The Abominable Peters surveyed the polar wastes. Other explorers had passed this way and their fatal mistake was that they viewed only a terrible nothingness, a white expanse, a cold infinity. They disappeared into it and were never heard of again.
The blizzard was as furious as ever. He wanted to sleep, but he knew the famous warning: sleep is the end of men who get lost in blizzards. He narrowed his eyes. He fixed on a point in the far distance. It looked like a thin trail of smoke. He walked towards it.
WEDNESDAY
The Abominable Peters continued walking towards the thin trail of smoke.
He had spent many long years in this Arctic hell. The temperature seldom rose above minus 40. It was dark the whole long day and darker the whole long night. But he kept going, put one foot in front of another, able to survive on a single governing principle: he never felt the cold.
Never.
THURSDAY
The Abominable Peters continued walking towards the thin trail of smoke.
He travelled light, with his oil tin and his seal bones, his whiskey and his pipe, and made steady progress over the ice. Now and then he saw footprints etched into the snow crystals. There were the little feet of Ardern, and the even smaller feet of Muldoon. He had known them all, the good and the great, the mad and the bad. None of them had ever got the better of him. Key tried; but he outlasted Key. Bridges tried; but he outlasted Bridges.
And then he came across another little pair of footprints.
They were fresh.
They seemed to dance across the ice.
Seymour.
He tightened the fur coat around his shoulders, and shivered long and hard.
The truth is that he was suddenly frozen to the bone.
FRIDAY
The Abominable Peters arrived at the remains of a campfire.
He could tell that expedition leaders Hipkins and Luxon had already passed this way.
Let them use up their energy, he thought. He didn’t care which of them would be first to reach the South Pole. Either way, they would have a nasty surprise when they got there: he had their flag. They would have to ask nicely for it, very nicely indeed.
He lowered a fish-trap through a hole in the ice. He sat and didn’t have to wait long. The old fish were really biting.
