A Grue Of Ice (2 page)

rather than the minute plankton my special net was seeking hundreds of feet below the surface.

Sailhardy seemed to anticipate my thoughts. " Any luck?" he asked.

I shook my head.

The Albatross' Foot! It had a selling title, one of the learned gentlemen of the Royal Society had said, and he was right. That strange, almost mesmeric name was woven into the fabric of my war years, with Sailhardy, with Tristan da Cunha. Little had I thought, the day Sailhardy had come aboard my destroyer in the Tristan anchorage, that he and The Albatross' Foot were to become the star which I had followed actively down-horizon for a dozen years. Before that I had lived with the magic of the name for a further six. Science had never heard of The Albatross' Foot! Nor had I,

despite my advanced researches before the war into

oceanography. Sailhardy had told me it was the inmost secret of the Tristan islanders. They maintained it was
a
gigantic warm current which swept down in spring—not every spring, but at irregular intervals—between Africa and South America, bearing countless billions of the microscopic 13

sea creatures called plankton, which are the food of everything in the Southern Ocean, from the smallest fish to the whale. The islanders called it The Albatross' Foot, so Sailhardy had said, because the current resembled, in macrocosm, the warm double vein in an albatross' foot with which the great bird hatches its eggs. The only warm thing in an albatross' nest in sub-zero temperatures is that life-giving warm vein. Life-giving it was, said Sailhardy, in the truest sense, because it brought in early summer the basic plankton-life for all other life to the frozen seas round Tristan, and by its warmth dispersed the

ice.

" Drake Passage," repeated Sailhardy. " There's a gale coming, and it's from the Drake Passage. I smell it. It's not coming from the South Shetlands at all." His voice, with its strange fascinating accent, had a curious clarity of modula tion, as if he had learned the trick of talking against a storm without having to raise his voice. The flat calm was broken only by an occasional cat's-paw of wind.

" Does it matter?" I asked.

He looked at me sternly. " Bruce," he said, " you've been away from the Southern Ocean too long. You've forgotten. You came back to Tristan that once after the war—you stayed a whole year until the next ship—but for the rest of the time you've been in Cape Town and London."

I laughed. " A man must live, Sailhardy, even an oceanographer. I came back to Tristan after the war and spent every penny of my war-time gratuity trying to find The Albatross' Foot. You know. How many days of that year did we spend at sea together, you and I, in this very boat?" He came over to the stern and unshipped the high, clumsy tiller, as if to reiterate his warning of an impending storm. " It wasn't long enough," he said. " It took three years before The Albatross' Foot came again. You should have waited."

" I want proof," I said. " I want plankton. I want eightyeight million plankton." He pulled the battered, Navy-style cap back from the red-brown balaclava cap beneath, and looked speculatively at me.

" Eighty-eight million?"

I grinned at him. " My special net will hold exactly one quart of sea-water, and one quart of sea-water, in the concentration I need to prove The Albatross' Foot, will contain eighty-eight million of the little so-and-so's. When—and if—

we ever do find them, you shall see what a little beauty a

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plankton really is. Under the microscope. It's octagonal, with a magnificent six-starred centre. The middle is round, and is all fluted and grained like machined silver wire."

" You'd better hurry and get that net up," he said. He reached out and took the hard collar of my buttoned-up

anorak jacket and rubbed it against the cloth by my throat.

" Listen!" he said. " Listen. If it were dry, you'd hear it squeak. That would mean your storm is from the South Shetlands. But it doesn't. It's wet. It means it's from the Drake Passage."

I could see it in his face. He was willing the storm—a

storm of which I could see not the slightest sign—to come. He wanted to pit the whaleboat against a full gale in the Southern Ocean. He looked to his right, to the south-west

first, and then to his left, to the south-east. Then he swung round and gazed at Tristan itself, dominated by the old snowcapped volcano and slightly masked by cloud, like a miniature version of the famous Table Mountain tablecloth at Cape Town.

" Masthead," he said, so softly that I had to strain to hear. " Tristan da Cunha, the masthead of the world!" I ran my eye over the lean figure. I knew he was my own age, but the attrition of wind, sea and ice had weathered his face to an age anywhere between forty and sixty.

" And a masthead must have a lookout," I joked. " That is why I took you with me during the war. What did I know

of the Southern Ocean then? I wanted a man with all the sea-lore of this ocean at his fingertips. I was as scared as hell of losing my ships before I even got a sight of a raider. I found my man—Sailhardy."

" I nearly let you down the very first time we entered Deception harbour," he said quietly. " Do you remember Neptune's Bellows?"

" I still get the heebie-jeebies when I think of it," I grinned. " Thank God I brought you on the bridge."

" Neptune's Bellows is just about right," said Sailhardy, " the way the wind rips through the gap."

" It caught old H.M.S. Scott's bows," I filled in. " Dear Heaven! The way her bows whipped in towards those

rocks!"

I could still see the way Sailhardy had taken hold of the situation as the flagship teetered on the edge of destruction in the narrow gap which leads into the deeper anchorage—the flooded volcanic crater—beyond.

15

" It was that afternoon," I said slowly, " that you told me about The Albatross' Foot."

Deception harbour had been full of bergy bits of ice. They had come in crabwise through Neptune's Bellows and started to freeze together in the inner anchorage. It seemed quite clear to me. what would happen: my small force was about to be frozen solid in the harbour. As I had seen it, it would have remained bottled up there for the next six months, unable to move, while the U-boats and raiders sneaked past

in the Drake Passage. Destroyers and frigates are not sturdy ships like whale catchers ; the ice would have damaged them severely. There were no installations or dockyards to repair them. As the harbour started to freeze, I had climbed the cliff entrance and had been appalled at the gigantic phalanx of solid ice moving through the strait between Deception and the mainland. Some of it was turning aside from the main

body into Deception harbour. If enough did—it would

have meant death to my whole task force.

