Chapter 21 Chapter 21 Blanche

(front missing) "Fall on deck," said the sailor.He was shaking so badly that his hands were ungloved.He crouched closer to Thomas Blanji, as if the ice expert were a source of heat. "My light fell on the deck when that thing knocked the yard off, and the fire went out in the snow." "What do you mean 'that thing knocks the yard off'?" demanded Blanche. "No living creature could knock the main-yards off." "It can." Humph said. "I heard Berry firing the shotgun and then he yelled a few times. Then his lights went out. Then I saw something... big, very big... jump on the yard and everything collapsed .I tried to shoot at that thing on the yard, but the shotgun went off. I left it at the rail."

Jump on top of the yard?Blanche thought.The turned mainyard stood some twelve feet above the deck.Nothing could jump on it, and besides, the mainmast was covered with ice and nothing could climb over it.He said loudly, "We've got to go find Barry." "Even if the sky falls, I won't go over to the port side again, Mr. Blanky. You can report me up for fifty lashes by Bosun Johnson with the nine-tailed whip, but if the sky falls I'll I won't go there either." Hanford's teeth were chattering so hard that Blanche could barely guess what he was talking about.

"Calm down," Blanche scolded him. "Nobody's going to be reported. Where's Reese?" From the vantage point of the guard on the starboard side, Blanche should have seen David Reese's light glowing in the bow.But the prow was dark. "When my lamp fell, his lamp went out at the same time," said Humphrey through his chattering teeth. "Go get your shotgun." "I can't go back to that with..." Han Fu said halfway. "Are you blinded by God?" bellowed Thomas Blanky, "if you don't get your weapon back in a goddamn minute, fifty lashes with the nine-tails will be your goddamn The last thing to worry about. Go now!"

Han Fu moved his steps, and Blanche followed behind him, keeping an eye on the pile of collapsed tents in the middle of the boat.Because the snow was blowing so hard, the lights could only produce a ball of light less than ten feet in diameter.The snow and ice expert held both his lamp and shotgun aloft.His arm was very sore. Han Fu tried to use his frozen fingers to retrieve the weapon from the snow. "What the hell, where's your mittens and gloves, man?" Blanji said reproachfully. Han Fu's teeth chattered so badly that he couldn't answer at all. Blanche put down his weapon, pushed the sailor's arm away, and picked up the sailor's shotgun.After checking that the barrel of the single-barrel gun was not blocked by snow and opening the breech, he returned the gun to Han Fu.Blanche had to tuck the gun under the man's arm so he could hug it with his frozen hands.Blanche also tucked his shotgun under his left arm so he could draw it quickly.Then, he took a bullet from the pocket of his large coat, loaded it into Humphrey's shotgun, and helped him close the breech tightly. "If anything bigger than Leth or I comes out of that pile of canvas," he almost shouted into Humphrey's ear, as the wind was howling, "you aim for it and buckle down. Trigger, even if you have to pull it with your fucking teeth."

Han Fu nodded his head with difficulty. "I'm going to the front to find Lace now, and help him open the front hatch," Blanche said.In the black chaos of frozen canvas, displaced snow and ice, broken yards and overturned crates, nothing seemed to make its way down the sloping deck toward the bow. "I can't..." Han Fu was interrupted. "You stay where you are," said Blanche hastily.He placed the lantern beside the terrified crew. "Don't shoot me when I bring Lace back, or I swear my ghost will haunt you to the end, John Hanford." Han Fu nodded again with his pale face.

Blanche started walking towards the bow.After walking a dozen or so steps, he was out of range of the lantern, but his eyesight was useless in the dark night.The hard snow particles hit him in the face like small pellets.Only a handful of rigging and shrouds remained on the masts of the interminable winter, and now above his head the strong wind howled among the rigging.It was so dark that Blanche had to hold the shotgun in his mittened left hand and touch the icy-crusted railing with his right to guide himself.The yards ahead of the mainmast, as he judged, were also down. "Race!" he yelled.

Through the dancing snow, something huge, roughly white, slowly emerged from the pile of wreckage, blocking his path.The ice expert couldn't tell if the thing was an ice bear or a tattooed demon, or whether it was ten feet in front of him or thirty feet away in the dark.But he knew that his way to go on to the bow was blocked. Then the thing stood up on its hind legs. Blanche felt its dark figure through the wind and snow it blocked. Although he could only vaguely see a large black shadow, he knew that it was huge.The little triangular head lifted up—is there really a head in the dark? --higher than the height of the original yard.There seemed to be two holes punched in the pale triangular head, could it be the eyes?But the holes were at least fourteen feet above the deck.

