Читать книгу Three Go Back - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 5

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Three days later, and the coming of nightfall. Almost it came in countable strides.

They had drowsed in the clear sharp sunshine that picked out so pitilessly the hilly, wooded contours of the deserted land. Swamp and plain and rolling grassland, straggling rightward forest fringe, a swamp and plain and hill again. Unendingly. But with the westerning of the sun these things had softened in outline, blurred in distance, and now, on the hesitating edge of darkness, the great chain of volcanoes lighted and lighted till they were a beckoning candelabrum, casting long shadows and gleams of light over leagues of the bleak savanna.

The coming nightfall paused a little, as if astounded by a spot in the tree-sprayed foot-hills that led to the volcanoes’ range.

For here, in all that chilled and hushed and waiting expectancy, were three things that did not wait, that bore human heads and bodies. For three sunsets now the nightfall had come on those three hastening figures. Each time they were farther south, each time they greeted the diurnal traveler with thin ridiculous pipings in that waste land overshadowed by the volcanoes.

“ ’Fraid it’ll beat us,” said the middle figure, a short bunched shapelessness.

The leading figure, tall and hastening, grunted. The last figure, breathing heavily, said: “I also think it’s useless. We had much better try the forest.”

“What do you think, Doctor Sinclair?” asked the midway shapelessness.

The leader grunted again.

“Damn nonsense. We’ll climb toward the volcanoes, where we’ve a chance of getting warm. Another night in the open may finish us. And the forest’s not safe.”

Underfoot, the heavy-fibered grass rustled harsh and wet to the touch of naked feet. The heavy-breathing rearward figure said:

“There is probably no danger in the forest. You saw things while you were half-awake. In daylight we’ve seen no animal larger than a small deer.”

The leading figure swore, turned a shadowed face, halted and confronted the rear-guard, and disregarded a restraining motion made by the shapelessness. “Damn you and your impertinences. Did you imagine that lion you originally saw, then?”

And the middle shapelessness which, under the endrapement of the eider-down quilt salvaged from the wreck of the Magellan’s Cloud, contained Clair Stranlay, thought, “Goodness, they’re both nearly all in. What on earth am I to do if they start scrapping now?”

That question had vexed her almost continually for some seventy hours. The American and Sir John Mullaghan had seemed to her designed from the beginning of the world to detest each other. For seventy hours they had adjusted fairly well, but she’d known antagonism would show. And now—

Clair thought, “Oh my good God, I could knock your silly heads together. And I’m cold and miserable and hungry. And if ever we get out of this awful country I’ll write an account and lampoon you both—”

There would be plenty of copy for that account.... The wreck. The rescue. Sir John Mullaghan arriving on the scene, complete with tale of discourteous lion. Climbing the cliffs. No lion. Wide view of the sea. No ships. No food. And before them an unrecognizable landscape about which Sinclair and Sir John had at once begun to disagree. Labrador or North Canada, said Sinclair—abruptly deserting Portugal. There were supposed to be lost volcanoes in the wilds of Canada. Sir John had asked if there were also lions, and how the Magellan, turning south just prior to being wrecked, could have reached Canada? No reply to that. Scowls. All three growing hungry. Finally, exploration in search of food.

It had led them farther and farther inland, that exploration. No animals. Not a solitary bird. Strange land without the sound of birds, without the chirp of grasshoppers in those silent forest clumps! Clair had shivered at that voicelessness, though, far off beyond the cliffs, they could still hear the moan of the lost Atlantic.

They had strayed remoter and remoter from that moan, out into thinner aspects of the park-land, till the landscape they saw was this: Distant against the eastern horizon a long mountain sierra, ivory-toothed with snow, cold and pale and gleaming in the cool sunshine, except at points lighted with the lazy smoking of volcanoes. To the right a jumble of hills that must lead back to the Atlantic, and those hills matted and clogged with forest. But no jungle. Pines and conifers and firs.

“Likely-looking country for lion,” the American remarked acidly, and then hushed them both with a sharp gesture. Something stirred in a clump of bushes only a yard or so away. They’d stared at it, making out at last the head and shoulders and attentive antlers of a small deer. Sinclair had acted admirably then, Clair had thought—albeit a little ridiculously.

