A Grue Of Ice (3 page)

" You know my story," I said briefly. " When the war was done, I brought H.M.S.
Scott
back to Tristan to take home the radio station men. I was demobbed. I did everything to get back to Tristan. The first freighter back was two years later-1948. I was aboard.
You
know. I spent that year with you searching for The Albatross' Foot. I spent every

penny I had. You know the result—nil. I went back to the

Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge. Three years ago they sent me to South Africa to act as liaison officer to the expeditions going South. A shore job, but at least there was no land between me and the Antarctic."

Sailhardy grinned. " Except Bouvet."

" Except Bouvet. I used to listen endlessly to the radio talk of the whalers down south. Then a year ago a short

message from a Norwegian catcher to her factory ship told

me what I wanted to hear."

" What did she say?" he asked.

" Her name was
Kos
47," I said. " She was about two hundred miles south of Bouvet. She said: Ì have never seen anything like this. The ice
is
breaking up as far as the eye can see. It's exploding before our eyes.' I had waited all the years since the
Meteor
sank, for something like that, Sailhardy."

" Did the factory ship realise its significance?" Sailhardy asked excitedly.

" I thought it wise to suppress her reply to the skipper of
Kos
47 when I flew back to London to try and persuade the Royal Society to give me the chance of investigating The

Albatross' Foot," I said wryly.

" What did she say?"

" Finsen,' said the factory ship, if you don't lay off the bloody booze before breakfast, I'll give you a shore

job cutting up whale's guts,' " I replied.

He grinned. " The Royal Society wouldn't have cared

for that."

" It was difficult enough to persuade them that there was any substance in the story of The Albatross' Foot. It

took a hell of a lot of talk. This scholarship runs for one year, and it's not worth much—only a thousand pounds. I'

ve already lost two and a half months getting to Tristan.

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I
was just plain lucky that the South Africans were sending out a relief ship to the radio station."

" But Bouvet . . ." Sailhardy demanded.

I shrugged. " But Bouvet!" I echoed. " They wouldn't hear of it. No ships go there. It would have meant a special charter, a special expedition. Neither the Royal Society nor myself could raise tens of thousands of pounds for anything on that scale. No, • Sailhardy, even if
I
prove the Tristan prong of The Albatross' Foot, I can't ever hope to prove the Bouvet one."

" You could try and collect reports from the catchers far south ..." he began rather helplessly.

" You can imagine the reaction of tough catcher captains, can't you?" I said. " It isn't practical. My theory is simple: two great warm currents strike down towards Bouvet, one from the Atlantic side and the other from the Indian Ocean

side of Africa, and link up in the neighbourhood of Bouvet. The Atlantic one is ours here at Tristan. That's the theory, anyway. The combined warm currents then break open the pack-ice which forms in winter between Bouvet and the Antarctic mainland. It not only breaks it up—it clears the sea for four hundred and fifty miles. It is, in fact, the whole mechanism which holds the Antarctic ice at bay. It is as important to South America, South Africa and Australia as the Gulf Stream is to the United States. It's the most exciting thing that happens in the world's oceans, the most dramatic. It is completely unknown."
I
tugged at the line to my net. " A hell of a lot depends on this one little net. Otherwise, it
is
likely to remain completely unknown."

I
started to haul in the deep-level net.
It
came up. Something kicked feebly. It must have been a fish, because

it came out of the sea. It had a peculiar flat head and a protruding beak. The etiolated tail looked as if it had been put through a mangle. The underlying colour was lead, but

near the surface the skin was a phosphorescent shocking pink. The eyes .

!

My exclamation brought Sailhardy over.
The
fish's eyes pointed in one direction only—upwards. It was horrible. It

gazed as if in supplication. It was about eighteen inches long. I held it at arm's length and I saw that the eyes were fixed to look permanently upwards.

Sailhardy stopped me from throwing it overboard. He

took it and held it affectionately. The upturned, dying eyes winced in the sun.

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" This is it, Bruce," he said quietly.

The thing writhed in his grip.

" This is an abyssal fish," he went on. " It comes from the deeps. He looks up—to see his food above him. He lives only on plankton."

" Plankton!" I exclaimed. " There wasn't a sign of plankton!" He went as taut as
a
jib sheet in a blow. His eyes were on something near the kelp barrier of Tristan.

" Longfin!" he said with satisfaction. " Longfin! And bluefin!"

There was nothing in sight except Tristan, which seemed

hazier. Clouds were starting to lock round the old volcano. " What is it, man?" I exclaimed.

" Tunny," he replied. " Tunny."

There was a momentary flash from the surface of the sea

near the kelp barrier.

" That was the forward fin of a tunny," he said crisply. " His aft dorsal fin stays erect, but the forward one he can fold and unfold at will. He does so when he wants to
make a
quick turn. He shoots it upright for a moment and swings round hard on it. The tunny wouldn't be doing it unless they were feeding—and feeding hard. That means . .."

" The Albatross' Foot," I said. " My God, Sailhardy!"

" Here it comes," he said excitedly. " Look, Bruce, look at the seals! They're grabbing the tunny !"

It was more dramatic than I had ever imagined it to be. As the warm current swept round the southern point of Tristan, the sea boiled with the commotion
as
the seals fought the longfin.

Sailhardy looked wistfully at the staccato glints. " If we had some Japanese longlines, we'd be able to bring them up from as deep as seventy fathoms," he said.

" I still want eighty-eight million plankton in my net," I grinned.

" You won't have to wait long," he replied. " Maybe half an hour. There's no hurry. It will go on like this for weeks."

