The pair of them fought their way to their feet, and Kate, her temper gone, screaming at them in a rage to match their own, came running across the ice and tried to grab Simon’s shoulder. He shrugged her off and dived forward so that Ross and he rolled, linked together, knees crashing against thighs, heads driven into faces.
Simon tore off mitten and glove between Ross’s back and the ice, and made talons of his fingers to gouge his enemy’s eyes. Ross jerked his face away, three deep grooves raked down his cheek. He let go and rolled away. He forced himself on to his knees. Quick did the same.
“For God’s sake,” said Kate.
Ross wiped his face, and stood up. Simon stood up, paused a moment, and came shambling forward again. They met like ocean and shore, Ross’s fist knocked aside and going over Simon’s shoulder, their faces colliding, shoulders, chests, bellies.
Kate looked for some way to part these two men who had suddenly, unaccountably, turned into wild animals.
Simon’s left fist was delivering short, deadly jabs below Ross’s belt. He swung his right in a haymaker into Ross’s ribs. Ross’s right did the same, again and again. His knee came up once more. His head tore back and crashed forward into Simon’s face. Simon staggered back. As he came forward again, Ross took a step to one side and tripped him as he blundered past.
“Had enough?” Colin gasped.
“Yes,” screamed Kate. “For God’s sake, stop it, the pair of you. The killer’s vanished. Christ alone knows what it’s up to.”
But Simon was up again, and he charged forward, swinging wildly. “I’m going to kill you, Colin!” he said thickly, through swollen lips. “Kill you!”
Kate went for him, her hands in claws. He caught her with one hand, and hurled her behind him on to the smaller section of the floe. She landed awkwardly, slipped and fell, striking her head. She tried to rise, but passed out.
Colin fell back, rolling free of the net, his boot slopping water. He began to get up again.
Simon swung his heavy boot back to kick him in the face. The bitterness which had festered in him for so many years had complete control now, and his bruised and swollen face twisted out of all recognition. He had won. If the first kick did not kill Ross, the second would. He swung his foot forward with all of his wiry strength . . .
And the whale came up, exactly as Colin had foretold that it would, through the crack in the floe and into the net.
The net reared under the men, hurling both of them back one on top of the other, on to the larger section of the floe. The whale froze for a second as the net closed around its head, then it lashed from side to side in a frenzy of movement. The floe heaved and bucked as it tried to free itself.
Simon, trying to reach the harpoons, was thrown to the ground. He struggled to get up, but he couldn’t make it. Colin rolled over and got on to all fours, but he couldn’t make it either.
“For God’s sake,” he screamed.
The whale lunged up into the air. The net tore completely free of the ice and closed entirely round it. The two pieces of the floe began to drift apart. The net was held only by the two long ropes, one to each section of ice. The whale, seeing freedom as the crack opened, lunged forward. Simon was on his hands and knees now, the two silver spears just in front of him. Their fight was forgotten. He grabbed one and, rolling on his back, handed it to Colin.
Colin struggled on to his knees, and, using the harpoon as a support, he dragged himself on to his feet and staggered forward. Still half dazed by the fight, he staggered forward until the ice ended under his feet, then he looked up and saw how terribly wrong everything had gone.
From just beside his unsteady feet one of the two ropes stretched to the edge of the net forty feet away. Five yards to the right the other half of the floe was being pulled by forty feet of orange rope. The two pieces of rope joined on the net wrapped around the whale’s head. All of it, the ice, the rope, the net, the whale, were moving through the water at an increasing speed. Waves beat against the thin ice, which began to break up.
“Sweet Christ!” he cried. He turned back to Simon, and opened his mouth to yell, when the peg beside his knees tore loose. The rope whipped away howling madly in the air.
The movement of the floe slowed, its angle settled back to the horizontal. Colin watched as what was left of the smaller part of the floe drew away at a speed of perhaps a knot, drawn forward by the wildly swimming whale.
He walked back over the ice towards Simon and the wreck of the camp. The canoe lay on its side, the yellow lifejackets lolling out of it, beside the hole where the old supply tent had stood. The latrine tent was in ruins.
And that was all there was.
Colin shook his head. “It’ll never get free of that. I think we’ve won,” he said.
But Simon was looking at the small floe following the whale across the grey sea. Colin’s face abruptly echoed the panic in Simon’s, and he swung round, his right hand coming up over his eyes. The labouring whale was by no means distant, and the small floe was still quite close. Colin’s eyes swept over the flat surface on the piece which the whale was still pulling.
And even as he looked at the tilting, rocking floe, he saw Kate slowly kneel up on its unsteady surface, and begin to wave wildly at him, her hair blowing in the slight wind.
iii
Abruptly Colin was in motion, running over that part of the floe remaining to them.
“Hurry, Simon. The boat. Help me with the boat. We have to go now or we’ll never catch up.” Simon stood up and looked at him unbelievingly. “Help me, damn you, Simon! We can’t just leave her there. We can’t just let her die. We have to go after her.”
That was as far as Ross’s mind had got. But Simon was thinking more clearly. “We’ll have to kill the whale,” he said. “It’s no use just getting her into the boat: the whale’ll simply eat that too. We have to kill that thing. That’s what we have to do.”
Ross paused. Then he stopped and picked up the deadly silver-steel spears and straightened. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “We’re going to have to kill the whale. Coming?”
Simon gave a massive shrug, and his bruise-puffed face twisted. “Well,” he said, “you can’t bloody do it on your own, can you?”
While Ross checked the seals and fastenings on all the sections of the small craft, Simon slipped on his bright yellow cork-lined lifejacket and laced it tight. Then he stowed the two harpoons with their bright orange ropes still tied to their ends.
They each took a side by the bows, gripped firmly, lifted the sharp-pointed hull a little off the ice at the front and ran it forward to the edge of the floe. As they arrived at the sea they swung the first third of the seven-foot canoe into the water. Colin jumped in and went down on his knees in the bows. He was already holding a paddle steadying the frail craft as Simon gave it a push forward, climbed in and knelt down himself.
“Go,” he said, grasping the other paddle in his right hand and plunging it into the water as Colin dipped his. On alternate sides they drove the paddles, Simon swinging his body with practised ease, Colin moving with an ungainly but dogged power. The canoe sped over the quiet water at surprising speed until the first waves generated by the churning whale slapped against the pointed bows and water began to wash into the light shell.
“Take me near the floe,” yelled Ross.
Simon nodded, and put in two strokes on the same side. “Stop paddling,” he snapped. “You’re more of a hindrance than a help. You just get ready for your battle. I’ll get you there!”