Authors: John Christopher
‘So we wait for him,’ Josef said, ‘and stick him with the spear when he comes up?’
‘There will be several holes round here,’ Olsen said. ‘If we search we will find them. Then one of us stands at each of the holes round about, stamping, making noises; and one stands quietly at the middle hole, with a spear. A score of years ago I was told of this, at Scoresby, by an Eskimo. I think he knew his business. I bought a pair of seal-skin trousers from him, and they are still good.’
It took them half an hour to locate another four holes. Olsen gave Josef the spear and the central position. The others stood by their holes and made as much noise as they could by stamping and kicking the ice.
It was an hour before they abandoned the task as hopeless. Dusk was deepening; it would soon be night.
Josef said: ‘I was right at the start. They are sitting on the beaches, taking buns from the Princess of Monaco.’
‘They had been there,’ Olsen said, ‘today. Otherwise the domes would have frozen over.’
‘They are not here now,’ Mouritzen said.
With barely restrained anger, Olsen said: ‘It was worth trying. Did you have a better suggestion?’
Mouritzen said: ‘Even an Olsen must fail sometimes. You are offended too easily, Erik.’
They plodded in silence back to the tent. It began snowing when they were half-way there – powder-fine, drifting snow. It was less palpable than the earlier snow, and more penetrating. It seemed to sift right through their clothes to lie, cold and wet and uncomfortable, against the skin. They struggled back into the tent and took their outer garments off, feeling miserable and depressed. Olsen turned on his side away from the others and lay in silence. Even at supper time, his speech was curt and monosyllabic. When Josef spoke to him, he ignored him.
All night and all the next day the snow drifted down. During the day, in addition to maintaining the paths, they cleared most of the snow off the tent itself, packing it high on either side so that the tent lay between tall, white walls. It gave their position a gloomy air of permanence which was in grim contrast with their dwindling supplies of food. The meat and chocolate had long been eaten. They were living chiefly on biscuits and oats, and the store of these was almost gone. They also cut steps leading up to the top surface of the snow.
In the early morning of the following day, Olsen went outside to inspect. The snow was still coming down, and he thought the wind was higher again. There was no prospect of improvement, and unless some improvement did come soon their position was likely to be desperate. The weather would clear in time, but by then few or none of them might be strong enough to continue the trek towards Scoresby.
Yet there was nothing else to do but wait. Olsen crawled back into the tent. ‘Not yet,’ he said, when someone put the usual question, ‘maybe it will clear later.’ He made little attempt to put conviction into his voice; for all of them, hope had become a nebulous, far-off thing.
It was close on ten when Stefan needed to go out; he had to climb over his father and Olsen to get to the nearest exit point. When he opened up the flap, he said: ‘It is more light.’ He put his head outside and then pulled it in again.
‘The snow has stopped!’
The others wasted no time in getting their boots on and following him. Olsen saw Stefan’s figure on the upper level, outlined against a sky that was grey-blue and powdered with stars. He climbed the steps to join him.
The view was impressive, and heartening. In the south-east, the last of the clouds lay above the peaks of the Stauning Alps, their undersides flushed salmon red from the sun that had not yet risen. The rest of the sky was clear, with a pale full moon and stars that faded and began to flicker towards extinction as the light slowly advanced. To the south, across the mouth of the fjord, there were hills with the dawn glow over them. The air was very clear and, despite the wind that still howled over the snowy crest behind them, there was a feeling of stillness everywhere.
Mouritzen, joining Olsen, said:
‘That looks good.’
‘Three days ago it would have looked better.’ Mouritzen glanced at him. ‘It is easier to lie still and starve,’ Olsen said, ‘than to march and starve.’
Josef, standing some yards from them, called:
‘Captain, you have the glasses? What is that – across the ice, at the foot of the hills?’ Olsen put up his binoculars and swung them in a small arc in the direction of Josef’s pointing. Josef said: ‘I am silly, maybe, yet it looks like smoke.’
Olsen took the glasses away. His face was controlled apart from a twitching at the corner of his mouth.
‘Smoke,’ he said. The word was non-committal; it could have indicated a despairing and contemptuous denial. Then he gave the glasses to Mouritzen. ‘The most easterly point of land,’ he said. ‘By the first dip.’
