36 Biggles Breaks The Silence

by Captain W E Johns

  "Did you see anything looking like a ship?" asked Biggles.

  "Not a sign. Did you?"

  Biggles shook his head. "No, neither did the Skipper. All I saw was snow, and there was plenty of that."

  "If we ever find this ship I'll be ready to believe anything in the future," stated Ginger.

  "We'll try again to-morrow," said Biggles. "Come and have something to eat."

  V

  INTO THE PAST

  FOR three anxious, rather boring days, the search for the castaway schooner continued along the lines planned, but without the slightest encouragement. No one said anything, but each knew what the others were thinking.

  Long silences made it clear that hopes were fading.

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  Anything like enthusiasm had certainly been extinguished. Eager anticipation had become mere labour. What was to have been a treasure hunt had become a tiresome task to be performed. However, no one had as yet mentioned failure.

  At intervals, two or three times a day, Biggles ran up the engines to keep them in working order. So far, the frost had not affected them. He was concerned mostly with the lubrication system, but it seemed to be all right. For the rest, the long Antarctic days continued without incident and without any appreciable change in the weather. From the direction of the open water came the growling and muttering of icebergs waging ceaseless war with each other.

  For one thing the party was particularly thankful. Visibility after the first day had remained good. Not that there was much risk now of any member of the party losing his way. After Ginger's early experience Biggles had seen to that by the simple expedient of knocking some packing cases to pieces and slicing the wood into long, thin splinters.

  Anyone leaving camp took a bundle of these with him, sticking one into the snow at intervals on the outward journey and recovering them on the way back. By this means, not only could a man be sure of finding his way home, but in the event of accident there would be no difficulty in trailing a searcher who failed to return.

  Four-fifths of the ground to be surveyed had now been covered. All these had yielded was the sight of an endless wilderness of snow, with mountains, also snow-clad, in the far distance. One segment remained. If it produced no result, Biggles had said, then the site of the camp would have to be shifted a few miles to the east, this being the direction of the general ice-drift according to scientific investigation. The whole process would then be

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  repeated, subject to the weather remaining fair. When the machine was in the air, making the move, Algy and Bertie could be given the new position.

  Everyone was disappointed by the failure, so far, of the mission, the Skipper most of all, for he insisted on shouldering responsibility. His early confidence that he could not have made a mistake when working out his ship's position, on the occasion of his previous visit, was being shaken. Biggles admitted that the present circumstances were not exactly encouraging, but asserted that they were still far from being beaten. They were all fit, not even tired. The cold, dry atmosphere was exhilarating, and it had all been very interesting, anyway. They had seen what few mortal eyes had been privileged to see, even though the landscape was nothing to rave about.

  On the morning of the fourth day the final search from the existing camp began. The party consisted of the Skipper, Grimy and Ginger, it being Biggles' turn to act as camp orderly. The Skipper took the left-hand beat. Ginger was on the extreme right, which meant that he would have to march almost due west, keeping roughly parallel with the irregular ice cliff that fringed the open water.

  He set off on what had become almost a routine operation. Every hundred yards or so he pulled a stick from his bundle and planted it in the snow, leaving about eighteen inches exposed. Progress, he found, was slower than it had ever been before. This was due to several causes. In the first place, he had to more or less follow the ice-and-water line.

  This was as irregular as the edge of an unfinished jig-saw puzzle. Naturally, this meant that he had much farther to go than if he had followed a straight course. Again, near the water, although this had not been apparent from the camp, the ice was far from flat.

  Either from pressure behind, or below, it had been lifted 50

  into long, frozen corrugations. In extreme cases the ridges had burst upwards in piles of ice of every shape known to geometry. This hid what ray ahead, and as more and more ice fell away behind him his view of the camp was cut off. Otherwise he would have seen it, for while the sky was grey, with a layer of high cloud, visibility on the whole was good. So with one thing and another the going was hard, and he was soon perspiring freely. But there was this about it, he thought, as he struggled on towards more broken ice: here it would be easily possible for an object even the size of a ship to remain unobserved except from close range. Against that, however, was the fact that he was much nearer to the sea than the hulk had been when it was last sighted. At that time, according to the Skipper, it had been at least a mile inshore, Whereas now he was seldom more than a hundred yards from the water. Still, he did not lose sight of the possibility of some of the ice-cliff breaking away, which would have the effect of bringing the hulk nearer to the sea.

  After passing across a broad field of snow he was approaching one of the big malformations of ice when, just short of it, he struck his knee against a piece that he had not noticed. This was not an uncommon occurrence, as, owing to the absence of shadows and the resulting white flatness, small objects blended easily into the background. Muttering in his annoyance he stooped to rub his knee, for he had given it a sharp blow, although the thick stockings he wore prevented an actual wound. In stooping, he noticed something which at first did no more than arouse his curiosity. He was accustomed to seeing ice of peculiar shapes, but the piece into which he had blundered was very odd indeed. First, there was a low symmetrical mound. From this, for no reason which he could discover, rose a quite definite cross. As white as the surrounding snow, in a churchyard it would

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  have been commonplace; but here, a thousand miles from the nearest church, he could only regard it with amazement. He stopped rubbing to stare at it. A cross! A distant bell rang in his memory. Quite recently somebody, somewhere, had said something about a cross, something, he thought, in connection with what they were doing. Then he remembered. One of the men concerned with the story of the Starry Crown—he could not remember his name—had killed his companion, built a cairn over his body and topped the edifice with a cross. Doubtless other men had died on the ice, to be buried by their shipmates. Was this one of them, or was it the man who had died near the schooner.

