Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

Bland was coming up the gangway. I watched him lumber for’ard along the deck and then he was heaving himself up onto the bridge. “Find your way about all right?” he inquired.

“Yes, thanks,” I answered.

“Come into the chart room then and I’ll give you the position of the Southern Cross.” He found the chart he wanted. “She’s about there,” he said, stabbing his finger at a point roughly three hundred miles west-sou’west of the South Sandwich Group. I marked the spot with a pencil. “She’s working her way south. Eide says there’s a good deal of ice about and the weather’s thickening. We’ll get their exact position tomorrow.” He turned and pushed through the door onto the bridge. “Met the chief yet?” he asked. “He’s a Scot.”

“Yes, I’ve just been talking to him.”

“Engines all right?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “Our agents here have fixed everything. I’ve got all the necessary papers with me. You can get going as soon as you’re ready. Do you need a tug?”

“I’ve never had to be lowed out of port yet,” I said.

His big hand gripped my arm. “You and I are going to get on fine,” he said, and levered his bulk down the ladder to the deck below.

Footsteps sounded on the ladder to the bridge. I turned. It was one of the crew. “Kaptein Craig?” He pronounced it “Krieg.”

“McPhee speaks me to come here.”

“Good,” I said. “I want somebody to translate my orders for me.”

“Ja.” He nodded his big, bearded head. His eyes glinted below the greasy peak of his cap. “I speak Engelsk good. I am two years on American ships. I speak okay.”

“All right,” I said. “You stand by me and repent my orders in Norwegian. What’s your name?”

“Peer,” he said. “Peer Solheim.”

I told him to get hold of the coxs’n and arrange for a man to take over the wheel. The coxs’n was short and broad. He rolled for’ard like a small, purposeful barrel. “Okay, kaptein,” he called up to me, and I saw that he had placed men at the warps and at the fenders. The gangway had already been brought on board.

“Let go for’ard!” I ordered. Solheim repeated the order. The heavy warp was hauled inboard. My mouth felt dry. It was a long time since I’d done this. “Slow ahead!” The engine-room telegraph rang before Solheim had repeated the order. The helmsman understood. “Let go aft!” I watched the warp come in, heard their report of all clear in Norwegian as the gap bet ween ship and quay widened. I ordered starboard helm and watched the bow come round. The stern didn’t even graze the concrete of the wharf. The men with the fenders stood there watching the concrete slide by, and then they glanced up toward the bridge. I felt suddenly at home.

“Steady as she goes!” I ordered as the bow swung to the mouth of the basin. “Half ahead!”

A voice at my elbow said, “It’s good to see the navy at work.”

I turned to find Judie standing behind me, muffled in her fur coat.

I grinned at her. “You thought I might run into something?” I accused her.

“Well, we’d only your word for it that you could handle a corvette.” She smiled. “But now I am requested to inform you that the company has the greatest confidence in your ability to sail the ship.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Is this Bland speaking or you?”

She laughed then. “I’m only a daughter of the company, so to speak. It’s the chairman who has confidence in you. In a flash of inspiration he thought the message would be more appreciated if delivered by me.”

I glanced quickly down into her eyes. “What about you?” I asked.

“A wise girl reserves judgment,” she said with a little laugh. And then suddenly, as though she knew the thought that was in my mind, she turned and left the bridge with a quick “Good night.”

All the next day we steamed sou’west at a steady thirteen knots through blazing summer sun and a blue, windless sea. I wasn’t a whaler and I couldn’t adapt myself to their free and easy ways. I ran the ship the only way I knew, the way I’d learned in the navy. I took the coxs’n with me in the morning on an inspection of the ship and was surprised to find that the decks had been hosed down, mess tables scrubbed, the galley shining and the men practically springing to attention, all grins, whenever I spoke to them. When I reached the engine room I said to McPhee. “It’s almost like being back in the navy.”

He grinned and wiped a greasy hand across his freshly shaven jaw. “Dinna fool yourself, sur,” he said. “This is a whale-towing ship, not a corvette. But they’ll play your game for a day or two. The word got round you were a navy officer and not a whaler. A lot of ’em were in the navy during the war. They were tickled to death when they heard there was to be an inspection. It’ll be the talk of the fleet when we reach the Southern Cross — how they had a British navy officer for the trip and stood to attention and were inspected.” He winked. “Dinna spoil their bit o’ fun,” he said. And then, anxiously, “Ye’re no offended because Ah’ve put ye wise to it’s all being a wee bit of a game?”

“Of course not,” I said.

Looking over the list of the crew later in the day, I found a name that didn’t seem to fit in—” Dr. Walter Howe.” I was on the bridge at the time and I got McPhee on the blower. “Who’s this Doctor Howe and why haven’t I seen him?” I asked. “Presumably he messes with the officers?”

“Aye, but it’s no verra often we see him for breakfast,” McPhee’s voice replied up the pipe. “He’s the biggest soak in the whole whaling fleet. And that’s saying something. He also kens more aboot what makes a whale tick than anyone else. He’s a scientist. He’s worked for the South Antarctic Company since the war. He’s a wee bit o’ a nuisance at times, but he’s no a bad sort when ye get to know him.”

I got to know the doctor that night. When the cox’n relieved me, I went down to my cabin, put on a pair of slippers and relaxed with the assistance of a bottle of Scotch from Sudmann’s locker. Then the door opened and Doctor Howe came in.

He didn’t knock. He just came straight in. “My name’s Howe.” He stood, swaying slightly in the doorway, looking at me uncertainly out of rather bulging, bloodshot eyes. He was a tall lath of a man with a pronounced stoop and an oddly shaped head that was all forehead and no chin. His eyes dropped to the whisky bottle. “Do you mind pouring me a drink?” He moved forward into the cabin and I saw that the sole of his left shoe was built up. He wasn’t lame, but that slight shortness of one leg gave him an awkward, rather crablike way of walking.

He sat down on my hunk and fingered his frayed and dirty collar as though it were too tight for him. I poured him a drink and passed it to him. He absorbed it as the desert absorbs rain, “Ah-h, that’s better,” he said, and lit a cigarette. Then he saw I was looking at him and his thick, rubbery lips twisted into a quick impish smile. “I’m ugly, aren’t I?” he said. And then, as I turned quickly to my drink, “Oh, you needn’t be embarrassed. It amuses me... when I’m drunk.” He paused, and then added, “And mostly I’m drunk.”

“What’s your job with the company?” I asked.

“My job?” He opened his eyes, screwing them up as he stared at the ceiling. “My job is to tell ’em where the whales go in the summertime. I’m biologist, oceanographist, meteorologist, all rolled into one. It’s the same as fortune telling. Only I use plankton instead of a crystal and I’m called a scientist. Any of the old skytters manage just as well by intuition.”

To stop his sneering at himself, I said, “I don’t know anything about whaling, as you’ve probably gathered. What’s plankton, and who are the skytters? ”