The Blue Ice

by Innes, Hammond;

  ‘Mr Dahler!’ Jill called. ‘You’d better wait for us.’

  He glanced back over his shoulder. Perhaps it was the light, but it seemed to me that his face was contorted in a frenzy of hate. Then he pressed forward. An instant later he was no more than a vague shadow. Then he was gone, swallowed up in the storm.

  Jill caught my arm. ‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Our skis are down there.’ She caught hold of the sticks still leaning against the side of the hut, thrust a pair into my hands and then started off down the slope, skiing forward like a skater on her feet. I followed. Below the loose surface the snow was a hard, frozen crust. The wind whipped blindingly into my face as I descended. The exertion and the cold brought my circulation back. By the time I caught up with Jill she had already fixed one of her skis. Fortunately all the skis had come to rest in a pile on a drift. I found mine and fitted them to my boots. As I straightened up, Jorgensen joined us. ‘Be careful, Miss Somers,’ he said. ‘It is dangerous now. You may get lost.’

  ‘I’ll risk that,’ she answered and started off up the slope towards the hut.

  I followed her. My limbs had stiffened so that they felt like boards with rusted joints. But by the time I reached the top of the slope, they had loosened up a bit and I was feeling warm with the exertion. There was no sign of the hut. The marks of our descent were already obliterated. Jill had a compass in her hand. ‘We shall never find the post in this snow,’ she said. ‘We must go by compass. Finse is just west of due south. Ready?’

  I nodded.

  She thrust her sticks into the snow and glided off along the ridge. ‘Keep close to me,’ she called. ‘And go slowly. It may be dangerous.’

  So began one of the craziest trips I have ever done. The snow was so thick that visibility was reduced to a few yards. The wind cut like a knife. There were no markers now. Jill was leading us by compass and intuition. And I’ll say this, she led well. She had a feel for the lie of the country which was instinctive rather than reasoned. We kept to ridges where possible. But every now and then we dropped steeply only to have to climb again on the far side. But as we went on the proportion of downhill to uphill work increased and in consequence the going became easier. Several times we found ourselves faced with drops into nothingness. Probably they were only a matter of twenty or thirty feet. But in the snow it was impossible to tell. Once we climbed a long, sloping snow-field only to find ourselves stopped by a sheer cliff of black rock splodged with patches of snow. We worked round this and then had a good run down a long cutting in the mountain.

  On this run Jill disappeared completely. She was somewhere just ahead of me, for despite the snow, her ski tracks were still quite clear as I followed. But apart from the tracks, I might have been alone in the wilderness of falling and fallen snow. Then suddenly her figure loomed up at me out of the storm. She screamed something to me and waved her stick. I did a jump turn and fell with my face buried in the snow. A hand caught me under the arm and helped me to my feet. ‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked, looking down into her face which was almost obliterated by snow.

  She turned round and pointed. I shivered. It was one of the most terrifying sights I have ever seen. Just beyond the point where she had churned up the snow in a quick Christi, the ground fell away and the colour changed from white to ice-cold green. We were on the glacier itself, and this was a crevasse. It was a big one – about fifteen feet across; a great gap that disappeared deep down beyond our sight. I went as close as I dared, but I could not see the bottom. I was looking at a million years of ice packed hard and solid like green crystal. I looked at Jill and could see she was thinking the same thing. She had only just saved herself. Just a fraction faster and instead of looking down into the green depths of that giant crack, we should be down there looking our last at the narrow slit that marked the world above.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We must go back and cross it higher up.’ Her voice, though she endeavoured to control it, sounded shaky.

  We turned then and began to trudge back, climbing parallel to the crevasse. Gradually it narrowed until at last it was bridged by snow. We climbed a little higher and then struck across the glacier. We found no more crevasses and were soon climbing a ridge on the far side studded with huge rocks, some of which outcropped from the snow. Beyond was a long, sloping run. We turned south again and began to glide down. But this time Jill kept the pace down.

