Collected Short Stories. Patrick O’Brian
plainly to go straight across. The rest of the field followed, for he knew the country well. As soon as they left the rock of the cliff they found the going very hard. The sloping face was covered with thin wiry grass growing in shallow soil, and the grass lay under an inch or two of snow. Everywhere there were rocks and stones, nearly all on the surface, and none to be relied upon for a handhold. The snow was too shallow to tread into steps, and it was of that coarse, crystalline sort that makes a foot slip as ice does; much of the stuff was hail. The grass was no help either; the way it lay was all downhill, so it would not hold a foot up, and its roots were so poor in the red scratching of soil that a very little pull brought the whole handful up.
They came to a wall, a wall that ran down the mountain to the wood, one of the innumerable walls that intersect the summer sheep-walks there; it accentuated the angle of the slope, and if Brown had not heard the cry of hounds in front of him he would not have followed the leader over the wall, but would have looked for another way.
It was worse the other side. Brown had not brought a stick – he preferred to have both hands free for climbing – and he missed it sorely now. Gonville was a little way behind him; they were too far apart to talk, and even if they had been closer the difficulty of their way and their hurry would have kept them silent.
For a little way there was the likeness of a path, but this vanished after it had led them well out on to the face of Wenallt. The slope grew a few degrees steeper now, and now they crept painfully and slow. It was a cruel slope: a man could hardly keep his feet standing quite still on it.
From time to time Brown looked down to the distant wood, over the great sheet of white, a sheet that he could now see to be full of boulders that jutted sharply from its surface.
They were all crawling along with their left hands to the snow, sometimes with their whole bodies pressed to it, all with a strong uneasiness. The real present fear, with no interposing doubts or comforting illusions, did not strike into Brown’s heart until he saw a flat stone that the man in front of him had dislodged go sliding easily down, easily and then faster, throwing snow from it like a ski, and at last crashing into an ugly great black rock far, far down. Just after this the man in front turned left-handed directly up the mountain, going up a gully with the help of his iron-pointed stick: he was aiming for a saddle that led behind the rounded brow of the peak. He did not speak to Brown – he was too much occupied for that – and Brown stood considering. He did not like the look of the way up. He kicked the rounded clogs of rammed snow from his boots; they clogged every few steps in this stuff. He looked forward, and again the cry of hounds raised his heart: the slope was surely easier in front, and indeed he must have come over the worst, and by God there was no going back over that stretch. Below him, a great way down, he saw a figure at the far end of the wood; it was the Master, and he was looking steadfastly up to a point on the other side of the shoulder of Wenallt that was in front of Brown.
If they have run him in round there, said Brown, I shall be the first up. He looked round before he started forward and saw Gonville spread-eagled in a bad place; another man was holding out his stick for him to grasp, and it was obvious that they were going back. Brown waved; he felt secretly rather pleased. His fear had receded, and although he knew, with his head, that he was in danger, the real starkness of it had gone. I may slip or fall, he said in effect, and that could be fatal – probably would be – but these are things that happen to other people.
The first ten paces were easy and the next quite plain, but then he saw bad ground ahead and he judged that he must go down a little to get along at all. The huntsman came into sight just below the snow; he was walking with the terriers along the diagonal line the fox had taken. He had been hidden for most of the time by a drop of ground that did not show from above. This confirmed Brown in his plan, and he decided to go down to the good ground and then across to intercept the huntsman’s path as he crossed the far arm of Wenallt. Just at this point the ground went down in steps, still grass-covered: these he negotiated, with his face downward. Below the steps the slope was terrible, but there was no retreat. It had looked just the same, or better, from above. I will go down on my bottom, he said; a little farther down and then across. The immensity of the stretch below him, the snow ending in shale and the far, far trees; the huge sweep sickened him.
He shuffled down – come, it’s not too bad, he said, but while the words were still in him, and he in an awkward position with his legs stretched out and his weight on his elbows and heels, he began to slip. With a furious, controlled energy he gripped into the grass and earth. It tore away without hesitation. Flat on his back, he went; he went with his arms out and his crooked, tense hands scrabbling for a hold, failing, then pressing fiercely on the sliding snow, stemming, breaking, but impotently and in vain, for he was going faster. Faster: with a terrible certainty the momentum increased: the seconds of controllable speed had passed. It is happening to me, he said: and Now for it, he said, as he passed into a hurtling rush down; but still he hunched his shoulders to protect his head and forced his hands into the snow. The sense of responsibility was gone and with it his fear: he expected one dark blow, a smashing blow and the end, but not without a certain constancy of mind.
His feet were against a rock, a firm rock. It was all over; and he was still, unmoving and unhurt. He lay for a moment, for some minutes, breathing and looking at the sky. He was wet, soaked through and through; the whole of his back was wet through and the caked snow was forced into his clothes. Was he hurt? No, he was not hurt. His hands were strange to him, but he was not hurt – all whole. He got up, trembling and shaken: he did not think very clearly now, in this strong reaction.
The trees were a good deal nearer: Brown was halfway down the mountain-face. He could not see the others when he looked up, nor could he be sure of the place where he had started. He looked down, but the huntsman was no longer to be seen.
He felt that there was a strong necessity to go on, not to stop, not to make anything of it. He thought slowly: perhaps he had been stunned, had been unconscious for a while without knowing it? How otherwise could Emrys have vanished like that?
He went on a few steps farther down to look from side to side: no man could he see, but there was a neat precipice, only fifteen or twenty feet deep, but sheer, and if he had not fetched up where he did he would have gone over it without any sort of doubt. This shocked him unreasonably and he turned his face to the dark crags above him. How he longed for the rough, strong rocks, firm and true: their steepness was nothing, he said inwardly, for they were reft and fissured and it was like going up a ladder.
Without thinking any more he started to move up. From where he was the crags seemed continuous right from where the grass ended to the very top, and once the rock was gained it did not look at all difficult to go up over the summit of Wenallt.
His new way was easier than creeping sideways across the mountain, but it meant going on all fours, and soon the snow had so numbed his battered hands that all the strength left them. They would hardly even open and close, so when he reached the first of the rocks he could not go up. He rested a long while before they recovered, and in a few minutes that he took in climbing the first stretch their strength went again. Again he rested, this time under an overhanging rock where sheep had stood years beyond counting in hard weather. By some freak his sandwiches had escaped being crushed into a mess, and eating them brought Brown back to common things and to a comforting sense of ordinariness – a feeling that had been quite stripped from him for some time before. He was shivering in his soaked clothes, soaked in front now as well as behind, for he had groped upward through deeper snow on his hands and knees; but his courage was fairly well as he came out of the sheep’s place.
He could see three separate masses of rock above him, and no more: he would be climbing them, he could see, in the right direction – that is, his path would carry him over toward Cwm Dyli, and he reckoned that from the top of the third crag he would see round into the valley on the other side.
The first crag was steady, exhausting climbing, not difficult, but needing continual strong effort. At the top of it was a stretch of open shale before the foot of the next crag. This was anxious going, very, for the snow was far thicker at this height, and it was not a pretty task to creep over unseen shale pitched at that angle and with that vast amount of world below. Brown set himself to it, and worked up along the edge of the scree, where