Bear Island

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘If only to stop you from drinking it all. I have an apology to make to you, Lonnie. About our delectable leading lady. I don’t think there’s enough kindness around to waste any in throwing it in her direction.’

  ‘Barren ground, you would say? Stony soil?’

  ‘I would say.’

  ‘Redemption and salvation are not for our fair Judith?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. All I know is that I wouldn’t like to be the one to try and that, looking at her, I can only conclude that there’s an awful lot of unkindness around.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ Lonnie swallowed some more brandy. ‘But we must not forget the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Nothing and nobody is ever entirely lost.’

  ‘I dare say. Luck to leading her back to the paths of the righteous—you shouldn’t have to fight off too much competition for the job. How is it, do you think, that a person like that should be so different from the other two?’

  ‘Mary dear and Mary darling? Dear, dear girls. Even in my dotage I love them dearly. Such sweet children.’

  ‘They could do no wrong?’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Ha! That’s easy to say. But what if, perhaps, they were deeply under the influence of alcohol?’

  ‘What?’ Lonnie appeared genuinely shocked. ‘What are you talking about? Inconceivable, my dear boy, inconceivable!’

  ‘Not even, say, if they were to have a double gin?’

  ‘What piffling nonsense is this? We are speaking of the influence of alcohol, not about apéritifs for swaddling babes.’

  ‘You would see no harm in either of them asking for, say, just one drink?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Lonnie looked genuinely puzzled. ‘You do harp on so, my dear fellow.’

  ‘Yes, I do rather. I just wondered why once, after a long day on the set, when Mary Stuart had asked you for just that one drink you flew completely off the handle.’

  In curiously slow-motion fashion Lonnie put bottle and glass on the table and rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked old and tired and terribly vulnerable.

  ‘Ever since you came in—now I can see it.’ He spoke in a kind of sad whisper. ‘Ever since you came in you’ve been leading up to this one question.’

  He shook his head and his eyes were not seeing me. ‘I thought you were my friend,’ he said quietly, and walked uncertainly from the saloon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The north-west corner of the Sor-hamna bight, where the Morning Rose had finally come to rest, was just under three miles due north-east, as the crow flies, from the most southerly tip of Bear Island. The Sor-hamna itself, U-shaped and open to the south, was just over a thousand yards in width on its east-west axis and close on a mile in length from north to south. The eastern arm of the harbour was discontinuous, beginning with a small peninsula perhaps three hundred yards in length, followed by a two hundred-yard gap of water interspersed with small islands of various sizes then by the much larger island of Makehl, very narrow from east to west, stretching almost half a mile to its most southerly point of Kapp Roalkvam. The land to the north and east was lowlying, that to the west, or true island side, rising fairly steeply from a shallow escarpment but nowhere higher than a small hill about 400 feet high about halfway down the side of the bight. Here were none of the towering precipices of the Hambergfjell or Bird Fell ranges to the south: but, on the other hand, here the entire land was covered in snow, deep on the north-facing slopes and their valleys where the pale low summer sun and the scouring winds had passed them by.

  The Sor-hamna was not only the best, it was virtually the only reasonable anchorage in Bear Island. When the wind blew from the west it offered perfect protection for vessels sheltering there, and for a northerly wind it was only slightly less good. From an easterly wind, dependent upon its strength and precise direction, it afforded a reasonable amount of cover—the gap between Kapp Heer and Makehl was the deciding factor here and, when the wind stood in this quarter and if the worst came to the worst, a vessel could always up anchor and shelter under the lee of Makehl Island: but when the wind blew from the south a vessel was wide open to everything the Barents Sea cared to throw at it.

  And this was why the degree of unloading activity aboard the Morning Rose was increasing from the merely hectic to the nearly panic- stricken. Even as we had approached the Sor-hamna the wind, which had been slowly veering the past thirty-six hours, now began rapidly to increase its speed of movement round the compass at disconcerting speed so that by the time we had made fast it was blowing directly from the east. It was now a few degrees south of east, and strengthening, and the Morning Rose was beginning to feel its effects: it only had to increase another few knots or veer another few degrees and the trawler’s position would become untenable.

