The Blue Ice (19 page)

‘Yes,' I said, looking up at the set of the sails as we leaned over to a fine reaching breeze. ‘Another eight by the log and we'll alter course. We'll be headed straight for the entrance to Sognefjord then.' I called to Dick who was slacking off the weather topping lift. ‘You and Curtis better turn in and get some sleep. You too, Jill,' I said.

‘What about you?' she asked.

‘I'll sleep in the chartroom bunk.'

I packed them off below – Carter, too. I wanted them to get as much sleep as possible. There would be work to do tomorrow if we were going to try and sail up the Sognefjord. Finally I was alone on deck with Wilson. I stood in the cockpit and leaned my arms on the chartroom roof, gazing up to the tall mainmast where canvas and rigging showed in a dim blur against the night. The whole ship was leaning gracefully, roaring through the water with the lee rail well under the water seething along the scuppers. It was a fine night for sailing. But there was a frozen bite in the wind. I shivered and went down into the chartroom. ‘What's your course, Wilson?' I asked.

‘North thirty west,' he answered.

I checked it on the chart. We were well clear of all the countless islands that dotted the coast to starb'd of us. ‘Wake me when you turn on to your new course,' I said and climbed into my bunk. The slight movements of the ship and the rhythmic creak of the rigging lulled me into instant sleep.

When we altered course, I took the wheel and sent Wilson below for some sleep. It was four o'clock and bitterly cold. The wind blew right through me. It seemed incredible that men ever sailed round the Horn. I felt numbed with the cold. The wind was on our port quarter now and the ship rode upright, main and mizzen booms pressed well out to starb'd. I watched Utvaer light come abeam and move across the quarter till it was lost behind a lump of land. The dawn came up out of the east, cold and grey and clear. The mountains emerged from the darkness of the night and gathered round. They were grey and heavy looking. But except for one, shaped like an enormous sugar loaf, they were not exciting. I might have been in Ireland or sailing up a Scottish loch. There was little sign of snow. These were but the foothills of the giant snow-fields inland. As the light increased the mountains grew blacker. Clouds gathered all across the sky. Grey scuds rolled up and wrapped themselves around the tree-clad slopes. The sky reddened till it blazed in fiery red and then the sun rose like a flaming cannon ball over the mountain tops. The sea boiled red along our sides. Then the scuds gathered thick like fiends of misery to drench all warmth and the bright fire died out of the sky. Suddenly the sun was gone and all was grey again – grey and drab as the mist rolled over us.

And yet it was then that I felt the excitement of the place. I was alone at the wheel of my own ship. And I was entering the longest fjord in Norway. For 130 miles it stretched eastward into the very centre of the most mountainous section of Norway. It was two to five miles wide with towering mountains falling sheer to the water and it was as deep as the mountains were high. I had read all about it and here I was actually sailing into it. And not just sailing for pleasure, but sailing with a purpose. I was going to Fjaerland, which lay under the largest glacier in Europe – 580 square miles of solid ice. And there, I hoped, I'd find the truth about Farnell. The reason for his death was as important to me now as the thought of what he might have discovered. I had seen the troubled look in Jill's grey eyes and something of the urgency in her had communicated itself to me.

The cold dampness of the mist should have destroyed my excitement. But it didn't. It increased it. Every now and then some change of the wind would draw aside for an instant the grey veil and I'd catch a glimpse of the mountains, their tops invisible, but their bulk suggestive of the greater bulk behind. This was the way to see new country, I thought. Like a woman, it should be revealed gradually. As I gripped the wet spokes of the wheel and felt the steady thrust of the wind driving
Diviner
deeper and deeper into the mountains, the mystery of the place held me in its spell and I remembered
Peer Gynt
again and the saeter huts high up in the hills.

Lost in my thoughts, the time, usually leaden-footed at the dawn, passed quickly. At eight o'clock the wind shifted abeam and I hauled in on main and mizzen sheets. Then I called Dick and went below to get some sleep. ‘Watch the wind,' I said, pausing with my head just out of the hatch. ‘You can't see them, but the mountains are all round us.'