  We found no more crevasses. And shortly afterwards the snow slackened and the dismal grey seemed lessened by a strange iridescence. This iridescence strengthened gradually until it hurt the eyes to look at it. The snow suddenly ceased to fall. The iridescence was mist. A moment later it was agitated as though by some giant hand and then, in a flash, the obscuring veil was whisked away and the sun shone. The white of the snow was blinding. To the west the sky was blue. The snow-capped peaks smiled at us benignly. The driving snowstorm up at the hut seemed as unreal now as a nightmare. We were in a pleasant world of warmth and white snow and brown outcrops of rock. Jill turned and waved. She was smiling. The next moment I was crouched low on my skis and going like the wind. The ski points sizzled in the powdery, ice-crystal snow and the cold air whipped at my cheeks.

  We were running down a long valley. Jill, leading, set the pace, and it was a fast one. As we went down and down that everlasting slope I felt my knee joints tiring. The exhilaration of going after Farnell, the concentration required to get safely through the snow, the fear that had gripped me at the sight of the open jaws of that crevasse – all these had combined to give me strength. But now, now that it was a simple, straightforward run, the strength ebbed away and I began to feel the efforts again of the overlong, all-night trek across the mountains.

  At the bottom of the valley we made a wide sweep round the foot of a shoulder of the mountains. It was here that I had my first fall. I don’t know quite what happened. The snow was deeper, I suppose, and I just hadn’t the strength to force my skis round. The joints of my knees seemed to melt away under my weight and the next thing I knew I was slithering across the snow in a jumble of skis and sticks.

  I had great difficulty in struggling to my feet. The snow was soft and my limbs just refused to supply the extra effort needed. Jill waited for me. And when I caught up with her, all plastered in snow, she said, ‘Tired?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said.

  She gave me a quick glance. ‘I’ll take it a bit easier,’ she said. And we started off again.

  I suppose the pace she set was slower, but it didn’t seem so to my trembling and aching limbs. I fell again and again, wherever there was a difficult turn. Each time she waited for me. Twice she came back and helped me up where the snow was soft. Then at last the slope was gentle and we were running easier, side by side.

  It was whilst we were crossing this gently tilted tableland of snow, that we came across two ski tracks freshly made. Jill, who was slightly in the lead, swung into line with them. ‘George and Dahler,’ she flung over her shoulder.

  ‘Must be,’ I called back.

  We reached a jagged outcrop of rock and she stopped. There, spread out before us in the sunlight, was the pass with the slender, black line of the Bergen railway snaking through the white waste of snow. Directly below us was the white, flat expanse of the frozen Finsevatn. And on the nearer bank the tiny, box-like shapes of the Finse Hotel and the railway sheds and cottages stood out black against the dazzling landscape. And beyond Finse, standing over it on the other side of the valley like a huge crystal dome, was the white expanse of the Hardanger-Jökulen. The sweep of the snow over the summit of the Jökulen itself was unbroken, but to the left the snow seemed to fall away, leaving glacial ice of a vivid blue exposed to view, veined with the black lines of the shadows in the crevasses.

  Jill glanced at her watch. ‘It’s half-past twelve,’ she said. ‘The Oslo train will be in shortly. See – they’ve got the snowploughs out.’

  I followed the curves of the railway beyond Finse. Whole sections of the track were
invisible, running through great timber snowsheds completely covered by drifts. They were like tunnels through the snow. Here and there, between the sheds, the line showed as a dark cleft cut through the snow, the sides as vertical as if they’d been sliced with a knife. Only on the bends were the lines visible – two slender black threads gleaming dully in the sun. Farther still to the left, a great plume of white vapour moved steadily along the track. At first I thought it was a locomotive. I could see the black shape of it just showing above the sides of the snow cutting. Then I realised it was a snowplough. The plume of vapour was snow being flung out from above the spinning rotary snow-cutters.

