Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

There were five structures here altogether, all of them set a considerable distance apart – as far as the shoulder of the hill beyond the escarpment would permit. Little as I knew of the Arctic, I knew enough to understand the reason for this spacing: here, where exposure to cold is the permanent and dominating factor of life, it is fire which is the greatest enemy, for unless there are chemical fire-fighting appliances to hand, and there nearly always are not, a fire, once it has taken hold, will not stop until everything combustible has been destroyed: blocks of ice are scarcely at a premium when it comes to extinguishing flames.

Four small huts were set at the corners of a much larger central block. According to the rather splendid diagram Heissman had drawn up in his manifesto, those were to be given over, respectively, to transport, fuels, provisions and equipment: I was not quite sure what he meant by equipment. Those were all square and windowless. The central and very much larger building was of a peculiar starfish shape with a pentagonal centrepiece and five triangular annexes all forming an integral whole: the purpose of this design was difficult to guess, I would have thought it one conducive to maximum heat-loss. The centrepiece was the living, dining and cooking area: each arm held two tiny bare rooms for sleeping quarters. Heating was by electric oil-filled black heaters bolted to the walls, but until we got our own portable generator going we were dependent on simple oil stoves: lighting was by pressurized Coleman kerosene lamps. Cooking, which was apparently to consist of the endless opening and heating of contents of tins, was to be done on a simple oil stove. Otto, needless to say, hadn’t brought a cook along: cooks cost money.

With the notable exception of Judith Haynes everyone, even the still groggy Allen, worked willingly and as quickly as the unfamiliar and freezing conditions would permit: they also worked silently and joylessly, for although no one had been on anything approaching terms of close friendship with Halliday, the news of his disappearance had added fresh gloom and apprehension to a company who believed themselves to be evilly jinxed before even the first day of shooting. Stryker and Lonnie, who never spoke to each other except when essential, checked all the stores, fuel, oil, food, clothing, arctizing equipment – Otto, whatever his faults, insisted on thoroughness: Sandy, considerably recovered now that he was on dry land, checked his props, Hendriks his sound equipment, the Count his camera equipment, Eddie his electrical gear, and I myself what little medical kit I had along. By three o’clock, when it was already dusk, we had everything stowed away, cubicles allocated and camp-beds and sleeping-bags placed in those: the jetty was now quite empty of all the gear that had been unloaded there.

We lit the oil stoves, left a morose and muttering Eddie – with the doleful assistance of the Three Apostles – to get the diesel generator working and made our way back to the Morning Rose , myself because it was essential that I speak to Smithy, the others because the hut was still miserably bleak and freezing whereas even the much-maligned Morning Rose still offered a comparative haven of warmth and comfort. Very shortly after our return a variety of incidents occurred in short and eventually disconcerting succession.

At ten past three, totally unexpectedly and against all indications, the conning-tower fitted snugly over the flange of the midship section. Six bolts were immediately fitted to hold it in position – there were twenty-four altogether – and the work-boat at once set about the task of towing the unwieldy structure into the almost total shelter offered by the right angle formed by the main body of the jetty and its north-facing arm.

At three-fifteen the unloading of the foredeck cargo began and, with Smithy in charge, this was undertaken with efficiency and dispatch. Partly because I didn’t want to disturb him in his work, partly because it was at that moment impossible to speak to Smithy privately, I went below to my cabin, removed a small rectangular cloth-bound package from the base of my medical bag, put it in a small purse-string duffel bag and went back on top.

This was at three-twenty. The unloading was still less than twenty per cent completed but Smithy wasn’t there. It was almost as though he had awaited my momentary absence to betake himself elsewhere. And that he had betaken himself elsewhere there was no doubt. I asked the winchman where he had gone, but the winchman, exclusively preoccupied with a job that had to be executed with all dispatch, was understandably vague about Smithy’s whereabouts. He had either gone below or ashore, he said, which I found a very helpful remark. I looked in his cabin, on the bridge, in the chart-house, the saloon and all the other likely places. No Smithy. I questioned passengers and crew with the same result. No one had seen him, no one had any idea whether he was aboard or had gone ashore, which was very understandable because the darkness was now pretty well complete and the harsh light of the arc lamp now rigged up to aid unloading threw the gangway into very heavy shadow so that anyone could be virtually certain of boarding or leaving the Morning Rose unnoticed.

Nor was there any sign of Captain Imrie. True, I wasn’t looking for him, but I would have expected him to be making his presence very much known. The wind was almost round to the south-south-east now and still freshening, the Morning Rose was beginning to pound regularly against the jetty wall with a succession of jarring impacts and a sound of screeching metal that would normally have had Imrie very much in evidence indeed in his anxiety to get rid of all his damned passengers and their equipment in order to get his ship out to the safety of the open sea with all speed. But he wasn’t around, not any place I could see him.

At three-thirty I went ashore and hurried up the jetty to the huts. They were deserted except for the equipment hut where Eddie was blasphemously trying to start up the diesel. He looked up as he saw me.

‘Nobody could ever call me one for complaining, Dr Marlowe, but this bloody–’

‘Have you seen Mr Smith? The mate?’

‘Not ten minutes ago. Looked in to see how we were getting on. Why? Is there something–’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘About where he was going? What he was doing?’

‘No.’ Eddie looked at the shivering Three Apostles, whose blank expressions were of no help to anyone. ‘Just stood there for a couple of minutes with his hands in his pockets, looking at what we were doing and asking a few questions, then he strolls off.’

‘See where he went?’

‘No.’ He looked at the Three Apostles, who shook their heads as one. ‘Anything up, then?’

‘Nothing urgent. Ship’s about to sail and the skipper’s looking for him.’ If that wasn’t quite an accurate assessment of how matters stood at that moment, I’d no doubt it would be in a very few minutes. I didn’t waste time looking for Smithy. If he had been hanging around with apparent aimlessness at the camp instead of closely supervising the urgent clearing of the foredeck, which one would have expected of him and would normally have been completely in character, then Smithy had a very good reason for doing so: he just wanted, however temporarily, to become lost.

At three-thirty-five I returned to the Morning Rose . This time Captain Imrie was very much in evidence. I had thought him incapable of becoming frantic about anything, but as I looked at him as he stood in the wash of light at the door of the saloon I could see that I could have been wrong about that. Perhaps ‘frantic’ was the wrong term, but there was no doubt that he was in a highly excitable condition and was mad clear through. His fists were balled, what could be seen of his face was mottled red and white, and his bright blue eyes were snapping. With commendable if lurid brevity he repeated to me what he’d clearly told a number of people in the past few minutes. Worried about the deteriorating weather – that wasn’t quite the way he’d put it – he’d had Allison try to contact Tunheim for a forecast. This Allison had been unable to do. Then he and Allison had made the discovery that the transceiver was smashed beyond repair. And just over an hour or so previously the receiver had been in order – or Smith had said it was, for he had then written down the latest weather forecast. Or what he said was the latest weather forecast. And now there was no sign of Smith. Where the hell was Smith?