Hammond Innes - Blue Ice

‘Fjaerland,’ I said.

‘In Sognefjord?’

I nodded.

‘That’s easy then,’ he said. ‘You’ll be off Leirvik in the morning. Put me ashore there an’ Oi’ll phone me partner an’

‘e can meet yer at Fjaerland on ‘is way back.’

‘Back from where?’ I asked.

But he smiled and shook his head. ‘Yer won’t catch me like that, Mr Gansert. Back from where ‘e’s been, that’s where.’

‘He’s taken Schreuder right up to Sognefjord, has he?’

‘Yes. No ‘arm in yer knowing that. You put me ashore at Leirvik an’ Oi’ll phone Peer to meet yer at Fjaerland.’

‘And you’ll come on to Fjaerland with us?’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Then me an’ me outfit can come back together.’

With that I had to be content. At least I had some idea where Schreuder had gone. I let him go to his bunk. He had all the obstinacy of the Cockney driven into a corner. Maybe we could have handled him better. Perhaps if I’d left it to Jill. ‘There can’t be so many places right up the Sognefjord,’ I said to her. ‘If this damned partner of his doesn’t turn up, we’ll make inquiries at every quay in the fjord.’

‘That’ll take us some time,’ she said.

‘Anyway, they probably didn’t touch at any of the landing stages,’ Curtis said. ‘They probably slipped him in at night on a deserted stretch of the shore.’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘If only we could make the little diver fellow tell us what he knows.’

Jill pressed my hand. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I’ll have another session with him in the morning.’

Curtis got to his feet and stretched. ‘By God, I’m sleepy,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Think I’ll make some coffee.’

At that moment Dick’s voice hailed us. ‘There’s a breeze springing up, skipper,’ he called down. ‘What about setting some sail?’

I remembered then that I had forgotten all about relieving him. ‘Coming,’ I called back. ‘Curtis. Give Wilson a shout, will you. We’ll be getting sail on her.’

Jill caught my arm as I turned towards the companionway. ‘Thanks for what you did to-day,’ she said. She was smiling. Her lips were very red against the pallor of her skin. ‘It made me feel I wasn’t alone any more — that I had good friends.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said and turned away from her quickly. But as I climbed the ladder to the deck I realised again how much more important this was to her than to me — how much more important emotion was than the hard financial gain of the thing.

I felt the breeze as soon as I poked my head out through the hatch. It was icy cold and refreshing. ‘Sorry, Dick,’ I said. ‘Losing my grip. Completely forgot you hadn’t been relieved.’

‘It’s all right,’ he answered. The moon had disappeared behind cloud and he was just a dark bundle of duffle coat humped over the wheel and outlined against the slight phosphorescence of our wake. ‘I came to remind you once, but I could hear you grilling the poor devil, so I left you to it. What luck?’

‘He won’t talk without his partner’s there,’ I answered angrily. ‘He’s phoning him in the morning.’

The others came up then and we hoisted sail. Hellesoy light was already astern, the black bulk of Fedje Island standing in silhouette against the swinging beam. On the starb’d bow another light winked. ‘Utvaer Fyr?’ Jill asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, looking up at the set of the sails as we leaned over to a fine reaching breeze. ‘Another eight by the log and we’ll alter course. We’ll be headed straight for the entrance to Sognefjord then.’ I called to Dick who was slacking off the weather topping lift. ‘You and Curtis better turn in and get some sleep. You too, Jill,’ I said.

‘What about you?’ she asked.

‘I’ll sleep in the chartroom bunk.’

I packed them off below — Carter, too. I wanted them to get as much sleep as possible. There would be work to do tomorrow if we were going to try and sail up the Sognefjord. Finally I was alone on deck with Wilson. I stood in the cockpit and leaned my arms on the chartroom roof, gazing up to the tall mainmast where canvas and rigging showed in a dim blur against the night. The whole ship was leaning gracefully, roaring through the water with the lee rail well under the water seething along the scuppers. It was a fine night for sailing. But there was a frozen bite in the wind. I shivered and went down into the chartroom. ‘What’s your course, Wilson?’ I asked.

‘North thirty west,’ he answered.

I checked it on the chart. We were well clear of all the countless islands that dotted the coast to starb’d of us. ‘Wake me when you turn on to your new course,’ I said and climbed into my bunk. The slight movements of the ship and the rhythmic creak of the rigging lulled me into instant sleep.

When we altered course, I took the wheel and sent Wilson below for some sleep. It was four o’clock and bitterly cold. The wind blew right through me. It seemed incredible that men ever sailed round the Horn. I felt numbed with the cold. The wind was on our port quarter now and the ship rode upright, main and mizzen booms pressed well out to starb’d. I watched Utvaer light come abeam and move across the quarter till it was lost behind a lump of land. The dawn came up out of the east, cold and grey and clear. The mountains emerged from the darkness of the night and gathered round. They were grey and heavy-looking. But except for one, shaped like an enormous sugar loaf, they were not exciting. I might have been in Ireland or sailing up a Scottish loch. There was little sign of snow. These were but the foothills of the giant snow-fields inland. As the light increased the mountains grew blacker. Clouds gathered all across the sky. Grey scuds rolled up and wrapped themselves around the tree-clad slopes. The sky reddened till it blazed in fiery red and then the sun rose like a flaming cannon ball over the mountain tops. The sea boiled red along our sides. Then the scuds gathered thick like fiends of misery to drench all warmth and the bright fire died out of the sky. Suddenly the sun was gone and all was grey again — grey and drab as the mist rolled over us.

And yet it was then that I felt the excitement of the place.

I was alone at the wheel of my own ship. And I was entering the longest fjord in Norway. For 130 miles it stretched eastward into the very centre of the most mountainous section of Norway. It was two to five miles wide with towering mountains falling sheer to the water and it was as deep as the mountains were high. I had read all about it and here I was actually sailing into it. And not just sailing for pleasure, but sailing with a purpose. I was going to Fjaerland, which lay under the largest glacier in Europe — 580 square miles of solid ice. And there, I hoped, I’d find the truth about Farnell. The reason for his death was as important to me now as the thought of what he might have discovered. I had seen the troubled look in Jill’s grey eyes and something of the urgency in her had communicated itself to me.

The cold dampness of the mist should have destroyed my excitement. But it didn’t. It increased it. Every now and then some change of the wind would draw aside for an instant the grey veil and I’d catch a glimpse of the mountains, their tops invisible, but their bulk suggestive of the greater bulk behind. This was the way to see new country, I thought. Like a woman, it should be revealed gradually. As I gripped the wet spokes of the wheel and felt the steady thrust of the wind driving Diviner deeper and deeper into the mountains, the mystery of the place held me in its spell and I remembered Peer Gynt again and the saeter huts high up in the hills.

Lost in my thoughts, the time, usually leaden-footed at the dawn, passed quickly. At eight o’clock the wind shifted abeam and I hauled in on main and mizzen sheets. Then I called Dick and went below to get some sleep. ‘Watch the wind,’ I said, pausing with my head just out of the hatch. ‘You can’t see them, but the mountains are all round us.