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Our March

WE WERE THANKFUL to be doing something. Our way – it was simply a line of sight across the broken wilderness –began by going downhill. Then we had to turn a shoulder and had a mile or so of more or less level ground ahead of us to the next ridge. As we rounded the shoulder the peak that had wrecked us went out of sight. Keller began humming Lili Marlene, and I put improvised words to it,

‘Best foot foremost,

Marching to the Pole,

Only got to get there,

Then we’ll be . . .’

‘Tired,’ Ruth put in.

‘Won’t do. Doesn’t rhyme,’ I said.

‘We will be, though!’

‘What do you mean by “Best foot foremost”?’ Keller asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s English of a sort. It means something like, “Go on doing your best”.’

‘Well, at least that’s what we are doing.’

We might be doing our best, but it wasn’t easy. What looked from the slope of the shoulder like a flattish expanse of snow-covered ground became harder going with every yard. It was criss-crossed with small crevasses, and the snow was mostly powdery and soft. We sank up to our knees in the better places, and frequently up to our thighs. Once Ruth seemed to disappear altogether. I was terrified that she had fallen into a crevasse, but it was merely a deep bank of snow. Even so, she took some getting out. We took over four hours to cover what could not have been more than a couple of miles.

That brought us to the next ridge, and when we reached the slope the going became rather better because the snow did not lie so thickly, and was merely ankle-deep over rock or scree. We topped the ridge in growing excitement, hoping to see the sea, but the prospect ahead was the same apparently everlasting wilderness, a long flat valley rising slowly to another ridge. We had been walking now for some six hours, and needed a rest. None of us felt like floundering on, and the ridge we occupied seemed as good a place as any for the night. We climbed down a little way to an outcrop of bare rock, and found a cluster of rocks that made a sort of roofless shelter. It did not seem worth trying to build a snow house for one night, so we made ourselves as comfortable as we could among the rocks. That was not very comfortable, but it was a change from walking, and the faithful lifejackets made good cushions, though they were woefully short as mattresses. We could not make a fire because there was nothing to burn but we divided two cans of the invaluable self-heating soup among the three of us. For the rest we had ration-biscuits and one thin slice of corned beef apiece.

We set watches as before, Ruth taking the first, Keller next, and then me. No one got much sleep because it was too cold. There was nothing, not even a bear, to hasten the slow passing of that miserable night. We thought back to our igloo by the wreckage of the helicopter as a palace of comfort, where we had not only shelter but a whole pile of lifejackets to snuggle into. At five a.m. we had had enough of the rocks, and after a breakfast that was precisely the same as our supper set off on our march again.

Although we had been marching only for half a day we had established a routine that seemed to have gone on for ever. We walked in single file about five yards apart, with Ruth always in the middle and Keller and I taking it in turns to break trail. We each led for half an hour, and then changed over. The man at the back carried the rifle. We ought to have been roped in that rough and dangerous country, but although we’d searched the wreckage carefully we couldn’t find any rope. We did come across a small reel of telephone wire, and we brought this with us, thinking that perhaps it might come in for fishing line.

It was Keller’s turn to lead when we set off, and within ten minutes we met a crisis. Like Ruth the day before, Keller just disappeared, but this time it was not in deep snow but into a crevasse. Ruth stopped at the edge and in a moment I was beside her. We peered down, but could see nothing, the black walls merging into total darkness a few feet down. I called, and to our infinite relief heard Keller answer, ‘OK, I think. But I don’t know how to get back.’

‘We can’t see you,’ I said.

‘I can see you against the light. I’m caught on a ledge, but there’s no handhold.’

‘How far down are you?’

‘I don’t know. Not very far, I think.’

The telephone wire was our salvation. I tied a stone to the free end and called down to Keller, ‘I’m sending down a length of wire with a stone on the end. Try to catch it, and then I’ll pull it up. That will tell us roughly how far you’ve fallen, and we’ll think of some way to get you up.’

