The Voyage of the Dolphin (22 page)

By Crozier's reckoning it was around three in the morning, and they had been climbing on a diagonal path east for more than an hour. He had stopped to catch his breath; his three friends were up ahead, beyond them, the hulking figure of their guide. As he turned, something moved among the trees on the lower slope and he strained to see in the gloom. All was still. Just a hare, or a deer perhaps. But he began to run nonetheless.

A little further on he looked up and realised that the others were out of sight. He came to another halt. The path had degenerated into brush and scree where it met a sharp bulge in the mountainside, and it was unclear whether the way was around or over. He gazed at the moon, which was warped, almost ovoid, its cratered face sharply delineated: Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains, that was one of the eyes; the open mouth, he was nearly sure, was Mare Nubium, the Sea of Clouds. But he couldn't recall the others. At that moment, from somewhere high above, back behind the crags, came a drawn-out, plaintive howl, pure in the silence, that made his scalp tighten. Barely had it subsided than another began, hungrier, lonelier than the first, and then another, and from the darkness of the mountains more cries emerged until they had swelled to an inconsolable chorus. Down in the village, several Huskies were roused to answer, and then, just as suddenly, the sounds ceased. He made his choice and set off.

As he ran, Crozier pondered again what it was he was escaping from. Life in the valley was no hardship. On the contrary, it was extremely pleasant. Idyllic even. The people wanted for nothing. They worked, they played games, or made music and told stories, or had books read to them. They lived off the fat of the land. Every one of them seemed to be a first-class cook. Man and woman, big and small: all were equal. And the wine!

He thought of the world he was running towards, with its heaving cities and turmoil, its cruelty and bloodshed, its traps and snares, its heartache. But, as Phoebe said: however lovely it might be, they were
prisoners
, and without free will it couldn't be paradise. McNeill, she grumbled, was a tyrant. ‘He's forcing us to be his children. He's emasculating us, don't you see?'

Just as he was beginning to fear he had taken the wrong path, Crozier rounded a bend and almost collided with the others.

‘Where the hell were you?' Rafferty demanded. ‘We need to hurry. Ossian says they may already be after us.'

The air, as they climbed higher, grew colder, and beneath their feet the pebbles became slippery. The trail itself narrowed to the width of a man's shoulders, falling away steeply to one side so they were forced to lean into the mountain as they ran. At one point the ledge gave way and Rafferty, momentarily off balance due to the weight of his pack, teetered and would have fallen if not for a timely shove from behind. Skeins of cloud dimmed the moon and they pounded along blindly until, at last, the ground began to level out and the path curved in towards a plateau that led to the base of the sheer wall of the summit.

They stopped to set their backpacks down and drink some water.

‘Not too far now,' Ossian said. ‘Another hour or so.'

‘Do you think anyone saw us leave?' Rafferty peered back down the trail.

‘We were careful, but you never know.'

‘What will your grandfather say when he finds us gone?'

Ossian surveyed the distant valley. The glow from the dying bonfire was still visible.

‘I don't want to think about that.'

Crickets were fidgeting in the undergrowth nearby. Phoebe took a meditative slug of water.

‘Fitz, I can't believe you didn't bring Bunion. We're going to be in big trouble.'

‘I tried, I really did,' Fitzmaurice said. ‘Little bugger did Stiff Dog like you wouldn't believe. And bear in mind, he's deceptively heavy.'

Another howl descended through the night. Ossian picked up the rifle Harris had provided when they left the
Dolphin
. It looked like a child's toy in his hands. They reattached their packs and set off across the plateau towards the cliffs. After a while the ground became increasingly uneven, undulating into a series of steep ridges they had to clamber up on all-fours before edging – or in some instances sliding and swearing – down the other side. Fitzmaurice, encumbered as he was by the Magiflex and its accoutrements, found this particularly taxing. The dense dusk through which they were travelling did not help. Eventually they came to the last rise, and Ossian, reaching the top first, held up a hand to halt the others as they arrived.

‘Oh my God.'

‘Jaysus.'

‘My word.'

‘Cripes.'

They were gazing down into a chasm, a long split in the shelf of the mountain some thirty feet across and so deep that the darkness far below was absolute. The cold breath of eternity wafted up at them.

‘Bit of a challenge this one,' Ossian said. ‘But don't be afraid.'

He led them further along the lip, stopped, and peeped over.

‘When you're ready, I want you to follow me.'

‘Wait a min—' Fitzmaurice began, but the giant had stepped into the abyss.

Phoebe clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress a scream, and they stood in shocked silence. A moment later, Ossian's head reappeared at their feet.

‘Right. Who's first?'

The ledge on which he was standing was connected to the opposite side of the chasm by a bridge made of rawhide ropes interlaced with slats of wood and animal bone, and secured by iron pinions driven into the rock. It had evidently been around a long time and, it was noted, sagged significantly in the middle.

