Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [111]
It took him endless minutes to reach the gondola. He did not dare look below, where the airship’s shadow twisted and folded as it passed over the hummocks, but looking in front of him, he could see faintly through the fog the Eskimos running behind the sled, almost catching it, but always missing it. “Follow that sled,” he said dramatically, as he reached the hatch and a powerful hand grasped his forearm to pull him inside.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Ariel
That we are always against the law—it is self-evident.
Novalis
The Phantom Patrol had passed under the reversed runners and were now pounding on the windshield with the butts of their rifles. By chance, it was one of the new Benedictus laminated panes, and for the time being did not cave in, though it burst into cobwebs of cracked glass.
At every impact, Brentford shook himself further from the palsy that had held him in thrall. He realized that his gun was useless against the Patrol, as would be any weapon he could improvise. He jumped to reach the hatch above his head and, lifting himself with his arms and elbows, crawled into the hold, knowing there would be a way to open it up at the bottom, which now faced the stars. He closed the hatch under himself as well as he could and, lamp in hand, began looking for the trapdoor that was used to load the ship from below. Once outside, it was his plan to sprint as fast as he could: maybe he could outrun dead men. He tried to be as silent as possible, but the trapdoor was stuck and needed a good shove. Brentford worried that they would hear the thudding and climb up the sides to meet him, but it was not as if he had any choice. So he pushed, with the strength of despair.
As the trapdoor suddenly yielded, the hold was flooded with light from above. “That’s it,” thought Brentford. The thought flashed through his mind that he would become one of the phantoms, condemned to prowl the ice packs until kingdom come. But the light did not come from their lamps. It was the white blinding glare of a searchlight. A rope ladder fell right under his nose. Before he knew it, he was climbing it, as fast as the swaying of the rope allowed him to.
He had no idea what he was scrambling toward but it could not possibly be worse than what he was escaping from. It seemed to him that the ladder was going up straight into the sky. It was hellishly cold, and the rungs were already caked with ice, but Brentford did not care about such trifles right now. He would keep on climbing, using his teeth if he had to. Shots cracked beneath him, with rumbling echoes; bullets whistled around his head, but he was carried away too quickly to be a sitting duck for long. He looked below: the wrecked ship was now almost invisible in the night, and all he could see of the Phantom Patrol was their lamps, the shadows they threw, the sparks of their shooting rifles. He looked up and could see that the rope led to a square of light, where some silhouettes awaited him. It looked like what people describe when they are about to die, but now he knew this is what you see when you’re resurrected.
He was lying on the floor of an airship, a crowd of topsy-turvy people surrounding him. He slowly soaked up the images, trying to make sense of them: Gabriel was there, dressed in mourning black, his hands in bandages. Three of the four Inughuit of the Frobisher Fortress delegation were there, commenting with animation upon his presence in front of them. But there were new faces as well. A few figures wearing