Chapter 1348: Leaving
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
After a week at the Arctic camp of FM mining group, a boat with two battery packs arrived.
Once the chief engineer changed The Hammerhead Shark’s battery pack, the icebreaker’s propellers finally began to turn again, and the sea steel beast was back to life.
Thus, Li Du and the others set out on their way back. Li Du had been at the Arctic long enough and didn’t want to stay any longer.
He knew how Dunford felt. He had been here on and off for two years and it was just too much.
Therefore, before he left, he promised Dunford again that when he saw the Ford brothers he would put in a good word for Dunford and try to get him transferred.
The tears in Dunford’s eyes showed the extent of his grat.i.tude.
He was even worse off than the regular workers, who would be paid similarly by any mining company and did not have much to lose by leaving.
However, Dunford had already been promoted to the position of general manager of the station, and if he resigned, it would be difficult for him to find a job that would match his current salary and position, given the global mining downturn and a large number of managers waiting to be hired.
The rest of the trip went smoothly until they reached the south of the Arctic Ocean, all the way to Komsomolets Island, where Li Du returned the icebreaker to Bobby Blodwen.
Master Blodwen, who was stoking the fire, looked surprised when he heard that his s.h.i.+p had come back. “They really returned it?”
The voice on the phone said, “It’s on the dock, boss. I’m on my way right now.”
“I’ll be right there,” Blodwen jumped into the car in a hurry.
After the loss of his helicopter and icebreaker, Bobby’s brother scolded him harshly and he was afraid that the helicopter and the s.h.i.+p would not come back.
The money was a small matter; the big thing was that the helicopter and the s.h.i.+p did not belong to the family. The Blodwens had borrowed them from a rich man in Russia.
If the rich man’s helicopter and s.h.i.+p were lost, he might not demand monetary compensation, but it would put a damper on the Blodwen family’s friends.h.i.+p with the rich man, which was more important than money.
The Blodwens had money, but their position in society had been bought with hard work and time, which no money could buy.
Bobby Blodwen arrived at the dock, where The Hammerhead Shark was standing undamaged, and saw Li Du unloading his cargo.
Seeing Bobby Boldwen, Li Du smiled. “I cleaned the boat for you. There’s nothing left on it.”
Bobby Blodwen glanced at him as he clambered aboard the s.h.i.+p. He went to the cabin and saw that the GPS and digital maps had been removed, leaving two holes in the cabin wall.
This made him so angry that he rushed down and shouted, “What do you mean? Did you wreck my s.h.i.+p?”
Li Du said with a smile, “Don’t accuse me. I did not destroy it, I even helped you change the new battery pack transformer system.”
“What about the GPS and digital maps?”
Li Du said, “Can’t you sail the s.h.i.+p without those?”
Bobby Blodwen said coldly, “It’s none of your business. These things belong to the s.h.i.+p, they belong to me, and it’s against the law for you to steal them!”
Li Du said, “See, you are accusing me again. I did not steal them, they accidentally fell into the sea.”
The s.h.i.+p’s chief officer smiled sadly beside him and said, “Sir, it’s true. Those two instruments are in the water.”
Bobby Blodwen’s face darkened.
Li Du wouldn’t keep the GPS and electronic maps that automatically recorded his route. If he kept them, the route of his voyage would be completely exposed to Bobby Blodwen.
Since he went to check these two items first, it meant that he wanted to know exactly where Li Du had been.
Li Du was not stupid and saw no reason to share his private maps with Blodwen.
Bobby Blodwen was thinking about what to do with Li Du when a little red dot appeared in the sky in the distance. The red dot grew bigger and bigger. The propeller’s sound was heard and a helicopter flew towards them.
When he saw the MI-171, Blodwen’s eyes turned the same color as the helicopter. Someone beside him said happily, “This is great, boss. They are going to return the helicopter too.”
Blodwen thought that was too good to be true, and sure enough, as the helicopter landed on the ground, Li Du and his men hurried to board it, and the helicopter flew away.
Steve waved to Blodwen from the cabin door with a big smile on his face.
Blodwen bellowed, “Give my helicopter back, you thieves!”
The helicopter had already taken off, but he still had some hope it would return to him eventually as the icebreaker did.
In the meantime, Steve and his men had left Bolshevik island for the October Revolution Island.
“How is the harvest going?” asked Li Du.
Steve laughed loudly and said, “Not bad, man. We joined forces with the police and caught the poachers. We took their transport s.h.i.+p. It was a tough fight!”
“Any meteorites?”
“Well, we didn’t find any more, but we got plenty before, didn’t we? When we first came to Severnaya Zemlya, we didn’t expect to get so many meteorites!” Steve said contentedly.
Then Li Du mentioned his main concern. “When are you going to leave these islands?”
Steve’s answer, to his delight, was, “In the next few days we’ll pack up and go. The first chapter of the Arctic adventure ends here, and we can leave soon.”
Li Du sighed in relief. Finally, he would be able to leave this boring place.
Back at camp, he gave the Ford brothers a gift of ice from the Arctic, sealed in a polyethylene compound that could last for hundreds of years without melting.
The Ford brothers accepted his gift with a smile, and then Li Du told them Dunford’s story and asked them to help move the hapless man out of the Arctic.
After resting for a few days, most of them returned home. Hankway and the other Nenets remain on the island. They were professional meteorite hunters and felt they hadn’t exhausted the resources of Severnaya Zemlya yet.
The cars and the tents remained, and Li Du and his men took the MI-171 to Vorkuta, where there was an airport, and then flew across Siberia to Alaska.
Finally, this trip to the North Pole was over.
When they emerged from the customs, Li Du looked back at the sky in the distance.
The sky was blue and spotless. When he reflected on his life in the past few months, it no longer seemed that it was very boring but rather memorable.
However, he decided he would not travel to Siberia and the Arctic again. He would find someone to retrieve the narwhal tusks.
Of course, he would only take the tusks and would not touch the narwhals’ carca.s.ses. He would do his best to protect the invisible graveyard.