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March 1912

It was clear early on in Bell’s search for a skipper with the right kind of Arctic experience that he’d end up either in the northern reaches of Canada or back in Europe And the Canadian angle seemed unlikely because most of those experts aboats searching the black waters for small whales and walrus

That he needed a whaler was never in doubt They are the onlyto risk both ship and crew on the hunt for the giant cetaceans that rate around the ice fields at the top of the world No merchantman need traverse these frozen reaches, save se to village along the coasts of Norway and Iceland and the Faroe Islands None had any need to kno to circuhty floes that drifted down from the Arctic or how to spot and exploit open leads in the ice that were large enough for a ship and navigable

The fishermen certainly had the bravery for what Bell had in mind, but they were mariners of the open waters where they could trawl their vast nets without fear of the’s jagged underside They stayed well clear of bergs and pack ice And inter’s darkened grip held fast and the ice grew truly thick, they beached the boats and tended to winter chores until the sun returned again in the spring

The men who chased the whales That’s who Bell was told he needed by sailors he’d befriended during past cases He talked to the few he knew and they, in turn, led hie of the ed, whispered as rumor at first but who others claiendary skipper, a man whose skills and experience and bravery were the stuff of tavern tales When cannon- so deadly efficient that they’d decimated the populations of minke, blue, and bowhead, he’d been one of the first skippers to turn southward and hunt the vast ice fields surrounding the continent of Antarctica

The skipper was Ragnar Fyrie, a native of Iceland, and Isaac Bell had tracked hi capital of Norway In reality, the coastal town of six thousand was also the world’s whaling capital, as so much of the industry was based here or at least crewed by sailors local to the area

Situated near the hty Oslofjord, Sandefjord boasted a natural harbor that ell protected froerrak Strait, the section of the North Sea between Norway and Den fjords in the north of the country, the toas backed by low hills It consisted es owned by the whalers, but there were some brick structures for the wealthy and a central street dominated by the newly rebuilt Sandefjord church, with its soaring brick tower roofed in dark slate and a suite of bells that sounded every hour

Bell arrived by train from Oslo He’d read that in the summer the nearby beaches were popular with the capital city’s residents and that there were spas nestled around town However, when he stepped off the train and onto the platforut punch and he wondered how anyone could spend even a few seconds in Sandefjord let alone an entire summer season

The s fleet at anchor in the inner harbor The ships were ularly serviced by their crews, but, like the slave ships of old, there was no a that could rid them of the noxious odor they carried like the stain of sin for what they were built to do The particular s within the city and probably carried for many miles It was the fishy stink of blubber rendered into whale oil, but also the hot copper scent of blood so copious that it would wash the whalers’ decks like the slosh of waves during heavy seas

He irown so accustomed to, they never noticed it, but that outsiders would never find themselves immune from

It was now mid-March, and histo reach Brewster and his fellowto find the right person for the job, and longer still to develop a plan to secure his assistance The proble whales in an area claimed as the exclusive territory of a concession holder from there in Sandefjord

For Bell, the legalities seeue The concession holder ave him the authority to hunt whales over a wide swath of the Arctic Ocean and he, in turn, e Fyrie maintained that he wa

s a native of Iceland, which made him a Danish citizen, and was therefore not bound by a concession granted by a foreign power His arguians As soon as he’d put into port with nearly ten thousand gallons of whale oil, as well as some more valuable spermaceti oil his crew had harvested from the mammoth heads of several spero confiscated

That had occurred at the end of the 1911 hunting season, and the wrangling between the governhout the sunless Arctic winter and there seereat cetaceans’ in anew Fyrie and his creere free to leave the ship and enjoy Sandefjord as they awaited their fate so long as their vessel reines cold

Bell knew all of this before he had arrived in the coastal town and had crafted a plan with the help of a nate who’d used the Van Dorn Agency on a few occasions when discretion was a o along with it