He pulled it back with the rope and threw it again. This time it rolled, but by whipping the rope he got it to an upright position and the light shone at right angles to them.
“Okay, so it can be done,” Frigate said. “But I’ll pull it back now. Nobody can jump until he’s had a good night’s sleep. Anyway, I’m too tired now to try it.”
“Let’s line up the run path with lanterns,” Blessed said. “I’d like to get a good idea of how it’ll look.”
They did so, and Frigate and Croomes paced to where they would start their run, if they did. The marker for the leap was a lantern a few inches from the edge.
“It has to be a one-time thing,” Frigate said. “We’ll really have to warm up first. This cold air…. On the other hand, the air is thinner and offers less resistance. That probably helped that black jumper—what’s his name? such is fame—make that fabulous twenty-seven feet and four and a half inches in the Olympics at Mexico City. But, back to the first hand, we haven’t really gotten acclimated yet to the high altitude. And .we’re sure as hell not in training.”
Burton had said nothing to Tai-Peng since he wished to give him a chance to volunteer. The Chinese had been watching the procedure. Now he strode up to Burton and said, “I am a mighty jumper! I’m also sadly out of practice! But I will not allow a woman to be braver than I! I will make the first jump!”
His green eyes shone in the lantern beam.
Burton asked him what distance he’d cleared.
“More than that!” Tai-Peng said, pointing at the gap.
Frigate had been throwing pieces of paper up in the air to test the wind. He came up to Burton then, saying, “It blows on our left side and so it’ll carry us a little to the right. But the mountain blocks most of it. I’d say it’s a six- or seven-miles-an-hour wind.”
“Thanks,” Burton said. He kept his gaze on the Chinese. Tai-Peng was very good in athletics but not as good as he claimed to be. No one was that good. However, it was his life he was risking, and no one had asked him to do so.
Frigate spoke up loudly.
“Look! I’m really the most experienced jumper! So I should be the one to do it! And I will!”
“You’ve gotten over your fear?”
“Hell, no! What it is… I don’t have the guts to let someone else do it. You’d all think I was a coward, and if you didn’t, I would.”
He turned to Nur.
“I failed to act rationally and logically. I failed you.”
Nur smiled grimly at his disciple.
“You didn’t fail me. You failed yourself. However, there are so many aspects to consider… anyway, you should be the one to jump.”
The little Moor went up to the titanthrop and raised his head under Joe’s vast nose.
“It may not be necessary for anyone to jump. Joe, do you think that I weigh as much as your pack?”
Joe frowned, and he picked up Nur with one hand under his buttocks. He held him out at arm’s length and said, “Not by a long thyot.”
When Nur was back on the ground, he said, “Do you think you could throw your pack across to the other side?”
Joe fingered his receding chin. “Veil, maybe. Thay, I thee vhat you’re getting at! Vhy don’t I try it? It von’t make no differenth if the pack’th over, there and ve’re over here. Ve got to get acrothth anyvay.”
He lifted the enormous pack above his head, walked to the edge, looked once, swung the pack twice, and heaved it. It fell a foot beyond the other edge.
Nur said, “I thought so. Joe, you throw me across now.”
The titanthrop picked up the Moor with one hand against the little man’s chest and one under his buttocks. Then he swung him back and forth, saying, “Vone, two, three!”
Nur arced across the abyss, landed on his feet a yard beyond the lip, and rolled. When he got up, he danced with joy.