"You think they're going to land, sir?" Curiosity, anticipation, horror—each struggled for supremacy in the thin, dark intelligent face. "You really think so?"

"I think they're going to try. What have you got there?"

"Fire bombs, a couple of Pyrenes." He dumped them by the stove. "Hope they're not solid."

"Good boy. And a couple of the tractor extinguishers—the Nu-Swifts, G-1000,1 think." A great help these little things are going to be, I thought, if several thousand gallons of petrol decide to go up in flames. "Fire axes, crowbars, canes, the homing spool—for heaven's sake don't forget the hojning spool—and the searchlight battery. Be sure and wrap that up well."

"Bandages?"

"No need. Seventy degrees of frost will freeze blood and seal a wound quicker than any bandage. But bring the morphia kit. Any water in these two buckets?"

"Full. But more ice than water."

"Put them on the stove—and don't forget to turn out the stove and both the lights before you leave." Incongruously enough, we who could survive in the Arctic only by virtue of fire, feared it above all else. "Pile the rest of the stuff up by the instrument shelter."

I found Jackstraw, working only by the feeble light of his torch, outside the lean-to drift-walled shelter that we had built for the dogs from empty packing cases and an old tractor tarpaulin. He appeared to be fighting a losing battle in the centre of a milling pack of snarling yelping dogs, but the appearance was illusion only: already he had four of the dogs off the tethering cable and the sledge tracelines snapped into their harness.

"How's it coming?" I shouted.

"Easy." I could almost see the crinkling grin behind the snow-mask. "I caught most of them asleep, and Balto is a great help—he's in a very bad temper at being woken up."