  At anchor, the Morning Rose could comfortably have ridden out the threatened blow, but the trouble was that the Morning Rose was not at anchor. She was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty—neither iron nor wooden structures would have lasted for any time in those stormy and bitter waters—that had first been constructed by Lerner and the Deutsche Seefischerei-Verein about the turn of the century and then improved upon—if that were the term—by the International Geophysical Year expedition that had summered there. The jetty, which would have been condemned out of hand and forbidden for public use almost anywhere else in the northern hemisphere, had originally been T-shaped, but the left arm of the T was now all but gone while the central section leading to the shore was badly eaten away on its southward side. It was against this dangerously dilapidated structure that the Morning Rose was beginning to pound with increasing force as the south-easterly seas caught her under the starboard quarter and the cushioning effect as the trawler struck heavily and repeatedly against the jetty was sufficient to make those working on deck stagger and clutch on to the nearest support. It was difficult to say what effect this was having on the Morning Rose, for apart from the scratching and slight indentations of the plates none was visible, but trawlers are legendarily tough and it was unlikely that she was coming to any great harm: but what was coming to harm, and very visibly so, was the jetty itself, for increasingly large chunks of masonry were beginning to fall into the Sor-hamna with dismaying frequency, and as most of our fuel, provisions and equipment still stood there, the seemingly imminent collapse of the pier into the sea was not a moment to be viewed with anything like equanimity.

  When we’d first come alongside shortly before noon, the unloading had gone ahead very briskly and smoothly indeed, except for the unloading of Miss Haynes’s snarling pooches. Even before we’d tied up, the after derrick had the sixteen-foot work-boat in the water and three minutes later an only slightly smaller fourteen-footer with an outboard had followed it: those boats were to remain with us. Within ten minutes the specially strengthened for’ard derrick had lifted the weirdly-shaped—laterally truncated so as to have a flat bottom—mock-up of the central section of a submarine over the side and lowered it gently into the water, where it floated with what appeared to be perfect stability, no doubt because of its four tons of cast- iron ballast. It was when the mockup conning- tower was swung into position to be bolted on to the central section of the submarine that the trouble began.

  It just wouldn’t bolt on. Goin and Heissman and Stryker, the only three who had observed the original tests, said that in practice it had operated perfectly: clearly, it wasn’t operating perfectly now. The conning-tower section, elliptical in shape, was designed to settle precisely over a four- inch vertical flange in the centre of the mid-section, but settle it just wouldn’t do: it turned out that one of the shallow curves at the foot of the conning-tower was at least a quarter-inch out of true, a fact that was almost certainly due to the pounding that we’d taken on the way up from Wick: just one lashing not sufficiently bar-taut would have permitted that microscopic freedom of vertical movement that would have allowed the tiny distortion to develop.

  The solution was simple—
just to hammer the offending curve back into shape—and in a dockyard with skilled platelayers available this would probably have been no more than a matter of minutes. But we’d neither technical facilities nor skilled labour available and the minutes had now stretched into hours. A score of times now the for’ard derrick had offered up the offending conning-tower piece to the flange: a score of times it had had to be lifted again and painstakingly assaulted by hammers. Several times a perfect fit had been achieved where it had been previously lacking only to find the distortion had mysteriously and mischievously transferred itself a few inches farther along the metal. Nor, now, despite the fact that the submarine section was in the considerable lee afforded by both pier and vessel, were matters being made any easier by the little waves that were beginning to deep around the bows of the Morning Rose and rock it, gently at first but with increasing force, to the extent that the ultimate good fit was clearly going to depend as much on the luck of timing as the persuasion of the hammers.