  He would soon see.

  With pulses now beating fast he took out his heavy hunting knife and opening the biggest blade struck the point into, the ice. A chip flew off. He struck again and again, causing the ice, as brittle as glass, to fly in all directions. In a couple of minutes he had reached what he hoped to see, and for that matter, what he fully expected to see. Wood. The ice was not solid. It had formed a crust over a wooden object, and from its shape that object could only be a cross. He began working on the crossbar, knowing that if there was any writing it would be here. It was. In five minutes more the board was exposed sufficiently for him to read a rough inscription, incised, it seemed, with the hard point of a lead pencil. It read:

  JOHN MANTON

  DIED 1877

  R.I.P.

  "Rest in peace," breathed Ginger. Well, Manton had certainly done that. Straightening his back Ginger wiped

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  his forehead with the back of a hand which now trembled slightly as his imagination ran riot. Here, then, at his feet, in loneliness utter and complete, lay the body, preserved in the eternal ice, of the man who had set out to do the very thing that he himself was now doing. Manton had come for gold. He had stayed, and would stay, for ever and ever—

  unless the earth moved on its axis, which did not seem likely.

  Ginger shivered, glancing around apprehensive
ly. The air seemed to have turned a shade colder. Then his imagination took a more material turn. Manton, he recalled, had been killed by the man Last. That final tragedy of solitude had occurred in or near the schooner. Last would not have carried the body of his victim far. There was no need. It followed, therefore, that the schooner was near at hand—or had been. If it was near why hadn't he seen it? He gazed around, his eyes travelling slowly over the scene of Last's ghastly ordeal. He could picture him wild-eyed and horror stricken, dragging the corpse of his one solitary companion to the very spot on which he now stood. It was easier here, than at home, to feel the full force of that terrible moment. No wonder Last had faced the open sea in a cockleshell boat rather than leave his bones beside those of the friend whose life he had taken.

  Ginger's eyes moved to the tumbled mass of ice towards which he had been walking when he had struck his knee. At first, it still seemed shapeless; so much so that had he not collided with the cross he knew that he would have walked past it without a second glance. But now, as he stared at it, with the help of a little imagination the mass began to take form. Without much effort he could make out the rough shape of a ship's hull. With a little more effort he could locate the superstructure. But where were the masts on which they had reckoned to reveal

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  the ship's position. Certainly they were not there—at any rate, not where they should have been. Then, staring hard, he understood. Right across the deck stretched a line of ice so straight that it was hard to suppose that it could have been formed without a foundation. Ginger realised that this must be the mast; but it had fallen, and in its new position had soon collected a coating of ice and snow. From it, projecting downwards in rigid lines, were what had once been supple ropes.

  For a moment or two Ginger stood still. The knowledge that he had found what, in his heart, he had never expected to see, set in motion a strange feeling of unreality. His knees went curiously weak and he found himself trembling. What was it about gold, he wondered vaguely, that affected men in such a way? But was he counting his triumph too soon? Was the gold still there? Should he return at once to report his discovery to Biggles or should he first confirm that they had not been forestalled by another treasure seeker? If he went back, to camp to report that he 'had found the ship, the first thing everyone would want to know, would be, was the gold still there? The hulk, without it, was nothing. The gold was everything. So ran his thoughts.

  It did not take him long to reach a decision. He would have a look inside the hulk, anyway, if only to confirm that it was the ship they were looking for. It should not take long.

  He had some difficulty in getting on the sloping deck—or what had once been a deck, for now, of course, it was under a layer of ice of unknown thickness. He slid off several times. But in stumbling around, looking for an easier place, he came upon something that exceeded his hope. It was a narrow flight of steps cut in the ice, so regular that it could only have been made by human hands.

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  Having gained the deck he again looked about him for some way of getting inside the hulk, and he was not altogether surprised to see that from the steps he had mounted there appeared to be a track leading to a hump of ice that must have been the cover of the companionway. He was not surprised because he remembered that he was not the first visitor to the ship after it had become ice-bound. Men had lived there for months.

  Naturally, they would be constantly going up and down. Walking on he saw that his surmise was correct. A hole had been cut in the ice, in the manner of a cave. Looking in he saw ice-encrusted steps leading downwards, although in his amazement at the sight that met his gaze he hardly noticed them. The place was a grotto, far exceeding in sheer fantasy those commonly pictured in books of fairy tales.

  His wonderment increased as he picked a cautious way down the slippery steps and presently stood inside the ship. Here the picture presented transcended all imagination.

