A Grue Of Ice (29 page)

Upton, Walter and Pirow
made
straight for the hut, but I held back, touching Sailhardy's arm.

162

" I want you to take a look at the catchers," I said. "I left my glasses behind in the factory ship.
Crozet is
easy to pick out because of the helicopter. It seems odd that she's against the ice."

Sailhardy took a long look. " It's not so strange," he said quietly. " She's doing exactly what
Aurora
did to get a steady platform. She's tied up to an iceberg."

" You mean . . ."

" Why should she want a steady platform?" he asked. " She's going to fly off the helicopter."

11. The Roverhullet

My dread, since the loss of the
Antarctica,
that Helen would attempt the impossible with the helicopter, crystallised at Sailhardy's words. The south-west quadrant of the horizon was ominously and unnaturally clear ; what wild eddies would arise above Bouvet's stark cliffs, the only projection in the sea for thousands of miles, when the gale hit them, I could not guess.

" We have got to signal her to keep off!" I said. " There are certain to be some emergency flares in the roverhullet storeroom."

" Look!" he replied.

I, too, caught the flicker of light above the orange splash: the rotors were spinning.

" Quick!" I went on. " She mustn't come close. It would be suicide here." I gestured to the glacier slope behind the hut.

Sailhardy and I ran to the hut, I leading the way to the storeroom. Upton and Walter were examining the stores with satisfaction, and Pirow was busy on his knees trying to get the stove going in the outer room.

" Do you see any flares here?"

Upton's manner changed at my question, and anger started up in his eyes. "
Thorshammer?"

"
No," I said. " Helen is flying off the helicopter. She'll kill herself. I'm going to signal her."

Although it was dim in the store-room, I could see the brightness of Upton's eyes. He moved swiftly over to the harpoon-rack, whipped up one of the old-fashioned weapons,

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and stood with it poised above his head, pointing at Sailhardy and me. " Walter! Here! You know how to use one of these things. You'll stay just where you are, Wetherby!

There will be no signalling anyone, do you understand?"

" But Helen .. ." I protested.

" It's not Helen alone, but the skippers as well," he replied. " They're coming to fetch us because they can't get into Bollevika by sea."

" For God's sake, doesn't your own daughter's life mean anything to you, except that
you may
be caught?" I exclaimed.

" She's a fine flier," he replied defensively. " She knows how to look after herself in the air."

" There's no flier born who is good enough for Bouvet's conditions," I snapped back. " Let me find some flares." Walter balanced another long harpoon from the rack in his massive fist. I had heard it said that he was one of the finest harpoonists in the Southern Ocean. " The harpoon is like a sailing-ship," he said caressingly. " There is no sailor like a sailing-ship sailor. There is no harpoonman like one trained to throw the old harpoons. There is a sense of balance
I
turned to the stacks of cases.
I
never saw Walter move, but the head of the harpoon crashed into the heavy timber within a foot of my face.

Walter stood grinning, another harpoon already in his hand. Sailhardy looked unimpressed, but Upton's face was full of admiration.
I
was shaken by Walter's skill.

" The skippers must have seen us through their glasses come up the pathway," said the islander. " They know we are here—right here in this hut."

" And they have the Schmeisser,"
I
added.

Upton started to laugh.
I
did not like the sound of
it.

"
There are no windows in the roverhullet, are there, Wetherby? Are there, Sailhardy?" He didn't wait for our reply. " No one will move outside the hut—understood? Walter . . ." He grinned again. " How about harpooning something quite new, for a change?"

" The front door will stand wide open," Upton went on. " We'll hear the helicopter overhead. She'll come down low, but I guess Helen won't try and land right away before she sees the lie of the land. Reidar Bull will be in the machine for certain, with his Schmeisser.
He won't expect a
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harpoon to be heaved at him. He'll think he's quite safe with a gun against unarmed men."

Walter held the harpoon head-high and made a lightning dummy-throw. " By God! I like that ! I like that!" he exclaimed.

" Listen, Upton!" I said. " You've already got blood on your hands. You're making things worse. It's only a matter of time before
Thorshammer
arrives. She can lie off the island and shell this hut into oblivion if she wishes." Upton shook his head. " She can, if she wishes," he replied. " But we won't be here. We're going to Thompson Island in

the whaleboat."

" We can also go to Cape Town in the whaleboat," I said sarcastically. " It is simply sixteen hundred miles across the worst seas in the world."

There was another change in Upton's manner. He was

easy and friendly, and he spoke directly to Sailhardy. " You'd sail your boat to Cape Town, wouldn't you, Sailhardy? We could stock her up. There's plenty here ..."

For a moment he caught Sailhardy's imagination with

his curious attractive power of drawing a person out of himself.

" We'd have to half-deck the boat against the waves," Sailhardy said, lost in the dream Upton had conjured up. " But she'd make it. Shackleton sailed seven hundred and fifty miles to South Georgia and his was only an ordinary ship's boat."

" Don't talk nonsense!" I said harshly. " Upton . . ." We heard the roar of the rotors. " Carl!" shouted Upton. " Come here! Don't go outside! Come here, do you hear!"

Pirow came through to the store-room, the unspoken

question dying on his lips when he saw Walter with the harpoon. The hut shook as the machine came low overhead. It could not have been more than thirty feet up. The sound receded, and then returned as the machine came back from the seaward side. The sound hung overhead. The note changed. The machine was coming down. Walter tensed, and then ran quickly forward. I gestured to Sailhardy. With Walter out of the way, Upton with his harpoon by himself was not much threat, and Pirow was unarmed. Sailhardy rushed at Upton. He couldn't handle the harpoon. Sailhardy dodged an

ineffectual thrust and grabbed the weapon from him. I snatched an ice-axe from the rack and rushed after Walter.

