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North?”
    “We could have got some good footage there,” he said seriously as I pulled him to his feet.
    They hauled the bear on to the shore and the headman pulled out the broken shaft of Desforge’s harpoon andcame towards us. He spoke to me quickly in Eskimo and I translated for Desforge.
    “He says that by rights the bear is yours.”
    “And how in the hell does he make that out?”
    “The harpoon pierced a lung. He’d have died for sure.”
    “Well that’s certainly good news. Presumably we’d have gone to the great hereafter together.”
    “They want to know if you’d like the skin.”
    “What would be the point? Some careless bastard seems to have ruined the head. Tell them they can have it.”
    I nodded to the headman who smiled with all the delight of a child and called to his friends. They formed a circle and shuffled round, arms linked, wailing in chorus.
    “Now what?” Desforge demanded.
    “They’re apologising to the bear for having killed him.”
    His head went back and he laughed heartily, the sound of it echoing flatly across the water. “If that don’t beat all. Come on, let’s get out of here before I go nuts or freeze to death or something,” and he turned and led the way back along the shore.
     
    When we reached the whaleboat he got in and rummaged for a blanket in the stern locker while I pushed off. By the time I’d clambered in after him and got the engine started, he had the blanket round his shoulders and was extracting the cork from a half-bottle of whisky with his teeth.
    “Looks as if they carry this with the iron rations,” he said and held it out. “What about you?”
    I shook my head. “We’ve been through all this before, Jack. I never use the stuff, remember?”
    I had no way of knowing exactly how much whisky he had put away by then, but it was obvious that he was fast reaching a state where he would have difficulty in remembering where he was and why, never mind make any kind of sense out of past events. I knew the feeling well. There had been a time when I spent too many mornings in a grey fog wondering where I was—who I was. At that point it’s a long fast drop down unless you have enough sense to turn before it’s too late and take that first fumbling step in the other direction.
    “Sorry, I was forgetting,” he said. “Now me—I’m lucky. I’ve always been able to take it or leave it.” He grinned, his teeth chattering slightly. “Mostly take it, mind you—one of life’s great pleasures, like a good woman.”
    Just what was his definition of good was anybody’s guess. He swallowed deeply, made a face and examined the label on the bottle. “Glen Fergus malt whisky. Never heard of it and I’m the original expert.”
    “Our finest local brew.”
    “They must have made it in a very old zinc bath. Last time I tasted anything like it was during Prohibition.”
    Not that he was going to let a little thing like that put him off and as I took the whaleboat out through the pack ice, he moved down to the prow. He sat there huddled in his blanket, the bottle clutched against his chest, staring up at the mountains and the ice-cap beyond as weskirted an iceberg that might have been carved from green glass. He spoke without turning round.
    “Ilana—she’s quite a girl, isn’t she?”
    “She has her points.”
    “And then some. I could tell you things about that baby that would make your hair stand up on end and dance. Miss Casting Couch of 1964.” I was aware of a sudden vague resentment, the first stirrings of an anger that was as irrational as it was unexpected, but he carried straight on. “I gave her the first big break, you know.”
    I nodded. “She was telling me about that on the flight in. Some war picture you made in Italy.”
    He laughed out loud, lolling back against the bulwark as if he found the whole thing hilariously funny in retrospect. “The biggest mistake I ever made in my life, produced and directed by Jack Desforge. We live