‘Yes,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘So’m I — Goddamned famished. But we sip a little coffee, and that’s all. The rest we leave for Paule. Agreed?’
I nodded, though my mouth was running at the thought of food and there was a dull ache in my belly. ‘You’ve decided to leave them here then!’
‘What the hell else can I do?’ he demanded angrily. ‘She won’t leave, I know that now. And another thing,’ he added. ‘If we do manage to get out, we don’t tell anybody what we know. They were dead, just like Bert said. Okay?’ He had stopped and was looking at me, waiting for my answer.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good.’ He patted my arm. ‘It’s a hard thing for you to have to do, considering what it was that brought you out here. But I think you owe it to Bert. He risked a lot to keep that thing a secret — and he’ll be dead before we’ve any chance of getting him out.’
When we got back to the fire, we found Paule lying beside Laroche, her head buried in her arms, sobbing convulsively. Darcy stood for a moment, looking down at her. ‘Poor kid!’ he murmured. But he didn’t go to her. Instead, he got the empty kettle and started down to the lake to fill it. ‘Leave her,’ he said as he passed me. ‘Just leave her, boy. She’ll be better for a good cry.’ And to my astonishment I saw there were tears running down his cheeks.
Whilst he was seeing to the coffee, I went down to where the remains of Briffe’s tent lay and searched about in the snow for the tools that must have been in that empty tool bag. There is no point in giving a list of things I found there; there were his personal belongings, and Baird’s too — clothes, instruments, some empty tins that had contained emergency rations, an alarm clock of all things. They had salvaged what they could from the plane. Lying there, scattered about in the snow, rusted and wet and gritty to the touch, it was a pitifully inadequate assortment with which to stand the siege of approaching winter in this bleak spot. I found the axe, too. It lay bedded in the ice at the water’s edge, its blade all pitted with rust, but whether he’d just dropped it there or whether he’d tried to fling it into the lake I didn’t know.
The tools were scattered about under the snow near where we had found him, and as I retrieved them, I kept on finding nuggets. They were obviously nuggets he’d collected, for there was an empty flour bag that still contained a few and a tin mug full of them. The sight of them sickened me. I could picture him searching frenziedly along the lake edge, with Baird lying in a pool of blood and Laroche fled into the timber on the start of his long trek out, and I couldn’t help wondering how he’d felt when the gold lust had left him and sanity had returned. He’d thrown the little useless hoards away in disgust; that much was obvious, for they were strewn all about the camp site. But how had he felt? Had he thought at all about the future and what his daughter’s reaction would be, as he crouched over the set, hour after hour, trying to make contact with the outside world?
I collected the tools and went slowly back with them to the fire. By then Darcy had made the coffee and we drank it black and scalding hot, and it put new life into us, so that even Paule 260’
seemed almost herself again, though she didn’t talk and her face still looked unnaturally pale. She ate what Darcy put before her, but automatically, as though the function of eating were something divorced from reality, so that I was surprised when she said, ‘Aren’t you hungry? You’re not eating.’
Darcy shook his head, avoiding her eyes. ‘We got work to do,’ he said awkwardly, and he gulped down the rest of his coffee and got to his feet, glancing at his watch. ‘There’s about two hours of daylight left. We’ll leave you with as much wood as we can cut in that time.’ He picked up his axe and with a nod to me started up the rocks into the timber.
I hesitated. I wanted to get to work on the generator. But I couldn’t help remembering that message from Briffe. No fire. Situation desperate. The radio probably wouldn’t work, anyway. Wood seemed more important, and I retrieved Laroche’s axe and followed Darcy up into the timber.
It was desperately hard work. We were tired before we started — tired and hungry. Paule helped us for a time, dragging the branches down to the edge of the timber and tipping them over the rocks. But then Laroche cried out, and after that she stayed with him, refilling the oil can with hot water to keep him warm and trying to get him to swallow hot Bovril and brandy.
He hadn’t regained consciousness. He was still in a coma, but delirious now, and every time I approached the fire I could hear him babbling.
Sometimes he’d cry out, ‘Paule! Paule!’ as though he were trying to make her listen. At those times he was back at the point where she’d struck at him with the knife. At other times he’d be talking to Briffe or wandering on an endless trek through Labrador. It was just an incoherent jumble of words, with now and then a name cried out — Paule’s or Briffe’s, my own once — and then as often as not he’d struggle in a feeble attempt to take the action dictated by the wanderings of his mind. And the horrible thing was that, though none of it made sense in a literal way, knowing what we did, it was impossible not to understand that his mind was trying to unburden itself of a secret too long bottled up.
And Paule sat there with his head on her lap, stroking his brow and murmuring to him as she tried to soothe him, her face all the time set in a frozen mask of wretchedness and despair.
The light went early, fading into a sleet storm that chilled us and covered everything with a fresh, powdery white dust. We went back to the fire then, and when I had recovered a little and my body was no longer ice-cold with the sweat of exhaustion, I tried the generator again. But though the casing was hot to the touch, it was still damp inside. At any rate, cranking the handle produced no sign of life. By the light of the fire and to the intermittent babblings of Laroche’s delirium, I set to work to dismantle the thing.
It took me more than an hour, for the nuts were all seized solid with rust. But in the end I got the casing off and with a handkerchief wiped the brushes clean. Fortunately the sleet had passed and after leaving it to toast beside the fire for a time and checking the leads and scratching at the terminals with the blade of a knife, I reassembled it. And then, with Darcy cranking the handle, I held the two points close together. When they were almost touching a small spark flickered into being. It wasn’t much of a spark, but it was there nevertheless, and when I held the two leads gripped in my hand, the shock was sufficient to make me jump.
‘Think it’s enough to work the set?’ Darcy asked, after he’d held the leads whilst I cranked.
‘God knows,’ I said. It wouldn’t be much of a signal. ‘Anyway, the set’s probably out of action by now.’ It was over two weeks since Briffe had made that transmission.
However, we coupled it up, re-rigged the aerial, and after cleaning the rust from the terminal, I slipped the headphones on, switched the set to receive and, with Darcy cranking, went slowly round the dial. But I could hear nothing, not even a crackle or the slightest murmur of any static. I checked carefully over the set, trying to remember everything that fool of an operator at Camp 263 had told me. But as far as I could see I’d done everything I should. But when we tried again there was still nothing.
‘It could be the jack of the earphones,’ Darcy suggested. ‘Suppose we give it a clean.’
But I shook my head. ‘We could clean the jack, but we’d never clean the socket. Once we disturb the phone-jack we’re done.’ I switched over to send then. It was long past the time I’d agreed with Perkins, but there was no harm in trying. The transmission might work, even if the reception didn’t. ‘Crank her up again,’ I said. And then I put the mouthpiece to my lips. ‘CQ — CQ — CQ,’ I called, with the tuning dial set at the net frequency. ‘This is Ferguson calling from Lake of the Lion. Any 75-metre phone station. Come in, please. Come in. Over.’ I flicked the switch to receive. But there wasn’t a sound.