Isvik Read online

  In the event it was the violence of the movement that woke me, the rolling gradually becoming so bad that I had to get up and rig the canvas leeboard to stop myself being pitched on to the deck. The first pale streak of a sickly dawn showed over the bows. We were coming out of the Beagle Channel now and already beginning to feel the effect of the gale building up round the Wollaston group of islands that terminate in the Horn. By the time Iain came on watch it had become very rough indeed. Andy and I got into our oilskins, took down the upper squares’l and hoisted the largest of our three storm jibs to steady her. Water was beginning to surge for’ard along the deck and we could hear the grumbling roar of breaking seas above the scream of the wind. It would be bad off Cabo San Pio, much worse probably when we reached Los Estados island and San Juan, the final tip of South America and our point of departure.

  I warned Andy he was on call and to keep his oilskins on. He was pale and I wondered whether he suffered from seasickness. The movement was unpleasant and I was beginning to feel a little queasy myself. ‘You all right?’ I asked Iain.

  ‘Aye. The good Lord gifted me with a cast-iron stomach.’ He smiled at me, a good colour in his cheeks as he sat, seemingly relaxed, in the swivel chair, his hands holding the wheel, not tight, but firmly. ‘What about ye?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, though I wasn’t all that sure. ‘What’s in the cases we brought off from that beach?’

  ‘Why d’ye ask?’

  ‘Semtex is an explosive, isn’t it? The stuff the IRA get from Czechoslovakia. One of those cases –’

  His hand banged down on the wooden ledge of the console. ‘I told ye. Keep yer thoughts to yerself. Ye’re the one person –’ He checked himself. ‘Nils had been paintin’ the back of the for’ard heads. Ah’ve slapped some of that on it. Ah don’t mind ye askin’ me questions. Ah reck’n Ah know ye now. Yes, of course it’s Semtex, and there’s a case of detonators, too. We may need to blast a way out of the ice and Ah couldn’t bring the stuff down through Chile.’

  He checked the swing of the bows as a breaker went surging beneath us, slamming the ship violently to port. He was a quick learner, or else at some time in his chequered career he had handled a vessel in rough seas before. ‘Remember what Ah said – keep yer eyes open and yer mouth shut.’ Another breaker, white water all along the deck and the bows swinging. But he anticipated it this time and checked the swing almost before it had begun. ‘Gettin’ a wee bit frisky, isn’t she?’

  ‘It’ll be worse when we’re abreast of Cabo San Pio.’ The black outline of the cape was just becoming visible low down on the horizon ahead.

  ‘Very probably.’ He grinned at me and I realised he was actually enjoying himself. ‘Ah wonder how our Ángel is takin’ it. He was a bit upset at bein’ whisked off like that. Felt as though he was bein’ hi-jacked.’

  The smell of bacon frying came up from below. It was past seven, but the cloud, even between the rain squalls, was so thick and low that there was still no more than a drab glimmer of daylight. I went below, thinking that Iris or Nils must have started breakfast, but to my surprise it was Carlos. ‘Thought you might be getting hungry.’ He smiled at me and I thought, my God, the boy’s a natural sailor. He handed me a plate that was almost too hot to hold with two thick rashers, a fried egg and a hunk of bread. ‘You want it fried? I have enough fat.’

  I shook my head, the heat and the movement making me wonder whether I could cope with what he had given me. But I was hungry, and after I had eaten I felt better. ‘You found your sea legs pretty quickly.’

  ‘Sea legs? Oh yes, sickness at sea is never any trouble with me.’

  I was just considering whether it was the moment to go to the heads, always a struggle when you’ve got oilskins on and the ship is trying to bounce you off the seat, when Ángel appeared wearing, of all things, a red and green Paisley-patterned silk dressing-gown. His hair was tousled and he was yawning.

  ‘I could not sleep, also there is a good smell.’ He stretched, running one hand through his hair, holding on tight to the corner of the cupboard with the other. ‘Where is Iris?’ He was moving towards the stove, his eyes half closed. ‘I like my eggs sunny side up. And the bacon …’ He stopped there, his eyes widening as Carlos turned towards him. ‘You! ¿Qué diablos baces aquí?’

