"Are you good at solving crossword puzzles?" he asked me after some time.
That was the first bit of conversation he had started from his side in the past many days. Hitherto he would respond with just a grunt or a nod to the most essential dialogue.
"I'm not too good at it."
"Never mind!" he said genially, " I'll give you a puzzle. Why don't you try your hand at it."
I readily agreed, for I wanted to do my best in bringing about a cheerful air. The burst of the gun had done him good. On my side I wanted to play safe and avoid all disagreements. Should I tell the pilot the day after tomorrow and ask the leader for a replacement? This was the pressing question that occupied my mind the most. What if the whole threat was imaginary? It would upset the whole schedule and cause untold inconvenience. It would also damage my reputation irreparably. Now he was showing signs of being friendly and I decided to co operate.
"What is the puzzle?" I asked him.
"It's a modified quotation from a poem." he said. "I'll give you a cryptic clue to each word not necessarily in the same order. All you have to do is decipher it."
"Sure!" I said sportingly, "give me the clues."
"Here's the first clue."He began, "It's a definite article with the summer sprite."
I had never tried my hand at crosswords. His clue couldn't help me to get on the right track for a long time. I gave 'Sunfairy' and 'Mistletoe' as answers, recalling old memories from my school textbook. He just laughed and said that I was way off the mark. I was still at it at dinner time when I suddenly had a flash. I recalled the name of Puck from Shakespeare and got the answer, which was a play of words on my name.
"It's my own name!" I told him beaming.
"Right!" he said, "I'll give you the next clue tomorrow." The rest of the day was spent in silence.
Next morning he offered to give me the clue for another word. I however declined and told him that it would disturb my work for the day. In the evening at the roll call over the radio, I conveyed to the base our plans for a camp shift the next day. After dining we crawled into our sleeping bags and while we were relaxing idly, he gave me the clue for a second word in the quote.
"A leading addend with an expert weaver gives the homonym."
I couldn't get the answer that day as I fell asleep in a short while. Next morning there was the usual hurried activ¬ity that accompanied camp shifts. I felt more confident with Karsten and dropped the idea of asking the expedition leader for a change of assistant as he seemed to be getting friendlier. "All this crossword exercise could be his way of generating a friendly air" I thought. For my part, I decided to play along and later develop some game of my own to reduce the impact of isolation where the other person becomes the sole target of one's frustrations. When the 'copter arrived, we loaded our belongings hurriedly and flew to a place about 15 miles to the northeast. While unloading the cargo there was a minor accident. The radio was a portable one and it came in a case with a sling attached to it so that it could be hung on the shoulder like a bag. The sling of the radio hooked on to a bolt in the helicopter's body and slipped off my hand and fell on the ground with a thud. These radios were rugged and the impact was too soft to cause concern. Later the helicopter flew off.
We had to hurry with the pitching of the tents, for the weather was turning bad. The föhn had been blowing fairly strong from the southeast since morning. I cross checked with the pocket barometer and found that the pressure had fallen. By two o'clock, low dense clouds were seen to the southeast in the lower part of the valley. Within an hour our camp was enveloped in thick fog and it started raining.
When the weather went bad, dark and gloomy with snow
Bad weather was the last thing that I desired under the circumstances. I had an ominous feeling that even a day's confinement with him inside the tent would catalyse animus and spell disaster. Karsten again retrieved the pistol and resumed polishing it.
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