Geoffrey Jenkins - A grue of Ice

When Captain Norris had rediscovered Bouvet Island, after it had been lost for nearly a century, he had also found something Bouvet had not: an island fifteen leagues, or forty-five miles, north-north-east of Bouvet. Captain Norris positioned it. His own original log lay open in front of me. Thompson Island had never been found again-officially.

Captain Norris' discovery provoked the liveliest controversy for over a century and a quarter. Nations have lavished millions on ships specially equipped to find Thompson Island. Ahead of the field were the Norwegians, who specifically explored the seas round Bouvet in the late 1920s under the great Lars Christensen. The British R.R.S. Discovery searched-Thompson was not found. Before that German, American and French expeditions had likewise failed.

Sailhardy took his eyes from the compass in front of him.

It was fully a minute before he spoke. " You are the only living man to have seen Thompson Island."

" Yes," I said. " But there's no need to dramatise it like 69 that. I know I saw an island as we went into action against the Meteor. It was near Bouvet. No one will believe I sighted land. I was told the same thing as Captain Norris when Thompson could not be found again-either I had seen a big iceberg and mistaken it for land, or else it was simply water sky."

" Yellowish reflected light over a big shelf of ice," murmured Sailhardy. " An Antarctic man like yourself doesn't make that sort of mistake."

" No," I said. " If I were one of the catcher skippers, I would like to have used a very rude phrase to the armchair critics who rejected what I had to say. Curious.. they said almost the same to Captain Norris. The Admiralty said he'd seen a large iceberg, and the streaks which he described on the cliffs were simply barnacles."

Sailhardy looked at me reproachfully. " You know the history of Thompson Island minutely, you know how great sailors from Sir James Clark Ross to Lars Christensen have searched for Thompson Island and failed, and yet you deliberately play it down in relation to Upton. It ranks with the island where Sir Francis Drake sheltered the Golden Hind off Cape Horn and which has never been seen again, as one of the greatest of sea mysteries."

" The vital phrase is, in relation to Upton," I said. " He is neither a sailor nor an explorer."

" No," replied Sailhardy. " He's got a flashy act as a modern-day buccaneer."

" That's not all," I said. " Underneath he is ruthless!"

" He's after Thompson Island," said Sailhardy doggedly. I shook my head. " If he'd wanted to discover Thompson Island, he would not have gone about it in this hole-andcorner way," I said. " A man in his position could telephone a London newspaper and say he was endowing a special expedition to search for the great ocean mystery, Thompson Island, etcetera, etcetera. There would be no lack of takers. You don't have to string a fleet of catchers along with you, anyway, to look for an island. One ship would do."

" Keep that chart out of the way, that's all I ask," said the islander.

" What possible value could Thompson Island have to Upton?" I went on. " I have seen it. It's simply the tip of an undersea mountain range jutting out into the worst seas in the world. There's nowhere like it anywhere. Gales, snow, ice, gigantic seas, day in, day out, year in, year out."

" He wants that log," said Sailhardy.

" Take a look, I assure you there's nothing."

He looked at me strangely. " You are the only living man to have seen Thompson Island. There are only three others in history. One of them was Captain Norris."

I smiled at his earnestness. " One of the three was Francis Allen, an American sealer who started a line of islanders on Tristan-and you are of that line."

Thompson Island was the Wetherbys', I told myself. It was the old John Wetherby's because his favourite captain had discovered it for him-and lost it to the world; it was mine, the last of the Wetherbys, because, I had found it again after four generations, or very nearly, since it had slipped away into the ice and fog with the same spectre-like elusiveness as it had done with Norris. Sailhardy was in it, too, and I could almost recall by heart the deposition made to the Franklin Institute by the man with whom Sailhardy's greatgrandfather had sailed: " Captain Joseph Fuller, of New London, now (1904) lighthouse-keeper at Stonington, served in the United States Navy during the Civil War and afterwards repeatedly went sealing and sea elephant hunting in the Antarctic-in 1893, in the Francis Allen, he saw Bouvet Island, and he saw Thompson Island bearing about north-east from Bouvet but he could not land on either on account of the ice, wind and fog." Joseph Fuller named his ship Francis Allen after his friend and mate Francis Allen. Only I had seen Thompson since.

Sailhardy went tense. His keen ears had heard someone coming. He jerked his head at the wheel. " Take it!" he hissed. " Give me that damn thing!" Before I could object, he folded the log of the Sprightly and thrust it inside his windbreaker. With equal swiftness, he unlocked the doors.

He was just in time. Upton came through. He looked curiously at me. " Are you the quartermaster as well as the captain, Bruce?"

I shrugged. " We may need two men at the wheel, the way we're going."

Something was eating into him. He was morose, preoccupied. " What the hell do you mean?"

" This fleet is putting its nose into trouble-big trouble," I replied. Sailhardy took the wheel again.

" If you mean you're afraid of one little fisheries protection destroyer…"

" I'm afraid of the biggest destroyer there is-ice," I said. 71

" I must know where Thorshammer is, and what course she is steering. Our course is dead wrong. I want to get to the north."

Upton's face went pink. " You'll stay on this course, and keep out of the way of the Thorshammer. Pirow's last D/F bearing on her showed we were steering diverging courses. We should be out of range of her seaplane."

" Pirow's bearing was two days ago," I said. " Anything could have happened since."

Upton picked up the bridge phone. " Carl! Bridge! At once. Bring Bjerko with you." He came back to me. " So you're frightened of a little weather-the great Captain Wetherby?"

" Yes, I am," I replied, "-when I am steering directly into the heart of the atmospheric machine which provides the energy for the storms of the Roaring Forties."

" Nonsense!" snapped Upton. " Walter agrees with me

– it will be stormy, but you are well used to that."

" Listen," I said. " I originally set course, after we had given Thorshammer the slip at Tristan, to approach Bouvet from the north. Pirow got his D/F bearings on Thorshammer. I wanted to stay just beyond radar range, but you put her on this course in order to approach Bouvet from the south and west. I say it is suicide."

" Thorshammer has a seaplane," retorted Upton. " Don't forget that."

" I'd like to see anyone take off in the kind of storm we've had," I replied. " Thorshammer's only got an old HE 114 for searching-Pirow heard that over the air. Its radius is not much more than a hundred and fifty miles anyway."

Pirow and the gauche Captain Bjerko came to the bridge.

" Carl," said Upton, " have you got a bearing on Thors- hammer?"

Pirow shook his head. " This part of the world is hell for radio. Thirty years ago Lars Christensen found that Bouvet was a radio ' dead-spot ', as we call it. I can't get any good signals from Thorshammer."

Upton was edgy. " You mean, you can't get enough of her sending for a D/F bearing?"

Pirow's lip curled. " I can get a bearing if a ship sends eleven letters. I proved it to the German Decryption Service."

" So you don't know what course Thorshammer is steering?" " No."

I tried to cash in on Upton's nervous uncertainty. " Even this big factory ship isn't good enough to stand up to what we're heading for."