Another quarter of an hour elapsed, an interminable fifteen minutes when, in the lulls between the thunderclaps, every slightest sound was an approaching enemy patrol, before Miller materialised slowly out of the darkness, half-way down the rock chimney. He was climbing steadily and methodically, then checked abruptly at the cliff-top, groping hands pawing uncertainly on the topsoil of the cliff. Puzzled, Mallory bent down, peered into the lean face: both the eyes were clamped tightly shut.
“Relax, Corporal,” Mallory advised kindly. “You have arrived.”
Dusty Miller slowly opened his eyes, peered round at the edge of the cliff, shuddered and crawled quickly on hands and knees to the shelter of the nearest boulders. Mallory followed and looked down at him curiously.
“What was the idea of closing your eyes coming over the top?”
“I did not,” Miller protested.
Mallory said nothing.
“I closed them at the bottom,” Miller explained weanly. “I opened them at the top.”
Mallory looked at him incredulously.
“What! All the way?”
“It’s like I told you, boss,” Miller complained. “Back in Castelrosso. When I cross a street and step up on to the sidewalk I gotta hang on to the nearest lamp-post. More or less.” He broke off, looked at Andrea leaning far out over the side of the cliff, and shivered again. “Brother! Oh brother! Was I scared!”
Fear. Terror. Panic. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. Once, twice, a hundred times, Andy Stevens repeated the words to himself, over and over again, like a litany. A psychiatrist had told him that once and he’d read it a dozen times since. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. The mind is a limited thing, they had said. It can only hold one thought at a time, one impulse to action. Say to yourself, I am brave, I am overcoming this fear, this stupid, unreasoning panic which has no origin except in my own mind, and because the mind _can_ only hold one thought at a time, and because thinking and feeling are one, then you _will_ be brave, you _will_ overcome and the fear will vanish like a shadow in the night. And so Andy Stevens said these things to himself, and the shadows only lengthened and deepened, lengthened and deepened, and the icy claws of fear dug ever more savagely into his dull exhausted mind, into his twisted, knotted stomach.
His stomach. That knotted ball of jangled, writhing nerve-ends beneath the solar plexus. No one could ever know how it was, how it felt, except those whose shredded minds were going, collapsing into complete and final breakdown. The waves of panic and nausea and faintness that flooded up through a suffocating throat to a mind dark and spent and sinewless, a mind fighting with woollen fingers to cling on to the edge of the abyss, a tired and lacerated mind, only momentarily in control, wildly rejecting the clamorous demands of a nervous system which had already taken far too much that he should let go, open the torn fingers that were clenched so tightly round the rope. It was just that easy. “Rest after toil, port after stormy seas.” What was that famous stanza of Spenser’s? Sobbing aloud, Stevens wrenched out another spike, sent it spinning into the waiting sea three hundred long feet below, pressed himself closely into the face and inched his way despairingly upwards.
Fear. Fear had been at his elbow all his life, his constant companion, his _alter ego_, at his elbow, on in close prospect or immediate recall. He had become accustomed to that fear, at times almost reconciled, but the sick agony of this night lay far beyond either tolerance or familiarity. He had never known anything like this before, and even in his terror and confusion he was dimly aware that the fear did not spring from the climb itself. True, the cliff was sheer and almost vertical, and the lightning, the ice-cold rain, the darkness and the bellowing thunder were a waking nightmare. But the climb, technically, was simple: the rope stretched all the way to the top and all he had to do was to follow it and dispose of the spikes as he went. He was sick and bruised and terribly tired, his head ached abominably and he had lost a great deal of blood: but then, more often than not, it is in the darkness of agony and exhaustion that the spirit of man burns most brightly.
Andy Stevens was afraid because his self-respect was gone. Always, before, that had been his sheet anchor, bad tipped the balance against his ancient enemy–the respect in which other men had held him, the respect he had had for himself. But now these were gone, for his two greatest fears had been realised–he was known to be afraid, he had failed his fellow-man. Both in the fight with the German caique and when anchored above the watch-tower in the creek, he had known that Mallory and Andrea knew. He had never met such men before, and he had known all along that he could never hide his secrets from such men. He should have gone up that cliff with Mallory, but Mallory had made excuses and ten Andrea instead–Mallory _knew_ he was afraid. And twice before, in Castelrosso and when the German boat had closed in on them, he had almost failed his friends–and to-night he had failed them terribly. He had not been thought fit to lead the way with Mallory–and it was he, the sailor of the party, who had made such a botch of tying that last knot, had lost all the food and the fuel that had plummetted into the sea a bare ten feet from where he had stood on the ledge . . . and a thousand men on Kheros were depending on a failure so abject as himself. Sick and spent, spent in mind and body and spirit, moaning aloud in his anguish of fear and self-loathing, and not knowing where one finished and the other began, Andy Stevens climbed blindly on.
The sharp, high-pitched call-up buzz of the telephone cut abruptly through the darkness on the cliff-top. Mallory stiffened and half-turned, hands clenching involuntarily. Again it buzzed, the jarring stridency carrying cleanly above the bass rumble of the thunder, fell silent again. And then it buzzed again and kept on buzzing, peremptory in its harsh insistence.
Mallory was half-way towards it when he checked in midstep, turned slowly round and walked back towards Andrea. The big Greek looked at him curiously.
“You have changed your mind?”
Mallory nodded but said nothing.
“They will keep on ringing until they get an answer,” Andrea murmured. “And when they get no answer, they will come. They will come quickly and soon.”
“I know, I know.” Mallory shrugged. “We have to take that chance–certainty rather. The question is– how long will it be before any one turns up.” Instinctively he looked both ways along the windswept cliff-top: Miner and Brown were posted one on either side about fifty yards away, lost in the darkness. “It’s not worth the risk. The more I think of it, the poorer I think my chances would be of getting away with it. In matters of routine the old Hun tends to be an inflexible sort of character. There’s probably a set way of answering the phone, or the sentry has to identify himself by name, or there’s a password–or maybe my voice would give me away. On the other han4 the sentry’s gone without trace, all our gear is up and so’s everyone except Stevens. In other words, we’ve practically made it. We’ve landed–and nobody knows we’re here.”
“Yes.” Andrea nodded slowly. “Yes, you are right– and Stevens should be up in two or three minutes. It would be foolish to throw away everything we’ve gained.” He paused, then went on quietly: “But they are going to come running.” The phone stopped ringing as suddenly as it had started. “They are going to come now.’,
“I know. I hope to hell Stevens . . .” Mallory broke off, spun on his heel, said over his shoulder, “Keep your eye open for him, will you? I’ll warn the others we’re expecting company.”
Mallory moved quickly along the cliff-top, keeping well away from the edge. He hobbled rather than walked–the sentry’s boots were too small for him and chafed his toes cruelly. Deliberately he closed his mind to the thought of how his feet would be after a few hours’ walking over rough territory in these boots: time enough for the reality, he thought grimly, without the added burden of anticipation. . . . He stopped abruptly as something hard and metallic pushed into the small of his bacL
“Surrender or die!” The drawling, nasal voice was positively cheerful: after what he had been through on the caique and the cliff face, just to set foot on solid ground again was heaven enough for DustyMiller.