Incredible, thought Thomas Blanji. It came towards him. Blanche shifted the shotgun to his right hand, resting the stock on his shoulder, steadied it with his mittened left hand, and fired. The flash of light and the sparks of the explosion from the gun barrel gave the ice expert a glimpse of those black, dead, and emotionless shark eyes staring at him.No, it wasn't a shark's eye at all, he didn't realize it until after the retinal afterimage from the explosion had temporarily blinded him for a second or so.Those two black circles are more frighteningly malevolent and more intelligent than the shark's black eyes, which are the ruthless stares of predators who regard you as food.The two eyes, like a bottomless black hole, are much higher than Blanche's, and the shoulders below the eyes are wider than the spread of Blanche's hands. As the vague figure approaches, the pair of eyes are getting closer.

With no time to reload, Blanche tosses the useless shotgun and jumps onto the rope ladder. Because the ice and snow expert has 40 years of sailing experience, he can clearly know the exact position of the frozen rope ladder in the dark and in the wind and snow, without even looking at it.He grabbed the rope ladder with his mitten-free right hand, threw his legs upwards, hooked his boots on the cross rope, and then took off the mitten of his left hand with his teeth, almost hanging upside down on the inside of the inward-sloping rope ladder , and start climbing up. At his hip and six inches below his legs, something chopped through the air with as much force as a two-ton battering ram could swing at full strength.Blanche heard the three thick longitudinal cables of the rope ladder being torn and snapped... Impossible! ...and start swinging inward.Blanche was nearly thrown onto the deck.

He barely clings to the rope ladder, puts his left leg to the outside of the few cables that have not been broken, and does not dare to delay even a second, clinging to the icy cables, he climbs up again.Thomas Blange seemed to have turned back into a twelve-year-old boy, still unformed, crawling on the cables like a monkey, and regarded the masts, sails, cables and high rigging on the barque as Her Majesty's playground for him. He was twenty feet from the deck now, nearly at the height of the second yard.The direction of the yard remains normal, at ninety degrees to the hull.But then the thing below him struck the bottom of the ladder again, and ripped the wood, dowels, dowels, ice and iron pulleys, all together from the guardrail.

In the darkness, Blanche's hand missed the cable he expected to hang there.But in the fall, his icy face hit it, and Thomas Blanji grabbed the cable with both hands, slid six feet down the icy cable, and began to hook himself frantically. Hanging from the cables, the body was drawn up towards the third and tallest yard of the shortened mainmast (which rose to less than fifty feet above the deck). The thing bellowed below him.Then the second yard, shrouds, blocks, and cables fell together and hit the deck with another roar.The louder of the two roars came from the monster attached to the mainmast. The cable was just an ordinary rope hanging about eight yards from the mainmast.The main purpose is to allow the crew to quickly descend to the deck from the crossbar or above the yard, not to climb.But Blanche is really climbing now.Even though the cable was covered with ice and was constantly fluttering in the wind and snow; even though Thomas Blange had lost all feeling in his right hand, he still climbed the rope ladder like a fourteen-year-old apprentice, After dinner on a tropical evening, play with the boys on the high rigging. He couldn't pull himself up to the topmost yard, it was too icy, but he got hold of the stay-rigging cables there, and from there he moved to the loosened and folded stays below the yard. Mast shroud.From here some cracked ice dashed down to the deck below.Blanji imagined—or hoped—that he would hear the ripping and thumping from the front of the ship, as if Crozier and the rest of the crew were trying to hack open the sealed forward hatch with an axe, Get out of the cabin. Clutching like a spider on the frozen shrouds, Blanche looked down and to the left.Maybe Fengxue had gotten smaller, maybe his eyesight had gotten better, maybe