Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘He’s gone ashore,’ I said.

‘Ashore? Ashore? How the hell do you know he’s gone ashore?’ Captain Imrie didn’t sound very friendly, but then, he was hardly in a friendly mood.

‘Because I’ve just been up in the camp talking to Mr Harbottle, the electrician. Mr Smith had just been up there.’

‘Up there? He should have been unloading cargo. What the hell was he doing up there?’

‘I didn’t see Mr Smith,’ I explained patiently. ‘So I couldn’t ask him.’

‘What the hell were you doing up there?’

‘You’re forgetting yourself, Captain Imrie. I am not responsible to you. I merely wished to have a word with him before he left. We’ve become quite friendly, you know.’

‘Yes you have, haven’t you?’ Imrie said significantly. It didn’t mean anything, he was just in a mood for talking significantly. ‘Allison!’

‘Sir?’

‘The bo’sun. Search-party ashore. Quickly now, I’ll lead you myself.’ If there had ever been any doubt as to the depth of Captain Imrie’s concern there was none now. He turned back to me but as Otto Gerran and Goin were now standing beside me I wasn’t sure whether he was addressing me or not. ‘And we’re leaving within the half-hour, with Smith or without him.’

‘Is that fair, Captain?’ Otto asked. ‘He may just have gone for a walk or got a little lost – you see how dark it is–’

‘Don’t you think it bloody funny that Mr Smith should vanish just as I discover that a radio over which he’s been claiming to receive messages is smashed beyond repair?’

Otto fell silent but Goin, ever the diplomat, stepped in smoothly.

‘I think Mr Gerran is right, Captain. You could be acting a little bit unfairly. I agree that the destruction of your radio is a serious and worrisome affair and one that is more than possibly, in light of all the mysterious things that have happened recently, a very sinister affair. But I think you are wrong immediately to assume that Mr Smith has any connection with it. For one thing, he strikes me as much too intelligent a man to incriminate himself in so extremely obvious a fashion. In the second place, as your senior officer who knows how vitally important a piece of equipment your radio is, why should he do such a wanton thing? In the third place, if he were trying to escape the consequences of his actions, where on earth could he escape to on Bear Island? I do not suggest anything as simple as an accident or amnesia: I’m merely suggesting that he may have got lost. You could at least wait until the morning.’

I could see Captain Imrie’s fists unballing, not much, just a slight relaxation, and I knew that if he weren’t wavering he was at least on the point of considering, a state of approaching uncertainty that lasted just as long as it took Otto to undo whatever Goin might have been on the point of achieving.

‘That’s it, of course,’ he said. ‘He just went to have a look around.’

‘What? In the pitch bloody dark?’ It was an exaggeration but a pardonable one. ‘Allison! Oakley! All of you. Come on!’ He lowered his voice a few decibels and said to us: ‘I’m leaving within the half-hour, Smith or no Smith. Hammerfest, gentlemen, Hammerfest and the law.’

He hurried down the gangway, half a dozen men close behind. Goin sighed. ‘I suppose we’d better lend a hand.’ He left and Otto, after hesitating for a moment, followed.

I didn’t, I’d no intention of lending a hand, if Smithy didn’t want to be found then he wouldn’t be. Instead I went down to my cabin, wrote a brief note, took the small duffel bag with me and went in search of Haggerty. I had to trust somebody, Smithy’s most damned inconvenient disappearing trick had left me with no option, and I thought Haggerty was my best bet. He was stiff-necked and suspicious and, since Imrie’s questioning of him that morning, he must have become even more suspicious of me: but he was no fool, he struck me as being incorruptible, he was, I thought, amenable to an authoritative display of discipline and, above all, he’d spent twenty-seven years of his life in taking orders.

It was fifteen minutes’ touch and go, but at last he grudgingly agreed to do what I asked him to.

‘You wouldn’t be making a fool out of me, Dr Marlowe?’ he asked.

‘You’d be a fool if you even thought that. What would I have to gain?’

‘There’s that, there’s that.’ He took the small duffel bag reluctantly. ‘As soon as we’re safely clear of the island–’

‘Yes. That, and the letter. To the captain. Not before.’

‘Those are deep waters, Dr Marlowe.’ He didn’t know how deep, I was close to drowning in them. ‘Can’t you tell me what it is all about?’

‘If I knew that, Haggerty, do you think I’d be remaining behind on this godforsaken island?’

For the first time he smiled. ‘No, sir, I don’t really think you would.’

Captain Imrie and his search-party returned only a minute or two after I’d gone back up to the upper deck. They returned without Smithy. I was surprised neither by their failure to find him nor the brevity of their search – an elapsed time of only twenty minutes. Bear Island, on the map, may be only the veriest speck in the high Arctic, but it does cover an area of 73 square miles and it must have occurred to Captain Imrie very early on indeed that to attempt to search even a fraction of one per cent of that icily mountainous terrain in darkness was to embark upon a monumental folly. His fervour for the search had diminished to vanishing point: but his failure to find Smithy had, if anything, increased his determination to depart immediately. Having ensured that the last of the foredeck cargo had been unloaded and that all of the film company’s equipment and personal effects were ashore, he and Mr Stokes courteously but swiftly shook hands with us all as we were ushered ashore. The derricks were already stayed in position and the mooring ropes singled up: Captain Imrie was not about to stand upon the order of his going.

Otto, properly enough, was the last to leave. At the head of the gangway, he said: ‘Twenty-two days it is, then, Captain Imrie? You’ll be back in twenty-two days?’

‘I won’t leave you here the winter, Mr Gerran, never fear.’ With both the mystery and his much-unloved Bear Island about to be left behind. Captain Imrie apparently felt that he could permit himself a slight relaxation of attitude. ‘Twenty-two days? At the very outset. Why, man, I can be in Hammerfest and back in seventy-two hours. I wish you all well.’

With this Captain Imrie ordered the gangway to be raised and went up to the bridge without explaining his cryptic remark about the seventy-two hours. It was more likely than not that what he had in mind at that very moment was, indeed, to be back inside seventy-two hours with, his manner seemed to convey, a small regiment of heavily-armed Norwegian police. I wasn’t concerned: I was as certain as I could be that, if that were indeed what he had in mind, he would change his mind before the night was out.

The navigation lights came on and the Morning Rose moved off slowly northward from the jetty, slewed round in a half-circle and headed down the Sor-hamna, her engine note deepening as she picked up speed. Opposite the jetty again Captain Imrie sounded his hooter – only the captain could have called it a siren – twice, a high and lonely sound almost immediately swallowed up in the muffling blanket of snow: within seconds, it seemed, both the throb of the engine and the pale glow of the navigation lights were lost in the snow and the darkness.

For what seemed quite some time we all stood there, huddled against the bitter cold and peering into the driving snow, as if by willing it we could bring the lights back into view again, the engine throb back into earshot. The atmosphere was not one of voyagers happily arrived at their hoped-for destination but of castaways marooned on an Arctic desert island.