Killer

They had pulled him out of the water apparently dead, but Ross, Quick, Job and Preston had taken a limb each, and they had run his heavy, inert form down to the new campsite and in to his tent. There they had stripped off his clothes to Ross’s curt directions, and dried him with the rough blankets so energetically that Kate had become almost concerned that they would strip his skin off. But she was well versed in first aid, and of a temperament which was anything but hysterical. As soon as she had seen that everything was well in hand in the tent, she had gone outside to the fire tray, and begun to heat water gathered carefully in handfuls from between the strands of the net. Then she had cast around for something else to make hot-water bottles out of. The best bet seemed to be the one-litre glass bottles she found filled with orange juice. She heated them until the juice unfroze, then poured it into every receptacle she could think of rather than waste it. She filled the bottles with hot water individually, wrapped them in blankets and delivered them to Colin. Ross pushed them inside the sleeping bag with the body, which was rapidly gaining warmth and colour. He had smiled at her. “He’s going to be all right.”

She had nodded, and brought them all coffee; but they couldn’t drink it because of the orange juice frozen in the cups. It had been Job, eminently practical, who had come up with the solution. They had simply emptied the chunks of orange ice in an old box, and kept it outside like ice-lollies in a freezer. Then, as there was nothing else to do for Warren, Ross had begun to make a meal while the rest of them transferred the last of the crates and boxes, and Kate had sat with her father. Then, after a disquietingly short day, they had all gone exhausted to bed.

BOOM!

“Can anyone see as well as usual?” asked Ross.

“Only me, I expect,” said Job. “We should have taken precautions earlier.”

“Obviously!” snapped Quick.

“No sense fighting,” said Preston. “What can we do about it?”

“Make goggles,” said Ross, cutting off Quick’s angry tirade.

“Yes,” said Job, “we’d better do that before we take on the killers again.”

So they made elementary snow-goggles from strips of material cut out of a small anorak that no one was using. They were shaped like rudimentary glasses, with long narrow slits just big enough to see through, but cutting out much of the brightness. And while they were doing this, Job checked on Kate and her father. He seemed to be doing well. Then Ross made coffee.

The whales, unable to break through the thicker ice, seemed to have given up for the time being. Nevertheless, the four men went to the edge of the floe, and looked at the water, and the distant, restless pattern of fins. There seemed to be fewer than earlier, even allowing for the two killed while rescuing Doctor Warren, and the third he had harpooned.

“I’ve never known them act like this,” said Ross.

“I bet it’s that big bastard with the scars on his face,” said Preston. “I don’t know much about these things, but he looked as though he was in charge.”

“One with scars on his face?” asked Ross, suddenly interested. “What did it look like? I didn’t see it.”

“I dunno. I only got a glance at his face when he came up through the ice that time. Ask me, those scars are bullet wounds, not that I’m an expert, mind, but I’ve seen enough to know.”

“Christ!” breathed Quick. “Do you think that could be it, Colin? Is it possible? Could someone have shot that big bastard in the face so that he now has a vendetta against people?”

“I’ve heard of such things happening to game animals in Africa, when they go rogue, but I’ve never . . . Anyway, what do we do about it?”

“Do about it? We damn well kill them!”

“That’s the problem! Can we? Oh, the guns will take out the smaller ones, if we get enough of the Remington soft-noses into them. But we haven’t an unlimited supply.”

“The dynamite,” said Preston.

“Yes, granted; but it hasn’t been an unqualified success so far, has it? And we don’t want to run out of ice.”

“God!” said Preston, “that’s one thing we’ve plenty of! Look around, there still must be fifteen – twenty acres. And those icehills. They’d never come through those.”

“Unfortunately,” Ross said, “it’s not as simple as all that. Those hills are probably weathered down now into a shape completely different to the one they had when they were formed. It is highly probable that all that is holding them upright is the rest of the floe here. Don’t you see? If anything happens to the rest of the floe and they break adrift, they’ll probably turn upside down!”

“Jesus,” said Preston in disgust, “so you mean all we can do is just sit here and wait to be eaten?”

“No. We have to fight,” said Ross. “It’s just a question of working out how.”

“I know how,” said Job.

It was his first contribution to a conversation which had grown increasingly loud, but, although he spoke in his usual soft tones, the others turned towards him and listened quietly.