Afternoon by the Ice 267 



Truelove on the double," the captain barked at the cringing seaman. 

 "And I want willing volunteers, not a bunch of mismated loafers. 

 Besides, for once you'll have to think for yourselves, if you can, be- 

 cause no officer leaves this ship. Now get out!" 



Able Seaman Bates darted for the door, still vigorously pulling on 

 his forelock, and Captain Hardwicke turned to his mate. 



"Now this is what we do," he began and his orders continued for 

 a full fifteen minutes, during which Angus MacNeil pulled up a 

 chair, sat down, filled and Hghted his pipe, but said nothing. When 

 the discourse was finished, he sat staring moodily at the floor and 

 at his tiny feet. 



"Arrach is the man you want," he said. "He's only a lad, but he's 

 a vurruh queer one. The Shetlands he comes from, and methinks he 

 was spawned by a seal. He fears neether the water nor this hell- 

 spawned ice, and I'll wager he'll know better what to do than we 

 ... if he feels like knowing," he added. 



"I thought he was particularly foolish," Captain Hardwicke sug- 

 gested. "I've never heard him talk but he's raving about lights in the 

 sky or little men in the bilges. The boy's daft, in my opinion." 



"Not in mine, Silas," said Angus MacNeil, as one old friend to 

 another. "He's queer all right, but he knows things we don't. Be- 

 sides, he says he'll be marrying a girl in Stornaway, and if he says 

 so, I have a fancy he will. That means he'll be getting home, and 

 if he can, the rest of us can go along with him. Have him cut 

 the damned ice where he will and I'll lay you ten guineas he'll go 

 right to the vurruh plank that's stove, and before she fills up, at 

 that." 



Captain Hardwicke looked at his mate in amazement. He'd never 

 heard him offer money on a bet before and he'd never known him 

 to sound so assured about anything that was obviously silly. That 

 he would risk his ship on the chance that some crazy young Islander 

 would know better than thirty experienced mariners which plank in 

 a hundred-foot hull was giving way to the absolutely unpredictable 

 pressures of several hundred or thousand square miles of shifting ice 

 was not only preposterous but somehow unbelievable. Nonetheless, 

 for some cause beyond his powers of reasoning, he nodded his head 

 in assent. And at that moment the ship gave another tremendous 

 heave, a noise like thunder rolled through her from stem to stern, 