both, and now he could see the huge size of the monster.She was climbing to the level of the third and last yard.It was so large on the mainmast that it seemed to Blanche like a big cat crawling on a very thin tree trunk.But of course, Blanche thought, it didn't look like a cat at all.It just stabbed its claws deep into the surface ice like a cat, into the royal oak and the iron skin that even a medium-sized shell could not penetrate. Blanche continued to move along the shrouds toward the edge of the yard, making the frozen shroud cables and sails creak like overstretched cotton, and causing a lot of ice to break off. The huge figure behind him had climbed to the level of the third yard.Blanche felt the yards and shrouds vibrate and sink, for the heavy thing on the mainmast was shifting some of its weight to either side of the yard.Blanji imagined the thing's two huge forearms already on the yard, imagined it slapping the thinner yard above it with a bear paw as big as his chest, and he sped up and climbed sideways on the yard. , now almost forty feet from the mainmast, and almost fifty feet below the edge of the deck.While working on the sails, crew members could end up in the sea if they accidentally fell over the outside of the yard or shrouds.If Blanche had fallen now, it would have landed on ice sixty feet below. Something blocked Blanche's face and shoulders: a web, a spider's web, and he was caught.He almost screamed at first.Then he understood what it was—a rope ladder, a grid of ropes strung together for the crew to climb, leading from the parapet to the crossbar of the second mast.For the winter, however, they had re-rigged so that the rope ladders ran straight up to the top of the stump of the mainmast, so that the work party could go up to clear the ice.What entangled him was the starboard rope ladder.After being hit twice violently by that thing's huge claws, the rope ladder was restrained by the guardrail and the lanyard on the deck.The grid of intertwined ropes was covered with thick ice, like small sails, and the loose rope ladder was blown out of the starboard side of the ship by the wind. Again, Blanche acted before giving himself time to think.Had he had had time to consider whether to proceed with the next move when he was more than sixty feet off the ice, he would have said no. He leaped from the creaking shrouds and onto the swinging rope ladder. As he expected, the sudden weight he added caused the ladder to swing back toward the mainmast.He was only a foot away from hitting something huge and hairy clinging to the T-shaped part of the yard.It was too dark around, and Thomas Blange could only roughly see its terrifying figure, but he could feel it twisting like a snake, which should not have appeared in this world at all. Above, a triangular head as big as his own torso suddenly shook.And, just where he'd swung past just a second ago, teeth longer than Blanche's frozen fingers snapped together violently in the air with a loud snap.Ice experts breathed in the stuff's bad breath, the warm, carrion smell of carnivores and predators, not the fishy smell of the polar bears they'd shot and skinned on the ice.What he smelled was a mixture of the stench of warm human carrion and some kind of sulfur, hot enough to compare with the hot air from the opening of a steam boiler. That's when Thomas Blange realized that the crew he secretly thought were superstitious and stupid were right: the thing from the ice was nothing but animal flesh and white fur. In addition, it is also a demon or god, a force they should give way to, worship or run away from. He was prepared that the rope ladder swinging below him might get caught in the stump of the yard near there, or be blocked by the yard or shrouds on the port side after he swung past the centreline.In this way, the thing can slowly pull him through like a big fish caught in a net.But his weight and twisting momentum kept him swinging for more than fifteen feet after he swung to the port side of the mainmast. Now the rope ladder was about to swing him again towards the huge left forearm sticking out in the snow and darkness. Blanche twisted his body, shifting his center of gravity toward the bow of the ship.He could feel the tangled, broken rigging moving with his inertia.In the next swing, he swung