" So you find your man, eh, Sir Frederick?" he said.
There was a suggestiveness about my mind. Upton had
told me about the Blue Whale ; Walter was obviously the type to carry out such a project ; yet what had been imponder-ables to them before they found me seemed now to fit neatly —
too neatly—into the pattern.
" Where are the others?" asked Upton.
" I kept them close to the Aurora all the way from South Georgia," Walter replied. " In fact, within W / T range.
You know what these catcher skippers are like—they spot
a whale and go chasing after it, and before you know where you are, you are chasing him. No, they'll all be in within half an hour."
" Good," said Upton. " I want to brief them as soon as they come in."
" Where is Pirow?" asked Walter.
Was I imagining it, or was there also some innuendo in
the way the tough skipper said it? The question and the
answer were harmless enough in themselves.
" Where do you think?" said Upton. " As always, in the radio room."
" That Pirow," said Walter thoughtfully. " He should have married a radio set." He thrust his big jaw towards Sailhardy. " Who is this, heh?"
" Sailhardy," I said. " A Tristan islander."
" Ah, hell," said the big Norwegian. " Tristan islander!
Shipwrecks and black women."
Sailhardy came across the cabin towards Walter. The only outward sign of his anger was a curious flicking of his left small finger into the palm of his hand. I knew Sailhardy's strength.
Upton intervened. " Walter doesn't mean it for you." "
Sonofabitch," said Sailhardy.
"Come, boys," went on Upton. " You both need a drink."
"I told you, not for me," glowered Sailhardy.
" A Cape Horner for me," grinned Walter. " A full Cape Homer!"
Upton splashed half a glass of Schnapps and tipped a
pint of stout into it.
49
Two more men in oilskins pushed open the cabin door. "
Reidar Bull, catcher Crozet," said one.
" Klarius Hanssen, catcher Kerguelen," said the other.
Their economy of words as they identified themselves and their snips was typical: to them, the ship and the skipper were synonymous. They eyed the luxurious cabin enviously. I knew what their own quarters were like: a metal box containing a hard bunk, continuously soaked through
leaking bulkheads. It was better to be on the bridge.
They were naming their drinks as Lars Brunvoll arrived. "
Brunvoll, catcher Chimay," he introduced himself.
" I laughed when Walter told me the name of your ship,"
said Upton. " Chimay—iceberg! Don't you see enough ice, Brunvoll?" The skipper was at his ease immediately. " We're still missing one, though."
".Mikklesen," said Walter. " Where is he, Brunvoll?" "
He was tying up as I came over," he replied.
The door open and Mikklesen came in. He did not look, like the others, as if he had been lashed together with steel wire. He was of medium height with a thin, pinched nose
and the clearest of blue eyes.
" I am Mikklesen of the Falkland," he said. " You are Sir Frederick Upton?"
He was the odd man out, just as the islands after which
his catcher was named belong more to South America than to Antarctica.
At a sign from her father, Helen left. The skippers sat uneasily on the fine furnishings. Their concession to the social gathering was to open their oilskins without taking them off. They were as tough as a Narwhal's tusk. Upton
did his trick with the flaming brandy and raised the metal tankard with its blue flame to them. " Skoll! To the finest whalermen in the Southern Ocean!"
Only Walter responded. The others stared selfconsciously into their drinks.
During the next few minutes I admired Upton's handling of the skippers. They were out of their element. Upton wanted them for something. They knew it, and he knew that they knew. To have put a foot wrong would have sent them all on their way.
Upton blew out the flame and gulped down the hot spirit.
They looked surprised. He grinned at them as he threw in another dollop-of brandy. " Surely I don't have to show whalermen how to drink spirits?" he asked.
50
Obediently, they up-ended their glasses.
He raised his tankard. " To the Blaahval."
Here it comes, I thought, with that toast to the Blue
Whale.
"Blaahval!" echoed the Norwegians.
4
" Captains," Upton began. " Peter Walter has asked you to come and join me here at Tristan to talk business."
