Eva Ibbotson - The Abominables

“’Oise,” he said.

And now the others heard what he had heard.

“An airplane,” croaked Ambrose. “I knew Con would come.” But it was far too dark now for an airplane to be out looking for them. It was a strange sound, unlike any they had heard before. It was a deep groaning and creaking, as though some huge monster was turning in an unquiet sleep.

Now Uncle Otto felt despair overwhelming him, for he realized what had happened. Instead of heading for land, the yetis had gone in the wrong direction and had come to the very edge of the Antarctic ice pack, and what they heard was the sea beating against it, driving new floes into it, breaking others off, sometimes gaining ground, sometimes retreating as the temperature dropped and the sea froze a bit more.

But before Otto could warn the yetis of the terrible danger they were in, there was a sudden booming noise. It was a terrifying sound like the striking of a vast gong under their feet, and the shocked yetis saw a crack open and come rushing toward them, widening all the time. They leaped aside in a panic.

“We must turn back,” cried Uncle Otto. They did turn back, wearily struggling over the torn and twisted ice, but they didn’t get very far. Utterly exhausted, at the end of their endurance, they collapsed into a miserable huddle, pressing close to one another to preserve a tiny bit of warmth. They could go no further.

As the long polar night dragged on, the yetis told each other stories. They told each other all the gentlest, funniest stories, because they didn’t feel like too much adventure. Stories about Mole and Ratty in The Wind in the Willows and about Alice and the Mock Turtle and about Henry King who had swallowed little bits of String. And at last, wretched as they were, they fell asleep.

But then a terrible thing happened. Lucy had stopped sleepwalking on the journey from Nanvi Dar. It is a thing you grow out of, like adenoids or sucking your thumb. But now, in her misery and fear, she got up, stretched out her arms, and began to totter — eyes open but unseeing — across the cruel ice toward the sea.

She did not get far. A dark gash opened in front of her. There was a splash — a terrible one, like a submerging tank — and then Lucy, who could not swim a stroke, was sucked down into the icy, heaving waters of the coldest seas in the world.

There would have been no hope for her. But though the land of the Antarctic is the most desolate place in the world, there are animals in the sea. And it so happened that two leopard seals had come up to breathe not far away. And when those kind and sensible animals saw that the thing that had fallen into the water was not making the right sort of movements at all — was, in fact, sinking like a stone — they quickly went to help.

It was a hard job, but, heaving and buffeting and shoving, they managed to edge Lucy’s huge bulk onto the ice again.

It was there that the others found her in the morning. A human would have died very quickly. To get wet is the worst thing that can happen to you in those conditions (even sweating in your protective clothing is dangerous) and Lucy was soaked to the skin. But Lucy was a yeti and she was — just — alive. Her long silky coat was stiff and frozen. She was deeply unconscious and shivering so dreadfully that it seemed as though she were having convulsions; yet when they touched her forehead, it was burning hot.

“Pneumonia,” said Grandma grimly.

They made themselves into a shield for her, trying to protect her from the wind, but she went on moaning and shivering. She was delirious, too, thinking herself back in the valley with Lady Agatha, saying her lessons, calling to the yaks, singing the rhyming games they used to play …

“Con and Ellen have forgotten us,” said Ambrose, trying to rub some warmth into his sister’s hands. “They don’t love us anymore. They couldn’t love us and leave us in this dreadful place.”

And poor simple Clarence, who so often summed up for the yetis what everyone was feeling, let a tear drop on Lucy’s closed eyes and said:

“’Ad. ’AD.”

He meant SAD. And it was true, the yetis had never been so sad. Never in all their lives. So sad that they simply didn’t want to live. Without firing a single shot, the hunters had already done their filthy work.

Y THE SECOND DAY AFTER THE YETIS’ KIDNAPPING,Con and Ellen were starting to despair.

Perry, grim-faced and silent, had driven them to London. There, in his rented room, with its portraits of famous pigs tacked on the walls, he’d developed photos he’d taken on the journey from Nanvi Dar: photos of Uncle Otto building a campfire, of Lucy saying sorry to an outsize tin of baked beans, of Ambrose trying to get Hubert to sit on his knee …

With this proof that yetis really existed, they had gone into action. Perry had visited all the newspaper offices. Con and Ellen had gone with Leo Letts, the boy who had been lost on Death Peak, to the studio of the Metropolitan Television Company, which was run by his father.

“I knew it wasn’t the dogs who found me,” Leo had said when they’d tracked him down in his smart Hampstead house. “I knew it!” And he was at once as helpful and efficient as anyone could be.

By the time the evening papers came out on that first day, all of them carried pictures of the yetis, while the headlines screamed things like: ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN COME AND GO or YETI SNATCH IN STATELY HOME or MARATHON JOURNEY ENDS IN TRAGEDY. And every hour, from the studios of the Metropolitan Television Company, there was a news flash announcing the arrival, and kidnapping, of five Abominable Snowmen, possibly the rarest and most valuable creatures in the world.

“ Now they’ll do something, won’t they?” said Con, when they came back, exhausted, to Perry’s room that night. “ Now they’ll save the yetis.”

But they didn’t. Perhaps it was because no one really knew who “they” were. The police said it was nothing to do with them; they were there to catch people who had broken the law, and there was no law against shooting yetis because no one had known that yetis existed. The army said it was not their business — their job was to deal with wars and revolutions, and this was neither. And the Minister of the Environment didn’t say anything because he was away in the Mediterranean sailing his yacht.

So on the afternoon of the second day, Con and Ellen were sitting wearily on the bed in Perry’s tiny flat, while Perry made a cup of tea. All day they had been doing the rounds of government offices and departments. They had been turned away by doormen and security men. They had left messages. They had waited on uncomfortable chairs in outer offices, only to be told that unfortunately the Undersecretary for the Environment, or the Assistant Adviser to the Government Blood Sports Commission, could not see them today.

And there was only one day left. Just one short day before the hunt began.

“There has to be someone,” cried Con. “Someone who has power. Someone who would listen .”

“There is someone,” said Ellen suddenly. “One person. The obvious person.”

“Who?”

“The Queen. She has planes — I’ve heard of them. The airplanes of the Queen’s Flight. And she is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. She could stop the hunters.”