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 moment. 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."
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 harpoongun, 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 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.