" Three hundred degrees," I said.
Pirow tapped out the figures. " You and I would have made a great team, Herr Kapitan."
" Finish that the way Mikklesen might," I added.
" Am awaiting your further orders. Anchored in nine fathoms off Julia Reef. Julia Point bearing 174 degrees." Upton was visibly excited. " Walter must know, but not the others," he said.
" They're risking their necks, just the same as Walter…" I began.
" They won't, if they know there's a warship only twenty miles away. I need those skippers. They'll simply evaporate if they hear about Thorshammer."
All my doubts came rushing in. Upton's concealment of the danger underlined the importance of his mission.
" Very well," I said slowly. " But they won't be very thrilled at up-anchoring in a blow like this."
" Thrilled or not thrilled, they'll do just what I tell them. Any special briefing for them, Bruce?"
" I'll leave the explaining to you-as much as you care to explain," I said. " I want them to keep in my lee, about a quarter of a mile apart on the port quarter of the Antarctica. We'll sneak past Thorshammer not very far from where Helen rescued Sailhardy and me. If I know anything about the radar scanner of the Thorshammer class, he won't want 62 to swing it more than is necessary in this wind. There must be no sudden opening up of the catchers' engines. They'll give a sudden spurt of flame in the darkness if they do. The convoy will work up speed gradually-nine knots at first, then eleven for twenty minutes, and then up to the maximum we can make into the gale."
Pirow's receiver started to chatter.
" Thorshammer to Mikklesen. Keep me informed. Heavy weather makes interception difficult. Will use searchlights and starshells. Keep clear of Upton's fleet."
" Will he, hell," I growled. Maybe the Southern Ocean brings out the essential man, the eternal hunter; for all the ennui, the frustration, of the long intervening years of study and research, fell away. I had a ship under me; I was at sea on a night as wild as the Creation. Upton must have managed the skippers, and from the bridge I saw the half-drunken, truculent men make their way by dinghy to their ships, and in less than half the time it would take Thorshammer to intercept us, my small fleet was at sea.
The gale hit us with a vicious left hook as we swung clear of Stonyhill Point, the southern extremity of the island, and took the full force of the storm after the shelter of Tristan's lee. The Kent clearview screen in front of the big bridge telegraph seemed to check for a moment in its quick, orbit. The only light was the main engine revolution indicator – out of sight of whatever searching eyes there might be in Thorshammer. The squadron was blacked out on my orders to the mystification of the skippers. I was not used to such luxury on a ship's bridge. The nine large windows exposed one to the eyes of the night, and every time the fancy clock which struck the time by ship's bells gave its melodious chime, I jumped. I went over to the telegraph on the port wing of the bridge and rang for more revolutions: the Ray's patent revolution indicator quickened its tempo.
W e m a d e f o r T h o r s h a m m e r. I s p o k e t o t h e l o o k o u t through the telephone by the starboard doorway. " See anything, lookout?"
The coarse voice came back. " Nothing, sir. Niks. Niks at all."
I double-checked on the bridge to see that everything was in order. " I'm glad I'm not on a destroyer's bridge to-night," I said to Upton. " Raw steel; raw sub-zero."
" What if Thorshammer spots us?" asked Upton.
" She won't," I replied.
" No," said Pirow, who glanced at his sleeked hair in the reflection of the small light. " She won't. Not with Captain Wetherby in command."
The bridge phone rang. " Lookout, sir. Aurora coming in very close."
" Tell her to sheer off," I told Pirow. " Make quite sure the signalling lamp doesn't point Thorsharnmer's way." He smiled thinly at my precaution, superfluous to someone like himself. Antarctica yawed and trembled under a violent squall. Sailhardy, whom I had ordered to the small brass wheel, held her beautifully. The Chernikeef log chuckled to itself. We waited, silent, tense.
They say the eyes see best ten degrees off centre. Mine caught -the tell-tail flicker of light away to starboard. It wasn't a ship.
Sailhardy spun the wheel. It seemed ages before Antarctica started to come round.
" Get my night glasses from the cabin-quick!" I told the Norwegian quartermaster whose place Sailhardy had taken. Upton handed me the bridge binoculars. I took one look at the name. " Standard British glasses are useless at night," I said. " I wonder how many ships were sunk during the war through not seeing a raider because of poor glasses." The man returned and handed me my own.
Pirow smiled at Upton. " Raider's glasses! Zeiss. Sevenfold magnification. They took months to perfect a single pair of binoculars for one of our raider captains. The Herr Kapitan Wetherby has all the answers."
The night drew in under their power, but I could not trace the momentary light which had alerted me. I opened one of the bridge windows. " We are in raiders' waters," I said. " Meteor used to rendezvous with Neptune off Tristan. U-boats, too. I almost surprised one. His oil hoses were still in the water." Gale-impelled rain deluged through the opening.
" Ice!" said Sailhardy. " Ice! I smell it. Ice, Bruce, very close."
" I smell it, too," said Helen. I had not heard her come to the bridge.
The gale held an indefinable smell. There is nothing like it anywhere else: not in Arctic ice, even. In the Southern Ocean the smell of it passes into men's clothing; the lookout in the swaying barrel on a catcher's mast knows that faintly wet, indescribable smell as his deadliest enemy and the companion of his labours. 64
We did not have to wait. The night was torn by a splendour of white light. The incandescent burst was man-made. Thorshammer had also seen what I had glimpsed. She had promised to use starshells.
The great iceberg was in two dimensions. It must have been two or three miles long and a thousand feet high. From Antarctica's bridge it was strange and beautiful under the slowly-descending parachute of the starshell. Towards its left-hand extremity, as if superimposed forward of the main body of the tabular berg, was a gigantic anvil soaring nearly its entire height; it seemed almost disembodied from the rest. Disembodied in colour, too: anchored for half a mile in a solid platform over which the sea spouted, it was deep green; where the blade of the anvil flared it was yellow, almost amber at the summit. The island of ice embayed itself near the right-hand cliff and I could see in the ephemeral light a tiny lake of blue water, dominated by fluted, grooved cliffs on either side. The weather face of the stupendous berg was hard and clear; the lee was blurred by a tumble of disintegrating spicules of ice, feathering their way on the gale.
" My God!" exclaimed Upton. Then he remembered Thorshammer. "She'll see us! Turn away! Turn away!"
" No," I retorted. " She's on the other side of the berg. It will block out anything this side."
" She can't miss us with her radar," Upton said.
Pirow disagreed. " That berg is breeding enough radar angels to fox anyone."
" Radar angels?" he asked.
" The ice, especially when it is disintegrating, produces all sorts of unaccountable echoes on a radar," he said. " We call them angels."
The starshell was doused. Darkness clamped down.
Helen was still next to me. " It is the sort of thing one remembers all one's life. I didn't know icebergs came so far north."
" It was probably ten times that size off Cape Horn," I said.