Ross watched the tiny plumes appear low on the cliff in the sight. His keen ears caught the strange echoes: as though the sound of the rifle were being reproduced, increasingly loud, in an electronic synthesiser. He scanned the face of the cliff anxiously. A powdering of crystals sprang out of the ice wall as though someone had dusted it with caster sugar. The sounds continued to grow. Something moved. He slammed the guard of the sight against his eyebrow. A concave face low on the cliff wall had suddenly become convex.
“There it . . .” His voice was lost in the roar. It was as though an express train was charging at full throttle out of the tunnels of the ice. The whole cliff began to slide, bulging at the bottom, descending with stately grace at the top, into the exploding cloud of crystals and spray.
“BACK!” yelled Ross. Already the first waves were boiling out towards them, walls of white foam throwing up great gouts of spume. They all scrambled to their feet, and ran as best they could to the camp.
“DOWN!”
Nobody needed to be told twice. They all threw themselves on to the net, and hung on for dear life. The floe, large as it was, rose steeply. And this was just as well, for had the waves swept on unchecked they might have washed the whole camp away. As it was, the storage tent collapsed, hot ash spilled from the fire tray; the ice beneath them cracked and groaned as though it was in pain; and long after the waves had all passed, they lay too stunned to move.
After a while, Ross spoke. “I really think,” he said, almost apologetically, “that it would be better if we all stayed here.”
He heaved himself up. The berg was looming dangerously close now. He could see the foam as the small waves broke against its huge underwater reaches. It would pass, he thought, a couple of hundred yards north of them: too close for comfort. “We’d better make as little noise as possible,” he continued, “and it would be better if we didn’t move around too much.”
Even Quick was more than content to stay where he was, clutching at the bright orange strands of the net. He licked his dry lips, and looked at the looming berg, his mind far too busy for comfort, seeing what would happen if it went now: the great waves, ten times higher than the ones they had just suffered, would sweep over them, tearing their hands from the net, sweeping them into the water to drown. To drown if they were lucky; a sudden vision of the killers reared in front of his eyes, tight-closed as they were. The huge black and white faces, the monstrous teeth.
BOOM! The ice leaped.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” he whispered. The berg loomed so large, its shadow ate at the whiteness of the floe. Another killer hurled itself at the floe.
BOOM!
Just beyond the perimeter of the camp, the ice heaved up into the familiar blister.
“What do we do?” asked Quick, his voice, grotesquely quiet, spiralling out of control.
“Pray,” said Ross, and under the brisk monosyllable, came the double click as he opened and closed the breech of the Weatherby.
“Colin! You’ll bring the berg down!” gasped Kate.
“I don’t think so. Not if I space the shots carefully.” BOOM!
The blister of cracked ice burst. A familiar black and white head rose, beautifully marked and deadly: a young male. Ross shot it under the chin: a fountain of blood blasted out of the top of its head. The mouth opened and closed. The tongue worked. It hesitated for several moments, while echoes of the shot grew and receded, before sinking slowly out of sight. But even before the water had closed over it, and while the last high sounds were hanging threateningly in the air, another one exploded through the thinner ice to the north of the camp, and another.
“Shoot!” screamed Quick.
“I can’t! Not until the echo dies!”
“I don’t think the bullets you have in there have enough stopping power,” said Job quietly. “You’ll be better with the Remington and the hollow-pointed stuff.”
“Right,” said Ross, squeezing off a shot at last at the larger of the two on the ice. The bullet went into the top of its head, glanced off the heavy skull, and did little damage. The whale screamed. The echo grew and lingered, like a chord struck on the piano with the loud pedal down.
Job was up and running for the supply tent. He had just reached it when two whales drove up together against the thick ice beneath his feet with a terrifying explosion of sound. He fell to his knees, his eyes drawn anxiously to the huge cliffs of the berg with their dusting of ice crystals glistening like a cloud of caster sugar. His gaze followed the crags up and up until he could feel the skin roll at the back of his neck. A great gout of snow fell off the heights of the nearest terrace as though an invisible shovel of mammoth proportions had hurled it over. Job watched as it fell down the dizzy cliffs and rumbled ominously into the water. The cliff stayed up.
The ice beneath him crashed and heaved again, smashing him out of his reverie. He reached into the tent, and took out the Remington. He slammed the breech open: it was ready to fire. He clicked the safety off, and began to run back across the ice. The high whip-crack of the Weatherby came again. The echoes began to grow. Again he glanced up at the berg, looming over them, seeming to give off a cold wind all of its own, so close now that when it heaved back, its underwater masses rose to grind against the northernmost reaches of the floe. The echoes of the Weatherby seemed to grow inside Job’s head, the sounding caves of ice were so near. He could see the webs of cracks on the glistening buttresses and towers.
BOOM!
The ice between the camp and the sea exploded again. Another head thrust into the light. Job slammed the Remington to his shoulder . . .
“JOB! NO!”
. . . and fired. The heavy, soft-nosed bullet destroyed the whale’s face. The echoes roared in the ice, working with those from the Weatherby so that the very air seemed to shake. Snow from the upper terraces fell through two hundred feet and more to thunder on to the floe itself. The sound roared and shuddered through its cycles, growing and dying. And the berg did not fall. But the whales, unafraid of the guns, were forced to withdraw to protect their delicate ears. Silence grew slowly, and remained.
“Christ!” Warren.
“That berg’s more solid than I thought.” Ross.
“Only just!” Job.
“But enough!” Quick. “Don’t you see? If we’re careful and fairly quiet, we could be all right on there!”
Silence.
“Christ, Colin; look around you! This is the thickest part of the floe, and they’re coming right through as though it was bloody tissue paper! What chance will we stand later, tomorrow, when it’s even thinner?”
A freak of wind and the berg caught the sound, demanding, “Thinner – thinner – thinner – thinner?” into silence.
Ross looked up at it. The slight friction as the underwater portion of the berg ground against the floe seemed to have slowed the speed of its passage, and turned it slightly. A perfect beach leading by gentle gradients up to an eminently suitable platform presented itself. Less than fifty yards away. Ross nodded, and the attempt was on.
Strangely, as though they had discussed it quite fully, each knew what to do. Kate got the longest roll of rope. Warren took both the guns. Job and Quick tore the crate containing the collapsible canoe open. Ross went up to the top of the hills at the north point of the floe. The canoe was big enough to take two men. It was made of canvas on steel box-struts and collapsed into three sections. It had paddles. They put it together quickly and efficiently as though fully practised.
“Give me the rifle just in case,” Quick said, “and a couple of good strong pegs. I’ll take the rope over and anchor it. Then we can ferry the stuff across fairly quickly. OK?”