Free Out of the Ice by Ann Turner

stunned. It was so unusual to be attacked aggressively by wildlife in Antarctica. When putting radio antennae on penguins you could get a few scratches and bites, but nothing like this – nothing with this force and anger. I took out my tablet and made myself focus enough to make notes, recording the time and details of what had just happened.
    I ate an energy bar, but I didn’t have any appetite. In front of me was the slipway into the sea, where the whales would have been brought after having been harpooned from the catcher boats and hauled to the harbour.
    From the slipway, the whales were winched up to the flensing platform to meet the flensers, men with long knives who peeled the blubber away in strips. Then more men with knives, lemmers, cut the meat from the bones. I saw winches that would have been used to turn the whales as they were sliced up; a winch that would have hoisted the bones up to the bone cookery loft afterwards; and other winches that would have taken the blubber and meat to their processing plants, one on each side of the flensing platform.
    I felt deep shame at what had been done to the whales. Reluctantly, I went to inspect the nearest shed, a long, red, corrugated-iron building with tall towers to let out the steam. I turned on my torch and slashed light through the gaping doors into the darkness. Giant metal vats, about ten times my height – pressure cookers – were lined up in two rows of eight, stretching about thirty metres into the deep gloom. Ladders were propped at several points, leading to a timber platform above. I walked through the cookers, coming out into an area that made my pulse quicken. Long saws lay along a vast table like something out of a nightmare, their jagged teeth rusty but deadly. Other circular saws stood in front of conveyor belts that rose to the upper platform. It was here the men would have cut the whale meat into smaller pieces, before sending it up to boil in the cookers. Nauseous, I walked out a door at the end, back onto the flensing platform. I breathed deeply and stared out to sea, where icebergs crowded further out, covered with Adélie penguins. One bird peered over the edge, decided it was safe and plunged down into the water. The rest of the Adélies followed in a single movement.
    After making a few quick notes, I walked to the opposite side of the flensing platform to another long tin shed. The door screeched as I opened it. I flashed my torch around and saw more tall cookers, again in parallel lines. I counted two rows of five. Conveyor belts ran from the floor through three storeys of platforms above. This was the blubber cookery, simpler than the meat cookery. The blubber would have been taken up on the belts and dropped into the top of the vats to burn off and distil the oil.
    Far away at the end of the shed, long knives and massive jagged-toothed saws orange with rust hung along the wall, with coils of thick rope, like a murderer’s lair.
    Goosebumps pricked my arms and I shone the torch behind me and to both sides, again feeling like I was being watched.
    I couldn’t see anyone or anything. Perhaps there were ghosts here, given the atrocities that had taken place. But I believed in ghosts of memory, not the supernatural. My baby Hamish floated before me, a trace of pale face, a blur of dark hair. A stab of sadness rushed through me like a physical blow. I waited, allowing a moment to think of him – and then I braced myself and continued through the shed.
    At the back, beside the knives, was a room with a dirty glass wall looking out into the building – some sort of manager’s office. As I headed for it I heard a rustling behind me. I swung around, and caught out of the corner of my eye a figure moving in the gloom. Large, thickset; the size of a man. I flicked off my torch and stood stock-still, holding my breath, heart pounding. I had no weapon to defend myself, and became acutely aware of the knives and saws nearby. Had he just helped