Geoffrey Jenkins - A grue of Ice

There were a score of other ships scattered about the anchorage. Some of the names I could read, others not. The beautiful Danish training sailing ship Kobenhavn was there: her disappearance in the Southern Ocean without trace before the war with a crew of sixty cadets had been a sea mystery as deep as the loss of the Marie Celeste. Near the Kobenhavn was the Berwick, one of the great teak fliers which had broken all records from Calcutta to London in the 1860s. A big iron-sided windjammer was broken in half across a reef. In addition, stacked like fragments of corpses in a mortuary, were ships' masts, teak and oaken timbers, figureheads, stanchions, cabin doors, big old-fashioned teak binnacles with Kelvin compasses and oil sidelights; broken oars, harness casks, whole deck-houses; a long mainyard pointed skywards as if it had been dropped from a plane, the footropes and gaskets still in position.

Overwhelmed by the sight, I steered automatically for the far end of the fjord, where I could see jets of steam in the rocks, spurting from some underground volcanic source. The glacier was more impressive close up: where the tongue of the ice entered the water it was sharp, not smooth and rounded as one would expect from the wash and weathering

of the current. It would be warm where the steam jets were, I told myself, and all of us needed warmth. Upton did not speak, but stared like a man in a dream at the caesium seams as we slid along with the current.

Pirow waved as we passed the Groniand. "Look, Herr Kapitan-it was you in H.M.S. Scott that made us slip those hoses and get away to sea so quickly."

The Man with the Immaculate Hand. The fine ships were as much his victims as Kohler's.

I brought the whaleboat into the shallows, sliding to a standstill against a rough beach of basalt and pumice. A jet of steam blew from a fissure in the rocks twenty feet above our heads. I seemed to be choking with warmth, and I pulled off my gloves. I jumped uncertainly over the side to secure the boat. As I felt land under my sea-boots, a wave of emotion and weakness almost overcame me. I threw a bight of rope round a rock to moor the boat. A tiny springtail-the wingless fly of Antarctica-settled on my hand. I had thought never to see a land creature again.

I picked Helen up and carried her ashore, bringing the sleeping-bag for her to lie on. I had to assist Sailhardy.

" Walter!" said Upton. " Bring me some hot water and see if we can get my hands loose." The palms must have been raw from the rowing, but he seemed oblivious of pain. " Take the Schmeisser, you bloody fool-I don't want Wetherby to get hold of it at this stage." His eyes were hard. " You won't be as lucky this time, Wetherby. The oil will have unfrozen by now in the gun."

Pirow clambered out too, and stood next to me. He looked down the fjord. " Liebe Gott!" he said huskily. " It is good to be back!" There was pride, arrogance and a touch of triumph in his ashen face.

The undamaged state of the ships-Kohler's victims-puzzled me. There had never been any hint from Kohler's signals in the German war records that he had used Thompson Island as his base. It was clear that Kohler had kept Pirow in the dark as to the name and position of this Southern Ocean base. The German sea fox had done the same to his own Oberkommado der Marine. In two years he had sent the High Command only half a dozen short messages listing his amazing successes. He, like Pirow, believed that while you kept off the air while raiding, you lived.

" Did you send boarding parties and bring the ships in afterwards?" I asked Pirow.

He shook his head. " The Herr Kapitan Kohler was a sailor like yourself. He used what the Southern Ocean gave him. Why risk the Meteor in action when your ships would come to him here in the fjord?"

" What do you mean?"

" The current," replied The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " It is deep and powerful-you want to see what happens to a ship in its grip. It is no ordinary current, Herr Kapitan-you see the vessels it has brought in from the ocean to this graveyard."

" A current is not that powerful."

" No, Herr Kapitan, it is not. Further out it is a strong current which will bring a derelict in and all the sort of stuff you see here. But near Thompson Island it becomes a killer. It sweeps in past the entrance on the side of the fjord where we are now, and then… Look!" He pointed at the foot of the glacier. There was a great swirling eddy. " It seems to nosedive there. We lost a boat's crew trying to investigate it closely. On the other side of the fjord the countercurrent is weak by comparison. The Herr Kapitan had his anchorage there, and he always entered the fjord on the counter-current side."

" You mean, you just sat here…"

He held out his hands. " The ships came because I signalled them. Sometimes it was a fake distress call, sometimes…" he grinned-" an order from the officer commanding the South Shetlands Naval Force-you, in other words, Herr Kapitan Wetherby. It was merely necessary to bring them into the fog-belt, where the current becomes so powerful, and it did the rest. It brought them in like lambs to the slaughter."

" The Kyle of Lochalsh was armed with six-inch guns," I said.

He nodded across the fjord. " You have-not noticed Meteor's gun emplacement over there. We unshipped one of our 5.9 inch guns and mounted it-on that side so that we could cover the enemy as he was swept along this side of the fjord. We had every inch of the fjord taped for ranges. Resistance would have been suicide."

I was filled with foreboding listening to Pirow's boasting. The weapons and victims of our war seemed so insignificant beside the potential in the rock seams above our heads.

Walter was massaging Upton's hands with warm water. I carried Helen to the stream of warm, sulphur-smelling water where it cut through the pumice on its way to the fjord.

I shifted some lumps of pumice to make a support for her back.

" What is my father going to do now?" she asked. My own anxiety was reflected in her voice.

" He talked about ships-and here they are," I said. " But you can't sail away without a crew in any of them, even assuming that they are in any shape after all these years."

" Listen!" she said.

Pirow was talking animatedly. We were slightly higher than the boat where the stream began up the slope. " The Herr Kapitan Kohler thought the 5.9-inch gun in the emplacement was better technically than those Harwood had at the Battle of the River Plate," he enthused. " But Kohler always marvelled at the English rate of fire. That gun is automatic on the ranges-every inch of the fjord is tabulated. You simply can't miss."

Upton got his hands free. He gave them a quick glance and then turned to Walter. " Could you load a gun like that?"

Pirow interrupted. " There is no need to pick up the shells. There is a hoist which brings them right to the breech."

" Christ!" said Walter. " All this sounds as if you're planning a war."

" I've got my island, and I've got the means to defend it," went on Upton, stretching himself.

" There's a big magazine under the gun," went on Pirow. " When Meteor put to sea, a gun crew was left behind except the last time, in order to engage H.M.S. Scott. There are probably some small-arms, too."

" Bruce!" whispered Helen. " It gets worse, not better. You must get to the radio and signal Thorsharnmer. I'm desperately afraid of what he is up to."

Sailhardy came slowly over to us. " Did you hear, Bruce?" " Yes."

" Will that gun be of any use after all this time?" Hope started into Helen's face. Sailhardy did not wait for my reply. " It must have a film of rust inside the barrel. If Upton tries to fire it, he'll blow himself to pieces." I shook my head. " If the gun had been on this side of the fjord, the warm side, I might have been hopeful. There aren't any warm springs over there. The temperature is polar near the glacier. Things don't rust in the dry Antarctic cold.