'Oh, thank God!' Lavina exclaimed. 'The blizzard's over at last. Now it's quite certain the others will find Calais tomorrow.'
'Yes. And they can eat a good meal now,' Hemmingway smiled. 'With only three of them left they can afford to have a proper breakfast.'
'Three of them?'
'Yes, I was just going to tell you. About the time you left the camp Derek left too. He said he was going to explore a hummock of snow that might conceal a cottage; but he didn't take his furs, and he didn't come back. After we had failed to find you we went out to look for him, but he'd abandoned his snow-shoes about thirty yards from the camp and his footprints were covered with fresh snow. When we got back we found he'd left a note. It simply said "This is my last will and testament. I leave my share of the remaining food to Lavina and a wealth of good wishes to you all." '
'Dear, splendid Derek. How like him. But how I wish that he could have the happy end that ours will be. Without furs he'll die very quickly; he may be dead by now.' Lavina's voice quavered but she steadied it and asked after a moment: 'How long d'you think we've got, darling?'
'Until tomorrow, I should think. We may not wake up after we go to sleep tonight, but if we do wake we'll remain lying here; and once we start to get numb from inaction the end will come quite peacefully.'
They talked far into the night in the great silence of the snow that lay all about them, while the stars twinkled overhead in a cold, frosty sky. They no longer felt any tiredness, and the dawn was near breaking when they kissed for the last time and sank into a peaceful slumber.
It was mid-morning when they woke. The warmth from each other's bodies, their fur clothes and the fur sleeping-bag had prevented them from freezing, and although they felt a little empty from having had such short rations the day before, they were overjoyed to know that they would have another day together. The sun was shining so they knew that the odds were all in favour of the others.
'We can change our minds if you wish, my sweet,' said Hemmingway. 'It'll be hard going on empty tummies but now the blizzard's over we might find the town.'
She shook her head. 'No, darling, I'm too weak. I couldn't manage another mile and when the others get to Calais they'll only have their hands and the tent pegs to dig with. The houses must be so deeply buried that they won't be able to break into one until tomorrow; and then they may not find food until they've tried several.'
As Hemmingway nodded she went on: 'It may be two or three days yet before they find more than a few odd tins to keep them going, and it wouldn't be fair to jeopardise the lives of the others, even if we could rejoin them, now.'
'I know,' he smiled. 'That's just how I feel.'
For a long time they lay curled up in their bag talking softly and caressing each other. Gradually they grew colder and their lower limbs began to get numb. Time drifted on, and unnoticed by them the sun passed the meridian. They became drowsy and Lavina was half-asleep when, as in a dream, a tiny, insistent sound caught her ear, breaking the great silence. Suddenly starting up, wide awake, she wrenched herself out of Hem-mingway's arms.
"What's that?' she cried. 'What's that?'
A faint, high, whining note came from the distance, gradually increasing to a roar.
'God!' shouted Hemmingway, struggling out of the bag. 'It's a plane! A plane!'
Next moment they saw it, flying at about 2,000 feet; a great, silver monoplane soaring through the blue sky southward down the Channel.
As it approached they stood on the cliff-top waving and shouting wildly. The plane passed almost overhead and they feared that its pilot had failed to see them but suddenly it curved out to sea, and, turning, came back towards them. It rose again, banked steeply, and turning into the wind, came gracefully down on to the flat surface of the hard-frozen snow at the base of the cliffs.
Frantic with excitement Lavina and Hemmingway waved to the occupants of the plane, who waved back to them from one of its windows. Stumbling from numbness but given new strength by their intense mental exhilaration they lurched along hand in hand seeking a way down to the sea-level.
After twenty minutes they found a gap in the cliff and scrambled down it. Lavina fell, staggered up, and fell again; she could go no farther. Hemmingway picked her up in his arms and stumbled across the snow towards two people who had got out of the plane to come and meet them. To their joy and utter amazement they recognised the man and woman as Rupert Brand and Conchita del Serilla.
Half-fainting Lavina collapsed in Conchita's arms the moment Hemmingway set her down, while the two men crushed each other's hands as though they meant to break every bone in each other's fingers.
'Lord knows what happened when the comet hit the world!' said Rupert when their first greetings were over and the brandy from his flask was coursing through Lavina's and Hemmingway's veins, bringing them new life. 'We decided to face the business in my stratosphere record-breaker just as I'd planned half-jokingly at that lunch-party of Sam's where we first discussed the comet. We started out from central Spain, of course, and I took her up to 30,000; then just ran her round in wide circles. At the moment of impact we were chucked about as though the plane was a piece of paper in a high wind, but I managed to pull her out of it at about 9,000, and when we went down below the clouds to see what had happened we found that Spain had disappeared and we were in the middle of the ocean. I turned her then and headed her eastwards, but we had to fly nearly 400 miles before we came down and I landed her on a grassy plateau without having the faintest idea where we'd got to. After walking a few miles we struck a village and, would you believe it, I'm damned if we weren't in Norway!'
Hemmingway explained Gervaise's theory of the world have ing been thrown right off its axis, which would have flung Spain twenty degrees farther south while the plane had been bucketing in the air, and Rupert went on:
'By the mercy of God I decided to fly home to England the following afternoon, so we were in the air again when that huge wave came crashing along but I succeeded in finding a high stretch of land that the deluge hadn't submerged, somewhere up in the highlands of Scotland. It was only an island, but it was enough, and with the stores in the plane, some mountain-sheep that had escaped the deluge, and a crofter's potato-field we were lucky enough to find, we managed to exist somehow until the flood went down. After that the problem was petrol, and for the last month we've had one hell of a time scouring frozen villages, getting a tin here and a tin there until we could collect enough to fly the plane down to a decent climate.'
He had hardly finished speaking when Gervaise, Sam and Margery appeared in the distance. From Calais, which they had found that morning, they had seen the plane come down and had hurried out across the frozen sea towards it.
Ten minutes later they were all taking off their furs in the glorious warmth of the big, engine-heated cabin of the plane.
Sam and HemmingNvay were smiling at each other unable to find words to express their joy at their reunion. Gervaise only stopped hugging his cherished Lavina to spread out a map on her lap so that they could choose an oasis on the coast of equatorial Africa where they would be able to live on fish and dates until the plague from the dead bodies of men and animals in the towns of the equatorial belt had abated.
Rupert wheeled the big plane and taxied it across the hard snow. With its burden of three gloriously happy pairs of lovers and the gentle, elderly man who had led those he loved out of the land of death towards a new beginning, it rose gracefully into the clear, bright sky and sped south—south—south—to the Sunshine.