Almost as slowly, the leader followed them up.
What had been a battle was now a rout. Thirty of the walruses were dead or too badly wounded to swim, for the loss of five whales. The family units, their flanks and rear protected by the remnants of the old males and females who had borne the brunt of the killers’ attacks, were in full flight towards the only protection which offered – that of the floe. The whales, their killing instincts still fully aroused and, if anything, extended by the ten or fifteen bloody minutes of the battle, were in full and wild pursuit. The grey water all along the east side of the floe was alive with screaming brown and maroon heads with their dully flashing tusks. All were heading through the steel-grey foam towards the safety of the ice.
The leader, seeing all of this, and as yet unaware of the fact that the survivors of his early attacks were still on the floe, gave a great cry and thrust himself back into the attack.
He had swum perhaps five yards before the first shots rang out.
iv
“Good Christ, they’re coming back!” yelled Simon Quick. He ran to the edge of the ice overlooking the churning water and turned unsteadily on the ice. “They’re coming back!”
Job’s lips moved silently as he watched the first moments of the attack. He was a religious man, and he was not about to call Quick to order for calling upon his God. His own prayers, however, were addressed to an older, wilder deity – Aipalookvik the Destroyer. But Innuit are a practical race, and he knew well enough that prayers unsupported by action weigh little with any god; so, with the words still moving his lips, he turned towards the supply tent and the rifles.
Kate, not understanding the implication of what she saw, asked Job what he was doing.
“I’ve told you. They’ll tear the floe apart, destroy us. We must keep them off.” And he was gone.
She turned to Ross, who was rushing towards the sleeping tent where the clothes were. “Colin, are we really – ”
She was going to ask were they really going to kill these poor creatures caught between two forces they did not understand. Ross answered her question before she had even formed it.
“Yes. We have to. Job’s right – they’ll bury us. We have to keep them off . . . Now come and get the warm clothes: this may be a long job. Hurry!”
He turned and gestured to Simon who began to stumble towards them. They waited a moment, and when he arrived, the three of them set off together towards the tent and the warm damp clothes.
While they were dressing, Job was busy in the second tent where they had moved the guns during the rainstorm. He made sure the Remington and the Weatherby were fully loaded, and put aside twenty more shells for each; then he started work on the carbines, making sure the action was free, whispering a prayer to Kaila, great God of the sky, and another to Torgasoak, tall one-armed protector of Innuit, that the mechanisms would function properly in the cold. Then he laid out the magazines ready. There were five guns in all. Many less than they needed. As he was making his preparations, his mind sped through the possibilities. Obviously, even if the automatic carbines worked perfectly, they would be unable to keep all the walruses from coming on to the ice, so they would need something for close fighting. He sorted out the three silver gleaming harpoons and laid them beside the guns. And they could use the axe as well, he thought. If the carbines jammed they would need to use the axe, the harpoons, anything.
God help them if the carbines seized.
Ross, Kate and Simon were dressed in moments, and were rushing back across the net towards the tent as Job came out through the flap, a rifle in each hand.
“Get the carbines. I’ll dress,” he said to Ross, and was off at an easy surefooted lope.
“Get the carbines.” Ross passed the terse order on to Kate and Simon, then he was heading for the other supply tent with its gaping side. Simon paused, frowning, but Kate obeyed immediately and without thought.
“Come on, Simon,” she yelled over her shoulder, and he followed.
In the supply tent, Colin was moving the pieces of the boat around, looking for a coil of rope. Most of the rope was being used to hold the net in place, and the floe together, forty-foot strands of it radiating from the corners and sides of the orange square. But he came out with the last heavy coil hung over his shoulder. The rifles were leaning against the side of the tent where Job was changing. Simon had two of the carbines, Kate one and the ammunition. Ross shrugged the rope on to the ground with a crisp smack.
“Cut two forty-foot pieces,” he said, and went back into the tent for the harpoons.
Again it was Kate who reacted first. She put the carbines and the ammunition beside the rifles and hefted the axe. It took her a couple of minutes to unravel the jumble of forty feet and measure it by eye against the twenty foot sides of the net. She was cutting the second length when Job came out of the tent.
“What are you doing?” he yelled, at the top of his voice, over the cacophony of screams, groans, grunts and cries coming from the terrified walrus herd.
“Cutting rope, Colin said.”
Ross came out of the storage tent, the harpoons glistening under his arm. “Good,” he said. “Now three twenty-foot pieces.” Kate began to measure and cut.
“Do we have time for this?” asked Job, lifting his hand and gesturing towards the red-foaming battleground which was surging towards them like an avalanche.
“Got to,” said Ross. “We’ll use the long bits round our waists. I’ll take Kate, you take Simon. That way anyone who gets in trouble will get help.”
Job nodded. He was about to ask why Kate wasn’t his partner – she wouldn’t be much help to Colin if he went down, but she might be able to at least pull his own lighter body to safety – when he saw Simon Quick and realised the two at either end of a rope would have to act as a team or they wouldn’t stand a chance. Ross and Kate stood side by side tying the rope round their waists. Job watched them move smoothly and in unison. Unnoticed during the last few days, something of central importance had sprung up between them, and it was as though they had been working together all their lives. He wondered if they realised yet that they were tied together by much more than the rope.
He turned and picked up the end of his own rope. Simon was already tying his end in place. Ross glanced up at Kate, who was tugging the knot round her bulky waist. Her teeth flashed in a lean smile.
Job went back to the tent-side and got the Weatherby and a carbine. He handed the latter to Quick, who made a negative gesture with his hand and went and got the Remington. Job shrugged and gave him the shells from his pocket. They stood between the camp and the sea, on the eastern edge of the floe, the rope between them in coils on the ice.
Colin took a carbine and five clips of bullets. Kate did the same. On the way past the fire, he picked up the axe and slipped it through the rope around his waist. Kate picked up a harpoon and one of the shorter pieces of rope. She tied the rope to the end of the harpoon, and looped it ready to go over her wrist when she needed to use the silver spear. Colin loped off until the rope grew taut. Then they moved together towards the northern edge of the floe.