Read Online Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair MacLean - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alistair MacLean
Ads: Link
to do would be to wall up the entrance and go home for a good nightâs sleep. Bowman inched ahead on hands and knees.
He saw a pale glow of light ahead. He was imagining it, he thought, he knew he must be imagining it, but when he suddenly realized that what lay ahead was a corner in the tunnel, he knew he wasnât. He reached the corner and wriggled round with difficulty. Before him he saw a patch of starstudded sky.
The tunnel had suddenly become a cave. A small cave, to be sure, a good deal less than headhigh and its lip ending in nothingness less than six feet away: but a cave. He crawled to the lip and looked down. He at once wished he hadnât: the plain lay hundreds of sheerly vertical feet below, the rows of dusty olive trees so impossibly distant that they couldnât even be fairly described as toy bushes.
He leaned out another few vertiginous inches and twisted his head to look upwards. The top of the cliff lay no more than twenty feet above â twenty smoothly vertical feet with neither fingernor toe-hold in sight.
He looked to the right and that was it. That was the path that even the moronic mountain goat would have balked at, narrow broken edge extending down at not too acute an angle to a point that passed, as he now saw, some four feet below the lip of the cave. The path, for want of a better word, went right to the top.
But even the moronic goat, which Bowman was not, will refuse suicidal chances acceptable to the sacrificial goat, which Bowman undoubtedly was, for death and suicide come to the same thing anyway. He didnât hesitate, for he knew with certainty that if he did he would elect to remain and fight it out in that tiny cave soomer than face that dreadful path. He swung out gingerly over the rim, lowered himself till he had located the ledge with his feet and started to edge his way upwards.
He shuffled along with his face to the wall, arms wide outstretched, palms in constant contact with the rock-face, not because of any purchase that could be gained, for there was none, but because he was no mountaineer, had no particular head for heights and knew very well that if he looked down heâd inevitably just lean out and go tumbling head over heels to the olive groves far below. A crack Alpinist, it was possible, would have regarded the climb as just a light Sunday afternoon workout but for Bowman it was the most terrifying experience of his life. Twice his foot slipped on loose stone, twice chunks of limestone disappeared into the abyss, but after a lifetime that was all of two minutes long he made it and hauled himself over the brink and into safety, sweating like a man in a Turkish bath and trembling like a withered leaf in the last gale of autumn. Heâd thought he wouldnât be scared again and he had been wrong: but now he was back on terra firma and it was on terra firma that he operated best.
He ventured a quick glance over the edge. There was no one in sight. He wondered briefly what had delayed them, maybe theyâd thought he was lurking in the shadow in the cul-de-sac, maybe theyâd picked the wrong aperture to start with, maybe anything. Heâd no time to waste wondering, he had to find out, and immediately, whether there was any escape from the pinnacle he was perched on. He had to find out for three very good and urgent reasons. If there was no other escape route he knew in his heart that no power on earth would ever make him face that descent to the cave and that heâd just have to stay there till the buzzards bleached his bones â he doubted whether there were any buzzards in those parts but the principle of the thing was pretty well fixed in his mind. If there was an escape route, then heâd have to guard against the possibility of being cut off by the gypsies. Thirdly, if there was such a route and they regarded it as unassailable, they might just elect to leave him there and go off to deal with Cecile Dubois whom they clearly,
He saw a pale glow of light ahead. He was imagining it, he thought, he knew he must be imagining it, but when he suddenly realized that what lay ahead was a corner in the tunnel, he knew he wasnât. He reached the corner and wriggled round with difficulty. Before him he saw a patch of starstudded sky.
The tunnel had suddenly become a cave. A small cave, to be sure, a good deal less than headhigh and its lip ending in nothingness less than six feet away: but a cave. He crawled to the lip and looked down. He at once wished he hadnât: the plain lay hundreds of sheerly vertical feet below, the rows of dusty olive trees so impossibly distant that they couldnât even be fairly described as toy bushes.
He leaned out another few vertiginous inches and twisted his head to look upwards. The top of the cliff lay no more than twenty feet above â twenty smoothly vertical feet with neither fingernor toe-hold in sight.
He looked to the right and that was it. That was the path that even the moronic mountain goat would have balked at, narrow broken edge extending down at not too acute an angle to a point that passed, as he now saw, some four feet below the lip of the cave. The path, for want of a better word, went right to the top.
But even the moronic goat, which Bowman was not, will refuse suicidal chances acceptable to the sacrificial goat, which Bowman undoubtedly was, for death and suicide come to the same thing anyway. He didnât hesitate, for he knew with certainty that if he did he would elect to remain and fight it out in that tiny cave soomer than face that dreadful path. He swung out gingerly over the rim, lowered himself till he had located the ledge with his feet and started to edge his way upwards.
He shuffled along with his face to the wall, arms wide outstretched, palms in constant contact with the rock-face, not because of any purchase that could be gained, for there was none, but because he was no mountaineer, had no particular head for heights and knew very well that if he looked down heâd inevitably just lean out and go tumbling head over heels to the olive groves far below. A crack Alpinist, it was possible, would have regarded the climb as just a light Sunday afternoon workout but for Bowman it was the most terrifying experience of his life. Twice his foot slipped on loose stone, twice chunks of limestone disappeared into the abyss, but after a lifetime that was all of two minutes long he made it and hauled himself over the brink and into safety, sweating like a man in a Turkish bath and trembling like a withered leaf in the last gale of autumn. Heâd thought he wouldnât be scared again and he had been wrong: but now he was back on terra firma and it was on terra firma that he operated best.
He ventured a quick glance over the edge. There was no one in sight. He wondered briefly what had delayed them, maybe theyâd thought he was lurking in the shadow in the cul-de-sac, maybe theyâd picked the wrong aperture to start with, maybe anything. Heâd no time to waste wondering, he had to find out, and immediately, whether there was any escape from the pinnacle he was perched on. He had to find out for three very good and urgent reasons. If there was no other escape route he knew in his heart that no power on earth would ever make him face that descent to the cave and that heâd just have to stay there till the buzzards bleached his bones â he doubted whether there were any buzzards in those parts but the principle of the thing was pretty well fixed in his mind. If there was an escape route, then heâd have to guard against the possibility of being cut off by the gypsies. Thirdly, if there was such a route and they regarded it as unassailable, they might just elect to leave him there and go off to deal with Cecile Dubois whom they clearly,
Similar Books
