Killer

“Good idea,” said Colin. “We’ll be warm enough in jeans and pullovers if we hurry.” He looked at Job who nodded. They put them on quickly and slid out. Ross remembered his boot.

“Get me another boot!” he yelled, and as he waited, he took the opportunity to strap his left arm back on.

“OK,” Kate replied, and began to slither across to the other undamaged tent. There were spare dry clothes in one of the bundles they had transferred. She opened it, and pulled out a roll of large clothing, sorted out the boots, and stumbled back. Halfway across the orange net, she slid to a halt. Something caught her attention. She narrowed her eyes and looked away to the south. Something was moving out there in the flat grey water. She frowned. Fear reared in her. It’s them! she thought. The whales.

She began to run towards the tent, where Colin was, suddenly very cold indeed. Simon was on one knee, putting the fire tray back up.

“Simon,” she gasped. “It’s them . . .”

“What?”

But she had crouched down and thrust head and shoulders through the flap. She almost threw the boot at Colin. “It’s them,” she shouted. “They’re back!”

“Oh Christ!” He was scrambling on to his knees, pulling on his pullover.

Job pushed roughly past both of them and stumbled out on to the ice.

“Are you sure?” asked Colin.

“I don’t know. Something. Oh, Colin. Why?” There were tears in her eyes. Colin straightened his back, put his arm around her shoulders.

“It’ll be all right,” he promised. “Quiet now. It’ll be all right.”

She pressed her face against his chest, eyes tight closed, trying to control her fear, her weakness. After a few moments she pulled away, angry with herself, and crawled across to one corner of the tent.

Ross went out and stood beside Job. The dark sky and the dark sea seemed to press one against the other. Visibility was bad. In the distance there was a brownish mass moving sluggishly towards them. He looked at Job, who was preoccupied with looking at the distant creatures.

Over the water came a faint sound like the ringing of bells. The light caught yellow tusks as one of the creatures heaved itself on to a small floe. Simon and Kate came out of the tent and stood by them. The sound of bells, a strangely resonant two-tone honking, grew louder.

“Odobendiae,” said Job.

“For Christ’s sake, Job,” snapped Kate, “will you stop speaking bloody Eskimo.”

“It’s Latin,” said Job, spectacularly unmoved by Kate’s anger. “They’re walruses.”

“Oh,” said Simon, “is that all?”

ii

In fact there were nearly two hundred walruses. A month earlier, as part of a huge herd nearly two thousand in number, they had drifted through the Bering Straits, carried north past St. Lawrence Island by the great spring current to their breeding grounds in the High Arctic. Every year they moved south in the autumn as the pack froze down to the south of Alaska. For the winter months they lived on the islands and coasts of the Bering Sea kept free of ice by the warm currents which swirled north along the edges of the continents. In April they began to move, and in the early days of May began to ride the currents up to their food-rich arctic breeding grounds.

Generally they had an easy life, rarely straying out of the shallow water which supported the small shellfish on which they fed. Never very active, they lazed in the sun, protected from the intense cold by their massive layers of fat. When they were hungry they swam to the ocean floor, stirred up the pebbles and sand with their tusks, eating huge amounts of the creatures which they disturbed. In winter, this particular herd lived in the general area of the Aleutian Islands; in May they ran up through the Bering Straits to the rich banks off the north of the Chukotskiy Peninsula, the eastern point of Russia. This particular summer, as they were on their way past St. Lawrence Island, the Eskimoes from Gambell town on the north coast had come out after them in unusual force in their umiaks, or large open boats, each man armed with three or four powerful hunting rifles, and began a slaughter which had panicked the herd. Every year for possibly ten centuries the Eskimo had come against the walrus, but this year for some reason, the herd panicked. Perhaps the Eskimo were unusually numerous, unusually accurate; perhaps the walrus were more easily scared than of old. Whatever the reason, this particular herd, made up mostly of young family units, began to run north at unusual speed, tending to the east, towards Alaska as opposed to Chukotskiy, leaving behind nearly one hundred young females stripped of skin and tusks, their flesh hacked into round chunks, their intestines hanging in the sun to dry. Gambell town would make it safely through the rest of the year, and some of its citizens might even make a profit. The herd, however, had followed the coast of Alaska until they had uneasily joined the breeding rookeries on the North Alaskan coast.