The Blue Ice

And then suddenly, at the top of that third ridge, close by one of the markers, the ski tracks turned away to the left and ran downhill. I followed them automatically. For two hundred feet or more I ran smoothly and easily down. The wind whipped through my windbreaker, turning the sweat of my body to an icy dampness. It was as though I had no clothes on at all. A flurry of torn-up snow leapt to meet me out of the mist. Fortunately I was not going fast. I did a half Christi and followed on the line of ski tracks. Below me, to the left, the snow fell away in a sheer drop. My heart leapt in my mouth as I saw the white tendrils of the mist swirling in an up-draught of air. I was skiing along the edge of a precipice. The drop might be a hundred feet. It might be a thousand. I couldn't tell. And I realised that I had passed no markers in the last five hundred yards or so. I stemmed and came to a standstill. As I stood there, looking down into the nothingness of moving vapour, I realised suddenly the game that Farnell was playing. He knew these mountains. He had deliberately led his pursuers off the marked track and was playing a game of hide-and-seek on skis, with the mist and all the perils of the mountains in his favour.

I hesitated. And as I hesitated the mist darkened. A myriad black specks began driving past me. It was starting to snow. I glanced ahead. There were the ski tracks, clear and deep. But even as I looked the edges became blurred and their sharpness was lost in the falling snow.

I turned then and in the fear of sudden loneliness hurried back along my tracks. The snow thickened. The wind was driving straight into my face, blinding me. In an instant my windbreaker was white and I was brushing the cold, clammy particles from my face.

God, how fear lent strength to my limbs! By the time I had reached the spot where I had had to Christi, the marks of the turn were barely visible. I started to climb the long slope down which I had run so easily. But before I was half-way up, the tracks made coming down were gone, as though rubbed out by a giant rubber. I stopped and got out my compass. No good going by the direction of the wind. It was eddying all over the place.

I reached the top at last and began to descend. I turned back then, certain I had crossed the line of the markers. I searched back and forth across a wide area. But there was nothing. Just snow and an occasional jagged outcrop of rock. I followed the compass bearing, casting back and forth across the direction it took me. No friendly posts came out of the mist to greet me. Perhaps the slope I had descended had curved. I cursed myself for not being able to remember. I had just followed the line of the ski tracks, blindly, unthinkingly. In a sudden panic I struck away to the right, climbing again. Soon I was on a ridge, the wind whistling past my face, driving the snow in a thick black cloud. Back and forth I cast, my heart hammering and a horrible emptiness in my belly. I began to descend, and then in panic turned back. I struck away to the left and in a few minutes was crossing a half-obliterated ski track that had been made by my own skis only a few minutes before. I climbed to the top of another ridge. And then I stopped. I was lost. Completely and utterly lost.

I had known men who had been lost in the bush in Africa. I had always thought it must be a ghastly experience. But it couldn't be as bad as this. At least there had been trees and warmth and sunshine. Here there was nothing. Just this empty, desolate waste of snow.

I was almost sobbing with fear. I'm not easily frightened. I've never been frightened of anything I could see. But I was cold and exhausted and alone. What was that story of Jack London's? Something about a wolf. Had London experienced the utter emptiness of exhaustion and lostness before he wrote that story? What had been the end of it? What had happened to that man? He had gone forward on all fours at the end. Had he killed the wolf that was as exhausted as he? Or had the wolf killed him? I couldn't remember. And it was frightfully important. I was certain it was important. I knew my mind was wandering. But I couldn't help it. The story hammered at my tired brain. I couldn't think of anything else. I could see it so clearly. The man on all fours and the wolf — each waiting for the other to die, neither having the strength to kill the other. I was feeling drowsy. I wanted to sink down into the snow. That way lay death. But I didn't care. A merciful oblivion. What did it matter? But I mustn't give up. There was Farnell. And there was Jill. Why did I think of Jill? Farnell and Jill. What was that to me? But I must go on. I must.