Hammond Innes

Calling the Southern Cross!

The Saturday Evening Post, February 11-April 1, 1950

Volume 222, Issues 33-40

I

Dawn was breaking as the first news of the disaster reached London. It was February tenth and the rattle of milk bottles was the only sound in the black, frost-bound streets. In Fleet Street a Reuter’s operator was handed a news flash and his fingers ran automatically over the keys of his machine as he transmitted the message to the subscribers. Two blocks away, in the office of a big London daily, a sleepy subeditor heard the clack of the message as it came through on the teleprinter. He tore it off and stood there reading it:

CAPE TOWN FEB to ROTTER: SOS RECEIVED FROM FACTORY SHIP SOUTHERN CROSS. SHIP IS CAUGHT IN ICE IN WEDDELL SEA AND IN DANGER OF BEING CRUSHED. NORWEGIAN FACTORY SHIP HAAKON 400 MILES FROM POSITION OF SOUTHERN CROSS GOING TO RESCUE.

REUTER 0713

The subeditor yawned, tossed the sheet of paper into the news basket. In Whitehall, at the Admiralty, a messenger hurried along the empty, echoing corridors. He handed a message to the duty officer. The duty officer rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, read the message through, placed it in a basket marked “For Immediate Attention.” In a big office block in Fenchurch Street the telephone rang incessantly on the third floor. These were the offices of the South Antarctic Whaling Company and only the cleaners were there. The telephone went unanswered. Then the call from Cape Town was transferred to the flat of Albert Jenssen, the company’s London manager.

Albert Jenssen was still in bed. The telephone woke him, and he wan half asleep as he groped for the receiver and lifted it to his ear. A moment later and he was sitting up in bed, wide awake and speaking rapidly into the phone. When he had finished, he replaced the receiver automatically and sat there for a moment, a dazed expression on his face. Then he fell upon the telephone, and call after call went out from the flat in South Kensington: cables to Durban, the Falkland Islands and the whaling stations of South Georgia; calls to Sandefjord and Tönsberg in Norway, to Leith in Scotland, to the BBC, to a cabinet minister and finally to the Admiralty.

By midday more than 150,000,000 people knew that a ship of 22,000 tons belonging to a British whaling company was locked in the grip of the Antarctic ice and was being slowly crushed, and that more than 400 men were face to face with death in the pitiless, frozen wastes of the Antarctic.

The Admiralty ordered the sloop Walrus to proceed to South Georgia, refuel and then make an attempt to reach the Southern Cross. A South African naval corvette was dispatched from Cape Town, also with orders to refuel at South Georgia. Det Norske Hvalselskab, of Sandefjord, Norway, announced that their factory ship, Haakon, which had steered for the Southern Cross within half an hour of receiving the first SOS at 0318 hours, was now within 200 miles of the ship’s last position. The United States Government offered the services of the aircraft carrier Ohio, then cruising off the River Plate.

Meanwhile events moved fast in the Antarctic. An early report that the Southern Cross had dynamited an area of clear water and was being warped round was followed by the news that the way out of the ice was blocked by several icebergs which were charging into the pack. The tanker, Josephine, and the refrigerator ship, South, were standing by on the edge of the pack, together with the rest of the South Antarctic Company’s fleet, unable to do anything. By midday the whole of the starboard side of the Southern Cross was buckling under pressure of the ice, and at 1417 hours Captain Eide, the master, gave the order to abandon ship. In a final message before unloading the radio equipment onto the ice, Eide warned the Haakon not to enter the ice beyond the line of icebergs. That was the last message received from the Southern Cross.

All that night the lights blazed in the South Antarctic Whaling Company’s offices in Fenchurch Street. But no message came through from the survivors. Utter silence had closed down on the abandoned ship and it was clear that this was the worst sea disaster in peacetime since the Titanic went down in 1912.

The most-detailed picture of the events leading up to the disaster available on the morning of the eleventh was contained in a feature article in London’s largest daily. It was headed: DISASTER IN THE ANTARCTIC, and read:

The Southern Cross left the Clyde on the sixteenth of October last with a total of 411 men and boys. In charge of the expedition was Bernt Nordahl, factory manager. Hans Eide was master, and the assistant manager was Erik Bland, son of the chairman of the South Antarctic Whaling Company. About 78 per cent of those on board were Norwegians, mainly from Sandefjord and Tönsberg. The rest were British. With her Mailed an ex-Admiralty corvette, converted to act as a whale-towing vessel, and the refrigerator ship. South.

The Southern Cross arrived at Cape Town on the fourteenth of November, where her catchers and a tanker were waiting for her. The expedition sailed on the twenty-third of November. The fleet then consisted of the factory ship, a vessel of 22,160 tons. 10 whale catchers, each of under 300 tons, two buoy boats — catchers used for towing — three ex-naval corvettes for towing whales, one refrigerator ship, one tanker, and an old whaler to transfer the meat to the refrigerator ship. One of the towing vessels was later sent back to Cape Town to pick up electric-harpoon equipment. The company intended to experiment during the season with the electrocution of whales, a method of killing that was in its infancy prior to the war.

On the twenty-ninth of November the Southern Cross sighted South Georgia and wits in radio-telephone communication with the shore-based whaling stations on this island. Reports of both Nordahl. the factory manager, and Captain Ride, the master, to the London office nil spoke of violent and incessant gales, low temperatures, loose pack ice and an unusually large number of gigantic icebergs.

Whales seemed very scarce by comparison with the previous bumper season, and on Boxing Bay. Nordahl reported trouble with the men. This is almost unheard of in Norwegian or British whaling fleets, where the men have a financial interest in the catch. But when Jenssen was pressed for fuller details, he said he had no statement to make on the matter.

The matter must have been serious, however, for Colonel Bland, chairman of the company, left London Airport on the second of January for Cape Town in a privately chartered plane. He undertook the journey against the advice of his doctors. He had been seriously ill for some time with heart trouble. With him went his daughter-in-law; Franz Weiner, a German technical adviser on the electrical harpoon; and Aldo Bonomi, the well-known photographer. The daughter-in-law, Mrs. Judie Bland, is the daughter of Bernt Nordahl.

No report was received at the London office after Colonel Bland joined the Southern Cross on the seventeenth of January, except routine reports of positions and number of whales caught. From these, however, it is clear that shortly thereafter Colonel Bland decided to steam south into the dangerous ice-strewn Weddell Sea in search of whales.

What happened? All we know at the moment is that the Southern Cross went to the assistance of several of her catchers who were in difficulties and that at 0318 hours on the tenth of February she was firmly beset by the ice and was rending out an SOS. The west ward-driven pack ice closed round her and in a matter of hours she was gone.

So much for the story of the Southern Cross disaster, as the public knew it then. It was a nine days’ wonder, but as the rescue attempts dragged on without success, it faded out. Interest revived momentarily when a United States aircraft carrier arrived on the scene, but bad weather hindered the search.

By the middle of March, winter was setting in, and by the twenty-second all search vessels had turned back. By the fifteenth of April. Jan Eriksen, factory manager of the Nord Hvalstasjon. Grytviken, reported to his company:

ALL SEARCH VESSELS HAVE SOW LEFT. THERE ARE SOW SO VESSELS IS THE AREA OF THE TRAGEDY. WINTER IS CLOSING IS IF AXY SURVIVORS ARK STILL ALIVE. GOD HELP THEM. FOR SO MAS CAS UNTIL SUMMER. I AM PREPARING TO CLOSE DOWN THE STATION.

That report wrote finis to all attempts to rescue any possible survivors of the Southern Cross.

But the story doesn’t end there, for on the twenty-first of April presses the world over rolled out the name Southern Cross in great, flaring headlines. For, on the twenty-first of April—

But this is Duncan Craig’s story. Let him tell it.

DUNCAN CRAIG’S STORY OF THE LOSS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS,

THE CAMP ON THE ICEBERG AND THE TREK THAT FOLLOWED

I did not actually join the Southern Cross until the seventeenth of January, only three weeks before the disaster occurred. Indeed, a month before that date I was unaware of the existence of the ship or of the South Antarctic Whaling Company. I am not a whaler, and apart from a season’s work in Greenland with a university exploration club, I had never before been in high latitudes.

My connection with the events that led up to the loss of the Southern Cross began with the New Year. I was emigrating to South Africa and on the night of the first of January I was waiting in the offices of a private charter company at London Airport in the hope of hitching a ride to Cape Town.

The flight was scheduled for 0100 hours. The plane had been chartered by the South Antarctic Whaling Company for a Colonel Bland. There were five seats available, and Bland’s party numbered four. That was all I knew. Tim Bartlett, the pilot of the aircraft, had tipped me off at a New Year’s Eve party the night before. As far as he was concerned, it was okay. He’d take me. But it was up to me to talk my way into the spare seat.

Bland arrived at twelve-thirty. “Is the plane ready?” he asked the clerk. His manner was peremptory. There were three other people with him — two men and a girl. A uniformed chauffeur brought in their baggage.

“The pilot’s waiting,” the clerk said. “If you’ll just sign these forms, Colonel Bland. And here’s a cable... arrived about half an hour ago.”

I watched his fingers rip at the cable envelope. His eyes were hard under the tufty brow’s and his bluish jowls quivered slightly as he read. Then he swung around abruptly. “Here, read this,” he said to the girl. He held the flimsy cable sheet out and it shook slightly in his thick hairy hand.

The girl came forward and took it. She was dressed in a pair of old slacks and a green woolen jersey. A lovely mink coat was draped carelessly over her shoulders. She looked tired and her face was pale under its make-up. She read it through and then looked at Bland, her lips compressed into a thin line, her eyes blank.

“Well?” Bland’s voice was almost violent. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, and I saw she was trembling slightly. “Well?” he barked again. And then the violence inside him seemed to explode. “First you, and now your father! What have you got against the boy?” His fist suddenly crashed down on the desk top. “I’ll not recall him! Do you hear? Your father had better learn to get along with him! Any more ultimatums like that and I’ll accept your father’s resignation! He’s not the only leader available!”

“He’s the only one that can get you the results you’ve been accustomed to.” she answered defiantly, a flush of anger coloring her cheeks.

Bland was about to reply, but then he saw me and stopped. He turned abruptly and seized the forms that the clerk had thrust toward him. His hand shook as he signed them.

As though he sensed that I was watching him, he suddenly turned and stared at me. “Are you just waiting for a plane, sir, or do you want to speak to me?” he demanded aggressively.

“I’m waiting for a plane,” I said.

He grunted, but didn’t take his eyes off me.

“Whether I get it depends on you,” I went on. “My name’s Craig — Duncan Craig. The pilot of your plane is a friend of mine. He told me there might be a spare seat, and I’d very much like to come with you to Cape Town.”

“Well, you can’t.”

And suddenly I didn’t care. Perhaps it was his manner — perhaps it was the way he’d spoken to the girl. “There’s no need to be offensive. Colonel Bland!” I said angrily. “All I asked for was a lift!”

“Just a minute,” he said. The violence seemed to have died out of him. “All right, Craig,” he went on. “As it happens, there is a spare seat. If the pilot vouches for you and you’re through the formalities in time, you can have it.”

He seemed to mean it. “Thanks,” I said.

“That seemed to exhaust his interest in me. Tim Bartlett came through with his copilot, a man called Fenton. He glanced at me with a lift to his eyebrows. I nodded and he grinned. He introduced himself and Fenton to Bland and asked the clerk for the passenger details. As he glanced through the papers, he said, “Which is Weiner?” One of the two men standing in the shadows by the door came forward slowly into the light. “I am Weiner,” he said. He had a bald head, thin, emaciated features and a tubercular cough.

“And I am Bonomi — Aldo Bonomi.” It was the fourth member of the party. He stepped out of the shadows into the light with the swagger and bounce of an opera singer. Gold rings flashed as he seized Tim’s hand and pumped it up and down. “I am so pleased to know that we shall be in such good hands. You are an artist. I can see that. I, too, am an artist. But I hope you are a careful driver. Last time I fly, the driver, he make play with the airplane and I am very seek.”

Tim got his hand back from the Italian and said, “It’s all right. You needn’t worry, Mr. Bonomi. It will all lie very dull, I hope.” And he went out into the hangar.

The rest of us followed.

As London stretched away to the darkness of the horizon, clear in my mind, like a montage, was the notice I’d pasted on my office desk: GONE TO SOUTH AFRICA. Was it only yesterday evening I’d put it there? I thought of Mr. Bridewell standing there, staring at it, uneasy, suspecting a leg-pull, completely unable to comprehend why I had left. Even my letter wouldn’t explain that to him.

I undid my safety belt. Behind me. Bland suddenly said, “Judie, change places with Franz Weiner. I want to discuss this electrical killing gear with him.”

I half turned in my seat. Nobody seemed to notice my surprise. The girl said, “Don’t you think you ought to rest?”

“I’m all right,” Bland answered gruffly.

“If you’re not careful you’ll kill yourself.”

“I’ll take a lot of killing.” He stared at her for a second. “Where’s that cable? I gave it to you.”

The girl felt in the pocket of her fur coat and brought out the crumpled cable flimsy. I heard him smoothing it out on his brief case. Then he snorted. “Bernt’s no right to cable me like this.” Anger was catching hold of him again. “He’s not giving the toy a chance.” I heard the cable crushed in the sudden clenching of his fist. Then: “The trouble is that only Erik stands tot ween him and full control of the company when I’m gone.” His voice was a deep, angry rumble.

“That’s not fair!” The girl’s voice blazed.

“Not fair, eh? What the devil am I to think? They weren’t a week out of Cape Town before there was trouble between them.”

“And whose fault do you suppose that was?” the girl demanded angrily.

“Bernt was playing on his lack of experience.”

“That’s Erik’s story.”

“What of that? Do you expect me not to believe my own son?”

“Yes, but you don’t know him very well, do you? You were in London all through the war, and since then—”

“I know when a toy’s being victimized!” Bland snapped back. “Why, Bernt even had the nerve to cable that he was causing trouble among the Tons berg men. There’s never any trouble with whalers. They’re far too interested in the success of the expedition.”

“If Bernt said he was causing trouble among the Jenssen men, then he was.” The girl’s voice steadied. “He’s never thought of anything but the interests of the company. You know that.”

“Then why does he send me this ultimatum? Why does he demand Erik’s recall?”

“Because he’s seen through him.”

“Seen through him? That’s a fine way to talk of your husband.”

“I don’t care. You may as well know the truth about him.”

“Shut up!” Bland’s voice was thunderous. “Don’t talk like that. I can see what’s happening to him now. You undermining him at home and your father undermining him out there. His confidence in himself is being sapped by the pair of you. No wonder he needs—”

“His confidence!” The girl’s tone was half contemptuous, half hysterical. “You don’t know him at all, do you? You still think of him as the gay, reckless boy of ten years ago — sailing his boat, winning ski-jump championships. You think that’s all he wants. Well, it isn’t. He likes to control things — men, machines, an organization. He wants power. Power, I tell you. He wants control of the company. And he’s got his mother—”

“How dare you talk like that?”

“Do you think I don’t know Erik by now?” She was leaning forward across the gangway, her body rigid, her face a white mask. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this for some time — ever since that first cable. But you were too ill. Now, if you’re well enough to travel, you’re well enough to know what—”

“I refuse to listen.” Bland was trying to keep down his anger. “Damn it, the boy’s your husband!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Her voice sounded frighteningly bitter. “Do you think he hasn’t made me aware of that every hour of every day we’ve been married?”

Bland was peering at her through his thick glasses. “Don’t you still love him?” he asked.

“Love him!” she cried. “I hate him! I hate him, I tell you!” She was crying wildly now. “Oh, why did you agree to send him out as second in command?”

“You seem to forget he’s my son.” Bland’s voice was ominously quiet.

“I haven’t forgotten that. But it’s time you knew the truth.”

“Then wait till we’re alone.”

The girl glanced at me and saw that I was watching her. “All right,” she said in a low voice.

“Franz!” The man next to me jerked in his seat. “Come and sit back here... Change places with Franz,” he ordered the girl. “And try to calm down.”

She got up heavily and changed places with Franz Weiner.

I think I was too excited to sleep. In the end I got up and went through into the pilot’s cockpit. Fenton was at the controls. Tim was pouring coffee from a vacuum flask. “Well, there’s the last you’ll see of England for a bit,” he said, nodding through the side window. “Getting on all right with Bland’s party?”

“I’ve hardly spoken to them,” I said. “Bland and the girl have just had a hell of a row. Now he’s talking to Weiner about some new equipment or something. Weiner’s German, isn’t he?”

“That’s right. He’s an expert on electrical harpoons. Poor devil! Think of it. Four months in the Antarctic.”

“Is Bland going out to the Antarctic too?”

“Yes, they’re all going, as far as I know. There’s a boat waiting for them at the Cape to take them out to the factory ship. I gather there’s some sort of trouble on board the Southern Cross. Anyway, Bland sounded as though he was in a hell of a hurry to get out there.”

“Do you mean to say the girl’s going as well?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know about her,” he answered. “She only joined the party at the last moment. According to her papers, she’s Norwegian by birth and South African by marriage. Looks rather a poppet.”

“She doesn’t behave like one,” I answered. “More like a wildcat. And she’s all tensed up over something. It’s an odd setup.”

“You should worry. You got your ride, didn’t you? If you want company, go and talk to Aldo Bonomi. There must be something behind the bounce, for he’s one of the world’s best photographers. Like some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll sleep better without it.”

He set down the flask. “That re minds me. I’d better hand out some blankets. You might give me a hand will you, Duncan?”

Back in the main body of the plane everything was just as I’d left it. We handed round the blankets. “Breakfast at Treviso,” Tim said as he went for’ard. I settled in my seat across the gangway from the girl. She had wrapped her blankets round her, but she still sat tense and wide-eyed. My thoughts drifted to South Africa and the new world that lay ahead. What sort of job would Kramer find me when I got there? The drone of the engines gradually lulled me to sleep.

A frozen dawn showed us the Alps as a wild barrier of snow-capped peaks with the crevassed glacier ice tumbling down through giant clefts. Then we were over the flat expanse of the Lombardy plain and setting down at Treviso for breakfast.

I was right behind Bonomi as we went into the canteen. He picked a table away from the others and I seated myself opposite him. “I gather you’re a photographer, Mr. Bonomi,” I said.

“But of course. I am Aldo Bonomi. Everyone wishes for my photographs. One week I am in America, next I am in Paris. Travel, travel, travel — I am always in trains or airplanes.”

“And now you’re going to the antarctic with Colonel Bland. Tell me, what do you think of him? You heard the row he had with his daughter-in-law? Is there something wrong on board the factory ship?”

His hand fingered his little green-and-red bow tie. “Mistair Craig, I never talk about my clients. It is not good for business, you understand.” The flash of white teeth in his swarthy face was hail ingratiating, half apologetic. He smoothed his hand over the shining surface of his black hair. “Let us talk about you,” he said. The waiter came with our breakfast. As he poured the coffee. Bo no mi said, “You emigrate to South Africa, yes?”

I nodded.

“That’s very exciting. You go to another country and you start again. You have no job, but you go all the same. That needs guts, eh? You are a man with guts. I like men with guts.”

“What makes you think I haven’t got a job?” I asked as the waiter disappeared.

“If you have a job, then you do not need to ask for a ride. But tell me, what makes you leave England?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just got fed up.”

“But something make you decide very quick, eh? Oh, I do not mean something serious, you understand. Life, she is not like that. Always it is the little things that make up our minds for us.”

I laughed at that. “You’re right there.” And suddenly I was talking to him, telling him the whole thing. “I suppose I’ve been feeling a sense of frustration ever since the war ended,” I explained. “I went straight from Oxford into the navy. When I came out I found that commanding a corvette didn’t qualify me to run a business. I finished up as a clerk with a firm of tobacco importers.”

“That is not so much after commanding a ship, eh?” He nodded sympathetically. “And what is the little thing that brings your frustration to a head, eh?”

“A fiver,” I said. “Mr. Bridewell, the man who ran the business, gave us each a fiver on New Year’s Eve. But the fool had to make a speech about it.”

“And you do not like this Mistair Bridewell?”

“No. It wasn’t that. He’s a decent little man. And it was a decent gesture. But I couldn’t stomach the lecture. I thought it was a hard way to earn a fiver. I went out and got drunk with it. And during the course of the evening I ran into Bartlett, the pilot of our plane. He told me he was flying to South Africa with a spare seat and I decided to chance it. A fellow I met during the war said he could always find me a job if I came out.”

“Ah, yes, a fellow you met during the war.” He shrugged his shoulders. At length he gave a little sigh and said, “Well, I wish you luck. I hope the job he have for you is a very good one.”

South Africa seemed suddenly less exciting. I should have got in touch with Kramer about that job first. Now, as South Africa became a reality, the problem of that job loomed more and more important.

The trip over the Med was bumpy; the sea very blue, but flecked with white. The Western Desert looked cold and drab. Cairo came up at us marked by the geometrical square of the Pyramid at Giza. An icy wind blew dust across the airport. Tim told us there’d be a six-hour stop there. We’d start again at ten. Bonomi went off with a journalist friend. Bland decided to rest. Weiner was suffering from air-sickness. I stood around, wondering what to do with the time on my hands. I’d just made up my mind to go and find someplace to get a drink when a voice behind me said, “Mr. Craig.”

I turned. It was the girl. She looked cold and pale. “Could you — would you mind taking me into Cairo... for a drink or something?” Her gray eyes were wide and her mouth trembled slightly. I think she was on the verge of tears. She was all wound up, like some thing that’s tied too tight and ready to burst.

“Come on,” I said, and took her arm. I could feel the tightness inside her. She wasn’t trembling, but it was there like the charge of electricity. We found a taxi and I ordered the driver to take us to Shepheards Hotel.

There was a long silence as the taxi rattled out through the airport gates. I didn’t hurry her. I knew it would come. She suddenly said, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Inflicting myself on you like this. I... I don’t think I’ll be very good company.”

“Don’t worry.” I said. “Just relax.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and closed her eyes.

At Shepheards I took her to a table in a comer. We tried a little small talk. It didn’t work. When the drinks came, she drank in silence.

“Wouldn’t it help to tell me about it?” I suggested.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“It’ll help spread the load,” I added. “It always does. And it’s not likely we’ll meet again.”

For a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-live, her face looked almost haggard. Suddenly she said, “I’m scared about my father. I don’t know why I’m scared, but I am. It came over me last night in the plane. It was as though—” She put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. “Oh, God!” she said in a choking voice. “It all seems such a mess!”

I wanted to do something to comfort her. But there was nothing I could do.

At length she raised her head. “All last night,” she said, “I was thinking about my father and Erik, down there in the Antarctic.”

“Erik is your husband, is he?” I asked.

“Erik Bland. Yes.” She nodded.

“And your father’s there too?”

“Yes, he’s the manager of the factory. He’s also leader of the expedition.” Then, “If only Erik weren’t there,” she whispered. And with sudden violence, “If only he’d been killed during the war.” She looked at me sadly. “But it’s always the wrong ones that get killed, isn’t it?” And I wondered whether there was somebody she’d been fond of.

“I’m frightened,” she went on. “Erik’s been working for this for two years. Through his mother, who’s Norwegian, he’s got a lot of Sandefjord men of his own choosing into the crew. And now, this season, he’s persuaded Colonel Bland to let him go out as assistant manager. They weren’t a fortnight out of Cape Town before he was cabling that my father was turning the Tönsberg men against him. There were other cables and then finally the one which said: ‘Nordahl openly saying he will have control of the company soon.’ My father would never say a thing like that — not in front of the men. I know he wouldn’t. It’s all part of a plan to drive a wedge between him and Colonel Bland.”

“Is Nordahl your father?” I asked.

“Bernt Nordahl, yes. He’s a wonderful person.” Her eyes came alive for the first time since I’d met her. “Nineteen seasons he’s been out in the Antarctic. He’s as tough and—” She checked herself and her tone flattened as she said, “You see, Bland’s just had a stroke. It’s heart trouble. He knows he hasn’t got long to live. That’s why he finally agreed to Erik going out this season. Normally he wouldn’t. He knows he hasn’t sufficient experience. But he wants Erik to follow him in the company. It’s natural. Any father would. But he doesn’t know him. He doesn’t know what he’s like.”

“And your father does?” I suggested. She nodded. “Yes.” She hesitated and then said, “That cable Bland received at the airport last night, it was from my father. It said either Erik must be recalled or he would resign.”

I looked at her, trying to understand why she had married Erik Bland. She wasn’t beautiful. She was a little too stockily built for that, and that ridiculous little uptilted nose gave her face a snubbed appearance. But she had grace. She had strength, too, and a bubbling vitality that showed even through the blank misery of her present mood. To me, she was all Norway with that lovely golden hair, creamy skin and wide, generous mouth. She was the sort of girl that’s born to fight for the right to live alongside her man. And from what I’d heard on the plane, it was clear she’d made a wrong choice.

“Mind if I ask you a personal question?” I said.

Her gray eyes were suddenly on the defensive. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Why did you marry Erik Bland?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Why does any girl marry the man she does?” she answered. “It was in nineteen thirty-eight. Erik was very attractive. He’s tall, fair, very boyish. He’s a fine skier, dances beautifully and keeps a lovely little yacht at Dronningen. Everybody thought I was very lucky.”

“And he was a sham?”

“Yes.”

“When did you discover that?”

“During the war. We grew up during the war, didn’t we? Before, all I thought about was having a good time. I studied in England and Paris. But it was the parties and the skiing and the sailing that I lived for. Then the Germans came.” Her eyes, which had sparkled for a moment, clouded now. “All the boys I knew disappeared from Oslo. They won’t north to join the fighting.”

“But Erik didn’t go.”

“No.” There was sudden violence in her tone. “You see, he liked the Germans. He liked the Nazi way of life. It fascinated him. It satisfied a sort of — it’s difficult to put into words — a craving for self-expression. Do you understand?”

“But why wasn’t he interned?” asked. “He’s English, isn’t he?”

“Well, South African. He claimed Boer descent on his father’s side, and of course his mother’s Norwegian. The police checked on him periodically, that was all.”

“Was Colonel Bland over in Norway during the war?”

“No, London. But Erik’s mother remained at Sandefjord. She’d plenty of money, so it didn’t make much difference to Erik.” She hesitated, and then said, “We began to have rows. I refused to go out with him. There were Germans at most of the parties he went to. He took them skiing, even out on his yacht. He just couldn’t see my point of view. Then the Resistance got going. I kept at him until at last he agreed to join. They thought he might be useful because of his German contacts. We forgot that the Germans might think him useful because of his Norwegian contacts. He went up into the hills for one of the drops. A week later the same dropping ground was used. The Resistance group collecting on that drop was practically wiped out. Nobody suspected.”

“Except you,” I said, as she stopped, her teeth biting into her lip.

She nodded slowly. “Yes. I got it out of him one night when he was drunk. He actually — he actually boasted about it. Said it served them right; that they were on the wrong side anyway. It was horrible. I hadn’t the nerve to tell the Resistance. He knew that and he—” She glanced up at me quickly. “Nobody knows what I have just told you,” she said. “So please—” She tossed the request aside as unnecessary. “It doesn’t matter, though.” Her tone was suddenly bitter. “No one would believe it. He’s so devilishly charming. That’s the hell of it — to know what he is and see him keeping up his front of popularity. His father—” She spread her hands helplessly and sighed.

“You’ve never told him about the Resistance business, of course?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to tell any father that about his son — not unless I had to.”

There was a long silence after that. There was nothing I could say. She stared past me, her mind far away, out there in the white wastes of the Antarctic where she was going. “I can hear dance music,” she said with a sudden, hard brightness. “Let’s go and dance.” As I rose, she put her hand on mine. “Thank you,” she said, “for being... so nice.”

I don’t know how she managed it, but we had a lovely evening. Perhaps it was reaction. Maybe it was sheer effort of will. But her gaiety, which was forced and brittle as we went on to the floor, became quite natural as we danced. She danced with her body very close to mine. She seemed to want to dance with complete abandon, and she danced divinely. Once she murmured, “You said we’d never meet again.” Her lips were almost touching my ear. In the taxi going back to the airport, she snuggled up close to me and let me kiss her.

But when the taxi swung in through the gates of the airport she straightened up. As she made up her face, I saw the worried look was back in her eyes. She caught my glance and made a wry face. “Cinderella’s home again,” she said, and her voice was flat. Then, with a sudden rush of warmth, she took my hand in hers. “It’s been a wonderful evening,” she said softly. “Perhaps if I’d met somebody like you—” She stopped there. “But there’d have to have been a war first, wouldn’t there? You see I was a spoilt little wench myself.”

It was just on eleven. The others were waiting for us. We went straight out to the plane. Ten minutes later the lights of Cairo were vanishing below us.

It must have been about four in the morning that Tim came through from the cockpit. The sound of the door sliding back woke me up. He had a slip of paper in his hand. He went past me and stopped at Bland, shaking him awake.

“Urgent message for you. Colonel Bland,” he said, speaking softly.

Bland grunted and there was a rustle of paper.

I turned in my seat. Bland’s face was white and puffy. He was staring down at the slip of paper that trembled in his hand. He swallowed twice and then glanced at Judie, who was fast asleep.

“Sorry to bring you bad news at this time of the morning.” Tim went back to the cockpit.

I tried to get back to sleep. But I couldn’t. I kept on wondering what was in that message. Somehow I was certain it had some connection with Judie. Twice I turned round. Each time Bland failed to notice my movement. He wasn’t asleep. He was sitting there, slumped in his seat, his eyes open and staring at the message.

Dawn came, and with it a glimpse of Mount Elgon on the starboard beam. Shortly afterward the snow-covered peak of Kilimanjaro was above the horizon and we were landing at Nairobi for breakfast. We all sat at the same table. Bland didn’t eat anything. I saw he kept glancing at Judie. He looked almost scared.

Bonomi, who was sitting next to me, suddenly leaned closer and said, “What is the trouble with Colonel Bland? He looks very seek about somethings.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But he got a message during the night.”

When we got up from the meal, I saw Bland motion for Judie to join him outside. He wasn’t gone long, and when he came back he was alone. “Where’s Mrs. Bland?” I asked. “Is anything wrong?

“No,” he answered. “Nothing.” His tone made it clear it was none of my business.

I lit a cigarette and went outside. I thought maybe Judie had gone to powder her nose. But as I turned the comer of the building I saw her walking alone across the airfield. She was walking aimlessly, as though she’d no idea where she was going and didn’t care anyway.

I called to her. But she didn’t answer. She just kept on walking, following her feet, changing her course like a ship without a rudder.

I ran after her then. “Judie!” I called. “Judie!” She stopped then and half turned, waiting for me to come up with her. Her face was quite blank. “What’s happened?” I asked. Her eyes were empty, her whole being withdrawn inside itself. She didn’t answer. I caught hold of her hand. It was cold as ice. “Come on,” I said. “Tell me. It’s the message your father-in-law received during the night, isn’t it?” She nodded bleakly. “What did it say?” For answer, she opened her other hand. I took the crumpled ball of paper and spread it out.

It was from the South Antarctic Company, dispatched at 2130 hours. It read:

EIDE REPORTS MANAGER NORDAHL LOST OVERBOARD FROM FACTORY SHIP. FURTHER INFORMATION LATER.

SIGNED JENSSEN.

Her father dead! I read the message through again, wondering what I could possibly say to her. She’d worshiped him. I knew that from the way she had talked about him in Cairo. The message didn’t say how it had happened; it just said, “Lost overboard.”

“Who is Eide?” I asked.

“The captain of the Southern Cross.” Her voice sounded numbed.

I took her arm and we walked on slowly for a while in silence. Then suddenly the pent-up emotion inside her broke out. “How did it happen?” she cried wildly. “He couldn’t have just fallen overboard! He’s been on ships all his life! Something is wrong down there! Something is wrong! I know there is!”

She began to cry then, her whole body shaking, her head buried against me like a puppy that’s lost its mother. I remember thinking then that if Erik Bland had had any decency, he’d have cabled her himself.

It was summer in Cape Town. My stomach felt hollow inside me. Somewhere down there my future was waiting for me, if I could find it. It was the start of a new life. As we touched down I glanced across at Judie. She was slumped in her seat, staring tensely out the window the way she had been all the way from Mombasa. I wished there was something I could do. But there wasn’t.

At the airport buildings I thanked Bland for the trip. He shook my hand. His grip was like iron, but his face was white. “Glad we could give you a lift.” He mumbled conventional good wishes automatically and then went out with Weiner at his heels. I said good-by to Tim Bartlett, and then Bonomi popped up like a jack-in-the-box, smiling and shaking my hand.

Then Judie was coming toward me. “Well, this is good-by, Duncan,” she said, and held out her hand. She even managed a little smile. Her fingers were warm and firm in my hand. “Just two ships—” she said. “Are you going to a hotel?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll go to the Splendide. Just for a few days I’m going to pretend I’m important.” She nodded and smiled. “Where are you staying?” I asked her.

But she shook her head. “We part here,” she said. “We shall probably go straight on board. Everything is arranged. In an hour’s time we’ll be sailing out of Table Bay.”

I hesitated. I didn’t know quite what to say. But I had to say something. “I hope you... you—” I just couldn’t put it into words.

She smiled. “I know. And thanks.” Then suddenly, on a higher pitch, “If only I knew what had happened. If only Eide or Erik had cabled details. But there’s nothing at the airport... nothing.” Her fingers squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry. You’ve got problems of your own. Good luck. And thank you for being so sweet.” She reached up then and kissed me on the lips. And before I could say anything she turned and went out to the car that was waiting for her. She didn’t look back.

That should have been the end of it. I should have got myself a job and they should have sailed for the Antarctic. But it didn’t work out that way.

I got myself fixed up at the Splendide and then rang Kramer. He was down in the book as a mining consultant. He sounded pleased to hear from me until I mentioned why I was in Cape Town. “You should have written me, old man,” he said. “Then I could have warned you. This isn’t the moment to come out here looking for a job.”

“But you said you could get me a job any time,” I reminded.

“Good heavens!” he said. “That was during the war! Things have changed since then. And you couldn’t have picked a worse moment than this. It’s sticky... very sticky, old man. Right now there’s a scare on and everyone’s got cold feet.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“One of these West Rand outfits — a company known as Words — has turned out a dud. It’s only a small company, but everyone’s panicky — afraid the whole field may turn out the same way. But I’m throwing a little party out at my place tonight. Come along. May he able to fix you up with something.” He gave me the address and rang off.

I put the phone down and sat staring out of the window. The sunshine suddenly seemed a brittle sham. I went and had a hath. And while I was lying there thinking it out the phone hell rang. I flung a towel round me and picked up the receiver.

“Is that Craig?” It was a man’s voice, abrupt and solid.

“Craig speaking,” I said.

“Oh. Bland here,” said the voice, and my spirits sagged again. “My daughter-in-law tells me you commanded a corvette during the war.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Where and for how long?”

I didn’t see what he was driving at, hut I said, “Pretty well everywhere. I took command of her in ’44 and had her for the rest of the war.”

“Good.” There was a slight pause, and then he said, “I’d like to have a word with you. Can you come down to Room Twenty-three?”

“I thought you were sailing right away?”

“I’m staying here the night.” The tone was suddenly abrupt, “When can you come down?”

“I’m just having a bath,” I told him. “But I’ll he down as soon as I’ve dressed.”

“Fine.” And he rang off.

I didn’t hurry over my dressing. I needed time to think it out. I’d got a damn-fool idea in my mind that I couldn’t shake off. It was that question of Bland’s about my being in command of a corvette during the war.

I knocked at the door of No. 23.

Bland answered it himself. “Come in, Craig,” he said. He took me into a big room facing Adderley Street. “What would you like? A whisky?”

“That’ll do fine,” I said.

I watched him as he poured it. His hands shook slightly. His movements were heavy and slow. He gave me a cigar with the drink.

“Sit down,” he said. “Now then, suppose you face facts, young man. You haven’t got a job and you’ve found that the prospects for getting one here aren’t too good.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said defensively. “I haven’t started to look—”

“I said let’s face facts,” he cut in with the imperturbability of a man accustomed to being listened to. “I know a lot of people here. I’ve interests in South Africa too. There’s a gold scare on and things aren’t going to be easy for a newcomer.”

He settled his big bulk carefully into a chair. I waited. He sat for a moment staring at me impersonally. Suddenly he heaved himself farther back into the chair. “I’m prepared to offer you a job with the South Antarctic Whaling Company,” he said.

“What sort of a job?” I asked.

“I want you to take command of Tauer Three — that’s the towing ship that’s waiting to take me out to the Southern Cross. Sudmann, her skipper, and the second mate were involved in a car crash last night. They’re both in a hospital.”

“What about his first mate?” I asked.

“He’s not on board. He was taken ill before Tauer Three left the factory ship. I gather that you know that Nordahl, the manager of the Southern Cross, is dead. It’s essential that I get out there as soon as possible. I’ve spent all day looking for a man to take command of Tauer Three. It was only this evening that my daughter-in-law told me you had commanded a corvette during the war. These towing boats are ex-naval corvettes, converted. I rang you right away.”

“But I haven’t the necessary papers,” I said.

He waved his thick hand. “I’ll fix that. You can leave that to me. I take it there’s no technical problem? You remember how to handle them, eh? You haven’t forgotten your navigation?”

“No. but I’ve never taken a ship into the Antarctic. I don’t know that—”

“That doesn’t matter. Now then, as regards terms. You’ll get the same pay as Sudmann — that’s fifty pounds a month plus bonus. You’ll sign on for the season, with the option of being landed at the Cape or taken back to England. You understand that your command of Tauer Three will be a temporary one covering the trip from here to the factory ship. You’ll hand over to the senior mate in the catcher fleet. I can’t engage you over their heads. But we’ll find you something interesting to do. And you’ll have the same pay as if you were in command of the boat. Now what do you say?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d like to think it over.”

“There isn’t time.” His voice had sharpened. “I want to know now. I must get out there and find out what’s happened.”

“Have you no further news about how Nordahl met his death?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “A message came through just after lunch. Nordahl disappeared. That’s all. There wasn’t any storm. No reason for it at all. He just vanished. That’s why I want to get out there.”

In the silence that followed I tried to shake my thoughts into some sort of order. I’d be away nearly four months. And then the search for a job would start again. While, who knows, Kramer might have talked to somebody, so that I’d get the offer of a job at this party.

“I’ll need to think this over,” I said. “I’m seeing a friend this evening. I’ll let you know after that.”

His cheeks quivered slightly. “I want your answer now,” he said.

I got to my feet. “I’m sorry, sir. I appreciate your making me this offer. But you must give me a few hours.”

He was about to make some violent retort. But then he thought better of it. “All right,” he said. “Ring me when you’ve made up your mind. I’ll wait up for your call.”

At Kramer’s the party was in full swing. There was plenty of liquor about. The males were mostly businessmen. There were a lot of young women. Kramer greeted me with warmth, but the way he talked I might have just dropped in. He left me in the clutches of a pretty little thing who proved a salacious gossip. I passed her on to a man in the hardware industry and went to the bar.

A group of men were discussing the latest mining gossip. One of them said, “But suppose the mine wasn’t salted?”

“Of course it was salted,” another replied. “If it weren’t absolutely certain, they’d never have dared to go as far as arresting Vynberg. I thought all along the assays were too good to be true.”

“Sure it was salted,” said the third, a stout American with a lot of gold fillings. “But Vynberg’s only the front, poordevil. There’s others behind him.”

“Who?”

“I’ve heard three names mentioned. Vynberg’s, and two guys I never heard of before — Bland and Fisher. They were unloading for all they were worth twenty-four hours before the thing broke.”

“Excuse me.” I was bored, standing there by myself... or perhaps it was the association of the name ‘Bland’. “Everybody I meet talks about the effect of the Words crash on the financial situation out here. Just exactly what is Words?” The three pairs of eyes fastened on me and were instantly hostile. “I only arrived out here from England this morning,” I explained quickly.

I sensed their instant relief. “Well, I’ll be damned!” said the American. “It’s a real pleasure to meet somebody who hasn’t got his fingers burned. ‘Words’ is the market name for Wys Odendaal Rust Development Securities. The abbreviation has turned out remarkably apt. The ten-shilling shares have risen from nineteen shillings to just over five pounds in the last four months on development reports showing high values at comparatively low depths. Now the whole game’s busted wide open. The managing director’s been arrested. They’ve stopped dealings in the shares on the stock exchange. I don’t reckon you could give ’em away right now.”

“Who’s this man Bland?” I asked, almost without thinking. “You mentioned—”

“Young fellow, I mentioned nobody by the name of Bland. And if I had, it’s a common enough name. And I don’t like strange people listening to what I’m saying.” His fishlike eyes were staring at me coldly. I glanced at the others. The hostility was back in their eyes too.

I turned away and picked up my drink. When I had finished it I slipped quietly out and got a taxi back to the hotel. As I went toward the desk to get my key, a girl got up from a comer of the entrance hall and came toward me. It was Judie.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Her face was very pale in the gold frame of her hair.

“For me?” I said. “Why?”

“Have you made up your mind yet? Will you take command of Tauer Three?” Her eyes pleaded.

“Yes,” I said.

“Thank God!” she breathed. “If you hadn’t, it would have meant waiting for them to fly a man out from England. I couldn’t have waited that long.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing what a wait of even a few hours had meant to her.

She took me straight up to Bland’s room. He nodded when he heard my decision. “Everything’s fixed,” he said. “I guessed what your decision would be.” He picked up the phone, ordered a taxi to stand by and arranged for our luggage to be brought down. “Yes, Mr. Bonomi and Mr. Weiner will be leaving too. Also Mr. Craig, Room Four-oh-four.” He turned to me as he replaced the receiver. “Get yourself packed up, Craig,” he said. “We’re leaving tonight.”

When my employer gave me a patronizing lecture and tipped me five pounds on New Year’s Eve, I went out and got drunk. I realized how deeply I had got into a rut, working as an importer’s clerk in London. I, Duncan Craig, who had commanded a corvette in the war, now had to be obsequious to fat merchants for my bread and butter.

I quit my job that night. A friend told me that there was an empty seat in a private plane bound for South Africa. I went to the airport, begged a ride... and that’s how I met the Blands. Colonel Bland headed the South Antarctic Whaling Company, which operated the huge new factory ship Southern Cross. The Southern Cross, in charge of Berot Nordahl, was near the Antarctic Circle, with Colonel Bland’s son Erik as Bernt’s assistant. Trouble had developed on board the big ship, and the colonel himself was flying down to straighten it out.

