Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

“Your eyes are better than mine, Kalstad,” I said. “Are they striking camp?”

“I think so,” he replied. “Jo. There is no tent.” And a moment later he said, in a puzzled tone, “I do not see more than two people.”

“Only two?” I screwed up my eyes in an agony of concentration. The dark patch in the snow wavered and separated into two figures. There seemed to lie nothing else but those two men. We threw ourselves on the sledge ropes. And then faint across the frozen waste came a hail in Norwegian. We could see the two figures waving to us now. We shouted back and ran, slithering on the ice-hard snow, toward them.

“It is Vaksdal and Keller!” Kalstad gasped.

“No sign of Bland?” I asked him.

“No, no. Only Vaksdal and Keller.”

They came out to meet us, shouting and cheering and waving their arms. But when they were about a hundred yards from us they stopped and were suddenly exhausted, gasping for breath. They made no move to help us. They just stood and stared at us dumbly. Vaksdal looked thinner and gaunter, and he had no boots on. Keller also had no boots. He had a knife and a piece of leather in his hand.

“Where’s Bland?” I gasped, dropping the sledge rope and staggering slightly, now that the impetus of moving forward no longer held me in a straight line.

“Bland?” Vaksdal’s eyes suddenly blazed from their deep sockets. “He is gone on. We thought you were a rescue party who have found our sledge track. How much food do you have?”

“None.” I said. “A few pieces of sugar and a biscuit or two.” I sat down on the sledge. Now that I’d stopped, exhaustion was taking hold of me. “What did you say about Bland?” I asked, trying to concentrate my mind.

“He is gone.” Vaksdal’s voice was angry. “You are right, captain. You are all right, and Keller and I are fools. He is left us. This morning we wake to find the wind blowing on us and Bland pulling the sledge out of the camp with the tent thrown on top of it. We shout to him and he just laugh at us. We start to follow. But he has take our boots. My gun is gone, but Keller has his inside his blankets. He try to shoot then. But Bland is too far. We have nothing — no tent, no food, no boots, nothing. The swine have left us to die.”

So it had happened just as Howe said it would. He’d used them as pack mules, and then he’d abandoned them in order to have the faint chance of coming out alive as the sole survivor.

“How much food had he?” I asked Vaksdal.

“For one man, perhaps three or four days. But very little, you understand.”

“And he’s weak?”

“Ja. Too weak to pull the sledge alone for very far.”

“All right,” I said. “Start pitching camp, Kalstad.” The skis — that was the answer. I turned to speak to Gerda. But she wasn’t there. Gerda was lying in the snow several hundred yards behind us. I don’t think I knew how exhausted we were until Kalstad and I turned back for Gerda. It was only about three hundred yards, but it seemed miles that we dragged the empty sledge before we reached her crumpled figure lying face down in the snow.

She was alive, but quite unconscious. It was as much as the two of us could manage to lift her body onto the sledge. Her weight made a vast difference and I thought we’d never reach the spot where I’d off-loaded our gear. I don’t think we’d have got her there, but for the fact that Vaksdal and Keller came out to help us.

We set up camp then and got some water boiling and made some beef tea. Gerda’s return to consciousness was slow. The beef tea she retched up. But I managed to get a little of our precious brandy down her throat. And when she could speak, she kept on saying, “You must leave me now, Duncan. You must go on. You must go on.” Her voice was so urgent that she exhausted herself. To keep her quiet, I told her how Bland had abandoned his two companions and gone on alone with all their stores. She didn’t say anything when I’d finished, but just lay there with her eyes closed, her face gray and puffy. I thought she hadn’t heard. Then her hand touched my arm.

“One of you must go on,” she whispered faintly. “Take the skis and go on. He must not get out alone. There are all those men on the iceberg.”

I said, “Don’t worry. One of us will go on.”

She seemed to relax then, and I think she went to sleep. Kalstad pulled at my arm. “Her spirit has outrun her body, I think,” he said. “She is like a horse who is too willing.”

He was telling me she was going to die. I felt the tears at the back of my eyes. I should have known how terribly driven she had been to keep up with us and not be a burden. And still she had had energy to think of us and of those others back on that ledge. I crawled out of the tent. One of us must go after Bland. I thought immediately of Vaksdal He was the strongest. And he could be trusted, now that he knew the sort of man Bland was. But I soon discovered that in removing their boots. Bland had as effectually stopped them from following him as if he’d shot them down as they lay in the snow. Whoever went after Blind must go on skis, and that meant well-fitting boots. Kalstad’s feet and mine were much smaller than Vaksdal’s or Keller’s. To lend them our boots was, therefore, out of the question. The choice lay then between Kalstad and me, and Kalstad was suffering from frostbite.

There was nothing for it. I would have to take what little rations remained and go on myself. “Get your rifle, Keller,” I said, “and take some ammunition.” I packed a rucksack, and when I was all ready to go I crawled into the tent. I don’t know whether Gerda was asleep or unconscious. She was quite still and her eyes were closed. I bent and kissed her. She moved slightly. Perhaps she knew I’d kissed her. At any rate, I’m glad I did, and I hope she knew — knew that I was saluting a very brave woman.

I went out into the biting cold of the wind then. Kalstad helped me to fix the skis. I slung Keller’s rifle over my shoulder. Then Kalstad lifted the rucksack on my shoulders — the rucksack that contained for him all that, was left of life. I was leaving them nothing but the remains of the beef extract and the stove with the last of the fuel. He clapped me on the back and said, “Good luck, captain.” I gripped his hand. Vaksdal and Keller looked on, sullen and morose.

“You are in command now, Kalstad.” I said. “Look after Gerda Petersen.”

I turned then and set out along the track of Bland’s sledge. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to lie reminded of the pathetic loneliness of that last camp. Gerda and the rest would die there. And somewhere out along the sledge track I was following, I, too, should die. I kept my eyes on those ruler-straight tracks and concentrated on the thought of vengeance.

It was surprising how much easier and quicker I found it, traveling on skis. The surface of the snow was crisp and firm. The skis slid forward with a crunching hiss, and only the constant driving of arms on sticks was tiring. And the going was over flat, snow-covered ice.

Bland had, I reckoned, a three-hour start on me. I had left the others shortly after midday. Presuming that I could travel twice as fast as a man dragging a sledge, I should be up with him about three in the afternoon. I had, therefore, only a few hours’ margin of daylight. If I wasn’t in possession of Bland’s tent by nightfall, then I should never see another day. A night in the open would kill me. I don’t think I really thought about this. But it was there at the back of my mind, a spur to my body, for I knew that if I was to achieve my purpose, it must be done before nightfall.

Ahead of me the sky was dark, like the beginning of night. As I slipped through this unending world of snow, the surface began to change. There were crevasses under the surface. Then I was in an area of open fissures, gaps too wide for the snow to bridge. The sledge tracks began to wind between these crevasses, and in one place I saw that Bland had had trouble getting his sledge across where the snow had crumbled into a gap.