  ‘I am signed on as one of the crew.’ He was smiling an ingratiating, nervous little smile. And there was something in his eyes …

  ‘You are coming with us? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Sí. Vengo contigo.’

  ‘No.’ The word shot out of Ángel’s mouth as though something had exploded inside the man. He turned and shouted for Iris. And when she appeared from her cabin aft, a scarf tied hurriedly round her head and her fingers still pulling at a heavy grey sweater, he told her we must put back immediately and land Carlos at the first possible place.

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t answer that, the three of them standing there, staring at each other. ‘Please,’ Carlos murmured.

  ‘I tell you, no. You will be put ashore, somewhere, anywhere. You are not sailing on this ship.’ And to Iris he said, ‘How could you be so stupid? He is not a good sailor and he is due back at college.’

  ‘Please, no.’ It was a cry of despair almost, and I was shocked to see the blatant look of adoration in the boy’s eyes. There was also a strange undercurrent of excitement radiating from him. ‘I am staying here.’

  The crash of a sea and a surge of water overhead caused the saloon to swoop, then roll, throwing us off balance so that we were suddenly in a huddle on the starb’d side. Iain descended slowly from the wheelhouse above. ‘What’s the trouble?’ And when he was told, he said, ‘Are ye serious? We’re approachin’ Los Estados and y’ want me to put back into the Beagle Channel?’

  The other nodded, saying that if we didn’t put Carlos ashore he would not continue with the expedition. Another wave broke on board, the movement increasingly violent. I dived for the companionway, realising he had left the helm on autopilot.

  ‘Wait. Take our friend with ye, let him see what it’s like out there. We would never make it back into the Channel against this wind.’

  ‘Then turn north after Cabo San Juan, go through the Estrecho de le Maire and drop him off at Rio Grande, anywhere along the east coast of Tierra del Fuego. You will be sheltered there.’

  ‘It will be down-draughting off the mountains,’ I said. And Iain told him bluntly that there would be no turning back. ‘Dae what ye fuckin’ like,’ he said furiously when Ángel reiterated his non-co-operation threat. ‘We’re no’ turnin’ back, man.’

  ‘The Malvinas then. You can land him on the Malvinas.’

  ‘The Falklands? Aye, we could have done that if ye’d joined ship at Punta Arenas. But from here our course is east towards South Georgia, then south into the Weddell Sea as soon as we get a favourable report on the state o’ the pack ice. Anyway, the boy’s a good cook an’ a useful hand. Ah should have thought ye’d be happy to have him –’ I lost the rest of it, for another sea came slamming over the stern with a noise like an express train hitting the buffers. I heaved myself to the top of the companionway, staggered across the wheelhouse and disconnected the autopilot. Then I settled down behind the wheel to ease her run before the wind-driven break of the waves.

  The apparent wind speed had risen to 36 knots, 40 plus in the gusts. Our speed through the water was 7½ knots, and since we were running with the wind almost dead astern, the true wind speed was something approaching 50 knots, or storm force on the Beaufort scale.

  Iain didn’t return, finally calling up to ask if it was all right for him to stay down for breakfast. The trouble over Carlos seemed to have died down. Iris relieved me about half an hour later and I asked her what it had all been about. I had to shout to make myself heard above the roar of the wind and sea. But all she said was, ‘Nothing very much. You get some sleep now. You’ve been up all night.’

  I didn’t argue. The clouds had lifted a
little, the light was stronger and I thought I could see the end of Tierra del Fuego and the entrance to the Le Maire Strait. I called Nils up to stand watch with her, entered our Satnav position in the log, and after pencilling it in with the time and date on the chart, went below to my bunk.

  I was so tired I went straight off to sleep, regardless of the violence of the movement, and when Iris finally woke me I was shocked to see it was 12.47. ‘Everything all right?’ I asked in a sudden panic.

  ‘Of course. You’re not the only one who can navigate.’ I thought she meant Andy, but no, she was referring to Iain. ‘Andy and Go-Go are both sick, and Carlos has taken to his bunk, looking very pale.’

  ‘And Ángel?’

  ‘He had his breakfast – two eggs and a lot of butter with his bread – then retired as though he was a paying passenger on a luxury cruise ship.’

