" Sailhardy!" I said. " Get down on the maindeck first before you rig the tackles. Have them bring ice-axes, crowbars, boat-hooks and poles up from below. You know the drill get every man on the rails with poles and try and keep her sides free of ice. Then get a boat and dynamite and blow the ice at intervals of twenty yards astern-we must keep it open!"
" Aye, aye, Bruce," he said tersely. A moment later he was among the men. If any man could save the ship through my last-ditch drill, he could.
Helen was gazing astern. " The fog is rolling back, Bruce, but I don't see the catchers."
" It's ominous that it should roll back. It means the cold is spreading," I replied. I picked up the phone to Pirow. " Pirow! What the hell is happening to the catchers?"
His voice was cool, professional. " No reply to my signals, Herr Kapitan. They're talking between themselves on the W / T… "
Sailhardy's call from the maindeck interrupted. " What size charges, Bruce?"
" Make them up into pieces of twenty pounds apiece," I told him. " Fuse 'em right up. Short." I returned to Pirow. " Pirow! I'm going full astern in a moment. I may go hellbent into an iceberg. What's the score with the radar?"
" Too much sub-refraction," he replied levelly. " We'll be right on top of anything before I can locate it. The normal detection range means nothing in conditions like this." Helen came with me to the starboard wing of the bridge.
I wanted, if possible, to see what was happening between the main body of the ice and ourselves. As I leant over, I saw. I gripped her arm.
" Look 1" I said. A long underwater spur had grown out from the cliffside towards the ship. It was perhaps ten feet long. Four others, like the teeth of a steam-shovel, reached out at intervals further aft.
" What is it, Bruce?"
"Those spurs," I replied. "I can't wait now. Any one of them will rip off a blade of the screw. In this cold each blade is twice as brittle as normal. One touch, and it will splinter."
I raced back to the engine-room telephone.
" Chief Engineer," said the voice.
Chief," I said, " there's a lot of trouble. There's sludge and brash ice everywhere. In ten minutes your condenser inlets are going to choke. Before that I want everything your engines can give me. Understand? Get a steam hose to the condensers so that there's hot water circulating round them. And for your own sake, see there's no condensation in the main steam pipes, or else you'll be blown to hell. In a moment
I'll be going alternately full ahead and full astern to shake her free. If the inlets block with sludge, I can't wait to stop. Can do?"
" Aye," said the Scots voice. " Can do. Is five minutes enough?"
" Just," I replied. " I'll ring down."
I called Sailhardy on deck. " Belay the dynamite," I said. " Get the tackles rigged, if you can. I want you on the bridge in five minutes."
I turned to Helen, gazing white-faced about her. There was no sign of the catchers. In her sea-leopard coat, she looked like one of those dead things I had seen so often on the icy outcrops of Graham Land.
" Do you want me to fly off the helicopter…" she started to say, when suddenly she coughed. I felt the sharp dagger of wind, too. It came softly, furtively, from the South. I felt its sinister touch by the slight condensation on the inside of my duffel coat. The wind was the last stage of the Bouvet pack: it would advance the ice-edge more rapidly still towards the factory ship; it was also the precursor a the storm which I knew would follow the freeze-up.
" The wind," I said quickly. " I can't give the Chief even his five minutes now." I rang Sailhardy and ordered him back to the bridge. The islander joined Helen and me. The shoulder of his coat was streaked with red rust where he had slung himself over the ship's quarter in a vain effort to rig the rudder-head tackles. A white streak of frozen spray was daubed alongside the red.
" The South wind, Bruce?"
There was almost no need for him to say it. He too had felt its message. I nodded to the port wing of the bridge and together we looked down at the sleazy sea. Catching some of the sun's attenuated light, it had turned to a pale, gelatinous, coagulating mass.
" Sailhardy!" exclaimed Helen, seeing the look on our faces. " You and Bruce together… you two…"
" Ma'am," he said gently-the long vowels were in his voice-" if this ship is a-dying, you can be sure of one thing: under Captain Bruce Wetherby she'll die the hard way." He pointed across to the dark blue cliff, where the ice rind had become young ice, anything from a couple of inches to half a foot thick.
Helen took the lapels of my duffel coat in her hands. " At first, when I lay in that snow-filled ditch after the Germans had shot me, I prayed. I prayed to God. I prayed with every formal and informal prayer I knew. I ran out of prayers. After my brother had died, I just lay there, without hope, almost without thought. Now…" The strange eyes were luminous, and she shuddered as she looked at the icefield. .. Now I want to live. Then I did not. If my prayers had names at this moment, they would be Bruce Wetherby and Sailhardy the islander."
I could find no words as I watched the light-blue, rustypink and steel-rose-in her eyes. It was Sailhardy who spoke. " Aye, ma'am. Praying words don't help you any here in the Southern Ocean. Prayer-words don't break the ice like an icebreaker, and at this moment I'd give all the Jesu-lover-of mysoul for a north-west wind and two degrees on the mercury."
A cold grue of terror! I relived Norris' fear as I saw the distant water-smoke start to throw up its dazed meridians into the dusty pink-blue light. The transparent membranes surrounding the brain's nerve-centres contract and contort their spider's-web as a blow approaches-that is how I felt as I watched them and waited for the coming blow from the killer-pack.
" Bruce…" Helen started to say, but I strode across to the bridge telegraph. " Sailhardy!" I said. " The wheel!"
" Full ahead!" I rang. " Port twenty," I told the islander as he took over from the Norwegian quartermaster. " If she responds at all."
I picked up the phone to Pirow. " Pirow! What are the catchers doing? Why aren't they coming to help us?"
" They're not answering my signals, Herr Kapitan," he replied.
" Send: ' Stand by to render immediate assistance. Factory ship in grave danger '."
I heard the rapid tap of his key as he called up the catchers. He was back on the phone in a moment. " No reply, Herr Kapitan."
" What the hell are they playing at? They can't leave us like this! Have you got them on the radar?"
Again, I admired the cool professional detachment of The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " Five radar contacts-ship contacts-bearing eight-oh degrees. Receding."
" They're deserting us?" I asked incredulously.
" Yes, Herr Kapitan."
" How far astern?"
" Four-five miles, maybe."
" Are they moving?"
" Yes, Herr Kapitan. Fast. Twelve knots I reckon." That meant they were in clear water, beyond the deadly grip of the ice-crescent.
Pirow went on coolly, " Shall I give a May-Day call, Herr K a p i t a n? I t m e a n s T h o r s h a m m e r w i l l h e a r i t t o o . " May-Day! A ship's last desperate call for help.
" Yes," I said. As I put down the earpiece I heard the start of the distress call, " May-Day! May-Day!" Antarctica started to judder, but she scarcely moved. It was like handling a Ferrari with a slipping clutch. The screws thrashed. Sailhardy spun the spokes. His look of despair told me everything. I must try and shake her free astern.
I called the engine-room. " Chief I Sorry about this. Full astern!"
There was a muffled oath. " Ever hear of torsional stresses in shafting, laddie?" But he'd already shouted my order. " The shaft. .."