Killer

The Eskimo turned and walked away from the quiet group, following his friend down the massive tongue of the floe. He soon caught up with Ross, and they walked on in silence for a while. A gentle wind whipped flags and streamers of ice crystals off the top of the reassuring wall of the ice hills to shower like tiny diamonds all over them. The floe widened here, and the sea was almost a hundred yards away on their left on the far side of a slightly undulating plain.

“What did they say?” asked Ross after a while.

“They said nothing. They are frightened and confused, Colin; you must give them time.”

“I’m not giving them anything! They’re no responsibility of mine.”

“Colin . . .”

“No, Job. In Antarctica I allowed myself to be swayed by a man whose judgment I didn’t trust, and I’ve been carrying that guilt for five years now. I’m not looking for any more. Eleven people. And Charlie.”

He lapsed into a morose silence, and tugged distractedly at the black kid glove which was all he wore, even now, on his left hand.

Job knew better by now than to interrupt, and after a while Ross shook himself out of it.

“Well, what’s the next step? I vote we just take a tent and move down here.”

“Colin, that is not charitable, wise, or practical. We would only alienate these people; we would be too far away to help them if anything went wrong; we would be so far away the food would be cold when we got it. You know as well as I do that the best chance is if we all stick together.”

“The best chance for them, perhaps; but our best chance is to stay well clear of them until they have all managed to kill each other off, then move in.”

“Colin!”

“It’s true, and you know it! If we join them, we risk our lives automatically, because if they’re not going to take perfectly reasonable advice, then they’re going to start having accidents, and we’re going to have to start getting them out of whatever they fall into.”

“You are right. And can you think of a better reason for going back?”

Then Ross gave a brief bark of laughter. “No, dammit; you’re right; I can’t.” He turned, and started back up the floe. “Come on; let’s go and save them from themselves.”

There was a spring in his step as he walked that Job, hurrying behind, hadn’t seen for years. He felt himself beaming like an idiot and shaking his head, hardly daring to believe the change in his friend engendered by that simple decision.

A few yards further on, Ross stopped and called back over his shoulder. “I smell soup.”

Job sniffed the air. “Oxtail!”

“Right!”

They had all changed now, and had set out the boxes in a rough square in preparation for the unpacking and setting up of the camp in the place Simon had suggested. They had opened another crate. This one contained a general survival kit: fishing-­­­­tackle, several packs of pressed meat, some cans of soup, can openers, chocolate, a knife, a compass, desalinisation unit, sterilisation tablets and a fire tray. This last was a steel tray on short legs, designed to stand a little above the snow and make it possible to light a fire even on ice. Kate was in charge of this, and was heating one of the tins of soup in an aluminium pot, with six tin mugs waiting to be filled. Ross and Job joined in with a will, unpacking the other crates and beginning to erect the tents. Kate gave them a smile as they arrived. Preston nodded. Warren and Quick carried on working silently.

In all there were seventeen boxes, eight gathered from the ice, and nine brought out of the belly of the plane. Of these nine, two each contained two tents with groundsheets, guy ropes, and pegs; one held six sleeping bags; one contained twelve blankets; there was a box with two rifles in it, and another of ammunition; two crates of food; the crate they had just opened with the general survival kit; rope; the net, and, caught up in the net’s strands, a three-foot six logger’s axe. From the ice they had collected one box containing two tents; a crate containing a collapsible canoe; and, of all things, two chemical toilets; a second crate of clothes containing changes in all three sizes; another box of rifles; a crate containing a harpoon gun and four harpoons; a box of the dynamite and two more crates of food.

They set up the tents in a rough square. The torn tent which they had used as a changing room was to become the storage tent. They piled the crates they were not going to open immediately in and around it, except for the dynamite which they put well away. Then they put the sleeping bags and blankets in each tent, except the one a little away from the others in which they set up a makeshift latrine.

By the time the soup was cooked, there was nothing to do except open the crates by the storage tent. They all grouped round the fire tray and swallowed the hot strong soup with great relish.

“I’d better heat up a little water so that you can wash,” said Kate: most of them were still covered with blood.