Alistair Maclean - Guns Of Navarone - bzelbublive.info

all sensitivity, the ability to locate and engage the tiny toe-holds which afforded the only sources of purchase. He hadremoved them with great difficulty, tied them to his belt by the laces--and lost them, had them torn off, when forcinghis way under a projecting spur of rock.The climb itself had been a nightmare, a brutal, gasping agony in the wind and the rain and the darkness, an agonythat had eventually dulled the danger and masked the suicidal risks in climbing that sheer unknown face, aninterminable agony of hanging on by fingertips and toes, of driving in a hundred spikes, of securing ropes, theninching on again up into the darkness. It was a climb such as he had not ever made before, such as he knew he wouldnot ever make again, for this was insanity. It was a climb that had extended him to the utmost of his great skill, hiscourage and his strength, and then far beyond that again, and he had not known that such reserves, such limitlessresources, lay within him or any man. Nor did he know the well-spring, the source of that power that had driven him towhere he was, within easy climbing reach of the top. The challenge to a mountaineer, personal danger, pride in the factthat he was probably the only man in southern Europe who could have made the climb, even the sure knowledge thattime was running out for the men on Kheros--it was none of these things, he knew that: in the last twenty minutes ithad taken him to negotiate that overhang beneath his feet his mind had been drained of all thought and all emotion,and he had climbed only as a machine.Hand over hand up the rope, easily, powerfully, Andrea hauled himself over the smoothly swelling convexity of theoverhang, legs dangling in midair. He was festooned with heavy coils of rope, girdled with spikes that protruded fromhis belt at every angle and lent him the incongruous appearance of a comic-opera Corsican bandit. Quickly he hauledhimself up beside Mallory, wedged himself in the chimney and mopped his sweating forehead. As always, he wasgrinning hugely.Mallory looked at him, smiled back. Andrea, he reflected, had no right to be there. It was Stevens's place, butStevens had still been suffering from shock, had lost much blood: besides, it required a first-class climber to bring upthe rear, to coil up the ropes as he came and to remove the spikes--there must be no trace left of the ascent: or soMallory had told him, and Stevens had reluctantly agreed, although the hurt in his face had been easy to see. Morethan ever now Mallory was glad he had resisted the quiet plea in Stevens's face: Stevens was undoubtedly a fineclimber, but what Mallory had required that night was not another mountaineer but a human ladder. Time and timeagain during the ascent he had stood on Andrea's back, his shoulders, his upturned palm and once--for at least tenseconds and while he was still wearing his steel-shod boots--on his head. And not once had Andrea protested orstumbled or yielded an inch. The man was indestructible, as tough and enduring as the rock on which he stood. Sincedusk had fallen that evening, Andrea had laboured unceasingly, done enough work to kill two ordinary men, and,looking at him then, Mallory realised, almost with despair, that even now he didn't look particularly tired.Mallory gestured at the rock chimney, then upwards at its shadowy mouth limned in blurred rectangular outlineagainst the pale glimmer of the sky. He leant forward, mouth close to Andrea's ear."Twenty feet, Andrea," he said softly. His breath was still coming in painful gasps. "It'll be no bother--it's fissuredon my side and the chances are that it goes up to the top."Andrea looked up the chimney speculatively, nodded in silence."Better with your boots off," Mallory went on. "And any spikes we use we'll work in by hand.""Even on a night like this--high winds and rain, cold and black as a pig's inside--and on a cliff like this?" There wasneither doubt nor question in Andrea's voice: rather it was acquiescence, unspoken confirmation of an unspokenthought. They had been so long together, had reached such a depth of understanding that words between them werelargely superfluous.Mallory nodded, waited while Andrea worked home a spike, looped his ropes over it and secured what was left ofthe long ball of twine that stretched four hundred feet below to the ledge where the others waited. Andrea thenremoved boots and spikes, fastened them to the ropes, eased the slender, double-edged throwing knife in its leathershoulder scabbard, looked across at Mallory and nodded in turn.The first ten feet were easy. Palms and back against one side of the chimney and stocking-soled feet against theother, Mallory jack-knifed his way upwards until the widening sheer of the walls defeated him. Legs braced against thefar wall, he worked in a spike as far up as he could reach, grasped it with both hands, dropped his legs across andfound a toe-hold in the crevice. Two minutes later his hands hooked over the crumbling edge of the precipice.Noiselessly and with an infinite caution he fingered aside earth and grass and tiny pebbles until his hands werelocked on the solid rock itself, bent his knee to seek lodgement for the final toe-hold, then eased a wary head abovethe cliff-top, a movement imperceptible in its slow-motion, millimetric stealth. He stopped moving altogether as soon ashis eyes had cleared the level of the cliff, stared out into the unfamiliar darkness, his whole being, the entire field ofconsciousness, concentrated into his eyes and his ears. Illogically, and for the first time in all that terrifying ascent, hebecame acutely aware of his own danger and helplessness, and he cursed himself for his folly in not borrowing Miller'ssilenced automatic.The darkness below the high horizon of the lifting hills beyond was just one degree less than absolute: shapes andangles, heights and depressions were resolving themselves in nebulous silhouette, contours and shadowy profilesemerging reluctantly from the darkness, a darkness suddenly no longer vague and unfainliiar but disturbinglyreminiscent in what it revealed, clamouring for recognition. And then abruptly, almost with a sense of shock, Malloryhad it. The cliff-top before his eyes was exactly as Monsieur Vlachos had drawn and described it--the narrow, barestrip of ground running parallel to the cliff, the jumble of huge boulders behind them and then, beyond these, the steepscree-strewn lower slopes of the mountains. The first break they'd had yet, Mallory thought exultantly--but what abreak! The sketchiest navigation but the most incredible luck, right bang on the nose of the target--the highest pointPage 28