‘Within the yard,’ Mallory agreed. ‘If you’re unemployed after the war, there should always be a place for you in a shunter’s yard.’ He swung down to the side of the track, lent a helping hand to Maria and Petar, waited until Miller, Reynolds and Groves had jumped down, then said impatiently to Andrea: ‘Well, hurry up, then.’
‘Coming,’ Andrea said peaceably. He pushed the handbrake all the way off, jumped down, and gave the locomotive a shove: the ancient vehicle at once moved off, gathering speed as it went. ‘You never know,’ Andrea said wistfully. ‘It might hit somebody somewhere.’
They ran towards the cut in the edge of the cliff, a but which obviously represented the beginning of some prehistoric landslide down to the bed of the Neretva, a maelstrom of white water far below, the boiling rapids resulting from scores of huge boulders which had slipped from this landslide in that distant aeon. By some exercise of the imagination, that scar in the side the cliff-face might just perhaps have been called a gully, but it was in fact an almost perpendicular drop scree and shale and small boulders, all of it treacherous and unstable to a frightening degree, the whole dangerous sweep broken only by a small ledge of jutting lock about halfway down. Miller took one brief glance it this terrifying prospect, stepped hurriedly back from the edge of the cliff and looked at Mallory in a silently dismayed incredulity.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Mallory said.
‘But this is terrible. Even when I climbed the south cliff in Navarone -‘
‘You didn’t climb the south cliff in Navarone,’ Mallory said unkindly. ‘Andrea and I pulled you up út the end of a rope.’
‘Did you? I forget. But this – this is a climber’s nightmare.’
‘So we don’t have to climb it. Just lower ourselves down. You’ll be all right – as long as you don’t start rolling.’
‘I’ll be all right as long as I don’t start rolling,’ Miller repeated mechanically. He watched Mallory join two ropes together and pass them around the bole of a stunted pine. ‘How about Petar and Maria?’
‘Petar doesn’t have to see to make this descent. All he has to do is to lower himself on this rope – and Petar is as strong as a horse. Somebody will be down there before him to guide his feet on to the ledge. Andrea will look after the young lady here. Now hurry. Neufeld and his men will be up with us any minute here – and if they catch up on this cliff-face, well that’s that. Andrea, off you go with Maria.’
Immediately, Andrea and the girl swung over the edge of the gully and began to lower themselves swiftly down the rope. Groves watched them, hesitated, then moved towards Mallory.
‘I’ll go last, sir, and take the rope with me.’
Miller took his arm and led him some feet away. He said, kindly: ‘Generous, son, generous, but it’s just not on. Not as long as Dusty Miller’s life depends on it. In a situation like this, I must explain, all our lives depend upon the anchorman. The Captain, I am informed, is the best anchorman in the world.’
‘He’s what?’
‘It’s one of the non-coincidences why he was chosen to lead this mission. Bosnia is known to have rocks and cliffs and mountains all over it. Mallory was climbing the Himalayas, laddie, before you were climbing out of your cot. Even you are not too young to have heard of him.’
‘Keith Mallory? The New Zealander?’
‘Indeed. Used to chase sheep around, I gather. Come on, your turn.’
The first five made it safely. Even the last but one, Miller, made the descent to the ledge without incident, principally by employing his favourite mountain-climbing technique of keeping his eyes closed all the time. Then Mallory came last, coiling the rope with him as he came, moving quickly and surely and hardly ever seeming to look where he put his feet but at the same time not as much as disturbing the slightest pebble or piece of shale. Groves observed the descent with a look of almost awed disbelief in his eyes
Mallory peered over the edge of the ledge. Because of a slight bend in the gorge above, there was a sharp cut-off in the moonlight just below where they stood i¯ that while the phosphorescent whiteness of the rapids was in clear moonlight, the lower part of the >pe beneath their feet was in deep shadow. Even as watched, the moon was obscured by a shadow, and the dimly-seen detail in the slope below vanished. Mallory knew that they could never afford to wait until the moon reappeared, for Neufeld and his men could well have arrived by then. Mallory belayed a rope round an outcrop of rock and said to Andrea and Maria: ‘This one’s really dangerous. Watch for loose boulders.’
Andrea and Maria took well over a minute to make this invisible descent, a double tug on the rope announcing their safe arrival at the bottom. On the way down they had started several small avalanches, but Mallory had no fears that the next man down would trigger off a fall of rock that would injure or even kill Andrea and Maria; Andrea had lived too long and too dangerously to die in so useless and so foolish a fashion and he would undoubtedly warn the next man down if the same danger. For the tenth time Mallory glanced up towards the top of the slope they had just descended but if Neufeld, Droshny and his men had just arrived they were keeping very quiet about it and being most circumspect indeed: it was not a difficult conclusion to arrive at that, after the events of the past few hours, circumspection would be the last thing in their minds.
The moon broke through again as Mallory finally made his descent. He cursed the exposure it might offer if any of the enemy suddenly appeared on the cliff top, even although he knew that Andrea would guarding against precisely that danger; on the other hand it afforded him the opportunity of descending at twice the speed he could have made in the earlier darkness. The watchers below watched tensely as Mallory, without any benefit of rope, made his perilous descent: but he never even looked like making one mistake. He descended safely to the boulder-strewn shore and gazed out over the rapids.
He said to no one in particular: ‘You know what’s going to happen if they arrive at the top and find us halfway across here and the moon shining down on us?’ The ensuing silence left no doubt but they all knew what was going to happen. ‘Now is all the time. Reynolds, you think you can make it?’ Reynolds nodded. ‘Then leave your gun.’
Mallory knotted a bowline round Reynolds’s waist, taking the strain, if one were to arise, with Andrea and Groves. Reynolds launched himself bodily into the rapids, heading for the first of the rounded boulders which offered so treacherous a hold in that seething foam. Twice he was knocked off his feet, twice he regained them, reached the rock, but immediately beyond it was washed away off balance and swept down-river. The men on the bank hauled him ashore again, coughing and spluttering and fighting mad. Without a word to or look at anybody Reynolds again hurled himself into the rapids, and this time so determined was the fury of his assault that he succeeded in reaching the far bank without once being knocked off his feet.
He dragged himself on to the stony beach, lay there for some moments recovering from his exhaustion, then rose, crossed to a stunted pine at the base of the cliff rising on the other side, undid the rope round his waist and belayed it securely round the bole of the tree. Mallory, on his side, took two turns round a large rock and gestured to Andrea and the girl.
Mallory glanced upwards again to the top of the gully. There were still no signs of the enemy. Even Mallory felt that they could afford to wait no longer, that they had already pushed their luck too far. Andrea and Maria were barely halfway across when he id Groves to give Petar a hand across the rapids. He to God the rope would hold, but hold it did for Andrea and Maria made it safely to the far bank. No sooner had they grounded than Mallory sent Miller on i way, carrying a pile of automatic arms over his left shoulder.
Groves and Petar also made the crossing without incident. Mallory himself had to wait until Miller reached the far bank, for he knew the chances of his being carried away were high and if he were, then Miller too would be precipitated into the water. And their guns rendered useless.
Mallory waited until he saw Andrea give Miller a hand into the shallow water on the far bank and waited no longer. He unwound the rope from the rock he had been using as a belay, fastened a bowline round his own waist and plunged into the water. He was swept away at exactly the same point where Reynolds had been on his first attempt and was finally dragged ashore by his friends on the far bank with a fair amount of the waters of the Neretva in his stomach but otherwise unharmed.