Ice Brothers Page 15

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now finding a lead and following it is the easy part. The hard part is knowing when the pack is going to close in on you and crush you like a bloody sausage in a meat-grinder.”

  “How do you tell when that’s going to happen, sir?”

  “Watch the current, watch the wind. You can get a feel of the way the pack is moving by the way it bunches up where the water is shallow enough to ground it. The only thing I really trust, though, is my balls. When they start to ache, I get the hell out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s why nobody can train ice pilots fast. They can teach their heads, all right, but it takes years to train their balls. And a guy who has hardly no balls at all never can learn.”

  Mowrey smiled sweetly at Paul when he said this. Then he drained the contents of his coffee cup and ducked into his cabin again.

  They searched for two days before finding a suitable lead, and even that one was so clogged with small icebergs at the narrow end that the Arluk had to push them aside to make a channel wide enough for the Dorchester. When all was in readiness, Mowrey steamed back to the edge of the pack and signaled to the troop ship, “Follow me as closely as possible. Speed dead slow.”

  Suddenly the whole operation looked easy. The Arluk led the way through a channel which twisted gradually enough for the big ship to follow. Some of the icebergs dwarfed even the troop ship, and her decks were crowded with men who stood with as much awe as though they were entering a cathedral. The great vessel edged through the narrows which the trawler had cleared, but just when the captain of the Dorchester sounded a mournful blast of his whistle in apparent panic, they emerged into a broad black sound which separated the ice pack from the steep red mountains.

  “We’ll have clear sailing now,” Mowrey said. “Tell the bastard that our speed is eight knots and to keep well astern. He’s keeping so close it looks like he wants me to hold his bloody hand.”

  For two more days they steamed south between the ice pack and the mountains. The water was as calm as a mountain lake and Nathan spent his off-duty hours quickly reading through books on navigation and seamanship which he had bought in Boston, as well as several volumes on Greenland.

  “If we get another few days of calm,” Seth observed to Paul, “I think that Mr. Green is going to know everything in the whole world. He’s apt to be giving the skipper himself lessons before long.”

  The wind-polished, rust-colored mountains of Greenland, too gale-swept to hold earth or much snow, never mind trees, rose in tiers to the ice cap, which was hidden by clouds thousands of feet above the sea. This coast was spectacular but changed so little as they paralleled it that the men of the Arluk soon began to take it as much for granted as they had the sea. Only Seth Farmer stood on the wing of the bridge studying it, even when he was off watch. As Mowrey had surmised, Seth was not much good with chart navigation, but he had almost a photographic memory when it came to coastlines. His boast was that if he had been to a place once, he could always get back.

  When Paul came on watch at four in the morning of the third day since entering the ice pack, he found that they were well into Narsarssuak Fjord. He had had no clear idea of what a fjord was and was astonished to find the ships following what appeared to be a narrow river in the depths of a grand canyon. Upon studying the chart he realized that the fjord was several miles wide, but the mountains towered so high on all sides of it that they dwarfed everything, making even the big troopship look like a tiny toy lost in the Arctic wilderness.

  In most places the mountains rose almost vertically from the fjord. There were a few bays surrounded by gently sloping land, some with low points which separated into groups of islands as they approached. Near one of these they saw a flotilla of kayaks heading toward them, their ivory-tipped double-ended paddles flashing in the sun.

  “Eskies!” Mowrey said, ordering the engine to be stopped. “I was afraid the damn army had chased them all away.”

  Three of the kayaks approached the trawler, while the others headed for the Dorchester. The delicate craft looked exactly like pictures which Nathan and Paul had seen in the geography books of their youth, and so did the occupants, small, broad-faced Oriental-looking men in parkas made of skin and fur. They grinned broadly as they approached the Arluk. On the foredecks of their kayaks they carried ivory-tipped harpoons, inflated bladders to float their prey, and one of them had a dead seal about four feet long. Standing on the well deck Mowrey shouted at them and they looked astonished when they realized that he was using a few words of their language. Their grins growing even broader, they came almost close enough to touch the ship.

