“When I was in the Antarctic,” he began,
“We were lost; cut off; blinded by the snow and the frost. We had no dogs; only
our compass with which to orientate ourselves. Schmidt stumbled and his foot
went through the ice; I grabbed him and pulled. Zimmermann began to shout: I
could hear him saying ‘it has him! It has him!’ but I couldn’t see what he was
talking about. I heaved as I felt Schmidt sinking and he screamed. Then the
flesh of his leg slid off, like a sock from a foot. I fell hard, into the snow
with Schmidt on top of me, screaming for all he was worth that something had
bitten him. As I stood up once more, I heard Zimmermann yelling for me to run,
that he would hold off the creature while we escaped. With the snow and mist I
couldn’t see clearly; Zimmermann seemed to be facing-off against some kind of
eel, or serpent, rearing up out of the ice, moving slowly and rising higher.
Schmidt was a mess; blood everywhere. I hauled him up over my shoulders and
turned to see Zimmermann waving his ice pick at a huge wall of growing shadow,
yelling over his shoulder for us to run as fast as we could. I did; and that
was the last we saw of him...”
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