Linn said, with a twitch of her lips, 'Why don't you ask the captain to switch it on then?'

'I wish I could.'

'He's standing in front of you.'

'You're kidding!' he replied. 'If I'd known…'

'Don't panic,' I assured him. 'I don't eat passengers. The radar should start working any time now. We're approaching the tanker lanes and if there's anything that needs watching with radar, human eyes, directionfinders, the lot, it's super-tankers. They'll mow you down without batting an eyelid…'

Suddenly the sea switched on as if my words had liberated light. The whitecaps of the day's gale became vivid lantern-bearers of the night, rippling, foaming, recurving in fantastic shapes. The churning screw threw up a wide wake of what looked like a billion Bunsen-bumers of blue-green flame. The water which burst from the Quest's sharp cutwater was softer in colour than bursting napalm, harsher than phosphorus. All the waters to the horizon were a welter of living and moving light.

Toby Trimen's recital of the scientific names of the creatures staging this fabulous display sounded like an incantation: 'Ceratium! Peridinium! Noctiluca!'

Linn whispered to me, as if speaking louder would destroy the magic, 'John — have you ever seen anything like this before?'

I found myself whispering back. 'Once. Further South. Not anything as spectacular as this, though.'

'It's fabulous… it's… there are no words…'

It was I, however, who was at a loss for words at what followed. As we stood entranced, there was a series of loud clicks: the Quest's masts, derricks, wire stays, the oval of the stack, the extremities of the deckhouses and bridge, the radar and D/F aerials all lighted up, each a flaming point of light. The clicking reverberated like a chorus of ten thousand beetles.

I wheeled round to face Linn and Toby Trimen. Linn's fine hair was surrounded by the sort of golden halo you see on old frescoes in Italy; the fire crackled off the oceanographer's auburn top-knot and contrasted with the jelly-fish's luminous slime on his hands. Then there.came striding towards us the figure of Miss Auchinleck, who had materialized out of the blackness of the stern. She looked like a devil with a flaming poniard in her mouth: the discharge spat off the end of her cigarillo-holder.

The sight of her brought me back to earth.

'John!.. what's happening?' gasped Linn.

I answered a little unsteadily, as the unburning flames enveloped the ship. 'St Elmo's Fire! I've only heard about it — never seen it. It's caused by the buildup of electricity… it's discharging from every point of the ship…'

Toby Trimen began to laugh; he looked like a fire-eater breathing out little bursts of blue-green.

I went on, 'What's happened is that the Quest has become the conductor for a big electrical build-up in the atmosphere — that's why it was so oppressive all evening. It's a natural phenomenon — no need to be scared. It looks bad, but it won't last…'

'But that noise, John!'

It sounded like foil being crumpled by a thousand hands.

That's the sound of the discharge. I believe it's harmless. But I'm worried about the radio and other instruments. It could damage them…'

Persson came sprinting along the deck, trailing fire like a jet's afterburner.

'Sir! Sir! What's happening! The radio's gone — it nearly burst my eardrums — everything's blown — '

I repeated my explanation and added quickly. 'It'll pass. There's nothing to be done until it does.'

The Quest was a fiery ship slicing through a burning sea; the firmament above our heads was black, except where Orion's belt cut it like a sword. Toby Trimen held up a hand in astonishment — it pulsed flame from the tip of each finger and thumb.

I told them, 'St Elmo's Fire is believed to bring a ship bad luck. At any rate the U-boat aces of the last war thought so. One of the greatest of them — Kretschmer — found his U-boat enveloped in St Elmo's Fire just before it was sunk.'

'I think they were wrong, John,' said Linn in a strange, subdued voice. 'Look at that.'

She gestured astern of the ship. Holding position effortlessly above the jackstaff was a Wandering Albatross. He was the biggest I have ever seen. He must have measured four metres from wing-tip to wing-tip. As. he came into the ship's field of discharge, the individual feathers of his great wings stood out clearly demarcated. Each one became a tiny muzzle of soft flame which he aimed at us.

Linn took my arm and held me to her, so that I felt the softness of her breast against my upper arm.

'It looks — holy!' she burst out.

The great bird lifted slightly as an updraught from the stack eddied in his direction. For a moment he hung there, the silent and luminous ambassador of the Southern Ocean.

Then everything went black.

The St Elmo's Fire had shut off as swiftly and dramatically as it had come. My eyes were still dazzled and I couldn't see the length of the Quest's deck.

Then, as my eyes accustomed themselves to the change, I saw that the sea still flamed — a softer glow, a gentle feminine thing alongside the harshness of St Elmo.

The Quest drove on into the blue-green ocean with its million lances and bickers of light. After a while this, too, began to fade, not suddenly but slowly, as the ship drew clear of the phosphorescent patch. Then finally we were in the night again.