I paid out the wire slowly until there was a shout from Keller, ‘Got it!’ To my relief I had not used very much line. While I held the wire Ruth pulled up the stone, and we estimated the length of line from the stone to the reel. It was about fifteen feet. ‘Not too bad,’ I said to Ruth. But how on earth were we to get him up without a rope? A gap of fifteen feet is not really very far, but it is infinity if you have nothing to bridge it. The thin telephone wire was useless. I thought suddenly of the lifejackets. These were made in the form of breast and back buoyancy bags, with straps over the shoulders and long tapes to go round the waist, and since it may be necessary to haul an inert body out of the water the tapes were designed to be strong enough to take the weight. We took off our lifejackets and I tied the tape of Ruth’s to the tape of mine. Opened out, the combined length of the jackets and tapes was a bit longer than the telephone wire we had used, so that we could get our improvised line down to Keller.

‘Help coming,’ I called to him. ‘We’re sending down our lifejackets tied together. Get a grip where you can, and we’ll haul you up.’

I lowered the lifejackets, and the tapes linking them were long enough for Keller to grip the shoulder straps of Ruth’s jacket. Then we met problems. Without tackle, the vertical lift of a man is a formidable job, and we had to be careful not to be pulled into the crevasse ourselves, and not to risk fraying the tape on the ice edge. Our emergency lifeline took Keller’s weight all right and we raised him a few inches, but it seemed impossible that we should be able to lift him through fifteen feet. He solved the problem himself. ‘You can’t lift me,’ he called up, ‘but if you can hold me I can keep a grip with one hand and scramble up the rock, I think. Keep the line taut.’

It was a severe climb. Ruth and I kept the contrivance taut by moving back from the crevasse as Keller inched himself up. I prayed that my knots would hold. The climb seemed to go on for ever, but gradually Ruth and I moved away from the crevasse, and suddenly there came a marvellous moment when Keller’s head appeared. He got his arms over the edge and rested, panting. ‘All . . . right . . . now,’ he gasped. ‘Many . . . thanks.’

‘Hold the end of the lifejacket in case he slips,’ I said to Ruth. ‘I’ll go and help him up.’ The worst was over, but even with my help it was a struggle to climb out of the crevasse. At last Keller was sitting safely on the ground. ‘Get him some hot soup,’ I called to Ruth.

Keller was bleeding from a long scrape on his forehead, but it was not a deep wound, and although bruised and badly shaken he seemed to have escaped major damage. His jacket was torn, which was serious because its insulating value would be reduced, but his haversack was intact and he did not think he had lost anything. The soup revived him, and when he had drunk a few mouthfuls he handed the can to me. ‘Fair shares,’ he said.

‘We’re not sharing this – it’s all got to go inside you. We didn’t share your ordeal in the crevasse.’

‘You got me out of it. The two of you saved my life.’

‘Time for soup,’ I said firmly, and made him drink the rest of the canful.

With snow and a handkerchief, Ruth did what she could to clean up Keller’s grazes. I carried a small first aid box in my personal kit, and this provided some antiseptic ointment. In that icy wilderness I doubted if there was much chance of infection, but the ointment at least smelt good, and applying it made us feel that we were trying to do something.

*

Keller’s rescue had occupied two hours, and left us all exhausted. Keller gallantly made light of his injuries, but he was shaken, and in the cold his bruised joints were stiffening. He wasn’t really fit to go on, but we couldn’t stay where we were. We could try to go back to the wreckage, but the effort of struggling back the way we had come would get us nowhere. If we went on, not much more effort might get us to the coast. Ignorance made for optimism, and it always seems better to try to go on than to go back. So I took over the lead. According to our routine Keller should have carried the rifle, but I didn’t want to add an ounce to the weight he had to carry so I asked Ruth if she could manage it. She agreed at once. ‘It’s not so much the weight of the thing that bothers me, but that I don’t think the rifle should be with the man in the lead. If Keller had been carrying it we’d have lost it in the crevasse, and Heaven knows we may need it.’ We disentangled the now rather battered lifejackets from the contraption we had made of them, put them on again, and started.

With Keller’s fall vividly in my mind I walked slowly, testing every yard of doubtful surface. This was as much fatigue as caution, for none of us was in any state to go quickly. In fact, however, the going improved somewhat, the ground no longer heavily crevassed, and loose scree changing to a firmer surface. We also began to climb towards the next ridge, a slope more pronounced than in yesterday’s valley. I did not take in much of our surroundings for I kept my eyes on the ground immediately in front of me, making sure that I trod on earth or rock and not on some treacherous film of snow masking the edge of a hole. Keller marched on doggedly but his bruises made it painful work and he had to concentrate on keeping going.