  Jill suddenly gripped my arm as faintly echoing through the mountains came the mournful note of a siren. She was pointing away to the right where the track curved round a shoulder of the mountains towards Bergen. Just below the tip of the shoulder a plume of smoke showed for an instant. ‘It’s the Oslo train,’ she said. ‘See it?’ A moment later the plume of smoke was visible again and I could see the dark line of the train coming out of the tunnel-like entrance of one of the snowsheds. For perhaps half a minute it crawled along in the sunshine. Then it was gradually swallowed up under the snow as it entered another snowshed. Little puffs of smoke came from the side of the shed which was not covered with snow. I couldn’t see the train, but I could measure its progress as it burrowed along under the snow by those little wisps of smoke that appeared and then hung motionless in the frosty air.

  ‘Do you think George really meant it when he said he was going to catch that train?’ Jill asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘But it certainly looks like it. These must be his and Dahler’s tracks. Surely nobody else would have been out in that snow? And if they are his tracks, then he’s certainly making for the railway.’

  ‘But look,’ she said, ‘they’re not going down to Finse. They’re curving away to the left. The next station down the line is Ustaoset. That’s more than twenty miles away. He’d never make it in time. And he can’t jump the train.’

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ I said.

  She nodded and we started off again. The ski tracks led farther and farther away to the left until Finse lay over my right shoulder. The Oslo train was drawing into Finse station now. I could see the black snake-line of the carriages slowing to a standstill. A white plume of steam burst from the engine as though it were blown with the long climb up from sea level to over four thousand feet. I began to wonder whether in fact we were following the right ski tracks.

  Then round a small nut of rock we came upon the figure of a man struggling up towards us. He looked up as we bore down on him. And then suddenly he shouted, ‘Is that you, Jill?’ It was Curtis. I recognised him as soon as I heard his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Jill called back.

  ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘I wondered what had happened to you. I’ve been trying to look for you, but I’m not very used to these things yet.’ He pointed to his skis. Then he saw me. ‘Hallo Skipper! So you made it all right.’

  ‘Has Farnell passed you?’ I asked as I ran up towards him.

  ‘Dunno,’ he answered. ‘Two men went by a little time back. One a long way behind the other. The second looked rather like Dahler. Couldn’t have been, could it? But neither he nor Jorgensen were at the hotel when I got down to breakfast. And police all over the place. Where have you been?’ he asked, turning to Jill.

  ‘Up on Sankt Paal,’ she replied.

  Down in the valley the train whistled. The siren note was thrown back by the mountains, growing fainter and fainter as it slipped away into the infinity of snow-capped peaks.

  ‘That was Dahler all right,’ I said. ‘The man ahead of him was Farnell.’

  ‘Good God!’ I heard him mutter. But I was already past him, thrusting with my sticks to gain impetus. Jill came up beside me. Now that I was within sight of the quarry, I felt the excitement of the chase bringing the strength back into my legs. If only I could get Farnell alone – away from people like Lovaas and Jorgensen. He was bitter, tired of being pursued. He needed to be handled carefully. If I could talk to him quietly.

  We topped another slight rise and there ahead of us, connected to us by the double lines of their ski tracks, two figures showed black against the snow. They were close above the railway now. The whistle of the train at Finse sounded again, the wail of it coming up to us from the valley and being thrown back by the hills. I glanced over my right shoulder. Great puffs of smoke were belching from the engine, condensing white in the thin air. The smoke turned black. I could hear the thick panting of the heavy locomotive. The long line of carriages began to move.

  Jill came up alongside me. ‘We must stop him getting on to that train,’ she panted. Then she raised her stick and pointed to the sharp-cut line of the snow-ploughed railway below us. Little figures were moving along above the cutting. ‘Police,’ she said.

  I nodded and plunged my sticks into the soft snow. All thought of my tiredness had vanished. If Farnell were captured by the Norwegian police, there was little chance of my getting the information I wanted.

  Side by side we plunged down the slope, heads bent, our skis sizzling through the snow, thrusting the powdery top surface up like bow waves on either side of the upcurved points.

