Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

“Is Grytviken in South Georgia?”

“Yes. There are shore stations there. I made three or four trips with my father in his catcher.”

“Then you’re quite an experienced whaler,” I kidded her.

“No,” she replied. “I’m not like Gerda Petersen.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“Gerda is the daughter of Olaf Petersen,” she answered. “Olaf was once mate on my father’s catcher when he was at Grytviken. Gerda and I are the same age. We used to play together when we were at Grytviken. But she’s tough. She’s more like a man. This is her second season with our company. Her father says he’ll make her the first woman skytter in Norway.”

“She must be tough,” I said.

She laughed. “Poor Gerda. She’s not very beautiful, you know. She ought to have been born a boy. She’s passed all her exams. She could be master of a ship, like women are in Russia. But she prefers to come south as her father’s mate. His men worship her. She may not be very beautiful, but I think she’s very happy.”

A sudden gust of wind hit the wheel-house. The ship heeled and dipped violently. I caught a glimpse of the white sheet of spray flung up by the bows as they crashed into a wave, felt the whole ship tremble. The door burst open and the coxs’n came in.

Judie said, “I think I’ll go below now.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I want to get some sleep before the storm breaks.” I told the coxs’n to wake me if it got worse, and took Judie below. Back in my own cabin, I took off my boots and climbed into my bunk with my clothes on.

The full force of the storm hit us just after four in the morning. I woke to sudden consciousness, feeling the weight of the water holding us down. I could feel the steel of the cabin walls bending under the strain.

I rolled out of my bunk and fumbled for my sea boots. The coxs’n came in as I was dragging on my oilskins. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went out again. Outside, the full force of the wind hit me, thrusting me against the rail, taking my breath away. Seas rolled green over the afterdeck. I hauled myself up to the bridge. The short night was over. But the dawn was a gray half darkness. The coxs’n had headed her up into the wind. The waves seemed mountain high, their tops a hissing whirl of spindrift. And the sleet drove parallel with the wave tops, a wild, driven curtain of darkness.

I won’t attempt to describe those next eight days. They were eight days of unrelieved hell for everyone on board. Sometimes it rained. More often it just blew. The sea was like a mountain range on the move. There wasn’t a dry place in the ship. Nearly everyone was seasick. In all those eight days we saw the sun only once, and that was a watery gleam that flashed out for a few minutes through a vent in the storm rack. I ceased to think about the object of our journey or about the Southern Cross; I ceased to think about anything but the ship.

I hardly saw anything of the others. I was up on the bridge most of the time. Bland came up twice, his heavy features blue with cold and the exhaustion of seasickness. Each time he asked for our position. The man had a driving purpose which was accentuated by the knowledge of his illness. His interest in life had narrowed down to an urgent desire to reach the Southern Cross as soon as possible. He was impatient at our slow progress, impotently angry at the elements.

Judie came up once, and I was angry with her, telling her to keep to her cabin. I think I threw some bad language at her. I was too wrought up to know what I said. It had the desired effect and she didn’t come up again. But after that every morning one of the crew brought up a flask of brandy, “From Mrs. Bland.” I was grateful to her for that.

Bonomi was the only one of the passengers who was a daily visitor on the bridge. He was suffering badly from seasickness, but he’d struggle up each day with his camera, regardless of the danger, and take pictures of the storm. Once I asked him about Doctor Howe.

“Is he sick?” I asked.

“He is sick, of course,” he answered. “But what is sickness to a man who drink two bottles of whisky a day? He is incredible, that man!”

In a way, the storm was a good thing. There was no more trouble with the Sandefjord men. The crew was fully occupied with the weather. It was much colder than it should have been and the gale prolonged itself out of all expectation. Daylight was now virtually continuous throughout the twenty-four hours. Visibility, fortunately, was not too bad, for on the fifteenth we sighted our first iceberg. We soon began to sight icebergs regularly, some of them big, towering masses of ice, pinnacled and ramparted like floating forts.

I was constantly up on the bridge now, for we were closing the last position we had received from the Southern Cross. We should have been in radiotelephone communication — the R-T sets had a radius of 400 miles or more. But early in the storm our aerials had been brought down and it had been impossible to rerig.

On the night of the sixteenth the gale got worse than ever. Heavy freezing rain brought visibility down to almost zero, and in the half light around midnight I reduced speed. Shortly afterward the lookout called down, “Ice!” I rang for slow ahead and a few moments later caught the white glimmer of ice ahead. It wasn’t a berg. It was our first taste of loose pack. The floes were small and broken — the thawing fringe broken from the pack ice farther south and flung northeastward by the storm.

The coxs’n shook his head gloomily. “Nefer haf I seen the ice up here in sommer.”

I turned the ship westward and remained at slow ahead. Early that morning the wind suddenly veered to the south and died away to a gentle breeze. The clouds drifted away astern and we saw the sun clearly for the first time in eight days. It was low on the horizon and had little warmth. But it was wonderful just to see it. Away to the south a glimmer of white showed the fringe of the loose pack ice. Through bleary eyes I watched the sun climb quickly up the sky. Soon everything was steaming.

Then gradually the sun’s light paled. The warmth died out of it and the blue gradually faded from the sky. Then the sun vanished altogether. The scene became a flat black-and-white picture. It was cold, like an etching. Then the sharpness of it faded as the fog rolled over us, enveloping us in its chill, soundless blanket.

We kept at slow ahead with lookouts in the bow and at the masthead. I was taking no chances with icebergs, though in that brief glimpse of the ice-littered sea to the south I had seen no sign of any.

Shortly after ten Bland himself came up onto the bridge. Eight days of enforced idleness and little food had made a great difference in him. The bluish tinge had gone and the mottled veining of his skin was not so noticeable. His movements were quicker, too, and his eyes more alert.

“What’s our position?” he asked. His tone was crisp. The personality that had driven the man to the top in his own world was there in his voice.

“Fifty-eight south, thirty-three west,” I told him. I took him into the wheelhouse and showed him the position on the chart — roughly 200 miles west of South Thule, the southernmost point of the Sandwich Group.

“We ought to be able to get the Southern Cross on the R-T,” he said.

“Sparks is rigging a new aerial now,” I told him. “I’ll let you know as soon as he makes contact.”

He nodded and went out onto the bridge. He stood for a while, staring out into the fog. “Where’s Howe?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen him since the storm started,” I replied.

He turned and barked an order in Norwegian to one of the crew.

The man looked at him. It wasn’t exactly insolence. But the man’s manner was sullen as he said, “Ja,” and crossed the bridge to the ladder.