The Abominables

12 Coldwater Straits

When the yetis woke they were in the bleakest, most terrible place you could imagine. All around them, stretching to the horizon, was a flat plain of snow and ice, broken only by low ridges like ragged teeth, and here and there a huge frozen block. There was no trace of colour, no blade of grass, no living thing as far as the eye could see — only the shrill screaming of the wind across the sunless waste.

“Oh, where are we? What has happened to us?” cried Ambrose, who was the first to come round after the drugs.

One by one the yetis came to, and stared with wretchedness at the place to which they had been brought.

“I can’t remember anything after we drank those cups of tea with the Farlingham uncles,” said Lucy.

“Why have they sent us here?” said Grandma. “This place isn’t fit for a worm.”

“They can’t have meant to,” said Ambrose wretchedly. “Unless we’ve been bad. Was it our table manners?”

“Pack ice,” mused Uncle Otto. “The North Pole? The South Pole? Alaska…?”

“I don’t want to be in a pole,” wailed Ambrose. “I want Con and Ellen. I want—”

But Lucy had discovered something even more serious. “There’s nothing to eat here,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”

It was true. Nothing grew on that frozen desert — no moss, no lichen, no grass.

“Wait a minute,” said Grandma. “What are those black and white chickens over there?”

“The penguins, do you mean?” said Uncle Otto.

“We can’t eat them,” said Ambrose, shocked. “They’re our brothers.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Grandma, “Of course we can’t eat flesh. But maybe they’ve laid some eggs.”

So they made their way slowly and painfully across the ice, doubled up against the wind. It was dreadfully hard going. The surface looked smooth from a distance, but in fact it was rough, and sharp where floes had been cast on edge by the wind before freezing into the solid mass. The yetis’ poor backward-pointing feet were soon bruised and torn. And it was unbelievably cold. Yetis can stand almost any amount of cold, but this was beyond anything they had ever experienced. The wind whipped the heat out of their faces and hands, and even the almost impenetrable yeti hair was not enough to keep them warm. Soon they were freezing as they had never frozen in their mountain home.

And when they got up to the silent huddle of penguins it was all no good. It’s true each of the birds had an egg balanced between its red, webbed toes. But one egg only. The egg.

“Sorry, penguin’s egg,” said Lucy, who was really unbearably hungry.

Then she looked at the father bird standing there quite quietly, not squawking, not protesting, just suffering, and she choked and turned away.

“I can’t do it,” said Lucy. “It’s his Little One. It’s the only one he’s got.”

In the lovely, fertile valley of Nanvi Dar, which now seemed just like a distant dream to the yetis, Lady Agatha had taught them always to say “sorry” to only one egg in a nest, so as to leave plenty for the mother bird. But of course in Nanvi Dar there had been no penguins.

Though it had never been properly light, it now became darker and the yetis clung to one another for warmth and comfort. Grandma and Uncle Otto, who were old and experienced, were beginning to give up hope, but for the sake of the children they pretended to believe in rescue. “We must keep moving,” said Uncle Otto. “This is polar pack ice. There must be land we can walk to and find some kind of shelter, a cave perhaps. And we will be easier to spot if we are on the move.”

“That’s right,” said Grandma, “and when an aeroplane comes we must shout and wave our arms so they’ll see us.”

“An aeroplane will come, won’t it?” said Ambrose. “With Con and Ellen in it?”

“Of course it will,” said Uncle Otto. “There has just been some silly mistake.”

“What sort of mistake?” asked Ambrose.

“Oh, I expect they wanted to give us a treat so they…” But even Uncle Otto couldn’t think of a convincing explanation of how they had come by accident to this ghastly place.

So they started to walk, forcing themselves forward through the gathering darkness, while the wind tore at them, their breath froze and formed icicles in their eyebrows and nostrils and a deathly cold crept slowly but surely through their thick coats, and into their very bones.

After what seemed like many hours of struggling over the treacherous surface, Clarence stopped.

“’oise,” he said.

And now the others heard what he had heard.

“An aeroplane,” croaked Ambrose. “I knew Con would come.” But it was far too dark now for an aeroplane to be out looking for them. It was a strange sound, unlike any they had heard before. It was a deep groaning and creaking, as though some huge monster was turning in an unquiet sleep.

Now Uncle Otto felt despair overwhelming him, for he realized what had happened. Instead of heading for land, the yetis had gone in the wrong direction, and had come to the very edge of the Antarctic ice pack, and what they heard was the sea beating against it, driving new floes into it, breaking others off, sometimes gaining ground, sometimes retreating as the temperature dropped and the sea froze a bit more.

But before Otto could warn the yetis of the terrible danger they were in, there was a sudden booming noise. It was a terrifying sound like the striking of a vast gong under their feet, and the shocked yetis saw a crack open and come rushing towards them, widening all the time. They leaped aside in a panic.

“We must turn back,” cried Uncle Otto. They did turn back, wearily struggling over the torn and twisted ice, but they didn’t get very far. Utterly exhausted, at the end of their endurance, they collapsed into a miserable huddle, pressing close to one another to preserve a tiny bit of warmth. They could go no further.

As the long polar night dragged on, the yetis told each other stories. They told each other all the gentlest, funniest stories, because they didn’t feel like too much adventure. Stories about Mole and Ratty in The Wind in the Willows and about Alice and the Mock Turtle and about Henry King who had Swallowed Little Bits of String. And at last, wretched as they were, they fell asleep.

But then a terrible thing happened. Lucy had stopped sleepwalking on the journey from Nanvi Dar. It is a thing you grow out of, like adenoids or sucking your thumb. But now, in her misery and fear, she got up, stretched out her arms and began to totter — eyes open but unseeing — across the cruel ice towards the sea.

She did not get far. A dark gash opened in front of her. There was a splash — a terrible one, like a submerging tank — and then Lucy, who could not swim a stroke, was sucked down into the icy, heaving waters of the coldest seas in the world.

There would have been no hope for her. But though the land of the Antarctic is the most desolate place in the world, there are animals in the sea. And it so happened that two leopard seals had come up to breathe not far away. And when those kind and sensible animals saw that the thing that had fallen into the water was not making the right sort of movements at all — was, in fact, sinking like a stone — they quickly went to help.

It was a hard job, but heaving and buffeting and shoving they managed to edge Lucy’s huge bulk on to the ice again.

It was there that the others found her in the morning. A human would have died very quickly. To get wet is the worst thing that can happen to you in those conditions (even sweating in your protective clothing is dangerous) and Lucy was soaked to the skin. But Lucy was a yeti and she was — just — alive. Her long silky coat was stiff and frozen. She was deeply unconscious, but shivering so dreadfully that it seemed as though she was having convulsions; yet when they touched her forehead, it was burning hot.

“Pneumonia,” said Grandma grimly.

They made themselves into a shield for her, trying to protect her from the wind, but she went on moaning and shivering. She was delirious too, thinking herself back in the valley with Lady Agatha, saying her lessons, calling to the yaks, singing the rhyming games they used to play…

“Con and Ellen have forgotten us,” said Ambrose, trying to rub some warmth into his sister’s hands. “They don’t love us any more. They couldn’t love us and leave us in this dreadful place.”

And poor, simple Clarence, who so often summed up for the yetis what everyone was feeling, let a tear drop on Lucy’s closed eyes and said:

“’ad. ’AD.”

He meant SAD. And it was true, the yetis had never been so sad. Never in all their lives. So sad that they simply didn’t want to live. Without a single shot being fired, the Hunters had already done their filthy work.