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MALINVAL bent down, took Sykes’s ankles in his hands and asked for help. Pulaski and Fiskarson came to help him out. Together, they brought the corpse to the forward hold and left it there. Each of the expedition members showered quickly. De Witt shaved with extra care, splashed himself with Cologne. There would be women in Panama, and he did not want to miss the occasion. At the last minute, he remembered to pull his fur gloves around his waist. Perfect chick-magnets, they were...
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On the following day, the whole expedition gathered in the officer’s mess. Their objective: to determine what would be told to the outside world, of the “creature” who had run rampant aboard the Gabrielle. That was easily taken care of. LONDON suggested it be presented as an amoeba, someone mentioned a fungus, and that was that. As there had been no human casualties, and the expedition had quickly taken care of the animiculi, it seemed the sailors would not make too much of a fuss about that ...

Black slugs and Iscariots…

On the morning of December 24th, 1933, Ralph De Witt was pacing the Gabrielle’s engine- room when Brunel, one of the crew-men, called to him :
“Hey Ralph, what did you say we were supposed to look around for? A black slug, is that it?”

De Witt scrambled up an iron ladder, squatted next to Brunel and saw a black blob squatting on top of an engine cowling. He used a fire-extinguisher on it, and saw the blob crawl away a few centimeters. ...

An angel of mercy, an angel of death

There was no news of Moore. All they could hope for was that he had left Weddell Base when the fire started. As to the reason for the fire, LONDON had his theory: “Bien mal acquis ne profite jamais”, he quoted in French. “The Germans stole something, some THINGS, from us, and they were punished for this...”
Laroche, Mc Ilvaine, MALINVAL and De Witt went back to the radio to try to overhear more news, but it was all in vain.
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A Cloak of Opprobrium

On board the Gabrielle, time seemed to have stopped. Outside, the gale raged. Inside, those who had survived tried to live among the small reminders of fallen comrades. Here, books that DE RAYSSAC had left, there, a photograph of MARSTON at University, a young man with a brilliant smile and the world in his hands.
MALINVAL was given BOUSSARDEL’s will by Winslow. He read it slowly, then went into his cabin to have a drink, then another.
“I think ...