  Ahead of us the two tiny figures swung further left. The leading figure turned still more. He was close by the railway now where it ran through a long cutting. He paused and half-turned his head. Dahler’s smaller figure was gaining on him. Farnell swung away suddenly to the right, his skis throwing the snow up in a huge wave as he turned the speed. A moment later he was running parallel with the line directly below us.

  I glanced once more over my shoulder. The train was moving steadily out of Finse. Jill saw it too and, without speaking, we turned and went headlong down the slope towards Farnell. Jill shouted at him. He must have heard, for I saw him look up. Dahler, too, had turned. He passed directly below us, a black speck hurtling down towards the railway.

  Jill, in the lead again, swung away to the right, following Farnell’s movement. Finse was hidden from us now by a long shoulder round which the line curved in a snowshed. Farnell was disappearing round the corner, Dahler close behind him.

  Then they vanished from sight. Faintly came the siren sound of the train as it went into the first of the snowsheds after Finse.

  A moment later, and we had turned the point of the shoulder. We were right over the line now, skiing along the roof of one of the snowsheds. It ended just round the bend. Here the line made a convex curve to another shoulder of hill where it entered the next snowshed. Farnell was climbing now up the side of the shoulder of land nearest Finse. Dahler came hurtling down the slope of the bend. He was making for the railway, clearly with the idea of getting between Farnell and the line.

  It all happened very quickly then. The slope was steep where Dahler was coming down. At the bottom, just above the line, he did a jump Christi. Either he was tired or he was handicapped by his withered arm. At any rate, he muffed the Christi and went slithering down on his side. The next instant he had fallen down the sheer side of the cutting on to the lines.

  Jill stopped then and I stemmed. We were standing at the end of the snowshed. Below us was the wooden tunnel over the line holding off the snow that poured like an avalanche slope down the shoulder of the hills. In places the wooden boards showed through the snow, which was blackened by smoke. Curving round the farther headland was the next snowshed, its entrance gaping black like a tunnel. Between the two snowsheds was the convex curve of the snow-ploughed cutting, with the lines showing black through the tight-packed snow. The walls of the cutting were quite sheer, the snow packed hard and tight. Its width was the width of a train. And in that cutting Dahler struggled to his feet and brushed the snow off his ski suit.

  Beyond the headland the train hooted as it entered another snowshed. Jill clutched my arm. Her fingers bit into my flesh. For a moment I couldn’t understand her agitation. Then I
saw Dahler trying to scale the sheer snow walls of the cutting and I realised the danger of his position.

  I glanced quickly up the shoulder ahead of us. Farnell was still climbing, glancing over his left shoulder as though measuring the distance to the line below. He was directly above the next snowshed now. Then I looked down towards Dahler. He was scrabbling frenziedly at the snow with his hands, trying to get a purchase for his skis. Round the headland I could hear the heavy panting and rumbling of the approaching train. ‘Mr Dahler!’ Jill screamed. ‘This way. Under the snowshed.’ Her fingers dug at my arm. ‘Doesn’t he know there’s room for him to get off the track in these snowsheds?’ She breathed, ‘Mr Dahler!’

  But the man was panic-stricken. Where he was, he could probably feel the trembling of the rails under his feet as the giant locomotive came down the track beyond the headland.

  ‘Dahler!’ I shouted. ‘This way!’

  But he was frenziedly tearing at the wall of snow as though he would burrow through it. Every now and then, where he had made it crumble a bit, he tried to climb with his skis.

  ‘Dahler!’ I yelled.

  He looked up.

  I waved to him. ‘This way, for God’s sake. Get under the shed here.’

  He seemed to take it in at last, for he straightened up. The engine hooted again. The sound of the siren was very clear now. It was hooting for the entrance to the snowshed on the other side of the headland. Dahler half turned and looked at the black, gaping hole of the snowshed. Then he started to ski towards us. But his skis caught in the sleepers and he fell. ‘Take your skis off and run for it,’ I shouted.