Thus we owed our discovery to Ruth, who had the wits to look about her. I was stopped by a shout, ‘Peter! Over there!’

She was pointing to something on our right, a hundred yards or so below our line of march. My instinct was to slip the safety catch of the rifle as I turned, expecting to see a bear. But there was nothing obviously threatening us; indeed, for a moment or two I could not make out what was exciting her. Then I saw it, too – a marked change in the landscape, with what looked like a band of dark earth instead of rock, for some reason more or less clear of snow, falling away at a right angle to our route. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘but I’ve seen an exposed opencast seam before, and I think that might be coal.’

Carefully watching where we walked, we went over to have a look. The geology of the place was weird, but the whole wilderness was so bleak and dreary that local differences did not stand out unless you looked closely. Here it seemed in some remote past half a hillside had fallen away, exposing a lower stratum of the local structure. To get to the black band we had to climb down a steep cliff, not noticeable from where we were because we were on top of it. The cliff seemed to have sheltered the area immediately below it from snow, and also from the prevailing wind, for at the foot of the cliff it seemed slightly warmer than on top, though probably there was not much in it, and what we were noticing was the absence of wind. But the change in microclimate made a profound difference and there were tufts of a heather-like little plant growing here and there, the first green we had seen since our wreck. The black stuff certainly looked coal-like. In places the surface was broken, and there were some loose lumps. They varied in texture from a sort of hard peat to something more like coal. ‘It’s either coal or lignite,’ I said. ‘As far as we’re concerned it doesn’t matter which, for whatever it is it ought to burn. Let’s see if we can light a fire.’

While Ruth and I had been examining the black band Keller had been resting at the foot of the cliff. ‘There’s a good place here,’ he called to us. ‘It looks like a cave.’

It was. It was not a big cave, not much more than a dent in the cliff, but it was shelter, with sides and a roof, and there was room for the three of us inside. Ruth and I carried over several lumps of our coal, and piled them just outside the cave. Using the machete I broke some into small pieces for lighting, and poured a little of our precious fuel over them. Then I put a match to the fuel-soaked coal, and our spirits rose with the splendid tongue of flame the match produced. Ruth went back for more coal from the seam, while Keller and I carefully built up our fire. Soon we had a really brisk fire crackling away, lovely to look at, and giving out a generous warmth.

As soon as we had our fire going we began to think that the one thing we really wanted was a cup of coffee. You can’t have everything – we had a fire, but there was no handy snow. ‘I’ll go back up the cliff,’ I said. ‘It won’t take long, and the snow there will make better water than the thin stuff round here.’ Feeling that the cave was home I took off my bulky lifejacket to be freer to climb, collected three empty soup cans, and set off. The site of our residence, however, turned out even better than we could have hoped. I had barely started to climb when I saw an icicle, and below it was a small runnel of half-ice, half-water. Some drops of water were running down the icicle. It was a spring, and for short periods of the year it would probably be proper water. It was more ice than water now, but there was plenty of it, and it solved our water problem – it was like having piped water on the spot! I filled the cans with broken ice and went back to the fire. They boiled quickly, and the meltwater from the ice was a big improvement on melted snow, which, however clean it looks when you collect it, always seems to give a grudging, muddy fluid. It also gives very little – a full can of snow yields only an inch or two of water.

With really boiling water, and ice rather than snow as the source of it, our coffee seemed the best we’d ever tasted. I leant against the rock wall of the cave, stretched my feet towards the fire, and invited discussion of what we should do next. ‘My own view,’ I said, ‘is that we should stay here until tomorrow morning. We all need rest, and we’re not likely to find anywhere better than this. The coal is a godsend in itself, and it may also be a valuable leading mark. We know that in some places in the region there is coal near the coast, and we may be within a mile or two of the shore. I shouldn’t be surprised if this valley runs down to it.’

‘It doesn’t seem to run in the right direction, at least, not in the direction where we thought we’d reach the coast,’ Ruth said.

