Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

It was shortly after two when I saw the first open water in weeks. It was like a black lake and clotted thickly with brash ice. I pressed on faster now, drawing on my last reserves of energy.

I wasn’t far out in my reckoning, for it was just after three when I sighted a small black dot moving ahead of me. For some time the sledge tracks had been winding among black pools of half-frozen brash toward a small berg caught in the pack, and it was against the sheer green slope of this berg that the figure showed like a small dot dancing in the white void. It was painful to try to keep my eyes on it, and dangerous, because it tended to make me lose my balance. After I’d had one fall through not watching my skis and had got up again with great difficulty, I ceased to worry about the mark ahead and concentrated on skiing as fast as possible.

He had almost reached the end of the berg when he saw me. He stopped, and then his voice reached me on the cold wind. He was shouting to me and waving his sticks. Just as his companions had done, he thought I was part of a rescue party.

I unslung my rifle then, cocked it and slithered forward with the ski sticks looped over one wrist. Now that the moment had come, I found my heart hammering wildly. I fought to steady myself as I went forward.

Something in the way I moved toward him must have warned him, for he suddenly stopped shouting and stood quite still, staring at me as I advanced on him. I was getting close now, and though the snow glare made it difficult for me to see, he was outlined against the final shoulder of the berg and a good target. But I was taking no chances. I closed on him steadily, just as I would have done on an enemy ship.

“Who are you?” His hail came to me quite clearly, and I realized I was getting into the shelter of the berg.

“Craig!” I yelled back, and there was an exultant feeling inside me, and I saw him stare at me for a moment and dive for the sledge and his gun. But he didn’t get up again, and a moment later the thin crack of a shot sounded across the snow. He was tiring from the shelter of the sledge. I turned then and circled to the west of him, cutting off his line of advance and reaching the shelter of the western end of the berg. He fired at me several times before I was out of sight, but I was a moving target and his bullets vanished into spice.

The snow was heaped in fantastic shapes round the berg and I moved steadily through the sheltering hummocks toward the final shoulder. And here, around the comer of a hollowed cliff, I saw Bland’s sledge deserted in the snow. He was in the cover of the broken ice close to the berg’s flank. I crept slowly forward. There was a crack of a shot and a puff of ice in my face. I felt blood flowing from a cut. I brushed it away and raised my gun. I could see him now, peering from behind a fluted column of ice, his gun raised. I was just about to fire when I saw something moving behind him. It was traveling fast across the snow with a strange undulating movement like a well-sprung sleigh. It was a big, ungainly animal, tawny — colored with brown spots, and although I’d never seen one before, I knew what it was. It was a sea leopard, after the killer whale the most dangerous inhabitant of the Antarctic.

Bland must have seen it at the same time, for his gun swung away from me, and I heard the sharp crack-crack as he fired. The huge beast did not check. He fired once more at point-blank range, and then it was on him. He staggered as he was home back, and then he fell with the beast on top of him.

I went toward him as quickly as I could over the uneven surface. Blood was staining the snow crimson at his aide. I saw the beast move, jerking as though injured. From a range of a few yards, I pumped a whole magazine into it. I went forward then. The beast was quite still, lying across Bland’s legs. I saw Bland move, trying to free himself. He still had his rifle gripped in his bands, and he was trying to work the bolt. I tore it from his grasp and threw it clear of us. Then I saw that the huge brute’s jaws were dripping blood and that there was a terrible wound in Bland’s side. He started to say something. Then he lost consciousness.

Looking down at him, with the big carcass of the sea leopard stretched across his legs, I suddenly realized what this meant. It was the end of Bland, and for us new hope. Here, stretched dead at my feet, was fresh meat and blubber. Here was life for Gerda and hope for the future. Somehow I’d got to go back along those weary miles loaded with meat and fat.

I got Bland’s sledge and dragged it up close to his laxly. As soon as I had erected the tent, I dug Bland’s legs out from under the sea leopard and got him into it. Then, when I had bandaged him as best I could, I got to work with my knife, and soon I had a blubber stove warming the tent and big steaks of juicy meat grilling in the smoke. Bland couldn’t eat, but I managed to feed him some of the hot blood. Meantime I ate more in a few minutes than I’d eaten in as many days. The blood seemed to give Bland strength, for once he shifted his position and asked who had left the iceberg with me. When I told him, he grinned and said, “Now we can all die in the snow together.” He seemed to relapse into unconsciousness then, and I lay wrapped in a blanket, unable to sleep for the gripping pins in my stomach caused by unaccustomed food.

In the darkness of the night I awoke suddenly with a feeling of being choked. I silt up, gasping for breath and racked by violent coughing. I didn’t know what had happened for a moment. Then I realized that the tent was filled with smoke. I turned toward Bland and found he wasn’t there. Through streaming eyes I saw an orange glow against the canvas of the tent. I crawled out. Flames were leaping up out of the snow, licking over the body of the sea leopard, reaching out with wind-fanned fingers toward the fabric of the tent, which was already blackened and charred at one side. Bland was in the middle of the flames, his face buried in the smoldering carcass, the snow steaming and beginning to form in crimson pools.

I pulled Bland clear and scooped up armfuls of snow, throwing it on the flames till they were completely smothered under a white drift. At first I thought Bland had tried to stop the fire. But as I was smothering it I saw an empty kerosene container and the stove, with the stopper of its fuel tank unscrewed, lying in the snow. I knew then that he’d started the fire, started it in order to burn the carcass, bum the tent with me in it. Both pairs of skis had been thrust well into the blaze and had been badly charred.

When the fire was out at last, I crawled, exhausted, back into the tent. To this day I don’t know whether Bland was dead when I dragged him clear of the fire he’d made. All I know is that he was dead and frozen stiff when I went outside the tent in the morning. For all I know, I killed him by leaving him out there. But I don’t care. I only know I was glad to find him dead.

Fortunately, I’d saved the skis in time. They were charred, but they were usable. I cooked myself a meal. Then I covered Bland with some snow and, leaving the tent standing, set out on the journey back, carrying Bland’s skis and enough meat and blubber to give the rest of the party a good meal.

The wind had swung round to the west and was blowing hard. The sledge tracks were still visible and I reached the other camp without mishap just after midday.

It was then that I received the most bitter blow of all that ghastly period. Gerda was dead. She had died in the night, never having regained consciousness since my departure. Kalstad showed me the mound of snow where they buried her, and I stood there in the wind and cried like a child.

“She look very happy when we bury her,” Kalstad said. “I think per’aps she find her father. If he is also dead, then it is per’aps best. She love her father very much.”