Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

At Kramer’s the party was in full swing. There was plenty of liquor about. The males were mostly businessmen. There were a lot of young women. Kramer greeted me with warmth, but the way he talked I might have just dropped in. He left me in the clutches of a pretty little thing who proved a salacious gossip. I passed her on to a man in the hardware industry and went to the bar.

A group of men were discussing the latest mining gossip. One of them said, “But suppose the mine wasn’t salted?”

“Of course it was salted,” another replied. “If it weren’t absolutely certain, they’d never have dared to go as far as arresting Vynberg. I thought all along the assays were too good to be true.”

“Sure it was salted,” said the third, a stout American with a lot of gold fillings. “But Vynberg’s only the front, poordevil. There’s others behind him.”

“Who?”

“I’ve heard three names mentioned. Vynberg’s, and two guys I never heard of before — Bland and Fisher. They were unloading for all they were worth twenty-four hours before the thing broke.”

“Excuse me.” I was bored, standing there by myself... or perhaps it was the association of the name ‘Bland’. “Everybody I meet talks about the effect of the Words crash on the financial situation out here. Just exactly what is Words?” The three pairs of eyes fastened on me and were instantly hostile. “I only arrived out here from England this morning,” I explained quickly.

I sensed their instant relief. “Well, I’ll be damned!” said the American. “It’s a real pleasure to meet somebody who hasn’t got his fingers burned. ‘Words’ is the market name for Wys Odendaal Rust Development Securities. The abbreviation has turned out remarkably apt. The ten-shilling shares have risen from nineteen shillings to just over five pounds in the last four months on development reports showing high values at comparatively low depths. Now the whole game’s busted wide open. The managing director’s been arrested. They’ve stopped dealings in the shares on the stock exchange. I don’t reckon you could give ’em away right now.”

“Who’s this man Bland?” I asked, almost without thinking. “You mentioned—”

“Young fellow, I mentioned nobody by the name of Bland. And if I had, it’s a common enough name. And I don’t like strange people listening to what I’m saying.” His fishlike eyes were staring at me coldly. I glanced at the others. The hostility was back in their eyes too.

I turned away and picked up my drink. When I had finished it I slipped quietly out and got a taxi back to the hotel. As I went toward the desk to get my key, a girl got up from a comer of the entrance hall and came toward me. It was Judie.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Her face was very pale in the gold frame of her hair.

“For me?” I said. “Why?”

“Have you made up your mind yet? Will you take command of Tauer Three?” Her eyes pleaded.

“Yes,” I said.

“Thank God!” she breathed. “If you hadn’t, it would have meant waiting for them to fly a man out from England. I couldn’t have waited that long.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing what a wait of even a few hours had meant to her.

She took me straight up to Bland’s room. He nodded when he heard my decision. “Everything’s fixed,” he said. “I guessed what your decision would be.” He picked up the phone, ordered a taxi to stand by and arranged for our luggage to be brought down. “Yes, Mr. Bonomi and Mr. Weiner will be leaving too. Also Mr. Craig, Room Four-oh-four.” He turned to me as he replaced the receiver. “Get yourself packed up, Craig,” he said. “We’re leaving tonight.”

When my employer gave me a patronizing lecture and tipped me five pounds on New Year’s Eve, I went out and got drunk. I realized how deeply I had got into a rut, working as an importer’s clerk in London. I, Duncan Craig, who had commanded a corvette in the war, now had to be obsequious to fat merchants for my bread and butter.

I quit my job that night. A friend told me that there was an empty seat in a private plane bound for South Africa. I went to the airport, begged a ride... and that’s how I met the Blands. Colonel Bland headed the South Antarctic Whaling Company, which operated the huge new factory ship Southern Cross. The Southern Cross, in charge of Berot Nordahl, was near the Antarctic Circle, with Colonel Bland’s son Erik as Bernt’s assistant. Trouble had developed on board the big ship, and the colonel himself was flying down to straighten it out.

I could see that Bland was the choleric sort of man who would probably die suddenly of a stroke. His daughter-in-law, Judie, accompanied him, and an Italian photographer, Aldo Bonomi, was a member of the party. At first Bland was reluctant to give me the empty place in the plane, but he changed his mind and let me go along.

In Cairo I had a chance to talk to Judie and learned that she hated her husband. Then we got a message from the Southern Cross — Bernt Nordahl was dead, leaving Erik in charge. And Nordahl was Judie’s father.

At Cape Town I said good-by to this strange party, but it wasn’t long before Bland called me. They were sailing for the Southern Cross in a small whale catcher — a converted corvette — and the skipper had been in an auto accident at Cape Town. Would I — an ex-navy skipper — take over?

I had nothing to lose. There were no jobs for me in Cape Town. I agreed to go... and thus became one of those involved in the greatest sea disaster in peacetime since the loss of the Titanic.

Tauer III lay in the inner basin of the harbor. Picked out in the pier lights as she chafed the concrete, she didn’t look much like a corvette. She was dressed in black and gray paint, the bows had been built up for smashing through the ice, and all the armament had been cleared out of her. She looked like what she was, a narrow-built, very fast, very powerful tug.

The deck hands were all Norwegian. But by the grace of God the chief engineer was a Scot. There was a knock at the door of my cabin and there he was. “Me name’s McPhee,” he said. He was a little man with thin, sandy hair. He held out an oily hand.

“I’m Craig. I’m taking over from Sudmann.”

His face lighted up and he seized hold of my hand. “Good, mon!” he cried. “Anither Scot’. There’s no anither Scot walking his ane bridge in the whole fleet. The rest of ’em is all Norwegians.”

“The appointment’s temporary,” I explained. But I couldn’t help smiling at his excitement. “I hope you’ve got some Scotch on board to celebrate with?”

“Och, aye. Ah’ve got a wee drap tucked away.” He jeered up at me quickly. “Tell me, mon, do ye know anything a boot these tin cans? I hope ye do, for she’s a mean cow in a big sea when she’s got some ice on her.”

“You needn’t worry, McPhee,” I said. “I was brought up in corvettes. Now, what about fuel and water?”

“Tanks all full.”

“Steam up?”

“Aye, we’ve been standing by, ready to sail, since this morning.”

“Fine,” I said. “As soon as we get the okay from Colonel Bland, we’ll be moving out. Any of the Norwegian hands speak English?”

“Most of them speak a word or two.”

“Then send the brightest linguist up to the bridge, will you?”

“Aye, aye, sur.”

As he turned to go, I stopped him. “McPhee, when was this ship last cleaned down? She smells dirty.”

He grinned. “Och, that’s whale,” he said. “Ye’ll no worry a hoot it once you get alongside of the factory ship.”

When he’d gone, I went up onto the bridge. I looked aft along the slim length of the ship. The paint was beginning to show rust marks and she was dirty. But warps were neatly coiled and everything was greased and cared for. It might not be navy fashion, but it was workmanlike.