I could see that Bland was the choleric sort of man who would probably die suddenly of a stroke. His daughter-in-law, Judie, accompanied him, and an Italian photographer, Aldo Bonomi, was a member of the party. At first Bland was reluctant to give me the empty place in the plane, but he changed his mind and let me go along.

In Cairo I had a chance to talk to Judie and learned that she hated her husband. Then we got a message from the Southern Cross — Bernt Nordahl was dead, leaving Erik in charge. And Nordahl was Judie’s father.

At Cape Town I said good-by to this strange party, but it wasn’t long before Bland called me. They were sailing for the Southern Cross in a small whale catcher — a converted corvette — and the skipper had been in an auto accident at Cape Town. Would I — an ex-navy skipper — take over?

I had nothing to lose. There were no jobs for me in Cape Town. I agreed to go... and thus became one of those involved in the greatest sea disaster in peacetime since the loss of the Titanic.

II

Tauer III lay in the inner basin of the harbor. Picked out in the pier lights as she chafed the concrete, she didn’t look much like a corvette. She was dressed in black and gray paint, the bows had been built up for smashing through the ice, and all the armament had been cleared out of her. She looked like what she was, a narrow-built, very fast, very powerful tug.

The deck hands were all Norwegian. But by the grace of God the chief engineer was a Scot. There was a knock at the door of my cabin and there he was. “Me name’s McPhee,” he said. He was a little man with thin, sandy hair. He held out an oily hand.

“I’m Craig. I’m taking over from Sudmann.”

His face lighted up and he seized hold of my hand. “Good, mon!” he cried. “Anither Scot’. There’s no anither Scot walking his ane bridge in the whole fleet. The rest of ’em is all Norwegians.”

“The appointment’s temporary,” I explained. But I couldn’t help smiling at his excitement. “I hope you’ve got some Scotch on board to celebrate with?”

“Och, aye. Ah’ve got a wee drap tucked away.” He jeered up at me quickly. “Tell me, mon, do ye know anything a boot these tin cans? I hope ye do, for she’s a mean cow in a big sea when she’s got some ice on her.”

“You needn’t worry, McPhee,” I said. “I was brought up in corvettes. Now, what about fuel and water?”

“Tanks all full.”

“Steam up?”

“Aye, we’ve been standing by, ready to sail, since this morning.”

“Fine,” I said. “As soon as we get the okay from Colonel Bland, we’ll be moving out. Any of the Norwegian hands speak English?”

“Most of them speak a word or two.”

“Then send the brightest linguist up to the bridge, will you?”

“Aye, aye, sur.”

As he turned to go, I stopped him. “McPhee, when was this ship last cleaned down? She smells dirty.”

He grinned. “Och, that’s whale,” he said. “Ye’ll no worry a hoot it once you get alongside of the factory ship.”

When he’d gone, I went up onto the bridge. I looked aft along the slim length of the ship. The paint was beginning to show rust marks and she was dirty. But warps were neatly coiled and everything was greased and cared for. It might not be navy fashion, but it was workmanlike.

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?”

“Plankton is sea food. The stuff the fin whales feed on. Mostly we catch fin whales. So if you know where their food is — well, that’s what I try to do — forecast by water temperature, currents, weather, and so on, where the plankton is.”

“And skytters?” I asked.

“The skytters are the catcher skippers. It’s always the skipper who operates the harpoon gun. Sometimes we call them gunners.”

He lay back as though exhausted by this brief dissemination of information. “Queer about Nordahl,” he said suddenly. “He was a wonderful man.”

I could hear Judie’s voice saying exactly the same. “That’s what his daughter thinks,” I said.

“To hell with his daughter!” he cried angrily, thrusting himself up onto one elbow. “A little wench that falls for a tyke like Erik Bland shouldn’t be able to call Bernt Nordahl her father!”

“Don’t shout,” I said. “Bland might hear you.”

“Do Bland good to know what his son is really like!” he stormed angrily.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

He sat up, swinging his feet off the bunk. “Nothing,” he said, “except the way he’s been brought up and the way his mind works.” His voice was bitter. “Bland’s a fool to think he can make his son fit to take over the business by sending him out for one season. All Bland thinks about is finance. It’s Bernt Nordahl who handled the whaling side. He was the best skytter in Norway. Then, after the war, he and Bland floated the South Antarctic Company. Nordahl took over management of the factory ship. In some outfits it’s the master of the factory ship who’s in charge of operations. In our case it’s the manager. And in the four seasons we’ve been operating, we’ve got more whale than any other outfit. Why? Because old Bernt Nordahl can smell whale. And because the men would do anything Nordahl says; they worshiped him. Or rather the old crowd did — the Tönsberg men.” He gulped down the rest of his drink. “And now he’s dead. Lost overboard. Nobody knows how or why.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. He’d been on ships all his life.” The very words Judie had used. “He was as much at home in these frozen seas as we’d be in London. He couldn’t just vanish like that. I’ll ferret out the truth of what happened if it takes me the rest of the voyage!” he added violently.

I think it was then that I got the first premonition of trouble ahead. Howe had buried his head in his hands and was rocking gently to and fro. “I’d like to know what was in his mind the night he died,” he murmured.

“What are you thinking of?” I asked. “Suicide?”

“Suicide?” His head jerked up as though I’d hit him. “No!” he said angrily. “No, he’d never have done that.”

But if Bland were planning to hand control of the company to his son, surely that might be grounds for suicide?” I suggested.

Howe gave a quick laugh — a jackal laugh, half bark. “Bland stole his girl once.” he said. “Bernt Nordahl didn’t commit suicide then. No, he didn’t commit suicide.”

“Why is Bland in such a hurry to hand over the business to his son?”

“You want to know why? All right. I’ll tell you. He’s in a hurry because he’s going to die. And he knows it. He’s had two strokes already. And as far as I’m concerned, the sooner he’s dead the better. He’s a financial crook with about as much sense of—” His voice jerked to a stop. His mouth stayed open, the jaw slack. He was gazing at the cabin door.

I twisted round in my seat. The door was open, as it had been all along. And framed in it was Bland’s heavy bulk. He came in and I saw that his face was mottled with the pressure of his anger. “Get to your cabin. Howe,” he said in a terrible controlled voice. “And stay there. You’re drunk.”

Howe cringed away from him as though he expected to be struck. Then his long neck jerked out. “I’m glad you heard,” he breathed. “I wanted you to hear.” His voice steadied. It was unnaturally quiet as he said, “I wish you were dead. I wish you’d died before you ever left South Africa and came to Norway and met Anna Halvorsen.” His hands clenched and he stared vacantly into space. “I wish I’d never been born,” he whispered.

The man staggered to his feet, swaying slightly. He turned his head and focused slowly on Bland. “If you killed him,” he said, “God help you.”

Bland’s big hands caught hold of him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Then have it in plain words,” Howe said. “You tricked Bernt out of the woman he loved. And now you’ve been trying to trick him out of his interest in the company. For all I know, you’ve done worse than that. But don’t worry. Bland. I’ll find out the truth about his death. And if you’re the cause of it” — he thrust his head down so that his eyes were looking straight into Bland’s — “I’ll kill you.” he said.

He turned then, swaying slightly, and staggered along the passage to his cabin.

Bland turned to me. He gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders. “I’m sorry you should have been witness to such a melodramatic scene,” he said. “The man’s not right in his head, I’m afraid. I’d never have employed him but for Nordahl. But until this moment I didn’t know he knew certain personal things. It gives his warped mind the sense of a grudge. I’d be glad if you kept the matter to yourself.”

“Of course,” I said.

The man looked terribly shaken. His face had a bluish tinge and his heavy cheeks quivered. “Good night,” he muttered.

“Good night,” I replied.

He closed the door behind him. I Hat there wondering what I’d got myself into.

Next day the sun had gone. The wind was cold and I began to think of the miles of ice-infested seas that lay ahead. Things were different this morning. There were no friendly grins as I inspected the ship. And later in the day an ugly fight broke out between two of the men. The coxs’n wouldn’t let me interfere, so I got McPhee up onto the bridge and asked him what the trouble was.

“Weel.” He fingered his jaw in the way he had. “It’s no exactly easy to explain. Ye see, this is a Nordahl boat. The men are all from Tönsberg. And noo that they know Nordahl is dead—”

“How did they find that out?”

“Ye canna have a row like there was between Bland and Howe last night wi’oot it getting aroond the ship. Ye’d be surprised, but the men are fond of Howe, the same way they were fond of Nordahl.”

“But they don’t have to fight over it.”

“Och, that was just their way of blowing off steam. The coxs’n was quite right to stop ye from interfeering. Ye see, there’s no love lost between the Tönsberg and the Sandefjord men, and it’s a Sandefjord man got hurt.”

“But they don’t have to fight just because there’s rivalry between the two towns.”

“Och, ye don’t understand. It’s this way: Nordahl was a Tönsberg man. When he and Colonel Bland started the company after the war, Nordahl had a free hand wi’ the signing on of the crews. Naturally, he signed on Tönsberg men. But Mrs. Bland — she’s Norwegian, ye ken — she comes from Sandefjord. Whatever the cause of it, Sandefjord men were included in the crew’s hist season. An’ this season the proportion’s aboot fifty-fifty. Weel, it dinna make for smooth running. There’s a natural resentment amongst the Tönsberg men.”

“So they took it out of this poor devil from Sandefjord?”

“Aye, that’s shoot it. They’re in an angry and soospicious mood — angry because they weren’t told a boot Nordahl’s death; Noospicious — weel, there’s one or two persons they wouldna mind shoving overboard.”

“Do you mean Bland and his son?” I asked him.

“Ah’m no saying anither worrd,” he replied. But I saw by the glint in his eye that I’d hit the nail on the head.

“And the Sandefjord man?”

“He’ll be all reel noo.” He hesitated, shuffling his feet awkwardly. “Ye’ll no pass on what Ah said jist noo about their wanting to get rid o’ one or two pairsons?”

“Of course not.”

He suddenly grinned. “It’s the deil when ye’ve got factions like this an’ they’re cooped oop togither in a Godforsaken place like the Antarctic for moonths on end. It’s no so bad on the catchers and the towing ships. Each ship is either Tönsberg or Sandefjord, wi’ a smattering of Scots in the engine rooms. But I tell ye, it’s no sa gude on the factory ship.”

“You mean they’ve a mixed crew on the Southern Cross?” I asked him.

“Aye. An’ it isna only the crew that’s mixed. It’s the flensers and laborers that’s mixed too. And they’re a violent bunch.” He shook his head gloomily and turned to go.

“Perhaps you’d care to have a drink with me later,” I suggested.

His face relaxed into a dour smile. “Aye, Ah would that.” And he slid down the ladder to the deck below.

About seven o’clock Bland pulled himself up onto the bridge. Hi face was blue and puffy, the blood vessels showing through the skin in a mottled web. “Hub the Southern Cross given you her position yet?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I got a message from Captain Hide this morning.”

“Good.” He peered over the helmsman’s shoulder at the compass. “Hear there was a fight,” he said.

“Yes. Sandefjord versus Tönsberg. Tönsberg won,” I added.

He gave me a quick glance and then leaned his heavy bulk against the wind-breaker. “Women are the devil,” he muttered. I think he was speaking to himself, but I was to leeward of him and the wind flung the words at me. “You married?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“A man’s no match for a woman,” he said, looking at me. “A man’s mind and interests range. A woman’s narrow. They’ve a queer, distorted love of power, and they’re fonder of their sons than they are of their husbands.” He turned his head away and stared down at the sea where it was beginning to break inboard over our plunging bow.

“What exactly are you trying to tell me?” I asked bluntly.

He peered up at me through his glasses. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you’re intelligent... and you’re outside it all. A man must: have somebody to tell to when things are getting too much for him.” He turned his head back to the sea again, hunching it into the fur collar of his topcoat. “Howe told you I was dying.”

“We’re all doing that,” I said.

He grunted. “Of course. But we’re not usually given a time limit. The best man in Harley Street gives me a year at most. A year’s not long,” he said hoarsely. “And at any moment I may get another stroke, and that’ll finish me.” He suddenly laughed. It was a bitter, violent sound. “When you’re told that, it changes your approach to life. Things which seemed important before cease to be important. Others loom larger. When we reach the Southern Cross,” he said, “get to know my son. I want your opinion of him.” He turned abruptly then and went ponderously down the ladder to the deck below. I watched him go, wishing I’d been able to hold him just a little longer. There were questions I’d like to have asked him.

In the middle of our meal that night, the radio operator brought Bland a message. His heavy brows dragged down as he read it. Then he got to his feet. “A word with you, Craig,” he growled.

I followed him to his cabin. He closed the door and handed me the message. “Read that,” he said.

I took the message to the light. It read:

RIDE TO BLAND: MEN DEMANDING INQUIRY NORDAHL’S DEATH. ERIK BLAND HAS REJECTED DEMAND PLEASE CONFIRM REJECTION. MOOD OK TÖNSBERG MEN DANGEROUS. WHALE VERY SCARCE. POSITION 57 98 S; 34 62 W. PACK ICE HEAVY.

I handed the message back to him. “The damned fool!” he growled. “It’ll be all over the ship that he’s not happy about Erik’s decision. And Erik’s quite right to reject a demand like that. It’s a matter for the officers to decide.” He paced up and down for a moment, tugging at the lobe of his ear. “What worries me is that they should be demanding an inquiry at all. If the circumstances warranted an inquiry, then Erik should have ordered it right away, instead of waiting for the men to demand it. And I don’t like Eide’s use of the word ‘dangerous,’ “he added. “He wouldn’t use it unless the situation was bad.” He swung round on me. “What’s the earliest we can expect to reach the Southern Cross?”

“Eight days at least,” I answered.

He nodded gloomily. “A lot can happen in eight days.”

“What are you scared of?” I asked. “You’re not suggesting that the men would mutiny, are you? Presumably a factory ship comes under normal British maritime laws. It takes a lot to drive men to mutiny.”

“Of course I’m not suggesting they’d mutiny. But they can make things damned awkward without going as far as mutiny. In a four-month season everything has got to move with clocklike precision.” He began tugging at the lobe of his ear again. “Erik can’t handle a thing like this. He hasn’t the experience.”

“Then put somebody else in charge,” I suggested. “Captain Eide, for instance.”

He looked up at me quickly. His small eyes were narrowed. I could see the battle going on inside him — pride against prudence. “No,” he said. “No. He must learn to handle things himself.” He paced up and down. He didn’t say anything more.

I went up onto the bridge. The sea was a heaving mass in the dreary half light. The air was bitterly cold. I went into the wheelhouse and looked at the barometer.

“No good,” said the bearded Norwegian at the wheel. He was right. The glass was very low and still falling.

The door flung back and Judie entered. “The weather looks bad,” she said. Her face was pinched and cold.

“We’re getting into high latitudes,” I reminded her.

She nodded bleakly, then asked, “Was that message from Eide?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What did it say?”

I told her.

She turned and stared out through the window. She didn’t speak for some time, and when she did, she startled me by saying, “I feel scared.”

I stepped forward and took her hand. It was cold as ice. “It’s rotten for you,” I said. “But there’s no need for you to worry. Things will sort themselves out when we reach the Southern Cross.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel as though that’s just the beginning.” She looked up at me. Her gray eyes were deeply troubled. “Walter knows something — knows something that we don’t know.” Her voice trembled. She was overwrought.

I didn’t say anything and we stood there for some time, quite silent. She didn’t attempt to withdraw her hand from mine. But there was no contact between us. Then suddenly she jerked her hand away, pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and offered me one.

“Is this the farthest south you’ve ever been?” she asked, her voice controlled and a little abrupt.

“Yes,” I said, and raised my other hand to show I was still smoking. “But I’m not new to ice. When I was twenty I went on a university expedition to Southeast Greenland.”

The conversation languished there, so I said, “I suppose this is your first trip into the Antarctic?”

“No,” she replied. “Not my first. When I was eight years old my father brought me with him to South Georgia. My mother had just died and we had no home. Bernt was one of the skytters at Grytviken. I was there about two months. Then he sent me to friends in New Zealand. I was there a year, and then he took me back with him at the end of the next season.”

“Is Grytviken in South Georgia?”

“Yes. There are shore stations there. I made three or four trips with my father in his catcher.”

“Then you’re quite an experienced whaler,” I kidded her.

“No,” she replied. “I’m not like Gerda Petersen.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“Gerda is the daughter of Olaf Petersen,” she answered. “Olaf was once mate on my father’s catcher when he was at Grytviken. Gerda and I are the same age. We used to play together when we were at Grytviken. But she’s tough. She’s more like a man. This is her second season with our company. Her father says he’ll make her the first woman skytter in Norway.”

“She must be tough,” I said.

She laughed. “Poor Gerda. She’s not very beautiful, you know. She ought to have been born a boy. She’s passed all her exams. She could be master of a ship, like women are in Russia. But she prefers to come south as her father’s mate. His men worship her. She may not be very beautiful, but I think she’s very happy.”

A sudden gust of wind hit the wheel-house. The ship heeled and dipped violently. I caught a glimpse of the white sheet of spray flung up by the bows as they crashed into a wave, felt the whole ship tremble. The door burst open and the coxs’n came in.

Judie said, “I think I’ll go below now.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I want to get some sleep before the storm breaks.” I told the coxs’n to wake me if it got worse, and took Judie below. Back in my own cabin, I took off my boots and climbed into my bunk with my clothes on.

The full force of the storm hit us just after four in the morning. I woke to sudden consciousness, feeling the weight of the water holding us down. I could feel the steel of the cabin walls bending under the strain.

I rolled out of my bunk and fumbled for my sea boots. The coxs’n came in as I was dragging on my oilskins. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went out again. Outside, the full force of the wind hit me, thrusting me against the rail, taking my breath away. Seas rolled green over the afterdeck. I hauled myself up to the bridge. The short night was over. But the dawn was a gray half darkness. The coxs’n had headed her up into the wind. The waves seemed mountain high, their tops a hissing whirl of spindrift. And the sleet drove parallel with the wave tops, a wild, driven curtain of darkness.

I won’t attempt to describe those next eight days. They were eight days of unrelieved hell for everyone on board. Sometimes it rained. More often it just blew. The sea was like a mountain range on the move. There wasn’t a dry place in the ship. Nearly everyone was seasick. In all those eight days we saw the sun only once, and that was a watery gleam that flashed out for a few minutes through a vent in the storm rack. I ceased to think about the object of our journey or about the Southern Cross; I ceased to think about anything but the ship.

I hardly saw anything of the others. I was up on the bridge most of the time. Bland came up twice, his heavy features blue with cold and the exhaustion of seasickness. Each time he asked for our position. The man had a driving purpose which was accentuated by the knowledge of his illness. His interest in life had narrowed down to an urgent desire to reach the Southern Cross as soon as possible. He was impatient at our slow progress, impotently angry at the elements.

Judie came up once, and I was angry with her, telling her to keep to her cabin. I think I threw some bad language at her. I was too wrought up to know what I said. It had the desired effect and she didn’t come up again. But after that every morning one of the crew brought up a flask of brandy, “From Mrs. Bland.” I was grateful to her for that.

Bonomi was the only one of the passengers who was a daily visitor on the bridge. He was suffering badly from seasickness, but he’d struggle up each day with his camera, regardless of the danger, and take pictures of the storm. Once I asked him about Doctor Howe.

“Is he sick?” I asked.

“He is sick, of course,” he answered. “But what is sickness to a man who drink two bottles of whisky a day? He is incredible, that man!”

In a way, the storm was a good thing. There was no more trouble with the Sandefjord men. The crew was fully occupied with the weather. It was much colder than it should have been and the gale prolonged itself out of all expectation. Daylight was now virtually continuous throughout the twenty-four hours. Visibility, fortunately, was not too bad, for on the fifteenth we sighted our first iceberg. We soon began to sight icebergs regularly, some of them big, towering masses of ice, pinnacled and ramparted like floating forts.

I was constantly up on the bridge now, for we were closing the last position we had received from the Southern Cross. We should have been in radiotelephone communication — the R-T sets had a radius of 400 miles or more. But early in the storm our aerials had been brought down and it had been impossible to rerig.

On the night of the sixteenth the gale got worse than ever. Heavy freezing rain brought visibility down to almost zero, and in the half light around midnight I reduced speed. Shortly afterward the lookout called down, “Ice!” I rang for slow ahead and a few moments later caught the white glimmer of ice ahead. It wasn’t a berg. It was our first taste of loose pack. The floes were small and broken — the thawing fringe broken from the pack ice farther south and flung northeastward by the storm.

The coxs’n shook his head gloomily. “Nefer haf I seen the ice up here in sommer.”

I turned the ship westward and remained at slow ahead. Early that morning the wind suddenly veered to the south and died away to a gentle breeze. The clouds drifted away astern and we saw the sun clearly for the first time in eight days. It was low on the horizon and had little warmth. But it was wonderful just to see it. Away to the south a glimmer of white showed the fringe of the loose pack ice. Through bleary eyes I watched the sun climb quickly up the sky. Soon everything was steaming.

Then gradually the sun’s light paled. The warmth died out of it and the blue gradually faded from the sky. Then the sun vanished altogether. The scene became a flat black-and-white picture. It was cold, like an etching. Then the sharpness of it faded as the fog rolled over us, enveloping us in its chill, soundless blanket.

We kept at slow ahead with lookouts in the bow and at the masthead. I was taking no chances with icebergs, though in that brief glimpse of the ice-littered sea to the south I had seen no sign of any.

Shortly after ten Bland himself came up onto the bridge. Eight days of enforced idleness and little food had made a great difference in him. The bluish tinge had gone and the mottled veining of his skin was not so noticeable. His movements were quicker, too, and his eyes more alert.

“What’s our position?” he asked. His tone was crisp. The personality that had driven the man to the top in his own world was there in his voice.

“Fifty-eight south, thirty-three west,” I told him. I took him into the wheelhouse and showed him the position on the chart — roughly 200 miles west of South Thule, the southernmost point of the Sandwich Group.

“We ought to be able to get the Southern Cross on the R-T,” he said.

“Sparks is rigging a new aerial now,” I told him. “I’ll let you know as soon as he makes contact.”

He nodded and went out onto the bridge. He stood for a while, staring out into the fog. “Where’s Howe?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen him since the storm started,” I replied.

He turned and barked an order in Norwegian to one of the crew.

The man looked at him. It wasn’t exactly insolence. But the man’s manner was sullen as he said, “Ja,” and crossed the bridge to the ladder.

Bland spoke to him sharply. The man’s face darkened. “Ja... Herr Direktor,” he muttered, and slid down the ladder to the deck below. Bland said something violent under his breath and walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. He stood there alone, peering out over the side, until Howe appeared.

Howe looked thin as a wraith beside the squat bulk of the company’s chairman. He had a weak growth of beard that looked untidy on his queer face, and his eyes were bloodshot. But he was sober. Standing in front of Bland, he seemed nervous, as though, without liquor inside him, he found it difficult to face the man.

“For the last four years Nordahl has employed you as a scientist,” Bland rumbled, his small eyes looking the other up and down with marked distaste. “Now it’s up to you to justify that appointment. Conditions out here this summer are abnormal. The last report we had from the Southern Cross spoke of few whales. We’ve seen none. By tomorrow morning I want a report from you on the probable movement of whales in these conditions. Your continued employment will depend on your usefulness to the company. Now get to work.”

Bland turned on his heel. Howe hesitated. I knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Bland that it was unfair to expect the impossible, that the very abnormality of the conditions made it so. He was being blackmailed and he knew it. Bland wanted whales. Howe was to produce them, like a conjurer, or be sacked. He turned and stumbled past me to the bridge ladder.

Shortly afterward Bland went below. An hour later, Bonomi called up to me to say that, the radio was working. I left the coxs’n on the bridge and stumbled wearily down to the deck below. My eyes were bleary with lack of sleep and the strain of staring into days of wind and sleet. Bland and Judie were in the wireless room. Judie had dark circles of strain under her eyes. But her smile of greeting was warm and friendly.

“You must be dead,” she said.

“The daily flask of brandy was a great help,” I said.

She looked away quickly, as though she hadn’t wanted to be thanked. Bland turned his big head toward me. “Just trying to get the Southern Cross on the R-T,” he said. “We’ve been speaking to the Haakon — one of the Sandefjord factory ships. She’s got eight whales in the last ten days. Now she’s steaming south toward the Weddell Sea. Hanssen, the master, says he’s never known conditions like this. He’s about three hundred miles west-sou’west of us.”

The radio crackled. Then, clear and distinct, came a voice speaking in Norwegian. I guessed it must be the Southern Cross, for Bland stiffened and his head jerked round toward the receiver. The radio operator leaned down toward the mike. There was a quick exchange in Norwegian and then he turned to Bland. “I have Captain Eide for you,” he said, and passed the microphone across to him. The chairman’s thick fingers closed round the grip. “Bland here. Is that Captain Eide?”

“Yes, sir. This is Eide.” The voice crackled in singsong English faintly reminiscent of a Welsh accent.

“What’s your position?” I nodded for Sparks to take it down. Fifty-eight point three four South, thirty-four point five six West. I made a swift mental calculation. Bland’s eyebrows lifted in my direction. “That’s about forty miles west of us,” I said. He nodded and resumed his conversation — this time in Norwegian. My eyelids became unbearably heavy. Sleep rolled my head against the wood paneling of the cabin wall.

Then suddenly I was awake again. A new voice was talking over the radio, talking in English. “They’re holding out for an inquiry. I’ve told them there isn’t going to be any inquiry. It’s a waste of time. There’s nothing to inquire into. Nordahl’s gone, and that’s all there is to it.” It was an easy, cultured voice — smooth, like an expensive car. But it was just a veneer. It revealed nothing of its owner. “The real trouble is that the season’s been terrible. Even the Sandefjord men are grumbling. As for the Tönsberg crowd, they’re more nuisance than they’re worth. If you hadn’t been coming out, I’d have sent the whole lot home.”

“We’ll talk about that when I see you, Erik,” Bland cut in, his voice an angry rumble. “How many whales have you caught so far?”

“Fin whales? A hundred and twenty-seven... that’s all. The fog’s just beginning to lift now. Perhaps the luck will change. But there’s pack ice to the southeast of us and the men don’t like it. They say conditions are abnormal.”

“I know all about that,” said Bland. “What are your plans?”

“We’re cruising east now along the northern edge of the pack. We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

“Hope for the best!” Bland’s cheeks quivered. “You get out and find whales... and find ’em damn quick, boy. Every day without a whale is a disaster. Do you understand?”

“If you think you can find them when I can’t — well, you’re welcome to come and try!” The voice sounded sharp and resentful.

Bland gave an angry grunt. “If Nordahl were alive—”

“Don’t you start throwing Nordahl at me!” his son interrupted in a tone of sudden violence. “I’m sick of hearing about him!”

“We’II be with you in a few hours now,” Bland said soothingly. “We’ll talk about it then. Put Eide back on.” Eide’s voice was comfortingly calm. He spoke in Norwegian, and Bland was answering him in the same language. There was a pause. Then suddenly his voice was back in the cabin again, shouting, “Hval! Hval! En av hvalbaatene hur set hval!” Bland’s face relaxed. He was smiling. Everyone in the cabin was smiling.

I looked at Judie. She leaned toward me, and I saw that even she was excited. They’ve sighted whales.” She turned her head to the radio again, and then added, “They have seen several pods. They are all going south... into the ice.”

“How many whales to a pod?” I asked.

She laughed. “Depends on the sort of whale. Only one or two in the case of the blue whale. But three to five for the fin whale.” She shook her head. “But it’s bad for them to be going south.”

The skipper of the Southern Cross signed off and Bland turned to me. “You got their position?” he asked.

I nodded and got stiffly to my feet. Sparks handed me a slip of paper on which he’d written the present position and course of the Southern Cross. I climbed up to the bridge and laid our course to meet up with the factory ship. Tauer III turned, heeling slightly as the helmsman swung her on to the new bearing. I told the coxs’n to wake me in four hours’ time, and went below for the first real sleep I’d had in eight days.

But I didn’t get my full four hours. The messboy woke me just after midday and I dragged myself up to the bridge. The coxs’n was there, sniffing the air.

“You smell something, ja?” He was grinning. I smelled it at once — a queer, heavy smell like a coal by-product. “Now you smell money,” he said. “That is whale.”

“The Southern Cross?”

“Yes.”

“How far away?”

“Fifteen... maybe twenty mile.”

“Good grief!” I said. I was imagining what the smell must be like close to. An hour later the fog began to lift and I ordered full speed. Slowly the fog cleared, revealing a bleak ice-green sea heaving morosely under a low layer of cloud. Away to the southeast I got my first sight of the ice blink. This was the sight striking up from close pack ice, its surface mirrored in the cloud. The effect was one of brilliant whiteness criss-crossed with dark seams. The lark seams were the water lanes cutting through between the floes, all faithfully mapped out in the cloud mirror above it.

Bonomi was up on the bridge with his camera. When I’d worked out our position and sent a lookout to the masthead, he came across to me. “You feel good now, eh? Everything is fine.” He grinned. His cheerfulness added to the sense of depression that had been growing up inside me. I wasn’t looking forward to closing with the Southern Cross. For one thing, it meant the end of my temporary command. For another — well, all I can say is that I had developed an uneasy feeling about the Southern Cross.

“Bland is saying we must go south into the Weddell Sea,” Bonomi babbled on. “I ’ope so. He says that after Nordahl, Hanssen is the best whaler in Norway, and if he take the Haakon south, then we shall go too. In the Weddell Sea I think I get very good pictures. You will see. Do not worry about losing the ship. I find a nice job for you, eh — carrying my camera?”

We were both laughing at his little joke when there was a cry of “Ship ahoy!” from the masthead. Ten minutes later a thick blur of smoke on the starboard bow was visible from the bridge. Bland, Judie, Weiner — they all came up, gazing excitedly at that first glimpse of the factory ship. Howe also came up onto the bridge and stood, a little removed from the rest, gazing out toward the smoke. I wished I could read his thoughts. I saw him glance covertly at Bland and then back again toward the smoke on the horizon. And in that instant I felt a tingle run up my spine.

Judie caught my eye. “I hope the whales—” She didn’t finish the sentence, but stared at me, her mouth slightly open, caught on the utterance of the next word. I think she knew that Howe worried me.

Bland went aft to the wireless room then. The others followed. Howe was the last to go. He stood gripping the windbreaker with his bony hands. Conscious of my gaze, he turned and looked at me. Then he swung away and stared for a moment south toward the ice blink. I watched him, fascinated. His glance went once more to the factory ship, and then back to the mirrored brightness of the pack ice. He stared at it for a longtime. Then he turned quickly.

“I must go and prepare my report,” he said and there was a curiously sly lift to the comers of his mouth as he said this.

Once I went down to the wireless room. It was a babel of sound. Norwegian voices boomed out of the R-T receiver — catchers to the factory ship, the factory ship to the buoy boats and towers — everyone was talking on the air at once. I gathered that the whales were plentiful. Bland was smiling. And in intervals between communications I he was discussing the new electrical equipment with Weiner, sometimes in English, sometimes in German.

It was a strange and rather wonderful sight as we closed the Southern Cross. It wasn’t just a factory ship. It was a whole fleet of ships. I examined them through my glasses. There were five catchers strung out in a line behind the Southern Cross. They appeared to be idle. Another catcher was almost alongside. There were two towing ships. I recognized them by their corvette lines. There were also two old-type catchers that I was told were buoy boats — that is to say, they were towing vessels that could be used to supplement the catcher fleet if required. Behind these was an old whaling ship which ferried the meat to the refrigerator ship, I a vessel of about six thousand tons, which was lying astern of the others. Near this was a large tanker, and more catchers were scurrying about on the horizon. To see all those ships gathered together in these hostile southern seas fired the imagination. It was such a gigantic operation — a litter of masts that reminded me of D Day.

I brought round the ship in a wide circle to come up parallel with the Southern Cross. In doing so, we passed right through the black, oily smoke that drifted to leeward of her. The thick noisome smell closed down on us like a blanket. It was a heavy, oily, all-pervading smell. It seemed to weigh down on the senses, thick and cloying and penetrating.

As we emerged from it, I could hear the sound of voices on the factory ship and the clank of winches. The stern was open, like a dark cavern, and a whale was being hauled up through it to the after-plan. The ship was big-about twenty-two thousand tons. Her steel sides, already rusting, towered above us as we glided alongside. Up on the bridge a man in a fur cap held a megaphone to his lips and called down to us. It was Eide. I caught the name. That was all. The rest was in Norwegian.

Judie said. “He’s lowering a boat and coming over to us himself.” Her ace looked puzzled. “I wonder why?” she added.

I glanced across at Bland. He was landing in the port wring of the bridge, gazing aft to where the catchers were strung out in a line. His brows were dragged down and his face had a thunderous look.

We were all there on the bridge when Eide arrived. He was a bony, gaunt man with hatchetlike features and a trick of continually chewing on a match-stick which he slipped to the corner of his mouth when he spoke. He was wearing a thick sweater, and his gabardine trousers were secured by a wide leather belt with a silver buckle.

“Well?” Bland barked at him. “What’s the trouble? Why aren’t all the catchers out?”

Eide looked quickly round. “I will speak in English,” he said, noticing that the man at the helm was watching him. “There is trouble. Half the men in the ship have struck. Also the men on five catchers and one towing ship.”

“The Tönsberg men?” Bland asked.

“Ja. They have threatened to stop the others from working. But they have not yet made any trouble.”

“They’re waiting to see what I do. Is that it?”

Eide nodded.

Bland’s fist thudded on the bridge rail. “You’ve not much more than a hundred whales to show for six weeks’ work!” He was almost shouting. “And now, when we are right in the midst of whales, they strike! Why? What’s their complaint?”

“They want an inquiry into Nordahl’s death.” Eide hesitated and then said, “Also they wish your son to be removed from the position of acting manager.”

“Who’s behind all this?”

“Kaptein Larvik, I think. He speaks for the others. As you know, he was a great friend of Nordahl. It is he, I think, who start this idea of an inquiry. But they are all of them in it now — Larvik, Petersen, Korsvold, Schnell, Strand and Jensen.”

Bland’s hand clenched into a fist. Then it relaxed. He took off his glasses and wiped them slowly. His heavy jaw was set, his small eyes steely. I watched his mouth spread into a tight-lipped smile. Then he put his glasses on again.

“Very well,” he said quietly. “If that’s the way they want it.” He glanced quickly at Eide. “Who do they want as factory manager instead of my son?”

“Kaptein Petersen,” Eide replied. “He is a good leader and he managed one of the South Georgia stations for three seasons. He returns to catching because he likes the active life.”

“All right. Captain Eide. You will signal for the captains of those five catchers and the towing ship to come on board for a conference with me. I shall then give them an ultimatum — either they get on with the job or they are relieved of their commands.”

“Perhaps they will refuse to come.” Eide’s voice sounded embarrassed.

“Good God!” Bland exploded. “If things have been allowed to get as out of hand as that, then there are other methods of dealing with them! How will they get on in the Antarctic without oil and supplies from the factory ship? Come, pull yourself together, Eide. We can be just as tough. Get down to the wireless room and instruct them to come on board the Southern Cross right away.” His jaw thrust out suddenly. “And if they try to make conditions, tell them they’d better not aggravate me further. While you’re doing that, we’ll get our things into the boat... Craig,” he said, turning to me, “you’ll come with us. The coxs’n can take temporary command here. Before you know where you are, you’ll be in charge of a catcher.” He was almost grinning now. He was the sort of man who thrived on a fight. But I must say I didn’t fancy the role of strikebreaker among a lot of Norwegians whose feuds I didn’t fully understand.

Eide was leaving the bridge now, but Bland stopped him. “Why didn’t Eril come to report this himself?” he demanded.

The skipper of the factory ship hesitated. Then he said, “He is on the foreplan. He could not come.”

Bland grunted. “He’s got assistants, hasn’t he?” he growled.

I must say that at that moment I felt some sympathy for Erik Bland. Whatever the man’s nature, he’d certainly been handed a tough job, and I didn’t blame him for staying up on the fore-plan. I looked at Judie to see whether she was feeling sympathy for her husband’s position. But she was staring up at the towering, ugly bulk of the Southern Cross, and I realized that her thoughts were on her father.

I left my clerk’s job in London because I couldn’t stand the dullness. I begged a ride in a private plane bound for Cape Town, South Africa. Colonel Bland, director of the South Antarctic Whaling Company, was headed for polar waters to investigate reports of trouble among the men on the huge factory ship. Southern Cross. I introduced myself to him as Duncan Craig and told him I had once been commander of a corvette in the war. In Cape Town the skipper of the corvette-type whale catcher that was to take Bland to the factory ship had been injured. Bland offered me temporary command, and I accepted.

Bland’s daughter-in-law, Judie, accompanied him, and so did the Italian photographer, Aldo Bonomi. Judie hated her husband, Erik, who shared control of operations on the Southern Cross with Bernt Nordahl, Judie’s father. Before we reached Cape Town we learned that Nordahl had been mysteriously lost overboard from the big ship, and I knew Judie suspected that Erik might be responsible.

From Cape Town we ran into vicious weather, and I had little time for anything but the ship — although I got to know Howe, the marine scientist of the expedition. Howe was a drunkard and devoted to the late Bernt Nordahl. He hated Colonel Bland. He seemed to hold Bland guilty of Nordahl’s death.

When we made rendezvous with the Southern Cross, I became acquainted with the smell of whales — thick, overpowering and nauseating. Captain Eide, the officer in command of the big ship, came aboard our little vessel. He told Bland the men were demanding an investigation of Nordahl’s death, that whales were scarce and that trouble was coming.

Bland turned to me. “Craig,” he said, “you’ll come with us. Before you know where you are, you’ll lie in charge of a catcher.”

III

I wasn’t present at the meeting between Bland and the skippers of the Tönsberg catchers. But I saw them leave and I got the impression that Bland had given them something to think about. They were tough, bearded men with fur caps on their heads, thick jerseys under their wind breakers and feet encased in knee-length boots.

I was being conducted round the ship at the time. My guide had taken me first to the flensing decks. This is the center of activity in a factory ship when the whales are coming in. There are two flensing decks — the fore-plan and the after-plan. And both looked like the sort of charnel house you might dream up in a nightmare. The winches clattered incessantly. Men with huge iron hooks dragged blubber, meat and bone to the chutes that took it to the boilers to be tried out and the precious oil extracted. The noise and the smell were indescribable. And the work went on as whale after whale was dragged up the slipway, the men working like demons and the decks slippery with blood and grease.

I want to give a clear impression of this ship, because only then is it possible to appreciate the shock of what happened later. She was a floating factory — a belching, stinking muck heap of activity two thousand miles from civilization. And over everything hung the awful smell of whale. But though her decks might present the appearance of some Gargantuan slaughterhouse, below all was neat and ordered. There were the refrigeration plant and machinery for cutting and dehydrating and packing the meat. There were crushing machines for converting the bone to fertilizer. There were laboratories and workshops, sick bays, mess rooms, living quarters, store rooms, electric-generating plant — everything. The Southern Cross was a well-stocked, well-populated factory town.

When we got up on deck again, the whole fleet was in action, with whales spouting all around us. It was an incredible sight. I saw one catcher quite close. The skytter was running down the catwalk that connected the bridge with the gun platform perched precariously on the high bows. He seized the gun, his legs braced apart, waiting for the moment to strike. Twice the catcher drove the whale under. Then suddenly the spout was right under the catcher’s bow. I saw the sharp-ended point of the harpoon dip as the gun was aimed. Then it flew out — a hundred-and-fifty-pound, javelinlike projectile with a light forerunner snaking after it. There was the sharp crack of the gun and then the duller boom of the warhead exploding inside the whale as it sounded. The next moment the line was taut, dragging at the masthead shackles and accumulator springs as the heavy line ran out and the winch brakes screamed. The whole thing took on the proportions of a naval operation.

But by this time my stomach was in open revolt. I thanked my guide hurriedly and staggered off to my cabin. I gave up all I had and, cold with sweat, fell into an exhausted sleep on my bunk. I didn’t wake up until Kyrre, the second officer, came in.

He grinned at me as I opened my eyes. “You are ill, yes?” The corners of his eyes creased in a thousand wrinkles and he roared with laughter. “Soon you are better,” he added. “No more whale.”

“You mean you’ve finished catching for the day.” I struggled up on to my elbow. I felt weak, but my stomach was all right now.

“Finish for the day, ja.” His eyes suddenly lost their laughter. “Finish altogether, I think.” he said “The whale go south. It is what you say, the migration.” He shook his big head. “Maybe we have to go south too.”

“That means going through the pack ice, doesn’t it?” I said, putting my feet over the side of the hunk.

“Ja,” he said, and his eyes looked troubled. “Ja, through the pack ice. It is bad, this season. The Haakon she is going south already. We go also, I think.” Then suddenly he grinned and clapped me on the back. “Come, my friend. We go to eat, eh?” The officers’ mess was plain and well scrubbed, the predominating note bleak cleanliness. Most of the men wore beards. They didn’t talk. But a sense of tension brooded over the table. Covert glances were cast at Bland where he sat, with Judie on one side of him and Eide on the other. Judie was toying with her soup. Her eyes were blank. The man next to her made some remark. She ignored it.

“Which is Erik Bland?” I asked my companion. It was as I had guessed. The man sitting next to Judie was her husband. He was taller and much slimmer than his father, but he had the same round head and short, thick neck. But there wasn’t the same strength. There was no violent set of jaw, no dragging down of the brows from a wide forehead. Instead there was a sort of arrogance.

When the meal was over, Eide asked me to have a drink with him. He took me to his cabin and we talked about the war. At length I brought the conversation round to Nordahl’s disappearance. But all he’d say was “It’s a complete mystery. I don’t understand it at all.”

“What’s your opinion of Erik Bland?” I asked.

“How do you mean?” he asked guardedly.

“I gathered he’d been causing trouble with the Tönsberg men.”

Eide’s brows lifted. “On the contrary. He’s done everything to smooth things over. He’s young, of course, and inexperienced. But that’s not his fault. He’ll learn. And a lot of the men like him.”

“But he didn’t get on with Nordahl, did he?”

Eide hesitated. “You’ve seen the messages to Colonel Bland, eh?” I nodded. “Well,” he said, “Nordahl wasn’t an easy man to get on with.”

