When the second harpoon hit, thumping its flank a second later, it seemed to groan somewhere deep within itself. A contained sound of suffering such that it was impossible not to believe the thing understood. That it was young and had a sense of the freedom and scale before it, and that this was now done.

The men in the small boats some twenty metres away braced because they knew the harpoon could put such sudden energy into the calf that it could fly at them, and that men were killed that way. Either from the direct strike or by being upturned. All they had between them and the freezing water was the five metres of Hypalon-coated polyester.

There were three men in each boat.

After the initial cowering, barely noticeable in normal time, the men recovered. All of this happened in a matter of moments. They drove the boats away, the twisted-steel harpoon lines, awkward and heavy, playing out behind.

The water was so flat it felt thick, and they – the only disturbance in it – seemed more to plough than to float through its surface. They went slowly.

The sound of the motors snapped in the air as if some communication took place between the boats.

They used modified old D-class RIBs, with big fifty-horsepower outboards. The outboards were disproportionate on the back of the inflatables but balanced by the heavy harpoon gun in the prow, and to an extent the weight of the wire lines.

At the hundred-metre knot the Lead Man called a stop.

There was still a chance the calf could blast at them and they had to suppress their instinct to put distance down quickly. But the most dangerous thing was done.

Each of the crew tried to divine what state the calf was in, watching it as if they could ascertain intention.

The boats wallowed.

The tock of their idling motors beat out into the open space. Somehow, the noise seemed to confirm the potential for profound quiet here. This sat too in the men, beneath the thoughts they were having, their estimations of remuneration. The fact one of them was madly hungry.

‘Ready the anchor,’ the Lead Man said.

‘Four hundred,’ the harpooner said, and the Lead Man nodded. He looked to the other boat. A hand went up in answer.

The red coats they wore were extremely bright with the sun so clear.

The Lead Man held his thumb and finger in the air before him in a backward C, as if he could squeeze the calf and lift it from the water.

He calculated its size, pushed his thumb into his nose, a thing he did, and nodded again. Should it spin on them, they were clear.

‘Just to the left. Hit it there.’

The thermal anchor hissed away, turning the air into a stream of steam, hitting the calved ice with a crack that made all the men momentarily sick.