Southtrap

'It's a pity about Kearnay,' he remarked thoughtfully. 'Maybe I should only have winged him. I've got to have someone who can handle a sailing ship.'

'Biggs could too,' I replied.

'He had his chance. He came at me,' Wegger retorted. That ugly look was coming back into his face at the recollection of the rush at the quarterdeck as he justified the shooting to himself. Wegger couldn't help himself. He'd kill — regardless.

'Wegger,' I said, 'all this is getting us nowhere. If you have anything to say to me, say it.'

'Don't come the heavy captain over me! Shut up and listen!'

'I'm listening.'

He said breathily, as if the words were being forced out of him under pressure, 'I told you I'd show you how to hide a ship in the Southern Ocean. And that's what I'm going to do.'

I showed him my watch. 'You can still make it to the buoy's launching-point if you hurry. Four hours and you could be there. First we rescue this crew in two trips with the motor-launch…'

'Stow it, Shotton. Don't tell me what to do. Get this absolutely clear, there is not going to be any buoy launch. Next…' he leaned forward towards me and made little chops at the air with the Luger '… you're taking this ship to Prince Edward Island.'

'This ship!'

'This windjammer, this ship, Botany Bay.'

'It's impossible!'

'You and Ullmann and Bravold and me — we're going to Prince Edward in Botany Bay.'

I simply stared at him.

I realized all along it would be pretty risky using the Quest, but I had no choice,' he said. 'But the minute Botany Bay's Mayday signal came in, I had my answer.'

'Go on.'

'What's one unknown windjammer compared to a vessel which the eyes of a hundred and forty-five nations are on?' he asked rhetorically. 'No one but the Quest heard her Mayday call. If she doesn't turn up in Australia, so what? There'll be very few questions. She'll be dismissed as a cranky replica of a cranky old windjammer. She won't be considered worth searching for. There'll be no follow-up when she's posted overdue. She'll be lucky if she rates a paragraph or two in the newspapers. So you and I and Bravold and Ullmann will take Botany Bay to Prince Edward, lift the gold, and sail on to Mauritius. My plan goes ahead as scheduled.'

A new fear swept over me. What did he intend to do with the Quest? He'd not mentioned Linn either.

'And Quest?'

I didn't like the way he laughed. 'You'll see. You'll see for yourself in good time.'

I kept my feelings hidden. 'Your plan is fine and dandy except for one thing.' I waved a hand at the ice locking in Botany Bay. 'You talk as if you had a ship to sail. You haven't. You'll never get Botany Bay out of this.'

He pointed the gun between my eyes, grinning like a death-mask.

'You will Shotton. You will, if you have to spill your guts on the deck doing it. You'll see why.'

I did, half an hour later when Ullmann returned, bringing Linn with him.

I recognized her as soon as she stepped on to the ice shelf from the motor-launch by her brown-and-white coat and hood.

When she came close to Botany Bay's side I saw she was walking stiffly and holding her head awkwardly.

I hurried to help her aboard. She stood on the ice, unspeaking, looking up at me, strained and white-faced, her head at a strange, stiff angle.

'Linn! What…!'

Wegger was laughing. He called down to Ullmann, who had unmasked the Scorpion after Wegger had shouted a go-ahead to him.

'Show him, Ullmann! Show him why he'll do everything to get Botany Bay free.'

Ullman went to Linn and wrenched down her hood. Her lovely hair was pale gold against the whiteness of the ice.

But it wasn't her hair my eyes were riveted on.

A grenade was tied against her neck.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

'Heave short!'

Ten men at the hand-operated capstan on Botany Bay's foc's'le-head bent their backs to the capstan bars. Their boots beat a treadmill pattern on the deck, a pattern which had been repeated time and again during the past two hours. They were sweating even in the icy cold. The sheep-stink from their heavy sweaters was rank and raw.

The clumsy old-fashioned anchor with its big flukes and long shaft rose to the end of the foreyard like a corpse on a hangman's gibbet. As it reached its extremity, a man watching at the rail called to me.

'Up and down, sir!'

'Hold it!' I ordered the exhausted men. I was waiting until the anchor steadied. It weighed a couple of tons. This was the tenth and — I hoped — last time I would have to order the sullen, resentful men to put their backs into the heavy task.

Two hours had passed since Ullmann had come aboard with Linn as a hostage. Wegger wasn't bluffing. He had her standing in full view on the quarterdeck while he kept guard. Ullmann was up for'ard with me and the crew. His Scorpion was over us like an evil dream. I knew how much the men had been shaken by the sight of Linn with that grim talisman of death fixed to her neck. They had seen for themselves over Kearnay and Biggs what Wegger was capable of. Although their muscles were groaning, they kept going. I could only hope against hope now that my own plan would work.

When I saw the two small drills which Ullmann had brought from the Quest to bore holes in the ice for the explosive charges I knew Wegger's plan was useless. The augurs had a diameter of about 50 millimetres or two inches and were a metre long. It was sending a boy on a man's errand to expect toys like that to make holes to accommodate charges of ten kilograms.

I told Wegger so.

His only reply had been to fix me with his cold stare and indicate Linn.

It was hopeless to try and get past him.

The cockbilled anchor — the one I had spotted at the cathead when we had first approached the windjammer — had given me my idea. I had decided to use its weight with a length of heavy steel bar fixed into the cross-piece as a kind of jumper drill. The anchor had been run out at the ship's lower yardarms on the ice-cliff side, hoisted, and then let fall. The device had worked. We were now drilling the final hole.

But would the blast free Botany Bay?'

I put the thought from me. That still figure on the quarter deck drove me afresh.

'Up and down, sir!' The man repeated. We had adapted sailing-ship parlance to cope with the situation. 'Up and down' meant that the length of cable running through the blocks on the yardarm was now equal to the distance the anchor had to fall to hit the ice.

'Stand clear! Secure the pawls!'

The men at the capstan stood back. I took a hammer and knocked out the anchor shackle. I jumped clear to avoid the wire's backlash.

The anchor plunged from the yardarm with a crash. Splinters of ice shot up as the steel dug deep.

Now it was the turn of the explosives.

'Break that anchor out — handsomely, men!'

One of the young men spat on his hands and asked me as he passed.

'Will it work, sir? How thick is the ice?'

That was exactly what I did not know, how thick the ice was which locked Botany Bay fast.

I tried to sound confident. 'We'll have the ship back in her natural element before the day's much older.'

'Heave!' — the men renewed their effort to secure the anchor.

Explosion seismology.

The phrase sprang ready-made into my mind. It seemed to come from deep in my subconscious; probably it was from some forgotten piece I'd read or heard, concerning the way scientists had calculated the depth of the ice-cap covering the Antarctic continent. They had fired small charges of explosive in holes drilled in the ice and measured the time taken for the echo to rebound from the bedrock thousands of feet below. Knowing the speed at which sound travels in ice, they were able to establish how thick the ice-cap was.