I must have been dead beat, for I fell asleep at once and the next thing I remember is Curtis shaking me. I sat up at once, listening to the sounds of the ship. We were canted over and moving fast through the water, cutting through a light sea with a crash and a splash as the bows bit into each wave. ‘When do we reach Leirvik?'

He grinned. ‘We left Leirvik an hour ago,' he said.

I cursed him for not waking me. ‘What about Sunde?' I asked.

‘He made his call.'

‘Is he back on board?'

‘Yes. I saw to that. I went with him.'

‘You don't know what place it was he rang?'

He shook his head. ‘No. He wouldn't let me come into the call box with him.'

‘Has Dahler come round?'

‘Yes, he's all right. Got a hangover, that's all.'

I got up and went into the saloon. Dahler and Sunde were there facing each other over the remains of a rice pudding. And again I heard the name Max Bakke mentioned – this time by Sunde. His voice was nervous and pitched a shade high. He glanced round as I entered and I was aware of a sense of relief at my interruption.

‘Who is Max Bakke?' I asked as I settled myself at the table.

Dahler rose to his feet. ‘A business acquaintance of Mr Sunde,' he said quietly. And then to the diver: ‘We will talk of Max Bakke later.' He turned to me. ‘Has the weather cleared yet, Mr Gansert?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I haven't been up top.'

He went out then and I was left alone with Sunde. ‘Who is Max Bakke?' I asked again as I helped myself to bully beef.

‘Just somebody Mr Dahler and I know,' he replied. Then with a muttered excuse he got up and hurried out of the saloon.

When I had finished my lunch, I went up on deck. It was raining. The ship was shrouded in a thick mist. The mountains on either side were a vague blur. The wind was abeam, coming in gusts as it struck down invisible gullies in the mountain sides. Dick was at the wheel, his black oilskins shining with water and little beads of moisture clinging to his eyebrows. Jill and Dahler were standing in the cockpit.

‘Had a good sleep?' Jill asked. Her face was fresh and pink and wisps of fair hair escaped from below the peak of her black Norwegian sou'-wester. Her grey eyes smiled at me teasingly. She looked little more than a kid.

‘Fine, thanks,' I answered. ‘Has it been raining all the time?'

‘All the time,' she said.

‘It always rains in the entrance to the Sognefjord,' Dahler said. ‘It is a very wet place.' He glanced up at a leaden sky. ‘Soon it will be fine. You will see.'

He was quite right. By the time we were off Kvamsoy the sun was out. The wind changed and blew straight down the fjord. We took the sails in and started up the engine. The mountains had receded. They were higher and more massive. But they were not impressive. Deep snow capped their rounded tops, but thickly wooded slopes dropped gently to the quiet waters of the fjord. They basked in the sun, a symphony of bright green and glittering snow, and somehow I felt cheated. They should have been towering and black with precipitous cliffs falling sheer 4,000 feet to the water with the white lacing of giant falls cascading down their granite cliffs. This smiling land seemed much too kindly.

The wind died away. The surface of the fjord flattened out to a mirror. The ship steamed in the noonday warmth and, sitting at the wheel, I found I was hot even with nothing on but a short-sleeved shirt. Dick had turned in and Dahler had also gone below. The rest of the crew lay stretched out on the deck, sleeping in the sun. Jill came aft and sat beside me in the cockpit. She didn't speak, but sat with her chin resting on one hand, gazing ahead towards a wide bend of the fjord. She was waiting for her first glimpse of the Jostedal.

I often think of that afternoon. It was the beginning of something new in my life. As I sat there at the wheel watching the bend of the fjord slowly open up ahead of us, I was conscious for the first time of someone else's feelings. I knew what she was feeling, felt it as though it were myself. She was dressed in a deep scarlet jersey and green corduroy slacks and her fair hair stirred in the breeze, glinting in the sunlight like spun gold. Neither of us spoke. The only sound was the rhythmic beat of the engine and the gentle stirring of the water thrust aside by the bows.