his legs free and kicked, trying to reach the third yard on this side. His left boot touched it as he swung over the yard.The deeply scarred soles slipped on the ice, and the boots passed just beside the yard, and when the rope ladder was about to swing back to the stern, both boots stepped on the ice-covered yard, and he pushed with all the strength of his legs. The tangled web of ladder cables swung past the mainmast again and followed a curving arc toward the stern.With his legs dangling in the air and still kicking wildly fifty feet above the pile of ruined tents and belongings, Blanche hunched over the ropes and swung toward the mainmast and what was waiting for him. The paw brushed the air not five inches from his back.In spite of her fear, Blanche found it quite inconceivable.He knew the arc of his kick had put him almost ten feet from the mainmast as he swung back.The thing must have driven the claws of its right hand—or hand, or talons, or devil's nails—deep into the mainmast, and then hung almost in the air, grasping with its huge left arm six feet or more. he. It didn't touch him, though. When Blanche swings back to the middle again, it won't miss again. Blanche grabbed the edge of the ladder and descended as fast as he would normally descend a free cable or ladder.His numb fingers kept bumping against the ropes of the ladder, and with each impact he threatened to fall off the rigging and fall into the darkness. The rope ladder had reached the furthest point of the swing arc, approximately outside the starboard rail, and was beginning to swing back again. Still too high, Blanche thought as the tangle of ropes above him swung back toward the mainmast. The creature could have easily caught the rope ladder as it swung to the midship line, but Blanche was now twenty feet below that level, clasping with frozen hands on the cross-ropes to carry on. climb down. The thing started pulling a whole bunch of rigging up. It's fucking scary, that ice rope ladder that weighs a ton or a ton and a half plus a man pulls up as easily and comfortably as a fisherman pulls up a net after casting it, Thomas Boo Ranji still had time to think this way. The snow expert slides down the rigging as he planned in the last ten seconds of the inward swing while shifting his center of gravity back and forth, imagining himself as the boy swinging on the rope to increase the arc of the traverse , even though the thing above was pulling him higher and higher.No matter how fast he moved down during the swing, the thing was pulling him closer at the same speed.He would be at the very bottom of the ladder in no time, but the creature would probably have pulled him aside by then, even though they were still fifty feet in the air. There was still enough slack in the rope ladder to allow him to bend twenty feet to starboard.His hands are on the longitudinal cable, and his legs are stretched out on the horizontal cable.He closed his eyes, and the image of the boy swinging on the rope recurred in his mind. Not twenty feet above him came a cough of anticipation.Then there was a violent jerk, and the whole rigging, with Blanji, rose suddenly another five or eight feet. Blanche had no idea whether he was twenty or forty-five feet off the deck, all he cared about was the timing of his swing.As he swung to starboard into the darkness, he jerked the rigging beside him, kicked the rope with both feet, and threw himself into the air. The process of falling is very long. He starts by twisting his body one more time in the air so that he doesn't land on his head, back or stomach when he falls.Falling on the ice field was a dead end, and it would be worse if he hit the railing or the deck directly, but at this point he had no moves to use.As the snow expert fell, it was clear that his life was now determined by simple Newtonian laws of motion, and that Thomas Blanji's fate was now a mere exercise in ballistics. He felt he was about to go over the starboard rail, and his head was only six feet from it, and before his lower body hit the icy slope of the Terror's side, he bent his legs and braced himself for landing, throwing his arms out at the same time. stretch.As he swayed blindly outwards, he had done his best estimate of the probability of death, and then tried to let himself fall to the end of the