‘It may be too local for that to matter. We can’t see the end of the valley from here, and it certainly looks as if it curls round that shoulder about half a mile away, which would make it about right. But I’d like to leave exploring until tomorrow, and concentrate on rest.’

Neither Ruth nor Keller needed much persuading. ‘It’s just after midday, now,’ I went on, ‘and I think the next thing is some food. It’s a pity we’ve got nothing to cook, but at any rate we can be warm while we eat. After lunch, I think Rolf should turn in. We’ll set watches as usual, but we’ll leave out Rolf for four watches. I’ll take the first after lunch, then Ruth, then I’ll come on again, then another turn for Ruth. That will give twelve hours to see what rest can do for getting over that fall.’

‘I’m not going to let you take any extra watches – I’m quite fit to stand my watch,’ Keller said.

‘I know you’d do it, but it’s not necessary,’ I argued. ‘You’re a third of our total strength and we need you fit – apart from any consideration for you, our own survival may depend on your fitness.’

Keller still didn’t like it. ‘What about the lady?’ he asked. ‘She needs rest, too. Let me share the first watches with you so that she can have unbroken sleep.’

‘There is no lady here. I’m an Oxford professor,’ Ruth objected.

We laughed. ‘There’s no arguing with that,’ I said.

He gave up. I was not wearing my lifejacket, so we added it to his and Ruth’s to make slightly better cushions in the cave. He turned in against one wall, and his need of rest was apparent for in a couple of minutes he was asleep.

Ruth was nearly as tired, but before turning in for her three hours off watch she stood outside the cave with me for a little. ‘Do you think we shall get through, Peter?’ she asked.

‘God knows,’ I said. ‘What worries me most is the extraordinary lack of activity by the Gould Bay party. There are eight of them there, well equipped, with good communications. It seems unbelievable that they shouldn’t have sent up the plane to look for us, and if they did send up the plane it seems unbelievable that we didn’t see or hear it. Nothing I can think of makes sense. I mean, you can imagine things like total radio failure which may have happened, but it’s unlikely that radio failure, with skilled operators, would persist for more than a few hours. And even if they lost contact with the helicopter by radio they must have been alarmed when we became physically overdue. I sometimes wonder if there may be a traitor in the party, deliberately out to lose us. But I can’t consider that seriously. Like everything else it doesn’t make sense.’

‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘The party are all Air Force or police, and I don’t see how your traitor could have got into it. I agree it’s puzzling that they don’t seem to have looked for us, but I’m less worried about that than you are, perhaps because I think mathematically. If you have a problem in maths that you can’t solve with any known data, you proceed to look for something you haven’t noticed before. And if you can’t, because you haven’t access to any more facts, you put it at the back of your mind until you can get at some more facts. We know that there is an explanation for whatever may have happened at Gould Bay, and it’s no use being worried because we don’t know it. I’m much more bothered about whether we ourselves can ever get anywhere. And I’m bothered all the time about you, Peter. You’re nowhere near fit for this kind of thing.’

‘We weren’t a bad partnership in getting Rolf out of his hole, and it was sharp-eyed of you to spot this seam of opencast coal. If we can reach the coast we can probably get somewhere in time. We must concentrate on the practical side of life. And the immediate practical need is for you to get some sleep. I’ll keep the bears away, and look after the fire.’

I thought that one of the best things I could do during my watch would be to collect a good pile of coal. It did not have to be carried far, about sixty to seventy yards, but getting it from the seam was hard work. Without a pick it would have been hard to break into, but natural weathering had to some extent done this for us. Here and there, towards the edges of the seam, the surface was cracked and pitted, and lumps of coal could be pulled away by hand. With the machete to assist I could even be selective about the size of lump I took. I kept the rifle slung during my mining and coal carrying work. I didn’t want to find myself with a bear between me and the rifle.

No bear appeared, and after about a dozen trips I had a fine dump of coal beside the fire – enough, I thought, to last the night. In our present luxury there was no reason why the watchkeeper should not have a mug of coffee, so when I’d dealt with the fire I fetched another can of ice from the spring and brewed up. Another blessing of the fire was that you didn’t have to keep on the move the whole time. I sat on a rock in the pleasant lee of the fire and savoured my coffee.

