“Simon . . .” a cry of agony, hardly Ross’s voice at all.
Quick pressed his words in like a stiletto. “You could have had her back if you’d come to her.”
“I called. I came round. She wouldn’t see me! I was in hospital for four months. I came as soon . . .”
Ross’s reaction so far had been pained confusion. He cast about like a blind bear poked by spears. Quick pushed his spear again . . .
“Four months. That was when she went off the pills on to the dope! She was waiting to hear from you.”
“But I wrote!”
“I took the letters, you bastard. I still have them . . .”
It was too much. Ross hurled himself across Job, the iron club of his left hand crashing on to the ground with such force that the ice beneath the heavy canvas groundsheet was hollowed. Quick, yelling, rolled clear. Ross swung again, screaming, “You bastard, it was you, you . . .”
“I did it for my brother’s sake. You killed him!”
“NO!” There was absolute certainty in the word.
Job had Ross now, holding him still. He twisted. “Can’t you see what he did? While I was in hospital he poisoned her mind against me . . .”
“Don’t be bloody silly,” jeered Quick. “I didn’t need to touch her mind! You killed her brother. You did it!”
“No, I did not! He bloody killed himself. And you know it.”
“I know it?” Still jeering.
“Of course you do, but you can’t accept the fact that your bloody heroic brother made a mistake, so you blame me. And you made Charlie blame me. You did that. You drove her out of her mind with it. You killed Charlie, but you can’t face that either, so you blame me for that as well. You make me sick.”
Quick’s eyes blazed. “What do you know about it? Were you there? Did you see? What the fuck do you know?”
“I know. As clearly as you know I killed your stupid bloody brother, I know.”
Quick leaned forward. Ross shrugged Job away, and they met in the middle of the tent on their knees, punching, clawing like animals . . .
BOOM!
The whale struck exactly under the tent, guided in by their noise. The shock threw them all flat.
BOOM!
With hardly a pause the killer struck again, driving the ice beneath the tent into a small cracked hillock. The canvas floor rose with the blow. For a moment they were rendered helpless by the unexpected power of it, then Job, nearest the exit, cried, “Out! Quickly!” and threw the flap open.
Warren crawled through the gap into the bright sunlight. Kate followed, hissing as her bare hands disappeared into the ice crystals to the wrist. She half turned to say something, but Job shouldered her aside as he too tumbled out. She staggered a step or two over the ice, suddenly freezing as the gentle wind cut through her shirt and vest. “Job,” she gasped, “the gloves, jackets . . .”
“Yes . . .” he turned, still on his knees. Ross was half out of the tent behind him. “Colin, the clothes!”
“Hell!” Ross paused, half in, half out of the tent. His head and shoulders disappeared again.
BOOM!
As Ross’s head reappeared in the tent, the floor was hurled up again by another blow from the killer’s massive head. Quick actually flew into the air and crashed against Ross’s massive shoulder. “Simon, the clothes. Quickly!”
The floor, terrifyingly, was beginning to sink beneath them as the broken ice fell away, removing the last barrier between them and the whale except for less than a quarter of an inch of canvas.
Ross’s eyes swept over Quick. He had never seen anyone looking so scared. Simon’s face was frozen into a rictus of terror, eyes bulging, lips curled back, skin utterly white, throat working convulsively. “Simon,” he repeated urgently, “the clothes – we’ll all freeze!”
Incredibly, Quick understood what was required of him. He looked among the jumble of stuff under him, summoning reserves from God alone knew where to cut through the crippling panic which threatened to hold him immobile while he died. “Right,” he gasped. Had Colin heard? Did he know how calm he was now under pressure? Abruptly, he became light-headed with his own heroism.
BOOM!
The floor slammed up into Quick’s face and chest, lifting him into the air again. When he landed, the canvas sagged under his weight and water began to seep through.
He was never able to recall with any clarity what he did next, or whether he did it because of panic or clear-headedness. Still in his sealskin trousers which kept most of the water out, he slopped about in the bottom of the tent, passing up to Ross the mittens, gloves, jackets, trousers, the sleeping bags and blankets, the face-masks and even Kate’s glasses before the whale struck again.
Ross clumsily thrust the articles past his own massive chest on to the snow outside, where Job picked them up and threw them in the general direction of Kate and Warren.
“That’s the lot,” gasped Simon, and began to get up. The floor of the tent was now three feet below the level of the door. Ross reached down to give Simon a hand as he reached his feet. Simon took a step forward, and the canvas, put under a strain far beyond its designed strength, began to tear along the edge of the ice below Ross.
“Simon.” The hand reached out imperatively towards him. The green crystal shone through a rent suddenly two feet wide. He could feel the floor sinking beneath him. “COME ON!”
Simon looked away from that terrible mouth fanged with ice. He held his hand out, took a step. The floor ripped again by another two feet.
Then their hands met. Ross, rolling back out through the door, jerked Quick after him one-armed, to lie on his stomach, his legs hanging down over the edge of the ice.
Incredibly – to himself at least – he still did not panic. He refused, consciously and absolutely, to acknowledge the picture which rose unbidden to his mind of the killer coming up again, mouth agape to tear away the floor of the tent and take his legs. Ross still held his hand in an iron grip. Once again their arms were at full stretch, and Ross, with a guttural grunt, jerked him free.
Then, with a great roar, even as Quick’s feet kicked clear, the whale’s head filled the tent, stretching the reinforced canvas, tearing the whole thing up into the air: five feet, ten feet. They staggered back across the net. The tent shook, billowed, began to come to pieces in the air.
“Guns!” yelled Ross. Job ran; Quick followed, still full of his heady courage.
The tent fell away revealing the great glistening black and white cone of the head, face unmarked, teeth gleaming. It was a young male. It looked at them, then sank a little.
“Hurry!” yelled Ross.
From the storage tent, the heavy Remington spoke. The side of the whale’s head split. It lurched forward on to the net, teeth snapping. The Remington spoke again. The top of its head seemed to explode as the heavy bullet, flattened by the impact, glanced off the top of its thick skull. It sank back, and vanished into the black water.
They stood, silently, listening as the whale sobbed quietly beneath them. The water in the hole where the tent had been began to freeze.
“He won’t be back,” said Job, lowering the rifle.
Kate said bitterly, “One tent gone and all of us nearly killed, just because of you two . . .” She swung on them both, blazingly angry. “Well you can damn well settle your differences later when we’re all on dry land! Do what you want then! I don’t give a damn if you beat each other’s stupid heads to pulp then, but we’ll all die if you keep this lunacy going much longer!”
Ross looked back at her levelly, meeting her hot eyes with his own until her gaze switched to Quick. But Quick, buoyed up by the strength given to him by his courage under pressure, also looked back without wilting until she swung on her heel, swept up her jacket, trousers and glasses and headed for her father’s tent. The others began to follow her. Quick’s eyes were drawn to the angry swing of her buttocks, loosely outlined by the heavy denim of her jeans. Suddenly he felt sick, and yet oddly at peace. He picked up the coat he had saved, one of the sleeping bags he had saved. He had saved them: jackets, gloves, trousers, sleeping bags, masks, all. He had saved them. He hummed as he followed the others.