The scene came in focus. Folds and slopes of snow, all white, blank, and there, at one point, a smudge of brown that curled against it, and thinned out and was lost.
Mouritzen said foolishly: ‘It is smoke. Then someone has lit a fire there?’
‘A hunting hut,’ Olsen said. ‘They are placed at intervals along the trail. Someone – a scout or a trapper – has been snowed up there, as we have been.’
‘And by the time we can reach it, he is likely to be gone. Should we send up a flare?’
Olsen shook his head. ‘We are over thirty kilometres away. And there are only two flares left.’
‘Then if we reach the hut,’ Mouritzen said slowly, ‘we only profit by having better shelter than the tent.’
‘The huts have stores of food,’ Olsen said, ‘and fuel. Some have wireless transmitters.’ He studied the distant view through the field-glasses again, as though reluctant to believe what he had seen. He was smiling when he turned back to Mouritzen. ‘Our luck turns with the weather.’
‘Over thirty kilometres – we cannot do that in one day.’
‘With the sledge, not even twenty – we must go slowly with the sick woman. But a couple, travelling light, can reach the hut by nightfall. If there is a transmitter, they can call Scoresby for help – perhaps get a nurse for Mrs Jones. In any case they can bring food back to us along the trail – if we walk today we will be in poor shape tomorrow.’
‘A couple? Who?’
‘You and Thorsen.’
‘I would rather stay with the main party.’
‘We will look after Mary and Annabel. The child is hungry. Bring food to her.’
Preparations for departure were undertaken in a cheerful mood, although most of them were surprised at the physical weakness revealed by their exertions. Packing, as a result of this, took longer than had been expected. Olsen said:
‘It is better for you two to start at once. You will not have much time to spare in reaching the hut.’
Thorsen had roped round the typewriter case. He put it on the sledge. He grinned at Jones, who was standing near him. In a low voice, he said:
‘Look after our typewriter, Mr Jones. It would be a pity to lose it now.’
There was a tremor in the snow, a few yards from the spot where the sledge stood; it was not strong, but they all felt it.
‘What is that?’ Stefan asked uneasily.
The tremor was repeated, more positively. The snow heaved volcanically, and split. A furry brown head lifted, and a large brown body unwound after it. Nadya ran across, slipping and plunging in the loose snow.
‘Katerina! So you are a faithful bear still – you found another bed but you did not go far.’ She put her arms round the bear’s neck. ‘You do not desert me.’
Olsen eyed the bear speculatively while the others crowded round. Nadya caught his eye. She hesitated for a moment and then went to him.
‘We will also go on the advance party, Katerina and I.’
Olsen said: ‘They cannot be delayed.’
‘We will not delay them,’ Nadya said. ‘We are ready now. She does not have her harness to put on since we have stolen her rations. There may be food for her at the hut. And you will not be tempted to go bear-hunting if you are hungry tonight.’
‘Two are enough in the advance party,’ Olsen said. ‘We need you to help with the sledge.’
‘Then let Niels or Jorgen stay behind. We are going.’
Olsen shrugged. ‘As you please.’
‘Shall I stay?’ Mouritzen asked.
‘No, you go. You can leave Jorgen, if you want to.’
Mouritzen glanced from Nadya to Mary. ‘I need Jorgen.’
Nadya said: ‘Then we go
à trois
–
à quatre
, with Katerina. That makes two couples.’ She grinned. ‘Katerina and I will chaperone each other.’
They carried no food and no blankets. Reaching the hut that day was vitally essential; it was only when they were well out on the ice that it occurred to Mouritzen that they had only Olsen’s word for it that the plume of smoke necessarily implied a cabin. It might come from a fire laid in the open. If there were trappers who had been snowed up like them, they also might have been in a tent. When they reached the spot there might be nothing but cold ashes and a depression in the snow.
Whether his doubts were reasonable or not, there was no point in dwelling on them. They were committed to the enterprise, and it had to be carried through with the minimum of delay. He set a fast pace. He had thought he might have to chivvy Nadya on or, in extremity, to abandon her to be picked up by the main party, but she kept up with him cheerfully and, it seemed, almost effortlessly. It was Thorsen who had to be bullied and who, even so, tended to fall behind. The bear followed Nadya, keeping three or four paces behind her, as though on a lead.
