A Grue Of Ice Read Free

God I brought you on the bridge."
    " Neptune's Bellows is just about right," said Sailhardy, " the way the wind rips through the gap."
    " It caught old H.M.S. Scott's bows," I filled in. " Dear Heaven! The way her bows whipped in towards those
    rocks!"
    I could still see the way Sailhardy had taken hold of the situation as the flagship teetered on the edge of destruction in the narrow gap which leads into the deeper anchorage—the flooded volcanic crater—beyond.
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    " It was that afternoon," I said slowly, " that you told me about The Albatross' Foot."
    Deception harbour had been full of bergy bits of ice. They had come in crabwise through Neptune's Bellows and started to freeze together in the inner anchorage. It seemed quite clear to me. what would happen: my small force was about to be frozen solid in the harbour. As I had seen it, it would have remained bottled up there for the next six months, unable to move, while the U-boats and raiders sneaked past
    in the Drake Passage. Destroyers and frigates are not sturdy ships like whale catchers ; the ice would have damaged them severely. There were no installations or dockyards to repair them. As the harbour started to freeze, I had climbed the cliff entrance and had been appalled at the gigantic phalanx of solid ice moving through the strait between Deception and the mainland. Some of it was turning aside from the main
    body into Deception harbour. If enough did—it would
    have meant death to my whole task force.
    Sailhardy had stood with me gazing at the fantastic sight. " The Albatross' Foot!" he had exclaimed softly. " The warm current was sweeping past Tristan as we left the other day. It will be here in a day or two. It will cut that ice up like a hot knife through butter."
    It did. I watched in amazement as Sailhardy's strange story of the warm, life-bringing current came true. The great moving battalions of ice, and even the landfast ice on the
    mainland, wilted before the attack of The Albatross' Foot. In a world where everything was frozen, The Albatross'
    Foot was the only warm thing. I blessed the day I had brought the islander with me. My squadron was saved. During the next two years, Sailhardy told me many things about the strange current of Tristan da Cunha—completely fascinating to an oceanographer like myself. But it was war, and we had work—grim work—to do, and there was not time or opportunity to carry out even the preliminaries to the study I wished to make of The Albatross' Foot. After the squadron
    had been saved Sailhardy had enjoyed a privileged position on the bridge of H.M.S. Scott.
    "I don't think Jimmy the One ever got used to my being on the bridge," smiled Sailhardy, as if reading my thoughts.
    " Regular Royal Navy," I said. " The form, old boy. Everything according to tradition. Even the admiral at the
    Cape never got used to me, a mere volunteer sailor, being given a strategic command. I was in the same category as
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    yourself. Not a hundred per cent. A week-end sailor. An upstart. An islander and a Cambridge scientist—it was just
    too much for some of the old school of regulars to stomach."
    " Yes," exclaimed Sailhardy hotly. " Their goddamned prejudice! Jimmy the One asked me once, what does your captain—you were always my captain—know of running a ship the regular way?"
    I hadn't heard this one.
    " And what did you say?" I asked.
    " I said," replied Sailhardy vehemently, " the Wetherbys have explored and been in these waters for a century or more. He's a Wetherby and a sailor first, and a scientist at Cambridge second. The Wetherbys' goddamned ships were the first to discover the Antarctic mainland, and a Wetherby ship anchored in Deception harbour itself while Napoleon was alive."
    I grinned. " What did Jimmy the One say to that?" Sailhardy gave his low laugh. " He said, ' If you ever use the expression " goddamned " on my bridge again, I'll put you on a charge.' "
    Sailhardy was sitting on the rough thwart. He seemed to