  Apparently he had finally accepted the fact of Carlos’s presence on board. ‘Why did he object?’ I asked. ‘Is he afraid we may never get out of the ice?’

  She shook her head. ‘Of course not. He doesn’t think of him in that way at all.’

  ‘What way then?’

  ‘I don’t know. It is something personal, something that concerns him. I don’t understand. All I know is that wretched boy is in love with him.’ She said it quite viciously.

  I sat up, staring at her. She was still leaning half over me and just for a second I caught a glimpse of something akin to hatred in her eyes. ‘You’re in love with him yourself, aren’t you?’ I was thinking what a hell of an emotional time bomb we had been landed with.

  ‘No. No, of course I am not. How dare you suggest –’ She turned quickly, knowing her protest had been too vehement. ‘It is not a question of love.’ She knew her voice had given her away. ‘It is …’ She stopped uncertainly, biting her lip. ‘You were asking about Carlos.’

  ‘Yes. How much do you know about his background – the Borgalini family?’

  ‘Very little, except that Roberto Borgalini either lives with, or is married to, that woman who keeps him. They are both second generation Sicilian.’

  ‘The singer, Rosalli Gabrielli?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she is Carlos’s mother?’ And when she nodded abruptly, beginning to turn away, I went on quickly, ‘When did you first meet Carlos?’

  She frowned. ‘I was trying to remember that the other day. I think it was when Ángel took me sailing. It was the only time, and Papa was with us. Carlos must have been about fourteen or fifteen. He was still at school.’

  ‘And he’s Borgalini’s child?’

  There was a fractional hesitation before she said, ‘I suppose so. I’ve never really thought about it until now. Seeing them together again … They’re very alike, you know.’

  ‘You mean –’ But I was suddenly conscious that the movement of the ship had changed. It was less abrupt, more a long, slow roll with a twisting swoop followed by a crash drop and the surge of water along the deck. But the whine had gone out of the wind. ‘The wind has dropped.’

  She nodded, her face crusted with salt. ‘Barely 20 knots now. And the sky is clearing. We are opening up the Le Maire Strait and can see the island of Los Estados quite clearly.’

  I swung my legs out of the bunk. ‘What’s our speed?’

  ‘Four and a half.’

  I nodded. We needed more sail. ‘Give Andy a shout, will you.’

  ‘I tell you, he is seasick.’

  ‘I don’t care. I can’t get the main and the upper squares’l hoisted on my own, so get him on his feet somehow.’ I was pulling on my sea boots, feeling slightly dizzy myself. Now the wind had dropped, the great wave trains marching up astern of us from the Horn were rearing higher, the toppling crests hitting our stern, flooding the deck right to the bows. Water was splashing down the wheelhouse ladder and there was a drip over my bunk.

  ‘What is the trouble?’ Ángel was standing at the entrance to his cubicle wearing nothing but a pair of pink and white striped underpants, his torso tanned, the muscles of his legs taut against the movement of the ship. He looked hard and very fit. ‘Anything I can do?’

  I told him and he said, ‘Okay. I give you a hand.’ He was back, fully clothed, almost before I had got my oilskins on. ‘You tell me what to do.’

  I didn’t argue with him. I just nodded, wondering whether I could do it with just him to help me. I refused to let Iris go out on to the deck, and Nils had been up all night watching over the engine. Anyway, he was the engineer, not a deckie.

  Going for’ard that morning was like a balancing act on the bows of a roller-coaster, but I suppose if you have ridden horses all your life muscle and nerve are tuned to that sort of movement. At any rate, Ángel just stood there as though he were part of the deck fittings, everything slatting and banging about us, the water sometimes up to our waists and the ship heaving wildly on the break of the great seas rolling under us. When I yelled above the tumult for him to pull on this rope or winch in on that, he literally jumped to it, so that once he got the hang of what was required he was doing it often faster than I could.

  It was my first real introduction to a man who was to prove a remarkable addition to the ship’s company whenever there was need. Arrogant, emotionally and socially disruptive, vain, self-conscious and supersensitive to the behaviour of those around him, he had an extraordinary flair for rising to any occasion that would offer him the opportunity of demonstrating his superiority. ‘A very dangerous man,’ Iain had said to me after we had watched him greeting the various members of the expedition on his arrival. ‘Just ye watch it, Pete, or he’ll charm the pants off ye an’ leave ye stark naked in the ice.’ It was said jokingly, but the broadness of his accent made it clear to me that the warning was a deadly serious one.

