Island. The islander replied that it had usually taken about four hours to cover the eighteen miles from Tristan to 171
Nightingale-perhaps a day to a day-and-a-half's hard sailing to Thompson. The wind and run of the sea would be behind us. Knowing there would be no Thompson Island, I had persuaded Upton to take supplies for about ten days, which I considered might be enough if we had to beat back to Bouvet in the teeth of the gale. We were also taking the helicopter's radio and my hope was that after a week in the whaleboat in a blow, everyone would be only too glad to surrender themselves to Thorshammer-if we could locate her, or she us. The project seemed riskier, whatever way I thought about it.
Sailhardy wrenched the last sheet of metal skin loose from the helicopter. He smiled at Helen. " Well, ma'am, I suppose it's better than using sea-elephant hide to half deck the boat with."
She mocked him gently. " So that's what you had in mind for your epic voyage from Bouvet to the Cape!"
I really think that Sailhardy was sold on the idea-if only as a thought-of making the voyage to the Cape. He was serious immediately. " You must not forget, ma'am, that on Tristan, the first, and maybe some of the beet whaleboats were made of sea-elephant hide stretched over wooden ribs. Three or four sea elephants would give us enough hide to do the job."
" Where do you propose to find sea elephants on Bouvet?" she asked.
He pointed at the blockhouse shape of a small island which lay at the southern entrance to Bollevika. " I'd bet you, ma' am, that you'd find some there."
" There aren't any animals on Bouvet!" she exclaimed. " Or insects. Or plants."
" You're wrong, ma'am," he replied. "If you look hard, you'll see penguins on that little island. I smelt them as we came in. I'm sure there are seals round on the sheltered side of the island." He waved his hand beyond the glacier.
" If we are very lucky, we might see a Ross seal-they're supposed to breed on Bouvet," I said. " It is the most beautiful creature in the Southern Ocean, and its eyes are quite wonderfully affectionate."
Helen laughed again. " How you two stick up for your Southern Ocean in every way!"
Sailhardy was carried away. " If there are Adelie penguins down there, ma'am, then I don't need Bruce for a navigator. The Adelie is the best pilot in the Antarctic. We on Tristan know he steers by the stars and the sun, and if I were making for Cape Town, he'd be the pilot I would choose."
She shook her head, but I backed Sailhardy. " The Americans down at McMurdo Sound thought the Adelie's navigation was just one of those stories. They carried out a test. They ringed and marked five Adelies and flew them two thousand miles away. A year later the five walked back into their rookery at McMurdo. Don't laugh!"
Sailhardy touched her leopard-seal coat. " That is the creature you want to be afraid of, ma'am. He's wicked, through and through. He's the colour of dirty snow and his head looks like a huge snake's."
" I don't want to hear any more," she smiled. " You've convinced me. The job's done and we can't move anything until to-morrow. I want Bruce to take me for a walk up the glacier slope."
" I'll put this sheet on the pile, then, and get both of you some crampons and an ice-axe," replied Sailhardy. He looked up the long incline, scattered here and there with boulders cemented into the ice. " You won't be able to go far up, ma'am."
" I don't want to go far," she replied. " All I want to do is to get away from this feeling of being watched all the time. Will you tell that oaf with gun?"
Sailhardy grinned and went off. Helen pulled back the hood from her hair. In the pale sun it was golden.
" Bruce," she said when the islander was out of earshot, " all this has a dreadful inevitableness about it. No one seems to be doing anything."
I nodded towards Walter. " That automatic pistol would cut anyone in half with a burst. We must pretend to fall in with the idea of leaving the island, under pressure."
"For God's sake! Not here-they might hear you!" she said. " Thompson Island…"
" Yes," I replied. " I want to talk to you about Thompson Island. Up there, where no one can possibly hear."
Sailhardy returned with an ice-axe for me and crampons for our shoes. He started to be jocular, but he too lapsed into silence when he saw our faces. Not speaking, Helen and I trekked up the slope. Above us towered the massive cone of the Christensen glacier. A rag of cloud about the peak made me uneasy about the storm which had been so tardy in coming. There was a bank of low cloud against the sun, and
I wondered if the reason for the relatively light wind so far 173 from the south-west meant a blow not from that quarter but from the north-west. A north-westerly cyclone meant a heavy swell from the same direction, which would throw up a tumbled sea to make our voyage to Thompson Island all the more hazardous; worst of all, however, would be the low cloud and poor visibility which went with it.
About half a mile above the roverhullet, Helen and I found our further path blocked by a face of ice which rose for about two hundred feet sheer. We leaned against a big rock. I handed her my glasses. The view was stupendous. She studied the catchers for a long time, and then cased the whole quadrant of sea and ice to the north-west, the north and the north-east, until her view was obstructed by the glacier.
" Looking for Thompson Island?" I joked.
She dropped the binoculars to the length of their lanyard. She gestured to the north-east. " It's not there, is it, Bruce, despite the chart?"
" No," I said. " It's not there at all. You could not see it in its real position, from here, even if it were clear. The glacier is in the way."
Her eyes were a mixture of pale gold, white and green from the sun, the sea and ice. " You mean, Thompson Island is south of Bouvet, not north at all?"
" Yes, Helen. Not north, or north-north-east, despite what the chart says. South. Rather, south with a little east in it. Better men than your father, with better ships than a whaleboat, have searched every inch of the waters north, north-east and north-west of Bouvet for Thompson Island. You know with what results."
" But south! How can that be? How?"
" Sit down," I said. " It's a long story. But before I tell you it, remember one thing-caesium. Remember your father also. And remember I could not tell you this except…"
" Except that I know it was not you who shot down the seaplane," she replied. She pulled off one glove for a moment and held my glasses with her bare hand. " I have to love inanimate, sometimes violent things, to come to the heart of Bruce Wetherby. A pair of raider's binoculars, a compass of the sea-that's the way it is. Nothing static, nothing restful, always something at war with ice or warmth or life."
" In that you can include Thompson Island," I said.
" Why are you telling me about Thompson Island?" she went on. " Why? After all, I am his daughter."
" Because," I said simply, " I believe that within a week we will all dead in an open whaleboat."