He’d motioned them to silence, unwound the damp eider-down from about his shoulders, crept forward, suddenly leaped, landed on top of the deer and proceeded to smother the little animal in the quilt’s gaudy folds. Squeals and scuffling. Deer on top, deer underfoot. Sinclair in all directions, but hanging on grimly and cursing so that Clair, running to his aid, had regretted that she’d no note-book with her.

She halted and gasped.

For at her forward rush all the bushes round about, probably held paralyzed by fear until then, had suddenly vomited deer; a good two score of deer. A hoof-clicking like the rattle and an insane orchestra of castanets, the bushes were deserted, and the deer in headlong flight. Clair had stared after them, fascinated, been cursed for her pains, then had knelt down and, rather white-faced, assisted Sinclair to strangle his captive....

Sir John Mullaghan, who had tripped and fallen in his forward rush, had arrived then.

They had kindled a fire and fed on that deer. The making of the fire had been a problem until it was discovered that the armaments manufacturer had a petrol-lighter in his pocket. Ornate, gold-mounted thing. No petrol. But the flint had still functioned and there had been lots of dry grass available. Fire in a minute. How to cook the deer? No knives.

Sinclair had said, “Miss Stranlay, go away for a minute. You, Mullaghan, I want your help.” Clair had turned away, reluctantly, had heard an unfriendly confabulation, had heard the sound of scuffling, the blow that must have broken the animal’s skull, smelled the reek of blood, had wheeled round with a cry.... The men had torn a leg and haunch from the body of the deer.

The meal had been good, though singey and tough. Sinclair had burned his fingers in tearing off a half-cooked portion and handing it to her. Sir John, his dress-suit spattered with drops of blood, had helped at the cooking efficiently enough. But there had been no cooperation between him and Sinclair. They had sat, replete, and disagreed with each other, never once addressing each other, but talking through the medium of Clair. It had then been late afternoon.

“It’s obvious we must hold inland and southward,” said Sinclair. “There’s no sign of human beings or habitations hereabouts. And if this, as I suspect, is northern Canada in a warm spell, it is only southward we are ever likely to meet with any one.”

“I doubt if there’s anything in that, Miss Stranlay.” The gray head had been shaken at her; the gentle eyes held determination. “Probably you, like myself, wish to get back to civilization as soon as possible? Then, I think we ought to return to the cliff-head before sunset and light a fire there and wait through the night. Some ship is bound to see the signal, for there are plenty of ships on the African coast.”

Clair wiped her greasy fingers on the coarse grass. “Canada? I don’t think we can be there, Doctor Sinclair. It’s too far away from the eastern Atlantic, as Sir John says. But this is not a bit like Africa.”

She looked at the three-quarters of deer left to them, and while the two men looked at her, Sinclair with apparent indifference, Sir John with courteous attention. “On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any food in this place. All those little deer ran away south. They may have been strays from the south. I think we ought to follow them. After all, we’re bound to meet people some time.”

The American had stood up, at that, handed Clair the quilt, seized the deer, butted it with his hands, and then slung it across the shoulder of his pajama-jacket. “You’ve the casting vote. Come on, then.”

And they had gone on. They’d camped that night a few miles inland, under the lee of a ragged and woebegone pine on the edge of the great, silent forest itself. They had made another fire with the aid of Sir John Mullaghan’s lighter, and broiled more deer and eaten it, all three of them by then weary and foot-sore from the few miles they’d covered.

When she came back they had apparently settled down for the night. Sir John was lying down to the left of her. He had removed his pumps and wrapped his feet with grass. He had also removed his coat and draped it round his thin shoulders. He lay, close enough to the fire. It had grown cold, though there was no wind.

Sinclair lay near the fire also, but more directly under the lee of the pine. He was swathed about by bundles of grass, and Clair had thought, appalled, “Oh, my good God, I’ll have to do some hay-making.” But that had proved unnecessary. Between the spaces occupied by the two men, and directly opposite the bole of the pine, the quilt had been out-spread to dry and had dried. This, Clair understood, was her sleeping position. She had sunk into the eider-down gratefully.

“Good night, you two,” she had called, muffling the soft folds around about her.

Sinclair had merely grunted.