arc, just on the ice hard as cement that the crew used to walk when leaving or returning to the ship. The front of the ramp, and the point of his impact, fell just behind the two snowbanks where the whaler lay.The two whalers were turned over, tied with ropes, covered with canvas, and buried beneath the frozen canvas and three feet of snow. He landed on a snowy slope between the front of the ice ramp and the rear of the whaler.The force of the impact made him breathless for a moment.A muscle in the left leg was torn, or a bone was broken.There was still time for Blanche to pray to any god who was up this late, hoping that it was a muscle and not a bone that broke, and then he rolled down the long, steep slope, cursing and yelling all the way, in the snowstorm that enveloped the ship. Within the range, another small snowstorm was raised. Thirty feet from the ship, on the snow-covered sea ice, Blanche finally stopped rolling on his back. He assessed the situation as quickly as possible.His arm was not broken, only his right wrist was injured.The head appeared to be unharmed, and the ribs were injured, making it difficult for him to breathe, although he thought it might be from fear or excitement rather than a broken rib.But the injury to his left leg made him want to curse in pain. Blanche knew he had to get up and start running... NOW! ...but he couldn't do what he ordered.He is very satisfied with the current state: lying on his back, stretching his limbs on the dark ice field, dissipating the heat from his body to the ice below and the air above him, trying to bring his breath and sanity back to him . He was sure now that someone on the foredeck was calling and yelling.Balls of lanterns appeared near the prow, each not more than ten feet wide, illuminating the wind-swept streaks of snow that were blowing horizontally.Then Blanche heard a heavy thump as the fiendish thing slid from the mainmast onto the deck.Then came the yelling of more crew, now quite alert, though still unable to see the creature clearly, for it was amidships in a mass of broken yards, fallen rigging, and large scattered barrels. In the chaos, there is still some distance from the bow.Then a shotgun roared. Enduring the pain and injuries, Blanche knelt on the ice on all fours.His lined gloves were completely gone.His hands were bare, his head was also bare, and his long gray-streaked hair fluttered in the wind, its braids untied in his violent escape.There was no feeling in his cheeks, fingers and toes, and he was in pain near his torso. The thing was rushing toward him over the starboard rail, leaping into the air on its four huge legs, its body lit from behind by the harp lights, and flying over the low barrier. In a moment, Blanche stood up and rushed out into the dark sea ice field full of seracs. On the way, I kept slipping, falling, getting up, and continuing to run.It was only when he ran about fifty yards away from the boat that he realized that this was not equivalent to signing his own death warrant? He should stay as close to the ship as possible.He should have skirted the two snow-drifted whalers, run along the starboard hull toward the bow, climbed over the bowsprit, which had sunk deep into the ice, and tried to get to the port side, running While calling for help to the people on board. No, he realized that if he did that he would probably be dead before he could get through the tangle of bow rigging.The thing would have him in ten seconds. Why am I running in this direction? Before deliberately falling off the rigging, he had a plan in mind.Where has that plan gone now? Blanche could hear heavy footsteps and scraping on the sea ice behind him. Someone, perhaps Goodser, the Nether's assistant doctor, had told him and the rest of the crew how fast a white bear could go when it was chasing its prey across the sea ice.Twenty-five miles an hour?Yes, at least that fast.Blanche could never run fast enough.And now he had to dodge seracs, ice ridges, and crevasses he couldn't see until he got close. That's why I'm running this way.That's my plan. The creature strode after him, dodging the sharp seracs and ridges of slabs that Blanji was turning awkwardly around first in the darkness.The ice and snow expert was panting like a broken bellows, but the huge thing behind him only made