There were some unfortunate moments — there always are at a real shindig. Some of the Newlands Progressive pupils went skinny-dipping in the Serpentine and persuaded three girls from the convent school to come along. A small boy from the prep school was violently sick after winning a packet of cigarettes off one of the Bermeyside kids in a hastily assembled game of Texas Hold ’Em poker on the flatbed of the low-loader. Still, a party is a party. What can you do?
But before long the celebrations came to an end, and Con and Ellen were on their way home to Perry’s little flat, hardly able to keep their eyes open, and still unable to believe that there was real hope for their threatened friends far away on the treacherous ice.
Chapter 15
The Attack
N THE TERRIBLE, BLEAK ICE OF THE antarctic, the yetis had given up all hope. It was their third night on the ice without food and shelter, and it didn’t seem possible that Lucy could live through another one. She was quite unconscious; her breath came in shallow, rasping pants, and even in that terrible cold she burned with fever. Grandma’s teeth were chattering so much that Uncle Otto had had to jam a piece of ice between them to stop her jaw from breaking. Clarence lay beside Lucy, despairing and as still as a stone. Only Ambrose, who had loved people so much, still believed that somehow they would be rescued.
“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.