“There must have been more to it than that for Nordahl to send that ultimatum to Colonel Bland.”

There was a short, embarrassed silence, and then Eide said, “If you do not mind, I would prefer not to discuss this matter with you. You understand, there are politics in every company and it is better not to talk about them.”

After that I switched the conversation back to the war. About half an hour later I excused myself and went down to my cabin.

The next morning I was told that Bland wanted to see me in his cabin. I didn’t know it then, but this was the morning of the fatal decision.

Eide and Erik Bland were in the cabin when I entered. Bland himself was seated in a swivel chair, his elbow resting on the desk. The man’s face was pallid. “Craig, I want you to meet my son,” he said. “Erik, this is Commander Craig.”

Erik Bland came over and shook my hand. “Glad to have you with us,” he said. His manner was friendly.” My father thinks you’re a tine sailor.”

“If I am,” I said, “the credit’s due the British Navy.” My antagonism was melting. He might not have the drive and pugnacity of his father, but his manners were better and he had self-confidence.

Bland swung round in his chair so that he faced me. “Sit down, Craig,” he said. “I’ve got a job for you.” He put his glasses on and began fingering the lobe of his ear.” For some reason that I don’t understand, the Tönsberg men have got the idea that Nordahl’s death wasn’t accidental. The man behind the whole thing is Captain Larvik. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not interested in the logic of their suspicions. I’ve told them that an inquiry will be held. And since they seem to have an idea that in some way I or my son is involved, neither of us will be on the committee of inquiry. The committee will consist of three people. The two members will be Captain Eide here and my daughter-in-law.”

“Good heavens!” I said. “You’re not going to make her go through the agony of examining all the men who had conversation with Nordahl just before he vanished? Surely you must understand her feelings in the—”

“I’m not interested in her feelings,” he growled at me. “My problem is that a lot of damned suspicious nonsense has got into the heads of some of the men. With Judie on the committee, they’ll accept the findings, whatever they are. In fact, Larvik has already agreed. Now then, the reason I’ve asked you up here is this: I want you to act as chairman of this committee. You’re entirely outside any company politics. With you, Eide and Judie on the committee, the men will be satisfied. Well?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to be drawn into it.

“I said I’d find you an interesting job,” he added. “And this is it.”

The point he was making was obvious. I was being paid by the company and it was up to me to take on anything I was given. Whether it was this that decided me or the fact that Judie was on the committee and I wanted to lessen the pain of it for her, I don’t know. But I heard myself say, “All right.”

“Good!” He shifted more easily in his chair. “Get down to it right away. The sooner the job’s completed the hotter.” There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he called.

It was Howe. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. His face was slightly flushed and there was a queer excitement in his eyes.

“Ah, come in, Howe,” Bland said. “What are your conclusions? Where’s the best place to hunt for whales in a season like this?”

“Through the pack.” Howe answered. “Through the pack into the Weddell Sea.” His mouth had a sly twist to it and his watery eyes gleamed. I suddenly had the feeling that the man’s report was based on nothing more substantial than the fact that he wanted Bland to go south.

And the strange thing was that Bland himself seemed to want to go south too. “Good, good!” he said. “Did you know Hanssen was taking the Haakon into the pack?”

“No.”

“Apparently he thinks the same. So do Petersen and Larvik... and after Nordahl they’re the most experienced men we have.” Bland got up and stared out of the porthole. Suddenly he swung around. “Very well. Captain Eide,” he said. His tone was abrupt, decisive. “Recall the catchers. As soon as they have all come in, get the gunners aboard for a conference. My view is that we should go south right away. Have we enough meat to give the refrigerator ship a full cargo?”

“No,” Eide replied, and looked across at Erik Bland, who added, “The South is only one third full.”

“She must come with us then. Now go and recall the catchers.” He dismissed his son with a nod and turned to me. “I want the findings of that inquiry completed while the catchers are assembling... before we start south. Captain Eide has agreed to release the second officer from all duties to assist you.” He nodded to us. “That’s all then, gentlemen. Tomorrow we will enter the pack ice.”

Kyrre had already received instructions and was waiting for me in our cabin. I got from him a brief account of Nordahl’s movements on the night he’d disappeared and drew up a list of men to be interviewed. I found Eide on the bridge and arranged for the inquiry to begin at eleven. Then I went down to Judie’s cabin.

“I’ve fixed the inquiry for eleven.” I said. “That’s in just over half an hour. That all right for you?”

“Yes.” Her tone was almost harsh, as though she were bracing herself for the ordeal.

I turned to go. Then I stopped. “It’s a rotten job for you,” I said.

“I’ll be all right.” She gave me a wan smile.

At eleven o’clock there were five men, besides the ones we’d called, scuffling their feet outside the door of the room set aside for the inquiry. Kyrre was already there. Eide came in as we were seating ourselves.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s have the men we’ve called first, in the order we I agreed, Kyrre.”

It took us two hours to get the story of that night out of them. On the evening of the second of January, Nordahl had joined the other officers for the evening meal as usual. He hadn’t talked much. The secretary, who saw a lot of him, said that he was increasingly concerned about the absence of whales. Nordahl had a very considerable financial interest in the company.

After the meal Nordahl had had a few drinks and then worked for half an hour in the office. A good deal of his time was spent in the office — young Bland wasn’t much help to him here, as he had insufficient knowledge. In fact, Nordahl bore the whole weight of management, both as regards policy and detail.

After leaving the office, Nordahl went up onto the bridge. He stayed there for a short time, talking to the officer of the watch. The half light of the Antarctic summer night had fallen. But shortly after Nordahl left the bridge a bank of fog rolled up.

Leaving the bridge, Nordahl had gone, as far as was known, straight to Eide’s cabin.

Captain Eide, who then gave evidence, said that he had seemed perfectly normal. “But he was tired, you know,” he added. “There had been trouble between him and Erik Bland. I must say it — since it may have a bearing on his state of mind — Bland did not know enough about the job.”

“And Nordahl took most of Bland’s — work on his own shoulders?” I suggested.

“Ja. That is so.”

“And you think this was too much for him? He was overtired?”

Eide nodded.

After leaving Eide’s cabin, Nordahl had gone to the wireless room. He was there talking to the chief wireless officer till shortly after midnight.

I then called Kyrre, who had been officer of the watch during the period when Nordahl must have disappeared. He had come on watch at midnight. The ship was stationary and blanketed in fog. Nothing unusual happened through his watch. After he had been on watch about half an hour the fog suddenly lifted and visibility increased to several miles. I asked him whether he had heard a cry or a splash. No, he had noticed nothing unusual.

It was clear, therefore, that Nordahl must have gone overboard between the time he had left the wireless room and just after twelve-thirty, when the fog lifted.

Finally I called Erik Bland. He seemed nervous. “There’s only one question I want to ask you, Bland,” said. “Nordahl left Captain Eide’s cabin shortly after ten-thirty on the night of January second. Did he visit you at all?”

“No. I had a few words with him during the evening meal.” His eyes flickered toward Judie and he gave a slight shrug to his shoulders. “I never saw him again.”

“Had you had a row with him?” It was Judie who put the question, and I remember the feeling of shock caused by the blunt way she put the question and the hardness of her voice.

He looked at her then and said, “Yes. You know as well as I do that we couldn’t get on together. It wasn’t the first row we’d had.”

“What was it about?” Judie’s voice was drained of any emotion.

“Nothing. Just a difference of opinion about the promotion of a certain man.”

“As assistant manager, your duty surely was to assist my father, not to obstruct him.”

“I wasn’t obstructing him.” His voice was pitched a shade higher. “Listen, Judie, your father and I didn’t get on. Leave it at that, can’t I you? I had nothing to do with his death.”

“Nobody is suggesting you had,” I said.

He looked at me quickly. His face was paler now and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “No? Then what is she driving at? And she’s not the only one. Larvik and Petersen are spreading the idea through the ship, and the Tons berg men will believe anything they say. Everyone on the ship knows Nordahl and I couldn’t get on together. What they don’t know is the reason.” He turned back to Judie. “Your father did everything he could to make things difficult for me. He wanted to put me in a position where I’d be forced to ask my father to recall me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why? Because he wanted to control the company after my father’s death. He wanted me out of the way.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” I cut in. “Have you any suggestions to make concerning Nordahl’s death?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve no more idea how it happened than you have. The only explanation I can think of is that he had financial troubles. He was gambling—” But Bland stopped short there. “It’s his affair,” he murmured.

“I don’t believe that,” Judie said quietly. “Father never gambled. He couldn’t possibly have had financial troubles. He was interested only in whales.”

“He would have liked to control the company, though, wouldn’t he? “There was a suggestion of spite in his tone. Then he gave a quick shrug. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’d rather not say any more about it.”

“But he had financial worries,” I said, “and you think this may have had some bearing on his death?”

“Perhaps.”

“And you saw nothing of him after he left the officers’ mess?”

“I told you, no.”

“Very well,” I said. “I think that’s all.” I glanced at the others. Eide nodded to indicate that he was satisfied. Judie was sitting, very pale, staring at her husband. She didn’t say anything, so I nodded to Bland. “Thank you,” I said.

He got up quickly. I could see he was relieved. I didn’t know what to think. There was clearly something behind his statement that Nordahl had been in financial difficulties, but just what, I didn’t know; and Judie either couldn’t or wouldn’t enlighten me.

I said, “We’ll adjourn now. After lunch we’ll see the men who want to give evidence.”

We broke up then. But all through lunch Judie sat silent and pale. She hardly ate anything. Bland himself only once referred to the inquiry. He asked me when I’d be through.

“Sometime this afternoon,” I said. “We only have to take the evidence of those who have volunteered to make statements.”

“Hurry it,” he said.

But by the end of the afternoon we were still sitting. The men who had volunteered to give information were Tons berg men, all of them, and their evidence put a different complexion on the whole business. Even allowing for exaggeration, it became clear that the trouble between Nordahl and Erik Bland was much more serious than we’d been led to believe.

The trouble, it appeared, had started a week after the ship had left Cape Town. It culminated in a bitter row over an error in the figures for whales brought in by Hval IV. Petersen, skipper of Hval IV, had queried the figures. The mistake was Bland’s. He had reported these whales to the secretary as being brought in by Hval VIII, one of the Sandefjord catchers. Petersen, who had come on board to right the matter, called the plan foreman to substantiate his claim. It was this man who volunteered an account of what had happened in the office.

Bland had refused to admit his mistake. White-faced, he had accused Nordahl of concocting the whole thing between Petersen and the foreman.

“I know what it is!” he had shouted. “You’re trying to get rid of me! You’re trying to get rid of my father too! You want to control the whole company!”

Nordahl had asked him what he meant by that, and he had answered, “I know what you’re up to. You crawl to me for financial advice. You thought you’d make enough out of it to buy control. Well, you wait till the crash comes. If I didn’t know it was coming, I’d... I’d—” He hadn’t finished, but had flung out of the office.

I recalled the secretary and asked him why he hadn’t given us this piece of evidence. He replied that he hadn’t thought it relevant. Pressed by me, however, the secretary confirmed every word of the foreman’s evidence.

There was another row in Nordahl’s cabin, which was overheard by one of the winch boys. All he heard as he passed was Bland saying, “I refuse to resign. Fire me if you like. But see what my father has to say when he arrives.” And Nordahl had answered wearily, “Your father can do what he likes. I’m not going to be saddled with a rat like you, and I’ll see that the company isn’t either.”

Next came the evidence that all this had gradually been working up to. The witness was a big man with a scar on his cheek over which his beard had refused to grow. He was from Captain Larvik’s catcher.

His evidence was that he’d been up on deck shortly after midnight on the night of the second and third of January. He had gone aft and had seen Nordahl smoking a cigar near one of the boats. A few paces farther on he met Erik Bland going toward Nordahl. He had stopped then, wondering whether there was any fresh trouble between them. He had heard the beginnings of an altercation. No, he couldn’t say what was said. He was too far away. The men’s voices grew angry. There was a sudden cry, then silence. He saw Bland come back. His face was very white. Then the man had gone aft to the point where Nordahl had been. Nordahl was no longer there.

“Did Bland see you?” I asked, through Kyrre.

“No, I was beside one of the ventilators and there was the fog.”

I had been watching the man closely while he gave his evidence. There was no feeling or interest behind his words. I got the idea that he didn’t see the scene he was describing.

Eide stirred. “Why didn’t you give me this information when I was inquiring into Herr Nordahl’s disappearance?” he asked.

The man hesitated. “I was scared,” he said.

I said, “I don’t believe a word of your evidence.” His eyes looked suddenly shifty. “Who put you up to this? Was it Captain Larvik? Come on, man!” I shouted at him as though I were back on the bridge of my corvette. “Let’s have the truth now! It was Captain Larvik, wasn’t it? He told you to give this evidence?”

The man fidgeted awkwardly.

“All right!” I snapped. “You can go!”

I looked across at Eide. There was no doubt in my mind. Captain Larvik had primed the fellow. “Why?” I asked, voicing my own thoughts.

Eide was fingering his beard. “I think we should call Captain Larvik.”

I turned to Judie for her agreement. She nodded. “I think he knows something,” she said quietly. “Peer Larvik is a great friend of my father.”

We had a break then while Captain Eide sent for Larvik, whose catcher had just rejoined the Southern Cross. I took Judie down to my cabin and got one of the messboys to bring us tea. It was the first opportunity I’d had of talking to her alone since we had begun the inquiry.

“Look, Judie,” I said when the tea had arrived, “is there anything you can tell us that would help to discover what really did happen?”

She stirred her cup for a moment. Then she said, “No. I don’t think I can.” Her voice trembled slightly. “All I know for certain, deep down in my heart, is that he did not commit suicide.”

“Do you believe the evidence of that man with the scar... Ulvik?”

“No,” she replied. “No, you showed quite clearly that he was lying.”

“You agree that Captain Larvik put him up to it?”

“Yes.”

“But why?” I asked.

She looked up at me then. And there was something in her eyes that disturbed me. “He had a reason,” she said. Her voice was suddenly beyond her control. It was harsh and violent. “The man was saying what he’d been told to say. But it’s what Peer Larvik believed happened.”

I hesitated. But I had to put it to her. “Do you believe your husband murdered your father?”

Her gray eyes were wide as saucers as she looked up at me. Then suddenly something inside her snapped and she buried her head in her hands. “I don’t know what to think! “She was sobbing violently. “It’s horrible, horrible!” Her shoulders shook with the sudden pent-up force of her emotions breaking out.

I went over and put my hands on her arms. “Stop crying,” I said. “You’re a member of a committee of inquiry, not a schoolgirl.” I shook her. It was the only thing to do. She was on the verge of hysterics. My violence and lack of sympathy checked her. “Stop blubbering and try to reason it out,” I said, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Either your father committed suicide or your husband’s a murderer.”

She gasped. But I could see that her mind was suddenly facing up to the facts that she had been trying to avoid.

There was a knock at the door. It was a message from Eide to say that Larvik was on board.

“I’m sorry, Judie,” I said. “Don’t think I don’t realize how rotten this is for you. But we’ve got to find out what was in Larvik’s mind. Will you quest ion him?”

She nodded and reached for her handbag. When she had made up her face again, we went down and joined Captain Eide. “Mrs. Bland will put the questions,” I said. I nodded to Kyrre to fetch in Captain Larvik.

At close quarters, the whaling skipper looked even broader and even more like a seal. He sat down awkwardly on the edge of a chair. He was nervous. He didn’t look at Eide or me. His small deeply blue eyes were fixed on Judie. Was it sympathy or was there something else in the expression of his eyes? I had a feeling that those blue eyes were trying to tell her something.

“Captain Larvik,” she said, “why did you tell Ulvik to say that Erik and my father had a row up there on the deck in the fog the night my father... disappeared?”

He did not deny it. His big hands waved awkwardly, like a pair of flippers. “I do not wish to hurt you more than you have been hurt already,” he said. “But it is what I believe happened.”

“You are accusing my husband of being a murderer,” she said, and Larvik winced at the bluntness of her tongue. “Of murdering my father,” she added. “Why didn’t you come to us directly or go to Captain Eide and make this statement yourself? To present your suspicions in this roundabout way, getting Ulvik to make a statement you and he knew to be false, is horrible. Erik didn’t see my father at all that night after the evening meal.”

“How do you know?” Larvik’s voice was gruff. Sudden anger showed in his eyes.

“Erik made that statement in evidence before this inquiry.”

“Then he’s lying,” Larvik growled.

Judie stared at him as though she’d been silenced with a blow. I could see that she believed this fat, bearded whaler. I saw her lips tremble. Her body seemed to sag. “Oh!” she breathed. She was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes quite blank. She wasn’t crying. She was past that.

“How do you know Bland is lying?” I demanded angrily.

I saw Larvik steady himself. His eyes were full of sudden pity. But beneath the beard his lips clamped into a tight line. “I have nothing more to say,” he growled. And then he added, “That is what I believe happened. I wished for the inquiry to know that and act on it.”

“How do you know?”

But all he replied was, “Ask Bland.”

I looked at Eide. I could see that he thought the same as I did — that we should get no further with Larvik. It was no good asking Judie if she had any further questions to ask. She was staring at Larvik, dry-eyed, with a sort of dawning horror mirrored on her white face.

His eyes were fixed on Judie. They were full of pain. He was sharing the hell that she was going through.

“Please return to your ship, Captain Larvik,” I said.

He got up then, standing awkwardly in front of the table, still looking at Judie. Once he cleared his throat as though about to say something. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and left the room.

I looked at Eide. “I think we should have Bland back again,” I whispered. He agreed. I turned to Judie. She hadn’t moved. I put my hand on hers. “Are you prepared to face your husband now,” I said, “or shall we adjourn for a bit?”

She swallowed quickly. “Please, now,” she said. She wanted to get it over.

When Bland came in, he was breathing heavily, as though he’d been hurrying. And it was a different Bland from the disarming, helpful young man who had faced us earlier in the day... or so it seemed to me.

His eyes darted about the room, crossing but not meeting our gaze. I motioned him to a chair. The tension of the room was enveloping him. I let it work on him.

“Well?” he asked, unable to bear the silence any longer. “What do you want to ask me now?”

“We have just heard the evidence of one of the men,” I said. I let that sink in for a moment. If I handled it right, whatever it was he was scared of would come out. “Do you still persist in your statement that you didn’t see Nordahl after the evening meal on the night he disappeared?”

His eyes flicked up at me and back to the floor. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.” Then his hands caught hold of the arms of the chair. “You’ve had Larvik on board. You’ve interviewed him, haven’t you?” So that was what had got him worried. “He’s trying to fix it on me.” His voice was uncontrolled. Something was gnawing at his mind, something he was scared of. “It isn’t one of the men who’s been talking to you. It’s Larvik. He’s always hated me. He’s a friend of Nordahl’s. He’s using Nordahl’s death to get at me. He’s lying! He’s lying, I tell you!”

“He says you’re lying,” I said.

“It’s my word against his!” Bland’s voice was wild. “He’s guessing! That’s all he’s doing!”

I said. Wait a minute, Bland. We’re not dealing with Larvik’s evidence. We’re dealing with the evidence of one of the men. He says that at about midnight Nordahl was standing by one of the boats. I knew the man’s statement was false. I justified myself on the ground that if Bland was hiding anything, it would force him into the open. Nordahl was smoking a cigar,” I went on. As the man passed him on his way for’ard again, he met you. He says you were going toward where Nordahl was standing.” Bland’s face was ashen. He seemed to be holding his breath. “Well?” I said. “Did you go toward Nordahl as he stood there by one of the boats, smoking a cigar?” I emphasized the details. I emphasized every point of the picture.

“No!” he cried. “No!”

The man said he then stopped by one of the ventilators.” I went on. “He heard the beginnings of an altercation. There was a cry. And then silence.”

“No. It isn’t true.”

He said that a moment later you passed him, going for’ard. Your face was very white. You didn’t see him because of the fog and the fact that he was hidden behind the ventilator cowl. He then went back to the spot where he had seen Nordahl.” I hesitated. Bland was staring at me, fascinated. “Nordahl wasn’t there any more.”

Bland opened his mouth. But nothing came out. He seemed to be gasping for breath. Then he suddenly said. “All right, I was up there. I did see Nordahl. We did have a row. But that was all. That was all, I tell you.”

“What was the row about?” I asked.

“What was the row... about?” He seemed dazed for the moment. He moistened his lips with his tongue and then said, “He accused my father of ruining him.”

“On what grounds?” I asked.

Nordahl wanted control of the company, he said. “He wanted to run it his own way. He was afraid my father, when he died, would make me chairman over his head.”

“Come to the point.” I said, as he paused. Why did he accuse your father of ruining him?”

“He needed money.” Bland answered. He was making a desperate bid to get control of the company. He badgered my father until he let him in on a deal he was planning in South African mines. He put everything he’d got into it. The crash came two weeks after we left Cape Town.”

“What was the name of the company he invested in?” I asked. “Was it Wys Odendaal Rust Development?”

“Yes,” he said, and his voice sounded surprised.

The plan foreman, in his evidence, had suggested it was from Erik Bland, not his father, that Nordahl had obtained financial advice. I hesitated. But there was no point in raising the matter. “In your opinion, Nordahl was broke then?”

“Yes. He’d mortgaged everything — all his holdings in the South Antarctic Company — in a desperate effort to cash in.”

“Then he was going to buy out the other people interested in the company?”

“Yes. That was his idea.”

“When he’d done that, would he have thrown you out?”

He ignored the point. “The case didn’t arise.” he said. “My father was too smart to be caught like that. I tell you, Nordahl was broke... finished. And he knew it. He cursed me there on the deck.”

“Why did he cry out?” I asked quickly.

Again that momentary hesitation. “He didn’t cry out,” he answered. “I think perhaps it was I who cried out. I don’t know. All I know is that he hit me. I left him then. I didn’t want to hit back at an older man, especially as he was wrought up over his losses.”

“The man whose evidence has produced all this,” I said slowly, “went straight back to the spot where Nordahl had been standing. Nordahl wasn’t there.”

“I tell you, he knew he was ruined.” Bland’s face was tense. He was fighting to make us see it his way. “He took the only way out.”

“My father never took an easy way out in his life.” Judie’s voice was clear-cut and distinct. It was like a douche of cold water on the heat of Erik Bland’s argument.

“Well, he took it this time.” There was something almost truculent in the way he said it.

I looked at Eide. “Any more questions?” I asked. He shook his head. I turned to Judie. Her lips were compressed. She was staring at Erik Bland with a sort of horror in her eyes. “All right, Bland,” I said. “That’s all.”

He got up slowly, as though he didn’t want to be released like that. He started to say something, hut then his eyes met Judie’s and he turned quickly and went out. I realized then that whatever he had once meant to her, it was finished now. And I was suddenly, unaccountably glad about that.

As the door closed behind him. I said, “Well, do we need to call anybody else?”

“I would like to call Doctor Howe,” Judie said in a small, bleak voice. It was drained of all emotion — empty, toneless.

I looked at her in surprise. “Doctor Howe? Why?” I asked. “He wasn’t even on the Southern Cross. He was in Cape Town, waiting for us.”

“I think he might be able to tell us something,” was all she said.

“All right,” I agreed, and nodded to Kyrre.

Howe was pale and nervous when he came in. It was as though he’d nerving himself for this moment. Judie said. “Walter, we want some information about father’s affairs. Was he involved in Wys Odendaal Rust Development?” she asked him.

Howe nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“And he’d mortgaged everything he had — all his holdings in the South Antarctic Company — for this gamble?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” she said quietly. “And he acted on Colonel Bland’s advice?”

“I don’t know whose advice he was acting on.”

She nodded. “Thank you. That perhaps explains it.” Her voice was barely audible.

I nodded for Howe to go. He hesitated, looking at Judie’s bent head. He wanted to help her. I saw it in his eyes. His face didn’t look ugly in that moment. Then he was gone and I heard myself saying in a matter-of-fact voice, “Why is it that Howe knows so much about your father’s affairs?”

“He and Walter were very close,” she answered quietly.

“You’re satisfied your father was gambling in South African mines?” I asked.

She nodded.

I glanced at Eide. “You satisfied, too, captain?” I asked him.

“Ja. I am satisfied.”

The telephone rang and I picked it up. It was Bland. He wanted to know whether we were through. “In about five minutes,” I said. “We’re just deciding on our findings.”

“Good. As soon as you’re through I want you and Eide to come up to the saloon. The gunners are all here.”

When I put the receiver back. Judie had risen. “You must wait until we have agreed on our findings,” I said gently.

“I don’t want to wait.” she answered. “I don’t wish to talk about it any more. Please, I will agree with your verdict.” She went out then, and I looked at Eide. He was massaging the side of his beard. “Bland wants us both up in the saloon,” I said. “Can I have your views?”

“Ja. I think it is a matter for the police. As far as we can discover, it is Erik Bland who sees him last. It is either — murder or suicide.”

“Fine,” I said. “That’s what I think. In the circumstances, I think we should merely file the evidence and hand it over to assist the police in their investigations.”

Eide nodded. His gaunt hatchet face was set in the lines beaten into it by years of violent weather. “Bland will not like it,” he said. “It is bad for the men that we do not reach some conclusion. But we cannot. I agree. So.” He pulled himself to his feet. “We had letter go to the conference now.”

The saloon was full of smoke when we entered. Bland was sitting in a big chair. The skippers of the catchers were grouped round him in a circle, charts littered the floor. Erik Bland was also there. He was sitting close to his father.

“Well, Captain Eide.” Bland said as we sat down, “the others agree with me — that we should go south through the pack. The Haakon has reached open sea six hundred miles south of us. She reports plenty of whale.”

“Then we must also go south,” Eide said. “There are good leads and the weather is fine.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” Bland rang for the messboy and ordered drinks. Then he got up and came over to me. “A word with you, Craig,” he said. I followed him out of the saloon and along the corridor to his cabin. “Now,” he said, as I closed the door. “What are your findings?”

I pulled the sheets of evidence out of my pocket. “In our opinion. Nordahl’s disappearance is a matter for police investigation.”

He blew his cheeks out like a grampus. It was as though he’d been holding his breath. “Why?” he asked sharply.

“There are two possibilities,” I said. “Either Nordahl committed suicide or he was murdered. The evidence, which I am now passing on to you, should be handed over to the police on our return to port.”

“I see. And... is my son involved in any way?”

“Yes,” I said. “He was the last person to see Nordahl alive. In his first evidence he denied seeing Nordahl at all after the evening meal. Later he admitted that he had had a row with him up on the deck. That was shortly after midnight. At twelve-thirty-five the fog cleared. It was only possible for Nordahl to have gone overboard unobserved during the intervening minutes.”

“I see.” Bland slowly wink into a chair. “But it could be suicide.”

“You should know,” I answered.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Weren’t you in on the Wys Odendaal Rust Development racket?” I countered.

Bland turned on me with a quick oath. “How do you know?” He stopped then. “Well?”

“Nordahl came to you and asked to be put onto something good in the financial world. He mortgaged all his holdings in the South Antarctic Company and invested everything he had in Wys Odendaal Rust Development.”

“If he did, then it’s the first I’ve heard of it!” Bland barked. “He never asked me for financial advice in his life.”

So it was Erik Bland who had advised Nordahl. “Well,” I said, “that’s what your son says.”

“I see.” At length he turned and faced me. He looked tired and somehow older. He didn’t say anything, hut sat down at the desk and began running through the sheets of evidence. Then for a long time he sat staring at one single page. At last he pushed the papers into a drawer and got to his feet.

“Very well, Craig,” he said heavily. “I agree. It is a matter for the police. Some changes must be made now.” He went to the door and I followed him back to the saloon.

One of the skytters gave me a drink and I gulped it. I needed it badly. Bland had sat down again. Something in his manner silenced the room. “I have some changes in command to announce,” he said. “Nordahl’s death has left as without an experienced leader. As I am here, and intend to stay out during the whole season, I shall direct operations personally... Petersen, you will take over from my son as manager of the Southern Cross.” There was a murmuring of surprise and a quickening of interest at this announcement. “Commander Craig, you are posted to command of Hval Four in Petersen’s place.”

I saw the oldest of the whaling skippers stir in his seat and lean forward. “Excuse me, sir,” I said quickly. “I don’t wish to query your orders. But I would like to remind you that I’ve no experience as a gunner.”

“I’m well aware of that, Craig,” he answered. “But you will take command of Hval Four.” He rounded on Petersen before the old skytter could begin to argue. “I know what you’re going to say, Petersen. But I won’t have a girl in charge of a catcher. Not down here. Craig will command the boat. Your daughter will remain in her present position as mate. But in addition, she will act as gunner. Some adjustment will lie made financially in her terms of employment. Does that satisfy you?”

The old skytter relaxed. “Ja, Herr Bland. I am satisfied.”

“Good... Erik, you will take command of Tauer Three. The ship is without deck officers at the moment. You can choose your own mates.” He turned to Petersen again. “I shall rely on you to see that there is not more trouble between the Sandefjord and Tönsberg men. More than six weeks have passed and we’ve only just over a hundred whales. In the next two months the leeway has got to be—”

But I wasn’t listening. I was staring at Erik Bland. His face seemed to have crumpled up on hearing his father’s decision. But it wasn’t his face so much as his eyes that held my gaze. There was something violent, almost vicious, about those small blue slits between the creases of fat.

I was brought back to the conference again with a jolt. It was Captain Larvik. “Has the inquiry into Nordahl’s death been completed yet, Herr Bland?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the chairman, and glanced quickly at me.

“Can we have the findings of the committee, then?”

“They have not been typed yet.” Bland answered. “They will be published tomorrow.”

Again I was conscious of a quick glance in my direction, and then he was hurrying on into details of organization for the journey through the pack. Finally he said, “Well, gentlemen, I think that’s all. We will start as soon as you have rejoined your ships.” He was as casual as if he were terminating a rather dull board meeting.

The skytters got to their feet. There was no argument, no indication that only just over twenty-four hours before, several of them had refused to operate. Bland sat, squat and solid, in his chair, smiling genially, dominating them.

The whalers were leaving now. Bland motioned me over to him. His son was still hunched angrily in his chair, waiting to speak to his father. “Craig,” Bland said quietly as I approached him, “I want you to know that the whole matter of Nordahl’s disappearance, together with the evidence you have taken, will be handed over to the police at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, anything I may do in the matter will be done with Captain Eide’s full knowledge. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

As I turned to go, his son rose from his seat. “Does that include posting me to command of a towing ship?” His tone was pitched a shade high. I got the impression that he was scared of his father. But something stronger was driving him now.

Bland looked at him. “It does,” he said.

“But Nordahl committed suicide. He’d lost everything he had. He’d nothing to live for. Why didn’t you tell the skytters the truth — that Nordahl was a ruined man?”

“I’m doing what I think best, boy.” Bland’s voice was a deep, angry rumble.

“You’re being weak.” Erik Bland was trembling, his eyes fever-bright and his mouth twitching. “You’re discarding me like you do everyone when it suits you.”

“Talk to me like that again, Erik, and I’ll send you back to the Cape in irons.” Bland took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. He was trembling with anger. He had calmed down a little by the time he’d put his glasses on again. He took out his wallet and extracted a piece of paper. “Read that,” he said, passing it across to his son.

“’Cargo unloaded as per instructions,” Erik Bland read aloud, and his brow puckered.

“It’s a copy of a radio message received by Nordahl on Christmas Eve. It was sent by Howe from Cape Town.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I’ll leave you to think about what it means for a moment.” Bland turned to me. “You’ll please regard what has passed between Erik and me here as confidential. Craig. Now I suggest you join your ship.”

I nodded and turned to go, but he stopped me. “I shall be sending Doctor Howe over to join you. I think it would be better if he didn’t remain on the factory ship. He is excitable, and when drunk, he might—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Bernt Nordahl...” he began, and then hesitated. He seemed to have difficulty in finding the right words. “Nordahl was his father,” he finished abruptly.

“His father?” I echoed in surprise. And I saw a shocked, almost dazed look on Erik Bland’s face.

“Yes,” Bland said. “He is Nordahl’s natural son by a Mrs. Howe, of Newcastle. That is why I think it would be better if he were on one of the catchers.” He nodded for me to go, and then added, “You will find Gerda Petersen not very beautiful, but a good first mate.”

I went straight down to my cabin. Judie was there, sitting on my bunk. Howe was pacing up and down. They both turned to face me as I came in.

“Shut the door, Craig,” Howe said. He was agitated, almost excited. Judie sat very tense, her eyes dark shadows in the tightness of her face. She was beyond tears... near the breaking point.

I shut the door. “Something happened?” I asked.

Judie nodded. “Tell him, Walter.” Her voice was barely audible.

“All right.” Howe swung round on me. “But understand this, Craig: not a word of what I’m going to tell you must be passed on to anyone. Understand? Promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

“Erik Bland said Nordahl was ruined, didn’t he?”

I nodded.

“That’s the basis for thinking Nordahl’s death might be suicide?”

Again I nodded.

“If Nordahl wasn’t ruined, it would mean that Erik Bland killed him?”

“On the evidence we have at the moment, it would be reasonable to suppose that,” I said cautiously.

Howe nodded excitedly. “That’s what I told Judie. If Nordahl was a rich man, then Erik Blank killed him, pushed him overboard in the fog.”

“What are you getting at?” I demanded.

“I stayed in Cape Town to look after Nordahl’s interests. Erik Bland was quite right — as far as he went. Nordahl invested everything he had in Wys Odendaal Rust Development, even to mortgaging his interest in the South Antarctic Company. Erik Bland got the whole of his father’s plan for the boosting of these shares from his mother. He passed it on to Nordahl as a straight tip, forgetting to mention that it was a racket, that the mine was to be salted and at a certain moment Bland was going to sell out. Nordahl had never dabbled much in finance. But he was an astute man. He saw through the reason for Erik Bland’s giving him the tip, and he saw in it a chance to prevent Erik Bland from becoming head of the firm on his father’s death. He got an introduction to one of the sharpest brokers in the business, and dealt through him. And when the Southern Cross sailed from Cape Town I stayed behind with his power of attorney. On Christmas Eve I cabled the Southern Cross that I’d sold all the shares.”

“’Cargo unloaded as per instructions,” I said. I was beginning to understand.

Howe looked at me sharply. “How did you know the wording?”

I told him about Bland handing the copy of the cable to his son.

“So the old man knows, eh?” He chuckled to himself. “It must have shaken him — reading the evidence and knowing that.” He caught hold of my arm. “Nordahl was a rich man when he died. A very rich man.”

I stared at him. I don’t think I made any comment. I only remember the shock of realizing what must have happened — that Erik Bland had killed him.

“It could have been an accident,” Judie whispered. “He may have struck Bernt without realizing, in the fog...” Her voice trailed away.

Howe laughed. It was a derisive sound. “You don’t really believe that,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell this to the committee of inquiry?” I asked him.

“Why? Because it would have given my hand away. And don’t forget your promise, Craig. Nothing I’ve told you must be repeated to anyone. I don’t think the old man knew what his son was up to. But he knows now. And he’s not the sort of man to regard justice as applicable to himself or his.” He stooped down suddenly. “I hear he refused to give the findings of the inquiry to the skytters... said they weren’t typed?”

I nodded. “But he has assured me that all the evidence will be handed to the police on our return to port.”

Howe gave that derisive, barking laugh again. “You wait. Vital witnesses will be sent home in another ship, Eide and the secretary will be persuaded that it’s not in the interest of the company to incur unprofitable publicity, and the whole thing will quietly fizzle out. That’s why I wasn’t coming out into the open. And I’ve still got something up my sleeve.”

But I wasn’t listening to him any longer. I was staring at Judie. I remember thinking. She knows. And realizing what hell it must be for her.

It was a long way I, Duncan Craig, had come in a few weeks: from a clerk’s desk in London to command of a ship in South Polar seas. I left England, fed up with a dull existence, and by chance fell in with Colonel Bland, director of the South Antarctic Whaling Company. Bland was a choleric man determined to put a stop to the trouble among the men on his huge factory ship. Southern Cross. The men were divided into factions over whether Bernt Nordahl, late manager of the factory ship, had been lost overboard by accident, suicide or murder. Erik Bland, the colonel’s son, was believed by one group to have murdered Nordahl, his own father-in-law.

Judie Bland, Erik’s wife, was a lovely woman. It was perhaps on her account — in part, at least — that I accepted Colonel Bland’s offer of temporary command of one of his corvette-like whale catchers.

As I had been a naval officer. Bland directed me to conduct the inquiry into Nordahl’s death on board the Southern Cross. My findings were inconclusive: Erik Bland was under suspicion. Colonel Bland promised to turn the evidence over to the authorities.

The expedition’s oceanographer, a pathetic alcoholic named Walter Howe, had a dangerous hatred of Erik Bland. He was the illegitimate son of the dead man, Nordahl, and had known enough about Nordahl’s private affairs to be sure he had never committed suicide.

Nordahl’s death left the expedition shorthanded, so Colonel Bland gave me permanent command of the catcher Hval IV. Before I left for my ship I took a last look at Judie. I could read her thoughts. She was thinking. My father has been murdered. By my husband.

IV

Half an hour later, I was up on deck with my things packed. The wind had freshened and ugly whitecaps were beginning to fleck the marching lines of cold gray water. Howe was waiting for me at the head of the gangway.

“Well, skipper,” he said, “all the problem children being evacuated.”

“Bland’s right all the same,” I said. “There’s two months of the season still to go.”

“I see you’re one of the reasonable sort.” He smiled at me crookedly. “You haven’t had much to do with the Blands of this world, have you?”

“Why not relax?” I said. “There’s nothing you can do about Nordahl’s death now,” I added.

“Wait until we get back to—”

“You fool!” he cried. “Don’t you understand Judie’s a rich woman? She holds the key to the control of the company. When Erik Bland know that—” He paused, and then added. “A man who’s prepared to commit murder to get what he wants won’t stop at that. Just now he’s probably scared. But sooner or later—” He shrugged his shoulders. If we stand here talking all day, we’ll get wet going over to the catcher.”

I started down the gangway. But then I stopped. There were three boats at the bottom of the gangway and one of them was just pushing off. In the stern sat Judie. She was sitting next to Larvik and her face was tense.

“Why’s she going over to Larvik’s catcher?” I asked. “Did Bland send her?”

“No.” Howe answered. “She sent herself. Bland doesn’t know she’s gone yet.”

“But why?”

“Because I advised her to. She’s safer there than on the Southern Cross.”

“But good heavens!” I said. “You don’t think anything would happen—”

“This is the Antarctic.” he reminded me, “not suburbia.”

He went down the gangway then. As he dumped his kit aboard the boat, I caught the chink of bottles. A few minutes later we had pushed off and were bobbing up and down past the yawning cavity of the Southern Cross’s stern. Ahead of me lay Hval IV, a battered little toy of a boat with a saucy rake to her uptilted bows. The knowledge that this was my new command gradually took hold of me as we approached her through the rising anger of the sea, and drove every other thought out of my head.

Olaf Petersen met us as we clambered aboard. He was a big, bluff man, rather like a polar bear. “I am happy to welcome you on my ship.” The grip of his hand was the clutch of a bear’s paw. “You haf not meet my daughter.” His head lunged round. “Gerda, here is Commander Craig.”

I shouldn’t have known she was a girl but for the breadth of her hips, the bulkiness of her chest, and the fact that she had no whiskers. She was dressed in a seaman’s heavy jersey and blue serge trousers, and wore a fur cap on her head. Her hand was rough as it gripped mine. I glanced at her quickly. She had large, very brown eyes. Her face was tanned and smooth — a chubby, friendly face with a nose like a little button. Her eyes twinkled in the creases of fat.

“I do not expect you have women as officers in your navy,” she said.

“Only ashore,” I said with a grin.

“Ah, yes. A woman’s place is ashore.” The laughter gurgled up from her throat. “And then you call them Wrens, eh — little birds!”

Her father’s big paw slapped my shoulder so that I nearly lost my balance. “You will haf to get used to Gerda!” he boomed. His great laugh seemed to rattle round the ship.

“Come,” Gerda Petersen said. “I show you to your cabin. You look—” she hesitated, her eyes bubbling with laughter, “you look as though you have borrowed your clothes from all the crew of the Southern Cross.”

“Gerda!” Petersen’s tone was half amused, half serious. “You will not get in the good books of your new captain if you make fun of him... What must you think, Commander Craig? You will think I have brought up my daughter badly and there is no discipline on my ship. Well, there is!”

His daughter laughed. “Take no notice of him,” she whispered. “He thinks he is important now he is to be manager of the factory ship.”

Her father shrugged his shoulders in mock despair.

“I’ll be only too glad to borrow from your slop chest.” I said.

“Fine. Then come and take a look at your new command. I hear you are the devil for spit and polish.” She grinned at me slyly over her shoulder. “Well, I can tell you, this ship needs some polishing. That dirty man has made a pigsty of her.” With this parting shot at her father, she pulled herself up the ladder that led to the bridge accommodation.

The catcher was a good deal smaller than Tauer III. The captain’s cabin was directly below the bridge, a part of the for’ard deckhouse.

“I am sorry,” Gerda said. “You will have to share your cabin with Walter Howe. Do you mind?”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Provided he’s willing to share his Scotch with me.”

Howe staggered in then with his box of instruments. “Walter, you will share the skipper’s cabin and he is to share your whisky. Okay?”

Howe’s eyebrows lifted. “He’ll have to drink fast,” he said, “if he is to get the same share of my drink that I get of his cabin.”

She took me on a brief tour of the ship then, introducing me to the crew. “Do not trouble to remember their names,” she said. “You will soon have sort them out.”

The ship was rather like a small fleet sweeper in appearance with its high bow and high bridge and a long, low afterdeck. She was narrow in beam, built for speed and power. Perched on a platform on the bow was the harpoon gun, a deadly looking weapon tiring a harpoon weighing around a hundredweight. The gun platform was connected to the bridge by a catwalk. Aft of the chain locker was a hold containing two great coils of two-inch Manila. These whale lines ran up to the winches on deck. Each winch had two drums, and the line ran three times round each drum and thence up to masthead blocks and so out through a fair-lead in the bow. The masthead blocks were connected to huge springs — accumulators — with a pressure of twenty tons. The springs performed the same function as the whip in a fishing rod, allowing the whale to be played on the winches without the sudden movements of the vessel in a seaway parting the line.

By the time I had completed the round of the ship. Captain Petersen was ready to leave.