  Light and ice together made play in a manner no artist could hope to portray. Everything was ice, taking the shape of the object on which it had formed. Where the light actually came from was not easy to see, but Ginger could only assume that it came from above, where the deck had been crushed and punctured by the weight of ice on it. Through the ice that covered such gaps the light filtered, and the result was an eerie luminosity. Even the very atmosphere seemed tinged with unearthly hues never seen by human eyes. The roof and walls, floodlit by beams of daylight passing through pure ice, were sheer crystal. From the ceiling hung sparkling chandeliers ablaze with prismatic jewellery.

  From clusters of diamonds long pendants of precious stones hung down, in one place rubies, in another emeralds, and in another sapphires. In such entrancing surroundings, for a little while

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  Ginger could only stand and stare, unconscious of the passing of time, unconscious of everything except an increased feeling of unreality. Then, slowly, he made his way into the fairy ice palace, following a corridor that seemed to run the full length of it.

  In the first room he entered another surprise awaited him. It was, apparently, the compartment that had been used as a mess room by the wretched men who had found themselves prisoners in this world of ice. Crocks and cutlery lay about as if they might have been used that very day. There was food, too, on plates and in opened tins. He picked up a biscuit on which unknown hands had placed a slice of bully beef, and smelt it. It was quite fresh and sweet. There was, after all, nothing remarkable about that, he mused. The ship was a natural refrigerator in which food would keep for ever.

  Corruption does not begin below freezing point.

  He walked on, looking into several cabins. The doors all stood wide open. But he saw nothing of particular interest. In one lay a pile of blankets, as if thrown aside by a man who had just slept there. The end room, however, was larger than the rest. Not only were the walls jewel-encrusted but on the far side the ice, as if melted by heat, had run down to form columns, row after row of luminous pipes in the manner of a church organ. To this weird phenomenon, however, Ginger paid little attention. His eyes were focused on the middle of the room, where stood a large deal table—or rather, he stared at what was on it. It was a stack of bars, all the same shape and size. They were black. He was disappointed that they were not yellow, for then he would have known that his quest had ended.

  Stepping closer to the table he reached for one of the bars to examine it; but when he went to pick it up he was amazed by its weight. In fact, he could not lift it.

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  He could only drag it towards him. Could this be —7 His heart began to thump. He reached quickly for his knife. One snick in the side of a bar told him all he needed to know. The cut metal gleamed, and the colour was yellow. He knew then that he had found the gold. He had found it! It was only self-consciousness that prevented him from shouting.

  It was at this moment, while he stood gazing fascinated at the stacked bars before him, that he thought he heard a sound. It was very slight, a faint crunch, as if a piece of ice had been crushed. He paid little attention to it, however, supposing that such sounds in such a place were only to be expected. All the ice around him was constantly subject to pressure. Then an idea struck him, one that pleased him greatly. He would take a piece of the gold back with him. He couldn't carry an entire bar. That was out of the question. But gold, pure gold, he recalled, had the quality of being soft, so that he should have no difficulty in cutting off a piece with his knife. He would take it back to camp and enjoy the expressions on the faces of his friends when they realised what it was. Making a rought measurement with his knife he started sawing at the end of the bar that lay nearest, smiling to himself at the thought that few people had a chance to saw up pure gold.

  The smile died suddenly as, while thus engaged, he heard another sound. This time there was nothing natural about it, and he was definitely startled. It sounded like what is usually called a chuckle—the soft sound made by a human being who is quietly amused.

&n
bsp; Ginger stopped sawing and stood tense, while cold fingers seemed to touch the back of his neck and slide down his spine. He was not superstitious, but he remembered where he was, and the horrors that had been enacted in that very room. Perhaps the very fingers that had last touched that bar

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  of gold were now frozen in death in the ice just outside. Could it be possible that Manton's spirit unable to rest— He looked around furtively. Nothing moved. The silence was profound.

  He tried to persuade himself that the noise had been made by a cruising skua, although in his heart he knew that the noise was utterly unlike that made by any bird. Yet, he thought, the skua was an exceptional bird to live in such inhospitable surroundings.

  Telling himself not to be a fool he again turned to his task, but he had not even begun when he saw, or thought he saw, a shadow flit across the room—exactly where, he couldn't say, although it seemed as if something solid had passed between the light and the pipes of the ice-organ. Could it have been the shadow of a cloud, passing across the face of the sun? But there was no sun. The sky was grey. Again he experienced the feeling of an icy hand creeping down his back. He could not deceive himself. Something, somewhere, had moved. Could it have been his own shadow? It might have been.

  Calling. himself a child for being frightened by his own shadow he tried to laugh it off, but it was a poor effort. His nerves were going to pieces, and he knew it. He would finish the job quickly, and go. That he might not be alone in the ship was still something that did not occur to him, and for this, in the circumstances, he was hardly to be blamed.

  He turned back to the bar, but found it impossible to concentrate on what he was doing.

  His gaze seemed drawn irresistibly to the far side of the room, to the organ, where the shadow had stopped. His eyes wandered over it. They halted abruptly, and remained fixed, staring at something that stared back at him through a hole in the ice. It was an eye. He could see it distinctly; a human eye it appeared to be, for 58