Is glittering Youth, which I have spent betimes--

nodded towards the tractor sled, visible through the gap in the canvas screen. "We're obviously carrying far too much fuel. Why don't you drop some off for Captain Hillcrest-why, in fact, didn't you drop some off last night, when you first heard of this?" I stared at him for a long long moment, then turned heavily for the door. "I'll tell you why, Mr Mahler," I said slowly. "It's because I'm the biggest damned prize idiot in this world, that's why." And I went out to tell Hillcrest just how idiotic I was. CHAPTER TENThursday 4 P.M.Friday 6 P.M. Jackstraw, Corazzini and I took turns at driving the Citroen all through that evening and the following night. The engine was beginning to run rough, the exhaust was developing a peculiar note and it was becoming increasingly difficult to engage second gear. But I couldn't stop, I daren't stop. Speed was life now. Mahler had gone into collapse shortly after nine o'clock that evening, and from the collapse had gradually moved into the true diabetic coma. I had done all I could, all anyone could, but heaven only knew it was little enough. He needed bed, heat, fluids, stimulants, sugar by mouth or injection. Both suitable stimulants and the heat were completely lacking, the lurching, narrow, hard wooden bunk was poor substitute for any bed, despite his great thirst he had found it increasingly difficult to keep down the melted snow water, and I had no means of giving an intravenous injection. For the others in the cabin it was distressing to watch him, distressing to listen to the dyspnoeathe harsh laboured breathing of coma. Unless we could get the insulin in time, I knew no power on earth could prevent death from supervening in from one to three daysin these unfavourable conditions, a day would be much more likely. Marie LeGarde, too, was weakening with dangerous speed. It was with increasing difficulty that she could force down even the smallest mouthfuls of food, and spent most of her time in restless troubled sleep. Having seen her on the stage and marvelled at her magnificent vitality, it now seemed strange to me that she should go under so easily. But her vitality had really been a manifestation of a nervous energy: she had little of the physical resources necessary to cope with a situation like this, and I had frequently to remind myself that she was an elderly woman. Not that any such reminder was needed when one saw her face: it was sdhc digital cameras supported haggard and lined and old. But worried though I was about my patients, Jackstraw was even more deeply concerned with the weather. The temperature had been steadily rising for many hours now, the moaning ululation of the ice-cap wind, which had been absent for over two days, was increasing in intensity with every hour that passed, and the skies above were dark and heavy with black drifting clouds of snow. And when, just after midnight, the wind-speed passed fifteen miles an hour, the wind began to pick up the drift off the ice-cap. I knew what Jackstraw was afraid of, though I myself had never experienced it. I had heard of the katabatic winds of Greenland, the equivalent of the feared Alaskan wllliwaws. When great masses of air in the heart of the plateau were cooled, as they had been in the past forty-eight hours, by extremely low temperatures, they were set in motion by a gradient wind and cascadedthere was no other word for itdownwards from the edge of the plateau through suitable drainage channels. Set in motion through their own sheer weight of cold air, these gravity or drainage winds, slowly wanned by the friction and compression of their descent, could reach a hurricane force of destructive violence in which nothing could live. And all the signs, all the conditions for a gravity storm were there. The recent extreme cold, the -rising wind, the rising temperature, the outward flowing direction of the wind, the dark star-obscuring clouds scudding by overheadthere could be no mistaking it, Jackstraw declared. I had never known him to be wrong about Greenland weather, I didn't believe him to be wrong now, and when Jackstraw became nervous it was time for even the most optimistic to start worrying. And I was worried all right. We drove the tractor to its limit, and on the slight downward slopewe had changed direction by this time and were heading due south-west for Uplavnikwe were making very good time indeed. But by four o'clock in the morning, when we were, I reckoned, not more than sixty miles from Uplavnik, we ran into the sastrugi and were forced to slow down. The sastrugi, regular undulations in the frozen snow, were the devil on tractors, especially elderly machines like the Citroen. Caused by raking winds, symmetrical as the waves in an eighteenth-century sailing print, hard on the crest and soft in the trough, they made progress possible only by slowing down to a disheartening crawl. Even so the Citroen and the