*

Ruth’s dismissal of what I called the Gould Bay Problem was all right as far as it went, and was certainly a practical approach – why waste mental effort on a problem that you know you cannot solve? But my mind is not so disciplined as hers, and I couldn’t stop thinking round it. The only solution that made some sort of sense was my wild theory of a traitor in the party. This was the place for practising Ruth’s dismissal principle – if I couldn’t see how a traitor could have joined the party forget it, and just assume that he had. If so, I thought that one thing followed – we must be near the mark, and there might be a real chance of coming across Apfel. What the three of us could do then I didn’t know – time to meet that problem if and when it arose.

With coal-work, coffee and reflection my watch passed quickly. I was reluctant to wake Ruth and felt ready to extend my own watch, but she has a mind equipped with clocks as well as computers and within five minutes of the time my watch was due to end she woke herself and came out. I made some coffee for her, handed over the rifle, and took my turn on the lifejackets. With a slight warmth from the fire coming into the cave and a flicker of flame to look at, I felt that I had never been more comfortable in my life. I must have been more tired than I realised, for in spite of having so much to think about I was asleep almost as soon as my head touched the lifejacket, and it seemed only a moment later that Ruth was kneeling beside me, shaking my shoulder gently. ‘It’s horrid to wake you up, darling, and I hate doing it, but you’ve brought me up to obey orders,’ she said.

*

Ruth had made up the fire before calling me, and there wasn’t much to do. I was refreshed by my sleep, and I wanted to explore what I called Coal Valley, but my job was to guard the cave and it wouldn’t do to move away from it. The day had clouded over and we seemed to be in for another bout of mist: exposed in the wilderness it would have been miserable, but with the fire and our cave we were all right. At ground level visibility was still fair, and I was contemplating a trip to the spring for ice when I thought I saw something move on the far side of the coal seam. I felt automatically for the binoculars which would normally have been hanging round my neck – but they had not survived the crash. I edged round to the cave side of the fire, so that the fire was between me and whatever was in the valley. Yes, there was definitely something . . . A moment later I made out a monster of a polar bear, coming towards us. I slipped the safety catch of the rifle, and waited.

The bear did not seem to be put off by the fire, but he advanced cautiously. Probably he had never seen a fire before, and was curious about it. I wondered if he could scent us, and hoped that the rather acrid smoke from the fire might disguise whatever scent we gave.

Although frightening, he was a beautiful creature and I had no wish to kill him. I hoped he would go away. But he didn’t. He seemed in no particular hurry, and paused to sniff at a tussock of the heather-like plant growing near the coal seam. It was more or less on the line from the seam to the cave that I’d followed on my coal carrying job earlier, and I wondered if I’d left some scent on it. If I had he was encouraged rather than discouraged by it, raised his head in a determined fashion and came on.

I couldn’t let him get to the cave. And I couldn’t risk firing too soon for fear of wounding and not killing him, and having a maddened animal rushing at us and thrashing about. A big bear is well protected by his massive fur, and I didn’t know which part of his huge body to aim for. I decided that I’d wait until he got within certain range and aim for his head. But I still hoped that he would go away.

It was no good. He came on steadily, apparently determined to investigate the fire and the cave. When he was about a dozen yards away I aimed between his eyes and fired. He reared up in a kind of shocked surprise, stood upright for a moment, and then fell over on his side, to lie still.

The sound of the shot roused Ruth and Keller, and they ran out of the cave – at least one advantage of our state was that we never had to lose time in getting dressed, for we had nothing but the clothes we wore, and apart from the lifejackets it was too cold to take off anything. They didn’t see the bear at once. ‘What’s happening?’ Ruth asked.

I pointed to the bear. ‘I think it’s dead, but we’d better wait a little to make sure,’ I said. I could have pumped some more rounds into the body as we had into the bear that had attacked Ruth, but I didn’t want to. That earlier encounter was different. Then the bear was threatening Ruth, we were desperately afraid for her, and we fought in hot blood. Now I had killed because the bear could not be allowed to stay near the cave, and not knowing enough about polar bears I did not know how to drive him off. I had not wanted to kill him, I should have preferred him to live and leave us alone. I had no sense of triumph in the killing. I just felt sad.

The beast was dead when Keller saw it and he reacted differently. ‘Fresh food!’ he said. ‘I shall cook a splendid dinner for us all tonight.’

