“Jeremiah? Jeremiah, can you hear me? We have to move. Can you move?”
“Colin? I’ve broken my leg, I think.”
“I know. Do you think you can move?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to help me stand.”
They struggled unsteadily to their feet. Jeremiah’s left arm gripped Ross’s shoulders. Ross’s right arm grasped his friend’s waist. They moved down the side of the crevasse, with the wind coming from their sides.
“It’s too slow. You’ll have to leave me.”
“No.”
“Colin, we’ll both die.”
“The hell we will.”
“Leave me, Colin. Go on by yourself.”
“No.” They came to the end of the crevasse, and pushed once more into the teeth of the white Bear.
And hours began to pass again. The going got easier after they discarded Jeremiah’s knapsack. They did not talk, each man preoccupied with his own agony. Ross felt his right side becoming warm where Jeremiah’s body pressed against him, but the uneven pressure on his shoulder of the crippled man’s limping gait soon attained the heights of agony. The arm gripping Jeremiah itself began to cramp. Ross’s shoulder began to fight to tear away from his neck, and as the dawn glimmered far away in front of them, he found himself crying out at every step as the claws of the white Bear tore down the length of his back.
As Night deserted the unholy Trinity, the storm seemed to ease a little; and even the Queen of Bitches seemed to be content with what she had done.
“Not dead yet,” said Ross.
“Leave me,” said Jeremiah.
“I’ll put you down for a bit,” said Ross, “and we’ll finish the soup and meat. Breakfast’s the most important meal of the day, my old mother always says.”
“Especially for condemned men,” agreed Jeremiah.
“Don’t come to me for sympathy,” said Ross, easing him to the ground, “I’d swap your leg for my back any day.”
He straightened, and stretched luxuriously, feeling his muscles exult in their freedom. Jeremiah looked up at him: he could only see a vague shape above the legs: the white Bear had not eased that much. And a plan took shape in the cripple’s mind. He began to look for his opportunity, and it came at once. “You get the stuff out,” said Ross. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He vanished into the swirling snow, leaving Jeremiah with the knapsack. Ross only took four or five steps away, then he turned his back to the wind, lifted the front of his anorak, eased the front of his heavy trousers carefully almost to his knees, took one mitten in his teeth, undid the zip in his second pair of trousers, opened his thermal underwear, relieved himself, and went through the reverse procedure. As he had left his mitten off, he checked the time: it was just after five o’clock. He turned, and followed his fading tracks back over the five steps, and Jeremiah was gone. The knapsack was there, but Jeremiah was not.
“JEREMIAH? JEREMIAH!” He did not think to look for tracks until it was almost too late, then he snatched up the knapsack and stumbled after his friend. Jeremiah had not gone far: there was little purchase on the ice now that most of the snow had been lifted by the wind, and ten minutes furious scrabblings with his desperate hands had dragged his heavy body only a few yards. But such was the concentration of effort needed to move at all that he did not notice that his friend had caught him until he found himself pushing against Ross’s unyielding legs. Then, robbed even of Oates’ terrible glory, he began to cry with the pain and frustration.
Ross fed him gently with one of the strips of meat, and half of the now-cold soup. “I can’t go on,” he said. “Leave me here. I am dead already: look.” He gestured at the leg, and Ross looked. From ankle to crutch it was frozen solid, held immobile in a cast of ice made from blood and urine. “Even if you take me back, what will be the use? I will have no legs, no manhood, the white Bear has taken both. Let me lie here and die.”
“I can’t,” said Ross. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, but I can’t.” There were tears freezing on the white mask of his face. His eyes were mad with desperation.
“What choice do you have? I can no longer walk. What can you do?”
“I’ll bloody well show you what I can do.”
Ross emptied the remaining knapsack, containing the letters, on to the ground, and began to tear feverishly at the seams. When they broke on the two sides, he had a canvas flap hanging down. He laid the knapsack on the ground, and moved Jeremiah on to it. The Eskimo’s buttocks just rested on the flap. Ross tied his shoulders into the frame with the last of their rope, and went around to his head. Then he took the straps in his left hand and stood. Jeremiah found himself sitting on the improvised sledge, the weight of his torso leaning back against the pull of his friend’s arm. And so they began again.
Ross walked on in a nightmare. The great Ice Barrier reared up in front of him, and the Queen of Bitches sat on top of it saying, “Climb this, Colin, and I’ll let you go. Climb up to me and I will let you sleep.” And he shouted at her, raved, stooped down as he stumbled towards her and gathered up chunks of ice to throw into the leering face. And she clapped her frozen hands and laughed.
Then abruptly she disappeared, and he saw Job. He ran towards his friend, crying out, “Job Job Job.” He ran so fast the straps on the knapsack-sledge broke and Jeremiah slumped on to the ice. “Job Job Job Job . . .” Ross ran towards the broad dependable figure. Nearer, nearer . . . And he too vanished. Ross stopped, unbelieving. “Job?” No answer. “JOB?” Nothing. Ross fell to his knees and wept.
When he looked up, there was the great Ice Barrier stretching up into the morning, and she looked down at him and said, “Climb this, Colin, and I’ll let you go . . .” He went back to Jeremiah, and looked at what he had done to the sledge. Try as he might, his icy mitten would take no purchase on the frozen tatters of the straps. Time and time again the ice-crusted leather slipped off the stiff webbing and Colin hurled face-down in the snow. During the next half-hour they hardly moved any distance. Each time Colin’s hand slipped and he fell forward, Jeremiah fell back, wrenching his frozen legs and screaming. It was no good, he could no longer move the makeshift sled in this way.
He never knew just when he decided to try it without the mitten and glove, but he would always remember what a fair trade it seemed to be: a hand for a friend. There was so little chance for them now that it didn’t really matter much. He looked at the still body of his friend for a moment, then he slowly took off his left mitten, and his underglove. He looked at his white, clean left hand.
“Come on then old son,” he said to Jeremiah, and he wrapped the stiff broken straps around his hand, and started forward into the storm. There were no hallucinations now, only the cold-pains in his fingers. Even his relatively warm right hand ached in sympathy with his tortured left. The cold ate at the joints of the fingers and thumb. His hand seemed to swell with the pain. It crept into his palm. All the joints inside his hand ached and burned. It was as though the hand to the wrist was in boiling water. Before the first hour was up, he was screaming as he walked. The cold-pains began to creep up his forearm. In his mind he could see the warm blood flowing down past his shoulder into the increasing cold of his arm. He began to feel his veins full of blood returning like ice. His mind reeled away from the terrible thing he was doing to himself, and the fantasies began to return. People he knew. Job again, crying out, and, disregarded, vanishing. Robin Quick, stumbling at his shoulder crying, “I’m dying, Colin; carry me too. For God’s sake, Colin . . .” Ross paid him no attention, and he wandered away in the half-light.