a slight grunt.Is it in a good mood?Expectantly?With every step it took, it slammed its forefoot on the ice once, a stride four or five times Blanji's. Blanji was now on the ice field about two hundred yards from the boat.He bumped into a large ice rock that he couldn't dodge.His right shoulder bumped into it and was now completely numb as was the rest of his body.It was only then that Blanche realized that he had been as blind as a bat since he started running for his life.The Terror's lantern was far, far behind him, far beyond his belief, and he had neither time nor reason to turn and look for it.It was so far away from the ship that the lantern would not be able to illuminate it, and it would also prevent him from concentrating on escaping. All he was doing now, Blanche knew, was running, dodging, and changing direction abruptly according to a map in his mind.The map showed the ice fields, crevasses, and small icebergs from around HMS Terror to the horizon.For more than a year, Blanji gazed at the frozen sea and its chasms, ridges, icebergs, and protrusions, and for many months he could see through the dim northern sunlight.Even in winter, he used his hours of guard duty under moonlight, starlight, and dancing northern lights to study the ice conditions around the beleaguered ship with the expert eyes of an ice and snow expert. Now, he remembered, in the tangle of ice two hundred feet from the ship, a little beyond the ridge he had just stumbled over—he could hear the thing jumping not ten feet behind him, too. Crossing the Ridge - is a maze of iceberg fragments (that is, small icebergs that have broken off from larger icebergs).A small mountain is formed by standing upright and hut-sized ice rocks. The invisible figure behind him grunted and picked up speed as if he knew where his doomed prey was going. One step late.Blanche dodges the last towering serac and enters the iceberg maze.But here, the map in his mind couldn't help, he could only see this small iceberg wasteland from a distance or through a telescope.In the dark he hit a wall of ice, rebounded and sat on the ground, then crawled forward in the snow on all fours. Before Blanji had time to recover his breath and sanity, the thing was only a few inches away from him. yards away. Between two small icebergs the size of a hut there was a gap not more than three feet wide.Blanche hurriedly ran into the gap, and was still on all fours. His two ungloved hands were as insensible and distant as the black ice below.The thing reached the crack at the same time, and a huge front paw reached in to grab him. Its impossibly large claws scraped up shards of ice not ten inches from the soles of his boots.The ice and snow experts tried their best to restrain themselves from associating with the picture of a cat catching a mouse.He stood up in the narrow gap and staggered forward in total darkness. No use, the ice alley was too short, less than eight feet long, and led into an open area.He heard the thing jumping and grunting around the ice barrier to his right.To stay there is like seeking refuge between the cricketing posts of nothing else.As for the original narrow alley, there was more snow than ice on the walls on both sides of it, and it was only for him to hide temporarily.If you stayed in that dark crevice for a minute, the thing would have dug the opening wide and crawled in.Staying there can only wait for death. In my impression, I used a telescope to see several small icebergs that were eroded by the wind. In which direction?On his left, he thought. He staggered to the left, bumped into small pinnacles and seracs, tripped over a crevasse that sank only two feet, climbed a low jagged ridge, slipped, climbed up again, And heard the thing sprint around the ice barrier, then slam on the brakes not ten feet behind him. Beyond this ice rock is a larger iceberg.He had previously observed with a telescope that the iceberg with a hole in it was in the... ...these things change every day, every night... ...thrusted relentlessly by the ice, they collapse, regrow, change shape... ...that thing was following him, clawing its way up the ice slope, to this flat ice platform from which he had nowhere to escape.Blanche stood here hesitating... Shadows, crevices, cracks, dead ends in the ice.None were big enough for him