“Well, I hope you will like Hval Four,” he said, gripping my hand. “Ja, I hope so. I hope also Gerda behave herself, no? When I am skipper here, my life she is not worth living.” He turned and looked up at us, his fat face creased in laughter. “One thing I do not haf to worry about. My daughter is safe with any man. She is a nice girl... but ugly as a fat leetle pig, eh?”

Gerda made a face at him. Still laughing, he climbed over the side into the boat that had been sent across from the factory ship.

“I am afraid all this talk will have made you think this is a play ship,” Gerda said, her voice suddenly serious. “But that is just our fun.”

“I like it,” I said. “I feel at home already. I think the ship must lie a very happy one.”

“Ja, I think so too.” She wrinkled her nose. It was a habitual gesture, half serious, half humorous. “You are nice,” she said. “My father and I have been three seasons together out here. We are not bad whalers. This time we lead all the fleet. We have twenty-two whale so far.”

“I hope we manage to hold the lead,” I said.

She patted me on the shoulder. It was a gesture copied from her father. “I think we get on fine, skipper. But I am not so good a skytter as Olaf. And you will have to learn how to control the ship for me.” She glanced at me quickly. “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking the antarctic is no place for a girl. But you must remember one thing: We can stand the cold well. I have much fat, eh?” And she tapped her cheek and laughed.

As we stood there on the deck a boat came across from Tauer III. It was McPhee. Bland had agreed to his transfer. I watched the chief engineer of Hval IV as he climbed down into the boat. It was clear that he didn’t want to leave his ship. But I had to have one officer that I knew. And McPhee was glad to come with me.

At eight thirty-five there was a series of whoops on the factory ship’s siren. The sea boiled under the ugly cavity of her stern. I ordered half ahead, and we swung into position astern of the Southern Cross. The other ships took up station, and the whole fleet, strung out in a line behind the mother ship, headed south into the ice.

The sky cleared about eleven that night. The sun was a flaming yellow ball, its lower edge just above the horizon. Ahead of us the loose pack ice stretched like an unending broken plain of pink straight into the sun. It was an incredible sight.

Gerda, who was standing between Howe and me on the bridge, caught hold of my arm and said, “It is beautiful, yes? I bet you do not ever see anything so beautiful as this. You are glad we go south?”

I nodded. But I was looking at Howe. I was thinking. He doesn’t see the beauty of it. Hut he’s exultant. The ice means something else to him.

Howe!” The unconscious peremptoriness of my tone jerked him away from his contemplation of the ice ahead. “That report you did for Bland. Why did you come to the conclusion that we must go south into the Weddell Sea?”

He stared at me for a moment and the comers of his mouth lifted in that sly smile of his.

“Why? Because if Bland is given enough rope—” He stopped there and gave a quick laugh. “Just leave it at that.” And he turned away and went quickly down to the cabin.

McPhee came up onto the bridge then to discuss a defect in one of the winches, and the conversation was never resumed. By midnight we had entered the ice, following a broad lead and steaming south at about ten knots. The weather remained fair and we were able to observe a steady shipboard routine of watch and watch about.

Occasionally we sighted whales. Once a big sperm whale came up to blow almost alongside. They were all headed south. There were plenty of the smaller killer whales hunting for seals among the ice floes. One morning a whole string of these ugly brutes passed across our bows. Gerda and Howe were on the bridge with me at the time, and she said, “Ugh, those devils!”

Gerda was a mine of information on the antarctic, and she would talk for hours about whales and ships and hunting expeditions on the ice. It was she who picked out a sea leopard for me in the glasses, so that I was able to watch the great spotted brute rushing across the ice with an undulating, snakelike movement as it charged a group of seals. She pointed out the small Adélie penguins, and one evening she showed me a little group of emperor penguins clustered on an ice ledge, where they bowed and chattered to each other with the distant dignity of foreign diplomats at an embassy social.

On the morning of the fourth day in the ice the sky to the south became very black and lowering. There were a lot of low clouds and at first I thought a storm was coming up. But Gerda shook her head. “It is the open sea. It always look dark when you are in the ice blink.” She was right. The lead we were following gradually opened out. And early on the twenty-third of January we were in open sea at 66 01 S., 35 62 W., with the ice blink behind us.

Hval I and Hval III ahead of us peeled off. Gerda had ordered a lookout to the tonne, which is the barrel crow’s-nest, and a few minutes later we heard his cry.

“Where?” Gerda called up.

“Starboard side.”

We picked it up almost immediately. I ordered starboard helm and emergency full ahead, and we were off on our first whale hunt. Presently the whale sounded and Gerda suggested that we reduce to half speed. All eyes were scanning the sea ahead, waiting for the next sight of the thin plume of vapor as the whale surfaced again to blow.

Gerda plucked at my sleeve. “You have not done this before, so perhaps if you take the wheel and I give directions—” She hesitated. “It is very difficult to get so that we can shoot him. We must drive him under again and again, until he is blown. You understand?”

“Of course,” I said.

I took the wheel, and soon one of the hands gave a shout and Gerda ordered full speed. The whale was wallowing on the surface about two cable lengths ahead of us. In a short time we were on top of him, and the sleek gray back curved as it sounded.

Five times we drove the whale under, and each time we were closer to him. Now we were driving him under almost before he had time to blow.

“Now I think we have him!” Gerda shouted to me. She thrust open the door of the bridge and ran down the catwalk to the gun platform. From there she directed me by hand signals which we had rehearsed beforehand.

We were steaming at slow ahead and turning to port. She had taken hold of the slender butt of the gun. She signaled for half speed and I saw the whale surface right ahead of us, not fifty feet away, as I jerked the engine-room telegraph. The catcher gathered speed. Gerda braced her legs apart and swung the harpoon gun. There was a flash, the sharp crack of an explosion, and I saw the harpoon fly down into the water, the light forerunner snaking after it. There was another duller explosion, a terrible flurry of spray, and then the winch drums were screaming and the masthead block dragging down as the heavy two-inch whale line went roaring out through the fair-lead in the bow.

Gerda came running back to the bridge. “My shot is no good,” she said. “I tell you I am not so good a skytter as Olaf. I do not hit the backbone. Slow now, please.”

The whale had sounded and the line was still roaring out with the block dragged down to the danger mark. I watched one, two splices run through the block. Each splice meant 120 fathoms of line gone out. All together there were four lengths — three splices. Just when the third splice was reeling through the block we saw the whale surface half a mile ahead.

Gerda was gripping the wind breaker in a frenzy. This was her first whale independent of her father. It meant a lot to her. The last splice went through the fair-lead. She ordered full speed. And just as I rang the engine-room telegraph I saw the block start to rise up the mast.

“We win!” she cried. “We win!” McPhee, at the winch, was braking now. Then suddenly the line was slack. Gerda ordered stop, and the winch began to clatter as McPhee took in line. We began to winch in. The whale was still lashing the water with its huge tail as we hauled up to it, and Gerda ran down to the gun platform and tired another harpoon into it. There was a sudden spout of blood, and then the great brute was motionless, lying alongside us like a half-submerged submarine.

“Next time I shoot better, I hope,” Gerda said, and took me down to the bows to superintend the pumping of air into the whale. As one of the hands thrust the lance with the air pipe into it, there was another call from the crow’s-nest. The air hissed as it went into the huge carcass. The harpoon holes were plugged, a long steel rod with a flag was thrust deep into the animal, and a moment later we were back on the bridge and off after our next whale.

I have given this detailed account of our first whale hunt to show the degree of concentration the work entailed. It occupied all our waking thoughts and energies, and when we fell into our bunks we were so tired we slept like the dead. For whales were plentiful, and when we had killed one, another was sighted almost immediately. When we’d flagged three or four whales we’d put through a call on the R-T for one of the towing vessels or a buoy boat, and go on to the next kill while they picked up our catch and towed it back to the factory ship. All around us, through good weather and bad, the rest of the catcher fleet was working in the same frantic haste. The only occasions on which we returned to the Southern Cross were to refuel and take on provisions and a new supply of harpoons that had been straightened out in the blacksmith’s shop. I had neither the time nor the energy to think about Nordahl’s disappearance, and though I wondered sometimes how Judie was getting along on Larvik’s catcher, my mind was so tired that her image was blurred, as though she were a girl I’d met years ago.

Even the announcement over the R-T that the committee of inquiry over which I had presided had found that Nordahl had committed suicide while the balance of his mind was affected by financial worries made little impression in the fatigue induced by hard and constant work.

Howe’s reaction was, of course, very different. “I told you what would happen!” he shouted at me. “I told you they’d try to hush it up! But I can wait! Sooner or later—” But I was too tired to listen to his railing.

Toward the end of two weeks of intense activity an incident occurred which brought the whole question of Nordahl’s disappearance back into my mind. We’d had a good day and after our fourth kill we radioed for a towing vessel to pick up the catch. As it happened, it was Tauer III that answered our call. She came round in a wide circle and steamed up almost alongside. Erik Bland was on the bridge, and he called to me on the loud-hailer, asking permission to come aboard and have a word with me.

Before I could reply, Howe came pell-mell up the ladder to the bridge. He was breathless and his face was working. He caught hold of my arm, forcing the megaphone away from my lips. “Don’t let him come on board!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why?” He shook me. “You ask me why? If that rat sets foot on board this ship, I’ll kill him! That’s why! I’ll kill him! I swear it!”

I stared at him. We hadn’t seen much of him during the last few days. He’d been drinking hardly anything. I realized suddenly that he’d been brooding. “All right,” I said, and raised the megaphone to my lips. “Ahoy! I... will come... over... to you!”

The two vessels were steaming parallel, only twenty feet or so apart. Bland waved his hand to signify he’d heard, and I ordered the engine stopped and a boat swung out.

He met me at the head of the ladder they’d thrown over for me, and I was astonished at the change in the man. His face was almost haggard and there was a nervous twitch at the comer of his mouth. He took me straight to his cabin without a word and poured me a drink with hands that shook.

He toyed with his glass. Suddenly he leaned forward, staring at me. “You think I killed Nordahl, don’t you?” And when I didn’t say anything, he repeated, “Don’t you?”

“I’ve no views on the matter,” I said. “I took evidence at a committee of inquiry. The rest is for the police to decide.”

“What if there was a row?” he cried.

“What if we did come to blows and he fell overboard? That doesn’t make me a murderer, does it?”

I didn’t know what to say. The man seemed to me on the very edge of sanity, and I wished I hadn’t come on board. “A court will have to decide that.”

He peered at me, measuring my mood. “There’s Judie,” he said quietly.

“What’s Judie got to do with it?”

“She’s Nordahl’s daughter... and she’s my wife.” He hesitated, and then said suddenly, “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

I stared at him in shocked surprise. The unexpectedness of the question put everything else out of my mind.

He sat back, suddenly relaxing. His face had a cunning look. “You wouldn’t want her dragged through an ordeal like that — her husband accused of murdering her father. Picture it in the English newspapers — the Sunday ones. And I’ll swear that she was your mistress here on board Tauer Three.”

I went for him then, I was so angry. But he caught my arm and flung me back into a chair. He was a big man and pretty powerful. “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no. you don’t. This isn’t a matter to fight over. You just sit there and listen to me. I’m in a jam and I’m not having a rope put around my neck by you or anyone else, do you understand? Now listen. Only four people know the whole of the evidence taken by the committee of inquiry over which you presided. My father holds that evidence. He’ll die soon, anyway. But I can handle him and I can handle Eide. Judie can’t give evidence against me. She’s my wife. There remains you.”

“There’s also Howe,” I reminded him. After all, that cable must have shown him Howe’s part in the business.

“Ah, yes. The illegitimate doctor.” The sneer in his voice made it clear that he didn’t take Howe very seriously. “I can look after him too. If you were to keep your mouth shut, then the whole thing could be hushed up. Will you do that?”

“The answer is no,” I said.

He nodded as though he’d expected that. “All right then. I’ll make a bargain with you. Keep your mouth shut and I’ll let Judie divorce me.”

“You must be mad to think I’d do such a thing!” I answered hotly.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Then I’d remind you again that Judie is my wife. If you go through with this, I’ll make her life hell. Whether I’m convicted or not, I’ll see she curses the day she was born. I’ll show her up as a common tart. I’ll represent that the row with Nordahl was about her. Oh, you needn’t worry. That sort of dirt sticks, and there’s always enough evidence, if used in the right way, to sway the minds of a jury. And when I’m acquitted, I’ll still be her husband. And I’ll see she lives with me. She’ll get no grounds for divorce, and if she tries to divorce me. I’ll oppose it and cite you for one as correspondent.”

“I’ll go to my ship now,” I said. “You’re lucky that you’re a more powerful man than I am, or I’d thrash you within an inch of your life.”

He stood aside and smiled as though I’d paid him a social call. “Think it over,” he said. “And don’t forget. I can break Judie mentally so that in two years you won’t even recognize her.”

A wave of anger engulfed me. But there was nothing I could do. “Watch out somebody doesn’t kill you before we get back to Cape Town,” I said, and went quickly past him through the door. If I’d had a gun on me, I swear I’d have shot him.

I climbed down into the boat and was rowed in silence back to my ship. Howe was there on the deck, waiting for me. “Well, what did he say?” he asked. But I brushed by him and went straight to my cabin. There I paced up and down, my mind a bewildering turmoil of half-formed ideas. On only one thing was I really clear. It was there in my mind like a flash of light. Bland was right. I was in love with Judie. And in no circumstances could I let her go through the hell he’d planned for her.

At length there was a tap on the door, and Gerda came in. “We have sighted another whale,” she said. “I think you should be on the bridge.” No questions. No desire to peer into my mind.

But with Howe it was different. When I came down that night to get some sleep, he was sitting at the desk, waiting for me. I was tired out. But I’d hardly got my boots off when he said, “Craig, suppose you tell me what Erik Bland said to you.”

“It’s none of your business,” I told him, and rolled over onto the bunk.

“I’m going to sit here asking you questions until I find out what happened,” he answered obstinately.

“The conversation was private. It was between Bland and me.” I closed my eyes.

“But it was about Nordahl’s disappearance, wasn’t it?” He hesitated, and then said, “I’ve a right to know. You’ll probably be surprised at this. But I’m related to Bernt Nordahl.”

“Yes. I know,” I answered. “But my conversation—”

“You know?” he interrupted on a note of sudden anger. “How do you know? Who told you?”

“Colonel Bland.”

“He would.” He was silent for a moment. Then he got up and began rummaging in one of his bags. “And knowing I’m Nordahl’s son, you still won’t tell me what Bland said?”

“No,” I answered.

“Perhaps this may help you to decide.” I looked up to find Howe standing over me. He had a gun in his hand. I sat up quickly, and he laughed. “It’s all right, Craig. I’m not threatening you.” He sat down, turning the gleaming nickel of the pistol over and over in his hand. “Life doesn’t mean very much to me,” he said quietly, and the sudden steadiness of his voice compelled attention. “I’ve nothing much to lose, you see. And this” — he held up the pistol — “this could be a way out. I know why Erik Bland wanted to see you. It’s just as I said. They think they can hush the whole thing up, provided they square you. What did he do — threaten you through Judie?”

“How did you guess?” I asked in surprise.

“Because I know the sort of swine Erik Bland is. I suppose he offered to trade Judie for your silence?”

I didn’t answer.

He laughed suddenly. “If he knew the whole story, nothing would induce him to part with Judie.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Because Judie is the South Antarctic Whaling Company. She controls it now, not Bland. My job in Cape Town wasn’t only to sell Nordahl’s South African holdings on a certain day. With the profits I was to buy out three of the larger shareholders in the South Antarctic Company. Before we left Cape Town, Nordahl held fifty-seven per cent of the shares in the company. They don’t know that... yet.” He chuckled to himself. Then suddenly he was silent, his eyes searching my face. “You like Judie, don’t you?”

He didn’t put it as bluntly as Bland had done, but I knew what he meant. “Yes, I’m very fond of her.”

He nodded slowly, as though it confirmed something that he was already satisfied about. “If Erik Bland were dead, would you marry her?”

I stared at him then, trying to read his mind. “The situation doesn’t arise,” I said, and my voice sounded harsh.

“It could arise,” he said, tapping the gun against the palm of his hand.

“Well, would you?”

“I can’t answer that,” I said.

“But you’d want to?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “And that was the threat Bland held over you, wasn’t it?” He was gazing at me intently. “Judie’s happiness against your silence?”

I didn’t answer, and he suddenly got up. “All right,” he said. “I just wanted to know what the situation was. Thank God I persuaded her to go across to Hval Five.” He stood then, looking down at me for a moment, then he turned away, slipping the gun into his pocket. “Bernt Nordahl would have liked you, Craig. Good night.”

In the next few days he worked steadily at his book. He was more I cheerful than I’d seen him at any time since I’d known him. Occasionally he’d come up onto the bridge for a breath of air and stand there, cracking jokes with Gerda and watching everything with the excited interest of a small boy. Gerda reacted strangely, like a mother given an ugly duckling to rear. In a rough, good-natured way she fussed over him. I even found her mending a tear in one of his shirts on the day we had to put back to the factory ship to refuel.

It was on the sixth of February that we refueled. Whales had suddenly become scarce. Hval V had just reported a pod a hundred and fifty miles to the northeast, and we were directed to steam in that direction. Early on the seventh we got two about a hundred miles away from the factory ship and radioed for a towing ship. Tauer III answered our call. The clouds had come down very low, driving before a rising sou’wester. The glass was rapidly falling and visibility was reduced to little more than a mile.

Throughout the rest of the day we steamed slowly northeastward, searching. The cry of “Ice!” came more and more often from the wretched lookout, perched in the tonne at the bucking masthead. Gerda ordered a lookout in the bows as well, and her foresight was justified when we narrowly missed a “growler” — a large platform of ice almost submerged.

“I think we must find shelter!” she shouted to me. “It is very bad!”

“Ice!” There it came again, that frightening cry from the tonne. We peered through the murk of a rain squall, waiting. And then suddenly it emerged out of the storm rack — a great wall of ice with breakers flinging water into the driven clouds. The helmsman swung the wheel before my order had I even reached him. The catcher turned and we ran parallel to the ice wall, where it stood out of the raging sea on the edge of visibility.

“I think we find shelter here!” Gerda shrieked to me.

The berg was a huge one. We must have gone nearly two miles before we turned the edge of it. But it was quite narrow and in a few minutes we had turned northwestward and were cruising along in comparatively calm water. I ordered stop, and we drifted quietly, the wall of ice just visible to port. It was queer, there in the lee of the iceberg — an unnatural calm in the midst of chaos. There was hardly any wind, yet we could hear the gale screaming over our heads and in the intervals between rain squalls we saw the ragged clouds driving pell-mell toward the northeast. And over and above the howling fury of the wind we could hear a deep rumble like a heavy-artillery barrage — giant waves battering at the farther side of the iceberg. I went to my cabin for a nap.

It was in these conditions, an hour later, that we received the SOS. I climbed out of a deep sleep to find Gerda shaking me violently.

“You must get up, please, Duncan. There is an SOS. Hval Five is in difficulties.” Her face looked white and strained. “I think we are the nearest ship.”

“Have they given their position?” I asked, and pulled on my boots.

“Ja.”

“Get the chart then. Bring it to the wireless room. I’ll be there. What’s happened to her?” I asked.

“Damaged her rudder... possibly her propeller,” she answered, as she hurried out.

I put on my oilskins and slid down the ladder to the afterdeck. I was thinking of Judie. A catcher with rudder and screw damaged would he at the mercy of the storm. When I reached the second mate’s cabin, I found Raadal huddled over the radio.

The door was flung back and Gerda came in. Howe was close behind her. “I have work him out,” she said, spreading the chart across Raadal’s hunk. “This is their position: Sixty-six, twenty-five South; thirty-three, forty-eight West. And we are about here. We are not more than forty miles distant.”

Have you given the Southern Cross our position?”

“Ja. They have the positions of all the ships in this area.”

I turned to the door, my mind suddenly made up. “Raadal, when the Southern Cross comes on the air again, tell them that we are going to the assistance of Hval Five.”

He nodded. “Yes, Captain.” I was half out of the door when he called me back.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

Howe silenced me with an impatient movement of his hand. A spate of Norwegian was pouring out of the radio. All of them — Raadal too — were listening intently. Finally came three quick whistles, and the radio went dead as the speaker signed off.

“What was he saying?” I demanded.

But no one seemed to hear me. Howe was staring at Gerda. She turned to Raadal. “Send Captain Craig’s message, Hans,” she ordered. “We must go there immediately.”

I caught hold of her shoulder and spun her around. “Do you mind telling me what’s happened?” I demanded.

“They have been driven on to some ice. Captain Larvik is injured. They are afraid the ship will not last long.”

I seized the chart. “You stay by the radio, Raadal.” I slammed out of the cabin and ran to the bridge.

“Half ahead!” I ordered the helmsman. “Steer northeast!” I dived down the ladder to my cabin and worked out the course. Back on the bridge again, I ordered a northeasterly course and sent a lookout to the bow. Gerda joined me.

Death seemed suddenly very close to us. As I stared out into the rain-driven murk, all I saw was Judie’s face and Hval V being hammered against a wall of ice. And I didn’t dare order more than half speed.

“Ice! Ice!” The cry was from the masthead. The lookout at the end of the catwalk signaled to starboard. The helmsman swung the wheel. The flat surface of a floe slid by, glimmering gray in the half-light.

Shortly afterward Howe came up. “They’re all right so far!” he shouted to me. “I’ve been talking to Dahle, the first mate! He says they’ve been holed by the ice, hut he thinks the pumps can handle it for a time, at any rate. Eide has just been on the radio. He confirms your decision to go to Hval Five. We’re the nearest boat. Tauer Three has been ordered to stand by at her present position. But she hasn’t acknowledged the order.”

“Do you think they’re in trouble too?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Ice! Ice!” Another change of course. Another floe. Gerda tugged at Howe’s sleeve. “Walter, do you think we shall reach them in time?” She screamed the question at him, yet her voice barely reached me.

“Yes!” he shouted back. But I wasn’t so sure. I’d never taken a ship into ice before. I cursed Bland for putting me in command of a catcher, and in the same breath thanked God that I’d be the one to reach Judie first.

“Ice! Ice!” I reduced speed to slow-ahead. The ice was all around us now. A sudden jar ran through the ship and there were a number of sharp, staccato cracks and then the grinding of ice along the sides. I stopped the engine, peering into the glimmer of white ahead. Then a squall came. It was sleet this time, not rain, and it blotted out everything. We lay there, drifting slowly forward, ice all around us. The sea was much calmer now.

As though she read my thoughts, Gerda said, “There is much ice, I think. It is holding down the sea.”

Half an hour went by while we lay there, waiting for the sleet to pass. Then suddenly all was quiet. “It is getting lighter,” Gerda said, and her voice, raised against the wind that was no longer there, seemed very loud.

Visibility was increasing and we could see that we’d fallen foul of a small huddle of ice floes. I backed the catcher carefully out and headed her at half speed into the ice blink.

The ice blink was crisscrossed by dark lines, and we scanned it, reading it like a map, searching for the most suitable lead. As we approached the loose pack the ice blink mapped for us a narrow lead like a long tendril that ended at the broad line of a much wider lead running northeast, and we headed for this. The ice closed round us, a flat, broken plain of dazzling white that heaved to the swell like ground moving under the impact of an earthquake.

I didn’t dare move from the bridge now. Gerda or Howe was constantly in Raadal’s cabin, and they kept me informed of all radio messages. Hval V reported the propeller shaft cracked and rudder almost ripped from its seating. They were attempting to clear it and rig a jury rudder. With the passing of the storm, they were no longer in imminent danger of being crushed. They reported a wide lead running southwest and passing within half a mile of their position.

“I hope to God that’s the lead we’re making for,” I said to Howe, who had brought me this piece of information. The lead we were following was narrowing rapidly now. Soon we could see the broad lead from the bridge. But between us and it, the pack seemed to huddle closer in a protective hank. I turned the edge of a floe into a narrow gap and jerked at the engine-room telegraph. I had turned into a cul-de-sac. The gap just petered out. And there, not two hundred yards ahead of us, was the dark water of the lead. As we drifted toward the flat sheet of ice that barred our progress, I went to the side of the bridge and leaned out, gazing aft along the length of the ship. The gap we had come up had almost closed behind us, the floes on either side having been sucked together by the movement of the ship. There was no question of going astern. We would have damaged our rudder, possibly knocked the blades off our propeller.

“Ram it,” Howe said. “It’s not thick. Only shut your engine off before you hit, otherwise you’ll damage it.”

I nodded. “Send word round the ship: everyone to lie fiat on the deck. Don’t forget the engine room.”

He clattered down the ladder and I stood there, waiting, my hands on the wheel, the engine-room telegraph at my elbow. It was a risk, but it had to be taken. I sent one of the crew to close the for’ard bulkheads and then, with a lookout aft, I rang for slow astern and backed down the cut until we reached the limit of clear water.

Howe came to the bridge and reported that everyone had been warned. I waited until the man I’d sent to close the bulkheads had returned to the bridge, then I stretched out my hand to the engine-room telegraph and rang for emergency full ahead.

We had nearly a quarter of a mile of clear water, and as my hand reached for the handle of the telegraph we must have been doing six or seven knots. The unbroken sheet of ice seemed to hurl itself toward us. I braced myself against the wheel and slammed the telegraph handle down. There was a sudden deathly silence as the sound of the engine dropped and the bridge became dead under my feet.

Then there was a crash. The ship seemed to stop dead. I was flung against the wheel, all the breath knocked out of me. The bridge swayed forward. A sound like rifle Fire crackled ahead of us and then was lost in the grinding crunch of ice on steel. Then we were driving slowly forward and a great crack was opening up in front of us.

I rang for slow ahead and we thrust like a wedge into the gap, the swell that was running helping us to break through. In a matter of moments it seemed we had thrust right through the thin barrier of ice and were in the open water of the lead.

I gave two whoops on the siren to tell the crew we were through. Then Gerda came running along the deck and up the ladder to the bridge.

“We’re through.” I told her.

“I know,” she said. “Well done.” She left to inspect the ship for damage.

Howe came and stood by my side. We stared silently into the frozen waste of black and white ahead.

“I wonder what Erik Bland’s up to?” he said suddenly.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Tauer Three never acknowledged the order to stand by.”

“Perhaps she didn’t get it. Maybe their radio’s out of action.”

“Perhaps.” He was silent for a moment. “Craig, you realize you and I are the only people that have the evidence to convict him?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know. That’s the hell of it — I don’t know. But I’ve got a feeling. Here we are going into the pack and there’s not another boat within a hundred miles except Tauer Three.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“I don’t think I’m crazy,” he said slowly. “If Bland could get you and me out of the way at one blow, he’d be safe.”

“What about Judie, Eide, Larvik? And there are probably others.”

“He doesn’t think they’re important, otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to make a bargain with you.” He began stamping his feet. “He can handle Eide. No man’s going to risk a new command by trying to incriminate the chairman’s son the first season he’s out with the company. Judie can’t give evidence anyway.”

“And Larvik?” I asked. “He knows something. I’m certain.”

“Larvik knows nothing — nothing definite,” he replied. “I had a talk with him after you’d had him up for cross-examination.”

“Then how could he give such an accurate description of Bland’s last meeting with Nordahl?” I asked. “Bland himself confirmed it. It was correct in every detail, even to the cigar. He couldn’t have made it up and got it so accurate.”

“He didn’t make it up.” He stopped stamping his feet and turned to me. “Apart from Erik Bland, Larvik was the last person to see Nordahl alive. He was with him up on the deck. He left him just after twelve. They decided the fog was going to lift and Larvik went to arrange for a boat to take him back to Hval Five. The fog lifted a quarter of an hour later.”

“Then why didn’t he tell us he was one of the last people to see Nordahl alive?”

“Because he knew his evidence would be regarded as prejudiced.” Howe answered. “He didn’t see it happen. He only guessed at what happened. But he knew where Nordahl was at the time he disappeared. If you’d told Bland the information had come from Larvik, you’d never have got him to admit he’d had a row with Nordahl up there by the boats. Peer Larvik never made any secret of the fact that he loathed Bland’s guts.”

“I see.”

“Anyway,” Howe added, “Judie and Larvik are on Hval Five. If we don’t reach them for some reason, then Bland would be ordered to try. And if he said conditions were impossible, they might never be rescued.”

“What the devil are you suggesting, then?” I demanded.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” he said. “Pm just wondering. Bland would never get an opportunity as good as this. That’s all I know.”

I thought of Tauer III somewhere astern of us. Suppose Howe were right? It was fantastic. But though I tried to dismiss it, the idea kept coming back. If Erik Bland would commit a murder— Well, a murderer doesn’t always stop at one crime. But surely the man had shot his bolt. I remembered the scene in his cabin on board Tauer III. Fear had driven him then — fear of a rope around his neck. He’d been badly scared. Just then another squall enveloped us and the icy cascade of sleet washed all thought of Erik Bland out of my mind.

And with the squall came the wind, like a howling demon coming up out of the ice. This time it was from the northeast, and it lashed the sleet in a stinging sheet against our faces. Visibility was cut in a moment to a few hundred yards. I didn’t reduce speed.

We were in constant communication with Hval V now. Gerda kept me in touch with the reports. Two miles southwest of the damaged ship there was a large iceberg with a flat top like Table Mountain, except for a tall pinnacle of ice at its southern end. This was our mark.

We reached what I thought was the approximate position of Hval V shortly after nine. That was on the morning of February eighth. Visibility was very poor. There was no possibility of our sighting the ice mark, and I hove to, waiting for the weather to clear.

That wait seemed endless. The only thing that gave me courage was the thought that Judie was somewhere quite close and that I was there to bring her out of the ice.

Then Gerda came up to say that we were no longer in radio contact with Hval V. “It was quite sudden... in the middle of a message.” Her face looked scared.

The loneliness of the Antarctic seemed to have moved a step nearer. “What was the message?”

“He said, ‘The ice is very thick now. We are getting—’ And that was all. I thought I heard someone shout. I am afraid—” She didn’t finish, but stared at me, round-eyed.

“Get Raadal to call them,” I ordered.

“He is doing that.”

“Tell him to go on trying.”

She nodded and clattered quickly down the ladder.

Howe came up shortly afterward. When I questioned him, he shook his head. “We keep calling, hut there’s no reply.” I listened to the grumbling of the ice out there beyond the gray curtain of the sleet, and the cold seemed to eat right into me.

“We must do something!” Howe shouted at me. “Start the engine! We must find them!”

My hand reached for the telegraph. Anything rather than this enforced inactivity. But the rigid discipline of six years in the navy stopped me. I shook my head. “No good until visibility improves. We’ve the lives of our crew to consider.”

Shortly after ten the sleet slackened and gradually visibility lengthened and the atmosphere became full of light. Gerda came out onto the afterdeck and sniffed at the wind. Then she hurried to the bridge. “It is better, ja?”

I nodded, peering into the light that was beginning to hurt my eyes. “Any news?” I asked.

“Nothing. They do not answer.”

A moment biter the sleet lifted like a curtain and we could see the dark water of the lead with the ice all round it. It was like a black waterway in a dead white plain. And as the rain rolled south west ward, a mercurial flash of sunlight showed an iceberg on our port quarter, fiat like Table Mountain, with the pinnacle at its southern end glistening like a spearhead.

I ordered half ahead and starboard helm. As the catcher swung round, the flash of sunlight vanished and the world was gray and cold, a frozen etching across which torn wisps of cloud scurried before the wind.

“There is more sleet to come... maybe snow,” Gerda said, gazing at the sky to windward, where the clouds were gradually darkening again.

I nodded. Every moment was important now. The break might last only a few minutes. I searched the area just northeast of the berg with my glasses. The ice looked a solid mass, tom like ground after an earthquake where the floes had been layered by the pressure ridge that had been built up against the massive bulk of the iceberg. Then suddenly I saw it — a black patch in the tom surface of the ice. Through the glasses it resolved itself into the upper works of a catcher. The masts and funnel slanted so sharply that it looked as though it were lying on its side. I gave several blasts on the siren. Then I called the lookout down and climbed to his place in the tonne.

From the masthead I could see it quite plainly. It was not more than a mile away and appeared to be in the grip of two floes which were layering under the pressure of the ice thrusting against the berg. I could see tiny figures moving about on the ice, and as far as I could tell, they were unloading stores onto the ice. I swept the area between the broad lead we were in and the ship. The shortest distance was about half a mile. Several leads thrust out toward the stricken ship. The sudden tingle of sleet on my face made me look at the sky. The weather was closing in again from the northeast. The wind seemed to be driving the clouds down onto the ice.

I turned my attention back to Hval V and the lines of open water between the floes, trying to memorize them. The crew were up on deck, leaning over the rail, talking excitedly. I clambered down onto the bridge and took a bearing. I had barely finished before the sleet closed in on us.

I took over the wheel now, and at slow ahead we felt our way down the northern edge of the lead until I saw what I thought was the opening we wanted. Cautiously I turned into the gap and we began to thrust our way between the floes on a general northwest course. Ahead of us we could hear the gunfire sounds of the pressure ridge building up toward the iceberg. Every thirty seconds I gave three blasts on the siren, hoping that Hval V would still have steam up and be able to reply.

For perhaps ten minutes we forced our way deeper and deeper into the loose litter of ice floes, sounding our siren. We strained our ears, listening for the answering call. But there was no sound except the wind’s howl in the rigging and the sizzle of sleet as it lashed the decks. The floes gradually thickened, packing tighter until at last we could go no farther. I stopped the engine and we lay there, heaving to the storm waves, which were blanketed by miles of ice into a long heavy swell. All we could do was keep sounding the siren and continue to listen. But there wasn’t even an echo.

And it was at this moment that Howe gripped my arm and shouted, pointing over the port quarter. A vague shape drifted on the edge of visibility. I lost it and rubbed my eyes, thinking I must have imagined it. But a moment later it was there again. A ship! I could see the faint outline of funnel as well as bows. It was like a ghost ship — faint and indistinct, one moment visible, and the next, lost behind that curtain of sleet.

“Is it Hval Five?” Howe shouted.

I shook my head. I had lost it again. But I knew it wasn’t Hval V. It was bigger than a catcher, and it was headed into the ice just as we were. There was a lead of clear water running toward the spot where we’d seen the ship, and I decided to investigate.

I continued sounding our siren and, with lookouts fore and aft, began to maneuver into the lead. But I’d barely ordered slow ahead when there was a sudden shout from the lookout in the bows and Gerda screamed for full ahead. The telegraph jangled as the curtain of the mist to port seemed thrust aside by the knife-edged bows of a ship bearing straight down on us.

There was no time to do anything, and yet the moment of waiting seemed like eternity. I seized the cord of the siren and kept it at full blast. But the ship that bore down on us seemed to gather speed. I could hear the hum of her engine and see the water creaming up in a cold green wave at her bow. Howe shouted something and jumped for the catwalk. It was only as he ran for the harpoon gun that I realized what he’d said; just one word: “Bland.” And immediately I recognized those warship lines, that sharp, deadly-looking bow. It was a corvette. And now I could see the name, white against her black paint, “Tauer III.”

I awoke then to full realization of what was going to happen. “All hands on deck!” I shouted. I rang for the engine to be stopped and seized hold of the engine-room communication pipe and ordered McPhee to get his men up as fast as he could. As I dropped the tube I saw Howe down on the gun platform, swinging the harpoon gun toward the oncoming ship.

One man stood alone on the corvette’s bridge. His oilskins were a dark gleam in the hissing sleet, his black Norwegian sou’wester framed his white face. His hands were braced on the wheel, his whole body hunched over it like a rider driving his horse at a jump. It was Erik Bland.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. There was the violent crack of an explosion from our bow as Howe fired. The harpoon rose in a wide arc passing over Bland’s shoulder and crashing down behind the bridge, the thin forerunner snaking after it. And in the same instant a man flung himself onto the bridge, swept Bland aside and swung the wheel over. The bows began to turn. The ship heeled. The engine-room telegraph clanged loud and clear above the wind. But it was too late.

I can see it now as vividly as when it happened. It’s like a strip of film running through my mind. Yet it all happened in a second or so. The bows were no longer driving straight at us. They were swinging away toward our stern. But they were right on top of us now. And as they drove through the last few yards of the gap, they seemed to grow bigger and sharper.

She struck us just aft of the engine room, smashing the port boat and plowing up the deck plates. Men were coming out on our afterdeck as the bows broke into our thin sides. There was the heavy shock of impact and an awful grinding, tearing sound as metal was ripped and tom open. Men fell sprawling on the deck. And in the same instant I was flung sideways and fetched up against the wooden side of the bridge with a jolt that drove all the breath out of me. The grinding and ripping of the metal seemed to go on unendingly.

Nature was vicious enough in south polar waters without having to cope with human hatred. I, Duncan Craig, seeking escape from the monotony of England, had joined Colonel Bland’s whaling expedition to the Antarctic. I found Bland’s son, Erik, to be a selfish brute, hated by his wife Judie and suspected of the murder of Judie’s father, Bernt Nordahl.

On the issue of whether Erik had killed Nordahl the men of the expedition were divided into factions. Colonel Bland had to stop the feuding or the whole expedition would suffer. A demoralized crew could catch few whales.

I was placed in command of Hval IV, a small whale-catching vessel; Erik Bland was given Tauer III, a former corvette; and Judie was aboard Hval V as a passenger. On Hval IV with me were the oceanographer, Walter Howe, natural son of Bernt Nordahl, and Cerda Peterson, the only working member of the expedition who was a woman. Cerda served as mate of the Hval IV.

As we steamed southward into the Weddell Sea the ice grew thicker and the weather worse. Suddenly we got a distress call from Hval V — the ship Judie was in. They were having trouble with ice. We speeded toward their position, with Bland in the Tauer III close behind us.

We sighted Hval V briefly, but could get no closer to her than a mile away. I was seeking a passage through the ice pack when suddenly Cerda screamed for full ahead. Out of the mist a sharp-prowed ship was bearing down on us. It was Tauer III, with Bland at the wheel. He was trying to sink us. Howe leaped for the harpoon gun. He fired the explosive missile into the Tauer III. Then I was flung against a bulkhead as the two ships crashed together.

--V

The suddenly all was still. Nothing seemed to move. The wind howled and beyond its howl was the rumbling gunfire of the ice. I gulped air and caught my breath at the pain in my side. Slowly the scene around me came to life. Gerda picked herself up from the corner of the bridge where she’d been flung. Men were staggering to their feet on the afterdeck. The bows of the corvette stood like a huge wedge in the twisted steel of the afterdeck. Our funnel was bent over with the impact. A plume of steam was escaping from the engine room.

Somebody moved on the bridge of Tauer III. It was the man who tried to take the wheel. Bland was cursing him, ordering him for’ard. His voice came to me on the wind as an angry scream. As the man left the bridge. Bland turned. His teeth were bared and he had a wild look about his eyes. His hand reached out toward the engine-room telegraph. I yelled at him not to go astern. I know he heard me yelling, for he raised his hand. It was a gesture of farewell. And then the engine-room telegraph rang.

I understood then, and looked on in a sort of dazed fascination. I’d never seen a man coolly murdering a ship’s crew.

The engine of the corvette began to hum. The black water at her stern was churned to an icy green and she began to back away from us. Our stern swung slowly with her. Then, with a horrible tearing sound, the bows wrenched free of us and she began to pull clear of the wreckage of our stern. Howe was screaming from the gun platform — screaming for them to stop. The forerunner of the harpoon lifted from the water in a slack loop, unwound slowly and as slowly tightened. And as it became taut there was a dull, muffled explosion from somewhere deep inside the corvette.

It’s queer, hut while I have that vivid mental picture of the actual ramming, I have only a confused recollection of what followed immediately after. I remember standing there for a second, watching the corvette draw away and stop, seeing Bland turn at the sound of the explosion, rage darkening his face, and hearing a confused medley of shouts and orders and the ugly roar of escaping steam from somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Then I was down from the bridge, running aft, shouting orders.

A quick examination of the damage made it clear we couldn’t stay afloat for long. The after bulkhead doors were damaged and water was pouring into the engine room. The crew’s quarters aft had home the brunt of the collision. Raadal was dead — crushed beyond recognition. Two other men were injured — one with a broken arm, another with broken ribs.

The radio had been completely wrecked. As for the gap in the little vessel’s side, there was no question of patching it up. It was a great, ragged hole, and it ran from deck to keel.

I sent McPhee down to the engine room to see if he could get way on the ship, and I ordered one of the men to the bridge with instructions that if the engine could be got going, he was to steer the ship into the ice. Gerda I ordered to get the remaining boat swung out and to collect all the stores she could, in case we had to camp on the ice. Then I ran up to the bridge and hailed Tauer III through a megaphone. The ship was lying to about twenty yards from us, her bows slightly crumpled and steam and smoke inuring out of her engine-room hatches. A man came running down to the bows. He looked scared.

“Can you come alongside and take us off?” I shouted to him.

But he shook his head. “No, no. We have damage in the engine room and fire.”

My stomach seemed suddenly empty. I looked back along the length of the catcher. Her stern was already badly down. “You must take us off!” I shouted. “We will help you fight the fire.”

The man hesitated uncertainly. He glanced behind him as though trying to decide whether his ship was in better shape than ours. And as he did so a great tongue of flame leaped out from amidships. Almost instantly there was a heavy roar of steam and the whole ship was enveloped in a white cloud. Then the white of the steam darkened, became black and turned to great billowing clouds of smoke. I knew what that meant. The oil was alight inside her. I turned on Howe, who was standing beside me, staring at the belching column of smoke. “You fool! You silly fool!” It wasn’t any good cursing him. I knew that. His damned harpoon was fired now. But I went on cursing him because I was scared. Tauer III had been our one chance. I felt sure the men wouldn’t have abandoned us even if that was what Bland had intended.

It was Gerda who pulled me out of my senseless mouthings. “We must begin landing stores,” she called up. McPhee was standing beside her and the expression on his face told me that he’d failed to do anything with the engine. Fortunately, the starboard teat was intact.

“Clear the teat and start loading,” I ordered.

I sent Gerda with the first boatload to choose a good stretch of ice. I remained on board, working to bring up the sort of stores we would need — food, clothing, canvas, petrol, oil, matches, instruments, charts, rifles and ammunition. The food stores I packed in wooden boxes. I got up every packing case we could lay our hands on. Wood was always useful. Two drums of oil. Blankets to make into sleeping bags. Needles and thread, cooking utensils, nails, tools. It was the little things that could so easily be overlooked. The afterdeck was almost awash now. We hadn’t much time.

