Alistair Maclean - Guns Of Navarone - bzelbublive.info

"Me and my big mouth," he said ruefully. "Always talkin' outa turn Miller, they call me. Your pardon, one and all.. . .And what is next on the agenda, gentlemen?""Captain says we're to go straight on into the rocks and up the right shoulder of this bill here." Brown jerked athumb in the direction of the vague mass, dark and strangely foreboding, that towered above and beyond them. "He'llcatch us up within fifteen minutes or so." He grinned tiredly at Miller. "And we're to leave this box and a rucksack forhim to carry.""Spare me," Miller pleaded. "I feel only six inches tall as it is." He looked down at Stevens lying quietly under thedarkly gleaming wetness of the oilskins, then up at Andrea. "I'm afraid, Andrea--""Of course, of course!" Andrea stooped quickly, wrapped the oilskins round the unconscious boy and rose to hisfeet, as effortlessly as if the oilskins had been empty."I'll lead the way," Miller volunteered. "Mebbe I can pick an easy path for you and young Stevens." He swunggenerator and rucksacks on to his shoulder, staggering under the sudden weight; he hadn't realised he was so weak."At first, that is," he amended. "Later on, you'll have to carry us both."Mallory had badly miscalculated the time it would require to overtake the others; over an hour had elapsed sinceBrown had left him, and still there were no signs of the others. And with seventy pounds on his back, he wasn'tmaking such good time himself.It wasn't all his fault. The returning German patrol, after the first shock of discovery, had searched the clifftop again,methodically and with exasperating slowness. Mallory had waited tensely for someone to suggest descending andexpmining the chimney--the gouge-marks of the spikes on the rock would have been a dead giveaway--but nobodyeven mentioned it. With the guard obviously fallen to his death, it would have been a pointless thing to do anyway.After an unrewarding search, they had debated for an unconscionable time as to what they should do next. Finallythey had done nothing. A replacement guard was left, and the rest made off along the cliff, carrying their rescueequipment with them.The three men ahead had made surprisingly good time, although the conditions, admittedly, were now much easier.The heavy fall of boulders at the foot of the slope had petered out after another fifty yards, giving way to broken screeand rain-washed rubble. Possibly he had passed them, but it seemed unlikely: in the intervals between these drivingsleet showers--it was more like hail now--he was able to scan the bare shoulder of the hill, and nothing moved.Besides, he knew that Andrea wouldn't stop until he reached what promised at least a bare minimum of shelter, and asyet these exposed, windswept slopes had offered nothing that even remotely approached that.In the end, Mallory almost literally stumbled upon both men and shelter. He was negotiating a narrow, longitudinalspine of rock, had just crossed its razor-back, when he heard the murmur of voices beneath him and saw a tiny glimmerof light behind the canvas stretching down from the overhang of the far wall of the tiny ravine at his feet.Miller started violently and swung round as he felt the hand on his shoulder: the automatic was half-way out of hispocket before he saw who it was and sunk back heavily on the rock behind him."Come, come, now! Trigger-happy." Thankfully Mallory slid his burden from his aching shoulders and lookedacross at the softly laughing Andrea. "What's so funny?""Our friend here." Andrea grinned again. "I told him that the first thing he would know of your arrival would bewhen you touched him on the shoulder. I don't think he believed me.""You might have coughed or somethin'," Miller said defensively. "It's my nerves, boss," he added plaintively."They're not what they were forty-eight hours ago."Mallory looked at him disbelievingly, made to speak, then stopped short as he caught sight of the pale blur of a facepropped up against a rucksack. Beneath the white swathe of a bandaged forehead the eyes were open, lookingsteadily at him. Mallory took a step forward, sank down on one knee."So you've come round at last!" He smiled into the sunken parchment face and Stevens smiled back, the bloodlesslips whiter than the face itself. He looked ghastly. "How do you feel, Andy?""Not too bad, sir. Really. I'm not." The bloodshot eyes were dark and filled with pain. His gaze fell and he lookeddown vacantly at his bandaged leg, looked up again, smiled uncertainly at Mallory. "I'm terribly sorry about all this, sir.What a bloody stupid thing to do.""It wasn't a stupid thing." Mallory spoke with slow, heavy emphasis. "It was criminal folly." He knew everyone waswatching them, but knew, also, that Stevens had eyes for him alone. "Criminal, unforgiveable folly," he went onquietly, "--and I'm the man in the dock. I'd suspected you'd lost a lot of blood on the boat, but I didn't know you hadthese big gashes on your forehead. I should have made it my business to find out." He smiled wryly. "You shouldhave heard what these two insubordinate characters had to say to me about it when they got to the top. . . . And theywere right. You should never have been asked to bring up the rear in the state you were in. It was madness." Hegrinned again. "You should have been hauled up like a sack of coals like the intrepid mountaineering team of Millerand Brown. . . . God knows how you ever made it--I'm sure you'll never know." He leaned forward, touched Stevens'ssound knee. "Forgive me, Andy. I honestly didn't realise how far through you were."Stevens stirred uncomfortably, but the dead pallor of the high-boned cheeks was stained with embarrassedpleasure."Please, sir," he pleaded. "Don't talk like that. It was just one of these things." He paused, eyes screwed shut andindrawn breath hissing sharply through his teeth as a wave of pain washed up from his shattered leg. Then he lookedat Mallory again. "And there's no credit due to me for the climb," he went on quietly. "I hardly remember a thing aboutit."Mallory looked at him without speaking, eyebrows arched in mild interrogation.Page 38