  Captain Imrie wasn’t frantic with worry for the sound reason that it wasn’t in his nature to become frantic about anything, but the depth of his concern was evident enough from the fact that he had not only skipped lunch but hadn’t as much as fortified himself with anything stronger than coffee since our arrival in the Sor-hamna. His main concern, apart from the well-being of the Morning Rose—he clearly didn’t give a damn about his passengers—was to get the foredeck cleared of its remaining deck cargo because, as I’d heard Otto rather unnecessarily and unpleasantly reminding him, it was part of his contractual obligations to land all passengers and cargo before departure for Hammerfest. And, of course, what was exercising Captain Imrie’s mind so powerfully was that, with darkness coming on and the weather blowing up, the for’ard deck cargo had not yet been unloaded and would not be until the fore derrick was freed from its present full-time occupation of holding the conning-tower suspended over the mid-section.

  The one plus factor about Captain Imrie’s concentration was that it gave him little time to worry about Halliday’s disappearance. More precisely, it gave him little time to try to do anything constructive about it, for I knew it was still very much on his mind from the fact that he had taken time off to tell me that upon his arrival in Hammerfest his first intention would be to contact the law. There were two things I could have said at this stage, but I didn’t. The first was that I failed to see what earthly purpose this could serve—it was just, I suppose, that he felt that he had to do something, anything, however ineffectual that might be: the second was that I felt quite certain that he would never get the length of Hammerfest in the first place, although just then hardly seemed the time to tell him why I thought so. He wasn’t then in the properly receptive mood: I had hopes that he would be shortly after he had left Bear Island.

  I went down the screeching metal gangway—its rusty iron wheels, apparently permanently locked in position, rubbed to and fro with every lurch of the Morning Rose—and made my way along the ancient jetty. A small tractor and a small Sno-Cat—they had been the third and fourth items to be unloaded from the trawler’s after-deck—were both equipped with towing sledges and everybody from Heissman downwards was helping to load equipment aboard those sledges for haulage up to the huts that lay on the slight escarpment not more than twenty yards from the end of the jetty. Everybody was not only helping, they were helping with a will: when the temperature is fifteen degrees below freezing the temptation to dawdle is not marked. I followed one consignment up to the huts.

  Unlike the jetty, the huts were of comparatively recent construction and in good condition, relics from the latest IGY—there could have been no possible economic justification in dismantling them and taking them back to Norway. They were not built of the modern kapok, asbestos and aluminium construction so favoured by modern expeditions in Arctic regions as base headquarters: they were built—although admittedly pre-sectioned—in the low-slung chalet design fairly universally found in the higher Alpine regions of Europe. They had about them that four-square hunch- shouldered look, the appearance of lowering their heads against the storm, that made it seem quite likely that they would still be there in a hundred years’ time. Provided they are not exposed to prevailing high winds and the constant fluctuation of temperature above and below the freezing point, man-made structures can last almost indefinitely in the deep-freeze of the high Arctic.

  There were five structures here altogether, all of them set a considerable distance apart—as far as the shoulder of the hill beyond the escarpment would permit. Little as I knew of the Arctic, I knew enough to understand the reason for this spacing: here, where exposure to cold is the permanent and dominating factor of life, it is fire which is the greatest enemy, for unless there are chemical fire-fighting appliances to hand, and there nearly always are not, a fire, once it has taken hold, will not stop until everything combustible has been destroyed: blocks of ice are scarcely at a premium when it comes to extinguishing flames.

