Southtrap

'John! John!'

Linn's eyes were conscious but they were glazed with pain. Her voice was so faint that for a moment I wondered whether I'd imagined her call.

I dropped the shell-case and went down on my knees by her couch.

She tried to lift herself and fell back as the agony of the wound gripped her.

'John! Darling! It's dark — where am I? It's warm — my chest — '

I took her shoulders and held her gently so that she would not attempt to move again. I leaned down and put my lips to hers.

'Everything's fine, Linn, my darling. You're going to be all right. There's nothing more to worry about.'

Her shock returned with her consciousness.

'He — he shot me — my chest…'

I stroked her hair and noticed that she was warmer than I had anticipated. I feared it might be feverishness.

'You've got a bullet in you — only part of a bullet, my darling. You're still on Prince Edward. I'll get you out safely.'

Fear started into her shadowed eyes. 'Where are we, John? Where on Prince Edward? Where is her 'We're at the cave entrance, Linn. Forget Wegger. He won't worry us any more.'

There was a note of despair in her whispered question, 'John — please — I don't understand — the shot, the gold, Dina…'

I sat and told her as the sun disappeared but the long light remained over the sea and on the golden bastions over our heads.

When I had done, she said, 'Did the bullet finish the transmitter, John?'

'Yes, Linn. I'm afraid so. It's useless now. But it saved your life.'

'So nobody knows where we are?'

I had tried earlier to talk myself out of that one: now Linn's urgency placed the problem squarely in front of me.

The GARP communications set-up has had days and nights to plot our position and follow our course. I'm sure that the search is on at this moment. They'll come — soon, Linn.'

'You won't let them take me without you, my love, will you?'

'Never, Linn.'

The flames crackled, the remaining elephant seals started shifting and grunting, and the penguins moved closer, standing their distance like well-dressed undertakers' assistants.

After a while she said, 'I'm dying, aren't I, John?'

Her question sent the cold fear sweeping across my heart. I tried to sound reassuring.

'No, Linn. The bullet was a soft-nosed one. It splintered. I don't think the fragment is deep. If it were in your lung you wouldn't be able to breathe properly or speak. A doctor with a probe would have it out in no time.'

She moved and then cried out in pain. It was her answer.

Later, she seemed to sleep after I had fed her the unappetizing mixture I'd brewed in the shell-case. I had some myself. It tasted oily and fishy. You get used to it, Wegger had said. I was still in my Prince Edward Island apprenticeship.

Night came, the half-dark of the Antarctic summer night.

I built a second fire just inside the cave entrance where it was dry and laid another bed in shelter for Linn as well as one for myself next to it. She did not fully wake but squirmed in agony when I carried her to it. I tried cushioning her head in my arms but she could not get comfortable, so I went and sat guard on my own heap of bed-grass.

I must have slept, for it was darker when I woke. It felt like half an hour but it was, in fact, nearly four hours. I went to the water's edge for more wood. It was a night as beautiful as Captain Prestrud's dream. The same pale opalescent blue was on the water and over the sea. Far out, a white iceberg seemed to hang like a star in space.

It was also fine enough to be able to see the all-night electric lights of Marion's weather station if I went up to higher ground.

I checked Linn. She was still asleep, breathing faster and more shallowly.

I hurried up the landslide pathway from our beach to the flat plateau above the cave. From its southern extremity I could detect a luminescence in the sky where I knew Marion must lie. But my direct view was hidden by a highland on the shore facing the channel. I dared not go further and leave Linn.

I hurried back to her.

She opened her eyes when I approached.

Her voice was so far gone that I had to bend right down to hear.

'John darling — our time together was so short, wasn't it?'

'It was a lifetime to me, my dearest.'

She shut her eyes and tried to smile, but the pain twisted her mouth. She drew in her breath sharply.

'I want you to promise me something, John.'

'Anything, Linn.'

'I want you to bury me in the Southern Ocean, here at Prince Edward. I want you to conduct the service.'

'No need to talk like that, my darling. You'll pull through, never fear.'

'I know I'm dying.'

In my heart I dreaded she was right. Her fever had been growing all the time. Her pulse was fluttering like a bird and her breathing was worse.

She took my hand. I was appalled at how hot it was.

'I'll love you always, John.'

Her eyes closed and cut short my reply. She didn't speak again.

I sat with her hand in mine, staring into the fire. After a while my thoughts switched from Linn to the grim chamber of death at our backs — and the gold. How, I asked myself, could the authorities have remained in ignorance of the hoard and have informed the three skippers that it was in safe-keeping in the vaults of the Federal Bank in the United States? I turned over every aspect, thinking back to try and find the answer. I tried to recall everything Captain Prestrud and Jacobsen had said in my attempt to throw light on the mystery.

Then I sat upright, wide awake, remembering something in Captain Jacobsen's letter to me. The Allied Commission had informed the skippers that the gold had been in transit via the port of Bergen. I racked my brains for his exact words — 'this was obviously a mistake since we knew it was Narvik!'

Bergen! That was the key to the mystery! Bergen is 1000 kilometres from Narvik. The Free Norwegian Fleet had seized the gold in Narvik and had made off to the Antarctic with it. Later it had been hidden in the great cave. Wegger had said that the British cruiser's boat had never landed, and I had seen for myself that the gold hoard had remained undisturbed. The fact that the Nazis had sent a raider and a pocket battleship to Antarctica proved that the gold had come from Narvik, not Bergen.

Yet the Allied Commission had ten million dollars in Danzig gold still in its safe-keeping. The only possible solution was that there had been two shipments of Danzig gold of equal size, one consignment via Narvik and the other via Bergen.

I reasoned further that such confusion could be due to the destruction of records during the Nazi Blitzkrieg on Poland and to wartime conditions in general. And, after all, the Allied Commission could point to a gold hoard of similar value in its own possession. Theirs, I knew now, was the Bergen shipment; the Narvik shipment still lay in a pyramid behind me in the darkness, guarded by the bodies of Wegger and the enigmatic Dina.

I must have fallen asleep from mental as well as physical exhaustion after working it out, for I was jerked awake by a roaring noise. As I surfaced I thought the sea had risen and was thundering on the beach.

But it wasn't in the sea.

It was in the air.

It was a plane., The rocks themselves seemed to shake as it passed over the cave at zero feet.

I jumped up and stumbled to the water's edge but I was too late to see anything beyond a big double tail disappearing behind McAll Kop as it travelled northwards.

I could have wept. The look-outs aboard the plane must have concluded that the cave was deserted. I cursed myself for having fallen asleep.

The fire — surely an alert crew would have spotted the fire even though it had burned low?