It lifted gently, easily, like a leaf. The front legs came free, the back legs folded and collapsed. The ashes hissed on the wet. It stood on its end for a second then turned faced down, kicked up, began to roll.
Ross was running at full tilt now, and even over the wind he could hear the ice crack at each footfall. He leaped over the black wound of the crack and pounded on. The tray was beyond the edge of the net now, bouncing over the ice faster and faster. Ross dashed over the floe, boots sinking to the ankle, rotten ice clinging like mud; he was almost up with it now, a few more steps. He was reaching out, leaning far forward, hand grasping. He had it!
The ice gave.
One minute he was running, the next on his right knee with his left leg vanished to mid-thigh. But he had the fire tray. He looked down bemused, a dull ache starting in his hip where he had wrenched it. He felt his boot fill with water.
“Damn!”
He began to get up, pulling the left leg gingerly through the sopping mess of white crystals. He used the edge of the tray as a crutch, keeping his balance as he straightened his right leg. The ice clung. Suddenly, unbidden, the memory of Hiram Preston rose in his mind. What if that bastard of a whale was down there now? He felt a tug at his foot. In fact what he felt was an edge of ice catching the top of his boot, but he didn’t know what it was so he straightened his right leg convulsively. The boot came off.
Ross looked for a moment at the sopping trouser-leg, the dripping sock. “Fuck!”
He began to hop back to the camp.
Kate, thrusting her head out of the tent to see what was holding him up, saw him coming through the rain, his left leg held up ridiculously, left sleeve flapping like a banner in the wind, right arm holding the fire tray, thrust out for balance. In a brief lull in the wind she heard what he was saying and she began to laugh. She fell back into the tent, tears of mirth running down her face, and Simon also had a look.
When Ross crawled through the tent-flap, his mood was not lightened by the hilarity that met his entrance; but he was by no means a naturally bad-tempered man, and in fact was a good deal relieved to see the improvement half an hour’s hard work and a little laughter had worked on both Kate and Simon. Even in spite of the crack beneath the camp’s netting.
Only Job was quiet. He had not yet been able to shrug off his feeling of depression, and he saw nothing to laugh at either in Ross’s accident nor in their present predicament. Quite apart from the question of how the ice would stand up to the battering it was receiving, they were all damp, and Ross, his leg soaked, a definite candidate for frostbite.
“We’d better get these wet things off,” he said, and began to strip off his anorak, shirts, boots and jeans. Ross nodded, and began first with his right boot, overtrousers and jeans. Simon and Kate stared at this grotesque strip-tease for a moment, and then the obvious good sense of it struck them. Their outer clothes were soaked; their underwear damp. It was obviously necessary to dry off as best they could or the cold would set in with deadly effect. Kate moved first, stripping off her dripping anorak, her wringing pullover, her wet shirt. She started to undo her trousers when she saw that Simon was staring at her, wide-eyed. She moved her trousers to her knees with a wriggle of her hips and sat, her body completely disguised under the shapeless white sagging of her quilted combinations. From neck to ankles she might have been dressed in a loosely-fitting boiler-suit.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Simon?” she said. “Have you never seen a girl in her underwear?”
Simon choked. “Underwear!” he said. “Christ!” He began to laugh again; Ross joined in, then Job, and, last, Kate herself. For some reason it struck them all as exquisitely funny and the crisis passed as they sat chuckling a little, chatting easily to each other while the temperature in the tent rose and their clothes began to dry.
Outside also, things were getting better. The storm clouds thinned, the wind fell, the rain stopped, the sea quietened. The sun did not return, however, for a heavy layer of nimbus cloud continued to blanket the sky and colour the ocean dull lead. The floe slowly stopped rocking. The waves no longer broke over the edge of the ice, but a good deal of water continued to slop about on the surface of the floe, freezing slowly on any protuberances, slicking over any unevennesses, bringing the crystals to a slippery, solid sheen. Even the net seemed to be half buried in grey glass.
They kept up the chat for nearly two hours. Only Job, although he pretended to be as involved as the others, was aware of the returning calm outside, and he quietly, but deeply and sincerely, thanked Kaila, God of the Sky, for not sending too great a wind, Nipello the rain for not being too warm, Hiko the ice for being so strong for so long.
At last they began to run out of energy.
“What we need is some coffee,” said Kate.
“Right,” said Simon. “And maybe something to eat, eh?”
“Good idea,” said Colin. “We’ll be warm enough in jeans and pullovers if we hurry.” He looked at Job who nodded. They put them on quickly and slid out. Ross remembered his boot.
“Get me another boot!” he yelled, and as he waited, he took the opportunity to strap his left arm back on.
“OK,” Kate replied, and began to slither across to the other undamaged tent. There were spare dry clothes in one of the bundles they had transferred. She opened it, and pulled out a roll of large clothing, sorted out the boots, and stumbled back. Halfway across the orange net, she slid to a halt. Something caught her attention. She narrowed her eyes and looked away to the south. Something was moving out there in the flat grey water. She frowned. Fear reared in her. It’s them! she thought. The whales.
She began to run towards the tent, where Colin was, suddenly very cold indeed. Simon was on one knee, putting the fire tray back up.
“Simon,” she gasped. “It’s them . . .”
“What?”
But she had crouched down and thrust head and shoulders through the flap. She almost threw the boot at Colin. “It’s them,” she shouted. “They’re back!”
“Oh Christ!” He was scrambling on to his knees, pulling on his pullover.
Job pushed roughly past both of them and stumbled out on to the ice.
“Are you sure?” asked Colin.
“I don’t know. Something. Oh, Colin. Why?” There were tears in her eyes. Colin straightened his back, put his arm around her shoulders.
“It’ll be all right,” he promised. “Quiet now. It’ll be all right.”
She pressed her face against his chest, eyes tight closed, trying to control her fear, her weakness. After a few moments she pulled away, angry with herself, and crawled across to one corner of the tent.
Ross went out and stood beside Job. The dark sky and the dark sea seemed to press one against the other. Visibility was bad. In the distance there was a brownish mass moving sluggishly towards them. He looked at Job, who was preoccupied with looking at the distant creatures.
Over the water came a faint sound like the ringing of bells. The light caught yellow tusks as one of the creatures heaved itself on to a small floe. Simon and Kate came out of the tent and stood by them. The sound of bells, a strangely resonant two-tone honking, grew louder.
“Odobendiae,” said Job.
“For Christ’s sake, Job,” snapped Kate, “will you stop speaking bloody Eskimo.”
“It’s Latin,” said Job, spectacularly unmoved by Kate’s anger. “They’re walruses.”
“Oh,” said Simon, “is that all?”
ii
In fact there were nearly two hundred walruses. A month earlier, as part of a huge herd nearly two thousand in number, they had drifted through the Bering Straits, carried north past St. Lawrence Island by the great spring current to their breeding grounds in the High Arctic. Every year they moved south in the autumn as the pack froze down to the south of Alaska. For the winter months they lived on the islands and coasts of the Bering Sea kept free of ice by the warm currents which swirled north along the edges of the continents. In April they began to move, and in the early days of May began to ride the currents up to their food-rich arctic breeding grounds.