  Four small huts were set at the corners of a much larger central block. According to the rather splendid diagram Heissman had drawn up in his manifesto, those were to be given over, respectively, to transport, fuels, provisions and equipment: I was not quite sure what he meant by equipment. Those were all square and windowless. The central and very much larger building was of a peculiar starfish shape with a pentagonal centrepiece and five triangular annexes all forming an integral whole: the purpose of this design was difficult to guess, I would have thought it one conducive to maximum heat-loss. The centrepiece was the living, dining and cooking area: each arm held two tiny bare rooms for sleeping quarters. Heating was by electric oil- filled black heaters bolted to the walls, but until we got our own portable generator going we were dependent on simple oil stoves: lighting was by pressurized Coleman kerosene lamps. Cooking, which was apparently to consist of the endless opening and heating of contents of tins, was to be done on a simple oil stove. Otto, needless to say, hadn’t brought a cook along: cooks cost money.

  With the notable exception of Judith Haynes everyone, even the still groggy Allen, worked willingly and as quickly as the unfamiliar and freezing conditions would permit: they also worked silently and joylessly, for although no one had been on anything approaching terms of close friendship with Halliday, the news of his disappearance had added fresh gloom and apprehension to a company who believed themselves to be evilly jinxed before even the first day of shooting. Stryker and Lonnie, who never spoke to each other except when essential, checked all the stores, fuel, oil, food, clothing, arctizing equipment—Otto, whatever his faults, insisted on thoroughness: Sandy, considerably recovered now that he was on dry land, checked his props, Hendriks his sound equipment, the Count his camera equipment, Eddie his electrical gear, and I myself what little medical kit I had along. By three o’clock, when it was already dusk, we had everything stowed away, cubicles allocated and camp-beds and sleeping-bags placed in those: the jetty was now quite empty of all the gear that had been unloaded there.

  We lit the oil stoves, left a morose and muttering Eddie—with the doleful assistance of the Three Apostles—to get the diesel generator working and made our way back to the Morning Rose, myself because it was essential that I speak to Smithy, the others because the hut was still miserably bleak and freezing whereas even the much-maligned Morning Rose still offered a comparative haven of warmth and comfort. Very shortly after our return a variety of incidents occurred in short and eventually disconcerting succession.

  At ten past three, totally unexpectedly and against all indications, the conning-tower fitted snugly over the flange of the midship section. Six bolts were immediately fitted to hold it in position—there were twenty-four altogether—and the work-boat at once set about the task of towing the unwieldy structure into the almost total shelter offered by the right angle formed by the main body of the jetty and its north-facing arm.

  At three-fifteen the unloading of the foredeck cargo began and, with Smithy in charge, this was undertaken with e
fficiency and dispatch. Partly because I didn’t want to disturb him in his work, partly because it was at that moment impossible to speak to Smithy privately, I went below to my cabin, removed a small rectangular cloth-bound package from the base of my medical bag, put it in a small purse-string duffel bag and went back on top.

  This was at three-twenty. The unloading was still less than twenty per cent completed but Smithy wasn’t there. It was almost as though he had awaited my momentary absence to betake himself elsewhere. And that he had betaken himself elsewhere there was no doubt. I asked the winchman where he had gone, but the winchman, exclusively preoccupied with a job that had to be executed with all dispatch, was understandably vague about Smithy’s whereabouts. He had either gone below or ashore, he said, which I found a very helpful remark. I looked in his cabin, on the bridge, in the chart-house, the saloon and all the other likely places. No Smithy. I questioned passengers and crew with the same result. No one had seen him, no one had any idea whether he was aboard or had gone ashore, which was very understandable because the darkness was now pretty well complete and the harsh light of the arc lamp now rigged up to aid unloading threw the gangway into very heavy shadow so that anyone could be virtually certain of boarding or leaving the Morning Rose unnoticed.

  Nor was there any sign of Captain Imrie. True, I wasn’t looking for him, but I would have expected him to be making his presence very much known. The wind was almost round to the south-south-east now and still freshening, the Morning Rose was beginning to pound regularly against the jetty wall with a succession of jarring impacts and a sound of screeching metal that would normally have had Imrie very much in evidence indeed in his anxiety to get rid of all his damned passengers and their equipment in order to get his ship out to the safety of the open sea with all speed. But he wasn’t around, not any place I could see him.