They walked into the sunrise. The wind dropped, and soon they were quite hot from their exertions. The sun itself, even when fully clear of the horizon, gave little warmth. It barely cleared the hills and almost immediately began to sink back below them.
Hunger was something that came in waves: on the crests it was a gnawing pain, in the troughs no more than a dull, nauseous ache. They rested for a time, about one o’clock in the afternoon, and Nadya chewed snow. The ice was quite flat there, and not far away there were signs of the domed seal-holes. Once Mouritzen saw a small jet of water spurt up, presumably as a seal came up to breathe. He was tempted to try hunting them again; the spears had been left behind but he and Thorsen both had knives. Or he could stun it, perhaps, with a shot from the flare pistol – Olsen had given it to him so that he could signal when they reached the hut.
Hunger sank back into nausea, and he realized the absurdity of his speculations. He stood up.
‘It is time to move on.’
Thorsen objected, but Nadya moved off even before he did. They were now in the middle of the fjord estuary. There had been no further sign of smoke from the headland towards which they were moving. The contours, too, seemed different as they got nearer. It was important that they should get into that region while there was still a reasonable light.
They got clear of the ice before three. In front of them the ground stretched up in quite a steep slope towards the point where, as well as Mouritzen could judge, they had seen smoke in the morning. Thorsen objected again when they started up that way.
‘We should go round,’ he said. ‘The smoke was coming over from behind the hill. Up there the hill curves round to the south. That will be the way the trail goes.’
‘We will go straight,’ Mouritzen said. ‘If we turn away, we may get lost.’
Thorsen gasped. ‘We are wasting what little strength we have left.’
‘You waste more by talking.’
But as they forced their way upwards, Mouritzen began to think that Thorsen’s view might have been the right one. A sledging trail would keep to the lowest possible level, and the hut, if there were a hut, must be visible from it. His parenthetic doubt clutched at him again, with a surer, more vicious grip. They were finding themselves stumbling into drifts of loose snow, from which extrication was difficult and exhausting; and the light was fading.
Nadya showed the least sign of flagging. Gradually she was taking the lead. Ten or twelve paces ahead of the others, she paused and called to them mockingly to come on.
She set off again before they were up to her. In front, Mouritzen saw, there was a slight depression in the surface of the snow. When he first saw her legs sink into it he thought she was in another drift. Then, with a soft echoing roar, several square yards of the surface collapsed. A cloud of fine snow lifted and hung briefly in the air. There was no sign of Nadya.
Mouritzen called to Thorsen, and made his way forward, warily. He stopped at the edge of the crevasse, and looked down. Where the snow had slipped the brown face of the frozen earth was exposed. There was a steep slope down to a ledge, about twenty feet below. Just below the ledge, Nadya was lying in snow.
‘Nadya!’ he called. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice echoed up from the cleft. ‘Only shaken a little.’
‘If you can reach the ledge,’ he said, ‘I think it is possible to climb up the slope.’
She said: ‘I have tried. It is too high, and when I stretch up, this snow goes down. See.’
Her hand reached up, and clawed at the side.
‘It went more,’ Nadya said.
The movement had been imperceptible from above, but Mouritzen now saw something which, since his gaze had been concentrated on Nadya, he had not seen earlier: not many feet from her there was a gap in the snow, and below the gap a drop of ungaugeable depth. She lay on a bridge of snow, perilously spanning a crevasse much deeper than either of them had thought. A sudden movement, a transfer of weight from one point to another, might well send the whole lot cascading down.
He called urgently: ‘Do not move! Lie still – quite still.’
Katerina was padding up and down beside the crevasse, aimless and bewildered. The vibration, he realized, could start the snow moving. He shooed at the bear to make her go away but she paid no attention to him. She looked down in a puzzled fashion to where Nadya lay. When she started padding back along the edge Mouritzen, in desperation, unhooked the flare pistol and fired it past her. The rocket streaked over the snow and Katerina, with a howl of fear, fled from it.