" Weeks?"

" When I was twelve," he said, " we nearly all died of starvation on Tristan. You know how it is—without fish, we couldn't live. The kelp got some sort of disease and the crawfish disappeared."

The islanders rely on the inshore crawfish and deepwater

Blue Fish as a perennial source of food. With seabirds' eggs and mollymawk chicks, it is their main diet. I could imagine the week-by-week cutting of their starvation rations.

" We stuck it for a year," Sailhardy went on. " Then it . came—The Albatross' Foot. I was so weak I could scarcely pull an oar. We hauled in some of the biggest bluefin that

day I have ever seen—some of them up to two hundred and

fifty pounds."

We were standing with our backs to the west, watching the current and its creatures sweep towards us.

It hit us then. Sailhardy's guard was down. The Southern Ocean waits for that in a man. We had overlooked the unsleeping menace. Thank God Sailhardy had untied the mainsail halliard from the boat's ribs. The force of the wind seemed to pick up the light craft and toss it bodily sideways against the unyielding sea. I started to shout a warning. Sailhardy never heard. I swung to face it—a searing, breath-robbing mask of spindrift, salt and foam choked me. Something scaly hit me. It could have been a dead bird or

fish. I spat out its briny clamminess. Tristan vanished. I

could not see Sailhardy. The wind reached inside my windbreaker. I fought against being lifted. I tried to fall down, but the wind held me upright, like a man falling free in space. I hooked one foot under the tiller. The boat seemed to lift with me. I was torn loose. As I went over the side a noose

and bowline slid over my chest. I found myself dragged against the daubed canvas side of the boat.

I still couldn't see Sailhardy. He was crouched away from the wind under the bulwarks. I grabbed the gunwale. Sailhardy's arm reached over and held me. A jerk, and the bowline was a steel band round my chest. Then I was gasping on the gratings.

Sailhardy knelt beside me. An inch of water sloshed in the bottom of the boat. It was useless trying to speak, even to shout. In the brief time it had taken him to get me aboard, his ocean-bred survival instincts were at work. The same titanic challenge of the storm had been thrown at the

men of New England when they had broken open the ice continent in their clumsy, stinking New Bedford sealers a century and a half ago. On their way they had rested at Tristan—

and sired sea-chasteners like Sailhardy.

He fought the wild object which I identified as the mainsail. I saw the sweat break out on his forehead as he held the bucking thing. He half knelt, his arm about it. The animated 22

fabric jumped and thrust to break his iron hold. I lay and

retched salt water. The splintered strake worked along the cracks. I was numb with shock and the tumult. I saw what

was frustrating Sailhardy, and tilting our lives in the balance: the mainsail halliards ran through holes bored through the mast. One had snarled up, and the islander could not get at it. I edged along the gratings and got my fingers to it. It whipped free. In a moment Sailhardy had the sail captive and lashed a bight of rope round it. The boat lay over on its port side. The sea poured in.

Sailhardy gestured me to bale. I snatched up a home-made pottery bowl containing our meal—the cooked mollymawk chicks floated pathetically in the rising waters I baled frantically. Then, as if stunned by its own disbursement of force the gale cut off.

" We're right behind the line of Inaccessible Island, and it'

s making a kind of huge slipstream," said Sailhardy. The normal modulation of his speech was doubly startling in the quiet. "In a moment we'll catch it again! Get the water out of her, for the sake of all that is holy!"

Although it was still light where we were, it was dark half a mile away. We soared sickeningly and fell into the troughs of the swell.

Sailhardy looked grave. " We must run for Nightingale Island," he said. " Inaccessible is right into the teeth of the storm, and we've been blown too far ever to hope to regain

Tristan again."

" What if we miss Nightingale?" I said. The light was brindled by flowing spume ahead.

"If we keep afloat, we could be blown for a thousand miles before the gale eases," he replied. " There's five gallons of water, and a few mollymawk chicks to eat." He looked sombre. " If I miss the beach at Nightingale, I'm going to spill her over and drown us both. It's better that way."

From my knees as I baled I looked up into the lean face. I

knew he meant it.

" Reef that foresail right down," he said tersely. " We may be lucky and get another lull. That's the way they come from the Drake Passage."

The rag of sail slatted in the trough of each wave and parachuted at the crest. The slipstream ended. The gale hit us again like a piston. How Sailhardy steered in that

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wild vociferation of untrammelled force, I do not know. The boat arced towards the sky in wild genuflexions. I held on to the mast and tried to manage the fragment of sail which kept her upright. I knew then why sailors speak with a special note in their voices about a Tristan whaleboat. She was superb. Even in my fear I felt some of Sailhardy's exhilaration at the storm's challenge. Under his hands, the frightened composition of wood and canvas wheeled up to the top of each comber and then, in the welter at the top, Sailhardy held her as she shied and started to break away. The descent was terrifying.

Sailhardy threw an arm forward, pointing. There, a

sinister tower ringing death from the tocsin which clanged round its black cliffs, was Nightingale Island. White gouts burst from its cliffs like signal guns as the water climbed in awe-provoking slow motion up the black granite. Behind a barrier of kelp and sea-bamboo was the beach. The boat swung heavenwards. Sailhardy wrenched one arm from the tiller and threw it across his eyes. Something black hit him. The boat, out of control, started a toboggan run down the wave. Sailhardy regained control. I was crawling to his assistance, but stopped short. The bird was shiny black, with fiery bloodshot eyes. It looked like something conjured up by a sick mind to match the contortion of nature about us. I gazed unbelievingly. There was something wrong. It had no