to tuck his body into.etc! The small iceberg standing to his right had a hole about four feet high in its face.The clouds in the sky parted slightly, and five seconds of starlight was enough for Blanche to see irregular circular openings in the dark ice wall. He lunged forward and plunged into the hole, not knowing whether the ice tunnel was ten yards deep or ten inches deep.His body couldn't fit in. His outermost layers of warm clothes and big coat made him too bloated. Blanche tore off his clothes.The thing had climbed the final slope and was right behind him now, standing on its hind legs.The ice expert couldn't see it, he didn't even take the time to turn his head to look, but he could feel it standing on its hind legs. Without turning around, the ice and snow expert threw his big coat and outer woolen coat and other heavy clothes towards the thing behind him at the fastest speed. There was a startled bark from the thing—a gust of wind reeking of sulfur—and the sound of Blanche's clothes being ripped apart and flung whole far into the ice maze.The throwing action interfered with it, gaining him five seconds or more. He pushed his body forward again, squeezing into the ice hole. His shoulders were just tucked in.The toes of his boots bounced back and forth, slipped, and finally settled down.His knees and fingers were also looking for force points. Blanche was still four feet from the hole when the thing reached out to grab him.It tore the boots off his feet and his feet with its claws.The snow expert could feel the terrible impact of the claws cutting into the flesh, and he thought (hoped) that it was just the heel being ripped off.He has no way of knowing the truth.He gasped for breath against the sudden, sharp sting that felt even in his wounded and numb legs, and he crawled, twisted, and forced himself deeper into the hole. The ice hole became narrower and narrower, squeezing him tightly. The thing was pawing at the ice with its claws, and it scratched his left leg, clawing at Blanji's injured left leg from falling off the rigging, tearing the flesh off.He smelled his own blood, and the thing must have smelled it too, because its claws stopped for a second.Then it roared. The roar in the ice tunnel was deafening.Blanche's shoulders jammed, he couldn't move forward, and he knew the back half of his body was still within reach of the monster.It growled again. The sound froze Blanche's heart and testicles, but he wasn't paralyzed by fright.Using the few seconds of reprieve he had, the ice and snow expert twisted his body, retreated to the loose space he had just crawled through, stretched his arms forward, and then kicked the ice with all his remaining strength while using his knees Rubbing the ice, trying to squeeze himself through the narrow holes that he shouldn't be able to get through even at his modest stature.Clothes and skin were worn off his shoulders and sides during the pushing. After passing the narrowest part, the cave widens and descends.Blanche slid forward on his stomach, and his blood became the lubricant for sliding.His clothes were in tatters, and he felt the icy cold attacking his taut abdominal muscles and constricted scrotum. The thing let out a third roar, but the terrible sound seemed to be several feet away from the previous one. At the last moment, before he fell from the edge of an ice tunnel into open space, Blanche was sure it was all for naught.The ice tunnel was most likely the result of snowmelt many months ago, which had run through the little iceberg while throwing him beyond it.Suddenly, he was lying on his back under the starlight.He could smell and feel his blood seeping into the freshly fallen snow.He could also hear the thing running around the iceberg, first to the left and then to the right, anxious to catch him.It should be very sure, as long as it follows the strong smell of human blood, it can find its prey.The ice expert was too badly injured and too tired to climb anywhere else.What should happen let it happen, may the gods of the sailors send this guy who is about to eat him to the fucking hell.Blanche's last prayer was that the thing's throat would be caught by a bone in his body. Another full minute passed before the thing roared five or six more times, one louder and one desperate, each from a different