  “Cookie!” Mowrey yelled. “Bring up some tins of coffee, tea, sugar, milk and Spam.”

  Soon a busy trading session was in progress. In exchange for the food, the Eskimos handed up ivory beads, walrus tusks, a spiraled narwhale tusk and, at Mowrey’s insistence, their seal.

  “Good as young beef any day,” Mowrey said as he tossed the seal to the deck at Cookie’s feet. “Cook it like steak and save me the liver.”

  “Do you expect me to butcher that thing?” Cookie asked recoiling in horror.

  “I’ll butcher it for you. Save all the ivory you can get, boys. The army and navy will give you cash or booze for it.”

  When the crew produced cartons of cigarettes, the Eskimos found more walrus tusks in the bottom of their kayaks. Looking astern, Paul saw that the men on the Dorchester were lowering buckets on long ropes to conduct their trading.

  Finally the Eskimos spread out empty hands to show that they had no more to sell. Mowrey smiled and said, “Ping-ping?”

  Immediately they all broke into gales of laughter which was so infectious that the men aboard the ship joined in.

  “Ping-ping, ping-ping!” they all repeated in delight. Then, pointing toward the head of the fjord where the ships were heading, the oldest of the Eskimos, a man with a wrinkled face and brown stubs for teeth, said, “No ping-ping.” Extending his arm toward the islands abeam, he grinned and said, “Ping-ping, all time ping-ping!”

  Everyone laughed but Mowrey.

  “I thought the army would move them miles from the big base,” he said. “I bet the brass would hang us higher than the moon if we went ashore at them islands. We ain’t going to have no fun until we get about four-hundred miles north of here.”

  Giving Paul the easy job of piloting the ship up the unobstructed fjord, Mowrey tied the tail of the seal to the cargo boom, got a sharp knife from Cookie, and proceeded to butcher it. Rolling up his sleeves, he attacked the seal as though it were a mortal enemy, but his big hands were expert enough to roll off the skin as though it were a garment. Newly relieved from the helm, Guns watched him with admiration.

  “Damn, skipper! Can you strip an Eskie girl that easy?”

  “There ain’t nothing an Eskie girl can’t do without stripping.”

  “You reckon we’re really going to find some Eskie girls?”

  “If they ever let us get away from these bases, we will. Course, I never had a crew this big up here. There were only about a dozen of us on the vessels, and a lot of them were Christers who didn’t even go ashore.”

  “Damn,” Guns said, “if I don’t find me a woman of some kind pretty soon, I’m liable to take after one of them seals. That red meat looks pretty good.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to fuck a seal,” Mowrey said as he cut a huge steak off a flank. “You better make sure the bugger is dead, though. They can bite like crocodiles. I had a friend who put a bag over the head of one, and she bit right through it. It’s a hell of a lot easier to fuck a holy roller virgin than it is a seal.”

  Nathan, who had been half listening to this while he admired the scenery, wearily went below and picked up one of his books on Greenland. “The Eskimos,” he read, “are a gentle people who need protection from white men.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The Dorchester moored at a new wharf to unload her troops. The
Arluk moored nearby. The army base and airfield did nothing to satisfy any curiosity the men of the Arluk had about the mysteries of the north. The rows of Quonset huts were so familiar that for a moment, Paul wondered whether he had ever left Argentia. This thought reminded him of the poker hands he had won and he wondered whether they played cards at the officers’ club here.

  “Captain, can I go ashore for a few hours tonight?” he asked Mowrey shortly after they had moored at a long, low wharf beside a Norwegian freighter.

  “You can after you see if there’s any mail for the men, after you discharge our cargo and load anything they got waiting for us here. I’m going ashore to see when the hell they’re going to let us start north.”

  Much to the disappointment of all hands, no mail was waiting for anyone aboard the Arluk, despite the fact that letters from the States came in every day aboard planes. Boats, who had left Boston while his wife was momentarily expecting a baby, swore softly.

  “I bet Headquarters has forgot all about us,” he said. “Talk about the legion of forgotten men!”

  “As soon as I can get ashore I’ll try to straighten things out,” Paul said. “Let’s get this hold unloaded.”

