'I told you this morning,' I replied. 'This cruise is following the route taken by HMS Erebus and Terror. They called at Prince Edward — or tried to. In fact, they never landed at all. They hove to off the island for the night but a gale caught them and blew them sixty miles towards the Crozets. That's why the Quest is bound for Prince Edward.'
'You're prepared to risk a ship for that sort of lark?'
'It's not my decision. That's the way the cruise has been planned. Miss Prestrud will fly in with the tourists this afternoon. That's what they're paying to get — and we've got to give it to them.'
I realize that by saying 'we' I had included him.
He went on forcefully, 'If the wind shifts south-east when you're anchored off Cave Bay, you can say your prayers.'
'I know. But it's usually out of the west or southwest.'
'What about the kelp barrier?' he demanded further. 'If it fouls Quest's engine intakes, you'll never get clear.'
The more I heard of his expertise, the more I knew that Wegger was the sort of officer I wanted. McKinley probably thought kelp was a new hair-spray. Nonetheless, I wasn't having Wegger supply me with a lesson in seamanship.
'Just for the record, Wegger, I've done a milk-run'. through the islands for some years now — Marion, Gough — keeping the weather stations supplied. I know.'
He eyed me. Something was still nagging him.
But my mind was jumping ahead to the thousand and one jobs which still lay ahead in order to get the Quest ready for sea.
I said briefly, 'This ship's in a mess. Can you start now? Not this afternoon, or in an hour, but right now. The job's yours if you can.' — What job?'
'First officer.'
He looked surprised, then replied after a short pause, 'Right now it is. I brought my gear aboard — just in case.'
'Good. Then…' I was about to start on technicalities when he pulled a pistol out of his pocket and threw it on to the chart that lay half-rolled upon the table in front of me.
It was an old 9mm Luger with a four-inch barrel, one of those early war-time guns collectors go crazy about. But this wasn't a collector's gun. It had a streak of rust from the muzzle to the safety-catch.
'Mind if I bring this along?'
'Why?'
'If we're going ashore at Prince Edward I want some protection against the skuas.' He rolled up his left sleeve. There was a long scar on the forearm in the place where a man might throw up his arm to protect his head.
He said venomously, 'One of 'em did that. I hate the bastards. There's only one thing for them — shoot them.'
I said, 'All the wild life is protected. Both Prince Edward and Marion are nature reserves. Don't forget.'
He gave an exaggerated laugh. 'Show me just one game ranger on those goddamned places! If we shoot a few birds, who's going to know?'
He was right of course. And those skuas have no fear of man. I'd been attacked by them on my own deck.
'How much ammunition have you got?'
He put two small boxes next to the pistol. One had been breached.
'About a hundred rounds.'
That's a lot of shells.'
There's a lot of skuas.'
'All right then. But take it easy, Wegger. I don't want any complaints. Only if it's absolutely necessary…'
He leaned forward to scoop up the shells with his sound left hand. As their weight came off the chart it rolled itself up an inch or two of its own accord so that the names which had been inked in were under his fingers.
He snapped the parchment down again so hard that it crackled. He stared at the names as if transfixed: Teddy. Atlantis-Pinguin-Sibirien. January 14th 1941.
'Where does this come from?'
His question came out like a pistol shot as he picked up the Luger. He was so stunned by what he had just read that I don't think he realized what he was doing nor where he was pointing the gun.
In fact he was pointing it straight at me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Several hours later after lunch, I was alone in the Captain's cabin. I felt even more of an intruder than in the chartroom earlier. Captain Prestrud had left his imprint upon the place, even in the short time he had owned Quest. A big roll-top desk, old-fashioned and friendly, contained a mixture of official and private papers and photographs. A smoked pipe and tobacco jar and an unfinished letter all pointed to a man who had gone out and meant to come back. But I couldn't help doubting Captain Prestrud would ever return.
I could still sense his warm presence. It was here that I had had my interview for the Quest job. The ship's documents were now my immediate concern. For the sorting and clearing of the desk with its personal possessions I decided to await Linn's arrival. Among his books I noted Captain Benjamin Morrell's autobiographical Voyage to the Antarctic, dating back a century and a half. After its publication Morrell had been dubbed a liar but in the course of time his accounts were confirmed by others. I made a mental note to check if he mentioned Dina's Island.
Dina's Island — the chart. Why had Wegger attached so much importance to it?
It was a question I had asked myself a score of times while sorting out all the things that needed doing to get the Quest ready for sea. I had asked him point-blank as he stood there staring at the chart: What was it that had shaken him so?
It had got me really rattled. Wegger had come aboard trailing as much tension as a primed hijacker's grenade and then this business of the chart. I was on the point of revoking my offer of the job. He sensed this, and had explained quickly that he had been serving in Teddy, a supply tanker to the Norwegian Antarctic whaling fleet at the outbreak of World War II. It was just that the unexpected sight of a chart from his first ship had touched a nostalgic chord of memory.
It sounded phoney. I told him so.
He then said that the Teddy had been captured and burned early in the war by a German raider and that it had moved him to see this tangible relic of her all these years later.
Wegger looked to me as sensitive as those Antarctic fish which don't need haemoglobin in their blood, they are so tough.
'What raider?' I asked.
With the third finger of his wrecked right hand he had stabbed the. name hand-printed on the chart. Atlantis.
But he couldn't — or wouldn't — offer an explanation for that last name, Siberien, or the date, or any possible connection with the other German raider Pinguin.
He was saved from further cross-examination by McKinley bursting in to say that the clutch on a derrick winch loading Number 3 hatch, between the bridge and the stack, had stripped. With it out of action, we'd never get to sea in time.
If I had my doubts about Wegger in one respect, I had no reason to question my judgment of him as a seaman in the next few hours. He personally took on the job of repairing the clutch — which even I considered to be a shore workshop job — and laboured at it, stripped and sweating in the hot wind, driving his squad as mercilessly as an old-time bucko mate until the job was done. When I was sure loading had been resumed, I made my way for'ard along the deck past the lifeboats — painted red for emergency sighting in the ice — to check the Captain's cabin. As the Quest's new captain the cabin was now mine.
I left the desk and opened the ship's safe with the combination numbers I had discovered in a drawer. The Quest's documents were all there, together with the wages for the crew. I riffled through the papers. Everything was in order.
Under a ledger I found a folding leather case, the sort of frame which is intended to house portrait photographs. I opened it. One half was empty: the other revealed a picture of one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She was young, dark, and her eyes seemed a little heavy. There was about her a timeless loveliness, a heart-stopping quality, and at the same time an almost unnatural stillness, a curiously blank expression in the eyes. She wore a sealskin jerkin with a high Cossack-like collar. I couldn't make out any more details.