'There he is,' Dick whispered in my ear. As he spoke I caught sight of a human figure moving towards the bridge. His boots slithered on the rock. The hard sound of his footsteps became hollow as he stepped on to the plankings of the bridge. It was Sunde all right. I could recognise him now. 'Soon as he's across the bridge,' I whispered to the other two. I tensed, ready to dart forward and grab the man.
And in that instant, a sharp command was given in Norwegian. Sunde stopped. He hesitated, as though meditating flight. The voice spoke again. It was a strong, commanding voice. Then two figures emerged from the shadow of some rocks away to our right. In the pale light of the still unrisen moon I recognised the squat bulk of Lovaas. He held a gun in his hand. With him his mate, Halvorsen.
Sunde began to reason with him. Lovaas cut him short. I heard a name that sounded like Max Baker mentioned, and Lovaas laughed. The two men closed in on the diver. And then, one on either side, they marched him away to the whaling station.
I waited till their shadowy forms had vanished over a crest of rock. 'Quick!' I said. 'We must get between them and the ship.'
'The factory,' Curtis whispered. 'It's the only place where we can surprise them.'
We struck away to the right then, making a wide detour and running hard. As far as possible we kept to gullies in the rock. Our rubber shoes made no sound. We reached the wire surround that kept the starving island sheep from getting into the factory and entered by one of the gates. I paused in the shadow of the office block and looked back. The sky was getting lighter. The moon's tip was edging up over the black outline of the hills. I could just make out three shadowy figures moving towards us across the bare rock.
We went down the cinder track towards the flensing deck. By the boiler house we stopped. The path was narrow here with buildings on either side. Dick and I slipped into the warm darkness of the boiler-room. Curtis stationed himself in a doorway opposite. We agreed a signal for action and waited.
We could hear the sound of their feet on the rock. But they didn't enter by the gate we had used. They kept outside the wire, moving along behind the factory. Curtis slipped out from his hiding-place. 'There's another gate,' he whispered. 'I saw it this afternoon when Kielland was showing us round. It's at the back of the factory. And there's a door leading into the place where the oil vats are.'
'Then we'll have to get them inside the factory,' I said. 'We must stop them getting to the catcher,'
We ran down the cinder track and across the greasy surface of the flensing deck. The moonlight was quite bright now. By comparison the inside of the factory was very dark. One solitary light glowed at the far end. It showed the shadowy shapes of oil vats rising to the roof. I moved cautiously forward and almost immediately stumbled into a thick, evil-smelling mass. It was a pile of waste from the vats, still warm like a dung hill. The place was silent, yet full of the sound of escaping steam. The steady hiss of it seemed as much a part of the building as the heavy warmth and the smell. The sound of the steam was all round us like a singing in the ears. And through it came a faint bubbling sound. It was boiling oil trickling down the gutterings between the vats.