  Nathan checked packing cases off an invoice as their cargo boom swung them ashore to waiting trucks. Most of their cargo consisted of bales of winter clothing and boxes of radio equipment, the lightness of which had contributed to the instability of the ship. Near the bottom of the hold were several boxes of spare parts for radar sets at the airbase.

  “Damn, I don’t think these would have fit Hansen’s old set, but I sure would have liked to have tried to work something out for him,” Nathan said. “To think I was sitting here on all this equipment, while that poor guy goes off with a busted set.”

  “I wonder where he is now,” Paul said.

  “From what I’ve read, he’s probably trying to work his way through the ice. They say the ice is a lot worse over there. That’s one big reason why all the big settlements are on the west side.”

  Paul had a quick mental image of Hansen’s trawler caught helplessly in ice which a big German icebreaker might get through easily enough. Well, he could call in aircraft. How long would the planes take to get there? Suddenly, he was glad that he had no more to worry about than Mowrey’s insults. Perhaps it was wise, after all, not to try to change the hand that the fates dealt to him.

  When he called the operations officer from a dockside telephone, Paul was told that a new cargo for the Arluk was still being assembled, and that inquiries about their mail had been radioed to Headquarters. Since both Seth and Nathan were interested only in getting some sleep, Paul set off for the officers’ club with a clean conscience.

  Or almost a clear conscience. The idea of winning at poker and bridge from rich, often spoiled fraternity brothers and from the people who hung around yacht clubs had seemed to him to be cause for more pride than shame, but the concept of a Coast Guard officer, the executive officer of a cutter on the Greenland Patrol, acting as a card sharp with his brother officers did bother him a little. Of course, he was not really a card sharp because he never cheated, but so few of the people who played poker or bridge really studied the games seriously and so few even bothered to stay sober enough while they were gambling to remember what cards had been played that he knew he was taking advantage of them. But now he had a reason for trying to win all he could: when he mailed the money he had won in Argentia to Sylvia, he had said he would try to send more for her house if his luck at cards held. When she had first mentioned it, the thought of her father lending her money for a house in Wellesley had not exactly thrilled him, but now he understood what the building of a home meant to her, and he was enthusiastic, especially when he imagined the greeting she would give him when he returned, maybe in only about six months. It was the job of a husband to keep his wife happy, wasn’t it, and if his “gift” for playing cards well helped him to satisfy some of her desires, why feel guilty about it?

  Whatever reservations Paul had about the morality of preying on his fellow Coast Guard officers stopped bothering him when he realized that the club at this base was frequented almost entirely by army air force officers, many of whom were majors and colonels while still in their twenties, and almost all of whom had wallets swollen with flight pay. As the evening wore on and the stacks of chips in front of him grew, Paul also realized that the people at this club changed too much with in-going and out-going flights for a hustler to be recognized, no matter how many nights he won. Apparently convinced that their lives would be short, many of the baby-faced majors and colonels gambled with reckless abandon. This airbase, probably all Greenland officers’ clubs, were absolute heaven for a man who really understood poker and bridge.

  Before that eight-hour poker game was over, Paul had won close to nineteen hundred dollars. With his pockets full of rolls of twenty-dollar bills, he went back to the ship to devise a package for mailing it home, a task which was made much easier by the fact that he had designated himself the naval censor aboard the Arluk.

  His thoughts of mailing the money and soon going back to win more were rudely interrupted, however, as he started across the wharf to his ship. Five trucks were just beginning to disgorge an avalanche of foodstuffs for transportation in the Arluk’s hold. Mowrey himself was supervising the loading.

  “Where the hell have you been, Yale?” he bellowed. “I lit a fire under the operations officer and we got our cargo. The folks all up and down this whole coast, clear up to Thule, haven’t had supplies all winter. I bet even the dogs are starving. Get your ass aboard here, Yale, and make ready to get under way.”

