He bent down and worked like a mad man at his ski bindings.
Jill pulled at my arm. She was pointing to where George Farnell stood poised high up on the slope of the headland. He was watching the track below, his body bent forward as though about to start the run for a ski jump. ‘What’s he going to do?’ Jill whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
The sound of the train was loud now, the noise of it magnified by the snow-arched tunnel. Dahler had at last got rid of his skis. He was running down the track towards us. Above the snowshed I saw Farnell do a half-jump and come hurtling down the slope. And suddenly I knew what he was going to do. He was going to do a ski jump from the lip of the snowshed entrance on to the top of the moving train as it came out of the tunnel. Jill had understood too, for her grip on my arm tightened.
The rumble of the train grew louder. Here and there on the outer side of the shed little puffs of smoke seeped out into the cold air. Farnell was just above the snowshed now, his body bent forward, his sticks poised ready. A perfect jump turn in a welter of snow and he was coming straight towards us along the very top of the shed. My hands were gripped around my sticks so that it hurt. Suppose he reached the edge of the shed before the engine emerged? But he was stemming now. The blunt, cow-catchered front of the engine burst out of the tunnel in a roar of smoke, its headlight blazing dully in the sunshine. The tender and then the first carriage appeared. In that instant Farnell reached the end of the snowshed and jumped. And in that instant I realised with horror that the forward carriage had no snow on it. The smoke from the engine must have melted it. He had gauged it perfectly and for a moment I thought he was going to make it. He had skied on to the train at the exact speed the train was moving. And for one instant he stood erect on his skis, steady on the very top of the carriage.
Then his skis caught something, slipped and threw him. He folded at the knees in a proper fall and clutched at one of the ventilating cones. I think he gripped it. But one of his skis caught the snow that was on a level with the top of the carriage and in a second he was dragged sickeningly back along the carriage top, ground down between the moving carriage and the small wall at the side and then spewed up again on to the snow above the cutting.
I felt Jill tense. I looked down at her. She had her hands over her eyes. Then she relaxed and looked up again. But in a moment she had stiffened with renewed horror. The train was on the curve now. Below us, in the cutting, Dahler was running towards us. Behind him, the engine panted and rumbled round the curve. I saw him glance over his shoulder. Then his face was turned towards us again and I saw that it was a mask of fear, his eyes wide and his teeth bared with the effort of running. He wasn’t a young man and he’d been skiing all morning. He ran incredibly slowly, it seemed.
The engine rounded the bend of the cutting until its headlight shone straight at us. The noise of it shook the snow-clad hills. And Dahler ran – ran for his life. The driver saw him and the brakes squealed as he applied them. But the heavy train was on the down-grade. Dahler turned his head again. He was about twenty yards from us. I could see the sweat glistening on his face. The engine was bearing straight down on him. He hadn’t a hope. I took hold of Jill and pressed her to me, so that she couldn’t see what happened.
It was all over in a second. Realising that the iron monster was on top of him, Dahler flung himself against the sheer snow wall, squeezing himself against it in the hope that there would just be room between the snow and the train. It was the worst thing he could have done. There just wasn’t enough room for his small body. I stood there, helpless, and saw the iron edge of the locomotive cut into him, mangling him to a bloody pulp against the ice-hard wall of the snow. His thin, high-pitched scream, like the cry of a trapped rabbit, merged and was lost in the squealing of the train’s brakes. With a roar and a hiss of hot smoke in our faces the engine thundered into the snowshed, rumbling heavily in the snow under our feet and shaking the buried wood structure. Then the sound of it was drowned by the metallic clatter of the buffers as the carriages overran each other.
‘Oh, God!’ Jill muttered. ‘How horrible!’ Her face was buried against my windbreaker and she was shuddering. In that moment she was thinking of Dahler and not of Farnell. Then she stopped shuddering and straightened herself. ‘What about – George?’ she asked and peered through the smoke towards the far side of the curve where George Farnell’s body lay in a dark heap on the snow above the cutting.
‘We’ll go and see,’ I said. Anything for action. To stand there waiting for Dahler’s mangled body to emerge from the other end of the train was unthinkable.
We started forward then, leaving the top of the snowshed and moving along above the cutting. Below and to the left of us the last carriages were moving slower and slower into the dark tunnel entrance of the snowshed.
The last coach moved sluggishly past me and stopped, with just half of it protruding from the tunnel to show that a train was standing there beneath the snow. I glanced hurriedly into the cutting. The farther wall, directly below me, was broken and scarred with crimson as though some political agitator with more ardour than education had tried to daub a slogan. Of Dahler himself there was no sign. Somewhere along the train they would find his remains caught up between two carriages. I did not like to think what his body would look like.
