Sailhardy and I eased the ropes loose round the stern and forward thwarts respectively. I awaited his signal. The smallest lack of synchronisation between us when we cast off would pitch us all into the sea, now rising and falling under the keel.
Sailhardy tensed, watching sea and wind. " Let go!" he shouted.
The boat dropped heavily into the water. Sailhardy moved quickly to the tiller and I whipped up the ochre-coloured mainsail. The boat gathered way swiftly towards an ice-lead running to the gaunt, sulphur-coloured north-westerly shoulder 185 of Bouvet which is known as Cape Circumcision. Sailhardy then stood up on the stern decking, steering with his right foot on the tiller-head while he conned a passage through the ice. I turned from securing the mainsail halliard to say something to the islander. I looked aghast at the horizon, so that he too swung round to see. The bank of ragged cloud, drifting on a level with the glacier, gave the impression of a line squall, but I recognised it as the spearhead of the storm I had anticipated. There was a flurry of icy rain. Cloud segments started to writhe up and down in contorted whorls a mile wide. Deliberately, a cloud shape started to reach down towards the sea's surface. To the north-west, two further vast and perfectly-drawn rulers of cloud funnel, spinning on an axis a mile wide and held upright by its own gyroscopic motion. Then it pitched forward and lunged into the sea. A great gout of spray and ice rose. Swaying like a Bali dancer, the wedded mass of sea and cloud moved towards us. We cleared the stark cape as the water-spout crashed against the cliffs, a quarter of a mile astern of the frail boat.
Bouvet vanished in the turmoil.
To hide his agitation, Sailhardy became formal. " Course for Thompson Island?"
" Steer north-east by a half east," I ordered. 12. Under Parry's Arc
For three days Sailhardy scarcely left the tiller. Our estimate of the time we would take to reach the locality of Thompson Island as marked on Norris' chart had been hopelessly astray. Four hours for eighteen miles to Nightingale from Tristan, we had reckoned, and therefore we had given ourselves about a day and a half at the outside for the forty-five miles from Bouvet to Thompson. The storm had decreed otherwise. From the time Bouvet had disappeared, sea and wind had made our lives a freezing wet hell. How many times Sailhardy's skill had saved the boat during the night I do not know, but I had witnessed it at least half a dozen times during the daylight hours. Several times the islander had had to drag the boat's bows round to face the gale in order to ride it out without being swamped, before putting her back on course
– as best he could-for Thompson Island.
By dead reckoning, I considered that the whaleboat must have reached the approximate vicinity of Thompson Island on the chart. My noon sight was almost due-for what it was worth in the bucking boat. There was a vast drift of storm cloud, through which there was an occasional glimpse of sun. This was the position sight which I hoped would persuade
Upton that there was no Thompson Island where the chart said. Upton, Sailhardy, Walter and I were in good shape, but I was worried about Helen. The wild gyrations of the boat had exhausted her, and she was very silent. Pirow had sent off more faked life-raft signals to Thorshammer, and on the first day after leaving Bouvet, had told us with a grin that the catchers had signalled Thorshammer telling of our escape, adding that we stood no chance in the wild weather. Thors- hammer had replied, Pirow said, that her chief concern was to find the life-raft: the destroyer refused to accept the catchers' repeated assertions that the signals were faked.
I crawled along the rough grating on the bottom of the boat to Pirow's cubbyhole, where my sextant was stored away from the prevailing wetness. I gave the thumbs-up sign to Sailhardy, sitting steering. His right shoulder and arm were caked with congealed ice and the accumulated spicules round his hood seemed to carve deeper the lines of his strong face. He grinned back.
Upton jumped to a sitting position on the forward thwart.
He shot a glance round the empty sea. Visibility was about a mile. " Is it time, Wetherby? Are you going to shoot the sun now?"
I paused and showed him the time. " In a quarter of an hour.
At our voices, Walter, who was still in his sleeping-bag, pulled himself out and looked round. " You could pass by bloody Thompson Island and never see it in this."
" Shut up!" snapped Upton. " We're close, and if we have to beat round in circles for a week, I'll find it. What about that bird-is he showing any signs of wanting to fly?"
The albatross was clinging like a figurehead to the decking in the bows. He was picking up strength daily. We had fed both the seal pup and the bird on the fish we had caught, and the albatross had accepted it docilely. Walter shook his head glumly. " If land were close, he'd be wanting to be off-and there's not a sign of it."
Upton became more agitated. " We're looking after the damned thing too well. It's no wonder he doesn't want to leave when every home comfort is laid on for him."
I took my sextant from its case and wiped the fogged eyepieces. A flurry of fine sleet and snow blocked out the sun. I stood, straddled by the amidships thwart, trying to keep my balance. The horizon swung rapidly.
I took the instrument from my eyes. " It's hopeless,
Upton."
He grabbed the Schmeisser from Walter. " Get on with it! Get on with it!"
I looked at Helen. Up to that moment, I think, she still thought there was some remote hope for her father. Now she saw him as a madman trying to force the sun to shine at pistol-point. Her head sank forward so that her chin rested on the seal pup's head.
I shrugged. " What do you expect me to do-manufacture a sun and a horizon?"
" You're stalling, Wetherby 1 You know the answers, and by God! I'm going to get them out of you!"
" Bruce!" called Sailhardy. " There's a break coming quick!"
The islander's keen eyes had detected a gap in the flying wrack. I rammed the eyepiece to my eye, one finger on the vernier scale. For a brief moment a sallow light appeared while I battled to keep the horizon glass steady. My fingers twiddle the micrometer screw. Then the flying cloud obscured the sun.
" Blast! blast! blast!" burst out Upton. " Did you…?" " Yes," I replied. " I got a fix. Not too bad, in these appalling conditions."
" Where is Thompson Island-which way?" he demanded, without a thought for intricacies of a navigator's calculations. It showed the state of his mind. I did not reply, but put down the sextant on the thwart and started to work out our position.
" Give me the chart," I said to Upton.
He pulled the parchment from his windbreaker and handed it to me. I made a little cross on it. I felt I had to go through with the useless charade. It was idle trying to explain to
Upton the errors and difficulties of using an outdated chart.
" There," I said. " We are now one mile to the north of Thompson Island."
I looked at Helen as her father swung round and scanned the sea to starboard. She was sobbing gently.
" Bring her about!" he ordered Sailhardy. Despite the 188 danger of the sea catching us beam-on, the islander manoeuvred the boat. The whaleboat was now trying to work across the run of the sea and the wind. One could only guess speed, but I let half an hour pass.
We reached the position where Thompson Island was supposed to be.
As far as the eye could see, the sea was a turmoil of blowing spindrift under a blanket of cloud.