They eyed him silently. I could see they were not impressed —
you don't get men to voyage two thousand miles in partial radio silence just to talk business, not ordinary business.
Mikklesen broke in. " Sir Frederick, before we go further, who is paying for our fuel to get here?"
" I am," Upton replied. " You will draw all food, fuel and supplies—liquor if you like—from this ship. Anything you want." They murmured approval.
Then Upton played it rough, the knockdown for rough men. He gestured at me. " The professor here has found it. He knows where the Blue Whale breeds."
Each turned and eyed me with a long, appraising look, as if searching an uncertain horizon. That, mixed with a kind of iconoclastic wonder. I started to speak, but Upton went on: " You captains will hunt the Blue Whale with me in its very breeding-ground."
Hanssen said thickly, " Where is it, Sir Frederick?"
Upton laughed and punched him on the shoulder. " You bastard, Hanssen!" He turned to the others. " He says to me, where is it? Just like that! The greatest mystery of all time for whalermen, and he says, where is it."
He'd got his audience. The Norwegians roared with laughter.
Sailhardy whispered to me: " Bruce! Let's get out of this set-up. It's all wrong."
Upton didn't miss his cue with us, either. " Only the professor knows," he told them. " You see, he has been a captain in the Royal Navy. You know what they are. They
never talk."
Mikklesen's eyes were so clear they were devoid of expression. "Captain Wetherby, of H.M.S. Scott?" he asked. "
Yes."
"The man who sank the raider Meteor?"
"Yes."
" They still talk about it when men get together," he said. He came over and shook my hand. " I was close, east of Bouvet, in my Falkland. I heard the signals. They 51
were clear, not in code—he was a clever one, that Meteor.
The twisting and the turning! He yapped over the air like a mongrel in a fight. From your ship there was—nothing.
Then silence. I knew you had got him then."
Upton was abstracted. I became a punch-line in his act. "
Captain Wetherby, Distinguished Service Order," he said. "
A professor of the sea in peace-time and a man of death in war-time."
It was so sentenious that I nearly laughed in his face.
The captains did not think so. Solemnly, each shook me by the hand.
Upton went on. "Captain Wetherby knows, and he has promised to take us there."
" What is it worth, Sir Frederick?" asked Hanssen.
"This ship will hold about two hundred and twenty thousand barrels of oil," he replied. " That's worth about three million pounds."
Mikklesen chipped in. "To you, yes, Sir Frederick. But not to the men who will do the work."
" There's a hundred thousand pounds net for each of you in this," Upton went on. " Net. I'll pay all expenses, and as I said. I provide all fuel, all equipment." He didn't wait. " Bull?"
Bull nodded quickly.
" Hanssen?"—" Aye."
" Brunvoll?"—" Yes."
" M ikklesen? "
The skipper of the Falkland hesitated for a mome
nt. I thought he might be going to refuse. He did not look at Upton, but at some point on the great map near Bouvet, as if it could help him to a decision. "I have never had so much money," he replied slowly.
" T h a t ' s n o t a n a n s w e r , " j o k e d U p t o n . " Y e s ? " H e didn't wait, but started to fill up the glasses, talking rapidly. "
This calls for a celebration. We sail in the morning. Keep close to the factory ship. Pirow will pass my orders to you on the W/T."
Mikklesen waited until his glass was full. "It is not as easy as that, Sir Frederick," he said.
The other skippers stared at Mikklesen in surprise.
" We agree to go with you—if so, where? It might be anywhere between here and Australia—or beyond."
Upton frowned. " It is not as far as that. A couple of thousand miles. You have my assurance on that."
52
Mikklesen shook his head. " I sweated for twenty years to buy my own ship. There must be safeguards."
" The safeguards are one hundred thousand pounds in cash," snapped Upton.
" Is this a legal or an illegal expedition?" pressed the Viking-eyed man. " Will I lose my ship? Why ask us to rendezvous at Tristan? I have never heard of whalers gathering here before." He said pointedly: " Why didn't you bring your nice big ship and meet us where we belong, in South Georgia?"