place in the surrounding darkness.Only now did Blanche realize that the thing couldn't reach him. He was lying under the stars in a clearing within a rectangular grid measuring no more than five feet by eight feet, an enclosure bounded by at least three thick icebergs that had been pushed and overturned by the pressure of the sea ice.One of the icebergs tipped above him like a wall about to fall, but Blanche could still see the stars.He could also see the starlight coming in from the two vertical holes on both sides of his ice coffin, and he could also see the predator blocking the starlight with its huge body at the other end of the two cracks, not far away from him. Fifteen feet, but no crack in the iceberg was more than six inches wide.The melting ice tunnel he climbed in was the only way to enter this space. The monster continued to roar and pace for ten minutes. Thomas Blanche forced himself to sit up so his scratched back and shoulders could rest on the ice.His coat and warm clothes were gone, his trousers, two sweaters, wool and cotton shirts, and wool underwear were all bloody rags, where he was going to freeze to death. The thing didn't leave.It keeps circling a rectangular grid of three icebergs, like a fidgety carnivorous animal in one of London's trendy new zoos.It's just that it's Blanche who's locked in the cage now. He knew that even if, by some miracle, the thing left, he wouldn't have the strength or will to crawl out of the narrow tunnel again.Even if he managed to climb out of the tunnel, it would still be as if he were on the surface of the moon—the moon was emerging from behind the billowing clouds, illuminating the surrounding icebergs with a soft blue light—and trapped among the hills.Even if he miraculously climbed out of the icebergs, the three hundred yards back to the boat would be impossible for him to cover.他已经无法感觉身体或腿的移动了。 布兰吉冰冷的屁股及赤脚深深陷入雪中。这里的积雪特别深，因为风吹不进来。他在想，惊恐号上的同伴们会不会发现他？他们有什么道理要来找他？他只不过是另一个被冰原上那东西带走的伙伴而已。至少他的消失不需要麻烦船长再安排人去抬一具尸体，或者把他的残尸用船上的好帆布包裹起来，送进死人房里――这样做有点浪费。 从裂缝及隧道深处传来更多吼声与噪音，不过布兰吉没去理会。“去死吧，你和那只生你的母猪或恶魔！”冰雪专家用麻木、冻僵的嘴唇喃喃地说。或许他根本没说出口。他发现冻死一点也不痛苦，同时失血而死也没关系，他的伤口及裂口流出的血有些已经冻结了。事实上，那是非常平和……非常安详的死法，一种很棒的方式去…… 布兰吉发现有光从裂缝及隧道照进来。那东西想用火把及提灯骗他出来。他才不会被这种老计谋给骗了。他会保持安静，直到光离开，直到他身体的最后一小部分也滑入轻柔、永恒的睡眠里。他不会让那东西在经过长时间的沉默对决后，因为听到他现在发出的声音而得意。 “天杀的，布兰吉！”克罗兹船长低沉的牛吼声从隧道里隆隆传来。“如果你在里面，就回答我，你这天杀的，不然我们要把你留在这里了。” 布兰吉眨了眨眼。或者，试着要眨眼。他的睫毛与眼睑都结冻了。这是那只恶魔般的东西使用的另一种计谋或策略吗？ “这里。”他沙哑地说。然后再一次，这次声音大了些。 "here!" 一分钟后，惊恐号上最矮小的船员之一副船缝填塞匠哥尼流·希吉的头与肩膀轻易地从洞里探出来。他拿着一个提灯。布兰吉懒懒地想，他好像在看一只尖脸、矮小的地精灵出生。 结果，四个船医都得来治疗他。 布兰吉偶尔会从那愉快的意识迷雾中走出来，看看事情的进展，然后再退回去。有时候是他自己船上的船医培第和麦当诺来治疗他，有时候则是幽冥号上的外科医生史坦利与古德瑟。有时候只有四位船医其中一位，来负责切开、锯断、包扎及缝合的工作。布兰吉很想告诉古德瑟，只要北极白熊决意要快跑，会比每小时二十五英里还要快得多。但是，接着问题又来了，它真的是一只北极白熊吗？布兰吉不这么认为。北极白熊是这世界上的生物，但是那东西却来自别处。冰雪专家汤马士·布兰吉对此毫不怀疑。 最后结算起来，这次的“屠杀清单”没那么糟。一点也不糟，真的。 约翰·韩弗到头来根本毫发无伤。在布兰吉把提灯留给他后，这名右舷守卫就把灯火弄熄逃出船外。当那只生物往上爬，想去抓冰雪专家时，他绕着船跑到左舷侧躲了起来。 布兰吉原本以为死了的亚历山大·贝瑞，后来发现在坍塌下来的帐篷及散落的小木桶之下。那东西最早出现时，他正站在那里担任左舷守卫，后来那东西才把那根做为前后走向脊梁的帆桁打坏。贝瑞的头被撞得相当严重，对那天晚上发生的事完全没记忆，但是克罗兹告诉布兰吉，他们找到这家伙的霰弹枪，而它确实发射过。当然，冰雪专家也开了枪，从近距离朝着像墙一般出现在他上方的身影开枪。但是，在甲板上这两个地点，都找不到这东西的血迹。 克罗兹问布兰吉怎么可能，两个人在近距离朝一只动物发射霰弹枪，它怎么可能没流血？但是冰雪专家没有表示任何意见。在心里，当然，他知道答案。 大卫·雷斯也还活着，没有受伤。这名四十岁的船首守卫一定看到且听到许多，很可能也包括冰原上那东西在甲板上的第一次现身，但是雷斯不愿意谈起。大卫·雷斯再次变回只会安静瞪着东西看的人。他先被带到惊恐号的病床区，但是因为所有医生都需要这个沾了血迹的空间来处理布兰吉的伤，所以雷斯就被担架转送到幽冥号比较宽敞的病床区。根据来探视冰雪专家的多话访客的说法，雷斯就此躺在那里，不眨眼地注视着上方的横梁。 布兰吉可就没那么幸运了。那东西用爪子从脚跟处扒掉他一半的右脚掌，麦当诺及古德瑟把剩下部分也切除，并且做了灼烧处理。他们向冰雪专家保证，在木匠或军械匠的帮忙下，他们会做一个皮制或木制的义肢，用带子固定在他脚上，他以后还是可以走路。 他的左腿被那只生物摧残得最严重，许多部位的肉被扒掉，深可见骨，连长长的腿骨上也有爪子的抓痕。培第医生后来也承认，他们四位船医原本都认为他们得从膝盖部位为他截肢。但是极地气候的少数好处之一就是，伤口感染及腐烂的速度比较慢。在把骨头接好并且缝了超过四百针之后，布兰吉的腿虽然有些扭曲、到处是疤痕，而且肌肉的纹理也不见了，但竟慢慢愈合了。“你的孙子们一定会很喜欢这些疤。”另一位冰雪专家詹姆士·瑞德来探望他时这么说。 不过，寒冷也让他付出代价。布兰吉没有失掉任何一根脚趾，他那只受损的脚需要它们来保持平衡，医生们这么告诉他。但是，除了右手大姆指以及左手大姆指和两根最小的指头外，他失去所有的手指。古德瑟显然对这种事有些研究，他向布兰吉保证，将来有一天，他只用左手两根相邻的手指就能够写字及优雅地用餐，而且，用那两根指头和右手的大姆指就可以扣好裤子及衬衫钮扣。 汤马士·布兰吉对扣裤子及衬衫钮扣一点屁兴致也没有。目前还没有。He is still alive.冰原上那只东西用尽全力要让他翘辫子，但是他仍然活着。他可以品尝食物，和同伴们闲聊，喝他每天配额的兰姆酒。他那双还缠着绷带的手已经可以拿他的白镴马克杯了，并且看书，如果有人愿意帮他捧着书的话。他已经决定，在卸下余生的尘世纷扰前，要读读《威克菲德的牧师》。 布兰吉还活着，而且他决定要尽他一切所能保持目前状况。现在，他有种很奇怪的幸福感。他期待回到自己在船尾区的那间小舱房，就在第三中尉厄文和船长侍从乔帕森两间同样狭小的舱房之间，可能就会在今天之后的任何一天，只等船医们确定伤口的缝合、拆线工作已完成，并在伤口嗅闻，以确认没有其他感染。 现在，汤马士·布兰吉感觉很幸福。夜深了，他躺在病床区的床铺上。在病床区外距离只有几英尺远的熄了灯的船员起居区里，船员们或发牢骚，或低声谈话，或放屁，或笑闹。他听见狄葛先生咆哮着对他的助手发号施令，这位厨师还要继续烤他的比斯吉直到深夜。汤马士·布兰吉也听见海冰挤压皇家海军惊恐号发出的呻吟声与巨吼声，他要让这些声音，和他早就成为圣人的母亲所哼的催眠曲一样，送他进入梦乡。