The boat returned, was loaded with stores and men, and was sent back to the ice, McPhee in charge. Gerda remained on beard, her woman’s mind quick to think of things I had forgotten: mending things, medical supplies, tins of fat, some personal stores of her father’s, including some brandy, leather ripped from chairs and seats, spare bootlaces. The boat came back again and this time we loaded the heavy stuff — frozen whale meat, the two oil drums, coils of wire, steel stanchions for tent supports, a roll of canvas, packing cases filled with flour, axes, saws, guns, a block and tackle with four sixty-fathom lengths of forerunner — for hauling the boat if necessary — and a pile of junk that had been flung down by the men, acting on their own initiative as to what would lie needed. We piled it all in and sent the boat back.

It was a risk. There were still seven of us on the ship and she was very low. To occupy the men, I sent them to comb the ship — or what was left above water — for anything else of use. Then I went over to the port side and looked at Tauer III. I suppose in all about half an hour had passed since I had last looked at her. Now I was amazed at the sight that met my eyes. The corvette was enveloped in black smoke. Aft of the bridge she was a roaring inferno, with flames licking up to funnel height. A group of men were dragging stores up onto a floe beyond the ship. The boat was being pulled back to the ship. I watched it come alongside. More stores were being lowered. And then my eyes went back to the corvette’s bridge, where something had moved, and I realized with a shock that Bland was still standing there. I picked up my glasses and focused them on him. He was no longer grinning. He seemed dazed, his face white and his lips moving as though he were muttering to himself.

And then Gerda tugged at my arm. “I brought this down, Duncan,” she said. It was the radio from my cabin. “It is a portable, in case of emergencies. My father always say it is good to hear, even if you cannot send.”

I cursed myself for having forgotten it and started to rack my brains again, in case there was anything else I had overlooked. “I wonder if Tauer Three managed to send a message?” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders. “We shall know when we join up on the ice. I think they will have radioed the Southern Cross. You see their R-T is below the bridge, and that is still clear of the fire.”

The catcher gave an ugly little wriggle then. I glanced quickly aft. We were very low now. I dived for the rail. The boat was on its way back. “Quick!” I shouted. The men bent to their oars. “Just drop everything in!” I ordered the others. “Then follow quickly!”

The boat slid alongside. I felt another tremble run through the ship. I had a horrible feeling that the bows were rising higher and higher. The deck seemed to be slanting away to the stern like a water chute. And as the men tumbled over the side, the water came around my ankles. The catcher was beginning to sink, stern first. Gerda heaved herself over the rail. I dropped the radio into someone’s lap and flung myself in after her.

“Row like the devil!” I shouted.

The oars bent under the thrust of the rowers. And as we pulled away, Hval IV gave a violent shudder. Her tottering stack shook free of its mountings and fell with a crash. And as though that were the last straw, the little vessel slid quietly, stern first, into the sea.

It was the first time I’d lost a ship. I felt an awful sense of emptiness. It took all the courage out of me. I glanced at Gerda and saw she was crying. Her brown eyes were staring almost unbelievingly at the spot where Hval IV had been, and big tears rolled down her cheeks. The catcher had been her home. I leaned forward to pat her hand. Then I saw that Howe was gripping her arm, staring into her face, his eyes looking hurt, as though he felt the loss through her.

The boat touched the ice, crunching into the thin edge of it, and we climbed out onto the floe. My first thought was for the stores, particularly the flour. Everything was heaped there in the rotten ice with the sleet streaming off it. The floe was a big one, jammed in against the other floes. It rocked gently to the swell that ran under it, and its edges ground against the others. A little to the north of us, one floe had layered on another, so that the ice was higher and slightly sloping. I floundered through the slush toward it. The ice was hard here and clear of slush. I went back and ordered all the stores to lie moved up to the new site. Tarpaulins were laid on the ice, and when all the stores were piled on them, others were placed over the top. Then we set to work to construct tents, and I ordered the steward to try to produce some sort of a stew.

There were fourteen of us on the ice, and two of those were injured. As soon as there was any sort of shelter, Gerda and I went to work, first on Jacobsen’s broken arm and then on Grieg’s ribs. The arm we set in splints and we must have done a pretty fair job on it, for it mended fine. But though we didn’t know it then, Grieg’s ribs were not a simple fracture. Only an X ray could have shown us the extent; of the damage, and it was to be a constant source of worry to us.

We had just finished strapping Grieg up when McPhee called to me that a boat was coming alongside. We ducked out of the canvas shelter to find the sleet easing off and Tauer Ill’s boat running in toward our floe. Four men were rowing it and in the stern sat a big, bearded man with a flattened nose and sharp, close-set little eyes.

“Who’s that?” I asked Gerda.

“It is Vaksdal,” she said. “He is first mate on Tauer Three. He is a Sandefjord man. He is a good whaler, but I hear he have a bad temper.”

The man certainly looked an ugly customer. Howe came up beside me as I watched the boat pull in to our floe. “I wonder what sort of a story Bland has thought up,” he said, and his voice trembled slightly.

That was the first time any of us had commented on the cause of our predicament. We’d accepted the situation and concentrated wholly on endeavoring to cope with it. But seeing Vaksdal’s set face and the purposeful way he came toward us, I knew why he’d come. I think Howe knew too.

“You Kaptein Craig?” he asked. The man was tense with anger.

“Yes,” I said. “What do you want?”

“Did you order that harpoon to be fired?”

“No,” I said.

But he didn’t wait for my reply. He went straight on, “That harpoon explode in our engine room. That is what cause the fire. That is what put us in this damn mess.” His little eyes fastened on Howe. “You fire that harpoon.” His hands clenching, he moved in purposefully on Howe.

“Just a moment,” I said.

But Gerda brushed past me and faced the man. “What do you expect us to do, you fool?” she said, her eyes blazing. “Sit still and be murdered? You go back to your Erik Bland and ask him why he ram us?”

The man had stopped. “It was an accident,” he said. And his hand stretched out to push her aside.

“Don’t you dare put your hands on me, Vaksdal!” she said angrily. “And you listen to what I tell you. That was no accident. Bland meant to ram us. There are people on this ship that he must kill if he is not to hang for the murder of Bernt Nordahl. Why do you think he bring Tauer Three here when he is ordered to stand by at his earlier position?”

“Who say we are to remain in our old position?” Vaksdal demanded. “And what is all this about murder? It is suicide.”

“It was murder!” Gerda snapped back at him. “And it is Kaptein Eide who ordered you to stand by. Don’t you listen to your radio?”

“It was out of action a little while.”

“So. Now you think. Was Bland near the radio when it go out of action?”

Vaksdal looked surprised. “Yes, but—”

“And when did the radio work again?” she cut in. “Not till Bland go down to the wireless room, I bet.” She suddenly stepped right up to him. “Was Bland alone on the bridge when he rammed us?”

“When the accident happened—”

“Was he alone — just tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“Then you go back and ask him why he send the helmsman below at that moment. You go back and make a few inquiries before you bring your anger over to us. I think you find much to be angry about over there. Now go. And see you do not have trouble with your men. It is bad to have trouble with the men on the ice. They are from Tönsberg. And if you do not make inquiries, they will.”

He turned away then, a baffled look on his face. It was clear he resented being outfaced by a woman. But it was clearer still that he was puzzled about something.

“Just a minute, Vaksdal,” I said. “Have you got your radio ashore?”

He half turned and shook his head. “The fire has consume everything. But we have send a message.”

“With our position?”

“Ja.”

“And it was acknowledged?”

“Ja.”

“One more question,” I said, as he turned again. “Is Bland still on Tauer Three?”

“No. The ship, she is on fire all over. Everyone is on the ice. Kaptein Bland is very sad man. He feel he is responsible for the accident.”

“Accident!” Howe screamed. “It wasn’t an accident! He rammed us! He rammed us deliberately! “He was moving forward impetuously, his arms sawing the air in his excitement. “Take me across to Bland! Take me to him! I said I’d kill him! By heaven I will!”

“You have done enough, I think, already,” Vaksdal said.

“Enough? Do you realize what he’s done? He’s murdered us all. We’ll never get out of this ice alive. Nor will Larvik or any of the people on Hval Five. He’s killed us all.”

Vaksdal thought a moment and then turned on his heel. “You will hear some more about this,” he said over his shoulder. We watched the big mate step into the boat. The boat pushed off and the oar blades dipped into the icy green sea. Beyond it a great tongue of flame licked up from the bowels of the corvette, a red glare against the dark water sky to the west. The boat rowed back to the dark huddle of men on the ice about a mile away.

That night the sleet turned to snow. Our food was cold almost before we had time to swallow the first mouthful. Even with the whole party huddled together in two small tents, the temperature inside was well below freezing. We turned in about eight. Everyone was very tired and I wanted them to be fresh should the weather improve. The boat was moored to the floe by an anchor dug into the ice. Watches were of two hours’ duration, with two men on duty.

When I turned in, the wind had backed to the sou’west and it was sleeting. Gerda and I had the radio between us, and for a while we lay smoking and listening to the monotonous calling of the Southern Cross. Her operator would call Hval V; then us; then finally Tauer III. There would be a five minute pause. Then he’d start calling all over again. At length I switched off, not wishing to waste the battery.

When I did finally get to sleep, I was roused almost instantly by loud shouts and the grinding clash of floes. I scrambled out of the tent to find myself in a gray-white world of driven snow in which men appeared like ghostly shadows leaning against the hitter wind.

Then there was a splintering crash. The ice trembled under my feet and a man pointed behind the tents. A dark line ran zigzagging through the snow. It broadened and then closed with the snap of a shark biting. Another crash, more trembling, and the line opened again. And this time it stayed open — a widening crevasse that wavered right across the floe.

There was no more rest for us that night. The boat was on one side of the crack, the camp on the other. We got the boat across the gap just in time. It widened out under the pressure of the other floes until we could see the sea. It became a sort of creek, and widened till it was a river with sheer ice-green banks. Tents and stores were right on the edge of it, and everything had to be moved back to the middle of what was now quite a small floe. We were being battered by the ice from all sides. We huddled in the re-erected tents, drinking hot tea laced with rum, and waiting for the floe to crack again.

Gerda said suddenly, “I wonder what sort of a night it is for the men of Tauer Three?”

“I’m more concerned about Hval Five,” I said. I was thinking of Judie.

She put her hand on my shoulder. “I understand,” she said. “But you must not be angry with the men of Tauer Three, Duncan. They are from Tönsberg. I know them all. They are good men. It is not their fault this happen.”

“What’s more to the point,” Howe said, “is what is Bland up to.”

“Bland?” I remembered the dazed look on his face as he stood there alone on the bridge while the men worked at unloading. “I don’t think Bland will bother us any more. His men will have realized the truth by now. He’s finished, whatever happens. Either he dies out here on the ice or he faces a charge of murder.”

“That’s what makes him dangerous.”

“No,” I said. “He’s shot his holt this time. I had a look at him through my glasses when he was alone on the bridge. He was numb with the shock of what had happened.”

“The numbness will wear off,” Howe said. “And when it does, he’ll realize he’s still got a chance. If he can get out alone — if he’s the sole survivor and all the rest of us die, then he’s achieved his purpose.”

“He still wouldn’t control the company,” I reminded him.

“He doesn’t know that,” Howe’s voice replied out of the darkness. “And anyway, if Bernt Nordahl’s estate passes to Judie, and Judie dies, the probability is he’ll inherit it.”

“Anyway,” I said, “the thing’s impossible. He couldn’t hope to get out on his own. That harpoon of yours finished him.

The shuddering and grinding of the ice had gradually lessened. Sometime in the night it must have ceased altogether, for when I went out at five everything was quite still. The air was clear and frosty and the light from the new-fallen snow was blinding. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. The sun had huge circles of light round it with lines of gold radiating from the center. All about us the ice had a faint sheen of color and toward the south and west columns of black smoke rose — frost smoke caused by warm air from the sea lanes rising into the frozen atmosphere. Then I saw the burned-out hulk of Tauer III. Mast, funnel, bridge — everything except the hull — were gone. She was completely gutted. Her crew were moving about on the ice, handling stores. Several floes had layered near them and it was clear that they, too, had experienced trouble from the movement of the ice during the night.

Our own situation might have been worse. The gap that had opened during the night had closed again. There were narrow sea lanes to the south and west of us, dividing us from the Tauer III camp. But to the northeast the ice seemed solid — a jagged broken plane, with small lumpy hills like rock outcrops, covered with snow, and broken edges where floes had been upended. There were some big icebergs there, as far as I could see, but they were forever changing shape in the distorting mirror of the atmosphere.

On the face of it we looked secure. But the snow covered all the flaws, and a thing that worried me was the grumbling thunder of the ice movement to the east. And now I got the impression of a tremendous weight of ice thrusting toward us from the heart of the pack.

My main object was to link up with the survivors of Hval V. Among the things Gerda had brought off the catcher were skis belonging to herself and her father. After breakfast I took Kalstad, one of the hands who was reckoned the best skier, and roped together with one of the harpoon forerunners, we made for a floe berg that stood up about a quarter of a mile to the north of us. The snow was crisp and the going quite good. But it took us an hour to do that quarter of a mile, and with the sun getting stronger every minute it was warm work.

The floe berg was perhaps twenty feet high. I imagine it was originally pack ice that had layered. From the top of it we could look across to the black blob of Hval V. It was very difficult to see it clearly through the glasses because of the shimmering light of the snow. The vessel was lying almost on its side, jammed up against a small floe berg by a whole series of layered floes. There were figures moving about on the ice and some form of shelter or a dump of stores had been set on a ledge of the berg. Between us and the ship was nearly a mile of ice thrust up in ridges and giant creases as though it had been compressed. Even as I stared at the scene through the glasses I saw movement in the ice. Then I saw great blocks of ice as big as houses being thrown into the air as they were ejected between the jaws of grinding floes.

I got a mirror out of my pocket and managed to focus the sun glare roughly on the ship. For about a quarter of an hour I endeavored to make contact by this primitive heliograph, with no result. I was just putting the mirror back in my pocket when I caught the glint of an answering flash. It was intermittent and I could make nothing of their Morse. For some time we tried ineffectually to get a message across. In the end, I gave it up. Before turning back to our camp I made a close examination of the ice between us and Hval V. But without actually reconnoitering, it was impossible to decide whether we could link up.

The return journey took much longer and was much more hazardous. The snow was beginning to thaw and the going was sticky. More and more often our skis broke through the surface on rotten ice. We made camp in the end, wet to the waist and actually sweating.

Gerda met me with a serious face. The pressure, she is increasing.” she said. “Also there are several icebergs coming up from the southwest which I do not like.”

I stood by the camp, listening to the groaning and rumbling away to the east. It certainly seemed louder. And there was a faint and almost constant trembling of the ice under us. She took my arm and pointed to the sou’west. Clouds of white vapor lay along the horizon. They had no form, but were constantly changing, like jets of steam in a gusty wind. Once they looked like castles of ice upside down in the sky. “Icebergs,” she said. “I see them this morning. Now I think they are nearer.”

I nodded and cocked my ear again to the growl of the ice to the east. “I don’t like it,” I said.

“There is a storm there.” Gerda said.

“It is driving the ice down on us. But I think there is an eastward drift and that is what bring the icebergs up.”

“Suppose the two meet?” I asked.

She grinned with a slight down-dragging of the comers of her mouth. “Then I think it is not very nice. We must find stronger ice.”

I looked back to the floe berg from which Kalstad and I had tried to signal to Hval V. It looked solid enough. But then I thought of the way the ice had heaved and thrown up huge blocks over toward the table-topped iceberg. I felt suddenly as though there was no future in struggling against the giant forces that faced us. “Any news from the Southern Cross?”

“Yes. She has dispatched Tauer One in answer to Tauer Three’s SOS. Larsen, her Kaptein, say he is approaching several icebergs about twenty miles from the position given by Tauer Three.”

“Twenty miles!” I glanced back to the southwest. There was no open water visible at all. Perhaps there were leads and we couldn’t see them. But the burned-out hulk of Tauer III was entirely beset with floes and the ice ran uninterrupted to the horizon. A corvette wouldn’t have a chance of breaking through. “If we only had our R-T,” I murmured. “It’s useless sending one of the towing vessels.”

“Per’aps.” Gerda shrugged her shoulders. “But it is all we will get. They will not risk the Southern Cross.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It is too much — too much value, too many lives — for the sake of even three of the catcher fleet. We must be content with a towing boat or, at best, the tanker.”

“A corvette won’t get through,” I said. “And I doubt whether the tanker could.” I suddenly made up my mind. “Better start trying to shift camp to that floe berg. Divide the stores into two equal lots. We’ll shift one lot today.”

We knocked up two makeshift sledges out of packing cases. Then we split up into two watches — one watch to rest and look after the camp while the other made the journey to the floe berg. I took the starboard watch out on the first run, blazing the trail ahead of them on skis. It was back-breaking work. Several times the leading sledge broke through. It took three hours to reach our goal. We had a half-hour rest and then went back, following almost the same route. The return journey took us an hour and a half. Gerda, who was in charge of the other watch, came out to meet us on skis. She was excited. I could see it, in the reckless way she swooped toward us across the treacherous ice. She brought up in front of me with a jump Christy that sent the wet snow spattering over us.

“The Southern Cross is coming herself,” she said.

“Coming into the ice?” I asked.

She shook her head. “That I cannot say. But just after you have left, Kaptein Larsen come on the radio. He say he is held up by the ice and can find no way through. Colonel Bland speak with him then. He tell him he damn well got to find a way. But an hour later he come on again to say the pack is too close. He has scouted it for ten miles, trying every lead, but it is no good. So then Bland say he come up with the Southern Cross. Maybe the Southern Cross try to break through, eh?” Her voice trailed away uncertainly.

“You said yourself they’d never risk the factory ship,” I reminded her. I wanted no false optimism.

She nodded. “Ja. I think perhaps they do not come, except to look.” She stood there fiddling with the ski sticks, staring out across the ice.

I knew she had something on her mind, so I got the party moving again and slid alongside her on my skis. “Well,” I said, “what else did Colonel Bland say?”

She looked up at me quickly. “It was not Bland. It was Larsen. He say there is a whole line of icebergs — five or six; some of them big ones — and they are drifting into the pack. He say already the ice is being built up into pressure ridges along a wide front. It is packing the ice in tight and he think it will get worse.”

“Are these the bergs we thought we saw this morning?” I asked her.

She nodded. “At the camp you can see them quite distinctly now. You can also hear the ice. They are much I nearer, I think.”

I didn’t say anything, but pressed on into the camp. Gerda was quite right. The bergs were nearer. I counted seven of them in a long line, and now I was not looking at their reflections in the atmosphere, but at the bergs themselves.

“I think there is a very big storm somewhere,” Gerda said. “The pressure on the ice is increasing. The floes are being packed closer together all the time.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” I answered sharply, and sent her off with the second load of stores.

There was nothing to do but lie in our tents and smoke and listen to the radio. The men were excited, full of I optimism. They talked and laughed. And when the Southern Cross ordered Tauer I to stand by and herself turned into the ice, I think they felt they were as good as rescued. I kept wondering what had made Colonel Bland decide to risk the Southern Cross in the ice.

I tried to picture him, sitting there in his big cabin, making the decision. The man was quite ruthless. He’d risk the ship and every man in it if he decided to fight the ice.

Shortly after eight the operator on the Southern Cross began calling us, first in Norwegian, then in English. He went on calling for half an hour. Then there was a pause. When he came on again, it was with a message:

“At twenty-one-hundred hours we are going to make smoke. I repeat, at twenty-one-hundred hours we are going to make smoke. As soon as you sight our smoke make signals by whatever means possible. Southern Cross to catchers, Hval—”

And he went on repeating it. I had one of our barrels of oil tapped and arranged a drip onto a bundle of clothes. We piled high packing cases on top of one another until we had a look-out post fully ten feet high. And just before nine I sent one of the younger hands up aloft as a lookout. We were all pretty excited. None of us felt like staying in the tents, and I had the radio brought out onto the ice.

At nine o’clock the Southern Cross operator came through with another message:

“We are now making smoke. We are three miles east of a line of icebergs, having passed between the second and third berg counting from the north. Signal to us if you can.”

We were all watching the lookout now. His eyes were screwed up against the glare of the sun, which was slanting down to the west and south. The man blinked and several times rubbed his hand across his eyes. I wished we had got sun goggles. Then suddenly he stiffened and pointed. The men cheered. Two of them began to dance, jigging from foot to foot. The ice trembled under us as a floe cracked under pressure with a noise like a thunderclap. If only the Tauer III were still burning!

I gave the order to light the oil-soaked clothes and then stopped the man just as he was about to strike the match. The lookout was rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. The two men stopped dancing. We all looked at him as he peered into the sun. Then he was pointing again. But the direction of his hand seemed fart her to the south. As I climbed up beside him the packing cases were wobbling under our combined weight. There was smoke all right. But it was too near and in the wrong place. Even as I watched, it broadened out into a great black streak. I couldn’t see the icebergs now because of the glare. But I knew it was to the south of them.

“I think it’s frost smoke,” I said, and the men were silent, staring westward.

I screwed up my eyes and tried to pierce the glare in the direction the Southern Cross must lie. But it was impossible to make anything out clearly. The whole atmosphere was constantly shifting.

The growl of the ice moved nearer, thundering at the floes and shaking our perch so violently that I jumped down on the ice again. Somebody shouted, and there, not a mile away, just beyond Tauer III, a floe turned on end, stood there for a moment and then slid back into the sea. A gap was opening out. We could see a stretch of water. It showed as a dark gash against the white of the surrounding ice. The gap widened. The frost smoke rose like a fog, darkening everything, screening the sun. It wiped out the glare and drained the color out of the ice. The world was suddenly white and cold. I felt a chill creep through me. I tried to buck the men up by telling them that the frost smoke was a better marker than any smoke we could make. But it didn’t comfort them. That cold black curtain stood between them and sight of rescue. I ordered the steward to brew some coffee. I posted two lookouts and took the radio back to my tent. The ice shook under us. I began to wonder how long the thin layer on which we were camping would stand this battering from the east.

“We can see patches of frost smoke, hut no signals. You must try and signal to us. The ice is getting very thick. We do not know how long we can go on.

For half an hour the Southern Cross went on imploring us to signal our position. Once Olaf Petersen came on, speaking directly to Gerda, trying to encourage her and us. Colonel Bland, however, made no attempt to contact his son. The messages became more urgent. Finally the Southern Cross operator radioed:

“We are making very slow progress. The icebergs are plowing into the ice behind us. Unless we can pick up your signals soon, we may have to abandon the attempt to reach you.”

If only that frost smoke hadn’t appeared! If only we could see! At least we should then have been able to occupy ourselves with searching the glare for the factory ship’s smoke.

There was a sudden shout from one of the lookouts, and I dived out of the tent. “Somebody is coming on skis.” he said.

“From the Southern Cross?” I asked.

“No. No. From Tauer Three.” And he pointed toward the black curtain of frost smoke.

I followed the direction of his arm. I caught a glimpse of something black moving on a ridge of ice, and then it was hidden again. It was the figure of a man all right. He was covered in snow and ice. He waved a ski stick and called to us, then staggered and came on, thrusting himself forward with his sticks.

I don’t know whom I expected — either Bland or Vaksdal, I think. As the man approached, I saw he was too short for Vaksdal. He brought up with a quick Christy and a “Hello, Captain!” And I found myself shaking Bonomi by the hand. “Oh, it is so good to see you, Craig. You have no idea.”

“Why? What’s the trouble?”

“Trouble? What is the trouble? My heaven!” His arms were waving so excitedly that I was in danger of being hit by his ski sticks. “You ask what is the trouble. It is that there is no order there. The men, they will do nothing for Bland or the mates Vaksdal and Keller. They do not trust their officers and they are very bitter. At first Bland is very angry. He strike one of them. After that the men camp on their own. They are sullen and they go their own way. I tell you, Mister Craig, they cannot exist in this cold that way. There is no order, no direction. I think there is danger, so I take skis and come ’ere.”

“Have they got stores?”

“Yes. When we abandon ship everything go fine. The trouble, she do not begin till later. Now tell me, what is the news? Have you a radio? Over there” — he nodded to the Tauer III — “they have no radio.”

“We’ve a portable,” I said. “We can receive, but we can’t send.”

“Then you will know what is happening, yes?”

“The Southern Cross herself has entered the ice and is asking us to signal to her.”

“Ah! That is wonderful!” He beamed. “Then I can have a bath. I shall lie and wallow for an hour. Now I will rest a little.”

He was apparently not in the least interested in how we were going to signal to the Southern Cross through that black fog of frost smoke. The Southern Cross was coming into the ice to rescue us. He would get his hath. It was as easy as that. I almost envied him his sublime acceptance of the certainty of rescue.

I was beginning to be worried now about Gerda and her party. They had been away five hours. I waited half an hour and then got my skis out. But I’d hardly gone a hundred yards when the lookout called to me that they were coming. I climbed an ice hillock and watched them winding like a black snake through the sunless white of our frozen world. Gerda saw me and waved and came ahead on her skis. I told her the news. “Then they must be quick,” was her comment. “The ice is getting very bad. Over to Hval Five it is terrible. That table-top iceberg of theirs is nearer, you know. Whole floes are being tossed about under the pressure. The journey back was bad too. The ice round us is beginning to move.”

I nodded and told her how the gap from which the frost smoke was rising had suddenly opened out.

“Ja. Soon we have trouble, I think. But it is colder now. Perhaps the sea freeze in the gap. Then maybe we see the Southern Cross and can make a signal.”

When we got into the camp I stopped for a minute to look at the stores. A whole day’s work and the pile still looked just as big. We’d shifted barely a quarter of it. Bonomi seized on Gerda, and throughout the evening meal told her of the troubles in Bland’s camp. I’d barely finished the last mouthful when there was a shout from the lookout. The frost smoke was going. By the time we’d tumbled out, it was no more than a faint gray curtain. It was gone almost immediately. Our eyes were on the lookout, standing on the packing cases and gazing westward. At length he shook his head.

“No Southern Cross,” he said to me. “But the icebergs, they are nearer, I think.”

I climbed up beside him and the pair of us stared westward through screwed-up eyes. But there was nothing — not even a column of frost smoke to mistake for the factory ship.

The steward called me to the tent. His face was serious. “It is the radio, Kaptein Craig. Listen! There is a message.” His voice was trembling slightly.

“...Repeat that in English. We have now ceased making smoke. If you are trying to signal us, do not continue. Do not waste your materials. We are temporarily held up by the ice, which is much thicker here. I shall radio again at twenty-two hundred and thirty hours.”

There was a stunned silence when I broke the news to the men. “It must be bad to hold the Southern Cross up,” one man said, and he cocked his ear, listening to the thunder of the pressure ridges. The others, too, were listening. It was as though they were suddenly aware that the sound might well be the forerunner of death for all of us.

“I do not understand,” Bonomi said suddenly. “How can the Southern Cross be held up? She is a big ship and the ice is quite thin. We came through it yesterday. It is only of a thickness when it is an iceberg. But they do not have to go through the icebergs. They can go round them. Craig, what do you say? What is the trouble?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “How the hell should I know?” I answered.

At ten-thirty the Southern Cross operator announced that they were still held up and that he would broadcast at half-hourly intervals. I set the watches and ordered the men to turn in. But I don’t think anyone slept. At broadcasting times I turned the radio up so that they could hear it in the other tent even above the noise of the ice.

The message was always the same. Nothing further to report. I could feel despondency growing in our little camp. It wasn’t only the broadcasts. The thunder of the ice movement to the east seemed to grow and grow. The floe trembled under us, sometimes so violently that it seemed as though we were actually shaken. But I was very tired and drowsed occasionally.

I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly Gerda was shaking me. “I think there is something wrong with the radio, she whispered. “It is past three and I can get nothing.”

I sat up and fumbled with the tuning knobs There was a faint crackling, but could pick up nothing on our R-T wave length. I switched over to the next wave band and almost immediately picked up music from a shore station. “Nothing wrong with the radio,” I said. “Sure you didn’t alter the tuning knob?”

“No. I switched on just before three. There was nothing. Then I look at the tuning. It is okay. I think they do not broadcast.” Her voice trembled.

“But they must have,” I told her. “They know how anxiously we’ll be following their broadcasts. They’d never just miss out one. I’ll try again at three-thirty.”

I glanced at my watch. It was ten past three. I lit my pipe and sat there, waiting for the next broadcasting time. And as I sat there, listening to the thunder of the pressure ridges and the crunch of the man on watch pacing up and down outside, an awful thought crossed my mind. Suppose the operator was too busy to broadcast to us. They’d never forget to broadcast. If Gerda was right and they had failed to broadcast, then there must have been a reason. And there could be only one reason-more important traffic. I glanced at my watch. It was fourteen minutes past three. I looked across at Gerda. She was lying down, breathing quietly. Twice in the hour, for three minutes, there is a period of radio silence. From fifteen minutes to eighteen minutes past the hour and from forty-five minutes to forty-eight minutes past the hour every operator in every ship in the world listens on a watch wave of 500 k.c. for emergency calls. I just had to set my mind at rest. I leaned quickly forward, switched the set on and tuned to the watch wave. The radio crackled. I gazed at the luminous dial of my wrist watch, and as the minute hand touched the quarter, I was sweating despite the cold. The radio crackled. That was all. Relief flooded through me. I told myself I’d been a fool. And then, so faint that I could not catch the words, the voice of an operator crackled out of the set.

I leaned forward quickly and fingered the tuning knob. The name “Southern Cross” was repeated twice. Then I was on the wave length and the operator’s voice was echoing through the tent:

“We are beset by ice in sixty-six, twenty-one south; thirty-four, six west. Southern Cross calling all shipping. SOS. SOS. Can you hear me? We are beset by ice in sixty-six, twenty-one south; thirty-four, six west. Southern Cross calling all ships. SOS. SOS.”

It went on like that unendingly. The operator’s tone never varied. He might have been making a weather statement. But the monotonous repetition of the words drummed at my brain, and I sat there, quite regardless of the cold, seeing nothing, hearing nothing beyond that voice, completely stunned.

There was movement in the tent round me. Gerda caught at my arm. She was thinking of her father. Nobody spoke, but I knew they were all awake and listening. Sometimes the operator Kent in English, sometimes in Norwegian. Always the message was the same. Then a new voice was on the air:

“Haakon to Southern Cross. Haakon to Southern Cross. Repeat your position. Over.”

The position was repeated. There was silence for about five minutes. Then the Norwegian factory ship was back on the air:

“Haakon to Southern Cross. Proceeding to your assistance. Our position is now sixty-four south, forty-four west. We should be with you at about twenty hundred hours. Report fully on your present circumstances.”

And the operator gave an R-T wave length.

After I had tuned to him, Eide himself came on the air: “We passed between two icebergs in a wide lead at seventeen hundred thirty hours yesterday, going to the assistance of three of our catcher fleet damaged in the ice. At about nineteen hundred hours the lead came to an end and we entered the ice, which was loose pack and not thick. At twenty-one hundred forty-five hours we were held up by a mass of very heavy pack. We tried to back out of this, but the icebergs we had passed through were piling the pack up across our line of retreat. It appears that there is a strong eastward drift here. The icebergs are moving with the drift. But to the east there is a storm thrusting the ice westward. We are being caught between these two forces. When you reach the ice you will find there are seven icebergs in a row. Do not try to proceed beyond this line. I repeat, do not try to proceed beyond this line. We will keep you informed of all developments.”

“Haakon to Southern Cross. Thank you for your warning. We will do all we can.”

“It is not believable,” Gerda whispered.

I didn’t say anything. I felt utterly crushed. I think I prayed. I don’t know.

“Captain,” — Bonomi’s voice trembled in the dark corner of the tent where he lay — “you will get us out of here, yes? You can navigate. You have been on a polar expedition. You can get us—”

“It wasn’t a polar expedition!” I snapped at him. “It was only to Greenland!”

“What’s the difference? You understand how to travel on the ice. Tell me, please. It is possible to get out of the ice, eh?”

“In Greenland we had dogs.”

“Yes. But we have a boat.”

“Would you like to drag a boat through twenty miles of the conditions through which you skied this evening.”

“No. But I must get back. When I complete these whaling pictures, I am to go to the Rand to work for some gold-mining companies. Oh, you people, you do not understand. You are not artists. For me my work is everything. I must get back. I cannot be snuffed out here like any common photographer.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said. But the way he talked made me realize that there were fifteen people here on the ice who expected me to save them. The responsibility lay like a heavy mantle on my shoulders.

Gerda touched my hand. “You must not worry, you know. God will help us.”

The refrigerator ship, South, and the tanker, Josephine were now on the air. They were ordered to close, but to stand off, clear of the ice.

All night the Southern Cross issued reports, to her own ships and to the Haakon. But they showed no improvement until shortly after six, when our hopes were raised by the news that she had dynamited a patch large enough for her to be warped round. I felt then that there was a chance. She was facing out of the ice, and a powerful ship of that size ought to be able to batter her way clear along the route by which she had entered. Everybody was cheerful at breakfast. But a broadcast shortly after eight-thirty shattered our hopes. The icebergs were charging into the pack and building it up into huge pressure ridges. The way out was blocked. Though we couldn’t see the Southern Cross because of the glare, we could see the icebergs. And to do this we no longer had to climb to our lookout. They were much nearer and plainly visible from the tents.

Shortly after nine. Colonel Bland himself came on the air, instructing the Josephine to refuel all catchers and towing vessels and escort them to South Georgia. This, more than anything else, brought home to us the seriousness of the situation. Giving such an order made it clear that the officers on board the Southern Cross felt there was no chance of their being able to resume operations that season.

There was no need for me to record here in detail what everyone knows. By ten o’clock the Southern Cross was reporting damage due to the pressure of the ice, though the pumps were still holding the water. But an hour later the whole starboard side of the factory ship was buckling under the constant attack from the ice. By eleven-thirty she was pierced in several places and the crew were off-loading stores and equipment. Oil was being pumped out, to be ignited later as a guiding beacon.

Gerda took me aside then. “Duncan, I think we must begin to carry more stores to the floe berg. I am not happy here. If we get caught between those icebergs and the pack ice to the east, we may lose everything.”

I nodded. “You’re right,” I said, and gave the order for my party to get ready. The men were reluctant. They didn’t argue, but I could see it in their faces. The morbid fascination of listening to the reports from the Southern Cross had gripped them. The sky to the east of us changed as we began to load the sledges. The opaque, iridescent light faded out of it till it was a dead white glare. Wisps of clouds drifted across the sun and thickened like a fog. The last spark of comparative warmth vanished and the world was a cold etching in black and white. Then the first flurry of snow scattered like a handful of confetti through the camp. With the snow came the wind. At first it was just a cold breath of air out of the east. But in a moment a gust hit us, whipping at the end of one of the tarpaulins. It died away again, and then it was blowing hard and the snow thickened. It was a thick cloud of black specks against the ice, but where it settled it produced a carpet of clear white. We secured the stores, pegging down the ends of the tarpaulins and crawled into our tents.

From the clear sunlight of the morning, it had changed to a world of howling chaos. The wind moaned and screamed and the snow drove like a biting shroud across the ice. We sat and smoked. Nobody said anything. The only voice was the voice of the operator on the Southern Cross. The blizzard was making it difficult to unload their stores and they could no longer estimate the extent of their danger.

I shall always remember that morning. I think it was the longest I have ever spent. It was dark in the tent and the other occupants were vague humps huddled under their blankets. The only thing unchanged was the steady voice coming out of the radio.

I think we all felt that the end was inevitable. Yet I remembered the profound shock the announcement caused. It was at seventeen minutes past two. Eide was speaking to the Haakon, which had now sighted the Josephine and the rest of the catchers. His voice was trembling slightly as he announced:

“The ship is pierced in several places. The pumps are no longer holding the water. She is sinking and I have given the order to abandon ship.”

At fifteen hundred fifty-three hours the operator on the Southern Cross announced: “All the crew safely on the ice, together with a reasonable quantity of stores. The ship is very low. Owing to the blizzard, our camp is not very satisfactory and the movement of the ice is threatening. We are right in the path of the icebergs, and unless the westward thrust of the storm eases soon, our position will be dangerous. Captain Eide is about to leave the ship, and I shall now remove the radio equipment to the ice. I will radio again as soon as I have set up the equipment.”

That was the last message we received from the Southern Cross. We sat there for hours in the semidarkness of the tent, the crackle of radio barely audible above the sound of the storm, but no message came from the Southern Cross survivors. At six o’clock in the evening the Haakon began calling the Southern Cross. The voice of the Haakon operator went on and on, a monotonous drone that gradually got on our nerves. There was no reply, and at length I switched the radio off. The voice was too much like someone trying to call the dead.

We lay there in the shadowy gloom of our tent and wondered what had happened. And with each minute that passed, the sound of the wind seemed to encroach upon our refuge until it dominated us all with its siren scream of warning. We were alone, without hope of rescue, and we felt our smallness and were afraid.

Not since the sinking of the Titanic had there been a peacetime disaster as great as the loss of the Southern Cross. The big factory ship had steamed into the Antarctic pack ice to rescue the crews of three of her whale-catching vessels. Two of the little ships had collided there. One was commanded by Erik Bland, son of the director of the South Antarctic Whaling Company, and the other by me, Duncan Craig. Young Bland, whom we all suspected of murdering his father-in-law, Bernt Nordahl, had rammed us deliberately — out of spiteful desire for revenge, I suppose, because he thought I loved his wife, Judie. It was true I loved Judie, and she had every reason to hate her husband. I had been searching for the ice-trapped whale catcher that she was aboard when Bland rammed us. Now all of us were stranded on the ice, with no ships.

The huge Southern Cross was the only vessel big enough to break through the ice. As it turned out, even she was not powerful enough to withstand the awful pressure of the piled-up Hoes.

We — Gerda Petersen, the only woman crew member of the party, Walter Howe, the drunken oceanographer, and I — had salvaged a portable radio receiver. We could hear the Southern Cross broadcast as she searched for us, but we could not reply.

Then the big ship reported herself in difficulties and went off the air. When she came back on, I got a shock. She was transmitting frantically: “SOS... SOS... Southern Cross calling all ships... SOS... SOS.”

The polar storms had backed up the ice and it was crushing the hull of the factory ship. Ultimately, Colonel Bland gave the order to unload stores and abandon ship. Then all messages ceased, except the staccato signals from other ships miles away: “Calling the Southern Cross!”

But there was no answer.

VI

To wake up on an ice Hoe with a blizzard blowing and realize that you are responsible for the lives of thirteen men, a girl and a young boy, is not pleasant. I knew I had to get them out, but in the moment of waking I was so dazed that I don’t think I realized the full extent of the disaster that had occurred. And as I lay there, it slowly came back to me — how the Southern Cross was gone and there was no prospect of help from the outside world, and how a line of icebergs was driving toward us through the ice. At least the floe hadn’t split up during the night. That was something. I climbed out of the tent into a screaming world of wind and stinging snow. The two men on watch were white ghosts against the dirty gray of the storm.

I got one of them to help me brew some tea and took it to the men myself. The only one who said anything was McPhee. “Mon, ye’d make a bonnie waitress,” he grinned as I handed him his mug. “Do ye ken if they charge extra for tea in bed at this hotel?”

“The tea’s free,” I said, “and so’s the weather.”

“Weel, thanks for the tea, anyway.”

Howe stirred at his side. “And you can thank God for the weather.” He sounded bitter.

“Ye’ll do no gude blaming the Almighty,” McPhee admonished him. “Better to get doon on your knees and pray to Him for guidance.”

Tempers were short and the hours passed slowly in that bitter cold. It was too dark to read or to play bridge. I found a notebook in my pocket, tore out all the used pages and started a log. The first entry is a queer scribble, written more or less blind:

11 Feb. The Southern Cross was abandoned yesterday. Still no message from the survivors. Blizzard blowing outside, but party all safe in the tents. No prospect of being rescued. Morale low. Movement of ice becoming violent. As soon as the storm ceases intend to move to nearby floe berg.

I then listed the names of all the party, including Bonomi, and the names of the two men who were killed in the collision.

I was sitting there, wondering morbidly who would eventually read the log and whether it was worth entering the reasons for the collision, when the ice quivered violently below me. There was a shout and a report like a pistol shot. I felt the tent moving. I put out my hand to support myself and fell on my side. The floor of the tent was no longer there. In the dim light, a dark gash was opening under us. The canvas of the tent began to rip. I flung myself toward the entrance, dragging Gerda with me.

Bonomi gave a shout. Howe was slipping, but somebody caught hold of his legs. Hans, the deck boy, was in the gap, clawing at the edge and screaming. He was all tied up in his blankets. McPhee pulled him out. We fought our way out of the tent, the men outside pulling the canvas clear of us.

The sight that met my gaze as I flung the last fold clear of my face was pretty frightening. A crack was opening right across the floe. Fortunately, it missed the stores and the other tent. But it had cut our own sleeping quarters clean in half. If the floe had split during the night, when we were asleep, nothing could have saved us. Even as I stared at it, the gap closed with an ugly snap. It did this several times — opening out to about three or four feet and then closing again with a clash of ice on ice. Finally it stayed closed and we could hear the broken edges grinding together under the pressure.

I knew we ought to move to the floe berg. But it was impossible in that weather. We re-erected our tent as best we could and crawled inside. It was only than that we realized we hadn’t brought the radio. I went outside to look for it. The others joined me, searching anxiously in the snow. But it was gone. And then Hans said he saw it fall into the gap as he was being pulled out. Questioned by Gerda, he admitted that he had grabbed at it to hold himself and had pulled it in. After that, we knew it had gone, and we went disconsolately back to the tent.

You can’t imagine what a difference the loss of the radio made. While we’d had it we at least had the illusion of contact with the outside world. Now we were completely cut off. Its loss produced temporarily a mood of despair in all of us. But it also brought us face to face with reality. I don’t think the men, or even I myself, had fully faced up to our position until then. As long as there was a voice on the radio telling us every move on the part of the rescue ships, I think we felt, unconsciously perhaps that we needn’t exert ourselves, that we had only to stay put and everything would be all right. Now we were out of touch. We had no means of knowing what the rescue ships were doing or what they planned to do. One thing we did know, however, and that was that our plight was now lost in the far greater disaster of the Southern Cross. There were over four hundred men out there on the ice somewhere, and their rescue would be the first objective.