Gradually the great headland on our port bow slid back, revealing more and more of the mountains to the north. And then suddenly we were clear of the enclosing mass and looking right up to Balestrand and Fjaerlandsfjord. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight. The mountains rose in jagged peaks, tier on tier for miles inland, crag over-topping crag till they seemed tilted up into the blue bowl of the sky. The dark green of the pines covered the lower slopes and there was emerald in the valleys. But higher up, the vegetation vanished and sheer precipices of grey-brown rock piled up like bastions holding back the gleaming masses of the snow-fields.

‘Isn't it lovely?' Jill whispered. But I knew she wasn't thinking about the wild beauty of the place. She was gazing for'ard across the bows to where the snow-field of the Jostedal glittered like a fairy carpet in the sun and remembering Farnell.

She didn't speak for some time after that. She just sat there, thinking about him. I could feel her thoughts inside me and in some strange way they hurt. Her left hand was flung out along the edge of the cockpit. It was a slender, almost ivory hand, with slender wrist and little blue veins. It was very close to mine where it lay against the warm brown of the varnished mahogany. Without thinking – conscious only of the reflection of her emotion in me – I stretched out my hand to hers. The fingers were cool and smooth, and the instant I touched her I felt close to her – closer than I'd been to anyone before. I started to withdraw my hand. But her fingers closed suddenly on mine. And then she looked at me. Her grey eyes were wide and misty. She clung to my hand as though it were something she feared to lose. ‘Thank you, Bill,' she said softly. ‘You've been a dear.'

‘He meant so much to you?' I asked, and my voice came strangely to my lips.

She nodded. ‘So much,' she said. Then she looked away to the mountains again. ‘So much – so long ago.' She was silent for a moment, her hand still holding mine. ‘Six weeks,' she whispered, as though to herself. ‘That's all we had. Then he was gone.'

‘But you saw him later – after the war?' I said.

‘Yes. For a week. That was all.' She turned to me. ‘Bill. What makes a man throw love away for – for something a woman can't understand? You, for instance. Have you ever been in love?'

‘Many times,' I answered.

‘But not really. Not so that it was more important than anything else?'

‘No,' I said.

Her hand suddenly tightened on mine so that I could feel her nails biting into my palm. ‘Why?' she cried softly. ‘Why? Tell me why? What was there more important?'

I didn't know how to answer her. ‘Excitement,' I said. ‘The excitement of living, of pitting one's wits against everyone else.'

‘Meaning a wife is an encumbrance?'

I nodded. ‘For some men – yes.'

‘And George was one of them?'

‘Perhaps.' I hesitated. How could I tell her what made a man like George Farnell love metals more than he loved himself. ‘Jill,' I said, ‘Farnell was an artist. He knew more about metals than any man I know. And the driving force in his life was the belief that he could open up these mountains here and let them pour out their store of mineral treasure. To the average person he is a cheat, a swindler, an escaped convict, a deserter. But in his own mind that was all justified. It was the means to an end. His art was everything. And he staked his whole self on the belief that there was metal up here under the ice that you see now. If he hurt you in the process – well, that was no more than the hurt he had done himself.'

She seemed to understand, for she nodded slowly. ‘Everything had to be subordinated to that.' She sighed. ‘Yes. You're right. But if only I'd known. Then I—' She stopped. ‘No,' she said. ‘Nothing would have made any difference. It was that singleness of purpose, that inward fire that attracted me.' She sat for some time with her eyes closed. Her hand was relaxed and soft in mine. ‘What about you, Bill?' she asked at length. ‘You say you've been in love – many times. What was it drove you on?'

I hesitated. ‘I'm not sure,' I said. ‘Excitement, I think. The excitement of running things, of always being faced with problems that were too big for me until I beat them. I'm a climber – in the industrial sense. I always had to get to the top of the next peak.'

‘And now?' she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Now I have had my fill – for the moment,' I answered. ‘During the war I reached the top. I exhausted myself, satiated my urge for power. Now I'm content to lie and bask in the sunshine – or was.'

‘Or was?' The slender line of her brows rose.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘All the time we have been sailing towards these mountains, that old sense of excitement has been rising inside me. If I can find out what Farnell discovered—' I stopped then. It sounded ghoulish, this search for a dead man's plunder.

‘I see,' she said and looked away to the mountains. And then suddenly with a violence I had not expected she said, ‘God! Why was I born a woman?'