Southtrap

'Wegger,' I said tersely, 'you can't kid me. You're bogus. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about!'

He put the chart table between us. His face was a tight mask. He lifted the Luger until I could see its blue rifling level with my eyes.

'If I didn't need you, Shotton, I would kill you.'

I believed him.

'You'll sail this ship where I tell you,' he went on, his voice full of menace. 'If I so much as suspect you're fooling me…'

I realized how close to the limit he was. I said steadily, 'Fair enough. Let's assume that Botany Bay is more or less where we anticipate. I then head Quest for the buoy's launching-point…'

He laughed, and I didn't care for it any more than I had for his threat.

'You're very casual and very clever about it — the buoy's launching-point,' he mimicked me. 'What do you take me for, you fool? You don't get me going anywhere near there.'

'Wegger! The launch is the most important thing…'

'Stow it!' he retorted. 'Don't try that on! Do you think I intend to give my position away? The one point in the whole of this ocean — ' he swept his hand across the chart — 'that's known, fixed, timed? The radio's been out for two, three days. No one knows where the Quest is. No one will ever know. She could be anywhere! You could search until you were blue in the face and the chances of finding a ship without anything to go by would be as remote as spotting a penguin's egg from the air at the South Pole!'

For his purposes, he was right. It made me more puzzled than ever why he should press on to Botany Bay. I decided that the less I said about the windjammer, the better.

I shrugged. 'Once the buoy and the balloon don't report via the satellite, the alert will go out. Then it's only a matter of time before they track down the Quest.'

'Only a matter of time!' he echoed. 'There'll be enough time to lift the gold and get clear.'

The gloves were off in earnest now. We were on our way. Wegger's way.

The Quest was on her way, too. When Wegger and I reached the bridge it was blowing a near-gale. The bow searchlight probably made the sea look even worse. The waves were heaping up in endless succession as far as the blue-white beam penetrated. White foam appeared in long streaks coming straight at the Quest. She was butting and lunging headlong at the rollers and throwing up clouds of spray; rising with a thrilling buoyancy which proved her to be the thoroughbred she was. But nevertheless we could not go on pitting her at full speed much longer into those hills of water rolling in from the south-west without something giving.

I went to a cleared window. The searchlight picked out an onrushing, foam-crested wall ahead. There was no escaping it. The Quest put her bows down. Then — up, up, up. Tons of water poured over the bow. The wind caught the burst and hurtled it back against the bridge windows. The ship rolled to port, staggered, lifted. It was probably the acute angle which threw the searchlight beam further ahead than normal.

The white thing hung in our path at the summit of the next hill of water, poised like an ungainly surfer.

I knew in an instant what it was.

I knew also we would hit it.

I spun from the window.

'Get that wheel down!' I yelled at the startled helmsman. 'Down! Hard aport! Hard, man!'

He didn't react; or perhaps time had stopped for me.

I threw myself at the wheel. I knocked his hands off the spokes, spun them, wincing at the shaft of pain in my hurt shoulder.

'Ice! Ice dead ahead! Hold on! We can't miss it!'

I held the wheel hard down, shifted head-on to face the menace out for'ard. The bridge phone rang. Wegger took the call.

'Crow's nest!' I heard the man's anguished voice vibrate in the earpiece clean across the bridge. 'Ice right ahead!'

It felt to me that Quest wasn't answering her rudder.

Her head scarcely seemed to have moved. The searchlight held the ice — it was a big growler — and kept on it like a stage spotlight. It hung poised at the top of the massive wall of water. Then Quest's bow seemed to shift a fraction. That meant the collision might be a glancing one. But it would still take the bow plating and rip the whole length of her starboard beam…

The ship's head went down deep into the the trough. She'd had the maximum bite the rudder would give. As the stern lifted, the rudder would grip less. The searchlight still held the growler. Finer, now, to starboard — the bow was swinging! Her head was swinging! But would it be enough…?

Quest barrelled into the roller. The searchlight blanked opaque. Water broke and roared. Where was the growler? For a fearful moment I thought it would fall bodily on the foc's'le deck.

The wave punched the swinging bow like an upper-cut to the jaw. No man-made force could have done what that huge wave did. It slammed Quest's bow aside. The searchlight beam held the growler like a bomber trapped in a night raid. The white menace cartwheeled.

Quest's bow slewed to port. Sweat poured off my hands on to the spokes. For a moment the growler hung suspended in the beam's maximum traverse. It was whiter than the white foam. Then it slid, yawed. Quest swerved aside.

It missed; it vanished into the night behind.

I still held on to the wheel. My legs felt as if they wouldn't hold me. Then I shifted the helm back amidships. When I handed over I scarcely recognized my own voice.

'Steady as she goes,' I told the white-faced helmsman. 'Keep her south-west by south!'

Then I rang the engine-room pointer down to three-quarter speed.

Wegger was still clutching the crow's-nest phone unseeingly in his damaged hand. The gun hung loose in the other at his side. His face was a grim mask of fear.

I relieved him of the phone. 'Crow's nest!' I said. 'That's the first of 'em — there are plenty more ahead. Keep your eyes skinned if you don't want an ice-bath tonight.'

The man's voice replied, 'I thought we'd bought it, that time.'

The Quest plunged on into the mounting storm.

By midnight, the scheduled time of Botany Bay's signal, the Quest's bridge and superstructure were streaked with long streamers of spindrift. It collected round the pulpit rail of the crow's nest like clotted cream. When it became thick enough, it blew clear in great dollops which smashed against the bridge windows like snowballs bursting. I had the look-outs replaced every hour. An hour was about all they could take in the freezing wind. The searchlight shifts were even shorter — forty minutes. The drenched and frozen crews were fed coffee laced with rum when they were relieved. The hands of the bridge clock were on midnight when Persson reported.

'Botany Bay, sir.' He did not address either Wegger or me directly, which satisfied protocol.

I looked my question at Wegger without speaking.

'Take it — I'll stay here,' he said. 'Report to me as soon as you've spoken to Kearnay. Ullmann, watch him.'

I went with Persson. The wind ripped and pummelled the ship. He opened the radio shack door for me.

'Linn!'

'John!' She came forward and kissed me. She smiled but her eyes looked tired and drawn. She was wearing her heavy Icelandic sweater and dark pants. 'I've brought you some coffee.'

'MacFie's own special?'

'Yes. I didn't want to bring it to the bridge. If I'd mentioned Wegger, MacFie would have put poison in his, for sure.'

She tried to smile. Then she said with a rush, 'I couldn't stay in my cabin as he ordered — you see, I heard them carrying Captain Jacobsen…'

'Where did they put him?' I asked gently.

She shuddered. 'In the sick-bay. Just like Holdgate. It's become a mortuary, for me.'

'And Mrs Jacobsen?'

'She's still unconscious.'

'Botany Bay, sir,' interrupted Persson.

Reception was hardly better than it had been earlier.

'Kearnay! This is Captain Shotton!'

I caught only isolated, out-of-context fragments. '… bow-sprit… ice…'