McPhee put it into words when he said. “Ah dinna think the radio’s much o’ a loss. There’s nobody will save us noo except oorselves.”

All that day the snow continued and the wind blew like a raging monster out of the east. The cold was numbing and we lay huddled in our tents. Nobody spoke much and the cards lay forgotten, though it became just light enough to see. I cut watches to half an hour, and that was quite long enough. You had only to go a few yards and the camp was lost to sight under its canopy of snow. I gave orders for the watch to remain close to the tents and within sight of each other.

At five the next morning the snow ceased. The wind remained, hut we were no longer hemmed in by the blanket of the snowstorm. We could see, and the sight that met our eyes was truly terrifying. The icebergs were not six miles away and they were tearing down upon us, churning the ice up before them like giant bulldozers. I gave the order to load the sledges. I had biscuit tins broken up and the tin nailed to the outside of the teat round the bows. This was to save the woodwork from being pierced or damaged by sharp edges of ice, for I was determined to take the boat with me. The teat was our only hope of safety. Without the teat we were doomed.

While these preparations were going on, Gerda and I went out on skis to reconnoiter the route to the floe berg. The snow was deep and crisp. Our skis slid easily along the surface of it. It took us only a few minutes to reach the floe berg — a journey that had taken Kalstad and me an hour. It was incredible. It seemed no distance at all. But though the snow was all right on skis, I wondered how it would be for the men on foot. The smooth carpet of white covered everything — all the flaws and honeycombs and areas of rotten ice. I was afraid I he weight of the boat would soon find the bad patches.

When we got back the steward had breakfast ready. It was the best meal we had had. I told him to use anything he liked from the stores we were leaving behind. We were ready to leave shortly after ten. Bonomi bustled about, taking pictures.

“I must have pictures of everything,” he said. “The camp of the disaster, the trek, the boat — everything. When we are back, everyone will say, ‘Bravo! Bravo! Aldo Bonomi, he has done it again.’ ”

That was how we came to call the place Disaster Camp. The man was unbelievable. He had come across to us with a rucksack on his back and his camera slung round his neck. Do you think that rucksack contained so much as a change of socks? Not a bit of it. It was full of unused film for his camera.

Before we started, Howe seized my arm and pointed toward Tauer III. A line of figures was winding slowly through the broken contours of the ice. Somebody raised a cheer, and in an instant the men were all shouting and waving excitedly. The fools thought it was a rescue party from the Southern Cross. I counted seventeen men — seventeen black dots moving against the dead white of the snow. I turned on my crew and shouted at them to be quiet. “It is the crew of Tauer Three.” The cheering wavered and died. I saw the light of hope leave their eyes. Their faces looked suddenly white and pinched under their beards. The deck boy, Hans, began to cry. Gerda went to him and put her arm around him, comforting him. We waited like men frozen by the cold as the crew of Tauer III approached.

They were dragging improvised sledges piled with stores. But they had no teat with them. I searched the long, straggling line with my glasses. Vaksdal was leading. His big viking figure was unmistakable. With only one man to help him, he was pulling one of the sledges. I searched down along the line, peering at each man’s face. The full complement of a towing vessel was sixteen men and two deck boys. There were only seventeen. Erik Bland was not with them.

As they reached our camp, Vaksdal came toward me. His eyes avoided mine. “The men wish to be under your command. Captain Craig,” he said harshly.

I ordered my steward to get the stove alight and prepare hot food for them. Then I turned to Vaksdal. Where’s Bland?” I asked him.

“He remain with the stores,” he answered. He was shifting uneasily on his big feet.

“Why?” He did not answer me, and I added, “Why have you abandoned him?”

“Because the men wish it,” he answered. His voice was sullen and angry.

“The men wish to abandon their captain?”

“Ja. Also he do not wish to come with the men. He wish to stay. He ask Keller and me to stay too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because the men wish to leave.”

“And you left Bland to die in the ice alone?”

The man’s face was sullen. “He would not come. He wish to lie left.”

“You’re the first mate, are you?” I asked him.

”Ja.”

“You assumed command?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Because the men refuse to do what Bland tell them. They say it is Bland’s fault, that it is not an accident. They are angry and they do not obey orders. They are Tönsberg men.” He said it as though that explained everything.

“Did you take the view that Bland deliberately rammed my teat?”

“No. He would not do that, not here in the ice. No whaler would do a thing like that. It is true what Petersen say, that he send the helmsman below, hut it is for some cocoa. It is also true that our radio is mysteriously out of order. These are things that will have to be cleared up at the inquiry when we get back to the Southern Cross. But I do not—”

“The Southern Cross is gone,” I interrupted him.

“Gone? I do not understand.”

“She got caught in the ice in an attempt to reach us. She is sunk.” I looked round at the ring of faces, listening open-mouthed. They looked scared and disheartened. “Gerda,” I said, “get these men to work. I want all the sledges lashed together, nose to tail.” Then I turned back to Vaksdal. “So you are in command of these men?”

“Ja.”

“When did you assume command?”

“When it is clear to me that the men will not obey Kaptein Bland.”

“Then it was your decision to abandon Bland.”

“That is not true. The men wish to leave Bland, and also Bland wish to stay.”

“But you say you were in command?”

“Ja.” His voice was sullen and his tongue flicked across his lips.

“Who is your second mate?”

“Keller.” He nodded to a short, stout man with a woolen cap.

I called him over. “Do you speak English?” I asked him.

“Yes, Kaptein.”

“Why did you abandon Bland?”

“The men demand that we—”

“Damn the men!” I shouted at him. “The two of you were in command, yet you did exactly what the men wanted. You are forthwith relieved of your commands and revert to ordinary seamen, both of you.”

Vaksdal took a step toward me. “You cannot do this,” he growled.

“I can and I will,” I answered him. “You’re neither of you fit to command.”

Vaksdal’s eyes blazed. “You dare to say that!” he shouted. “You who have not served one season in the Antarctic! You know nothing and you tell us what we should and should not do! I have been eight voyages to the Antarctic! I know what is right!”

“You know what is right, do you?” I said. “You assume command of a crew cut off in the ice and you abandon your boats. How do you think you’re going to get to safety without your boats?”

“I did not know the Southern Cross is sunk.” He was looking at the ground, shuffling his feet angrily in the snow.

“Did it never occur to you that the Southern Cross might not be able to reach us? Were you planning just to sit and wait to be rescued? Abandoning your captain when you believed him innocent of the men’s charges is tantamount to mutiny. Abandoning your boats shows that you’re not fit to command in these circumstances, either of you. You are now relieved of your commands. If you have anything to say, hold it for the inquiry when we get back.” I turned then and went over to Gerda. “Get all the men together. I want to talk to them.”

“But, Duncan, it is too cold for talk now,” she said.

“They’ll be colder if they die out here,” I answered. “And that’s what will happen if we don’t scotch this trouble right at the start. I want another mate — one of the Hval Four men. Whom do you suggest?”

“Kalstad.”

“Good.”

She paraded the men then and I spoke first to the men of Tauer III. I told them that what they’d done was equivalent to mutiny; that unless they obeyed their officers, they would never get out of the ice alive. I told them what had happened to the Southern Cross, that we were now entirely on our own. I then appointed Kalstad a mate, in command of the Tauer III crew, and announced that I had relieved Vaksdal and Keller of their commands.

One of the men interrupted me. He was the coxs’n of Tauer III and he started on a denunciation of Bland.

“That is no reason for abandoning him,” I answered. “He will have to stand trial when we get back. You have no right to take the law into your own hands, which is what you have done in abandoning him. Moreover, you have abandoned your boats too. And without them you have no chance of reaching safety.” I then asked for volunteers from the Hval IV crew to go back and bring in Bland and the two boats.

Every man of them volunteered. Even the two injured men and the boy, Hans. I was proud of them, and I remember that my voice felt choky at this display of confidence in me. The coxs’n of Tauer III stepped forward a little shamefacedly then and asked if his men might not volunteer.

But I shook my head. “You’ve done one trek today. My men are fresh.” I ordered Gerda to get the sledges moving as soon as the Tauer III men had fed. “When you have set up the new camp and the men are rested come back with a dozen volunteers to help us bring in the boats.”

Gerda nodded and began running out ropes from the sledges. I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was Howe. “Bring back the boats, Craig,” he said. “But for God’s sake leave Bland there.”

“I can’t do that,” I said.

“He’s a murderer,” he said. “You know that. Bring him back and you give him a second chance. Let him find his own way out... if he can without any boats.”

But I shook my head. “I can’t do that,” I repeated.

“If you bring him back I’ll have to kill him,” Howe said. “I’ve sworn I will. I’ve sworn to avenge my father. But I don’t want to do it — not now. You see, there’s Gerda—” He hesitated awkwardly, and then said. “Why not let the ice do it? Please. To bring him back will make so much unhappiness. Gerda is already frightened for her father. And if I kill Bland—”

“No,” I said. “And you’re not going to kill Bland either. When I’ve brought him back and if these icebergs don’t finish us. I’ll try him by a summary court here on the ice, and if he’s convicted of deliberately ramming us, he’ll be put to work as an ordinary seaman pending trial when we get back to civilization.”

Howe stared at me. “You damned fool!” he said. He was almost crying now, he was so worked up. “You’re not in the navy now. This is the Antarctic. That man killed my father. He’s caused the loss of three ships and endangered the lives of over four hundred men. Can’t you realize that he’s better dead? If you bring him back he’ll fight to kill us all and get out alone. You heard what Vaksdal said. He wanted to be left there. Well, if he wants to be left—”

“If he wants to be left,” I said, “then I’ll not force him to come. There, will that satisfy you?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but Gerda came up then. “Everything is ready for us to go,” she said.

“Fine,” I replied. “And don’t forget to come back for us. It’s going to be a hard trek with two boats.”

“I won’t.”

“Good luck, then.”

“Thank you. And be careful. Duncan,” she added. “You are a nice man and it would not lie good if we lose you.”

I collected my volunteers, leaving only the two injured men and Hans and Howe, of the Hval IV crew, with Gerda, and we set out west along the sledge tracks that led toward the black hulk of the Tauer III.

We took with us three of the harpoon forerunners, our boat anchor and a block and tackle. The snow had been packed down by the Tauer III sledges and the going was good. With the wind on our backs, we made the trip in just over half an hour.

The camp itself was completely obliterated by snow. As we neared the camp we could see the ice grinding at the wreck of Tauer III. The rusty sides of the ship stood up black and sheer above the floes, blotched here and there with white patches of snow. The ice was riding upon the farther side, and though we could not hear it, we could see that the steel plates were being broken under the stress.

From an ice hillock I looked beyond Tauer III to the line of icebergs. The nearest was not three miles away — a huge, wedge-shaped cliff of ice plowing into the pack, turning it up on either side like the bow wave of a huge battleship held motionless in the still of a camera picture. But it was motionless only if you glanced at it quickly. I stood there for a moment, staring at it, and saw that it was moving all the time. Thick floes were being crushed and churned back. I thought of the survivors of the Southern Cross. The icebergs must have plowed their way right across the position where the factory ship had foundered.

There was a chill in my stomach as I slid down into a trough of the ice on my skis, glad to have the sight blotted from my view. I felt there was no hope. Strive how we might, we were doomed to the same death as the men of the Southern Cross. The advance of the icebergs was slow but inevitable, like the Day of Judgment. I tried to grin cheerfully at the men, but my lips seemed frozen. I made some crack about the ice — I don’t remember what, but it seemed a hollow mockery. The men laughed, and I thought. They’ve got guts. I found myself praying to God to give me strength.

As my skis slid along the sledge tracks into the Tauer III camp, Erik Bland emerged from a sailcloth tent pitched in the lee of some packing cases. “It’s you, Craig, is it?” he said as I stopped just short of him. His voice was thick and he was swaying slightly. “What do you want?”

I was well ahead of the men, and for the moment we were alone. “I’ve come for you,” I said. “I think you know why.”

“I suppose you think I rammed you deliberately?” His eyes had a glazed look and his face was white and mean under the dark stubble of his heart! He was very drunk. “Well, what if I did? You can’t prove it. You can’t prove anything. If that filthy little rat Howe hadn’t fired that harpoon—”

“You’d be out of the ice by now, reporting that there was no way through. Is that it?”

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?” he sneered. “Well, I’ll beat you all yet — all of you.”

“Better get your things together, Bland,” I said. “You’re coming back with me.”

“To have you rig another little court of inquiry?” He laughed. “Oh, no. I’m staying here.”

“You’re not taking the easy way out like that,” I told him. “You’re coming back with me to stand trial. If we ever get out of the ice I think you’re going to find yourself responsible for a lot of deaths.”

“I’m not responsible for what the ice does,” he answered. “You can’t prove anything. It was an accident. And don’t imagine I’m going to die. I’m not taking the easy way—” He stopped then, peering out across the snow. He’d seen the men. “So you’re so damned scared of me you bring a dozen men with you.” His eyes were suddenly narrowed. He was lighting to sober himself up.

“I didn’t bring the men in order to persuade you to come back with me,” I said. “I brought them because I’ve come for the boats Vaksdal was fool enough to leave behind.”

“The boats! You leave the boats alone!” He stared at me a second and then swung around and lunged into the tent. Like an idiot, it never occurred to me what he was after until he came out carrying a gun. “You leave the boats alone!” he screamed at me. He was tugging at the bolt, which was jammed with frozen snow. “As long as I have the boats, I’ve got a chance!”

I drove my sticks hard into the snow and charged him on my skis. I drove into him head first and we collapsed in a tangled heap. He was quicker on to his feet than I was, encountered by my skis. But I had the gun, and the bolt was free. I’d misjudged his motive in staying behind. I could see now that one of the boats had already been partly decked in with pieces of packing cases. It was just as Howe had said. He wanted to be the only man out of the ice alive. Only his nerve had failed him when he was alone and he’d had to get drunk.

“How do you think you’d get away in one of those boats without a crew?” I demanded angrily.

“I’ve sailed boats singlehanded all my life,” he answered sullenly. “If that berg missed the camp, I’d have got back to the Southern Cross somehow.”

“You fool!” I shouted at him. “You don’t realize the half of what you’ve done! The Southern Cross came into the ice after us! She was beset and smashed!”

He stared at me. His mouth hung slackly open. “I don’t believe it!” he cried. “It isn’t true!” And then, as I didn’t say anything, he added, “How do you know? Your radio went down with your ship.”

“We had a portable,” I said.

The men were coming into the camp now. I ordered them to start breaking the first boat out. Then I slipped the bolt out of the rifle and threw the weapon into the tent. “Better get to work, Bland,” I said. “You’re to help us run these boats back to the camp.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there. It was as though he couldn’t realize the truth of what I’d told him. I went over to help the men. They were hitching the ropes to the first boat and running them out to a block and tackle fixed to the anchor bedded in the ice. Bland lumbered across to me and caught hold of my arm.

“Is she sunk?” he demanded hoarsely. The steam of his breath in the cold air smelled of whisky.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Any survivors?”

“We don’t know yet. We’ve had no message since they abandoned ship.”

He suddenly laughed. It was an ugly sound, half drunken, half menacing.

Nobody will dare come into the ice to rescue us now. We’re alone. Alone out there in the ice. An’ it’s a damn good thing too. Damn good thing.”

“Doesn’t the loss of that ship mean anything to you?” I demanded angrily.

“Why should it? The insurance people will pay.” He was grinning almost happily.

I fought down a sudden desire to strike him, knock him down and kick him till he understood what he’d done. “Your father was on that ship.” I reminded him.

“Why should I care about my father? I hardly knew him.” His gaze wandered to the men straining on the rope to break the boat out. He lurched toward them and caught hold of the rope. “Come on, damn you, pull!” He was like a man suddenly possessed of a devil. “Come on, Craig!” he shouted. “Don’t stand there gaping! Lend a hand!”

He was like that for perhaps ten minutes while we broke both boats out from where they were frozen in. Then the drink died in him and he became morose and sullen. We ran the two boats out of the camp. There were eleven of us with Bland. But though we could shift them all right, it was exhausting work. With the aid of my skis I was able to put my full weight on the rope without breaking through the snow. But the others went through, sometimes up to the waist. It was hopeless. I spliced the forerunners together, ran them out to the anchor with a block and tackle, and that’s how we got the boats back to Disaster Camp. It was slow work. But it was the only way.

We reached the camp just before ten that night, utterly exhausted. The pain in my side was like the stab of a knife. Gerda had left one tent still standing. We cooked a meal and got some rest. No watch was set, for I knew not one of us could stand even half an hour out there in the biting wind.

Three hours later I woke to find Gerda shaking me. “You must come quickly, Duncan,” she said. Her voice was urgent. “The icebergs are not more than two miles away and the ice is breaking up.”

I was so tired I did not care if an iceberg crushed the tent with us in it. Then my face was being slapped and I was dragged out into the freezing wind. I staggered to my feet then and stood swaying weakly, staring unbelievingly at the cold, ice-clad scene. Tauer III was gone. There was no sign of it. And along the trail where we had dragged the boats the ice was heaving like a frozen sea. An iceberg with a tall, jagged spire, like the Pillar Rock, was driving toward us, icy chaos running out ahead of it.

The others were being pulled out of the tent. “Hurry! Hurry!” Gerda called to them. She had a dozen men with her. They began to move out of the camp, dragging the men from the tent with them.

“Wait!” I called. “We must take the boats!”

“No!” Gerda shouted at me above the wind. “We must go quickly or we shall be too late!”

I stared at the iceberg. There seemed little hope, whether we stayed here or reached the floe berg. I pulled myself together. “Get your men on to the boats,” I ordered her.

She started to argue, but I stopped her. “With the two crews there are over thirty of us. We need all three boats. If we do escape destruction and w-e lose these boats, then we are doomed anyway. Better to die with the boats.”

I called the men together, and there in the ice, with the wind driving right through us, we knelt down and I prayed that we might be delivered from the disaster that threatened. After that the men took up the ropes of the first boat without a word.

I shall never cease to marvel at man’s determination to cheat death. It wasn’t love of life that drove them out there on the ice. Life wasn’t lovely to them then. It was days and days of cold and hunger and exertion stretching ahead of them unendingly. It was their determination not to die. Call it fear, if you like. But whatever it was, it gave them strength — incredible, fantastic strength — and courage.

With all of us tugging on the ropes, we’d take one boat in a rush a hundred yards, sometimes two hundred. Then we’d come back and do the same with the other boat. The ice was splitting all around us, the cracks opening like bursts of machine-gun firing. Yet they never hesitated to go back for the second boat and I never had to drive them. Twice men were only saved by the ropes from the opening jaws of the ice. Once we had to rush the second boat across a gap that was half a boat’s length in width.

But we did it in the end. And as we dragged the second boat to the foot of the iceberg, a whole crowd of men came down and took the boats with a rush to the top of the berg. I remember a vague impression of new faces, of soft hands, of another voice taking command in Norwegian, then I had slipped into oblivion.

My return to consciousness was like the slow drag to the surface of a drowning man. I lay still, panting as though I’d run a race, and listened to the deathly stillness that seemed to surround me. I was stiff and numb. The cold struck through to the very core of me and the pain gripped me every time I breathed. There was a sudden grating roar. It rose till it filled the place with sound, and terminated in one splitting crash. It ceased abruptly. There was no echo. The stillness filled my ears, shutting me in upon my own thoughts. And yet I wasn’t alone. There were others near me. I could hear their breathing, feel their faint stirrings. I could smell them, too — the sour odor of men’s sweat. I opened my eyes. I was in a world of sepia glory with huddled shapes packed close beside me.

Then I suddenly wanted to laugh. The sepia glory was the sun slanting through brown sail canvas. The men around me were not dead. They were sleeping. I sat up, and then I didn’t want to laugh any more. I wanted to be sick.

I crawled out of the tent, staggered to my feet in the snow and stood there retching. The wind was gone. The sweat broke cold on my forehead. And in that moment the dragon’s roar of sound that had invaded the stillness of the tent came again. The crash that followed seemed like a splitting atom. I straightened my aching side and searched the blinding, gold-tinted ice for the source of the sound. And I stared unbelievingly as a block of ice that seemed as big as the Crystal Palace emerged out of the ice. It opened up like a flower and then fell crashing, shattered into a million fragments. The sound of its fall was like the end of the world. It was a noise that split the eardrums and then ceased — ceased as though there had never been any noise. Stillness shut down on the ice again and a hand touched my arm.

“Feeling better?” I swung round at the voice. It was Howe who had spoken. His face was white and his hand trembled as it held my arm. He was scared. “Feeling better?” he repeated. And then, as I nodded dumbly, he produced a flask. “Take a swig at this,” he said.

“It’s brandy. Do you good.” I took a pull at the flask. “You were all pretty exhausted when you got in last night.”

I didn’t say anything. I was trying to remember what had happened. Of course, we’d brought the boats to the floe berg. There they were, black against the frozen snow. Four boats and a litter of Sion’s, tents and makeshift sledges. Somebody had stuck a Norwegian flag on an upended oar outside one of the tents. The triangle of red with the white-edged blue cross hung dejectedly. Beyond the floe berg, the ice stretched westward in crumpled, jagged folds. And beyond that plowed-up field of ice was a huge berg. It was a fairy crag, a gigantic, prismatic skyscraper citadel of ice, one pinnacle reaching like the torch of the Statue of Liberty into the gold-shot rainbow of the sky. At its base the ice was moving, turning back on itself, splintering and folding as the wedged cutwater plowed into the floes. To the north of it was another, and to the south another and another — great masses of shimmering ice.

I shivered and handed Howe back his flask. “Thanks,” I said. “Not much future for us, is there?”

I’ve worked it out that at its present rate of drift that one over there will be plowing right through the camp at about midday tomorrow.” His voice was the voice of science, quite unemotional.

“There wasn’t much point in shifting our camp then,” I said wearily.

He shrugged his shoulders. “If it were just one—” he began, and then again he shrugged his shoulders as though it wasn’t any good talking about it. He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did, his voice was bitter. “Why couldn’t you leave well alone?”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Why couldn’t you leave him to die in the Tauer Three camp? I told you not to bring him back.”

“And I told you I’d only abandon him if that was what he wanted.” I felt very tired. “He didn’t want to be left... not when he knew I’d come for the boats.”

“What was he planning to do?”

“The fool thought he’d got a chance of getting away alone in one of the boats. He’d got one of them half decked in before he started drinking.”

“What happened? Did he lose his nerve?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Any man would lose his nerve on his own out here, watching those icebergs plowing into the ice toward him.”

“Why the hell do you waste your sympathy on him?” Howe demanded.

“I’m not wasting my sympathy on him,” I replied wearily. “I’m just explaining what happened. Where is he now?”

“Over there.” He nodded toward one of the tents. “Talking to Vaksdal and Keller.” His gloved hand caught hold of my arm. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” His voice was hoarse. “We’re in a bad enough fix, without having Bland here. He’s a murderer. He knows it and he knows that we know it too. It’s not only Nordahl. There’s Raadal and that other poor devil. And all these men here” — he waved his hand around the camp — “they’re all going to die. We’re all as good as dead — you and me; Gerda and Judie too. And why?” His voice was unsteady, almost out of control. “Because of Bland. But for him, we’d have got the crew of Hval Five out. Instead we’re all locked in the ice, and the men of the Southern Cross as well. Gerda’s beside herself. She’s scared for her father. She loved him. And you go and bring Bland back, and Gerda has to be a party to his rescue. I could have throttled you to see you going out like a little Sir Galahad to rescue a man who’s responsible for the killing of over four hundred men.”

“I went for the boats,” I reminded him.

“What good are the boats to us?” He stared out across the ice, his hands clenching and unclenching. “We’re going to die and you’ve forced on me the choice of killing a man or dying with him without doing what I swore I would do.” He paused, and then said, “And if we do get clear of this iceberg, we’re going to have trouble with Bland. He’s lost his nerve for the moment, but if he can do something to get back his self-confidence, then he’ll be dangerous. I’m going to have a word with Peer Larvik.”

“Larvik!” I swung around, not hearing what he replied, seeing four boats where there should have been only three and the Norwegian flag drooping from the upended oar. I seized hold of him, shaking him in my sudden excitement. “Is Larvik here? Have the Hval Five crew joined up with us?”

He nodded, and I hesitated, steadying myself, conscious of the pulse heat in my body. “Judie? Is she all right? Is she here too?”

He stared at me, astonished. “Good God! Don’t you remember? You collapsed into her arms last night.”

I stood there for a moment, cursing he ice that made our time so short, ruining myself for bringing her husband back. “Where is she?” My voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.

“Over there... in Larvik’s tent.”

I stood there without moving for quite a while. I was thinking that perhaps it was as well for both of us that we had only a few hours left of life. I bent down and scooped up a handful of snow, rubbing it over my face. I no longer felt weak. I felt strong — strong enough to cheat death and to fight my way out of the ice. And yet it was better this way. I knew that. I walked slowly over to the tent where the Norwegian flag hung and called to her.

In a moment she was out there in the glory of that iridescent sunshine, holding my hands, looking up into my face and smiling and laughing, all in one, her eyes gleaming like frosted diamonds. We just stood and looked at each other and laughed with happiness. And then without a word we turned and walked through the powdery snow to the farther edge of the floe berg and stood and watched the towering cliffs of ice tearing up the floes, not seeing them as death any more, but dominating their terror with our sense of life, so that they were just something exciting to watch. It was as though our love could exorcise the devil of fear. And that’s a funny thing. We never had to ask each other about our love; the truth was there in our eyes.

But our moment alone together was very short. Kalstad came up. His round, rather Slavonic face looked worried. “What’s the trouble, Kalstad?” I asked, as he coughed awkwardly.

“It’s Vaksdal and Keller,” he said. “The men do not want them in their tents. They are Sandefjord men, both of them.”

“This is no time to worry about whether a man comes from Sandefjord or Tönsberg!” I exclaimed.

“Also these two men will not do what I order,” Kalstad added woodenly.

“Then make them.”

“I have tried, but—” Kalstad shrugged his shoulder. “Vaksdal is a big man, and it is no time to fight, I think. Also he is very angry because he is no longer mate.”

“I see. What about Keller?”

“Keller will do what Vaksdal do.”

“All right, bring Vaksdal here.”

Vaksdal was in an ugly mood. I could see that by the morose way he slouched toward me. When he stood in front of me he was a good head taller.

“Kalstad informs me you refuse to obey his orders?” I said.

“Ja. It is not right he should give me orders.”

“Did you hear me appoint him mate yesterday?”

“Ja.”

And I reduced you to ordinary seaman for abandoning your boats.”

“Kaptein Bland say you have not the authority to—”

“Damn Bland!” I shouted. “Bland is—” I stopped then. I was seething with anger. “You come and talk to Captain Larvik.”

“No.” Judie’s hand was on my arm. “You must not worry Peer Larvik with this, Duncan.”

“It’s his responsibility,” I said. “He’s in charge now.”

But she shook her head. “No. You are in command. Larvik is very ill. His ribs are crushed, and his legs. He got caught between the side of Hval Five and the ice. I was just going back to him. I don’t think—” She hesitated and there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t think he’ll live very long. You must handle this yourself.” She turned then and walked toward the tent where the Norwegian Hag hung. I felt suddenly very tired again. So the responsibility was still on my shoulders.

I looked up at Vaksdal. “Have you ever thought what it’s like to die?” I asked him.

He looked puzzled. “No,” he said. “I do not think about such things.”

“You’ve never looked death in the face.” I turned him round so that he faced the slow, inevitable advance of the iceberg. “You are looking at death now,” I said. “I don’t think we have much hope. But so long as we’re alive there’s still a chance. So long as we’re alive and working together. This is no time to cause trouble, is it?”

“I do not begin it,” he growled. “It is the men who begin it. They are Tönsberg men. Me and Keller, we are from Sandefjord.”

“All right.” I said. “I’ll have a word with the men later. In the meantime, have the sense to accept orders. If, when this iceberg has passed, there are any of us alive, I’ll discuss the question of my authority to act as I have.”

He stared down at me for a moment, and then I saw his eyes drawn to the towering bulk of the iceberg as though it were a magnet. “All right,” he growled, and turned quickly and went back to Keller, who had been standing by the tents watching us.

I crossed the top of the floe berg where the stores and boats were lashed down and reached the tent with the flag outside. The flap was drawn back and Judie was bent over a figure lying in a huddle of blankets. There was blood on the trodden snow and the man’s head that showed in the sunlight over Judie’s shoulder was unrecognizable. The blue eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and the lower lip showed red and bloody in the stubble of his beard where the bared teeth had bitten into the flesh with the pain.

Judie looked up as my shadow fell across her. “Is he conscious?” I asked.

She nodded. “I was just coming to fetch you,” she said. “He wants to speak to you.” She crawled out of the tent and stood up. “Don’t let him talk for long. He’s very weak.”

I bent down and sat myself in the doorway of the tent. “Judie says you want to see me,” I said.

“Craig?” The voice was very faint.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come nearer, please.” I slithered into the tent, and then I knew he was going to die. The tent smelled of rotting flesh, even with the tent flap pulled back and the cold air circulating. It was gangrene. “You can smell my legs, eh?” There was no fear in his voice and his eyes were quite steady. “Judie has done her beat, but it will not be long now.” He said something else, but it was lost in a crash of splintering ice so loud that it seemed to lie just outside the tent. His hand came out from under the blankets and fastened on my shoulder. It was gray and the veins and knotted muscles stood out like cords in the wasted flesh. “You are in command now. You must get them out of the ice There is not much hope, but—” He gnawed at his lip, fighting the pain. “What are you going to do?” he asked at length.

“We could start trekking,” I said. “Now the wind has dropped, the westward thrust of the ice seems to be lessening. If we left now, we might be able to keep ahead of this iceberg.”

He shook his head slowly. “No good,” he said. “If you leave here, how do you live? How do you finally escape without the boats? I hear what you do yesterday. Gerda tell me. You know that there is only hope so long as you have the boats.” For a while he lay still without speaking, staring out through the open tent to the scintillating mass of the berg grinding its way toward us. “If it is only one berg, per’aps south or north. But here it is a line. Also it is not good to retreat. It is not good for morale.” He turned his head toward me and I saw that his eyes were excited. “I think you must advance, eh? That will have better appeal to the men, you know.”

I suppose my face must have shown that I was mystified, for his grip tightened on my shoulder. “All morning I am lying here with nothing to do but look out of the tent. Look.” He nodded through the open tent flap. “Do you not see something on the berg to the south? There is a ledge there. It slope up like a ramp. I have look at him through the glasses. If you can transfer the camp to that ledge—”

“But it’s impossible,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “It is difficult. But nothing is impossible. As you say, the rate of advance of the iceberg is becoming more slow. Already it is breaking the ice up more gently. Our camp here is a small berg. The ice floes round us will be broken up. We shall be thrown about, but perhaps we do not break entirely. Perhaps we are for a little while close to the ledge. With God’s help we may get there. You are a sensible man. You think to bring forerunners and tackle. I also bring my forerunners. I think we have a chance. It is a very small chance, hut it is the only one.” He looked at me quickly. “You agree?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I stared at the foot of the iceberg where it plowed into the floes. It was less than a mile away now, advancing at the rate of about two hundred yards an hour directly toward us. For a mile or more to right and left of it the ice was in a state of chaos, the floes being splintered, broken up and layered. The outer fringe of this area of chaos was the worst, for there the chaos of one iceberg met the chaos of the next and all was a confusion of upended floes and great slabs of ice tossed into the air like snowballs. As the chaos was worse at the sides of the iceberg than in front of it, there seemed just the barest chance, for we were in the direct path of its advance. At least the idea of riding the source of the destruction appealed to me in its daring.

I nodded. “At any rate it gives us something to try for.”

“Something to try for.” Larvik nodded slowly. He looked drained of life and I realized that I’d let him exhaust himself. “Something to try for.” he said again, his voice scarcely audible. Then he seemed to rally. He patted my arm. “When you are on his back, he will be your horse and you can laugh when he charge the ice. Perhaps he... break a way out for you.” He closed his eyes.

I stayed there beside him for a little longer; then, as he still lay motionless with his eyes closed, I began to slide out of the tent. But his hand moved on my arm. “Is Bland there?” he asked. His voice was thick, as though his throat were clogged with blood.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you want to speak to him?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “No. I do not think I am strong enough to say what I should wish.” He coughed and writhed in agony. I held his hand till he was quiet again. “Whatever I may think of old Bland, he is a man. This pup of his has gone wrong. He is dangerous, Craig. Judie is now the biggest shareholder in the company. Bernt Nordahl leave her everything. I know because I witness the will. Look after her, my friend. And see that Erik Bland does not get out of the ice alive. You understand?” His sunken eyes stared at me. “Promise me—” His voice was too faint for me to hear the rest. His eyes were gazing urgently into mine.

I knew what he wanted. But I couldn’t promise that, so I slid quietly out of the tent. Judie was waiting for me. “You’ve been a long time,” she said. “Is he all right?”

“He’s very weak,” I told her.

Her face looked small and unhappy. “I am afraid he will not last the night.” She crawled into the tent then and I turned and stared at the giant iceberg, searching that ledge. It started right at the base of the berg and sloped gently up till it merged into the cliff of ice that formed the side about fifty feet above the surrounding pack. There was just a chance, I felt. Just the slightest chance. And I prayed that Larvik, who had given us this chance, would live to reach that ledge.

I got the men together then and told them the plan. It appealed to them. Anything positive would have appealed to them, and they threw themselves into the work of preparation with an enthusiasm that was derived as much from a desire to blot out the fear that was in them as from any sense of hope. Forerunners were thawed of ice and spliced together in long lines. Anchor stakes were prepared and sliding tackle rigged. Boat slings were fitted. Stores were packed and secured in bundles, for the idea was that boats and stores should be run out to the ledge on the iceberg on the life-line-and-bos’n’s-chair principle. But as the day wore on and the iceberg came nearer and nearer to our camp, I noticed the men glancing over their shoulders at it with a scared look in their faces.

By evening the work was done. Only the tents and immediate stores were left unpacked. After the evening meal there was nothing for the men to do. No one felt like sleep and they stood about on the ice in groups, gazing with awe at the towering mass of ice. It loomed over the camp like death in visible form. The noise of the floes being crushed and thrust aside as it advanced was incessant — a grinding rumble penetrated by sharp, splintering cracks.

Bland kept mostly to his tent. Vaksdal and Keller had erected one against some packing cases and he had moved in with them. Our own men, at any rate, must have suspected that he’d rammed us deliberately and kept away from him. In other circumstances they might have killed him. As it was, the iceberg and the approach of death dominated everything. Only once did any incident occur.

It was in one of the rare moments when Judie wasn’t looking after Larvik. We were sitting together on the edge of one of the boats. Gerda and Howe were standing at the edge of the floe berg gazing toward the sun. They were holding each other’s hands. As they turned back toward the camp, Bland came out of his tent. Howe stopped at the sight of him. His face was tense. He let go of Gerda’s hand and went toward Bland.

He passed right by us. He was crying and there was a strange, desperate look of longing on his face. Bland saw him coming and stopped, his eyes narrowing and his body stiffening. Judie’s hand tightened on my arm. I got up. Bland could break him as easily as he could snap a twig.

But as I rose, Gerda ran past me. She caught Howe by the arm and dragged him away from Bland. As she brought him back, leading him by the hand, his face was horribly convulsed and there was an air of bitterness and frustration about him that was quite frightening.

Judie’s hand slipped into mine. “He is tearing himself apart,” she whispered. “Oh, how I wish they could live.”

I glanced down at her. “Do you think they would be happy?” I asked.

“Yes, I think perhaps they might,” she answered. She sighed and gave a little shrug. “Poor Gerda — it’s the maternal instinct with her. With Walter it’s different. He’s in love. I think he’s found happiness for the first time in his life. That’s what is tearing him apart. He wants to live... and kill.” She sighed again and added, “I think it might have worked out very well.”

“Why the devil doesn’t he just enjoy the fact that he’s alive and Gerda is with him?” I said.

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “If we ever reach that ledge, Duncan, you must have a trial at once. The men must know the truth.”

I remember thinking. Well, we’ll all be dead soon. It doesn’t matter. I’d no real hope of our getting across that litter of broken ice on to the ledge. The mere sight of it appalled me, knowing that sooner or later I had to attempt to cross it.

“But it doesn’t matter now,” Judie said suddenly. “Nothing matters now except that we are together... for a little.”

Judie had all the realism of her sex. She was not buoyed up by any preposterous illusion of hope. She saw the inevitable and accepted it. She made no attempt to bolster up her courage with the idea that we could cheat the death that stared us in the face from those glass-hard cliffs of ice. Her attitude affected me in a strange way. Instead of being scared, I, too, felt acceptance of the inevitable. And I almost welcomed it. To go like this — loving someone and loved by someone — it was sublime. In that bitter cold there was no suggestion of passion. I can’t explain it quite, but if we have souls, then it was the merging of our two souls. In that twilight evening of death our love was out of this world. We were two people wanting to pass over into the beyond together.

I have often wondered since what Bland’s feelings about Judie really were. And anyway, love and hate are never far apart. But I remember one occasion that evening when the man’s emotions blazed through the sullen facade he’d erected as a barrier between himself and the people round him.

It was toward midnight and she and I were watching the sun sweep low in the eggshell-pale sky. Standing there, I was suddenly conscious of being watched. Judie must have felt it, too, because she turned as I did. Bland was standing outside his tent. He was standing quite still about twenty yards from us. His face was heavy and brooding. Our eyes met and I remember I was shocked to see such a violence of hatred. I have never, thank God, had a man look at me like that before or since. It was the look of the lone wolf — the rogue male — barred from the pack, and bitter with the thought of what others enjoyed. It was bitterness and frustration turned to hate. But whether it indicated a depth of feeling for Judie that she was unaware of I do not know.

But I do know that she saw it and recognized it, for her fingers caught at my arm, and as we turned back toward the sun her face looked white. “You must lie careful,” she said, and her voice trembled. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. Bland had gone back to his tent. “Erik is dangerous,” she added. And then, “I must go and see my patient.” She turned quickly toward Larvik’s tent.

The cold became intense that night. A very slight breath of air came out of the west and the thermometer fell as it brought into the camp the chill ice temperature of the berg. The hours passed vaguely as in a dream. The camp was restless and for the first time since we’d abandoned ship the men on watch had company.

There is a strange fascination about death. No one likes it to catch him unawares. And inside the tents the noise and the quaking of the ice seemed magnified, so that one lay in a sort of tense expectancy of fear, the berg growing in one’s imagination to undreamed-of heights and toppling down on the flimsy sepia curtain of canvas. It was a relief then to go out and see the real height of the berg and mark how slowly it ground its way toward us.

But though it might come slowly when we watched it, when we ignored it for a moment and looked again, we’d realize with horror how swift in terms of the future that advance was. The ledge on the south side gleamed clear and bright, like a ramp leading to heaven in some supercolossal color-film monstrosity. But I don’t think any of us had any hope of reaching it. Between us and that ledge was a slowly closing gap of moving ice. There were great crevasses that opened and closed with a snap, floes that stood on end, all jagged, and then sank slowly beneath the heaving mass, and huge blocks of ice that were spewed up and fell crashing on to the floes.

I wasn’t scared. At least it didn’t seem like fear to me then. The scene was so stupendous as to seem remote and unreal. I felt like a spectator. And I knew I should go on feeling like a spectator until the moment when I had to cross the gap and the ice overwhelmed me.

At last I, Duncan Craig, knew what it was like to look death in the face. Marooned on the antarctic ice pack with the survivors of three vessels belonging to the Southern Cross whaling ship, I could see the line of icebergs plowing slowly but violently toward our camp. Great blocks of ice were upended and crushed in the path of their advance, which moved toward us at about three miles an hour. When they reached us, we would be crushed or drowned in the icy sea.

Peer Larvik, the senior officer among us, was seriously injured and must soon die. That left me in command. I had not only to cope with the monstrous natural forces trying to destroy us but also with human violence. Erik Bland, son of the director of the whaling company, was degenerating into a madman. He would certainly challenge my right to leadership — even though he was responsible for the disaster that had stranded us. Bland’s wife, Judie, hated him. So did Walter Howe, our alcoholic oceanographer. They both knew Bland had murdered Bernt Nordahl, their father.

Bland hated me, because I loved Judie. We would have been fighting if it were not for the good sense of Gerda Petersen, daughter of one of the whaling captains. But our personal bitterness had to wait on the desperate measures we had to take to save our lives.

The dying Larvik called me to his tent. He pointed to the iceberg which was heading directly for us. If it came close enough, we might get onto the flat ledge on the side of it. That way we could ride the back of the monster and possibly survive. There was only a slim chance to cross the gap of churning ice between us and the berg, but I had to take it.

I told myself I wasn’t scared. I wouldn’t be scared until the moment came for the leap across the chasm.

VII

Most of you who read this will have faced sudden death at one time or another. You’ll know how it feels. There is the tensing of the nerves, the sudden photographic clarity of vision. But no fear. That comes later, when nerves stretched beyond endurance relax, leaving you shivering with the reaction. If the period is too sustained, then the nervous reaction sets in before the moment of impact. Then comes fear — naked, uncontrolled fear.

That’s what happened at our camp the morning the iceberg reached us.

Just after six Judie crawled into my tent. She looked exhausted. “Duncan, will you come, please? I think he’s gone.”

I followed her to Larvik’s tent. His body was cold, and I saw that his eyes were glazed. I pulled a blanket over him.

Outside the tent I saw that many of the men had come out of their tents. They were watching us furtively and there was an air of tension over the camp. It was as though they had sensed death.

“How shall we bury him?” Judie asked.

“Leave him where he is,” I said. She started to argue, and I said, “Look at the men. They’re scared enough as it is, without knowing that Larvik is dead.”

She turned and looked round the camp. I could see there were tears in her eyes. I saw her bite her lip. Then she looked at me and nodded. “Yes, I understand. I think he will understand too.”

I turned away then and shouted for the stewards to get a meal ready. The men were silent and tense as they ate in their tents. And when it was finished they were out again in the open, staring at the crumbling ice.

The prow of the iceberg was not three hundred yards from us now. And behind the prow the ice towered up and up in sheer crags of blue and green, cold and still, until it lost itself up in the clouds.

The noise of the shattering ice was so loud that we had to shout to make ourselves heard. The floe berg was quivering. We could actually see the ice shaking. The boats rocked and the packing cases tied together rolled over. All around us the ice was breaking up now. And in a little while I should be down in the maelstrom, fighting to get a rope across to the ledge. I felt fear gripping at me.