Sir John had said, uncovering his face, “Good night, Miss Stranlay. Call me if you want anything.”

“Tea in the morning, please.”

He had laughed, with pleasant courtesy, and there had been silence.

Such silence! All her life she would remember it, though the second night had made it commonplace. The night was a woman, asleep. Sometimes you could hear her breathe. Terrible. And against the sky, unlighted though it was, you saw her hair rise floating now and then. The pine-foliage....

Next day they held south again, with little conversation.

Sinclair had divided up the last leg and haunch for the evening meal. “We don’t know when we’ll get any other food.” The others had assented, Clair silently regretful, for she found herself very hungry in those hours of marching through the clear cold sunshine. Suddenly she had thought, and said aloud with a rush of longing, “Oh, my good God, I do wish I had a cigarette!”

Sir John Mullaghan had come to her aid unexpectedly. “I have two,” he had said, and had drawn a small silver case from his pocket the while Clair stared at him unbelievingly. Opened, the case disclosed two veritable Egyptians. Clair had reached for one, starvingly, lighted it from a twig, drawn the acrid sweet smoke down into grateful lungs. Sir John, similarly employed, had sat at the other side of the fire. Sinclair, looking tired, looked into the fire. She had suddenly disliked Mullaghan.

“Share with me, Doctor Sinclair?”

“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”

Next morning—the third morning—they had eaten the last of the deer and tramped southward again, across country still unchanged and unchanging in promise. But this morning had greeted them with rain, so that they had been forced to shelter under a great fir, watching the sheets of water warping westward over the long llanos.

“I’m going to hunt around and see if there’s any food to be had, Miss Stranlay,” Sinclair said.

“I think I’ll also look round, Miss Stranlay,” Sir John put in immediately.

“There’s a fire required,” the American had flung over his shoulder curtly. “And Miss Stranlay’s tired.”

Sir John Mullaghan had searched around for dry grass and twigs, scarce enough commodities, but it was clear that the men were becoming irritable.

Clair wrapped in the quilt, had fallen asleep listening to the slow patter of the rain on the leaves overhead.

Sir John Mullaghan, in a considerably battered dress suit, squatted on bruised and dirty heels, doing futile things with his petrol lighter against a dour loom of treey, desolate landscape. Sinclair had gone hunting and had not yet returned.

They had no method of measuring time, with the sun’s face draped in trailing rain-curtains, but it must have been at least another two hours before Sinclair did come back, coming from the direction of the forest, and walking wearily, a soaked and tattered figure.

“You’ll catch pneumonia,” Clair had called, and tried to stir the fire to warmth-giving. But both she and Sir John had looked at the doctor with sinking hearts. Clair had said, casually, “Any luck?”

Sinclair had opened his right hand. “These.”

They were half a dozen half-ripened beechnuts, picked up below a high, solitary and unclimbable tree. Sinclair told, shortly, that he had wandered for miles without sighting any animal or bird or fruit-bearing tree. “And we’d best be getting on again.”

“Why?” Clair had queried, eating her two nuts.

“Because you can’t stay unsheltered on a night such as this promises to be. We’ll try nearer the mountains for some ledge or rock-shelter.”

So once again they had set out southward, with the rain presently clearing merely to display a sun hovering on the verge of setting.

And now, in the last of the daylight, lost, desperate and foolish, they stood on the brink of a disastrous quarrel, Sinclair with every appearance of being about to assault the armaments manufacturer, Sir John with his gentle face ablaze. Clair looked from one to the other of them, wanly, but still with that gay irony that was her salvation, and, after a little calculation, did the thing that she thought would be best.

She burst into tears.

The two men paused. The American, she observed through her fingers, went more haggard than ever. Sir John laid his hand on her arm.

“Miss Stranlay, you must keep up. We can’t be far now from some town or village or a trapper’s hut.”

“You’re spoiling all our chances because you won’t act together.”

There was a silence. Sinclair looked at the volcanoes, looked at Clair. “That’s true, Miss Stranlay ... I’m sorry, Mullaghan.”

“And I, Doctor Sinclair.”

The American turned again and led them onward.

Suddenly they found themselves in the lee of one of the foot-hills, under the mouths of two great caves.