‘You’re supposed to be resting,’ I said. ‘We could certainly do with some fresh food, but Ruth and I will look after it’

‘No. I learned how to skin a bear on my Arctic course – it was not a polar bear, but I expect it’s much the same. Thank goodness we have the big knife. I’ve had five hours sleep, and I feel fine. What a marvellous place this is, house, fire, food and water all provided.’

There was no point in trying to make him go back to rest. He looked better, and it was probably good for him to have something practical to do. The shock of the past few days had been worse for him than for us. We had merely been in danger for ourselves, but Keller had lost fellow countrymen and loyal subordinates from his own force, for whom he felt responsible. He was a German policeman investigating a crime that seemed to have been committed in Germany, but it was part of a complex network of events, many of which had happened in England, and he had met disaster in the Arctic because of the theories of an English investigator whom he had tried to help. It would have been understandable if he had felt some bitterness, but if he did he did not show it. He was a fine man and a magnificent ally. He had a right to cook bear steaks if he wanted to.

*

They were certainly good eating, and I’m afraid we made rather gluttons of ourselves. Partly this was because although we had food and fire, the conditions were primitive. We had nothing to cook with, and the best we could do was to cook our steaks in the embers, turning them with the machete. Keller and I had pocket knives, but Ruth’s personal cutlery consisted of a pair of scissors and a nail file. Our meat was liberally coated with ash and we had to eat with our fingers, but with ration-biscuits to accompany it we made a princely meal. Keller cut a couple of big joints from the bear, and we put these to roast slowly in hot ashes, planning to take them with us cold next day.

Well-fed and comfortable we sat round the fire. ‘I’m much encouraged by the coal seam,’ Keller said. ‘It’s another piece of evidence that fits. When you hear of something thousands of miles away there’s an extraordinary sense of achievement in actually finding it. I feel hopeful about tomorrow.’

‘I feel less and less inclined to leave here. We could do worse than become settlers in the Arctic.’

‘It might be all right for you,’ Ruth said, ‘but I feel more and more that I want a bath. I wonder if I shall ever see a bathroom again?’

‘Be hopeful, like Rolf. Tell me, Ruth, what exactly does this coal seam indicate?’

‘I keep explaining that I’m not a geographer. You can work it out as well as I can. From very elementary knowledge one can say it proves that the whole of this region of the Arctic once supported extensive vegetation.’

‘That would require a completely different climate,’ Keller said.

‘Yes, but we know there have been huge climatic changes over geological time. There’s no doubt about that.’

‘The problem is the extent to which some residue of a past warm climate may linger on the seabed, or in certain warm currents,’ I said. ‘Do you think there’s anything in it, Ruth? We’re coming nearer to your own field in trying to assess mathematical probability.’

‘I can’t give you any assessment of probability without having more facts. What I can say is that a mathematician of the calibre of Adrian Stowe, who you think was murdered in Hamburg, wouldn’t have done as much work on the problem as he did if he hadn’t thought there was something in it.’

‘There’s very little doubt that he was murdered,’ Keller said. ‘The case was not really investigated at the time, for much the same reasons that the death of Dr Jackson in Cambridge was at first not thoroughly investigated. As soon as we reopened the Stowe case it was obvious that it was by no means the straightforward suicide that it was meant to look like. Somebody was sufficiently impressed by his work on the theory to murder him for it.’

Ruth was silent for some time. Then she said, ‘The trouble is that mathematical reality and practical reality are not always the same thing. I mean, Adrian Stowe may have satisfied himself that the Arctic Calorific Syndrome had a mathematical reality without necessarily showing that it was likely to be of any practical use. Whoever killed him presumably thought that he had discovered something, but it wouldn’t necessarily have any practical value.’

‘Think back to what seems like another lifetime, Ruth. Do you remember telling me that it didn’t much matter whether my theory was right or wrong as long as somebody else was prepared to act on believing it to be right?’

‘I do, vaguely. And I think that is really the point here. An open water North-West Passage may or may not exist – for myself I think that it probably doesn’t – but if rival groups both seriously believe in it then it’s going to influence their actions whether it actually exists or not.’