I turned my head away and trudged on as fast as I could. It was Farnell I had to reach – Farnell, who might be still alive. But I could not get the thought of Dahler out of my mind. I’d liked the man. There had been something sinister and unreliable about him. And yet, remembering his past, it was all so understandable. I was sorry he was dead. But perhaps it was as well.
‘Bill! I think I saw him move.’ Jill’s voice was small and tight as though she were fighting to keep control of herself.
I peered ahead. The brilliance of the sunlight on the snow played tricks. My eyes were tired. I couldn’t focus properly. ‘Maybe he’s not dead,’ I said, and pressed on, my skis crunching in the frosty snow.
When we reached Farnell he was lying quite still, his body curled up in a tight ball. His ski pants were dug deep in the snow and there were smears of blood along the broken lip of the cutting. Jill lifted his head. It was all bloody. I loosened the bindings of his skis and cleared them from his boots. One leg was horribly broken. As I eased it round so that it was less twisted he gave a slight groan. I looked up and, as I did so, I saw his eyes open. Jill was wiping the blood from his face. His skin beneath the stubble was ivory against the pure white of the snow.
‘Water,’ he whispered. His voice rattled in his throat. Neither of us had our packs. Jill smoothed his forehead. He stirred and tried to sit up. His face twisted with pain and he lay back again, his head cradled in her lap. His teeth were clenched. But when he looked up into her face and saw who it was, he seemed to relax. ‘I nearly made it,’ he whispered. ‘No – snow. I’d have done it if—’ He stopped and coughed up a gob of blood.
‘Don’t talk,’ Jill said, wiping his face again. Then to me, ‘See if there’s a doctor on that train.’
I started to get to my feet. But Farnell stopped me. ‘No use,’ he said.
‘You’ll be all right,’ I said.
But I knew he wouldn’t. I could see it in his eyes. He knew too. He looked up at Jill. ‘I’m sorry’ – his voice was barely audible – ‘I’ve been a poor husband, haven’t I?’
Husband? I glanced from him to Jill. And then I understood – all the things that had puzzled me were suddenly clear.
He had closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he had gone. But his grip on Jill’s hand was tight and suddenly he looked up at me. His glance moved from me to Jill. Without a word he put her hand in mine. Then he said, ‘Bill – you must take over where I left off. The thorite deposits—’ He gritted his teeth and raised himself. Jill supported his back. His eyes were narrowed against the light as he gazed out across the valley. ‘The Blaaisen,’ he murmured.
I turned and followed
the direction of his gaze. He was looking across to the Jökulen, to the flank of the mountain where the glacier ice shone a brilliant blue. When I looked back at him he had relaxed and closed his eyes. Jill bent and kissed his lips. He tried to say something, but he hadn’t the strength. A moment later his head lolled over and the thin blood trickle of a haemorrhage started from his open mouth.
Jill laid him back in the snow as a shadow fell across us. I looked up. Jorgensen was standing over us. I became conscious of many voices from the direction of the snowshed. The half coach was still protruding from the tunnel and in the cutting police and officials mingled with a mob of excited passengers.
I glanced at Jill. She was dry-eyed and staring at nothing. ‘Dead?’ Jorgensen asked.
I nodded.
‘But he told you before he died?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I stood up, conscious again of the aching of my limbs, and I turned and stared across the valley to the Jökulen. At my feet lay the remains of George Farnell. But out there, under the Blue Ice, lay all that he had lived and worked for, all that was best in him. That was the sum total of his life. Nothing visible – nothing that has been visible since the Ice Age first elected to make the ice on the flank of the Jökulen blue. But an idea – something born of a lifetime’s study and work, backed by the solid presence of mineral wealth under the rock and ice. And I swore then and there that I’d stay up here at Finse and build an industrial monument to George Farnell, who died there in the snow – ex-convict, swindler, forger, deserter, murderer – but for all that a great man who subordinated everything to one idea.
And now, here it is, half completed. When I began this story the days were shortening and Finse was in the grip of ice. It is still in the grip of ice. But now the days are drawing out. Spring is coming. All through the long winter months Jill and I have been living up here and the work has gone steadily forward. We have done all the exploratory work. We have proved that George Farnell did not die for nothing. Soon now we shall mine the first ore. Soon these sprawling, wooden buildings will be humming with activity. Finse will be a small town, centre of the life blood of one of the world’s greatest industrial plants.
Open the window now and look out across the snow. I can see from here the spot where Farnell died. And away to the right, its icy jaws seeming to grin back at me, is the Blue Ice and all he lived for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hammond Innes (1913–1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children’s and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain.
Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes’s protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment—for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts—or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes’s protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels.
Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1948 by Hammond Innes
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4011-2
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
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