Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

Paul was still studying the distant mountains, which appeared to change shape as they merged with clouds, when Nathan staggered to the pilothouse.

“Captain,” Nathan said to Mowrey, “I have them repeating a radio message which I have decoded. They are getting quite angry because we don’t acknowledge it. Captain Hansen has already acknowledged his — it’s addressed to both of us.”

Mowrey took the clipboard from him and read the message. It said, “German weather ship detected by radio operating in vicinity of Angmagssalik Fjord, Greenland east coast. Nanmak will proceed to investigate immediately. Arluk will stand by according to original orders to escort Dorchester to Narsarssuak Fjord.”

“Well, good-by Wally,” Mowrey said. “Sure, acknowledge it. We won’t have that bastard giving us orders anymore.”

Both Nathan and Paul stood on the wing of the bridge watching as the Nanmak changed to a southeasterly course. Lost amongst the whitecaps, the blue and white ship was almost invisible. It was strange to think that the Arluk was a sister of Hansen’s ship — in a way it was just like looking at oneself, seeing oneself as little more than a chip lost in the Arctic sea and sky. Suddenly the signal light on the flying bridge of the Nanmak blinked briefly.

“He says good luck,” Mowrey said. “Return the sentiment. That won’t cost us nothing.”

While the lights exchanged their brief farewells Nathan said, “They didn’t even give me a chance to fix his radar for him again. I’d give a lot to be with him.”

“Yeah,” Paul replied, but he wasn’t sure what he felt or thought except that stupid old adage about being careful not to jump from the frying pan into the fire. He stood watching the Nanmak until she was out of sight, and, there was nothing but sea, sky and the distant mountain peaks.

After standing his watch, Paul slept, the usual druglike effect of seasickness expunging even dreams. When he came back on deck hours later the view of Greenland was much more dramatic. To his surprise the great mountains were smooth red granite with only a few patches of snow. Glaciers like white rivers pushed to the sea between them. These, however, were not the sights that excited Paul. Spreading out from the coast for miles was the Greenland ice pack. It was nothing like anything which he had ever seen or imagined.

If Paul had tried to visualize it at all, he had thought of flat cakes of ice jammed up. This was a vast city of ice castles, towers and crystal ramparts, all thrown together as though by some cataclysmic earthquake. Like the ruins of fortifications which some forgotten gods had erected at the dawn of time to protect the coast of Greenland, row upon row of these spires and sloping walls, some of them hundreds of feet high, stretched as far to the north and south as the eye could see. The crumbling ice palaces were astonishingly varied in color. Glittering blues and greens of all shades made the white background look anything but drab, and the sun, which was now low on the horizon behind them, gilded some of the snowy slopes, and made them glow in many tones of gold, bronze and even rose. This was not the most spectacular aspect of the ice pack. The sea in front of it was almost black, and huge combers rolling in from Davis Strait smashed themselves against the outer ramparts, sending spray high in the air and jostling the smaller icebergs together, causing a thunderous gnashing of teeth, a grinding roar which would make any sailor but a seasoned ice pilot turn his stern to it and run. The constant jostling of the icebergs in the outer walls which took the brunt of the surf produced a broad band of crushed ice which undulated on the dark waves just to seaward of the breakers, a writhing white serpentine barrier which somehow was most terrifying of all.

“Lord God!” Nathan said as he clung to the rail of the bridge and his ravaged face was transfixed.

“We call it storis ice,” Mowrey said with grim satisfaction, as though he had created this miracle himself. “Do you think you could pilot a ship through that, Yale?”

“Not right now, sir,” Paul said.

Mowrey changed course to parallel the ice pack at a distance of about a mile, called for slow speed and went to his cabin to refresh his coffee mug. Nathan and Paul continued to study the ice pack, as did Flags, Guns, who was at the helm, and Boats.

“Where do all those icebergs come from?” Flags asked with awe. “How do they get made like that?”

“I’ve been reading a little about it,” Nathan said. “Apparently Greenland is shaped like a gigantic saucer with rocky mountains forming the rim. It’s real cold in the interior, but warmer than you’d think around the coasts because of the Gulf Stream. In the interior, I guess, it almost never stops snowing, and you’ve got a mound of snow there damn near two thousand miles long, eight hundred miles wide and something like ten thousand feet high.

“It really is a big factory for producing icebergs,” Nathan continued. “The weight of the snow on top of that big mound compresses the snow on the bottom to ice and drives it out through mountain ravines at the edge of the saucer. Those rivers of ice are the glaciers — we can’t see them move, but you can’t see the hour hand of a clock move either. When the ice rivers hit the sea, which has been warmed by the Gulf Stream, huge chunks break off — they call it calving, and that’s a pretty graphic term when you come to think of it. Then the relatively warm wind over the sea takes over and sculpts the icebergs into all those shapes. The warm currents melt their bottoms too, and every once in a while, they turn over. Both the currents and the winds keep changing their shapes.”

“Thank you, sir,” Flags said. Most of the enlisted men had regarded Nathan’s gaunt, bent figure with contempt, but now there was a note of respect in the young signalman’s voice.

Paul was interested in Nathan’s explanation of the ice pack, but he was concentrating on the problem of how a ship could be worked through such barriers without being crushed, ground to bits in the outer rim, where the smaller icebergs were being smashed together. When Mowrey reappeared, he watched him carefully to see what miracle he could produce. After draining his cup of “coffee,” the old ice pilot went to the wing of the bridge, squinted through the vanes of a gyrocompass repeater and called, “Stand by to take down some bearings, Flags. The highest peak on our starboard bow is 148 degrees. The notch in twin peaks is 028 degrees. A big round mound is 152 degrees.”

When Mowrey went to the chart table in his cabin to plot these bearings, Paul said, “Do you mind if I watch you, sir?”

“Won’t do you much good,” Mowrey growled. “You get to learn to identify these peaks on the chart. The Danes and the Eskies have given names to all these mountains which no one can pronounce, but I know ’em when I see ’em.”

The lines which Mowrey drew on the chart crossed in a very small triangle about fifteen miles off the spot marked Narsarssuak Fjord. Turning to a radio direction finder in a corner of his cabin, Mowrey flicked a switch, donned headphones, and turned a horizontal wheel back and forth. Returning to his chart, he plotted another bearing which came about five miles from his triangle.

“Well, we’re about here all right,” he said. “Now how many days do you suppose that bloody troop ship will keep us waiting?”

The timing of the operation proved more precise than anyone aboard the trawler had hoped. After the Arluk had waited off the edge of the ice pack for only about six hours, a bright signal light blinked on the edge of the western horizon. Flags read the message: “ Arluk , we have you on our radar. Stand by for us five miles off pack.”