A Grue Of Ice (6 page)

" That landing . .." I began.

She waved me quiet. " It wasn't the landing," she got out, biting her lips. " It's me. Don't be polite. You've
seen me."
"I don't understand," I said.

She spoke so softly I could scarcely hear. "The winches. I forgot. Usually I use one of them to haul me up after a long spell of flying. It gets my hip, you see. There's a bullet in it. I just limp a bit ordinarily. When the flying
is
tough, it gets me. Once I'm on my feet, I'm all right. I always send everyone away."

" Your father shouldn't allow you."

" He doesn't know, and won't know, unless you tell him," she replied. " He must not know. Never. Help me up, please."

She pulled off the flying helmet. Against the stark light and storm-darkened night, her hair could not have been more effectively posed. It was fair and short and curly, dented round her forehead with the pressure of the leather. I put an arm round her. She leaned heavily against me for the first steps along the deck and then walked slowly, with a slight limp, past the bridge to a large chartroom-cum-office. Behind the desk sat a man. A light was at his left shoulder, etching the features.

His face was made of metal.

36

3.
The Secret of the Blue Whale

Incredulity, mixed with revulsion, stopped me as I saw the grey mask. The effect was more startling when he rose and the pewter crinkled into a smile. I could see the laughter-lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. There seemed to be no division between the line of his strangely-coloured forehead and his short, curly grey hair. He was short and stocky, with a sailor's eyes. The change from what I thought would be a deadpan into a warm welcoming smile left me at a loss.

Helen kissed his cheek. " Well, Daddy, I found your man." He took my hand and shook it cordially. " I've spent a lot of time and money on you, Bruce. I'm glad to have you safely aboard."

His immediate use of my Christian name did not offend me,

as it would have with almost anyone else.

" Your daughter did a magnificent piece of rescue work," I said. " I scarcely expected to see the inside of a warm ship's cabin to-night."

He glanced keenly at me. " From what I know, I don't think a night at sea in an open boat would hold much terror for you. Good girl, Helen. I knew you'd find him."

She did not seem to hear. The eyes, so filled with distress in the cockpit, were composed. They were even warm through taking on the colour of the cabin's panelling. Her unspoken attitude was that split-second timing and consummate skill were all in the day's work. It was clear that Upton expected little less than that.

I fumbled for something to say. The mask disconcerted

me.

He laughed. " It gets you down the first time, doesn't it? I never notice it any more. Mine is no beauty, but you should have seen the chap with the silver pan! My God! He shone like a

balloon-sputnik!"

" I'm afraid I don't understand . . ." I faltered. I looked to Helen for help. She was busy rubbing oil off the back of her left hand. She might as well not have been there, she was so remote from our conversation.

" Of course you don't," said Upton in his rapid-fire way. " You can have the medical term for it if you like—argyria. I got it from fooling around with rare metals in Sweden.

37

What happens is that the metal actually passes into your

system. The doctor chappie with the silver face had been

using silver nitrate. He was so self-conscious. We were in

the same sanatorium in Stockholm."

My eyes had accustomed themselves to the light. The cabin was as distinctive as the man. One whole wall was

taken up by a map of Antarctica, and no ordinary map.

It was in relief, and the land contours had been demarcated by intricately inlaid pieces of whalebone. The long spur of Graham Land, which juts out from the ice continent towards Cape Horn, was exquisitely fashioned.

As eye-catching as the map itself were scale models of the ships which had opened up the South. They had been

carved by a master: replicas of clumsy eighteenth-century

British men-o'-war ; of tough British sealers, the originals of which had oaken planks thick enough to withstand pack-ice and roundshot ; of the finer-lined New Bedford whalers ; of the first steamers, aided by sails ; of the armoured icebreakers of to-day. They clustered mainly round where I had operated from during the war, for Graham Land was the

first part of the continent proper to be found. Near my base at Deception was an old brig, and I could read her name—

Williams.
It was in her that Captain William Smith discovered the South Shetlands in 1819. It was Captain Smith who raced to Chile to a British naval officer, Captain Shireff, who realised that the Drake Passage was the key to naval power between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It had been true in

Napoleon's time ; it had been true in my lifetime, too. I had guarded that passage for two years.

Near my old base, too, was a tiny American brig named
Hersilia.
James P. Sheffield had sailed from Connecticut to look for a dream—the legendary, fabulous islands called the Auroras. He failed. But his young second mate, Nat Palmer,

made history by being the first man to put a foot ashore on the Antarctic mainland. A Britisher, Captain Bransfield, holds the distinction—a few days only before Palmer—of being the first man to sight and chart the coast of the Antarctic mainland.

Clustered round the long peninsula, too, were other ships

with strange names:
Vostok
and
Morny,
Russian, among the first ever in those waters ; Captain Cook's immortal

H.M.S.
Resolution
which got nearer to the coast of West Antarctica than any ship since ;
Astrolabe
and
Zelee,
French ; 38

H.M.S.
Erebus
and
Terror,
British ; Shackleton's
Endurance,
a
pitiful wreck crushed in the ice.

In the Weddell Sea, that great bite out of Antarctica which adjoins Graham Land, was shown the epoch-making penetration a hundred and forty years ago by the British

Captain James Weddell in his little ship
lane.
No ship has ever navigated the Weddell Sea as far as Weddell in the same longitude. Weddell was amazed that there was no ice at all

almost within sight of the ice continent. The intrepid captain turned back in clear seas ; all subsequent attempts to pierce the thousands of square miles of solid ice have failed. The map showing Weddell's historic voyage—in clear seas which should have been ice—brought the reason home to me right

then: The Albatross' Foot!