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As I darted through the doorway, I saw Walter poise in his stride and lift the harpoon like a javelin-thrower. The helicopter was hanging about fifteen feet above the ground in front of the roverhullet, the nose half pointing towards the doorway. The cabin door was open and in it stood Reidar Bull with the Schmeisser at the ready.

Walter threw. The crackle of the Schmeisser came almost at the same moment, but Walter had dropped on the ground

out of the line of fire and started to roll sideways. In the split second the harpoon took to reach its target, the machine dipped a few feet. It might have been that Helen saw it coming, or it might have been an eddy of wind. The harpoon trailing its short length of rope, arced, and missed Reidar Bull. The steel head and shaft crashed into the spinning rotors.

The rest followed at lightning speed.

I
saw
the bight of rope snick upwards
as
it
became
entangled in the rotors. One moment Reidar Bull was standing firing the automatic pistol, the next the harpoon-rope had snatched off his head. The headless trunk stood, transfixed. I never saw the head fall. The rotors gave a single flailing screech of torn metal like a shot partridge. The headless trunk and the Schmeisser spilled on the ground. A buckled rotor, still under power, bit into the rocky ground and cartwheeled the machine for about thirty yards past the roverhullet into a boulder at the start of the glacier incline. I sprinted to the wreck. Behind the perspex, I could see Helen in her sea-leopard coat slumped over the controls. My raider's glasses, which I had left behind at the factory ship, were suspended round her neck. I hacked through the window with my ice-axe. I jumped through and cut the throttle. The thumping clatter stopped. In my anxiety to get Helen clear before the machine caught fire, I forgot her safety belt. I hacked it free. There was a mark across her forehead and she was unconscious. I picked her up in my arms and staggered clear of the machine.

In front of the roverhullet stood Upton, Pirow, Walter and Sailhardy. Walter cradled the Schmeisser in his huge paws. Behind the group, blood staining the rocks, lay what remained of Reidar Bull.

I carried Helen to them. " Get the stove going," I ordered Pirow. " I don't know how badly she's hurt."

Upton was casual. " She doesn't look too bad."

" You callous bastard .. ." I started to say, but he ignored me.

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" Walter," he went on, " don't hesitate to use it if either Wetherby or Sailhardy starts anything."

" Sir Frederick!" said Pirow. " There's a radio in the helicopter. I'm going to see if it is all right."

" Wait a moment," said Upton. " The machine could still catch fire, although it doesn't seem likely now." He went to the corpse and turned it over with his foot with a measure of cool, pleased appraisal which sickened me.

" For God's sake!" I said. "Sailhardy! Get that stove lighted, will you! And bring some blankets from the store." Upton grinned. " Throw that thing over the cliff," he told Walter. " Here, give me the gun while you do it." Walter hesitated. " Throw him over the cliff!" repeated Upton. " What are you waiting for?"

He balanced himself lightly on the balls of his feet.

Walter shook his head. " There should be some sort of

prayer. After all, just now he was a man. Perhaps the Captain will say one and then I will throw him over."

"Christ!" burst out Upton. " You, Walter! A catcher skipper!"

Walter became surly. " I'd want it that way, if I was lying there, catcher skipper or no bloody catcher skipper."

" Carry on," said Upton. " There'll be no prayers while I'm around."

I did not wait to see Walter perform his grisly task. I

carried Helen inside, and Sailhardy brought some blankets, in which we wrapped her. She was breathing easily, and I could not find any bones broken. Both Sailhardy and I reckoned

she was merely stunned. He also brought from the store-room some pieces of wood, chopped them up, and lit a fire for our immediate warmth on a piece of metal he had also found.

At the same time he started the big stove in the centre of the room. The ice would take hours to melt off the walls.

In ten minutes she stirred. " Helen!" I exclaimed. "Helen!"

"I'll get a sleeping-bag for her and some more wood," said Sailhardy.

She sat up and threw her arms round me. " Bruce, my

darling, my darling!" she sobbed. I held her, but she pulled back suddenly. " Where are your glasses? I brought them from the
Antarctica."

"Yes," I said gently. " They were round your neck and I have them."

" The helicopter, Bruce! Did it catch fire?"

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" No," I said. " But it will never fly again."
I
told her briefly about Reidar Bull.

She seemed paler. " That means we can't get off this

island."

Upton came in. " Yes, indeed we shall. With bits of your helicopter, if not with the whole." He seemed scarcely concerned about her.

Walter followed, Schmeisser in hand.

" What the hell are you talking about now?"
I
asked.

" Get this clear, Wetherby," said Upton. " I am going to Thompson Island in Sailhardy's whaleboat. So are you—all

of us, in fact. I need you to navigate. I need Sailhardy to sail it." He indicated the Schmeisser. " Beyond that, I have no use for you. Remember that."

Sailhardy came back.

" Sailhardy! You have the material now to half-deck your boat. There's all the aluminium you need. How long

will it take?"

Sailhardy put down the wood and looked at me for support.

" A day, maybe. Two, provided the weather doesn't get much worse. We'll have to carry the aluminium down to the beach, and that will be quite a job."

Helen listened in disbelief. " Father!" she said quietly.

" You have cause so much misery already. Drop this idea of yours about Thompson Island. What we need most is warmth, shelter, civilisation."

He burst out laughing. Pirow returned, carrying the

helicopter's radio. " Hear that, Carl,! My daughter wants warmth and civilisation! We've got everything we need for

the moment here, and Thompson Island is forty-five miles

away. Do you think I would give up now?"

Helen recoiled and sat silent. We would make the boat

voyage, all right, I told myself, but when he had failed to find Thompson Island, I could then try and locate
Thorsham-
mer
and give ourselves up. We would be in no shape for anything else, after a few days in an open boat in a Southern Ocean storm.