  With both squares’ls set on the foremast and the main sheeted half in, Isvik steadied down, heeled slightly to port and rode the waves with a great swooping surge of power. At times we were surfing and had over 14 on the clock, which was a lot for a heavily-built boat loaded below her marks with a year’s stores and the gear to cope with a winter in the ice. I remember Andy, white-faced in the wheelhouse doorway, breathing in great gulps of air and saying, ‘We could get pooped running downwind like this in the Roaring Forties.’ And when I reminded him we were into the Fifties now and anyway you could get pooped in the North Sea, he nodded a little wanly. ‘But down here we don’t have any lifeboat stations handy.’

  ‘There’s the Falklands.’ I was laughing then with the sheer exhilaration of our speed as Isvik was lifted on a breaking comber and went careering wildly through the seedling water of the crest. And Iain, his head appearing like a jack-in-the-box at the top of the companionway, said, ‘There’s an ocean-going tug at East Cove, where there’s two fishery protection vessels, a Marr trawler and all sorts of foreign krill and squid fishers, plus the Navy, of course, so don’t get the idea there are no ships around but ourselves.’

  He heaved his bulk into the wheelhouse and was promptly flung against the gyro column. ‘We won’t be fully on our own till South Georgia is behind us and we’re enterin’ the pack.’ And he added, ‘There’s even drillin’ rigs in the sea area between Patagonia and the Falkland Exclusion Zone, and then there are the various Antarctic bases. Argentina has about a dozen, the three nearest Marambio, San Martin and Esperanza.’

  It was like that most of that first day, the cloud lifting steadily and the visibility becoming so clear we had the highest parts of Tierra del Fuego in sight hour after hour despite our speed. That was what impressed me most – not the great wave trains and the steady weight of the wind that drove us, but the wonderful, breath-taking clarity of the unpolluted air. And the sky. Sunset that day, and the next, was a roaring furnace of red that changed gradually to horizontal streaks of cold blue and white, then translucent green. And when night finally came and the stars grew like lanterns being switched on, they were so brilliant they were unbelievable in their beauty and their nearness.


  Once we had cleared the land and the seas were less disturbed, the movement was much easier. It was still a roller-coaster of a ride, but gradually, as the eight of us found our feet again, the routine of shipboard life asserted itself. Andy raised his ‘ham’ contact on the Falklands and got a repeat of the weather situation. Ángel was in the wheelhouse at the time and in due course it was borne in on me that he almost always contrived to be around when Andy raised either the Falklands or the mainland of Argentina or Chile.

  It was just after dawn on the fourth day that we raised South Georgia. It was almost two hundred miles away, broad on the port bow, and it showed as a mirror image of pale white peaks upside down on the horizon. Nils was at the helm and he called me to check that it really was South Georgia. The image was gradually paling with the dawn, but there was absolutely no doubt. The phenomenon, and the inversion, was on a bearing of 67 degrees, which agreed precisely with our Satnav position, and for a time it was so clear I could actually identify the Allardyce Range and the great nine-thousand-foot peak of Mount Paget.

  There happened then something so bizarre that for a moment I couldn’t believe it. We were all of us on deck, or in the wheelhouse, for I had called them up to look at the extraordinary sight of the great volcanic mass where Shackleton is buried, standing on its head and gleaming white like an upside-down wedding cake. There was a sudden, sharp crack, as though a piece of ice had broken away, and I turned my head just in time to see the albatross that had been following us for the last day and a half fold its left wing and veer away. I saw its beak open, heard its cry, and then it collapsed into our wake, its eight-foot span of wings folded, the left held awkwardly and trailing in the water.

  I was so surprised, so shocked, that I just stood there, South Georgia forgotten, staring at the bird that we had identified from the book on board as a young specimen of the Great or Wandering Albatross. For almost two days it had been Isvik’s aerial escort, riding the wind so effortlessly I had come to think of it as the spirit of Antarctica, and now to see it down in the water, ditched and unable to rise.