– so would Antarctica's plates, making the task of the ice-vice easier still.
By now, I thought, Upton must have read the annotation on the back of Captain Norris' log. Norris was a sensitive man-his sketches of the lost Thompson Island showed that. What he had written to complement the laconic deck-log version of his discovery revealed his terror at seeing the same icekiller as we were seeing now. Norris had known then it meant death, and who knows to what eventual ghastly end he and his gallant Sprightly went? I could recall by heart what Norris had written, the impress of fear was so vivid upon his words:
I s a w T h o m p s o n I s l a n d o n t h e m i d – a f t e r n o o n o f December 13, 1825. There was fog, floating ice and a Force 8 gale from the north-west. There was the island, long and low in the foreground, and a high peak more distantly. The crew of the Sprightly gazed awe-struck at t h i s u n k n o w n h a v e n o f r e f u g e a m i d s t s e a s w h i c h, b y contrast with their wild tumult, made its ice-bound shores s e e m l i k e p a r a d i s e. T h e g i a n t g l a c i e r w h i c h c a p p e d Thompson Island like a nightmare caul continued into the sea as a solid tongue of steel-blue ice, linking a gigantic, unbroken icefleld on the southern horizon. The grotesque nature of this single massive tongue, like that of a malice-filled and possessive viper from the unknown regions of the Pole, struck a cold grue of terror into my men, used even as they were, to the hardships and evils of the wild Southern Ocean.
A cold grue of terror!
Norris had used the Scots word in all its force, and the grue, the thrill of naked fear, which ran through me as I gazed at the blue icefield, was as primordial as the birth of the killer-pack.
" Yes," I said to Upton. " It's saving our skins that matters most." I spoke to Sailhardy. " Put them, Upton, Walter and Bjerko, in irons in Upton's cabin. The same with Pirow, in his radio office. Chain him near his transmitting key. I may need him later."
Sailhardy came over to me to take the Luger. At the same moment our ears were stunned by an immense thunder. It was the icefield. Every rivet in the ship trembled. A cluster of Skua gulls rose in white detonation from the foot of the blue cliff. The reverberation roared through the yellow fog. Helen buried her head against my thick sweater. Across the flat side of the icefield I saw a new mound ejaculate itself, rusty-rose, as some hidden pressure-force threw up ice the size of St.
Paul's Cathedral. Bouvet's conquistador with his sword of ice was coming at us. If the ship were nipped, we could still get stores ashore on the ice-pack, but we would not survive as Shackleton and others had done. Their ice had stayed solid; I knew that Bouvet's pack, when The Albatross' Foot reached it, would dissolve and leave us to drown. We would die either of exposure on the ice or of drowning when the life-giving warmth came. I had to save Antarctica, I told myself before, the challenge itself would have been enough, but now
… I looked down at the fair hair against my shoulder.
I found myself shouting, I was so deaf. " Pirow! Signal the catchers! Tell them to form up in line astern, and come through there." I pointed at the plumes of vapour ghosting above the blue ice forming in the sea, the way Antarctica had come. " Tell them to rush it, and keep the lead open. Each one is to go full astern within three cables' lengths of this ship. I' ll then go full astern and try and break out. Understood?"
" Yes, Herr Kapitan."
Sailhardy ushered the prisoners away, Walter cursing under his breath and holding his injured wrist.
H e l e n d r e w h e r s e l f a w a y f r o m m e. " G o d! I t l o o k s hopeless!"
" There are still open leads of water," I said. " Look at the clouds there above the icefield-see the dark patches? That's water sky, which means that somewhere, even in that lot, there is some sea which is not frozen solid-yet." She shuddered. The frost-smoke or vapour plumes which the whalermen call The Barber could guide us to salvation yet. My first job was to get the head of the factory ship clear of the ice-buttress, and keep the sea reasonably ice-free at the stern. Even if the ice closed, I thought rapidly, we might escape the fate of the factory ship if I brought the catchers in to surround her: with their shallow draught they might pop like peas in a pod out of the clutches of the ice without fatal damage, whereas Antarctica would be trapped because of her greater depth. It was worth risking as a last resort. There were, however, more immediate things to do aboard Antarctica. In the piercing cold, I must get the water drained from the deck mains and have a steam hose run through them, to clear the drain-cocks, or else they would burst soon, leaving us without a water supply. I must also have the rudder strengthened with wire pendants to prevent its being unshipped as we crashed stern-first through the ice. My mind raced on: I hoped that Antarctica had been fitted out by someone icewise and that she had a propeller with removable blades, for we seemed almost certain to damage one of the blades on projecting pieces of ice in getting clear. Breaking propeller blades was, I knew from hard experience, the commonest damage when trying, in a situation like ours, to extricate a ship from being nipped.
" Bruce," said Helen, " what do you intend to do with them, particularly my father? Are you going to hand them over to Thorshammer?"
" That question will have to wait," I replied. " The ice is the danger. Go and get yourself as warmly dressed as you can. Pack something small. Let the valuables go, if you have them. A pair of warm gloves might be more use in the long run."
" You're going to… to… abandon ship, without even a fight?" she asked.
" The fight is on," I said. " Quick now. Come back here." Sailhardy returned to the bridge. He smiled grimly as he looked about him. " She's sick, this ship. Sick with the cold."
" Get aft and trim her down well by the stern," I ordered. " Rig some steel wire pendants to the rudderhead from both quarters… My God!" I indicated the echo-sounding equipment. It showed fifteen fathoms-in the middle of the Southern Ocean! It meant that the cold was so intense that even the anti-freeze in the transmitter and receiver tanks had started to freeze. The ice was closing on Antarctica quicker than I thought.
Sailhardy let out a long whistle.
" Get steam through the mains," I snapped down the bridge telephone to the maindeck. Scarcely had I said it, when there was a scream of metal immediately below the bridge. The winch through which the steam had to pass gave a quarter-turn as the head of steam tried to burst through. Then the heavy piping, already frozen inside, ripped along its whole length, as if it had been opened by a huge unseen tin-opener.
Helen came back to the bridge, wearing a heavy coat of 118 sea-leopard skin. She heard the scream of the metal, but without speaking thrust my heavy gloves, reefer jacket, cap, seaboots and duffel coat into my hands. Dragging them on, I raced to the port wing of the bridge and looked at the sea. It was viscous now as it froze.