‘We’re here because we think it possible that a yacht has been able to sail as far north as the Robeson Channel,’ Keller said. ‘If a yacht really can get here, it certainly looks as if there’s something in the open water theory.’

‘I don’t think that quite follows,’ I said. ‘It has always been possible to navigate these waters in some states of the ice – given a good crew and patience it’s astonishing where a sailing vessel can get. The real question is whether there are geophysical factors making for favourable ice conditions in certain areas of the Arctic for all or most of the time. We’re assuming that some people think there are such factors, that they can be identified and located. But that’s all we’re assuming: we’re not assuming that they’re right.’

‘Well, maybe we shall find out one day, maybe not. For tonight we’re going to be comfortable, anyway. I’m going to take the next watch. I’m perfectly fit for it – indeed, after that dinner I feel fit for anything.’

*

The night passed uneventfully, and both Ruth and I were grateful for the extra sleep that Keller’s insistence on standing a watch allowed us. We were up at five, and with little to pack we were ready to start as soon as we had breakfasted.

The best walking was on the coal seam, but it didn’t last long. It was exposed for only about four hundred yards, after which it went underground again beneath a rubble of broken rock and scree. It was a tiny speck in relation to the thousands of square miles of wilderness and I marvelled at our luck in Ruth’s sharp eyes.

When the seam became broken rock we left it for slightly better ground a little lower in the valley. There were still scraps of that small heathery plant growing here and there, and an occasional bush like some sort of juniper, with sparse green berries on it. I wondered if the short Arctic summer would give them time to ripen: on the whole I hoped that we should not be around to see.

The valley narrowed as we descended it, and turned in a sharp dog-leg to get round a wall of cliffs to the north, or more probably north-east, of where we were. The valley bottom was now a ravine, enfolding a rock-strewn river bed. Here and there were frozen pools, but later in the summer there would probably be water. The spring by our cave must have drained into the river higher up. As we made our way down, the going became more and more difficult, with the sides of the ravine broken by deep miniature gorges, which doubtless channelled water from the high ground into the riverbed.

We were halted by coming to a sheer drop where the watercourse in the ravine plunged over a cliff-like shelf of rock festooned with icicles, a frozen waterfall. It wasn’t really very high, perhaps about thirty feet, but without ropes there seemed no way down it. And I wondered if there was any point in following the ravine any longer. We hoped that it would lead to the sea, and it still seemed possible that it did – it may have been imagination, but I thought that there was a feel of the sea in the air, and from time to time I seemed to sniff salt water. But if we were making for the coast this ravine-like valley did not seem a good approach. We knew from the pilot book that the Ellesmere Island shore of the Robeson Channel is often sheer cliff, and that where there are beaches they are mostly rough and broken. The increasing size of the watercourse in our ravine was a hopeful sign – it looked like the bed of a river not far from the sea. It did not follow that it reached the sea in some nice gende river mouth – it might simply cascade over a cliff. And since the pattern of the land, the varying strata making up the wilderness, seemed to be repeated it looked as if the waterfall we had now come to might recur on a larger scale on the coast.

‘I don’t think it’s worth going on here,’ I said. ‘Anyway, we’ve got to make a detour of some sort. I’m quite hopeful of the cliffside to our left. It’s not sheer, it looks climbable, and if we can get up it and over the ridge we shall by-pass the end of the ravine. If we’re really near the sea we shall be going something like parallel to the coast, and not out of our way.’

‘You’re the navigator,’ Ruth said. ‘We certainly can’t go down here.’

‘What do you think, Rolf?’ I asked.

‘Well, you’ve made far more study of the charts than I have. It seems to me a choice of climbing the ridge, or going back. I hate going back.’

‘That’s settled, then. You’re a better climber than I am, Rolf. Do you feel fit to lead?’

‘Sure.’

It was hard work, but relatively straightforward, and only once did we have any serious rock-climbing to do. Keller had done a good deal of climbing, and he had a sort of natural instinct for rock, with a fine eye for a route. Whenever it seemed that we had come to an impassable place there was always a little shelf or gully that enabled us to get round it. The worst bit was a huge slab of rock about twelve feet high that blocked everything. To the left was a more or less vertical wall, and to the right a sheer drop. There seemed no way round the barrier, and the maddening thing was that from the top of it the cliffside rose quite gently, and it looked good going.

