The Complete Navarone 4-Book Collection: The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten From Navarone, Storm Force from Navarone, Thunderbolt from Navarone. Alistair MacLeanЧитать онлайн книгу.
always something they forgot to fear, to guard against. But Andrea was afraid of everything – and he forgot nothing. It is as simple as that.’
He looked across at Stevens and smiled.
‘There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die – that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he, too, is brave and afraid like all the rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer. Or sometimes ten minutes, or twenty minutes – or the time it takes a man sick and bleeding and afraid to climb a cliff.’
Stevens said nothing. His head was sunk on his chest, and his face was hidden. He had seldom felt so happy, seldom so at peace with himself. He had known that he could not hide things from men like Andrea and Mallory, but he had not known that it would not matter. He felt he should say something, but he could not think what and he was deathly tired. He knew, deep down, that Andrea was speaking the truth, but not the whole truth; but he was too tired to care, to try to work things out.
Miller cleared his throat noisily.
‘No more talkin’, Lieutenant,’ he said firmly. ‘You gotta lie down, get yourself some sleep.’
Stevens looked at him, then at Mallory in puzzled inquiry.
‘Better do what you’re told, Andy.’ Mallory smiled. ‘Your surgeon and medical adviser talking. He fixed your leg.’
‘Oh! I didn’t know. Thanks, Dusty. Was it very – difficult?’
Miller waved a deprecatory hand.
‘Not for a man of my experience. Just a simple break,’ he lied easily. ‘Almost let one of the others do it … Give him a hand to lie down, will you, Andrea?’ He jerked his head towards Mallory. ‘Boss?’
The two men moved outside, turning their backs to the icy wind.
‘We gotta get a fire, dry clothing, for that kid,’ Miller said urgently. ‘His pulse is about 140, temperature 103. He’s runnin’ a fever, and he’s losin’ ground all the time.’
‘I know, I know,’ Mallory said worriedly. ‘And there’s not a hope of getting any fuel on this damned mountain. Let’s go in and see how much dried clothing we can muster between us.’
He lifted the edge of the canvas and stepped inside. Stevens was still awake, Brown and Andrea on either side of him. Miller was on his heels.
‘We’re going to stay here for the night,’ Mallory announced, ‘so let’s make things as snug as possible. Mind you,’ he admitted, ‘we’re a bit too near the cliff for comfort, but old Jerry hasn’t a clue we’re on the island, and we’re out of sight of the coast. Might as well make ourselves comfortable.’
‘Boss …’ Miller made to speak, then fell silent again. Mallory looked at him in surprise, saw that he, Brown and Stevens were looking at one another, uncertainty, then doubt and a dawning, sick comprehension in their eyes. A sudden anxiety, the sure knowledge that something was far wrong, struck at Mallory like a blow.
‘What’s up?’ he demanded, sharply. ‘What is it?’
‘We have bad news for you, boss,’ Miller said carefully. ‘We should have told you right away. Guess we all thought that one of the others would have told you … Remember that sentry you and Andrea shoved over the side?’
Mallory nodded, sombrely. He knew what was coming.
‘He fell on top of that reef twenty-thirty feet or so from the cliff,’ Miller went on. ‘Wasn’t much of him left, I guess, but what was was jammed between two rocks. He was really stuck good and fast.’
‘I see,’ Mallory murmured. ‘I’ve been wondering all night how you managed to get so wet under your rubber cape.’
‘I tried four times, boss,’ Miller said quietly. ‘The others had a rope round me.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not a chance. Them gawddamned waves just flung me back against the cliff every time.’
‘It will be light in three or four hours,’ Mallory murmured. ‘In four hours they will know we are on the island. They will see him as soon as it’s dawn and send a boat to investigate.’
‘Does it really matter, sir,’ Stevens suggested. ‘He could still have fallen.’
Mallory eased the canvas aside and looked out into the night. It was bitterly cold and the snow was beginning to fall all around them. He dropped the canvas again.
‘Five minutes,’ he said absently. ‘We will leave in five minutes.’ He looked at Stevens and smiled faintly. ‘We are forgetful too. We should have told you. Andrea stabbed the sentry through the heart.’
The hours that followed were hours plucked from the darkest nightmare, endless, numbing hours of stumbling and tripping and falling and getting up again, of racked bodies and aching, tortured muscles, of dropped loads and frantic pawing around in the deepening snow, of hunger and thirst and all-encompassing exhaustion.
They had retraced their steps now, were heading WNW back across the shoulder of the mountain – almost certainly the Germans would think they had gone due north, heading for the centre of the island. Without compass, stars or moon to guide, Mallory had nothing to orientate them but the feel of the slope of the mountain and the memory of the map Vlachos had shown them in Alexandria. But by and by he was reasonably certain that they had rounded the mountain and were pushing up some narrow gorge into the interior.
The snow was the deadly enemy. Heavy, wet and feathery, it swirled all around them in a blanketing curtain of grey, sifted down their necks and jackboots, worked its insidious way under their clothes and up their sleeves, blocked their eyes and ears and mouths, pierced and then anaesthetised exposed faces, and turned gloveless hands into leaden lumps of ice, benumbed and all but powerless. All suffered, and suffered badly, but Stevens most of all. He had lost consciousness again within minutes of leaving the cave and clad in clinging, sodden clothes as he was, he now lacked even the saving warmth generated by physical activity. Twice Andrea had stopped and felt for the beating of the heart, for he thought that the boy had died: but he could feel nothing for there was no feeling left in his hands, and he could only wonder and stumble on again.
About five in the morning, as they were climbing up the steep valley head above the gorge, a treacherous, slippery slope with only a few stunted carob trees for anchor in the sliding scree, Mallory decided that they must rope up for safety’s sake. In single file they scrambled and struggled up the ever-steepening slope for the next twenty minutes: Mallory, in the lead, did not even dare to think how Andrea was getting on behind him. Suddenly the slope eased, flattened out completely, and almost before they realised what was happening they had crossed the high divide, still roped together and in driving, blinding snow with zero visibility, and were sliding down the valley on the other side.
They came to the cave at dawn, just as the first grey stirrings of a bleak and cheerless day struggled palely through the lowering, snow-filled sky to the east. Monsieur Vlachos had told them that the south of Navarone was honey-combed with caves, but this was the first they had seen, and even then it was no cave but a dark, narrow tunnel in a great heap of piled volcanic slabs, huge, twisted layers of rock precariously poised in a gully that threaded down the slope towards some broad and unknown valley a thousand, two thousand feet, beneath them, a valley still shrouded in the gloom of night.
It was no cave, but it was enough. For frozen, exhausted, sleep-haunted men, it was more than enough, it was more than they had ever hoped for. There was room for them all, the few cracks were quickly blocked against the drifting snow, the entrance curtained off by the boulder-weighted tent. Somehow, impossibly almost in the cramped darkness, they stripped Stevens of his sea- and rain-soaked clothes, eased him into a providentially zipped sleeping-bag, forced some brandy down his throat and cushioned the bloodstained head on some dry clothing. And then the four men, even the tireless Andrea, slumped down to the sodden, snow-chilled floor of the cave and slept like men already dead, oblivious alike