When we’d first come alongside shortly before noon, the unloading had gone ahead very briskly and smoothly indeed-except for the unloading of Miss Haynes’s snarling pooches. Even before we’d tied up the after derrick had the sixteen-foot work-boat in the water and three minutes later an only slightly smaller fourteen-footer with an outboard had followed it: those boats were to remain with us. Within ten minutes the specially strengthened foreword derrick had lifted the weirdly shaped-laterally truncated so as to have a flat bottom-mock-up of the central section of a submarine over the side and lowered it gently into the water where it floated with what appeared to be perfect stability, no doubt because of its four tons of iron ballast. It was when the mock-up conning tower was swung into position to be bolted on to the central section of the submarine that the trouble began.
It just wouldn’t bolt on. Goin and Heissman and Stryker, the only three who had observed the original tests, said that in practice it had operated perfectly: clearly, it wasn’t operating perfectly now. The conning tower section, elliptical in shape, m-as designed to settle precisely over a four-inch vertical flange in the centre of the midsection, but settle it just wouldn’t do: it turned out that one of the shallow curves at the foot of the conning tower was at least a quarter-inch out of true, a fact that was almost certainly due to the pounding that we’d taken on the way up from Wick: just one lashing not sufficiently bar-taut would have permitted that microscopic freedom of vertical movement that would have allowed the tiny distortion to develop.
The solution was simple–just to hammer the offending curve back into shape-and in a dockyard with skilled plate layers available this would probably have been no more than a matter of minutes. But we’d neither technical facilities nor skilled labour available and the minutes had now stretched into hours. A score of times now the foreword derrick had offered up the offending conning tower piece to the flange: a score of times it had had to be lifted again and painstakingly assaulted by hammers. Several times a perfect fit had been achieved where it had been previously lacking only to find that the distortion had mysteriously and mischievously transferred itself a few inches farther along the metal. Nor, now, despite the fact that the submarine section was in the considerable lee afforded by both pier and vessel, were matters being made any easier by the little waves that were beginning to creep around the bows of the Morning Rose and rock it, gently at first but with increasing force, to the extent that the ultimate good fit was clearly going to depend as much on the luck of timing as the persuasion of the hammers.
Captain Imrie wasn’t frantic with worry for the sound enough reason that it wasn’t in his nature to become frantic about anything but the depth of his concern was evident enough from the fact that he had not only skipped lunch but hadn’t as much as fortified himself with anything stronger than coffee since our arrival in the Sor-Hamna. His main concern apart from the well-being of the Morning Rose-he clearly didn’t give a damn about his passengers-was to get the foredeck cleared of its remaining deck cargo because, as I’d heard Otto rather unnecessarily and unpleasantly reminding him, it was part of his contractual obligations to land all passengers and cargo before departure for Hammerfest. And, of course, what was exercising Captain Imrie’s mind so powerfully was that, with darkness coming on and the weather blowing up, the foreword deck cargo had not yet been unloaded and would not be until the fore derrick was freed from its present full-time occupation of holding the conning tower suspended over the midsection.
The one plus factor about Captain Imrie’s concentration was that it gave him little time to worry about Halliday’s disappearance. More precisely, it gave him little time to try to do anything constructive about it, for I knew it was still very much on his mind from the fact that he had taken time off to tell me that upon his arrival in Hammerfest his first intention would be to contact the law. There were two things I could have said at this stage, but didn’t. The first was that I failed to see what earthly purpose this could serve-it was just, I suppose, that he felt that he had to do something, anything, however ineffectual that might be: the second was that I felt quite certain that he would never get the length of Hammerfest in the first place although just then hardly seemed the time to tell him why I thought so. He wasn’t then, in the properly receptive mood: I had hopes that he would be shortly after he had left Bear Island.
I went down the screeching metal gangway-its rusty iron wheels, apparently permanently locked in position, rubbed to and fro with every lurch of the Morning Rose–and made my way along the ancient jetty. A small tractor and a small Sno-Cat–they had been the third and fourth items to be unloaded from the trawler’s afterdeck–were both equipped with towing sledges and everybody from Heissman downwards was helping to load equipment aboard those sledges for haulage up to the huts that lay on the slight escarpment not more than twenty yards from the end of the jetty. Everybody was not only helping, they were helping with a will: when the temperature is fifteen degrees below freezing the temptation to dawdle is not marked. I followed one consignment up to the huts.
Unlike the jetty, the huts were of comparatively recent construction and in good condition, relics from the latest IGY-there could have been no possible economic justification in dismantling them and taking them back to Norway. They were not built of the modern kapok, asbestos, and aluminium construction so favoured by modern expeditions in Arctic regions as base headquarters: they were built-although admittedly presectioned in the low-slung chalet design fairly universally found in the higher Alpine regions of Europe. They had about them that four-square hunch shouldered look, the appearance of lowering their heads against the storm, that made it seem quite likely that they would still be there in a hundred years” time. Provided they are not exposed to prevailing high winds and the constant fluctuation of temperature above and below the freezing point, manmade structures can last almost indefinitely in the deep freeze of the high Arctic.
There were five structures here altogether, all of them set a considerable distance apart-as far as the shoulder of the hill beyond the escarpment would permit. Little as I knew of the Arctic, I knew enough to understand the reason for this spacing: here, where exposure to cold is the permanent and dominating factor of life, it is fire which is the greatest enemy, for unless there are chemical fire-fighting appliances to band, and there nearly always are not, a fire, once it has taken hold, will not stop until everything combustible has been destroved: blocks of ice are scarcely at a premium when it comes to extinguishing flames.
Four small huts were set at the corners of a much larger central block. According to the rather splendid diagram Heissman had drawn up in his manifesto those were to be given over, respectively, to transport, fuels, provisions and equipment: I was not quite sure what he meant by equipment. Those were all square and windowless. The central and very much larger building was of a peculiar starfish shape with a pentagonal centrepiece and five triangular annexes forming an integral whole: the purpose of this design was difficult to guess, I would have thought it one conducive to maximum heat loss. The centrepiece was the living, dining, and cooking area: each arm held two tiny bare rooms for sleeping quarters. Heating was by electric oil-filled black heaters bolted to the walls but until we got our own portable generator going we were dependent on simple oil stoves: lighting was by pressurised Coleman kerosene lamps. Cooking, which was apparently to consist of the endless opening and heating of contents of tins, was to be done on a simple oil stove. Otto, needless to say, hadn’t brought a cook along: cooks cost money.
With the notable exception of Judith Haynes, everyone, even the still groggy Allen, worked willingly and as quickly as the unfamiliar and freezing conditions would permit: they also worried silently and joylessly, for although no one had been on anything approaching terms of close friendship with Halliday the news of his disappearance had added fresh gloom and apprehension to a company who believed themselves to be evilly jinxed before even the first day of shooting. Stryker and Lonnie, who never spoke to each other except when essential, checked all the stores, fuel, oil, food, clothing, Arcticising equipment-Otto, whatever his faults, insisted on thoroughness: Sandy, considerably recovered now that he was on dry land, checked his props, Hendriks his sound equipment, the Count his camera equipment, Eddie his electrical gear and I myself what little medical kit I had along. By three o’clock, when it was already dusk, we had everything stowed away, cubicles allocated and camp beds and sleeping bags placed in those: the jetty was now quite empty of all the gear that had been unloaded there.