The sound of the hoofs brought Ben out of his lethargy. Forgetting he was under a table he sprang to his feet, and the resulting impact produced another form of oblivion. When he recovered, the hoofs were no longer audible.
Now he crawled out, and stood up carefully. Speed was vital, but so was caution. Another knock like that and he wouldn’t have any head left—and now, if ever, was the time he wanted it!
He walked dizzily to the door. The moon emerged from the clouds again as he opened it, and a little patch of light streamed through a small window in the passage. It revealed the emptiness of the passage, and the bottom stair. Ben took a breath, and turned towards the bottom stair.
There should have been no need to take that breath. Five people who might have murdered him, three of whom had actually attempted to do so, no longer threatened him. Sims, Greene and Faggis were out of the house, and the other two were out of the world. But stairs, particularly if they were wooden and uncarpeted, always had an unnerving effect upon Ben. They were in the same category as corners and cupboards, and just as liable to spring surprises. And then these were foreign stairs. You couldn’t trust anything foreign, never mind what it was!
There was another reason, however, why Ben took that breath, and why he ascended with such palpitations. The memory of the slow, heavy steps he had heard upon them twice seemed to fit somehow into the sound of the hoofs, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, and he didn’t like the picture they made.
On every stair he told himself that he would find everything all right in the upper room towards which he was ascending. On every stair he believed he was wrong. And when at last he reached the top, found the door of the room ajar, and poked his head in, he discovered his worst fears justified. The room was empty.
‘’E got ’em both dahn,’ thought Ben, ‘and now ’e’s gorn orf with ’em!’
Yes, that was obvious. The tumbled little bed showed that it had lately had an occupant. The occupant’s form could almost be discerned in outline. But now the occupant had been carted away, and also the girl who had been deputed to sit by her and look after her.
And neither of them had offered any audible protest! That fact impressed itself upon Ben with all its sinister implications.
Subconsciously Ben pieced together the probable movements of Sims after Greene and Faggis had started for the beach. He had found and harnessed the mule. To a little cart, very likely. He had returned to the hut and ascended the stairs—light, soft steps—and had descended with one of the girls—slow, heavy steps—occasionally pausing to shift the burden, or open a door, or listen. Twice he had made this journey, and each time the girl he had brought down had uttered no sound. And now they were being driven away to … where?
As the question rose miserably in Ben’s mind, his eye fell upon a little piece of paper lying under a chair. It was the chair by the bed, upon which Molly Smith had presumably sat. He lurched towards it eagerly, stooped, toppled, and picked the paper up sitting. On it was written:
‘Don Manuel. Villabanzos.’
Ben stared at it with almost tearful gratitude. ‘It’s fer me,’ he thought. ‘The nime of the second ’otel! Doncher worry, miss—I’ll be there!’
He clambered up from the floor, and sat on the side of the bed. He resisted a nearly overwhelming desire to lie on the bed. He knew that, if he gave way to the desire, he would close his weary eyes and would not open them again until he saw Greene and Faggis bending over him. Yes, lummy! Greene and Faggis! He must leave before they got back! He had a double reason for continuing on his way with as little delay as possible.
Sims would be ahead of him, and they would be behind him. As usual, his mission was to be the middle of the sandwich!
Still, there were one or two small matters to be attended to before he left the hut with all its gloomy associations. The first was food. He wanted a bit in his stomach and a bit in his pocket. Descending the stairs, he hunted around, but he couldn’t find a crumb. Sims had taken the sack, and had evidently cleared out the larder as well.
Next, weapons. ‘I’ve got me sirocco,’ he thought; ‘but if there’s hennything helse knockin’ abart, I might as well ’ave it.’ He found a hammer, and put it in his pocket with satisfaction. It went right through the pocket on to the floor, so he picked it up and tried the other pocket. This proved all right for hammers.
Lastly, the two dead men. Answering an odd impulse for which he could not account, he paid a final visit to the room in which they awaited some final ministration from the living. There was not much Ben could do, and there was no call for him to do anything; but somehow he hated the idea of leaving the Spaniard bound, and he loosened the cords that secured him and then eased the body to the floor.
The two bodies now lay side by side. It gave Ben a funny feeling to look at them. Had they truly, only a short while ago, been at each other’s throats? Rapacity and life had divided them. Peace and death brought them together again, destroying their quarrel and their menace. ‘Good luck ter yer,’ muttered Ben. And shoved the table-cloth over them.
Then, rather ashamed of himself, he left the hut, gave an anxious glance westwards in the direction of the coast, and turned his face eastwards.
