Geoffrey Jenkins - Southtrap

'John?' said Linn. 'Can you come down to the cabin, please?'

She might have been calling from the South Pole, she sounded so far away.

I pushed past Wegger and went down to her.

Linn was sitting at the desk on the wing-chair. Her eyes looked dark, very different from how they had looked out on deck only a little while before.

I said gently, 'Linn?'

She responded with only a faint tremor in her voice. 'An inquest can take a long time, can't it, John?'

'It can, Linn. The police have to carry out their investigations first. Suspects, and all that. Then there are all the legal processes which have to be put in motion.'

She looked at me squarely. 'And the medical.'

'A post-mortem can be a long and tricky business when you've got the implications of…' I couldn't say it. I had liked Captain Prestrud too much.

'Quest could be at Kerguelen before… before — ' she hesitated a little — 'before they finished that side of things.'

'It might be even further. We may well reach New Zealand in time for you to fly back for the official enquiry.'

'I hadn't pictured things as clearly as that yet.'

'Quest belongs to you now, Linn. The decision whether or not the cruise goes on is yours.'

She shook her head. The action loosened tears which hung on her cheek.

'You have a stake in Quest, too, John. Not a material share maybe, but nonetheless very real.'

This woman would read and understand me better than any of the others had done, I found myself thinking. Including the one I had married. Or those who had provided me with bed-comforts. Because she understood the Southern Ocean with her heart.

'Thank you, Linn. I won't forget that,' I answered lamely.

She got up, paced across the cabin, and then swung round and faced me. Her words came with a rush, 'For my part, the cruise goes on.'

That's for my part too, Linn.'

She came back to the desk and slumped in the chair as if the effort of making the decision had exhausted her. 'I'll have to tell Captain Jacobsen. He was Dad's dearest friend.'

I went to the phone next to her. As I picked up the instrument, I put my lips for a moment against her hair. She didn't look up, but brushed a hand across her eyes.

'Bridge,' I said. When the connection was made I continued, 'Mr Petersen, full ahead, if you please. Same course. And is Mr Wegger still there?'

'Yes — I mean, aye, aye, sir.'

Tell him to come to my cabin.'

'Very good, Captain — I mean, sir.'

It scarcely seemed a moment before Wegger entered. I stood next to Linn's chair. The controlled intensity of the man seemed to radiate, around him like a ship's electrical field in the sea. It was as if he were balancing on the balls of his feet, ready for anything.

I dropped the formal 'mister' in addressing him, now that no other member of the crew was about.

'Wegger,' I said, 'you had no right to be doing anything in the radio shack. Signals — especially those marked personal — are for my eyes only.'

'I told you before that I knew about radio. I'm interested in the Quest's equipment. I was only looking around.' Then he added with a note in his voice I didn't care for: 'And I don't like being bawled out, especially in front of a woman.'

'Miss Prestrud happens to be the new owner of the Quest.'

'Is that supposed to make a difference?'

I kept my cool. 'Miss Prestrud has decided to proceed with the cruise in spite of her father's death.'

The ugly lightning flashed in his pale eyes. And, like real lightning, it seemed to bring an instant relaxing of tension in the big body clad in nondescript uniform.

'Good.' His left hand went to his pocket and unconsciously smoothed it as if wanting — now — to conceal the gun. He took a grip on himself and said formally to Linn, 'My condolences, Miss Prestrud. I am sure your father would have wished us to go on.'

'You happened to be a party to a confidential signal, Wegger,' I told him. 'It's to remain confidential, do you understand? We don't want a shadow over the trip, for the sake of the passengers.'

He replied readily, too readily, 'Of course, sir.'

'I intend to carry on with my lectures and the tour part of it as if nothing had happened,' Linn added. That's the way we want it.'

I didn't miss the way she said 'we'.

Wegger's whole bearing appeared to have changed abruptly. He said in the half-servile way which had grated on me when he had asked me about the job, 'I'm sorry I was a bit sharp on the bridge, sir. You see, this voyage is very important to me and if it had been called off…' He let it hang for a moment and then added, as if his words needed further explanation: 'When you've been out of a job for a long time a berth like this means everything. If there's anything I can do — in my watch off if necessary…'

Thanks,' I replied. 'I'll keep that in mind.' What I had in mind, though, was that I would like to frisk him and see whether his Luger was loaded.

As he left, I felt the engines picking up their running speed. Linn wasn't with me when the Quest rounded the twin peaks and the majestic cliffs of Cape Point and dug her bows deep into the swells of the freshening gale. She missed the sight that she had dreamed of, that mariners ever since Ptolemy had dreamed of. Later in the afternoon, however, she came up on to the bridge and stood silent, watching as the low, hummocky spit of gale-blasted land that is the extremity of the continent of Africa hove into view and then began to disappear astern. I made Cape Agulhas my departure-point along the 20th parallel which intersects it.

The Quest headed South, and there was no more land between us and the Pole.

I let the special ten-year-old Cape brandy trickle slowly out of the screw-stoppered bottle into my glass. It was after dinner that same evening after we had left Africa. Captain Prestrud's cabin — my cabin, I kept telling myself, the man was dead — was hot and stuffy. I had taken off my uniform jacket, my collar was loose. At last I was alone and had a chance to think.

I stopped the brandy at three fingers, and added only a little water so as not to dilute its superb bouquet. I dropped one cube of ice thoughtfully into the drink, then another. A random thought crossed my mind, triggered off by the sight of ice. Where we were going, the fish have their own in-built anti-freeze. I sipped and the brandy warmed my blood. I sat down, sipped again. I wanted to be alone, and yet I did not want to be alone. I looked idly round Captain Prestrud's pictures on the walls, including the fjord scene of Linn's home. They would have to come down. That went also for the preserved tip of a killer whale's fin which hung like a stiff leather triangle over the desk.

I was restive. I moved towards the desk and fingered the fin. The phone rang.

'Wegger here, sir. Sorry to disturb you off duty.'

'No hassle. What's your problem?'

Those cases of explosive charges for blasting a way through the kelp for the boats when we land… I'd like your permission to re-stow 'em.'

'Aren't they safe enough where they are?'

'They're in Number Three hold, sir. I've been down checking. They're stowed above the shaft tunnel, aft the engine-room. It's pretty warm down there tonight. There's the heat from the engine-room and this hot wind. I'd like to bring the cases up to Number Two 'tween decks, where the ventilation's better. It's also easier to get at them there.' v I was to remember that comment later. At the time I endorsed the suggestion. If the hold were anything like as hot as my cabin — which had an open porthole — Wegger's was a sound idea.

'Carry on, Mr Wegger.'

Since the incident earlier in the day over the radio signal Wegger had proved himself a professional. Already the crew was functioning as a team, although I didn't care for his slave-driving methods. This was the second idea that Wegger had had for negotiating the kelp, which blocks Prince Edward like a floating reef. Before the ship had said goodbye to Cape Agulhas he had proposed that we sharpen the leading edges of the propeller on the boat we would be using — weather allowing — to land the shore parties. The sharp edges would serve as a kind of rotary knife to hack a way through the barrier. Kelp is especially thick off the landing-place at Cave Bay, in places up to 50 metres wide. Trying to row through its strangling fronds is for the birds. The idea was to blow a path through the kelp first with small charges of explosive and then negotiate it by means of the boat.