Keller stopped to consider, his eyes ‘reading’ the rock. The corner between the slab and the wall offered what looked like a secure hold, but it was about eight feet up. ‘If you could stand against the wall and I could climb on your shoulders, I could just about do it,’ he said.

One of the legacies of my wounds and operations is that I am not able to lift anything heavy. Ruth knew this and I could see her eyes cloud with worry, but I put my finger to my lips, and shook my head slightly. I didn’t think that Ruth could bear Keller’s weight, and there was nothing else for it but for me to have a go. I found as secure a stand as I could. ‘OK,’ I said.

I could not have climbed on Keller, but with one hand on my shoulder and the other on the rock face he hauled himself up successfully. He could now reach the hold quite easily, and the rest – for him – was child’s play. His weight sent a sharp pain down my side, but he was up, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

But how could Ruth and I follow? Keller was already considering this. ‘It’s quite good above the hold. If we had a rope there’d be no problem,’ he said.

‘Lifejackets,’ I suggested.

‘Possibly, but we may not need them. If Ruth can get on your shoulders as I did, I can reach her.’

Ruth didn’t want to climb on me, but she is much lighter than Keller and I could lift her to where with a knee on the rough rock she could scramble on to ray shoulders. Keller is immensely strong. He took Ruth’s hands and seemed just to swing her up.

Then it was my turn. ‘I think we’ll have to use the lifejackets now,’ Keller said. ‘I’ll knot mine and Ruth’s together, and send one end down to you. Use it as a hold, with your feet on the rock. It’s quite rough, and you’ll be able to manage.’

His confidence was more than mine, and without him I certainly could not have done it. Ruth sat on the top of the slab holding on to the lifejacket tapes. Keller stayed where he was when he had pulled up Ruth, wedged somehow on the narrow ledge that had given him a hold for getting up. He didn’t leave my weight to Ruth, but took the middle of our lifejacket line.

It took two or three goes before I could get started. At first it seemed impossible to co-ordinate a hold on the lifejacket tape with footwork on the rock, but by using my knees instead of my feet I succeeded in crawling upwards a few inches.

‘Fine,’ Keller said. ‘Just keep going.’ He helped by hauling, and at last he was able to grip my hands. He held me for a moment’s rest. Then an indication of the tension with which he braced himself came in his return to German. ‘Jetzt,’ he said. Next minute, and how he did it I don’t know, he swung me up as he had swung Ruth. She gave me a hand over the edge of the slab, and I lay there, sobbing with exhaustion and relief.

Keller joined us and patted my back. ‘You did well,’ he said. I couldn’t say anything, but I held out my hand and he took it.

There was still about half a mile to go to the ridge, but the slope seemed relatively gentle, and the ground mostly exposed slabs of rock, slippery with snow, but good to walk on if one took care. I felt done in, with a pain in my side, and eager as we all were to get to the top I suggested that it might be sensible to halt for lunch. I must have looked in need of a rest, for the others agreed at once, and would not let me do anything. Keller collected snow to serve for a drink, an unappetising mush served neat, but there was nothing to melt it with. We still had some soup, but wanted to keep that for emergencies. Unpalatable as it was, the snow at least served to keep up our fluid intake. We were better off for food. Using the machete as a carving knife Ruth cut me a chunk of cold bear meat which although distinctly tough had all the virtues of fresh food.

After lunch I went off a little way by myself, partly to answer a call of nature, partly because I wanted to have a look at my wound. When I got down to it through my layers of clothing it was as I feared; it had opened, and was bleeding. There was little I could do about it. In my haversack I had some lint and plaster, and I stuck a pad of lint over the wound, hoping to stop or at least to check the bleeding, to prevent it from getting all over my clothes. I said nothing about it for the moment, and as the others were ready we started at once on our final climb to the ridge.

Even in known countryside there is always a lift of the heart in coming to a view, and in our condition in unknown territory we were almost breathless with excitement as we covered the last few yards to the ridge. What we expected I don’t really know. Our immediate goal was the sea, and we all hoped for something that would indicate the coast. What we did see was the remotely possible in theory suddenly become real. Below us, and about half a mile away, anchored off a stony beach in a little bay of open water, was a yacht.