The storm made the factory ship lean at her anchors. Drake Passage! The
Golden Hind,
Sir Francis Drake's flagship, was on the map, fighting her way round Cape Horn. There was almost a physical resemblance between the man

in front of me and the famous Elizabethan. I wondered if Drake had found his tiny cabin aboard the
Golden Hind
big enough for his spirit. This wasn't, for Upton's.

" Sit down," he said. He couldn't seem to get the words out quickly enough. " There's not another map like that anywhere. Are you wet? Get him a drink, Helen. She hauled you up out of the boat?"

I could go along with Upton, I thought. I didn't know what he wanted me for, but among the tough-charactered men the Antarctic throws up, Upton stood out.

Helen went across to the drinks cabinet. " Captain Wetherby believes it was luck. He had a strange bird with

him. It hasn't got any wings, and he says Nightingale Island is the only place in the world where they're found. The rescue was a matter of luck."

There
was
an odd self-rejection about her. I interrupted. " It wasn't luck—it was spot-on, skilled judgment. She rescued the whole boat. What's more, her landing with it lashed to

the side out there on the flensing platform was masterly. Lucky for me, since all my instruments and charts are in the boat."

He looked at me keenly. " They're safe, these things of yours?"

" Y e s , " I r e p l i e d . " I w e n t b a c k t o s e e a f t e r w e h a d landed."

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Helen stood with the drink in her hand, her eyes fixed on me. They were alive with distress. She was begging me not to say what happened.

" It's a strange bird," she said in an even voice. " It makes little appeal at first. It has no flight." She splashed more spirits into the glass without taking her eyes from me. " I don't expect it sings. Perhaps somewhere there is a message in its disdain and isolation."

I could not fathom her. " Ask Sailhardy," I said. " I'll go and fetch my things from the boat."

Upton shook his head. He pressed a button on his desk. A

sailor came in. He spoke rapidly to the man in Norwegian. " Can't lose personal property," he said. In the same jerky way, he clicked off the desk lamp and put on the general cabin lights. It was all Southern Ocean and luxury. A chunk of baleen held down the charts he had been studying ; the central chandelier was made of four seal skulls skilfully matched and joined ; his chair was sealskin stretched over dark timber.

Pirow came in with Sailhardy. Upton nodded perfunctorily

at the islander. " When will the gunner-captain boys be here?" he asked Pirow.

Pirow grinned. " All of them in time for a drink. You can bet on that. They're about as tough a bunch as you could hope to meet in a month's sail round South Georgia." Helen stood with the drink she was pouring for me in her hand. Upton went across to the cabinet. A heavy gust of wind shook the factory ship. I felt uncomfortable. She just stood there with the drink. " I'm glad we got in before
that
started," I said.

" I had a good pilot," she addressed herself to Sailhardy.

" Sailhardy?" asked Upton, his hand on a glass. The islander did not seem to hear him. He was as far away as Helen. I think he half regretted not being out in the gale. Upton repeated the invitation. Sailhardy shook his head. " I like a drink, but food is more important on Tristan. One is only tantalised by alcohol."

Upton shrugged. He took my drink from Helen. " Water in your brandy? I've just come from the Cape. Full cellar of your national drink."

" For the record, I'm not
a
South African," I said. " I've lived there for the past three years. I
was
born within sight of the English Channel. Last of a long line of Wetherbyssailors, explorers, hopeless businessmen." 40

Helen pointed to a group of islands on the map near Graham Land, and to a model ship. " The Wetherbys did more than any private firm in the history of the exploration of the Southern Continent. I would like to know what drove t h e m t o i t " S h e j a b b e d a f i n g e r a t t h e m o d e l . " T h e
Sprightly!"
She lingered over the name. " The first Wetherby's favourite ship."

It slipped out—harmlessly, I thought then. " There was another, and their names are always linked," I said. " The
Lively
and the
Sprightly."

"
Yes," she said. " The
Lively
and the
Sprightly!
You can find them at any place between the Drake Passage and . . ." " Bouvet," I said.

Upton's keen glance seemed more than to study my

appreciation of the fine brandy he had handed me. He slapped together a double dry martini for Helen. He took a

beautifully blown bottle from the cabinet. In everything he did, Upton was the supreme showman. The bottle

contained no liquid. He shook out of it a couple of long, pretzel-like sticks. He took a tiny coffee spoon from a drawer and carefully scraped it full, put the softish scrapings into a glass, and added iced water. He took a metal decanter and put it next to the glass, pouring in a stiff slug of brandy. He set it alight, blew out the spurt of blue flame, raised the decanter, and sipped quickly first from the iced water and then from the hot brandy.

" I've been around," I said, " but I've never seen a drink like that before."

Upton laughed. "I must do this at some place in the Antarctic where they'll find a name for it. The ingredients are scarcely usual."

" Erebus and Terror," I interjected. " You know, the two volcanic peaks in the Ross Sea—belching fire and smoke from the ice."

He roared with laughter. " God, Bruce, what a name for guarana and buccaneers' brandy—Erebus and Terror it shall be!"

Pirow sipped his schnapps reflectively. Sailhardy's thoughts were still outside in the storm.

It was the calm, self-possessed way Helen said it that made me wonder if she was not anything more than a cog in the whirring personal machine which was Upton, overshadowed by him, integrated, whether she liked it or not, in his pursuits. " I don't think Daddy ever got over playing pirates," she said.

41

" Flaming brandy—buccaneers' brandy they called it on the Spanish Main. Morgan drank it."

Daughter filling in the gaps, I thought. That wasn't the whole answer, though. No daughter tortures herself with a bullet in her hip, nor develops such flying skill, just because Daddy says so. Yet her knowledge of the Southern