Eva Ibbotson - The Abominables

“When an airplane comes, we must run and shout and wave our arms,” he said for the hundredth time.

None of the others answered. They couldn’t hear him. Their ear lids had been iced to their ears. The yetis had cried easily, but now there were no tears frozen to their furry cheeks. The despair they felt was far too great for tears. And at last Ambrose, too, lay down and waited for the end.

It was their iced-up ear lids that stopped them, at first, from hearing the drone of engines coming toward them. Five engines. Five snowmobiles: huge armored monsters, part tank, part sledge, built for the hunt, pushing steadily onward through the desert of snow and ice.

In the first of the snowmobiles sat Colonel Bagwackerly, the president of the Hunter’s Club, and the MacDermot-Duff. Their eyes shone with greed and excitement, their automatic rifles were loaded and ready, and on the floor beside them was a sack. Not an ordinary sack. An outsize one, specially made for the dead body of a yeti.

There were five such sacks, one for each yeti, one in each snowmobile.

“You don’t think that mealy little worm Prink’ll blow the gaff, do you?” said the MacDermot-Duff. He had stuffed his kilt and sporran inside a quilted flying suit and looked like a large and lumpy liver sausage. “We ought really to have shot him.”

“Dash it, man, he is human,” said Bagwackerly, flicking the ice crystals from his sticky mustache. And when his companion looked a bit doubtful, he added, “Anyway, I was at school with his cousin.”

They pressed on, their specially built snowmobiles negotiating the broken surface and ridges of ice with ease. This was going to be the hunt to end all hunts! There weren’t going to be many clubs in the world with five stuffed yetis on their walls — perhaps the only yetis in the world! Why, one skin alone would be worth a king’s ransom!

“Spilled blood is glorious, killing is grand, hunters victorious conquer the land,” sang Bagwackerly above the noise of the engine. It was the club song and a perfectly disgusting one, but then, the hunters were disgusting people.

Behind them, in the second snowmobile, was the Sheik of Dabubad with some of his friends. The Sheik had murdered all the swift cheetahs and tawny lions and fleet-footed gazelles in the golden plains around his palace and now thirsted for a new kind of slaughter. Behind him came Herr Blutenstein, gibbering with excitement. This was better than schtickpigging!

“There!” said Bagwackerly suddenly. “Do you see?”

He pointed to where some dark shapes could just be made out against the featureless ice.

“It’s them, all right!” said the MacDermot-Duff, his black eyes popping with excitement.

“Get out the guns,” ordered Bagwackerly. And the snowmobiles came steadily on …

“Oh, look! People are coming! In those funny black things. It’s Con and Ellen! We’re going to be rescued,” cried Ambrose the Abominable, leaping to his feet.

The others lifted their weary faces. Making a great effort, they forced their ear lids open. Then, stiffly, without hope at first, they raised their shaggy arms and waved.

“Ambrose is right. It is help after all,” said Uncle Otto unbelievingly.

“God has heard us,” said Grandma. “It was me singing all those hymns.”

Lucy was too weak to move, but for the first time since her illness she opened her eyes and a shy and hopeful smile appeared on her gentle face.

“They’ve got some sort of stick things in their hands,” said Ambrose. “I expect it’s bamboo shoots because they’re our favorites.”

And then it happened. Spattering the ice, the bullets bounced and ricocheted, a hail of death.

“Bullets!” said Grandma unbelievingly. “They’re shooting from those sledge things.”

The snowmobiles came closer. There was another burst of fire.

“But there’s nothing to shoot at here,” said Ambrose, peering at the empty, desolate waste.

“Yes, there is,” said Uncle Otto, and he spoke in a voice they had never heard him use before. “There is something to shoot at here. Us.”

“Damn it, missed,” cursed Bagwackerly. “It’s this darned machine jigging about. Can’t you hold it steady?”

“I am,” snapped the MacDermot-Duff.

“Well, I’m not letting those cross-eyed wallies behind us get in first. They’re blasted foreigners and I’m the club president. We’ve got to move in closer.”

So the MacDermot-Duff jammed his feet down on the accelerator, and the armored sledge lurched forward.

“There! Winged one!” shrieked Bagwackerly. “Look, he’s fallen, the hairy brute. It’s a big one, too! We’ve done it! The first yeti ever, and I, George Bagwackerly, shot it!”

“It’s nothing …” said Uncle Otto, as Grandma and Ambrose ran up to him. “Just … my leg.”

But the wound was a bad one. Blood poured in jagged spurts through the thick fur. An artery had been hit.

Desperately, the others tried to stop the bleeding, closing the wound with their fingers, laying their cheeks against it, but they had nothing. No cloth to make a tourniquet, no bandage.

“They’re closing in,” said Grandma. “It won’t be long now. At least we can die like Christians. Say your prayers, Ambrose, like Lady Agatha would want you to.”

But Ambrose was beyond saying anything. If people could do that — if they could come across the ice and shoot kind, good Uncle Otto — then let death come, and come quickly. Ambrose the Abominable was through.

But the men in the snowmobiles did not come. Their machines had stopped; their greedy, glittering eyes were turned in amazement to the sky.

Airplanes. The sky had suddenly filled with planes, skimming low toward them across the ice.

“What the devil?” said Bagwackerly. “Those aren’t ours.”

“If anyone’s trying to get in ahead of us and bag themselves a yeti, there’s going to be trouble,” snarled the MacDermot-Duff. “Those hairy brutes are ours, every one of them.”

All the hunters were stopped now, looking up through their snow goggles at the sky.

“Schweinehunde!” yelled Herr Blutenstein, shaking his fists. “You schall not schteel my yeti schkinn!”

“Pariah dogs,” screamed the Sheik. “Poachers! I’ll have you whipped!”

“Quickly, reload, everybody,” shouted Bagwackerly, gesturing to make himself heard above the roaring of the planes. “Move in for the kill. We’ll get in first. We’ll show ’em!”

And in all the snowmobiles, the hunters, terrified of being done out of their spoils, reloaded their guns and started their machines.

“Ready!” screeched Bagwackerly, and the hunters gunned their engines and set off at full throttle to finish the job.

But up above them, others were ready, too. The aircraft, after circling once, now lined themselves up and flew in low over the snowmobiles. The fuselage doors opened and five long black muzzles emerged.

The hunters did not have time to scream “Cannons!” or even to notice that it was not the yetis that were being attacked but they themselves before it happened.

“Uuugwaa! Blubble-hoo!” gurgled Bagwackerly. “I’m drowning. I’m choking! Uroo!”

“It’s poison, it’s … aauuua gug … I can’t see. I can’t move! Yak glumph,” spluttered the MacDermot-Duff.

“ Hilfe! Hulp! I schtuck am,” yelled Herr Blutenstein. “I am schtuck.” He was indeed stuck. His behind was stuck to his seat, his gloved hands were stuck to his gun, his gun was stuck to his snowmobile, and his nostrils and eyelids were stuck together.