  The loading of the cargo did not go anywhere near as speedily as Mowrey wished and there were seemingly endless delays while they waited for medical supplies and heavy generators which had been requested by settlements they were to visit. When the hold was full, drums of diesel oil were stowed on the well deck and on top of these they lashed crates of odiferous dried fish which the Greenlanders needed for dog food. It was May 18 when they finally got their orders to sail, and by this time the ship was “loaded up like a tinker’s wagon,” Mowrey said. Even the confusion of a miscellaneous deck cargo did not dampen his high spirits, for his orders were exactly those he wanted and which he had feared would be given to some other vessel. The Arluk was to sail as far north on the west coast of Greenland as the ice conditions permitted, stopping at each native settlement and Danish village to deliver supplies. From Narsarssuak Fjord to Thule, far above the Arctic Circle, the distance was only about fifteen hundred miles, a voyage of little more than ten days in open water, but not much of that could be expected in the ice pack, which might make many of their ports of call inaccessible for weeks. Mowrey knew that his superiors would not be surprised if the voyage lasted six weeks, two months or all summer. The prospect of escaping military bases and returning to the unspoiled parts of Greenland which he remembered so well made him almost genial and most of the crew reflected his mood.

  Paul’s spirits were improved too when he found, soon after leaving the fjord, that Mowrey was seriously training him to pilot the ship through ice, a step he probably would not take if he expected soon to carry out his threat of transferring him to a shore base. In addition to standing his regular watch, Paul was told to remain on the bridge with the captain as long as he could stay awake and observe the way Mowrey twisted and turned through leads in the great jumble of icebergs, a process which made ordinary navigation by dead reckoning impossible. To keep track of their position it was necessary to keep identifying on the chart each mountain peak and bay which came into view, and to take frequent bearings. When a lead they were following narrowed and came to a dead end, it was sometimes possible to place the bow of the ship gently against a crack between two small icebergs and gradually increase the revolutions of the trawler’s big propeller until the barrier parted like a great white gate and let them through. Suddenly released from the grip of the ice, the Arluk sometimes lunged ahead and would ha
ve crashed into the next iceberg if the engine were not stopped or reversed at precisely the right instant. Sometimes two or three long Arctic days and sunny nights were needed to shoulder their way from one lead to another, but the process fascinated Paul so much that he needed only two or three hours of sleep before returning to the bridge. Mowrey gave him no compliments and during the first week always jammed the ship in the ice to wait motionless during the brief periods that he himself had to sleep. When, on the eighth day, he retired to his cabin and let his executive officer pilot the ship toward a distant mountain peak for a full hour without supervision, Paul felt as though Harvard had just granted him a doctoral degree. Even the fact that the captain shouted at him worse than ever when he returned after a brief nap did not dim his sense of accomplishment.

  For Nathan Green time passed much more slowly. Although he stood the twelve-to-four watch, Mowrey made sure that he was never alone on the bridge and considered him too incompetent to pilot the ship even under supervision. Still, when Nathan discovered that on this voyage the ship almost never left the ice pack and that the water amidst the icebergs was as calm as a small mountain lake, his release from constant seasickness made him feel as joyful as a condemned man upon receiving a pardon. Full of a new sense of contentment, he stood by the rail while Mowrey or Paul conned the ship and admired the spectacular scenery, which changed from minute to minute less because of the motion of the vessel and of the icebergs, which drifted slowly in currents and winds, than because of the strange atmospheric conditions which made Greenland resemble a vast stage with gauzy curtains, veils beyond veils in constantly changing patterns of light. Coming to the bridge from his cabin one rosy midnight, Nathan saw a row of sparkling white icebergs like the skyline of a city silhouetted against a pink cloud which at first looked solid enough to be a wall of quartz. As he stared in awe, a sudden gust of wind dissolved the cloud, revealing a range of naked mountains which now glowed a deep burnt orange against a lavender sky. What looked like a bank of snow at their base gradually turned into a luminous mist which blew away, revealing the entrance to an enormous fjord. Heavy pewter-colored clouds hung over that great canyon and delivered a narrowly localized snowstorm which was slanted by the wind into a diagonal pattern of gray and white, a translucent nearly transparent curtain through which the rising half moon shimmered. As the sun rose higher above the range of mountains, the surface of the sea, the ice and the land were momentarily turned almost crimson.