Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

“Can I look at it?”

“If you like. There’s nothing secret about a sword.”

Reaching over the bunk, he took the sword case from its brackets and handed it to her. She rubbed it like a connoisseur of fine leather. “Can I open it?”

“Sure.”

Unbuckling the top, she drew out the gold-handled sword in its black, gold-trimmed scabbard. As she examined it, he felt as though he had never seen his sword.

“I wonder where the design came from,” she said, touching the small improbable gold-colored metal sea snake that was coiled around the tip of the scabbard. Two other tiny sea snakes curved from the hand guard. Embossed in other parts of the metal were square knots, laurel leaves, a shield and an eagle on the pommel.

“So many symbols! The sword says, ‘I am power.’ Can I take out the blade?”

“Be careful. The point’s sharp.”

The blade made a hissing as she drew it from the scabbard, and it glittered brightly. She laid it carefully on the chart table as she studied it, tracing with her finger the embossed eagle near the handle, more stylized laurel leaves, a fouled anchor. Turning it over, she studied a flag with a trident curiously perched on what appeared to be the mast of a square-rigger, scrolls and a pattern of stars.

“But there are no embellishments on the last foot of it,” she said. “The point is all business. You really could kill someone with it.”

“Not today.”

She put the blade back into the scabbard and its brown leather case.

“Would you give it to the enemy captain if you surrendered?” she asked.

“Brave trawlers never surrender.” He put the sword back on its brackets over his bunk.

“Have you ever made love here?” she asked.

“No.”

“Have you ever had a chance?”

“No, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. There’s nothing soundproof about this cabin.”

“It would have a certain excitement. For me anyway …”

“No, Brit. There are men on the bridge.”

“Too bad. Love under the sword — has a nice ring to it.”

“A little melodramatic.”

“Do you know how the expression, ‘son of a gun’ got started?”

“No.”

“When women came aboard the old warships in the days of sail, the sailors made love to them on deck under the guns. The phrase meant a sailor’s bastard.”

“Where do you learn such things?”

“When I studied English at the University of Copenhagen, they had a whole course in the origin of such idioms. It was very interesting. If I should have a child by you, it would sort of be a son of a gun.”

“Is that a clear possibility?” he asked a little nervously.

“No. Unfortunately I can’t let myself have a son of a gun.”

“Let’s go, Brit.”

“Will your men be talking about my being in your cabin?”

“It will be their chief topic of conversation for days. I’ve made them envious enough. Rank has its privileges, but they shouldn’t be flaunted.”

“I’m glad you’re such a good captain. Are you going to take me ashore now?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s one thing I want to see — the galley where all that marvelous food comes from.”

“That’s up in the forecastle, the quarters for the men.”

“I’d like to see that too. I bet they’d like to have a woman visit, even a woman dressed like an Eskimo.”

She was probably right about that, Paul reflected, and telephoned the forecastle from the bridge to give warning.

The men of the Arluk quickly put pants and shirts over their long underwear when they heard a woman was about to appear in their midst, but they did not see any reason to stop what they were doing, and that was making knives out of files. Knife-making had taken the place of checkers as a forecastle diversion, and Guns had done a brisk business selling files he had bought from Chief Banes, who had stolen several sets from the wreck of the destroyer. In exchange for beer rations to be paid on the next beerbust ashore, he and Chief Banes had ground the files to a rough edge on the emery wheel in the engineroom, and now Guns was showing the men how to achieve scimitar-like perfection with whetstones provided by Cookie. In the three tiers of bunks, men lay honing a variety of picturesque daggers, dirks and curved blades. The dim light made them look like a pirate crew busy with last-minute preparations for a bloodthirsty onslaught. At the head of the table Guns, looking like Blackbeard himself, was fastening an ivory handle to his masterpiece of a scimitar.

Brit’s first reaction when she saw this tableau was a sudden intake of breath. It was, Paul suspected, exactly what she expected to find aboard an American warship.

“What are they going to do with all these knives?” she asked Paul.

“What I’m going to do is get me a Kraut’s head and make it into a lamp,” Guns boomed before Paul could reply. “This baby can slice even the fattest neck like butter.”

Getting to his feet, Guns demonstrated the shining arc his knife could draw in the air, almost slicing off Cookie’s chef hat.

“You want coffee, captain?” Cookie asked after coolly ducking, as though that sort of thing happened all the time.

“The lady just wants to see the galley, Cookie.”

“She can look from the door. I won’t let nobody in my galley. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, captain, but even aboard ship a chef has to have rules.”

After taking a brief peek into the cramped little galley where Cookie regularly prepared such fine meals for more than thirty men, Brit fled to the deck.

“That’s quite a crew you’ve got,” she said as they reached the well deck.

“I think maybe they were putting on a little show just for you.”

“Perhaps, but I kind of get the idea that they’re not kidding either.”

“No, they’re not,” he said.

The short November day had long ago died, but enough moonlight was getting through the cloud cover to make the icy sides of the canyonlike fjord appear to glow softly, and the water of the bay and channel showed clearly as black against white. Stevens and Krater, who had the boat duty that day, sat silently in the stern as Krater steered the whaleboat toward the settlement. Paul sensed that they were angry at him because they thought he had no business keeping a boat crew out in the cold just to ferry his woman. Higher pay and fancy uniforms for an officer and a private cabin for a captain were not begrudged, but the possession of a woman in Greenland was a privilege too great to be forgiven. Although Paul told himself that a good captain should not be oversensitive to the feelings of his men, the silent backs that Stevens and Krater turned to him hurt. He found that he wanted to apologize to them, but of course there was nothing he could say.

“Can you come ashore with me?” Brit asked as they neared the wharf.

“I can’t keep the boat waiting, and I don’t want to keep it going back and forth.”

“Why not spend the night? Your Mr. Green looks as though he could handle anything.”

Remembering that Brit had first taken Nathan to be the captain, Paul felt an absurd stab of jealousy. He suspected that she would have bedded any man who happened to be the commanding officer. With his courtly manners Nathan might still have a chance to join what was probably Brit’s line of lovers. Hell, how long could the line be in this desolate place and why was he becoming so damned Puritanical? Paul felt miserably disloyal when Brit looked up and smiled at him, her narrow face under the hood of her parka looking oddly childlike in the shadowed moonlight, undefended, vulnerable.

“I’d like to have you spend the night,” she said, taking his hesitancy as indecision.