Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
into view.
“Quick,” he said. “I’ll follow in a second.”
“I doot I’ll get a dunt,” said Hamilton grimly as he went over the left side of the cockpit. Archie saw that the chute had opened and righted at once, and that he was descending steadily into the void.
His own task was more difficult. He cut out the switches and pulled the plane into a stall. He meant to go out on the right, when suddenly the right wing began to droop, which meant that it would strike the parachute. He therefore steadied the plane, and followed Hamilton over the left side. He started head foremost, but the risers pulled him upright and the parachute opened. The plane above him was lost in an instant, and Archie, oscillating violently and feeling very sick, plunged into a gulf of primeval darkness.
Something hit his head; then he hung for a second upside-down before slipping into what seemed a gigantic bramble bush which scratched his face. Another bump, a plunge, and Archie found himself standing on tiptoe on solid earth, with the ruins of the parachute and his great-coat hanked in the lower boughs of a tree.
X
Archie took a good quarter of an hour to disentangle himself from his Absalom-like posture, since, owing to the constriction of his garments, he could not get at his knife, and his hands were numb with cold. When at last he was free, he pitched forward stiffly into a huge tree-fern, which kept him from rolling down the slope. The actual forest was thin, but the undergrowth was dense and water-logged, and the declivity so steep that every step must be matched. The fog was still there, but it was not thick, and faint light filtered through it, so that it was possible to see he ground beneath and the trees above in a dim monotint.
His first business must be to find Geordie Hamilton. He shouted, but it was like speaking with the mouth muffled by folds of blanket. He argued that Hamilton must have descended not more than two hundred yards below him, and that the plane when he left it had been directly ascending the mountain face, so he tried to shape a straight course downhill. But the going was appalling. There were thickets of cactus to be circumvented, an occasional tall tree choked with creepers, and strips of sheer red earth. He stopped very few yards to shout for his companion, but no answer came; it seemed impossible to pierce that deathly stillness.
Presently he realised that at this rate he would soon be lost. He halted and mopped his brow, for he was sweating under the burden of his heavy flying-clothes. And then he heard, apparently from the bowels of the earth, what seemed to be a groan.
“Hamilton,” he cried, and, shouting his name, he made his way a little to the left.
At last a reply came, a miserable, muffled voice.
“Is’t you, Sir Erchibald?” it said, and it was as if its owner were speaking from under deep water.
The place was a shallow ravine, and as Archie groped his way something very hard and sharp caught him in the neck.
“Hamilton, where on earth are you?” he cried in pain.
“I’m catched in a buss,” came an answering groan. “For God’s sake get me out, for I’ve gotten some awfu’ jags.”
Then Archie remembered his spot-light. It revealed a great clump of the aloe called caraguata, with Hamilton most intricately wedged among the sword—like leaves. Above the spikes, like a dissolute umbrella, waved the parachute. Hamilton hung face downward, his great-coat suspended over him and his legs splayed like a clumsy diver’s. He had ceased to struggle, for every movement sent the thorn deeper into his tenderest parts.
Archie stripped to shirt and breeches, and set himself slowly to cut the victim out, but it was the better part of and hour before the work was done, and Hamilton, still apoplectic about the face, was cautiously examining his wounds. He had plenty of them, but only scratches, though he declared that his legs were so stiff that it would be a month before he could walk.
“You’ll have to start right away,” Archie told him. “We can’t stay in this blasted hot-house. We must be pretty near the edge of the tree-line, and once we get above the forest we can find a place to sleep. So step out, my lad, game leg or no. You and I are about equal now.”
Slowly and with many stumbles they began the ascent, guiding themselves by the lift of the ground. It was desperately laborious, for sometimes the way was up sheer banks of earth, the remains of old landslides, and as slippery as oil; sometimes through acres of great ferns where the feet sank into deep hollows among the roots: sometimes through cactus scrub which reduced their coat-skirts to rags; often through horrible oozing moss which sent up a stink like a charnel-house. The fog was dying away, and the rising moon made their immediate environment clear, but the better they could see the more hopeless the toil became.
Hamilton panted and sobbed, and Archie’s weak leg gave him many falls. The air had none of the wholesome chill of night. A damp heat closed them in, and when now and then a faint waft came up from the valley beneath. It seemed to have a sickening scent of violets. Often they stopped for breath, but they did not lie down. Instinctively they both shrank from contact with that unhallowed soil. Once Hamilton drank from a pool in a stream, and was violently sick.
“We must be about the height of the Matterhorn,” Archie said, “and yet it’s as hot as hell. This is a cursed place.”
“Deed, it’s no canny,” said Hamilton, gulping with nausea.
Before long it was clear that Hamilton’s strength was giving out. Thickset and burly as he was, this greenhouse-mountaineering was beyond him. He stumbled more often, and after each fall took longer to recover. At last he stopped.
“I doot I’m done, sir,” he wheezed. “This bloody cemetery is ower much for me! You gang on.”
“Nonsense,” said Archie, taking his arm. He was dog-tired himself, but to his more sensitive nerves the hatred of the place was such that it goaded him forward like a spur.
“See, we’ll take hands. We can’t be far from the tree-line.”
But it seemed hours before they reached it. Fortunately the slope had become easier and less encumbered, but the two men staggered on drunkenly, speaking no word, their eyes scarcely seeing, so that their falls were frequent, everything blotted from their mind but the will to bodily endurance. So blind were they that they did not notice that the fog was almost gone, and they had come out of the forest before they realised it. Suddenly Archie was aware that he was no longer climbing steeply, and then he was looking across a shelf of bare land which rose to a rim of a pale silver.
He was breathing free air, too. A cool light wind was on his forehead.
“Hamilton,” he cried, “I… believe… we’re clear.”
The two dropped like logs, and the earth they sank on was not the reeking soil of the forest, but the gravel of an upland.
Both lay for a little, their limbs too weary to stretch. Then Archie crawled to his feet.
“Let’s go on a bit. I want to feel really quit of that damned Poison Valley. We must find a hole to sleep in.”
They staggered on for another half-mile, weakly, but no longer so miserably. The sand and shale underfoot gleamed white as salt in the moonlight, and were broken only by boulders and small scrubby thorns. Then they found a shelf of rock which overhung so as to form a shallow cave. It was now as cold as it had been hot in the covert, the sweat had dried upon them, and the scratches on hands and face smarted in the frost. Each had a small ration of food in his pocket, charqui—which is the biltong the Gran Seco Indians prepare—some biscuits and chocolate, and Arch had a packet of raisins. They supped lightly, for thirst and hunger seemed to have left them, and, cuddled against each other for warmth, both were soon asleep.
Archie woke in an hour’s time. He had slept scarcely all during the past three days, and even deep bodily fatigue could not