A Grue Of Ice (23 page)

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

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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."

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" 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

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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

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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."

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" 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.