The moment of panic came when a floe between us and the berg split across with an ear-splitting crackle. The half nearest us reared up, turning slowly on its back. For a moment it seemed poised above us, forty or fifty feet high. Then it came crashing down. Its edge splintered on the forward ledge of our refuge. A piece of ice as large as a barn door knocked one of the Hval V men flying. A great chunk was torn off our floe berg. For a moment the sea boiled black. Then the gap closed, the floes rushing together, grinding and tearing at one another.

No one moved for a moment. We were stunned by the terrible power of the forces at work. Then Hans suddenly screamed. The boy turned like a hunted hare and began to run. The men watched him for a second, immobile, fascinated. Then one of them also began to run, and in a second half the crews were following the boy.

I started forward to stop them, but Vaksdal was before me. He caught the first man and knocked him cold with one blow of his huge fist. And he got Hans — scooped the boy up with one hand and turned to face the break. The men stopped. They stood watching him for a moment like cattle that have been headed. Then they turned and shuffled shamefacedly toward the camp.

I met them as they came back. I realized that it was now or never. I couldn’t talk to them because of the noise of the splintering ice. They knelt down, all of them, and every man knelt so that he faced the advance of the berg. And as we knelt, that comforting sense of oneness developed in us — oneness of purpose in adversity. Then I looked at Judie. Her eyes met mine and smiled. And I felt sure of myself again. I could face it, whatever it was to be.

I got up and called out to the men that the moment for action had come, that now we were going to attack the berg itself. Judie was beside me, and I heard her say, “Who makes the first attempt?”

“Vaksdal and I,” I answered.

The ropes were coiled down on the ice at the side of the camp nearest the berg. I took the two ends and shouted for Vaksdal. “Because of the boats!” I shouted at him. I don’t know whether it was because he recognized the justice of my choice or because he was afraid of being regarded as a coward, but he took the rope and began to tie it round his body. I took the other rope and we went to the edge of the floe where the ice dropped in a steep slide to the quivering pack. Judie came up to me and kissed me. Then she took the rope and began to tie it around my body.

But as she started to tie it, there was a sudden surge in the crowd and she was swept aside. The rope was whipped away from me and Erik Bland slipped over the edge onto the pack ice below. He held the rope in his hand, and I can see him now as he looked up at me with a sort of crazy grin, tying the rope round his waist and calling to Vaksdal to come. I seized hold of the rope to haul him back. Whatever relief I automatically might have felt was swallowed in my instant realization of the danger of such an undisciplined action.

In that moment of hesitation I lost my one chance of stopping Bland, for as I reached for the rope again I saw it uncoiling unsteadily. Down on the ice, Vaksdal and Bland were going forward together. And then I saw that Bland was wearing crampons. Where he’d got them I don’t know. But the fact that he was wearing them made it clear that his action wasn’t done on the spur of the moment. The men were watching him intently and in some of their eyes I caught a glint of admiration.

Down on the pack the two men were moving into the broken ice. Trailing the slender lines, they climbed out on the edge of a floe that was slowly being tilted. They dropped from view. The floe rose almost vertical, hiding them. Then it broke across and subsided into the ice, showing them leaping in great bounds from one precarious foothold to another.

They got to within twenty feet or so of the ledge and there they paused, facing a gap full of powdered ice in which the sea sometimes showed. Vaksdal coiled his rope and leaped. For a moment I thought he’d made it. But the ice received his weight like a bog. In an instant he was up to his knees. Then he was floundering full length, with only the upper half of his body visible. He was within two yards of the ledge, but it might have been two miles for all the chance he had of reaching it.

Bland hesitated, staring at Vaksdal and coiling his rope. Then he backed away and started to run. Judie’s fingers dug into my arm. Whatever she might think of him now, Erik Bland was, after all, a part of her life. Instead of jumping, he flung himself full length in a beautiful tackle. His impetus carried him half across the gap, his body sliding on the surface of the ice, his arms working like a swimmer doing the crawl.

Then at last he was standing on the ledge itself and was hauling Vaksdal up after him. The men cheered wildly as the two men stood together on the ledge. Bland looked across at the cheering men. My eyes, weakened by the constant glare of the past few days, couldn’t make out the expression of his face.

But Howe was screaming in my ear, “He’s laughing at us! He’s on his own now! That’s what he wanted!”

I brushed him aside, shouting to Dahle, first mate of Hval V, whom I’d put in charge of loading, to get tools and anchors across. The men tied them to the rope, and as they were hauled across the two-hundred-yard gap, Howe was pulling at my sleeve and yelling, “He’ll abandon us, I tell you!”

“Don’t be a fool!” I snapped. “He can’t do anything without boats and stores!”

“Well, get yourself across with the first batch of men.”

I shook my head angrily. Now that Bland had done the job of getting the ropes across, as leader I was bound to be the last man to leave the camp.

Vaksdal and Bland were working like mad to fix the anchors firmly. As soon as this was done and the rope set up, the first boat was run across. About the middle the boat was bumping dangerously on the ice, and just before it reached the ledge one of the two anchors broke out. Fortunately, the other anchor held and the boat was got safely to the ledge. But this made me realize that more men were required on the ledge at once. As the slings were hauled back I gave the order for the first batch of men to go, instead of stores, which were next on the loading table.

Gerda came across to me as the men were getting into the slings. “I think you should be there, Duncan!” she shouted. “It is important nothing go wrong at that end!”

I didn’t like the idea of being one of the first across, but I had already decided that I should be there. I ordered Dahle to assume command of the rear party and took the place of one of the men in the slings. We also hitched on the two remaining anchors.

With the extra personnel and anchors, we soon had both lines set up securely and began to ferry the stores across.

It was while we were hauling the second boat across that the movement of the old camp on the floe in relation to the iceberg first became really noticeable. What had happened was that the floe berg had been caught in a sort of eddying outthrust of ice and was moving outward, away from the berg.

At length we were hauling in the last boat. As it came in to the ledge somebody shouted to me. A rope end went trailing over the edge. I glanced quickly across at the huddle of dark figures on the ice. They were standing, staring toward us, quite motionless. All the stores had been cleared. There was just the rear guard — Dahle and five of the Hval V crew. The floe on which they stood was being whirled away from us, caught in a gigantic surge of the ice. We flung our weight on the last remaining rope. But it was dragged from our hands by forces far beyond our puny strength. The end of it trailed over on to the ice and we could do nothing but stand and watch that little group of figures alone in a heaving chaos.

I put my arm round Jodie’s shoulders. She was tense, her face white and her lips moving in agitated prayer. The floe berg on which Dahle and his companions were marooned was turning slowly round and round, as though it were at the very center of a revolving whirlpool. A moment later it split. Two of the men abandoned their shattered ice island and began floundering toward us across the churning ice. They were right in broken ice now. They hadn’t a chance.

Through my glasses I could see only three men standing near where our camp had been. One was Dahle. The remains of the floe berg began to roll. The three men scrambled and clawed their way across the ice, fighting to keep on the uppermost side.

It was horrible, standing there watching them go like that, especially as I should have been one of them. Judie must have understood my mood, for her hand gripped my arm. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

“If we’d been quicker,” I answered. “If we’d started on the job a few minutes earlier.” I turned away angrily. No good brooding over it. There was work to be done.

I detailed a dozen men to cut a way through the jagged ice of the ledge and drag the boats up as far as possible. Then I turned to get the stores secured and the tents pitched. And as I turned. Bland came toward me. As he approached, he seemed to have an air of truculence, and there was something about his eyes, a queer sort of confidence, something like a sneer. He had lost the dazed look.

He came right over and stopped in front of me. “I want a word with you, Craig,” he said. There was a sudden authority in his tone, and I saw several of the men stop work to watch us.

“Well?” I asked.

“In the future you’ll keep away from my wife,” he said.

“That’s for her to decide,” I answered.

“It’s an order,” he said.

I stared at him. “The hell it is!” I said. “Get to work on the boats, Bland.”

He shook his head, grinning. “You don’t give orders here.” And then, in a moment of quiet, he said, “Mr. Craig, please understand that, now that Larvik is dead, I am in command.” He swung round on the men, who were all watching us now. “In the absence of my father, I shall, of course, take command here as his deputy. As commander I brought the ropes across. Craig, as second in command, should have remained with the rear party as I instructed, but—” He shrugged his shoulders... “As a newcomer to the company,” he said to me, “you will realize that you are too inexperienced to have any sort of command in a situation like this.” He turned abruptly and strode toward the men. There was almost a swagger in the way he walked.

I just stood there, too amazed to make a move. I remember thinking, Howe was right. He’s got back his confidence, Nordahl’s death, the ramming — he’s forgotten it all. And I cursed myself for not realizing he was dangerous.

He began shouting orders at the men. I saw the amazement I felt written on their faces. Hut they were overawed by the terror of their surroundings. They would follow any leader, so long as he led. I started forward, and as I came up to Bland I heard him announce the reinstatement of Vaksdal and Keller as mates. He gave an order. The men hesitated. Their eyes shifted to me. Bland turned. The sneer was gone now, but the truculence was still there. I ordered him to pick up one of the packing cases. His eyes shifted quickly from me to the men. And as he didn’t move when I repeated the order, I knew there was only one thing to do. “McPhee. Kalstad.” The two Hval IV men moved forward. “Arrest that man,” I ordered. And then, turning quickly to Bland, I said, “Erik Bland, you are charged with the murder of Bernt Nordahl and also with the deliberate ramming of Hval Four, an action which caused the immediate death of two men and which may be responsible for all our deaths. You will lie held for trial when and if we ever reach civilization.”

I was watching his eyes all the time as I spoke. For a moment they had a wild, almost hunted look. Then he laughed. “You can’t get away with this, Craig!” he shouted. “First you try to steal my wife, now you try to get control of the company through her!”

I called to the Hval IV men and with Kalstad and McPhee moved in to get him. I knew what he was capable of now and I was taking no more chances.

Then suddenly he turned and slithered down the ice of the ledge. I sent Kalstad and the rest after him. He had stopped at one of the packing cases that had apparently been tom open with a pick. I thought we’d mastered him without a fight. I had turned back to speak with the men when Howe gave a shout of warning. As I swung round, Bland was lifting a rifle out of the broken packing case.

Kalstad started to run toward him. Then he and the men behind him I checked suddenly. Bland had the gun cocked and leveled straight at them. He was laughing at them.

Bland was coming up the ledge now, and he was driving the Hval IV men back at the point of his gun. He was immensely pleased with himself. He bunched all the survivors together. None of us hesitated to obey. His eyes were narrowed, and his manner and the way he held the rifle made it clear that he would not hesitate to use it.

He called Vaksdal and Keller over to him. They hesitated uncertainly. Bland as the son of the chairman of the company was one thing. Bland with a gun another. But they went down to him all the same. Then he called on the rest of the men to join him. He spoke in Norwegian. They began muttering among themselves.

“He tell them it is safe only to have one leader,” Gerda translated for me. “That he is in command and that it is mutiny if they do not obey him.”

The thing had to be stopped at once. I called out to the men. And then Judie’s hands were tugging at my arm. Bland was yelling at me to shut up. He had the gun at his shoulder and was aiming straight at me.

“Keep quiet. Duncan,” Judie pleaded. “He will shoot. There is plenty of time.”

Howe, just behind me, said, “We’ve got to get his gun.”

As we hesitated, one or two of the men moved toward Bland. In an instant they would all go. If we could stop the men, isolate Bland and his two mates, then the sheer threat of our numbers would wear him down. I started forward. If I got killed — well, it was just too bad.

But just as I moved, Gerda rushed past me. She stopped, facing the men with her back to Bland, and she poured a flood of Norwegian at them. The men stopped. I heard Nordahl’s name and Hval IV mentioned repeatedly. She was telling them the truth now and the men growled angrily.

I glanced at Bland. He had lowered the gun. He was sane enough to realize that if he shot her the men would kill him. But he was coming up the slope, his face white and convulsed with rage. I called to Gerda to look out. But she kept on speaking. Bland struck her from behind, stunning her with one blow of his hand across the nape of her neck. Howe gave an inarticulate cry and ran forward. He flung himself, shrieking, on Bland, who met him with a jab of the rifle barrel in his stomach. And as Howe folded up. Bland smashed his fist into the wretched man’s face. Howe’s face looked dazed and a gush of blood shone crimson against the white of the snow. His knees gave and he was a crumpled bundle on the ice. Bland kicked at him viciously, his gun ready, waiting for the first man to break and rush at him. He grinned all the time.

I felt Judie stiffen beside me. This was the real Bland, the Bland she knew — the man who admired the Nazis and their methods. And seeing him kicking at Howe’s body, I knew that none of us would get out of the ice alive — unless we killed Bland first.

For a moment he was lost to everything but the pleasure of taking it out on Howe. And then he began talking to the men. With the gun in his hand he had complete confidence in himself. His manner was a queer mixture of the arrogance of the leader and the almost boyish excitement of the adventurer.

“He’s trying to persuade the men to desert us,” Judie said. “You must do something.”

“You talk to them,” I said. “They’re all Tönsberg men. Talk to them about your father.”

She stared at me in surprise. And then, as she saw I wouldn’t move, she stepped forward. It was hard for her. The man was her husband and she had to tell the men that he’d murdered her father. For a moment she and Bland were talking at the same time. Then the attention of the men became riveted on her. Bland hesitated and stopped speaking. His eyes shifted uneasily to Judie and back again to the men. His grip on his gun tightened as an angry murmur rose from them.

Then suddenly he shouted an order. He was calling on the men to follow him. Then they were silent. He called to them again. But no one moved. “All right!” he shouted in English. “Have it your own way then! Stay with Craig and see where it lands you!” He turned to me. “They’re your responsibility now, Craig!” He drew a line with the heel of his boot across the ice of the ledge. “You’ll camp above this line. Any mutineer that crosses it will be shot. Understand? You’ll be issued tents and stores. Once a day, at mid-day, you’ll send two men to collect rations... Bonomi.”

The little Italian started. “Yes, sir.”

“Can you cook?”

“A leetle. But lam not—”

“You’ll cook for the officers then. Go down and report to Vaksdal... The rest of you get back up the ledge. Go on. Get moving.” He made a threatening gesture with the gun. Go on! Go on!” I could almost hear the Nazi “Raus! Raus!” echoing the violence of his voice.

“What about the boats?” I asked. Bland turned to me. He had the mean look of something that’s been cornered. “The boats will remain with me. I’ll look after them for you.” He turned to Judie and said, “You’d better stay with your boy friend.”

Bland took no chances with the men. He got right on with the issuing of tents and stores. I set the men to leveling platforms for the tents and cutting into the ice wall at the back of the ledge to provide extra shelter.

As the day wore on, Judie’s attitude began to worry me. When I tried to explain to her that there was nothing I could have done, she turned away angrily. It was as though she were blaming me for what had happened. She and Gerda were given a tent to themselves. As soon as it was erected, Judie crawled into it. And that was the last I saw of her that day.

That night, after the evening meal, as I lay in my tent talking to Howe and McPhee and Kalstad, who shared it, Gerda crawled in.

“What are you going to do, Duncan?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“But you must do something.”

“Not yet,” I answered. She was sitting close to Howe and I saw that her hand was holding his. It made me think of Judie. I asked Gerda whether she was all right.

“Ja. I think so. But she is not very happy.” She peered at me uncertainly in the half light. “It is not very nice, her position, I think. Also she feel you must do something. You make her speak to the men. She have to bare her soul in front of them all, so that they will follow you and not Bland. Now she think you must—” She stopped.

“Must what?” I asked.

“Please do not he offended, Duncan. But she feel... that you must justify the men’s faith, that you must take control. It... it is not that she do not believe in you. But you must try to understand. It is terrible for her, this position.”

“What does she expect me to do?”

“I do not know. You see, it is all a terrible muddle for her. Bland is her husband. She know he murder her father. She is in love with you, and Bland, whom you save from dying alone, now controls everything.”

“Gerda’s right,” Howe said, his words blurred through his thickened lips. “They’re both right. We’ve got to do something.”

“Yes, but what?” I demanded irritably. “We’ve no weapons. All together Bland has three rifles and about a thousand rounds of ammunition. Also, the men are well fed and for the first time in days they feel secure. When supplies get short and they get desperate, then maybe we can rush Bland.”

“Perhaps it is too late then,” Gerda said. “This berg may break out of the pack in the next storm. Then Bland will get away in one of the boats and stove in the rest. His one chance is to be the sole survivor.” It was as though Howe were speaking through her.

“We’ll just have to wait,” I answered stubbornly. “Don’t worry, time and the ice will wear him down. Anyway, I’m not risking anyone’s life, my own included, in some premature attempt to regain control of the stores. I suggest you all get some sleep now.”

When Gerda left, Howe produced an iron stanchion and with a file began working away at the tip of it. The rasp of the file and grinding of the ice seemed to tear at my nerves as I fell asleep.

I won’t attempt to give a day-to-day account of our sojourn on the iceberg. One day was very much like another. Technically I was in command. But it was not an easy command. Only the fact that they were Tönsberg men and believed what Judie had told them about her father’s death kept them with us. Tempering every decision was the fear that some of these men might break away and join Bland. Bland had the boats and the stores. They represented hope and a full belly. The men knew from Bonomi that in Bland’s camp food and tobacco were plentiful. And once the men started to break away, it would become a stampede. Orders became little more than requests, and all the time Judie kept to her tent and refused to speak to me.

I worried about Judie a lot. I worried about Howe too. He took no interest in the work of the camp and made no effort to help. He hardly stirred from the tent. And all the time he whittled away at the iron, working the end to a point with a double edge like a spear. The grating of the file rasped at my nerves till I could stand it no longer. “For God’s sake,” I snapped at him, “stop it! Do you hear?”

He stared at me sullenly and said, “What would you do if Bland had killed your father? “And then, as though he’d been bottling it up all inside him, he started to tell me about Nordahl; how he’d come to see him at Newcastle; how he’d bought him a boat when he was twenty-one; how he’d taken him out to Grytviken for a season. “If I’d been his legitimate son he couldn’t have done more for me. And then, after the war, he gave me this job. Do you think I don’t know what I have to do? I tell you. I’ll kill Bland. I’ll kill the—”

“Shut up, do ye hear!” McPhee shouted, at the end of his patience.

But Howe’s voice went on and on, talking about killing, eternally talking about killing. I fell asleep to the drone of his voice and woke in the morning to the rasp of the file.

I told Gerda what he was up to, but whenever she came into the tent he hid the stanchion under his blankets. When she asked about it, his face puckered up like that of a kid about to cry. He hadn’t wanted her to know. I saw the struggle going on inside him between his love of her and the need to justify his existence by avenging the one man he’d loved. He wasn’t really sane. Every flicker of emotion was mirrored instantly in his features. And when Gerda took the wretched thing away from him, he behaved like a kid whose favorite toy has been confiscated. He had it back by evening, and was filing at it with desperate energy, till the rasp of it drove us nearly crazy and McPhee tore the iron out of his hands and flung it out over the ledge to the ice below.

Howe burst into tears then. But by next day he was at work on another stanchion. By then we were too tired to care, and the rasp of the file seemed to merge with the grinding of the ice as we fell asleep in a coma of exhaustion.

It was on February seventeenth that we established ourselves on the iceberg. A period of fairly good weather followed, and to keep the men constructively occupied and to give them some constant glimmer of hope, however slight, I set them to work cutting steps in the side of the berg.

We maintained a constant watch, and each day this lookout was posted higher and higher as we laboriously cut our way upward, until at last our lookout post was on the flat top of the berg. This was at about 120 feet above the pack.

On February twenty-third shortly before midday I was dragged from my tent by an excited lookout. “There is smoke, Kaptein,” he said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Vestover,” was his reply.

I climbed the hundred and forty-seven steps to the lookout, and there, just to the south of west, was a great column of smoke. It could have been frost smoke. But that night, when the sun dipped just below the horizon, we could see a red glow under the smoke. The whole camp was in an uproar of excitement. The sudden thought of rescue was in everyone’s mind. It was a hard thing for me to have to tell them that the only thing it could possibly be was the crew of the Southern Cross igniting the oil they had pumped out of the ship, as a guiding beacon to the rescue ships. But even that didn’t damp their spirits. If the survivors of the Southern Cross had decided to make a signal, then it must surely mean I that there were rescue ships in the vicinity.

For two days everyone was cheerful and the talk was all of rescue. Then the gale hit us. It came up out of the southwest and flung itself on us with a banshee howl that drowned the constant thunder of the breaking ice, seeming to pin us by its very weight to the ice walls of the berg.

When the storm broke, our ledge was facing straight into it. Our situation would have been bad enough down on the ice. But up there on an exposed ledge we got the full force of the wind. And with the wind came sleet and snow. It was terrifying — the bitter cold and the constant noise, the inability to breathe outside our tents and the lack of hot food.

No one spoke of rescue any more. In fact, we hardly spoke at all. We were glued to the face of the berg by the weight of the wind, like flies on a flypaper, and the snow piled up round us and froze, so that there was no longer a ledge. Drawing rations from Bland each day became a major expedition. We lost a man during this storm. He went out with two others and never returned. They were Tauer III men, all of them, and though I questioned them later, I never really got to the bottom of it. I think what really happened was that they went down there with the intention of deserting our camp for Bland s, only to find that Bland didn’t want them. That one of them disappeared over the edge was, I believe, an accident. At any rate, the two who came back suddenly became violently anti-Bland and infected their whole tent.

For six days we lay in a coma of cold and hunger, hardly daring to go out, the tents overcrowded, insanitary and wholly covered by a mixture of snow and ice. On the sixth day all was suddenly quiet. The wind had gone. And on that day, the men, led by the two survivors of that trip to the lower camp, complained to me about the amount of rations Bland had issued. They were getting desperate. Bonomi had told them that food was still plentiful in the lower camp. I said I’d go down and talk to Bland himself.

Howe dragged me aside then. “This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said.

But I knew what that would mean. “If we let them run amok like that,” I said, “they’ll pillage the stores.”

“It’s the chance we’ve been waiting for,” he insisted. His eyes were feverishly bright.

“No,” I said.

I went down the ledge before he could argue further. Bonomi was standing by the barricade of frozen snow that marked the boundary between the two camps. I called to him. “I want to speak to Bland,” I said.

He put his finger to his lips. “I wish to speak with you.”

“Well, what is it?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk to him. I felt that he was a toady, and he looked sleek and well fed by comparison with the wraithlike figures who had crowded round me a moment ago, demanding more food.

“I wish you to know that Bland is becoming frightened,” he said. “All the time I am telling him how the men are getting desperate and how they believe he killed Nordahl and rammed your ship. At first he would tell me to shut up. Once he strike me in anger. Now he sits morose and uneasy, and all the time I am telling him how desperate the men are become. I do not think he sleep well any more.”

“Is this true, Bonomi?” I demanded.

“Do I trouble to tell it to you if it is not true? I tell you, he is becoming desperate. He is hoping all the time that the iceberg break out of the pack. The storm makes him hopeful. But now he no longer have any hope of that. I think he abandon the camp soon. There is only twenty-five more days of food left and he does not dare to reduce the rations any more.”

“Go and tell him I want a word with him,” I ordered.

He hesitated, looking a little crestfallen. I think he had expected me to congratulate him on his Machiavellian campaign.

Perhaps I should have, for when Bland came up the slope toward me, I saw his confidence was broken. He looked well fed, but his eyes were sunk in their sockets and his body seemed slack. His gaze did not easily meet mine.

“Well?” he said.

“The men are complaining about the rations,” I said.

“Let them complain,” he said.

“They’re getting desperate,” I told him. “If you’re not careful, they’ll rush the stores. You know what that means, don’t you, Bland?”

He passed his tongue quickly over his chapped lips. “I’ll shoot anyone who attempts to rush us. Tell them that, Craig. And tell them also that it’s not my fault we’re short of food.”

“They’ll believe that when they know that you’re on the same scale of rations as they are,” I answered. “How many days’ supply is left? Bonomi says only twenty-five.”

“Damn that little rat,” he muttered. “He talks too much.”

“Is that correct, Bland?”

“Yes. They’ll get the present scale of rations for twenty-five more days. That’s all. Tell them that.”

I made a quick mental calculation of the quantity of food four men, unrationed, would consume in that period. “I want thirty days’ rations for my men, three boats, together with our full share of stores and navigating equipment, by nightfall,” I said.

He stared at me, and I saw he was scared at my tone. “If you’re not careful, Craig, I’ll cut off rations completely.”

“If what I’ve asked for isn’t ready at this barrier by eighteen hundred hours tonight, I won’t answer for the consequences. That’s an ultimatum,” I added, and left him to think over what I’d said. If Bonomi had told the truth, and it certainly looked like it from Bland’s manner, then he’d do as I’d demanded.

I told the men what I’d done. For the first time in days I saw them grinning. “But it doesn’t mean the end of rationing,” I warned them. “It just means that we shall control our own rationing.”

The men gathered in hungry groups at the snow barrier. I saw Bland watching them uneasily. Just after midday the men cheered. Down in the lower camp Bland’s two mates and Bonomi had started humping stores. Bland himself kept guard with his rifle. We broke down the snow barrier, and the boats and stores were run into the upper camp. I put McPhee in charge of stores and Gerda in charge of food. Without Gerda, I think the men would have broken into the food in one glorious orgy. We were all desperately hungry.

The end of the month came and went with only the entries in my log to mark the passage of time. There was a period of darkness at night now, and each day this period lengthened with amazing rapidity. But though the weather was calmer, in ten days I managed to shoot the sun only once. My calculations gave me a position of 63 31 S. 31 06 W., just about 230 miles nor’nor’east of the position at which we had abandoned the Hval IV. It gives some idea of the rate of drift.

All this time Judie was a source of worry. Her attitude was an additional weight on my mind, so that I found it very hard to shake off the increasing periods of depression. She hadn’t spoken to me since the day we had reached the ledge. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, into a state of more or less blank misery. Gerda told me that she sometimes woke up in the night to find Judie crying and murmuring her father’s name.

“You must do something,” Gerda said to me one day. “If you do not, I think she will just fade away.” That was on March eighth. I went to Judie’s tent and tried to speak to her. She looked pale and thin, and stared at me as though she didn’t recognize me. I told Gerda to feed her some of the precious meat extract that had been included among the rations Bland had handed over to us. I left the tent in a mood of utter despair.

That was the day the aircraft flew over us. It was an American plane — the star markings were plainly visible as it passed over at about 500 feet. We had nothing to signal with, and half blanketed in snow on the sheer flank of the iceberg, it was hardly surprising that they did not see us. We piled inflammable stores together and kept constant watch in a fever of excitement and renewed hope. Two days later we saw another plane, away to the south. I picked it up in the glasses, but it was too far for our smoke to be visible and I would not give the order to ignite our precious reserves of fuel. Sleet and snow followed and we never saw another glimpse of the search planes. The monotony of hunger, cold and dying hope settled on the camp.

There were no storms now. Just the everlasting glare of low clouds and the night lengthening with the increasing cold. The steadily falling temperature was magnified by lack of food and our decreasing resistance. The men no longer looked hungrily at the lower camp, for through Bonomi we knew that their ration scale was as low as ours. Daily I checked the stores and watched our meager reserves dwindle. The lookout no longer searched the sky for planes, but peered at the ice through eyes inflamed by the constant glare, searching for some sign of life — seal or penguin, anything that would do for food. The movement of the berg through the ice gradually slowed. Everything was much quieter; the silence of death seemed to be settling over us.

March nineteenth carries the following entry in my log:

Reduced rations still further. Grieg dead. Broken rib probably pierced his lung. Has been weakening for a long time. Slipped his body over the edge as though burying at sea, none of us having the strength to cut a grave in the snow, which is hard like ice. Very cold. Wind has dropped and iceberg now stationary in pack. No hope now of breaking out to open sea.

I knew it was time for the last desperate effort I had been planning. Gerda apparently had the same thought. She came to my tent the next morning. As she sat there in the dim light I was surprised to see how much weight she had lost. Howe was with her, thin as a wraith under the bulk of his clothes, his ugliness lost in the ascetic sunken appearance of his features.

“Duncan, it is time we do something,” Gerda said. “We cannot just stay here waiting for death.”

I nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said.

“Anything is better than to die without effort. I think soon I go to join my father.” She paused and then said, “It is quiet now. We can go down onto the ice. The Southern Cross was per’aps fifteen, not more than twenty miles from us when she sink. Per’aps my father is alive. I do not know. But I must go and see.”

“You realize we’ve drifted nearly two hundred and fifty miles from the place where the Southern Cross went down?”

“Ja, ja. But they also will have drifted. I think perhaps we do not find them. But I must try.”

“Don’t forget we’ve been on this iceberg,” I said. “We’ve been moving steadily through the pack for days. Suppose there are some survivors, they’ll be a lot more than twenty miles away. You’d never make it. You’re too weak.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I also think they will be a long way away. Also, we cannot be sure in what direction they now are. But I must go. Perhaps I am too weak, as you say. But it is the spirit that is important. My spirit is strong. I shall go to search for my father.”

There was no point in arguing. I could see she had made up her mind. “And Howe?” I asked.

Her face betrayed no emotion. She knew it meant his death. He would die first and she would have to watch him die. But she never flinched. She just said, “Walter comes with me.”

I saw that they had been over this together. In their faces was a sort of glow of exaltation. I almost loved Howe’s ugliness in that moment, for he wasn’t ugly, he was beautiful. His spirit, purged of all bitterness and cynicism by Gerda’s love, shone through his features and transformed them.

I lay back, not saying anything, but going over in my mind something that had been there for a long time. At length I sat up. I was looking at Howe, wondering how he’d take it, hating myself for having to do it. “Walter,” I said, using his Christian name for the first time, “you’re not strong, physically. Whatever your strength of will, you know you will die before you reach the position where the Southern Cross survivors might be. You know that, don’t you?”

His eyes clouded. The glow died out of him. He knew the drift of my words. He nodded slowly, and there was a queer resignation in his face. It was as though I’d killed his spirit. “You think I should say good-by to Gerda here?”

“Are you prepared to if it would give her a chance of reaching her father, and give us all just a chance of preserving life a little longer?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice scarcely audible.

I got up then and crawled out of the tent, Gerda clutching frantically at me, pleading to know what I intended to do. I think she was a little scared at the thought of making the journey without Howe. He was now the source of her strength. I said, “Wait,” and called the men together — those that could still crawl out of the tents. The air was cold and still as they assembled round me.

“You know there is food for only a few days more?” I said.

They nodded.

“I checked the stores this morning.” I went on. “On our present rations there is food for seventeen days more. That is all. After that there is nothing. We have seen no sign of any living thing in all this time. Unless we get food and fuel, we shall die.” They stood there, dumb — stunned by having what they all knew put bluntly to them.

“Gerda Petersen wishes to try to reach the position of the Southern Cross,” I went on. “She wishes to know whether her father is alive. She has the right to go, if anyone does.” They growled agreement, waiting for me to continue.

I then told them what I planned to do. “The Southern Cross unloaded stores on the ice before she went down,” I said. “She had a big cargo of whale meat. This and blubber would have been transferred to the ice. If there are any survivors, then they will have meat and fuel. I intend to try to reach them. It is a desperate chance, and you must decide whether you agree to my going. We have no hope of reaching them in our present condition. The party, which should consist of three, must be properly fed for at least two days. That and the rations they will have to take with them will cut your own food supplies by about three days. It is up to you to decide whether you wish to take this chance.”

The men nodded and began to talk among themselves. Gerda stepped forward and said, “Whatever you decide, I must go. I do not need your food.”

The men stared at her. Then one old man from her father’s ship said, “We will not let you go without food. Hval Four will give you part of their rations.”

The men of her own crew nodded agreement, their eyes kindled, not by hope, but by their sacrifice for something they thought right and good.

McPhee stepped forward and said, “Will ye tell us, sir, who ye’ll be taking with ye?”

“Yes,” I said. “Kalstad, if he agrees to come.” And then I added, “Before you decide, let me warn you that there is little hope in this, and we shall almost certainly die on the way. But it is a chance, and we should take that chance, however slight, before we are too weak to attempt it.”

“I will kom,” said Kalstad.

“Good,” I said, and asked the men for their decision. They didn’t say anything, but I saw that one of the stewards had gone to prepare a meal. They were all grinning excitedly, like children. They made of their sacrifice a sort of festival. They crowded round the cook pot, advising, offering more food. Gerda was crying, her eyes starry, and she went among them, thanking them, kissing them in her excitement and her sense of their innate kindness. She thought they were doing it for her, and not for any desperate hope of relief — and I’m not at all sure she wasn’t right.

So it was arranged, and for two days the three of us fed like fighting cocks.

I could literally feel the strength flowing back into me. Depression was thrown off. I even had some hope. And the cold receded. Kalstad grew taller and more cheerful. And as we were fed up, the rest of the men seemed to shrink into sunken-eyed ghosts by comparison.

On the evening of the first day on full rations, something happened which should have warned me what Bland was planning. Bonomi came into our camp and asked to speak to me. He looked shrunken and cold and very frightened. He pleaded to come and join our camp. “They eat everything,” he cried wildly. “They will give me nothing, and they eat and eat! Soon there is nothing left! I am ’ungry and I do not wish to be cook to them no more.

“Better go and talk to Bland. He holds your rations.”

“But he will give me nothing.

“It’s a matter between you and Bland,” I repeated. “Go and sort it out with him.”

I am afraid I was rather brusque. My mind was on more vital things than Bonomi’s rations. That morning we completed the building of a really good light sledge. We turned in at midday and the evening meal was served to us in our blanket sleeping bags. One more day at Iceberg Camp and then we should be out on our own, trekking across illimitable wastes of ice, searching for the Southern Cross camp. We didn’t know where it was. We didn’t even know whether it existed. We would just have to go on and on until the end came.

I was wakened very early the following morning by somebody shaking me and calling my name. For a moment I thought it was time for us to leave them. But I realized that it was not until the next day, the twenty-second, that we were starting out. I opened my eyes to find Bonomi bending over me. “Captain! Captain! They ’ave gone! They ’ave gone and they ’ave leave me nothing! Nothing at all!” He was excited and scared.

I sat up. “Who’s gone? What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Bland!” he cried. “Bland is gone, and he take all the rations, everything. He is down on the ice — he and a and Keller! Come and see if you do not believe!”

I crawled out of my tent and stood in the cold stillness of the ledge, shielding my eyes from the glare and trying to see what Bonomi was pointing to.

I followed Bonomi’s linger and saw three figures moving across the ice — three tiny figures dragging a sledge. They had their backs to the sun and they were headed toward the position where the Southern Cross might be expected to be. I ought to have realized what it had meant when Bonomi had said that Bland and the two mates were eating full rations. Bland had finally despaired of the iceberg breaking through to the open sea and had started westward in search of the Southern Cross camp or the rescue ships which might still lie searching on the edge of the pack.

Bonomi’s excitement had roused the camp. One by one, the men stumbled out and stared at the three figures moving slowly across the ice below. I remember one man said, “I think perhaps you do not go now, captain. They have had more food, those three. If anyone reach the Southern Cross they will. There is good hope now.”

Howe heard him, and he said, “If Bland reaches the Southern Cross camp no rescue party will come here. He’s gambling on being the sole survivor. That’s the only way he can save himself from being hanged for murder.” He turned to me. “Craig,” he said, “you’ve just got to get there. Don’t let him beat you on the last stretch. You and Gerda have got to reach the Southern Cross camp.”

It meant that we should have to follow Bland’s tracks. I had no illusions about the man. Somewhere along the route he would abandon Vaksdal and Keller. And if he did reach the Southern Cross camp and we didn’t, then there’d be no rescue party for the survivors on the iceberg.

The three of us remained in the tent all day, conserving our energies and eating enormously. As we lay there, warm and well fed, the iceberg assumed the friendliness of a home. In contrast, the trek that was to begin the next day seemed more and more frightening.

That night, shortly after our evening meal, the flap of the tent was pulled back and Judie’s voice, very low, almost scared, said, “Can I come in a moment, Duncan?”

She crawled in, caught hold of my hand, and fell, sobbing, into my arms, her cold cheek against mine, her body trembling. At length she said. “I have been so stupid. All this time — I have wasted it, lying in my tent being miserable. And now—” She kissed me and lay close against me, quietly crying. It was as though Bland’s departure had freed her from the thing that had lain so heavy on her mind.

At length she said, “You must sleep now. I shan’t watch you leave tomorrow. I’ll say good-by here.” She kissed me, her fingers caressing my beard. Then she said, “I don’t think we shall meet again, Duncan — not in this world. Will you please remember that I... love you always? And I’ll be with you out there... if it helps.” She stretched her hand across to Gerda. “Good-by. Gerda,” she said. “I wish I were coming with you to find my father.” She kissed Gerda. Then she kissed me again. The flap of the tent dropped back. She was gone.

Gerda touched my hand. “You must get through. Duncan... for her. You must go on, whatever happens. You understand?”

I didn’t say anything. I understood what she meant. Decisions like that couldn’t be taken in the comfort of a full stomach and a warm tent. That was for the next day and the days and days of weary ice that lay ahead.

At last the world was silent and still. There was nothing but the ice and the cold. The awful polar winter was upon us, and we were marooned at the southern end of the earth.

Our mother ship, the Southern Cross, had been crushed in the ice. The survivors had removed plenty of stores to their camp, but the little group of which I, Duncan Craig, was one, was starving. We could only guess in which direction the Southern Cross camp lay. We had been aboard small whale-catching vessels — Judie Bland, her despicable husband Erik, Gerda Petersen, Walter Ho we and I — until Erik’s mad hatred had led him to wreck us. Bland had murdered Bernt Nordahl, his wife’s and Walter Howe’s father, and, rather than return to civilization and face justice, he chose to make us all die together on the ice, with the crews of our vessels. To make us still more helpless, Bland had the only guns in the party. We had worked together in the desperate hours when the icebergs had been about to crush us — in fact, Bland had quite heroically led the way for us to get on one of the surging ice mountains. But now that the gale had abated and the ice froze us in, he wanted to destroy us.

The only chance was for one of us to strike out for the Southern Cross camp. It was decided that I should go. But Bland beat us to it. He set out on skis, with two of the crew. The rest of us could not stop him. All I could do was follow his tracks, and hope to avoid his bullets.

Gerda and Kalstad, a crew member, were to accompany me. We lay in our tents, conserving our energy for this last desperate dash in the morning. Judie came to me and kissed me good-by.

“I do not think we shall meet again, Duncan — not in this world,” she said.

Conclusion

The next morning as soon as it was light, we started out. We carried food for six days, a little tobacco, a pair of skis, one length of rope, a small portable stove with a little fuel, tent, blanket sleeping bags and a change of clothes. All this was piled on one sledge. The morning was very still and our breath hung round us like a cloud of steam. The sun came up as we went down the ledge and the world turned gold with an orange band along the horizon. Most of the men turned out to see us off. They came with us as far as the bottom of the ledge and a ragged cheer went up as we lowered ourselves to the broken surface of the pack ice. Our sledge was lowered after us, and then McPhee, who had climbed down with us to help get the sledge onto the ice, gripped my hand.

“Good luck, sir,” he said.

“We’ll be back with whale meat within a fortnight,” I said. I spoke loudly and with a confidence I did not feel in order to encourage the men. “If we’re not back by then.” I said to him privately, “do the best you can.”

“Och, ye’ll find ’em,” he said. “Dinna worry a boot us. Maybe the berg will break out into the open sea yet.”

I clapped him on the shoulder and picked up the sledge ropes. Gerda was saying a last farewell to Howe, who’d scrambled down beside us. Kalstad and I started out with the sledge along the track that Bland and his party had blazed.

Howe called after me, “Craig, you’ve got to get through! If Bland gets through alone—” He didn’t finish, but I knew what was in his mind.

I waved my hand in acknowledgment and Kalstad and I began to wind our way through the hummocks of snow-covered ice. Gerda caught us up, and in a moment the three of us were swallowed into a strange world of ice — an iridescent fairyland of silence.

As we wound our way through the great humps of ice we caught occasional glimpses of the iceberg. Once I saw a figure I thought was Judie waving to me. I waved back and then turned my face resolutely to the west. It was surprising how quickly the iceberg was lost to view in that broken plain.

I am familiar, as I’ve no doubt you are, with the great ice treks of polar exploration. In execution and design, our trek across the ice was in no way comparable. I realize that. But in fairness to my companions — both of whom are dead — I must make it clear that what we suffered was little short of what the great explorers suffered in the most desperate of their journeys. We weren’t explorers. We were ship-wrecked sailors with shipboard clothes, and sledges made out of bits of packing cases, an old piece of canvas for a tent and short rations. Our only goal was to save our own lives and those of the men we’d left behind on the iceberg. We were going to try to find the survivors of a ship. We weren’t sure whether there were any survivors and we weren’t sure of the position in which it had gone down. In fact we were on a forlorn hope — a last desperate bid for life in which I don’t think any of us really believed.

Finally, there were none of the smooth miles of snow to be found on the Ross Barrier or the high land in toward the South Pole. The area across which we were trekking was the area through which our own iceberg had smashed its way, leaving chaos in its wake — an area of jumbled, broken, jagged ice in which every step forward was a struggle. The skis were useless. We trekked on foot, one of the party path-finding, the two others dragging the sledge.

In four days, trekking fourteen hours a day, we made about thirty miles. It doesn’t sound like much, but though the weather was good, the going was incredibly bad. Also, of course, we were weak after our long period of malnutrition, exposure and inactivity. I doubt whether we would have made thirty miles in four days if we hadn’t been following Bland’s sledge.

It was strange about those sledge tracks. At first, we had regarded Bland as the enemy, something to be beaten in addition to the ice. We’d no gun. If we caught up with Bland he could kill us if he wanted to, and if there was any chance of reaching the Southern Cross survivors or being rescued by the search ships, I knew that that was what he would do, just as he would have to get rid of his two companions. And yet, though we never actually mentioned it, I’m certain none of us, after the first few days, would have thought of turning aside from the tracks and striking out on our own. Soon we were following them blindly, not caring where they led, buoyed up by the constant hope that somewhere ahead of us, around the next ice hillock, over the next limit of our horizon, they would connect us with the outside world.

On the fourth day, Gerda began to show signs of weakening. Kalstad was limping from a swollen ankle and I was beginning to feel a stabbing pain in my chest. We made little more than two miles that day, the snow having softened, with the result that we sank through the honeycombed ice. Up to that time, I think we had been going faster than Bland, for early that morning we had passed his fourth camp site. It makes a lot of difference, in the conditions we were experiencing, if someone has blazed the trail for you.

