Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

But to keep an eye on Heissman I had first of all to find him and Heissman, inconveniently and most annoyingly, was nowhere to be seen. The intention, as I had understood it, was that he, with Jungbeck and Goin, should cruise the Sor-Hamna in the sixteen-footer, in search of likely background material. But there was no trace of their boat anywhere in the Sor-Hamna and from where I stood in the vicinity of the cabin I could take in the whole sweep of the bay at one glance. Against the remote possibility that the boat might have temporarily moved in behind one of the tiny islands on the east side of the bay I kept the glasses on those for a few minutes. Nothing stirred. Heissman, I was sure, had left the Sor-Hamna.

He could have moved out to the open sea to the cast by way of the northern tip of the island of Makehl, but this seemed unlikely. The northerly seas were whitecapped and confused, and apart from the fact that Heissman was as far removed from the popular concept of an intrepid seaman as it was possible to imagine it seemed unlikely that he would have forgotten Smithy's warning the previous day about the dangers inherent in taking an open-pooped boat out in such weather. Much more likely, I thought, he'd moved south out of the Sor-Hamna into the sheltered waters of the next bay to the south, the Eviebukta.

I, too, made my way south. Initially, I moved in a southwesterly direction to give the low cliffs of the bay as wide a berth as possible, not from any vertiginous fear of heights but because Hendriks and the Three Apostles were down there somewhere recording, or hoping to record, the cries of the kittiwake gulls, the fulmars, the black guillernots which were reputed to haunt those parts: I had no reason to fear anything at their hands, I just didn't want to go around arousing too much curiosity.

The going, diagonally upwards across a deceptively easy-looking slope, proved very laborious indeed. Mountaineering ability was not called for, which in view of my lack of expertise or anything resembling specialised equipment, was just as well: what was required was some form of in-built radar to enable me to detect the presence of hidden fissures and sudden dips in the smooth expanse of white, and in this, unfortunately, I was equally lacking, with the result that I fell abruptly and at fairly regular intervals into drifts of newly formed snow that at times reached as high as my shoulders. There was no physical danger in this, the cushioning effect of newly driven snow is almost absolute, but the effort of almost continuously extricating myself from those miniature ravines and struggling back up to something resembling terra firma-which even then had seldom less than twelve or fifteen inches of soft snow-was very wearing indeed. If it were so difficult for me to make progress along such relatively simple ground I wondered how Smithy and Heyter must be faring in the so much more wildly rugged mountainous terrain to the north.

It took me just on an hour and a half to cover less than a mile and arrive at a vantage point of a height of about five hundred feel? that enabled me to see into the next bay-the Evjebukta. This wide U-shaped bay, stretching from Kapp Malmgren in the northeast to Kapp Kolthoff in the southwest, was just over a mile in length and perhaps half of that in width: the entire coastline of the bay consisted of vertical cliffs, a bleak, forbidding, and repellent stretch of grey water and precipitous limestone that offered no haven to those in peril on the sea.

I stretched out gratefully on the snow and, when the thumping of my heart and the rasping of my breathing had quietened sufficiently for me to hold a pair of binoculars steady, I used them to quarter the Evjebukta. It was completely bereft of life. The sun was up now, low over the southeastern horizon, but even although it was in my eyes, visibility was good enough and the resolution of the binoculars such that I could have picked up a seagull floating on the waters. There were some little islands to the north of the bay and, of course, there were the cliffs immediately below me that blocked off. all view of what might be happening at their feel?: but if the boat was concealed either behind an island or under the cliffs, it was most unlikely that Heissman would remain in such positions long for there would he nothing to detain him.

I looked south beyond the tip of Kapp Kolthoff and there, beyond the protection of the headland, the sun glinted off. the broken tops of white water. I was as certain as one could be without absolute proof that they would not have ventured beyond the protection of the point: Heissman's unseamanlike qualities apart, Goin was far too prudent a man to step unheedingly into anything that would even smack of danger. How long I lay there waiting for the boat to appear either from behind an island or out from under the concealment of the nearest cliffs I didn't know: what I did know was that I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was shaking with the cold and that both hands and feel? were almost completely benumbed. And I became aware of something else. For several minutes now I'd had the binoculars trained not on the north end of the bay but at the foot of the cliffs to the south on a spot where, about three hundred yards northwest of the tip of Kapp Kolthoff, there was a peculiar indentation in the cliff walls. Partly because of the fact that it appeared to bear to the right and out of sight behind one of the cliff faces guarding the entrance and partly because, due to the height of the cliffs and the fact that the sun was almost directly behind, the shadows cast were very deep, I was unable to make out any details beyond this narrow entrance. But that it was an entrance to some cove beyond I didn't doubt. Of any place within the reach of my binoculars it was the only one where the boat could have lain concealed: Why anyone should wish to lie there at all was another matter altogether, a reason for which I couldn't even guess at. One thing was for certain, a landward investigation from where I lay was out of the question: even if I didn't break my neck in the minimum of the two-hour journey it would take me to get there, nothing would be achieved by making such a trip anyway for not only did the descent of those beetling black cliffs seem quite suicidal but, even if it were impossibly accomplished, what lay at the end of it removed any uncertainty about the permanency of the awaiting reception: for there was no foreshore whatever, just the precipitous plunge of those limestone walls into the dark and icy seas.

Stiffly, clumsily, I rose and headed back towards the cabin. The trip back was easier than the outwards one for it was downhill and by following my own tracks I was able to avoid most of the involuntary descents into the sunken snowdrifts that had punctuated my climb. Even so, it was nearer one o'clock than noon when I approached the cabin. I was only a few paces distant when the main door opened and Mary Stuart appeared. One look at her and my heart turned over and something cold and leaden seemed to settle in the pit of my stomach. Dishevelled hair, a white and shocked face, eyes wild and full of fear, I'd have had to be blind not to know that somewhere, close, death had walked by again.

"Thank God!" Her voice was husky and full of tears. "Thank God you're here! Please come quickly. Something terrible has happened."

I didn't waste time asking her what, clearly I'd find out soon enough, just followed her running footsteps into the cabin and along the passage to Judith Haynes's opened door. Something terrible had indeed happened but there had been no need for haste. Judith Haynes had fallen from her cot and was lying sideways on the floor, half-covered by her blanket which she'd apparently dragged down along with her. On the bed lay an opened and three-part empty bottle of barbiturate tablets, a few scattered over the bed: on the floor, its neck still clutched in her hand, lay a bottle of gin, also three-parts empty. I stooped and touched the marble forehead: even allowing for the icy atmosphere in the cubicle, she must have been dead for hours. Make it a long sleep, she'd said to me: make it a long sleep.