" I had to meet Captain Wetherby here . . ." Upton began. "
Listen," I interrupted. " Forget Captain Wetherby. The war has been over a long time."
Mikklesen smiled. " No, Captain. Seas and wars do not forget their captains." He confronted Upton. " Have you a permit from the International Whaling Association?"
Upton was on the defensive. " I will explain more to you. . . ."
Mikklesen pressed on. " Do we fish where we should not? What country's waters, eh? Is this a second Onassis and the Olympic. Challenger? Will we also be bombed and arrested?"
" There is a territorial limit of two hundred miles which has been laid down which is completely unreasonable and no nation would really adhere to it if . . ." said Upton.
Mikklesen certainly was on the ball. " So we fish in my own country's territorial waters?" he asked with a thin smile. " We fish for the thing every Norwegian whalerman has dreamed of since he first heard the crash of a harpoon-gun, or since he fiensed his first whale? The breeding-ground of the Blue Whale?"
Upton tried again. " Technically, I say, we will be inside territorial waters. With the knowledge I have, I cannot risk a maritime court action ; it would give everything away."
" It is Bouvet, is it not, Sir Frederick? Not so, Captain Wetherby? Inside Norwegian territorial waters, off Bouvet?"
" It is Bouvet, blast you " roared Upton. " But, by God, Mikklesen, you can search until you are as blue as a Blue Whale, but you won't find the breeding-ground—not without Wetherby! "
Mikklesen's answer was quick. " That I know. Every season for thirty years I have sailed near Bouvet. I have never found it. I try every time."53
Walter broke in. " We are fishermen, and two hundred miles for a territorial limit is damn stupid. Twelve miles maybe."
The other captains, except Mikklesen, grunted approval.
" We are hunters," went on Walter. " We hunt where the game is. You cannot draw lines across the ocean and say, keep out. Where would we be if the British did what Norway has done, and kept us away from South Georgia and the South Shetlands?"
" We Norwegians first thought of the breeding-ground,"
Mikklesen retorted angrily. "It belongs to Norway, even if two hundred miles is a stupid limit, and as a whalerman I agree that it is."
Upton saw his opening. " You are a hunter first, or a patriot first, Captain Mikklesen? Will Norway offer you a hundred and twenty thousand pounds like I will?"
" A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?" echoed Mikklesen. " A moment ago it was a hundred thousand pounds."
Upton did not sense his mistake with Mikklesen in bidding up.
I did, and Mikklesen's grudging agreement should have warned Upton. " That's the new price," he laughed. " So that everybody feels quite happy."
" This secret belongs to Norway, not to one man or one expedition," said Mikklesen doggedly.
" I thought more of your spirit of enterprise," said Upton. "
Does that mean you are not joining us?"
" I'll come," he replied sullenly. " For a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Now I must get back aboard my ship." He gave me a further long glance, as if to satisfy himself he had really seen someone who had located a secret so precious to Norway, and went.
" Some of these boys like jam on it," laughed Upton. He turned to me. " He'll feel differently once he sees the sea red with dead whales. They just cannot resist it, you know."
Mikklesen's departure lifted the air of tension over the gathering. I had heard of the drinking prowess of South Georgia whalermen, but even so, the way they downed their Cape Homers astonished me. But then, they were also drinking dreams of their £120,000. Upton became one of them as the strong liquor and his camaraderie loosed their tongues.
". . . Fanning Ridge," Walter was booming. "It's the best landmark on South Georgia as you come up from the
54
south-west. Damn me, I've seen it from as far away as
fifty miles on a clear day."
" Nonsense," said Lars Brunvoll. " Why come from the south-west, anyway?"
Walter let out an oath. " I wouldn't have been coming at all, if it hadn't been for the emergency huts the Americans put up on Stonington Island."
" Stonington Island?" Hanssen echoed. " That's to hell down the Graham Land peninsula, way in Marguerite Bay!"
" Too true," Walter replied. " I was caught by one of those violent gusts which come down the glacier near Neny Island."
" In other words," smiled Upton, " you thanked God and the Norwegians who first set up the emergency depots they call roverhullets throughout the Antarctic and its islands."