He had used several minutes in these preliminaries to departure, but two of the preliminaries had been practical, and only the third sentimental; and even the sentimental preliminary had been necessary for his peace of mind. If he had left the little Spaniard bound in the chair, the vision would have haunted him horribly. It was much pleasanter to think of the poor, ugly fellow lying quietly under the table-cloth, next to his old foe …
The moon was high, and the track, as Ben stepped out upon it from the shadows of the cottage, was dazzlingly clear. If the moonlight showed up the dizzy valleys and gorges as well as the track, and made the mountain-tops look like great white ghosts, it was nevertheless welcome. In darkness, this journey would have been impossible.
After all, you could keep clear of the gorges if you walked straight and didn’t wobble, and you needn’t look at the ghostly mountain peaks, not if you didn’t want to! And you didn’t want to. One of the peaks was like a sword point, and another was like a witch’s face, and another was like a crocodile’s open mouth. And no matter how fast you walked, they all seemed to be walking along with you, telling you that you weren’t going to get away from them and so you needn’t think it!
‘Funny thing abart mountins,’ reflected Ben. ‘Yer can pass a ’ouse in a tick and ’ave done with it, but a mountin sticks ter yer like. Wunner why it is?’
But he soon stopped wunnering. The mountains were on his right and, the valleys were on his left, and his reflective mood had brought him too near the valleys. He veered away swiftly, and, as though in response, a valley suddenly darted towards him, seeming to slash his road in two with a vast black knife.
A deep gully ran in southwards from the left, stabbing the mountainside which had gradually crept forward from the right to the very edge of the track. The gully ended in a point, and was perhaps more like a black arrow than a knife, an arrow that had been shot by some invisible giant from the north and had wounded sheer rock. A hundred yards ahead of the spot where Ben paused and gasped at space was another spot where, presumably, he had to get to. He could see the track gleaming as it emerged from the dark gash in the mountainside. Before the giant had sent this shattering arrow, the road had probably run straight across this great dividing gap, but now one had to turn sharply to the right, and creep round the wound.
‘Well,’ murmured Ben, ‘wot I ses is, wot yer gotter, yer gotter, and I gotter!’
So he turned to the right, and crept.
On one side, sheer rock. On the other, sheer precipice. Immediately beneath, a narrow, rough track that was sometimes not more than nine feet across. Nine feet from rock to precipice. And a precipice, you understand, that to look over was almost to fall over. Its carpet, surely, was in another world!
Ben began erect. Then he found himself stooping. In that position you could hit the mountain more quickly if it came too close, or dart away from the precipice if it advanced too near. Then, when the precipice insisted on advancing too near, and the mountain refused to go back, he found himself crawling. After all, nobody was looking.
Crawling, he neared the extremity of the incision. He wasn’t looking at it, but he was conscious of it, because the precipice was narrowing and the wall of cliff on the opposite side was looming closer and closer. It seemed to be pressing down upon him. Trying to prevent him from breathing. The silence became more intense. Not that he had heard anything before, but sound, as a theory, had existed. Here, in this appalling, suffocating vastness—not the vastness one escaped in but the vastness that squeezed one into nothingness—even the theory of sound ceased to be.
‘Gawd! Where’s me ’eart!’ thought Ben.
Not even that!
Then, with a sharp crack, the theory of sound swept back.
‘Oi!’ thought Ben. ‘Some ’un’s shootin’ me!’
He tried to lie flat, but couldn’t, because he was. The cracking continued, then a little dribble, as of a dancing stone. The stone danced during a second of freedom after a century of captivity. Plop! The swansong rose from the depths, where the stone had reached captivity again for yet another century.
Thus Ben’s crawling body influenced the history of geology.
‘’Ere it is agine,’ thought Ben.
His heart had returned, and was thumping the ground like a hammer.
He crawled on. Now he reached the extremity of the wound. The spot where it had hurt, and where the mountain had roared, ‘Ow!’ How was the track going to negotiate this cruel V? Suppose … it didn’t? The thought brought sweat.
The track didn’t negotiate the V. A few boards did. Ben crept up to the boards. Blackness shrieked at him. From above and below and all sides. Some of the sweat dripped down into the blackness below. For the first time in his life, Ben pitied the stars.
He repeated his slogan. ‘Wot yer gotter, yer gotter.’ He got to the middle of the boards. Then, they swayed. He grabbed them to hold them up. Then, doubtful whether this was scientific, he grabbed himself, to hold himself up. The boards went on swaying.
He tried to move, but failed. He was holding himself too tightly. The situation grew more and more impossible. He decided to think of all the nice times he had had in the past. He found he hadn’t had any. The situation now became quite impossible. If you can’t hang on to your past while you’re going into the future, what’s the use? He gave up trying, and did whatever he was told to. Apparently he was told to start singing ‘Three Sailors of Bristol City.’
Suddenly he stopped singing. He didn’t know why. Again he was merely doing what he was told. Had the world he was about to leave had enough of the song?
All at once he discovered there was another reason why he had stopped singing. Voices were on the track behind him. Greene’s and Faggis’s.