Sailhardy had stood with me gazing at the fantastic sight. " The Albatross' Foot!" he had exclaimed softly. " The warm current was sweeping past Tristan as we left the other day. It will be here in a day or two. It will cut that ice up like a hot knife through butter."

It did. I watched in amazement as Sailhardy's strange story of the warm, life-bringing current came true. The great moving battalions of ice, and even the landfast ice on the

mainland, wilted before the attack of The Albatross' Foot. In a world where everything was frozen, The Albatross'

Foot was the only warm thing. I blessed the day I had brought the islander with me. My squadron was saved. During the next two years, Sailhardy told me many things about the strange current of Tristan da Cunha—completely fascinating to an oceanographer like myself. But it was war, and we had work—grim work—to do, and there was not time or opportunity to carry out even the preliminaries to the study I wished to make of The Albatross' Foot. After the squadron

had been saved Sailhardy had enjoyed a privileged position on the bridge of H.M.S. Scott.

"I don't think Jimmy the One ever got used to my being on the bridge," smiled Sailhardy, as if reading my thoughts.

" Regular Royal Navy," I said. " The form, old boy. Everything according to tradition. Even the admiral at the

Cape never got used to me, a mere volunteer sailor, being given a strategic command. I was in the same category as

16

yourself. Not a hundred per cent. A week-end sailor. An upstart. An islander and a Cambridge scientist—it was just

too much for some of the old school of regulars to stomach."

" Yes," exclaimed Sailhardy hotly. " Their goddamned prejudice! Jimmy the One asked me once, what does
your
captain—you were always
my
captain—know of running a ship the regular way?"

I hadn't heard this one.

" And what did you say?" I asked.

" I said," replied Sailhardy vehemently, " the Wetherbys have explored and been in these waters for a century or more. He's a Wetherby and a sailor first, and a scientist at Cambridge second. The Wetherbys' goddamned ships were the first to discover the Antarctic mainland, and a Wetherby ship anchored
in
Deception harbour itself while Napoleon was alive."

I grinned. " What did Jimmy the One say to that?" Sailhardy gave his low laugh. " He said, ' If you ever use the expression " goddamned " on my bridge again, I'll put you on a charge.' "

Sailhardy was sitting on the rough thwart. He seemed to have forgotten his fears about a storm. The whaleboat rolled easily in the slight swell.

" At least the admiral made a hell of a fuss of your being purely a Volunteer Reserve man when he dished out the D.S.O. after you sank the German raider."

Sailhardy's words dissolved my holiday feeling. Maybe it

was the memory of the
Meteor's
deadly 5.9-inch salvos bracketing my small ship as I went in with torpedoes. My

guns were useless against the raider's. They had neither the range nor the calibre to match hers.

" Sailhardy," I said incisively, " as you know, I've been back on Tristan for only a couple of days. We've scarcely seen each other until now, what with my having to make social calls to almost every home on the island and the weatherstation men into the bargain Foot." I looked hard at him. " I believe there is another Albatross'

" You believe—what?" he asked incredulously.

" Listen," I said. " During the war you and I went over every shred of evidence, every accompanying phenomenon,.

from whales to weather, about The Albatross' Foot. The Tristan one."

" What do you mean—the Tristan one?" he asked. " The Albatross' Foot belongs to Tristan. It
is
Tristan." 17

" We sank the German raider near Bouvet Island," I replied. " From Tristan that is about two thousand miles." Bouvet! If ever Sailhardy's war-time words to my first lieutenant about the Wetherbys' held true, it was in regard to Bouvet Island. Sixteen hundred miles south of Cape Town towards the South Pole, and slightly to the east of the Greenwich meridian, lies an island. It is about five miles long and slightly over four across. It is the only point of land between Cape Town and the ice continent. There are no other islands, no other land. Bouvet, rivalling Tristan's claim to be the loneliest inhabited island in the world, is the loneliest uninhabited island. Men have not succeeded in landing more than half a dozen times on Bouvet. It lies deeper into the heart of the Roaring Forties than ordinary ships ever go ; even the daring clipper captains of the past would seldom venture into such high gale-lashed, ice-strewn latitudes. A Wetherby ship had been there before Napoleon died on St. Helena. I had seen Bouvet once, from the deck of a fighting ship in action ; the waters of Bouvet had brought me glory in sinking the
Meteor,
one of the war's deadliest armed raiders.

" Bouvet," I said slowly to Sailhardy. "We'd • cleared H.M.S.
Scott
for action. I was on the bridge, of course. You couldn't see what I could. The
Meteor was
getting our range—quick. She was good, that raider. Kohler's gunnery officer was in a class by himself. From the bridge we could just see Bouvet in sight behind the raider. Every eye was on her. I took one last look round before opening fire. We'd dodged round a big icefield to the south. We all heard
Meteor's
guns open up. It wasn't guns, Sailhardy. In time,
Meteor'
s
guns were way ahead of the fall of shot."

Sailhardy stared. " What are you saying, Bruce?"

" It was the thunder of ice breaking up," I replied. " Not guns. Everyone aboard H.M.S.
Scott
was so intent on the raider that they didn't notice the time lag. I did. I also saw."

" You saw
what,
Bruce?"

" I saw a great spurt of fragments as the ice started to break up. Like the day it broke up in Deception harbour. The day you told me about The Albatross' Foot."

" Then why ..."

I shrugged. " Who would believe a story like that? Strain of going into action, they say. Putting my hobby-horse to the front. I couldn't prove it, any more than I can prove

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the presence of The Albatross' Foot round Tristan. I couldn't even suggest it scientifically. That is, not until a year ago." " What do you mean?" he breathed.