" It was the Scots who started the idea, on Laurie Island, in the South Orkneys, sixty years ago . . ." began Reidar Bull.
I stood aside as the argument developed, as only sailors and whalermen can argue. Mikklesen's shrewd formulation of the illegality of the proposed expedition worried me. There could be no doubt that, in terms of the Antarctic Treaty, which twelve of the major powers with possessions and interests in Antarctica, including Britain, the United States and Norway, had signed, we were infringing Norwegian territorial waters. If we were caught, Upton might buy or talk his way out of trouble, but for me it would be different. I, a Royal Society researcher, would acquire a life-long stigma for throwing in my lot with an expedition whose one and only purpose was gain, Upton's gain. In fact, the whole business could lead to a small shooting war if Norway got tough. That is exactly what had happened when Onassis allegedly flouted the two-hundred-mile offshore whaling limit declared by Peru, Ecuador and Chile in 1954. His Olympic Challenger expedition, as Mikklesen had pointed out, had been bombed by the Peruvian Air Force and seized by the Peruvian Navy. That had created a major diplomatic incident, and the ships had been released only on payment of £1,000,000
indemnity by Lloyd's.
The breeding-ground of the Blue Whale was far more important to Norway than Onassis' mere infringement of whaling limits. That was where the parallel between the Olympic Challenger expedition and Upton's ended. Had the Olympic Challenger had on board an oceanographer like me who could have nailed down a killer-current the Peruvians 55
call El Nino—a warm, less saline stream which blitzes the life-flow of the Peru Current and kills fish, whales and seabirds by the million off the coast of South America—the knowledge in itself would have been worth that £1,000,000
indemnity many times over.
The Albatross' Foot represented a mighty challenge.
What, I asked myself as the catcher skippers grew more noisy, if a similar challenge had been rejected by the man who, only since World War I, had revolutionise
d all ideas on the great Gulf Stream itself? He was laughed to scorn
—but he proved his theory. Until ten years ago the United States was unaware that yet a second great Gulf Stream, known as the Cromwell Current, swept in to its shores, this time from the Pacific ; again, it was one man's persistence, pitted against all contemporary scorn, which proved that a 250-mile-wide column of water, equal to the flow of the Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Yellow and Congo Rivers together multiplied several thousand times, washed the Pacific coast of the United States.
Here, at my fingertips, lay the possibility of a discovery as great as either of these, if not greater. The whole of the world's whaling industry would be affected by knowledge of my current. That, I argued with myself, could bring conservation on a global scale of the disappearing schools of whales in the Southern Ocean, even if Upton killed off a few hundred in pinning down that knowledge for me.
There was, too, a vital military aspect of The Albatross'
Foot. In H.M.S. Scott I had sunk a U-boat deep in the Southern Ocean toward the ice. She had surfaced before she sank, and I recovered her log. For submarines, knowledge of water temperature and salinity is vital. I had been surprised at the data the log had shown of the area where I now knew The Albatross' Foot must be: it was a picture of current and counter-current, of rapid temperature changes in the boundary layer between surface water and the main body of the sea itself, which we oceanographers call the "
thermoc-line ". A study of the waters round Bouvet would yield new and invaluable operational information for atomic submarines guarding the vital sea route round the Cape of Good Hope.
How else but through Upton would I ever get near Bouvet? It had been difficult enough to persuade scientists at the Royal Society to let me investigate the Tristan prong of The Albatross' Foot ; no government or scientific organisation 56
would be prepared to spend tens of thousands of pounds on an expedition to the wild waters of Bouvet merely to test an unsubstantiated theory. The answer was: Upton's expedition must not be located. To me that meant only one thing—I must take command. Sailhardy and I knew every trick of the Southern Ocean. We had learned it the hard way. I grinned a little wryly to myself now that the decision had been formulated: I was deliberately seeking out the worst seas in the world, among whose fogs I would hide the factory ship and catchers from whatever ships Norway might have there while I sought within my " circular area of probability " (
A Grue Of Ice Page 6
