“But it must be almost a mile,” said Quick. “I’m not that good. Are you?”
“No . . . But Colin is. There are telescopic sights on the Weatherby, and it has the range.”
“He could never do it, man . . . his arm!”
“Actually,” said Ross. “I’m a better shot now than I ever was, under the right circumstances.” He gave a sheepish grin. “It takes out one of the variables, you see. It doesn’t shake, so it can make an absolutely rigid tripod for shooting from.”
“Can you do it, Colin?” asked Job.
“Well . . . There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
In the event, they used a piece of ice as their raft, with a plank of wood wedged into it rather like a sail. Around the bottom of the plank they piled ten sticks of dynamite, four of which were attached to a length of fuse wound round and round the plank.
“That way, you see, I only have to hit the plank to set off the fuse,” explained Ross as he was working on it.
“Only!” said Preston, shaking his head.
Within half an hour it was ready. They lowered it carefully into the water and gave it a gentle shove, then stood mesmerised for nearly an hour as the gentle breeze took it and moved it slowly away.
Conversation began sporadically, rose in intensity, then dwindled away as the time passed. When Ross took the gun, there was silence.
The bundle, black against the water, was almost invisible to the naked eye, but it jumped into focus, surprisingly large, as Ross adjusted the telescopic sight. He was kneeling on his right knee, the elbow of his left arm firmly on the lower thigh of his left leg, the stock of the rifle sculptured on his cheek. The black sails passed restlessly between him and his target. He began to build up his concentration, cutting out everything in his immediate surroundings, focussing all of his mind on the bobbing target beyond the precise cross-hairs. He adjusted the sight, hearing the quiet click sound crisply on the air. He regulated his breathing, and held the cross of the hairs just a little above the top of the board when it was vertical. But, of course, it was vertical for only a very few seconds in every minute, for it swung from side to side like a metronome, moved by the waves.
Ross counted silently. “Over one two, Upright one two, Down one two, Upright one two . . .” At least it was regular; or it would be as long as the wind held. This time, then, before the wind could change. His gloved finger began to tighten on the trigger slowly, smoothly: Over one two, Upright one two, Down one two, Up . . .
He felt the fluke of the wind on his cheek, and saw the target hesitate; but it was too late. CRACK! The rifle jumped back against his shoulder. His snow-mask slipped down from his forehead and rested on the cold metal sight. His eye remained pressed against the rubber eyepiece, watching as the wood jumped just an inch or two left of centre, and the fuse exploded into action. Job’s hand came down on his shoulder and gripped. Preston breathed out loudly: “Hot damn!” Simon Quick nodded.
The fuse did not follow its spiral course as it burned. Once it had caught, all the carefully wrapped strands ignited together, and the top of the plank burst into flame. The single strand running down to the four sticks burned swiftly, which was as well, because as soon as the fuse began to burn, the black sails all vanished in golden swirls of water.
BOOM!
A great column of water and ice hurled into the sky as though there was some unimaginable cetecean blowing there. A cold, wet wind blew counter to the gentle breeze for a second, carrying with it the aftersounds of the explosion as the column began to tumble back into the water.
Kate came running over the rocking ice. “What was that?”
“Ross scaring off the whales,” said Preston with satisfaction. She stood, watching the distant column as the waves broke over the edge of the floe, sending shallow washes of icy water around their feet. Ross lofted the Weatherby with one hand to his shoulder again, and searched the gleaming water for the telltale fins.
Nothing.
“I think we may have managed it,” he said.
He turned, scanning to the south with the gun-sight. In the far distance the sun caught fine columns of water spray and vapour moving away.
“We’ve done it!” His voice was exultant. The others danced and capered and cheered. A distant voice demanded, “What’s all this then?” And Warren, fully dressed and as belligerent as ever, barrelled across the ice towards them, stopping only to slip an arm round Kate as she ran over to him.
“Well,” he said as they told him, “I think that calls for a little something. I for one am famished!” And so, lacking alcohol, they celebrated with ham, powdered eggs and beans. Preston saved his ham.
“Don’t you like the ham?” Kate asked him.
He winked. “There’s lines and hooks in that box we opened first. I’m going to try to catch some fresh fish for supper.”
“Good idea!” said Simon Quick. “We’ll not have much else to do now until we get picked up.”
“How long d’you think that’ll take?” asked the doctor.
Quick shrugged. “They got a message off before we came down. Someone should be looking for us.”
“Will we have drifted far?” asked Kate.
“Up to thirty miles a day,” said Ross.
“How long have we been adrift, then?”
They all looked at Job, who looked at the declining sun. “Three days.”
“Three days!” said Preston, surprised. “It hasn’t seemed that long.”
“Well, it’s about sixty hours since we crashed; and we’ve been sleeping for at least half of that.”
“That’s nearly a hundred miles away from where we crashed!” Preston gasped. “And heading for Russian waters . . .”
They were all quiet after that, and sat sipping their coffee thoughtfully.
Preston was the first to move. He left his plate on the ground, and went across to the supply tent. “I’d better get things set up before the bait freezes solid,” he said cheerfully, waving the heavy green line, and the assortment of hooks.
He found he was quite excited at the prospect of doing some fishing, even if it was only dangling ham in the ocean on the end of a hand-line. Neither Ross nor Job told him that the chances of him catching anything were minimal; he knew it anyway, but he didn’t care. The thought of sitting in the camp with nothing to do was irksome, but the idea of sitting doing nothing while holding a line in the water was considered by millions of people to be a most acceptable occupation.
He checked the tackle: a dozen hooks of different sizes, all covered in tiny spines the better to hold in a fish’s mouth; and the line itself made of braided nylon coloured green and with a breaking-strain of at least two hundred and fifty pounds. It was by no means the kit for a sportsman: there was no subtlety in it, no art. The fish, once it became hooked on the deadly spines, really stood no chance whatsoever. And that, of course, was the whole object. This kit was not designed to give people sport, but to keep them alive.
Preston expertly looped a weight on to the end of the green line, attached three hooks of different sizes to the first eighteen inches of the tackle, biggest at the bottom and graduating up, and slipped his firm chunks of ham over their nickel-gleaming spined curves.
“Right.” He picked up a small box and the axe, and went up the floe towards the old campsite. “Wish me luck,” he called over his shoulder.
“Break a hook,” called Ross.
“Be careful,” called Kate.
He waved his left hand carefully, avoiding the hooks which dangled from it.
At the top of the floe, where the camp had stood, there were holes enough for all of them to fish through. He chose one carefully, although he was completely ignorant of the correct things to look for. He pulled a box up, sat down with the line in his hand, and then fed it carefully into the black-green depths at his feet. There was one hundred and fifty yards of it, and he let out half its length, watching it dreamily as it angled down, pulled away by the drag as the currents moved the floe faster than they could move fine line and dead weights. Lacking a rod, he rested his arm on his knee so that it reached over the hole. At first he had worn only his woollen gloves, but his hands soon became cold so that he put his mittens back on. The line was difficult to hold with his hands covered by the heavy sealskin, so he wrapped it round his wrist a couple of times, then he just sat and dreamed, not really expecting to catch anything at all.