I put such thoughts from my mind and stepped inside. It was hard to see, and there was that curious smell of frozenness which only the Antarctic can produce. The walls were flasked-lined with ice. There was a big stove in the centre of the first room, and a notice in Norwegian and English said:
" This hut is for the use of distressed seamen. There are stores, provisions, fuel and other necessaries in the store-room beyond. Please put back whatever is not used."
I went through two more rooms and had to bend down to enter the store-room. When I saw the piles of sleeping bags, blankets, cases of kerosene lamps, and a host of paraphernalia so essential for survival in the Antarctic, I remembered that Christensen had originally planned to establish a weather station on Bouvet but had abandoned the thought after seeing the wildness of the place.
In a rack, heavily greased, were a number of ice-axes, pitons, skis and old-fashioned throwing harpoons, each with a length of rope attached to the shaft. There were coils of thick rope, hundreds of feet of it, but before it could be used it would have to be thawed out. I noted with approval that all the boxes-and indeed the joints of the hut itself-were all dovetails and dowels. There was not a nail to be seen. These men had known their job, for in the Antarctic, wood changes its nature and the cold dries it out so that nails lose their withdrawal resistance.
I took four ice-axes and one of the harpoons, whose steel shaft must have been six feet long, and some pitons. My immediate task was to bring the party past the ice-ladder to the hut. We could make the path and ladder usable later on, but for the moment they would have to cut steps in the ice as far as the exposed rungs from which I had hung. I stood at the top of the cliff and looked out at the distant G.I. 161 catchers before starting down the track. Crozet was apart from the others. I watched in puzzlement, for I thought I could see her moving, since the orange of the helicopter showed against the general whiteness. Whatever she was about, it needed Sailhardy's eyesight to see. All I could distinguish was that Crozet was much nearer the ice than the others, who remained in the centre of the channel.
Then I saw. Radiating like spokes from a wheel hub, there were a number of other open passages between the ice to the north and north-east, converging on the towering northern cliffs of the island. They would be useless for a ship to negotiate, but for the whaleboat…
I craned over the cliff and looked down, ramming the harpoon's blade firmly in a crack of the rocks to hold. My altitude above the sea gave the effect of an aerial photograph of the ice below. A number of fissures in the ice-belt followed the contours of the island; in other words, there were small open channels running round Bouvet which would easily take the whaleboat into one of the wider channels to the north, and so avoid the catchers, which lay to the southwest. Upton could not miss seeing them either. I made my way slowly and cautiously down the path back to the great fortress rock and the ice-ladder. I climbed over the overhang, carrying two ice-axes, and shouted. Sailhardy's voice, tense with relief, came back. Crouching on the last exposed rung, I handed the axes down, and felt them being seized by invisible hands. I climbed back to the top of the overhang, with its dizzy drop to the sea.
For about fifteen minutes I heard the clunk of ice-steps being cut, and then Sailhardy, grinning, hauled himself alongside me.
" Bruce, boy!" he exclaimed. " I thought you were a goner that time! Is there a hut?"
I told him about the roverhullet and the supplies. " There's enough there to last us a year or more."
It was also Upton's first question when he appeared next. He seemed in great spirits when I told him about the hut. Despite the height, he swung himself up and down on his toes in impatience to be off. Pirow looked like a ghost and Walter was sullen. All of them were blue with the cold and it was not until we neared the top that some colour came back into Pirow's face.
Upton, Walter and Pirow made straight for the hut, but I held back, touching Sailhardy's arm.
" I want you to take a look at the catchers," I said. "I left my glasses behind in the factory ship. Crozet is easy to pick out because of the helicopter. It seems odd that she's against the ice."
Sailhardy took a long look. " It's not so strange," he said quietly. " She's doing exactly what Aurora did to get a steady platform. She's tied up to an iceberg."
" You mean…"
" Why should she want a steady platform?" he asked. " She's going to fly off the helicopter."
11. The Roverhullet
My dread, since the loss of the Antarctica, that Helen would attempt the impossible with the helicopter, crystallised at Sailhardy's words. The south-west quadrant of the horizon was ominously and unnaturally clear; what wild eddies would arise above Bouvet's stark cliffs, the only projection in the sea for thousands of miles, when the gale hit them, I could not guess.
" We have got to signal her to keep off!" I said. " There are certain to be some emergency flares in the roverhullet storeroom."
" Look!" he replied.
I, too, caught the flicker of light above the orange splash: the rotors were spinning.
" Quick!" I went on. " She mustn't come close. It would be suicide here." I gestured to the glacier slope behind the hut.
Sailhardy and I ran to the hut, I leading the way to the storeroom. Upton and Walter were examining the stores with satisfaction, and Pirow was busy on his knees trying to get the stove going in the outer room.
" Do you see any flares here?"
Upton's manner changed at my question, and anger started up in his eyes. " Thorshammer?"
" No," I said. " Helen is flying off the helicopter. She'll kill herself. I'm going to signal her."
Although it was dim in the store-room, I could see the brightness of Upton's eyes. He moved swiftly over to the harpoon-rack, whipped up one of the old-fashioned weapons,
and stood with it poised above his head, pointing at Sailhardy and me. " Walter! Here! You know how to use one of these things. You'll stay just where you are, Wetherby!
There will be no signalling anyone, do you understand?"
" But Helen…" I protested.
" It's not Helen alone, but the skippers as well," he replied. " They're coming to fetch us because they can't get into Bollevika by sea."
" For God's sake, doesn't your own daughter's life mean anything to you, except that you may be caught?" I exclaimed.
" She's a fine flier," he replied defensively. " She knows how to look after herself in the air."
" There's no flier born who is good enough for Bouvet's conditions," I snapped back. " Let me find some flares." Walter balanced another long harpoon from the rack in his massive fist. I had heard it said that he was one of the finest harpoonists in the Southern Ocean. " The harpoon is like a sailing-ship," he said caressingly. " There is no sailor like a sailing-ship sailor. There is no harpoonman like one trained to throw the old harpoons. There is a sense of balance I turned to the stacks of cases. I never saw Walter move, but the head of the harpoon crashed into the heavy timber within a foot of my face.