Upton's eyes were hard. "Brunvoll! The first score I have to pay is with Wetherby. The second is with you. Remember that."
Brunvoll shrugged. " Get up on deck, all of you. And remember, Captain, that Kerguelen with the SpandauHotchkiss will be only a quarter of a mile behind you. You'll see when you get on deck, there's no sea-room. There's an open-water passage leading into the Bollevika anchorage, zigzag and half frozen. There are icebergs jumbled together everywhere."
It was no use arguing. " Brunvoll," I said, " if we are mined, are the boats ready to use?"
"Yes," he replied brusquely. " I had them checked last night. The falls are all running freely. Also, the whaleboat is lashed across the winches by the foremast." He spoke to Sailhardy. " You don't have to go with this lot, you know."
" Nor does Captain Wetherby," said Sailhardy.
" On to the bridge, then," replied Brunvoll.
The skippers had done what I thought. Aurora was held against a small berg by a couple of ice-anchors, with Kerguelen 150 immediately astern. Two men stood in the Spandau-Hotchkiss harness and pointed the wicked weapon at Aurora. Moored alongside Kerguelen was Brunvoll's ship Chimay, and half a mile astern, pitching heavily in the open water, was Crozet. I half-closed my eyes against the sudden onslaught of frozen spindrift carried along by the wind. It was upon Crozet that my attention fixed. On her forward catwalk was lashed the helicopter. The orange stood out clearly in the wild morning. Helen would be aboard her, I told myself.
I looked about me with fear in my heart. Ahead, scarcely visible, was a mound which looked like a gigantic iceberg. It was Bouvet. We were still too far to distinguish detail clearly, except the soaring twin peaks, capped with ice. The sea was thick with ice and icebergs. Open water, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, made a winding passage between the ice towards the grim island.
Brunvoll ushered us ahead. " Walter," he said, " get down to the engine-room. The rest of you stay here." There was a cluster of about a dozen men, Aurora's crew, filing aboard Kerguelen. Two had remained to cast off the ice-anchors.
"It's all yours, Captain," said Brunvoll. " You'll have to steam slowly, because of this." He gestured at the ice. " When you reach Bollevika, anchor a quarter of a mile offshore. I'll come aboard again."
He lifted a hand in the direction of the gun in Kerguelen's bows. The twin barrels pointed straight at us. One of the gunners raised a hand in reply. Brunvoll and the tough Norwegian then backed down the bridge ladder, as if still afraid we would do something, even in the face of the two weapons. I cupped my hands. " Cast off," I shouted to the men at the ice-anchors. I rang for " slow ahead ". Aurora moved slowly clear, heading towards Bouvet.
Our course was dictated by the open water through the ice. I could not have manoeuvred, even if I had wished.
Aurora pitched more heavily than I would have expected, which meant that the ice was loose and the sea itself had not frozen. Kerguelen followed, and, in line ahead, Chimay and Crozet.
When we had covered about five miles, a squall swept across the sea. It cleared, and I saw Bouvet close. The cliffs might have been the savage black conscience of the Southern Ocean itself. The pale sunlight inched into the awe-provoking sky with the tenacity of the orange lichens which stained the stark cliffs near the water's edge. The great twin volcanic 151 craters of Christensen and Posadowsky threw up their icecovered heads three thousand feet to left and right; away on the left the cliffs, instead of being sombre basalt, were a strange sulphur colour. Running down from the twin glacier cones was a fantastic wall of solid ice, and where the cliffs became vertical, which I guessed was at a height of about 1, 500 feet, the ice rose sheer out of the sea to join with the glaciers high above. The ice took its blackness from the cliffs, Which it parasitised. Here and there was an eroded headland with fingerlike projections of rock, which reached out as if in supplication to the brutal face of the Westerlies; where the sea and the ice had made rocklike arches, they contorted themselves in strychnic agony. The Southern Ocean might have chosen its colours for the grim island in the same way as some old painters used to grind up Egyptian mummies for pigment when portraying scenes of death. Bouvet stood at bay, shoulder to the great winds, without a chink in its black armour, almost without light except at the edge of the flagcloud flapping at the summit of the twin peaks, its edges pale orange-white. There must have been fifty or sixty icebergs jammed on one of the outlying reefs of Bollevika, so that it was almost impossible to see the line of the coast. Bouvet stood before us-wild, evil, at war endlessly with the mighty undulations which threw themselves against the cliffs from the water below, and the winds above which sometimes even the anemometer cannot measure.
Sailhardy was at the wheel. I glanced at the echo-sounder. Twenty-five fathoms. I took a quick bearing on a headland on the port bow. That was where Christensen's party must have erected an emergency depot, or roverhullet, as they called it, stocked with provisions and fuel. I wondered if such a hut, however well built and shored up, could ever have survived the gales of thirty-odd years. Bollevika anchorage itself lay slightly away to starboard, but I thought I might have to do what Christensen's ship had done during the whole month his party had been ashore-steam back and forth at slow speed, because the gales and rollers from the south-west. would make anchoring impossible.
I had just opened my mouth to give Sailhardy an order, when the mine exploded.
Auroras port side was torn wide open.
Stunned and deafened, I could not for a moment believe that it had actually happened. My mind could not credit that plating, decks, beams and rivets had been dissociated from all that they had been part of, seconds before-the very fabric of Aurora. A ragged chunk of metal sang and rang in the steel wall at the back of the bridge like an Apache's arrow. It had passed clean between Sailhardy and me. It would have taken off one of our heads had its path been a foot either side.
Aurora started to roll towards the brash sea. A gout of water rose up from her side and then smashed down bringing chunks of ice clattering on the tilting deck. From beneath our feet came the sound of frames rending.
It was Sailhardy who saved us. I saw that he was shouting, although his voice came faint to my stunned senses. " Quick!
The whaleboat! She's going so quickly, we'll be trapped!" He grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust me down the bridge ladder. I stumbled over to the whaleboat and, fumbled, half-dazed, at the lashings. Above my head, the blocks swung loose as the mast sagged. Walter came running from the engine-room hatchway as if he were drunk. Even in my confused state, I saw he was carrying a heavy wrench and a flensing knife. He slashed at the ropes holding the whaleboat. Sailhardy reappeared, half thrusting, half carrying, Upton and Pirow. Upton appeared the least dazed of us all, except Sailhardy. He slid his little first-aid bag over his arm decisively as he too plucked at the lashings.
I snatched the last rope free of the winch, tearing my hand on a rough rowlock. I scarcely noticed. Aurora's flared bow, harpoon gun and forward engine-room telegraph had been pushed back by the explosion to the line of the fo'c'sle ventilators. A heavy barrel from one of the starboard winches rolled past us as she prepared to plunge for the last time. Sailhardy, Walter and I pulled the whaleboat to the side. Pirow stood like a man concussed and Sailhardy had to thrust him into the boat, so incongruously gay in its bright Tristan colours, yellow, blue and white. Upton and Walter jumped in after us.
" Fend her off, Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " Aurora's coming right over on us!"
I pushed the boa t clear with one of the long oars. Sailhardy did likewise. We pulled away as the catcher leaned over. Walter also grabbed an oar. The three of us gave a couple of strong sweeps out of range of the dying ship's last. roll. Then Sailhardy took the high tiller, whose steering arm he had not had time to ship properly, leaving us at the oars.