Helen kissed his cheek. " Well, Daddy, I found your man." He took my hand and shook it cordially. " I've spent a lot of time and money on you, Bruce. I'm glad to have you safely aboard."
His immediate use of my Christian name did not offend me, as it would have with almost anyone else.
" Your daughter did a magnificent piece of rescue work," I said. " I scarcely expected to see the inside of a warm ship's cabin to-night."
He glanced keenly at me. " From what I know, I don't think a night at sea in an open boat would hold much terror for you. Good girl, Helen. I knew you'd find him."
She did not seem to hear. The eyes, so filled with distress in the cockpit, were composed. They were even warm through taking on the colour of the cabin's panelling. Her unspoken attitude was that split-second timing and consummate skill were all in the day's work. It was clear that Upton expected little less than that.
I fumbled for something to say. The mask disconcerted me.
He laughed. " It gets you down the first time, doesn't it? I never notice it any more. Mine is no beauty, but you should have seen the chap with the silver pan! My God! He shone like a balloon-sputnik!"
" I'm afraid I don't understand…" I faltered. I looked to Helen for help. She was busy rubbing oil off the back of her left hand. She might as well not have been there, she was so remote from our conversation.
" Of course you don't," said Upton in his rapid-fire way. " You can have the medical term for it if you like-argyria. I got it from fooling around with rare metals in Sweden.
What happens is that the metal actually passes into your system. The doctor chappie with the silver face had been using silver nitrate. He was so self-conscious. We were in the same sanatorium in Stockholm."
My eyes had accustomed themselves to the light. The cabin was as distinctive as the man. One whole wall was taken up by a map of Antarctica, and no ordinary map.
It was in relief, and the land contours had been demarcated by intricately inlaid pieces of whalebone. The long spur of Graham Land, which juts out from the ice continent towards Cape Horn, was exquisitely fashioned.
As eye-catching as the map itself were scale models of the ships which had opened up the South. They had been carved by a master: replicas of clumsy eighteenth-century
British men-o'-war; of tough British sealers, the originals of which had oaken planks thick enough to withstand pack-ice and roundshot; of the finer-lined New Bedford whalers; of the first steamers, aided by sails; of the armoured icebreakers of to-day. They clustered mainly round where I had operated from during the war, for Graham Land was the first part of the continent proper to be found. Near my base at Deception was an old brig, and I could read her name Williams. It was in her that Captain William Smith discovered the South Shetlands in 1819. It was Captain Smith who raced to Chile to a British naval officer, Captain Shireff, who realised that the Drake Passage was the key to naval power between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It had been true in
Napoleon's time; it had been true in my lifetime, too. I had guarded that passage for two years.
Near my old base, too, was a tiny American brig named Hersilia. James P. Sheffield had sailed from Connecticut to look for a dream-the legendary, fabulous islands called the Auroras. He failed. But his young second mate, Nat Palmer, made history by being the first man to put a foot ashore on the Antarctic mainland. A Britisher, Captain Bransfield, holds the distinction-a few days only before Palmer-of being the first man to sight and chart the coast of the Antarctic mainland.
Clustered round the long peninsula, too, were other ships with strange names: Vostok and Morny, Russian, among the first ever in those waters; Captain Cook's immortal
H.M.S. Resolution which got nearer to the coast of West Antarctica than any ship since; Astrolabe and Zelee, French; 38
H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, British; Shackleton's Endurance, a pitiful wreck crushed in the ice.
In the Weddell Sea, that great bite out of Antarctica which adjoins Graham Land, was shown the epoch-making penetration a hundred and forty years ago by the British
Captain James Weddell in his little ship lane. No ship has ever navigated the Weddell Sea as far as Weddell in the same longitude. Weddell was amazed that there was no ice at all almost within sight of the ice continent. The intrepid captain turned back in clear seas; all subsequent attempts to pierce the thousands of square miles of solid ice have failed. The map showing Weddell's historic voyage-in clear seas which should have been ice-brought the reason home to me right then: The Albatross' Foot!
The storm made the factory ship lean at her anchors. Drake Passage! The Golden Hind, Sir Francis Drake's flagship, was on the map, fighting her way round Cape Horn. There was almost a physical resemblance between the man in front of me and the famous Elizabethan. I wondered if Drake had found his tiny cabin aboard the Golden Hind big enough for his spirit. This wasn't, for Upton's.
" Sit down," he said. He couldn't seem to get the words out quickly enough. " There's not another map like that anywhere. Are you wet? Get him a drink, Helen. She hauled you up out of the boat?"
I could go along with Upton, I thought. I didn't know what he wanted me for, but among the tough-charactered men the Antarctic throws up, Upton stood out.
Helen went across to the drinks cabinet. " Captain Wetherby believes it was luck. He had a strange bird with him. It hasn't got any wings, and he says Nightingale Island is the only place in the world where they're found. The rescue was a matter of luck."
There was an odd self-rejection about her. I interrupted. " It wasn't luck-it was spot-on, skilled judgment. She rescued the whole boat. What's more, her landing with it lashed to the side out there on the flensing platform was masterly. Lucky for me, since all my instruments and charts are in the boat."
He looked at me keenly. " They're safe, these things of yours?"
" Y e s, " I r e p l i e d. " I w e n t b a c k t o s e e a f t e r w e h a d landed."
Helen stood with the drink in her hand, her eyes fixed on me. They were alive with distress. She was begging me not to say what happened.
" It's a strange bird," she said in an even voice. " It makes little appeal at first. It has no flight." She splashed more spirits into the glass without taking her eyes from me. " I don't expect it sings. Perhaps somewhere there is a message in its disdain and isolation."
I could not fathom her. " Ask Sailhardy," I said. " I'll go and fetch my things from the boat."
Upton shook his head. He pressed a button on his desk. A sailor came in. He spoke rapidly to the man in Norwegian. " Can't lose personal property," he said. In the same jerky way, he clicked off the desk lamp and put on the general cabin lights. It was all Southern Ocean and luxury. A chunk of baleen held down the charts he had been studying; the central chandelier was made of four seal skulls skilfully matched and joined; his chair was sealskin stretched over dark timber.
Pirow came in with Sailhardy. Upton nodded perfunctorily at the islander. " When will the gunner-captain boys be here?" he asked Pirow.
Pirow grinned. " All of them in time for a drink. You can bet on that. They're about as tough a bunch as you could hope to meet in a month's sail round South Georgia." Helen stood with the drink she was pouring for me in her hand. Upton went across to the cabinet. A heavy gust of wind shook the factory ship. I felt uncomfortable. She just stood there with the drink. " I'm glad we got in before that started," I said.
" I had a good pilot," she addressed herself to Sailhardy.
" Sailhardy?" asked Upton, his hand on a glass. The islander did not seem to hear him. He was as far away as Helen. I think he half regretted not being out in the gale. Upton repeated the invitation. Sailhardy shook his head. " I like a drink, but food is more important on Tristan. One is only tantalised by alcohol."