Next day Gerda was weaker. She showed signs of dysentery. Kalstad and I were also suffering from diarrhea and beginning to weaken. Also the constant glare without sun goggles was inflaming our eyes, so that it was difficult to see. The snow held up crisp that day and we pressed on fast, using up in a savage effort the last reserves of energy. It was the first day of really good going and we had to take advantage of it.

By midday I think we had made as much as ten or eleven miles. After eating a biscuit and two pieces of sugar each, we pushed on. The sun became a pale disk shining wanly through a curtain of mist. The air became colder and the world we moved through lost its color. It was less painful to the eyes, but it was also less friendly. I think we must have gone on to the limit of endurance. And then suddenly we knew we could go no farther and we pitched camp.

In the stillness of early evening I thought I heard voices. Imagination plays hellish tricks. That night as we lay in the tent, Gerda whispered, “Duncan, it is no good. You must leave me behind.”

I remember experiencing a terrible sense of shock. I hadn’t realized how near the limit of endurance the day’s trek had brought her. I remember I shook my head angrily. “We’ll go on together,” I said.

She caught hold of my arm. “Please,” she whispered. Her voice, though weak, was urgent. “It was selfish of me to come. I should have known I have not a man’s strength. It is your duty to go on without me. I shall hinder you, and always you must think of all those peoples on the iceberg.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said. And I got close against her, so that if she moved I should know. I was afraid she might walk out into the snow.

Sometime in the night the wind rose and by morning it was blowing a blizzard. I looked out of a comer of the tent into a gray, swirling void. Then I turned quickly to see if Gerda was still there. She was, thank God, for we could not move, and the enforced rest might enable her to make another day’s march.

For three days the blizzard continued, and in those three days we finished all our food with the exception of five biscuits and fifteen lumps of sugar. The tent was in perpetual darkness. It was like being buried alive.

The night it stopped snowing we smoked our last cigarette. In the gray light of morning I wrote in my log:

There is now no hope and no reason to go on. The others. I think, realize this now. I shall not abandon Gerda. There is no point.

We made an early start, wishing to take full advantage of what little energy we had been able to store up by lying still. The snow was feet deep. I made Gerda put on the skis. The snow was crisp and fairly firm, and we moved off with a feeling almost of cheerfulness. And around the first snow hillock we came upon the trampled snow of a camp. It had been evacuated that morning, for, beyond the camp, sledge and ski tracks marked the new snow, stretching out ahead of us again and disappearing round a cornice of blue, snow-free ice.

“Bland?” Gerda asked as she stopped beside me.

I nodded. So I really had heard voices that night the blizzard started. It was incredible. For three days we’d been camped within a hundred yards of Bland and his party, and not known it.

“They’re probably not more than an hour ahead of us,” I said.

“What will happen when we catch them up?”

“I don’t know,” I answered her. “I don’t think it matters much.” I didn’t think there was much chance of our catching up with them. There were three of them to pull the sledge, and both Bland and Vaksdal were big men.

So we went on, following the sledge marks through the fresh snow. Kalstad and I pulled the sledge and Gerda kept up with us easily on the skis. For two or three hours we made good progress. But about midday the sun came through. The glare was frightful and soon the snow began to soften and the going became harder as our boots broke through the surface crust. In some of the drifts we struggled forward through sifting snow that was well over our knees and had the consistency of rice grains. It took too much of our small reserve of energy and I made camp.

When darkness fell it was terribly cold and none of us slept very well. The cold seemed to eat into our undernourished bodies. Gerda suffered agonies of pain in her stomach and Kalstad complained of frostbite due to the fact that his boots, worn by the ice, were no longer watertight.

The next morning was cold and cheerless, with low clouds and a biting wind out of the south. We were late in starting. Gerda had no energy, no desire to move. When we did start, we made good progress, for the cold wind had frozen the thawed snow of the previous day into an ice-hard crust. Ahead of us Bland’s sledge tracks unwound steadily like a line meandering through the snow hills of the burned-up pack.

“Soon we kom to their camp, I think, ja?”

Kalstad was right. The snow hills gradually flattened out until finally we emerged into an almost flat desert of white where the pack had had time to settle before becoming frozen solid. And in this dead plain we saw the sledge tracks running straight, like parallel lines drawn by a ruler to a black patch.

“That is their camp!” Kalstad shouted to me. “And they are still there! I see some peoples moving!”

I could see a dark patch in the virgin white of the snow, a patch that danced and wavered. I don’t know why we pressed on so hard then. We didn’t really want to join up with Bland. It wouldn’t help us. And yet the mere thought of contact with other human beings in that grim waste of frozen snow spurred us forward.

“Your eyes are better than mine, Kalstad,” I said. “Are they striking camp?”

“I think so,” he replied. “Jo. There is no tent.” And a moment later he said, in a puzzled tone, “I do not see more than two people.”

“Only two?” I screwed up my eyes in an agony of concentration. The dark patch in the snow wavered and separated into two figures. There seemed to lie nothing else but those two men. We threw ourselves on the sledge ropes. And then faint across the frozen waste came a hail in Norwegian. We could see the two figures waving to us now. We shouted back and ran, slithering on the ice-hard snow, toward them.

“It is Vaksdal and Keller!” Kalstad gasped.

“No sign of Bland?” I asked him.

“No, no. Only Vaksdal and Keller.”

They came out to meet us, shouting and cheering and waving their arms. But when they were about a hundred yards from us they stopped and were suddenly exhausted, gasping for breath. They made no move to help us. They just stood and stared at us dumbly. Vaksdal looked thinner and gaunter, and he had no boots on. Keller also had no boots. He had a knife and a piece of leather in his hand.

“Where’s Bland?” I gasped, dropping the sledge rope and staggering slightly, now that the impetus of moving forward no longer held me in a straight line.

“Bland?” Vaksdal’s eyes suddenly blazed from their deep sockets. “He is gone on. We thought you were a rescue party who have found our sledge track. How much food do you have?”

“None.” I said. “A few pieces of sugar and a biscuit or two.” I sat down on the sledge. Now that I’d stopped, exhaustion was taking hold of me. “What did you say about Bland?” I asked, trying to concentrate my mind.

“He is gone.” Vaksdal’s voice was angry. “You are right, captain. You are all right, and Keller and I are fools. He is left us. This morning we wake to find the wind blowing on us and Bland pulling the sledge out of the camp with the tent thrown on top of it. We shout to him and he just laugh at us. We start to follow. But he has take our boots. My gun is gone, but Keller has his inside his blankets. He try to shoot then. But Bland is too far. We have nothing — no tent, no food, no boots, nothing. The swine have left us to die.”

So it had happened just as Howe said it would. He’d used them as pack mules, and then he’d abandoned them in order to have the faint chance of coming out alive as the sole survivor.

“How much food had he?” I asked Vaksdal.

“For one man, perhaps three or four days. But very little, you understand.”

“And he’s weak?”

“Ja. Too weak to pull the sledge alone for very far.”

“All right,” I said. “Start pitching camp, Kalstad.” The skis — that was the answer. I turned to speak to Gerda. But she wasn’t there. Gerda was lying in the snow several hundred yards behind us. I don’t think I knew how exhausted we were until Kalstad and I turned back for Gerda. It was only about three hundred yards, but it seemed miles that we dragged the empty sledge before we reached her crumpled figure lying face down in the snow.

She was alive, but quite unconscious. It was as much as the two of us could manage to lift her body onto the sledge. Her weight made a vast difference and I thought we’d never reach the spot where I’d off-loaded our gear. I don’t think we’d have got her there, but for the fact that Vaksdal and Keller came out to help us.

We set up camp then and got some water boiling and made some beef tea. Gerda’s return to consciousness was slow. The beef tea she retched up. But I managed to get a little of our precious brandy down her throat. And when she could speak, she kept on saying, “You must leave me now, Duncan. You must go on. You must go on.” Her voice was so urgent that she exhausted herself. To keep her quiet, I told her how Bland had abandoned his two companions and gone on alone with all their stores. She didn’t say anything when I’d finished, but just lay there with her eyes closed, her face gray and puffy. I thought she hadn’t heard. Then her hand touched my arm.

“One of you must go on,” she whispered faintly. “Take the skis and go on. He must not get out alone. There are all those men on the iceberg.”

I said, “Don’t worry. One of us will go on.”

She seemed to relax then, and I think she went to sleep. Kalstad pulled at my arm. “Her spirit has outrun her body, I think,” he said. “She is like a horse who is too willing.”

He was telling me she was going to die. I felt the tears at the back of my eyes. I should have known how terribly driven she had been to keep up with us and not be a burden. And still she had had energy to think of us and of those others back on that ledge. I crawled out of the tent. One of us must go after Bland. I thought immediately of Vaksdal He was the strongest. And he could be trusted, now that he knew the sort of man Bland was. But I soon discovered that in removing their boots. Bland had as effectually stopped them from following him as if he’d shot them down as they lay in the snow. Whoever went after Blind must go on skis, and that meant well-fitting boots. Kalstad’s feet and mine were much smaller than Vaksdal’s or Keller’s. To lend them our boots was, therefore, out of the question. The choice lay then between Kalstad and me, and Kalstad was suffering from frostbite.

There was nothing for it. I would have to take what little rations remained and go on myself. “Get your rifle, Keller,” I said, “and take some ammunition.” I packed a rucksack, and when I was all ready to go I crawled into the tent. I don’t know whether Gerda was asleep or unconscious. She was quite still and her eyes were closed. I bent and kissed her. She moved slightly. Perhaps she knew I’d kissed her. At any rate, I’m glad I did, and I hope she knew — knew that I was saluting a very brave woman.

I went out into the biting cold of the wind then. Kalstad helped me to fix the skis. I slung Keller’s rifle over my shoulder. Then Kalstad lifted the rucksack on my shoulders — the rucksack that contained for him all that, was left of life. I was leaving them nothing but the remains of the beef extract and the stove with the last of the fuel. He clapped me on the back and said, “Good luck, captain.” I gripped his hand. Vaksdal and Keller looked on, sullen and morose.

“You are in command now, Kalstad.” I said. “Look after Gerda Petersen.”

I turned then and set out along the track of Bland’s sledge. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to lie reminded of the pathetic loneliness of that last camp. Gerda and the rest would die there. And somewhere out along the sledge track I was following, I, too, should die. I kept my eyes on those ruler-straight tracks and concentrated on the thought of vengeance.

It was surprising how much easier and quicker I found it, traveling on skis. The surface of the snow was crisp and firm. The skis slid forward with a crunching hiss, and only the constant driving of arms on sticks was tiring. And the going was over flat, snow-covered ice.

Bland had, I reckoned, a three-hour start on me. I had left the others shortly after midday. Presuming that I could travel twice as fast as a man dragging a sledge, I should be up with him about three in the afternoon. I had, therefore, only a few hours’ margin of daylight. If I wasn’t in possession of Bland’s tent by nightfall, then I should never see another day. A night in the open would kill me. I don’t think I really thought about this. But it was there at the back of my mind, a spur to my body, for I knew that if I was to achieve my purpose, it must be done before nightfall.

Ahead of me the sky was dark, like the beginning of night. As I slipped through this unending world of snow, the surface began to change. There were crevasses under the surface. Then I was in an area of open fissures, gaps too wide for the snow to bridge. The sledge tracks began to wind between these crevasses, and in one place I saw that Bland had had trouble getting his sledge across where the snow had crumbled into a gap.

It was shortly after two when I saw the first open water in weeks. It was like a black lake and clotted thickly with brash ice. I pressed on faster now, drawing on my last reserves of energy.

I wasn’t far out in my reckoning, for it was just after three when I sighted a small black dot moving ahead of me. For some time the sledge tracks had been winding among black pools of half-frozen brash toward a small berg caught in the pack, and it was against the sheer green slope of this berg that the figure showed like a small dot dancing in the white void. It was painful to try to keep my eyes on it, and dangerous, because it tended to make me lose my balance. After I’d had one fall through not watching my skis and had got up again with great difficulty, I ceased to worry about the mark ahead and concentrated on skiing as fast as possible.

He had almost reached the end of the berg when he saw me. He stopped, and then his voice reached me on the cold wind. He was shouting to me and waving his sticks. Just as his companions had done, he thought I was part of a rescue party.

I unslung my rifle then, cocked it and slithered forward with the ski sticks looped over one wrist. Now that the moment had come, I found my heart hammering wildly. I fought to steady myself as I went forward.

Something in the way I moved toward him must have warned him, for he suddenly stopped shouting and stood quite still, staring at me as I advanced on him. I was getting close now, and though the snow glare made it difficult for me to see, he was outlined against the final shoulder of the berg and a good target. But I was taking no chances. I closed on him steadily, just as I would have done on an enemy ship.

“Who are you?” His hail came to me quite clearly, and I realized I was getting into the shelter of the berg.

“Craig!” I yelled back, and there was an exultant feeling inside me, and I saw him stare at me for a moment and dive for the sledge and his gun. But he didn’t get up again, and a moment later the thin crack of a shot sounded across the snow. He was tiring from the shelter of the sledge. I turned then and circled to the west of him, cutting off his line of advance and reaching the shelter of the western end of the berg. He fired at me several times before I was out of sight, but I was a moving target and his bullets vanished into spice.

The snow was heaped in fantastic shapes round the berg and I moved steadily through the sheltering hummocks toward the final shoulder. And here, around the comer of a hollowed cliff, I saw Bland’s sledge deserted in the snow. He was in the cover of the broken ice close to the berg’s flank. I crept slowly forward. There was a crack of a shot and a puff of ice in my face. I felt blood flowing from a cut. I brushed it away and raised my gun. I could see him now, peering from behind a fluted column of ice, his gun raised. I was just about to fire when I saw something moving behind him. It was traveling fast across the snow with a strange undulating movement like a well-sprung sleigh. It was a big, ungainly animal, tawny — colored with brown spots, and although I’d never seen one before, I knew what it was. It was a sea leopard, after the killer whale the most dangerous inhabitant of the Antarctic.

Bland must have seen it at the same time, for his gun swung away from me, and I heard the sharp crack-crack as he fired. The huge beast did not check. He fired once more at point-blank range, and then it was on him. He staggered as he was home back, and then he fell with the beast on top of him.

I went toward him as quickly as I could over the uneven surface. Blood was staining the snow crimson at his aide. I saw the beast move, jerking as though injured. From a range of a few yards, I pumped a whole magazine into it. I went forward then. The beast was quite still, lying across Bland’s legs. I saw Bland move, trying to free himself. He still had his rifle gripped in his bands, and he was trying to work the bolt. I tore it from his grasp and threw it clear of us. Then I saw that the huge brute’s jaws were dripping blood and that there was a terrible wound in Bland’s side. He started to say something. Then he lost consciousness.

Looking down at him, with the big carcass of the sea leopard stretched across his legs, I suddenly realized what this meant. It was the end of Bland, and for us new hope. Here, stretched dead at my feet, was fresh meat and blubber. Here was life for Gerda and hope for the future. Somehow I’d got to go back along those weary miles loaded with meat and fat.

I got Bland’s sledge and dragged it up close to his laxly. As soon as I had erected the tent, I dug Bland’s legs out from under the sea leopard and got him into it. Then, when I had bandaged him as best I could, I got to work with my knife, and soon I had a blubber stove warming the tent and big steaks of juicy meat grilling in the smoke. Bland couldn’t eat, but I managed to feed him some of the hot blood. Meantime I ate more in a few minutes than I’d eaten in as many days. The blood seemed to give Bland strength, for once he shifted his position and asked who had left the iceberg with me. When I told him, he grinned and said, “Now we can all die in the snow together.” He seemed to relapse into unconsciousness then, and I lay wrapped in a blanket, unable to sleep for the gripping pins in my stomach caused by unaccustomed food.

In the darkness of the night I awoke suddenly with a feeling of being choked. I silt up, gasping for breath and racked by violent coughing. I didn’t know what had happened for a moment. Then I realized that the tent was filled with smoke. I turned toward Bland and found he wasn’t there. Through streaming eyes I saw an orange glow against the canvas of the tent. I crawled out. Flames were leaping up out of the snow, licking over the body of the sea leopard, reaching out with wind-fanned fingers toward the fabric of the tent, which was already blackened and charred at one side. Bland was in the middle of the flames, his face buried in the smoldering carcass, the snow steaming and beginning to form in crimson pools.

I pulled Bland clear and scooped up armfuls of snow, throwing it on the flames till they were completely smothered under a white drift. At first I thought Bland had tried to stop the fire. But as I was smothering it I saw an empty kerosene container and the stove, with the stopper of its fuel tank unscrewed, lying in the snow. I knew then that he’d started the fire, started it in order to burn the carcass, bum the tent with me in it. Both pairs of skis had been thrust well into the blaze and had been badly charred.

When the fire was out at last, I crawled, exhausted, back into the tent. To this day I don’t know whether Bland was dead when I dragged him clear of the fire he’d made. All I know is that he was dead and frozen stiff when I went outside the tent in the morning. For all I know, I killed him by leaving him out there. But I don’t care. I only know I was glad to find him dead.

Fortunately, I’d saved the skis in time. They were charred, but they were usable. I cooked myself a meal. Then I covered Bland with some snow and, leaving the tent standing, set out on the journey back, carrying Bland’s skis and enough meat and blubber to give the rest of the party a good meal.

The wind had swung round to the west and was blowing hard. The sledge tracks were still visible and I reached the other camp without mishap just after midday.

It was then that I received the most bitter blow of all that ghastly period. Gerda was dead. She had died in the night, never having regained consciousness since my departure. Kalstad showed me the mound of snow where they buried her, and I stood there in the wind and cried like a child.

“She look very happy when we bury her,” Kalstad said. “I think per’aps she find her father. If he is also dead, then it is per’aps best. She love her father very much.”

Kalstad had trekked out along the sledge route the previous day and found where Bland had buried his companions’ boots in the snow. We were able, therefore, to start out for the new camp as soon as we had had a meal. It was a nightmare journey. The ice was heaving under us, breaking into fissures and growling as the broken edges of floes ground together under their covering of snow.

But for the iceberg, I don’t think we should ever have found the sea leopard again, for by three o’clock we were struggling across a plain of virgin white, all traces of my ski tracks made only that morning having vanished. I saw the iceberg black against the pale circle of the westering sun and within an hour we had a blubber stove going and meat cooking.

At the time, I blamed Fate for what happened. But it was really my own fault. I should have remembered that there had been stretches of open water the previous day and realized how thin the ice was. We should have camped on the berg. But then I didn’t know that any of us had the strength to drag tent land stores and sledges up on to the higher ice.

All that night the wind howled with demoniac force. I slept fitfully, racked with pain, and conscious all the time of the increasing movement of the ice and the rising sound of the grinding floes. Toward morning I must have fallen into a heavy sleep, for I was wakened by the ice splitting with the crack of rifle fire.

In the gray light of early dawn I was horrified to see water slopping at the tent entrance. I put my head out of the tent. The scene had changed completely. In place of the flat white expanse of snow-covered ice, I found myself looking across a black expanse of brash-filled water. All around us the ice had broken up into separate floes, which drove against one another under the lash of the wind.

We were floating on a raft of ice not more than forty feet across, and we were in the middle of the open channel of water. The jagged edge of our floe fitted like a piece of jigsaw puzzle to the main floe from which it had cleaved. The spot was marked by our sledge and the carcass of the sea leopard. It was hard to see us drifting slowly away from all that meat. We had three or four pounds of the meat in the tent, which we were keeping thawed. But it wouldn’t last long. We were drifting away from the only source of life and strength we had.

I was just putting back the canvas to exclude the cold when I saw something — a fin moving stealthily through the water, slipping along like a black dhow sail, making scarcely a ripple. It was a killer whale. As though attracted by my gaze, it turned quickly and came straight toward our floe. The high dorsal fin passed out of my view, and a moment later I heard the great beast snorting on the other side of the canvas. It was an ugly, pig like sound, and deadly sinister. I waited, scarcely daring to breathe. The floe trembled as the monster skimmed beneath it. More snorting. I put back the canvas and lay down, rigid and trembling, waiting, tense, for the moment when the whale would see us and tip the floe over. That was what Gerda had said they did — peered over the edge of a floe and then tipped it up with their weight.

The snorting was close beside me now. I lay still, not waking the others. Better that they should not know till it happened. It would be over quicker for them that way.

The snorting went on for what seemed an eternity. Once the floe tilted, rocked violently, and I tensed, waiting for the sudden flurry of water, the cold and the snapping jaws. But the snorting died away. The floe rocked gently to the movement of the water. I relaxed slowly, and with relaxation came sleep, a queer half coma of things remembered and things imagined.

I woke suddenly to the soft grinding of ice on ice and a knocking, shuddering under the floe. For a moment I thought it was the killer whale back again. Then the soft grinding of the ice told its tale and I peered out, praying that we’d fetch up on the same side of the channel as our meat.

But fortune was against us. About a quarter of a mile of water separated us from the sledge and the sea leopard. Still, at least we had fetched up against a big, solid-looking floe. I woke the others and got them onto firm ice. There we repitched our camp and cooked a meal. And while we ate I racked my brains for a means of getting across the water to the sea-leopard meat.

But it was impossible. The wind had swung to the south and the gap between us and our old camp was widening all the time. I didn’t know whether to push on or wait in the hope that the gap would freeze over or the wind change. Anyway, Kalstad was delirious and seemed too weak to move, and I decided to remain, in the hope of being able to reach the carcass of the sea leopard the following morning.

At some point during that timeless day, Kalstad woke me. His eyes were very big and his face quite white. He wasn’t delirious any more, but he was shaking slightly and seemed possessed of some sort of fever.

“You must go on, captain,” he said. His voice was very faint.

I shook my head. I knew what he meant. His voice was merged with the memory of Gerda’s. “There’s no point,” I said.

“The others,” he whispered. “I shall die here. You must leave me and goon.”

“You’re not going to die,” I told him. But I didn’t believe it. I knew we were all going to die.

As night came on, we made a blubber fire, and though we practically choked ourselves with the acrid fumes, we managed to cook the rest of the meat. Kalstad refused to have any. Shortly after that I went to sleep. For the first time in days I slept like a log, without dreams or any disturbance. It was more a coma than sleep, for I was numb all over, with no feeling whatever in my feet.

When I awoke it was clear and sunny. A channel two miles wide separated us from the iceberg where the sea leopard lay. To the north and west the pack seemed to have closed again in a solid mass. When I crawled back into the tent again I saw that Kalstad was dead.

I roused the others, and we buried him there in the snow. For him the struggle was over. “Now we go on, ja?” Vaksdal had seen the wide channel of water. He accepted the loss of the sea leopard and the inevitability of going forward until we dropped. His eyes were running and horribly inflamed, so that they seemed rimmed by raw flesh. Both he and Keller were suffering from the beginnings of frostbite due to walking in the snow after Bland had taken their boots. Yet they were willing to go on. They were tougher than I was. I just wanted to crawl into my tent and die as Kalstad had died.

But somewhere there is always a last flicker of energy. We took our tent, our sleeping bags and the rifle. Everything had to be carried. Before leaving, we ate the blubber off the stove over which we’d cooked the last of the meat the night before. Then I got out the compass, set our course, and we started off, leaving Kalstad to his lonely vigil in the ice, just, as we had left Gerda.

We were all very weak. We took turns using the skis. But soon we had to discard them, for we hadn’t the strength to hold our balance, and the extra weight on our legs when we had to lift them over broken outcroppings of clear ice was too much. The food we’d had caused us great pain. So did our feet. We were all suffering from frostbite now. Keller weakened rapidly and only the fact that I refused to give in until the two Norwegians were beaten kept me going.

Our progress was painfully slow. By midday we had made something like two miles, but by then Keller had to be supported between the two of us.

If we’d only had some definite goal it would have given an impetus to our struggle. But there was no goal, only a vague hope that none of us believed in. There was no point in going on. I found myself dogged by an overwhelming desire to drop in the snow and let the relief of death steal over me. It was a thing that had to be fought, together with exhaustion, the griping pains of hunger and the aching stab of my eyes.

That night Keller wanted to be left behind. He said he was too weak to go on. But we couldn’t leave him. There was only the one tent. We had to go on together or stop and die together. There is an entry in my log made that morning which reads:

We are going on. But this is the last day we can hope to move. Those on the iceberg will run out of food today. God help them.

Barely able to stand up for weakness, we made about a mile that morning. My eyes had become so bad that I could hardly see to lay a course. Keller was barely conscious as he stumbled on with his arms about our necks. At times he was actually delirious as he walked, babbling incoherently in Norwegian. Vaksdal and I were in little better case.

Shortly after midday we pitched our tent for the last time. It was while we were doing this that Vaksdal seized my arm and pointed into the snow glare. “Pingvin,” he croaked. Penguins? That meant food. I followed the line of his arm, screwing up my eyes against the glare. Several dark dots hovered in the mirage of the ice, waving their flippers. I picked up the rifle. God give me strength to shoot straight. The gun was incredibly heavy. The barrel wavered. I could not get the sights to stay for a second on the target. I told Vaksdal to kneel in the snow and I rested the barrel on his shoulder. The penguins were waving their flippers over their heads and vaguely, like sounds in a dream, I heard shouts. The trigger was heavy. I couldn’t see the sights properly and the shouts kept ringing in my ears.

Then suddenly I knew they weren’t penguins. Penguins didn’t wave their flippers over their heads. Those shouts were real. I dropped the gun and started forward. The figures melted, lost in a mirage of light that wavered uncontrollably. It was all a dream. There was no substance in those dark dots against the snow. I was delirious and imagining things. I knew this was the end even as I stumbled forward at a ridiculous wobbly run. I heard hoarse raven croaks coming from my throat. Then I stumbled and pitched forward. The snow was soft. A wonderful lethargy stole through me. I knew I must struggle to my feet. But I hadn’t strength. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to struggle any more. I remember I thought for a moment of Judie, dying of starvation up there on the ledge of the iceberg. But there was nothing I could do about it — nothing. I was finished. And slowly, luxuriously, unconsciousness came like a blanket to cover me.

I woke to warmth and the smell of food. A spoon was pushed between my cracked lips. I opened my eyes. Pain flamed at the back of my eyeballs. Captain Eide was bending over me. I couldn’t believe it at first. But there he was, forcing hot liquid between my teeth again, and I knew that I was alive and that I’d linked up with the survivors of the Southern Cross. His face came and went in front of me and I heard a croaking sound that was my own voice. There were things I had to tell him. But I kept losing the drift of what I wanted to say as I slipped back into unconsciousness.

I’m told I slept for sixteen hours. When I finally got my eyes open I found Kyrre, the second officer of the Southern Cross, in the tent beside me. The things I’d been frying to tell them rushed to the forefront of my mind.

“They have no food,” I croaked.

Kyrre put out his hand to steady me. The violent urgency of my voice must have shaken him. “It is all right, Craig,” he soothed me. “Lie down and rest. Kaptein Eide left yesterday, you know, with nine men. We are to follow.”

“But he doesn’t realize the urgency!” I cried excitedly. “He doesn’t know they are—”

He smiled and patted my arm as though I were a child. “He knows everything. You have been delirious. For hours you say nothing else but that they have no food and will die soon if no one reaches them. You are still telling us that, long after Eide has left. He has two sledges and a week’s meat for them and he is making forced marches. He tell me to say, do not worry. He will get there.”

“But the gap!” I cried. “He does not know there is a channel of water a quarter of a mile wide only a few miles to the east of us!”

“You tell us that also... many times.” Kyrre’s hand pressed me back. “You must rest, for soon we must start. We have sledges piled with whale meat and soon we must start.”

I thought of the long trek back over that frightful road to the iceberg. I knew I couldn’t make it. “Give us one man as guide and some food. We will go on to the Southern Cross camp. We shall only hinder you.”

But he shook his head. “You did not hear what Eide tell you last night. The Southern Cross camp is abandoned. You see, though we have an enormous quantity of meat and blubber, we have no boats. They were destroyed. So we go where the boats are. Each day we make a journey with half the sledges and then return for the other half. When we are too weak for this, we make a dump of half the sledges and go on with the others.”

“How many men have you?” I asked as I lay back.

“Forty-six, including those who have gone forward with Kaptein Eide.”

“The boats will not hold them,” I said, and added, “Even supposing we ever find open water to launch them in.”

“That is so. But we are agreed that everyone must be together. While the ice holds we shall continue to make journeys until all the meat is with the boats. So we may perhaps survive the winter, if we must. Sometime the iceberg must drift out of the pack. Then the fittest will try to reach South Georgia, as Shackleton did, and bring relief. It is our only hope.”

“Is Colonel Bland with him?” I asked.

But he shook his head. “Colonel Bland is dead. It was his heart. He died soon after Dahle reach us.”

“Dahle?” I stared at him. “Do you mean the mate of Hval Five?” He nodded. “He is gone on with Eide; now to the iceberg. He and two other men reach us early last month.”

“But how?”

“It seems they were swept away from you in the ice. They are on a floe berg. When it is quiet they find the Tauer Three camp. Then—”

“You mean the Tauer Three camp I was still there?” I interrupted him. He nodded.

So Erik Bland had been right. The icebergs would have missed him there. If he’d stayed he’d have had a chance of getting out alone. “Go on,” I said.

“There is not much to tell. They get food and shelter there and survive the storm. Then, when the weather clear, they see the oil smoke with which we try to signal to aircraft, and they join us. They are five days without food and the journey is terrible, I think. But they are all right.”

“What about you? What happened after the Southern Cross went down?”

“We lose our radio, so we cannot talk with the rescue ships. Then we were caught by one of the icebergs, as you were. Only a few survive. Olaf Petersen and the others are dead. Then Dahle tell us how you are on a ledge on an iceberg, with boats, and Eide start out with volunteers to reach you. But they are caught in a blizzard and have to turn back. We were beginning a second attempt with all the men when we are lucky enough to find you.”

I was beginning to feel tired again. Behind Kyrre I could just make out the emaciated features of Franz Weiner. And I thought how Gerda had gone, and Peer Larvik and Olaf Petersen. The good ones, the fighters — they’re always the ones that are sacrificed. I thought of Dunkirk and Salerno and Anzio and the ships that had gone down in convoys I’d escorted. It was always the fighters.

Next morning, after an early meal, all the tents but the one in which Vaksdal, Keller and I lay, were struck, and Kyrre set out with his men and the first convoy of sledges loaded with whale meat. One man was left behind to help us. We were to lie in for a bit and then come on in our own time.

The trek east, back along the trail we had come, was painfully slow. For the first three days we just made the single journey from camp to camp. We carried nothing and could take our time, for Kyrre’s men, when they’d pitched the next camp, had to go back for the second lot of sledges. On the fourth day Vaksdal and I were sufficiently recovered to pull our weight on the single journey. Keller was still weak. But the next day, he, too, was pulling the single journey, while we had progressed to the full three trips between camps. With an abundance of regular food my strength quickly returned.

Slowly the line of icebergs came up over the horizon. I began to dread their approach, for when we reached them I should have to tell Howe about Gerda’s death. And I didn’t want to do that. Eide would have broken it to him, but he still would want to hear how it happened from my own lips. What could I possibly say to him? I remembered that scene on the ledge when he’d renounced his right to accompany Gerda. He’d committed her to my charge. Only one thing consoled me — that was that she died without knowing that her father had been killed. But that wouldn’t help me with Howe.

I could see his features quite distinctly as I trudged through the ice, leaning my weight on the sledge ropes. I could see the bitter look coming back into his face. And when we got back — if we got back — he’d start drinking again. Drink was all that was left to him. It would kill him in the end, and somehow I didn’t want him to go like that.

At last we could see the whole of our own iceberg. With my inflamed eyes I looked through Kyrre’s glasses and saw the ledge on which our camp should be. Perhaps we were too far away, but my heart sank as I saw no sign of life, no dark smudge that could be the boats and stores.

But at midday the following day — that is, on April ninth — we saw figures coming toward us across the snow. I thought, It’s Eide coming back. They’re all dead. I wasn’t worrying about Howe then. I was thinking of Judie and there was an awful ache in my heart. Then the figures were waving to us and shouting. My stabbing eyeballs couldn’t recognize them. I dropped the sledge ropes and broke into a stumbling run toward them.

There were about half a dozen of them, and the first one I recognized was Eide. I was sure then that the others were dead. He caught hold of my arm, grinning and slapping me on the shoulder. Then he pulled one of the others forward, and the next instant Judie was sobbing and laughing in my arms.

And when I looked at her, she was no longer thin and emaciated. She looked well fed and fit, except for the tears that ran down her cheeks. “I thought you were dead,” she said through sobs of laughter. “Then Captain Eide came and told us you were all right. Oh, Duncan, I didn’t want to go on without you. I couldn’t have faced it without you.”

I had my arms tight round her. She was trembling. The cold air seemed suddenly warmer and I no longer felt tired. “The others?” I asked. “Are they all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, everyone’s fine. Except Walter.”

“Except Walter?” I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Two days after you left,” she said. “Only two days, and thousands of penguins appeared on the ice round the berg. Migrating or something. We killed over two hundred in one day and more the next. We were roiling in food. We tried to make signals. But you didn’t see. Then Walter went after you. He went in the night without telling anyone. In the morning we could see him going out along the trail of your sledge. Eide says he didn’t find you.”

“No,” I said. A great weight seemed to have been taken off my mind. Howe was dead. He was safe from the bitterness of life. He was dead and I didn’t have to tell him about Gerda.

“There’s open sea within five miles of us.”

I was thinking about Howe and I didn’t take that in until she repeated it. “We’re drifting north and the ice is breaking up. If there’s a gale, the iceberg may break through the pack in a matter of days.”

I turned to Eide. “Is this true?” I asked incredulously. “Is there a chance of the iceberg breaking out?”

“Not only a chance,” Eide answered. “It’s a certainty. We’ll be able to launch the boats inside a week.”

“And then?” I said, glancing around at the Southern Cross survivors.

He caught the drift of my thoughts. “And then we split up. We have boats. Chances of getting help. The rest must camp on the iceberg. One of the boats will surely get through.”

I turned and stared at the iceberg. It looked solid enough, but the open sea was different from the pack. It wasn’t going to be pleasant marooned on an island of ice swept by gales and the piled-up waves of the South Atlantic. And those tiny boats. Winter way closing in. There’d be gale after gale. What chance had they? The thought made me shudder. I thought again of the trip I’d just made — the futility of it. We had gone in the wild hope of bringing back meat, and two days after we’d left they’d had meat in abundance. Gerda and Howe need never have died, and Eide would have joined up with us anyway. But we hadn’t known that. Just as now we didn’t know whether or not a rescue boat would sight us on the iceberg we stayed there. And because we didn’t know, we’d have to attempt the impossible and sail those flimsy liftboats to South Georgia.

I put my arm round Judie’s shoulder and pressed her to me. It was worth it for her sake. But “I hope to God Fate doesn’t play us any more dirty tricks.”

She looked up at me quickly and realized I’d spoken aloud. Then at said, “You’re thinking of Gerda, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“She was a lovely person. But, you know, she wouldn’t have been happy without her father. Walter couldn’t fill his place in her life.” And then looked up and smiled. “I think we are all right now. Everything is going to work out.”

The sledges were moving forward again and we turned our faces toward the great castle of ice ahead of us... and the future. Behind the ice was the black cloudscape that marked the open sea. And beyond was South Georgia. One of the men began to sing. It was a Norwegian song I’d heard them singing on board ship, something about going home. In an instant it was taken up by the rest of the men, and the sledges slid forward to the swelling of men’s voices breaking the eternal silence of the ice with their challenge of hope and longing. The sound was thin in the limitless plain of pack ice, but it was indomitable and it sent a thrill of pride and courage through me. Judie was singing, too — singing for me, with her gray eyes laughing and her young body flung forward, straining on the ropes. And her words echoed in my ears, I think we are all right now. Everything is going to work out.

On April twenty-first a message from South Georgia put the name of the Southern Cross back in the headlines of the world’s newspapers. It was from Jan Eriksen, manager of the whaling station at Grytviken, to the offices of his company in Oslo, and read:

TWO BOATS CONTAINING SURVIVORS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS ARRIVED AT GRYTVIKEN.

Two hours later a further message was received containing the first news that there were survivors marooned on an iceberg in the Antarctic. This read:

TWO BOATS EACH CARRIED SIX SURVIVORS. COMMANDERS: HANS EIDE, EINAR VAKSDAL LISTS OF CREW TO FOLLOW, TWO FURTHER BOATS (KYRRE AND DAHLE) NOT YET ARRIVED. REMAINDER OF SURVIVORS, INCLUDING MRS. JUDIE BLAND, MAROONED ON ICEBERG IN OPEN WATER. POSITION 62 58S. 30 46W. FOUR CATCHERS DISPATCHED TO SEARCH FOR MISSING BOATS. ON ARRIVAL STATION RELIEF SHIP. PINGVIN. WILL ATTEMPT TO RESCUE SURVIVORS MAROONED ON ICEBERG.

Winter was closing in on the ice-capped island of South Georgia. In two days the whaling station would have been closed and the place deserted. Eide had made it with just two days to spare. It was an incredible story.

The iceberg had broken out of the pack in a gale on April tenth. The ledge on which their camp was situated then faced straight into the wind. Swept by icy spray from the waves that thundered against the berg, they clung precariously to life for twenty-four hours. Then the berg swung round so that their ledge was sheltered from the wind. They had already decked in the boats with pieces of packing cases and canvas.

They now recut the ledge, and on the afternoon of the eleventh, when the gale had begun to subside, they ran the boats down the ice slipway with the crews in them, letting them take the water like lifeboats being launched from a shore station.

In the mountainous waves and the almost continual gloom, the four boats were soon swept apart and separated. For ten days they drove northward toward South Georgia, their scraps of sail driving them pell-mell through the water on the crests of the waves and hanging slack for lack of wind in the troughs.

Eide, in his radioed report of the boat journey, said: “I have never experienced such hardship during my thirty-two years at sea. There was a crew of six to each boat. There was no place to sleep. We were constantly bailing for our lives and chipping away at the ice that coated the boat and threatened to sink her. Only once was I able to shoot the sun and check my navigation. It was so cold that men froze stiff as boards at the tiller and could not move their limbs until they had been well rubbed to restore the circulation. By the fifth day we were suffering badly from exposure and there were cases of frostbite. The fear that I should make an error in navigation, miss South Georgia and drive on into the Atlantic was constantly with me.”

They experienced one had gale. And then, late on the tenth day, they sighted the southeastern tip of South Georgia, and in the morning, as they sailed up the northern side of the island they saw Vaksdal’s boat following about a mile behind them.

These were, in fact, the only two boats to get through. What happened to the others we shall never know. Maybe they missed South Georgia and drove on into the Atlantic. Maybe they were swamped or the men became too weakened to chip the ice off and they just capsized. The catchers sent out from Grytviken to search for them reported nothing, not even wreckage.

Meanwhile messages were pouring in to the Nord Hvalstasjon. The attention of the whole world had suddenly Income focused on this lonely whaling outpost. Eide found himself with offers of assistance from a dozen different countries. But they were all useless. Within a few weeks the pack ice would have moved north with the winter and the iceberg would be beset again. There would be no hope of rescue then until next summer, and he knew that those on the iceberg could not survive the winter. His only hope was the Pingvin.

This little vessel arrived at Grytviken on the twenty-second and began refueling at once. It left in the early hours of the twenty-third with Eide and Eriksen on board. Before he left, Eide had radioed a full account of the disaster and the names of the survivors on the iceberg. This was the first intimation we had that an Englishman, Duncan Craig, was in command of the survivors.

There followed an anxious period of waiting. The catchers searching for the two missing boats were forced by heavy storms to return to Grytviken. No messages were received from the Pingvin. The ship was held up by loose pack and heavy seas, and though we didn’t know it at the time, Jacobsen, the captain, insisted on turning back early on the twenty-sixth. Only the pleading of Eide and Eriksen persuaded him to risk his ship and his men a few hours more in those terrible seas.

On the evening of that same day came the first piece of good news. A radio message from Grytviken reported: “Pingvin has sighted iceberg. Pack ice heavy and weather conditions bad.”

After that, nothing. For more than twenty-four hours Grytviken had nothing to report. Newspapers began running gloomy accounts of conditions in the Antarctic in late April, and as the hours of waiting passed and still there was no news, fears grew that the rescue attempt would fail.

Then, just after midday on the twenty-eighth, the teleprinters began clacking out the news for which the public had been waiting:

ICEBERG SURVIVORS RESCUED. OSLO APRIL 38 REUTER: MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM STATION. RELIEF SHIP PINGVIN STATES ALL SURVIVORS OK SOUTHERN CROSS MAROONED ON ICEBERG NOW SAFE. PACK ICE AND HEAVY SEAS DELAYED RESCUE OPERATIONS. SURVIVORS SAY CONDITIONS VERY BAD ON ICEBERG IN OPEN WATER OWING TO HEAVY SEAS BREAKING OVER LEDGE CAMP AND FREEZING.

REUTER 1317

Well, that is the end of the story of the Southern Cross disaster. There is little more to add, except that now, just over a year after it all happened, a new Southern Cross is building at Belfast. It is to cost over £2,500,000 and is expected to be ready for next season. The South Antarctic Whaling Company still has its offices on Fenchurch Street. Only the list of directors has changed. Sir Frederick Sands, well-known financier, is the new chairman, and Duncan Craig is on the board.

Judie Bland is now Judie Craig. They were married in Cape Town on their way back from South Georgia, and according to Craig, most of South Africa turned out for the wedding. Besides being a director of the company, Duncan Craig sails as master of Southern Cross II when the South Antarctic’s next expedition leaves in October. Eide, who was cleared of all blame for the disaster, is already in the Antarctic as master of another factory ship.

It is unlikely that Judie Craig will make another trip to the White South. Already she is a mother, and she and Duncan have charming hours looking out over the Falmouth estuary, where they spend the summer months sailing. There is nothing now to remind them of the terrible hardships they suffered except a series of beautiful ice studies presented to them by Aldo Bonomi. And most treasured of all, a picture of Gerda Petersen taken just before the start of the trek across the ice. It faces you in the wide entrance hall as you go in, so that no one can enter their house without meeting her.

Content

Hammond Innes
Calling the Southern Cross!

I

II

III

IV

--V

VI

VII

Conclusion