Free A Grue Of Ice by Geoffrey Jenkins

defensive. " I will explain more to you. . . ."
    Mikklesen pressed on. " Do we fish where we should not? What country's waters, eh? Is this a second Onassis and the Olympic. Challenger? Will we also be bombed and arrested?"
    " There is a territorial limit of two hundred miles which has been laid down which is completely unreasonable and no nation would really adhere to it if . . ." said Upton. Mikklesen certainly was on the ball. " So we fish in my own country's territorial waters?" he asked with a thin smile. " We fish for the thing every Norwegian whalerman has dreamed of since he first heard the crash of a harpoongun, or since he fiensed his first whale? The breeding-ground of the Blue Whale?"
    Upton tried again. " Technically, I say, we will be inside territorial waters. With the knowledge I have, I cannot risk a maritime court action ; it would give everything away."
    " It is Bouvet, is it not, Sir Frederick? Not so, Captain Wetherby? Inside Norwegian territorial waters, off Bouvet?"
    " It is Bouvet, blast you " roared Upton. " But, by God, Mikklesen, you can search until you are as blue as a Blue
    Whale, but you won't find the breeding-ground—not without Wetherby! "
    Mikklesen's answer was quick. " That I know. Every season for thirty years I have sailed near Bouvet. I have never found it. I try every time."53
    Walter broke in. " We are fishermen, and two hundred miles for a territorial limit is damn stupid. Twelve miles maybe."
    The other captains, except Mikklesen, grunted approval.
    " We are hunters," went on Walter. " We hunt where the game is. You cannot draw lines across the ocean and say, keep out. Where would we be if the British did what Norway has done, and kept us away from South Georgia and the South Shetlands?"
    " We Norwegians first thought of the breeding-ground," Mikklesen retorted angrily. "It belongs to Norway, even if two hundred miles is a stupid limit, and as a whalerman I agree that it is."
    Upton saw his opening. " You are a hunter first, or a patriot first, Captain Mikklesen? Will Norway offer you a hundred and twenty thousand pounds like I will?"
    " A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?" echoed Mikklesen. " A moment ago it was a hundred thousand pounds."
    Upton did not sense his mistake with Mikklesen in bidding up. I did, and Mikklesen's grudging agreement should have warned Upton. " That's the new price," he laughed. " So that everybody feels quite happy."
    " This secret belongs to Norway, not to one man or one expedition," said Mikklesen doggedly.
    " I thought more of your spirit of enterprise," said Upton. " Does that mean you are not joining us?"
    " I'll come," he replied sullenly. " For a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Now I must get back aboard
    my ship." He gave me a further long glance, as if to satisfy himself he had really seen someone who had located a secret so precious to Norway, and went.
    " Some of these boys like jam on it," laughed Upton. He turned to me. " He'll feel differently once he sees the sea red with dead whales. They just cannot resist it, you know." Mikklesen's departure lifted the air of tension over the gathering. I had heard of the drinking prowess of South Georgia whalermen, but even so, the way they downed their Cape Homers astonished me. But then, they were also drinking dreams of their £120,000. Upton became one of them as the strong liquor and his camaraderie loosed their tongues.
    ". . . Fanning Ridge," Walter was booming. "It's the best landmark on South Georgia as you come up from the
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    south-west. Damn me, I've seen it from as far away as
    fifty miles on a clear day."
    " Nonsense," said Lars Brunvoll. " Why come from the south-west, anyway?"
    Walter let out an oath. " I wouldn't have been coming at all, if it hadn't been for the emergency huts the Americans put up on Stonington Island."
    " Stonington Island?" Hanssen echoed. " That's to hell down the Graham Land peninsula, way in Marguerite Bay!"
    " Too true," Walter replied. " I was caught by