‘Don't worry, it's quite safe. It held my family with you on their shoulders after all,' Ossian said.

‘We don't remember that.'

‘Not surprising, as you were unconscious.'

Crozier went first. The rawhide made for springy suspension and the bridge bounced up and down at the least provocation. Weight management, and rhythm, were the key. Though he was careful not to look down, he was aware of the dark suck of gravity beneath him. He was recalling crossing, as a child (what were his parents thinking?) another, much longer rope bridge slung by fishermen between the mainland and a small islet off the Antrim coast, how it swung wildly in the wind, the swarming, marble-flecked agitation of the Atlantic a hundred feet below, the exhilarated relief of completion. Already a lifetime ago. This was easy by comparison. He gripped the hand supports, focusing on the steps up ahead that led back to terra firma. The ropes were creaking and he paused to let the bridge stabilise.

‘Keep going,' Ossian called.

‘Nearly there,' Phoebe said.

It was steeper after the mid-point and he had to haul himself towards the ledge, his boots sliding on the damp slats. At last he was at the other side, scrambling up onto the plateau.

Rafferty was next to cross, followed by Phoebe. Fitzmaurice, despite his mountaineering experience, required some coaxing.

‘I don't like the look of it.'

‘It's perfectly safe. We all did it.'

‘I don't like the way it creaks.'

‘That's normal. All rope creaks.'

‘Not like that it doesn't.'

‘Do you want Ossian to carry you?'

‘No.'

He set off gingerly, keeping an ear to the groaning of the cords, and made good progress until the halfway stage where he froze, hunched forward, his legs wobbling.

‘Fitz?'

‘Fitzie?'

‘Hugh?'

Through gritted teeth, ‘It's the Magiflex.'

Lashed to his back, the camera, attached to its folded tripod, had slipped forty-five degrees to the horizontal, the weight of it pulling the bridge off kilter.

‘Release the strap, let it go,' Ossian advised.

Fitzmaurice began grunting and wriggling, heaving on the opposite rope in an attempt to shrug the camera back into position.

‘Let it go!'

The bridge teetered and listed, Fitzmaurice holding on with one hand as he struggled with the other to grasp the Magiflex.

‘Let it fall!'

But Fitzmaurice was intent. He flailed behind him with his free hand and, after a panic of fumbling managed, for a brief instant, to grip the underside of the camera. With a sound like the twang of a vigorously plucked bass-string, the bridge overturned, leaving Fitzmaurice dangling over the abyss and the Magiflex whistling towards the centre of the Earth. Eyes wide with anguish, Fitzmaurice watched it fall and appeared, for a moment, to consider dropping down after it.

‘Bloody hell,' he shouted.

‘Don't let go,' Ossian told him. Crouching on all-fours, the young giant began to edge along the upturned bridge.

‘Stop it. Keep still,' he yelled. The dangler's attempts to secure purchase were causing severe turbulence. The bridge steadied, Ossian set off again, the griping of the ropes increasing in pitch as he neared the middle. Once there, he braced himself as best he could, reached around, seized Fitzmaurice by the wrist and, with huge, quivering effort, hauled him half onto the slats, nearly causing the structure to overturn again. Amid the hysterical squeaking of over-stressed fibres, Fitzmaurice squirmed himself into a horizontal position.

‘Nice and easy. No sudden moves. Let it settle… Now, slowly forwards.'

The pair of them inched along, urged on by the others. The bridge shuddered and lurched, and even Ossian, though outwardly confident, appeared once or twice to be questioning the reliability of Inuit technology. It held. Once up the steps, Fitzmaurice sat down and took out his pipe and did not speak for some time.

 

The entrance to the mountain was hidden to the casual eye by a projection of rock where the cliff fell away, and was further obscured, even when close up, by the positioning of several large boulders. The opening was narrow, and low enough that the giant had to bend almost double, but once inside, a seal-fat lamp revealed a high-vaulted passageway leading at an upward angle into the dark. The stone on either side was wet to the touch and the chill air had a metallic tang. They trudged in silence for half an hour and then the gradient eased and the tunnel opened up into a vast cavern. Ossian held up his lantern and the light flickered over gargoyles of twisted rock and limestone, growths and meltings; an aeon's worth of corrosions and metastases. Immense stalactites protruded from the ceiling far above; in the grottoes, mountain seepage dripped into glittering pools.

‘If only I had the Magiflex,' Fitzmaurice moaned.

They passed through chamber after chamber, each more fantastically wrought than the last – one was electric-green with phosphorescence, another encrusted from top to bottom with enormous pink crystals – until the path descended steeply and they arrived at the edge of an expanse of dark water. Tethered nearby was a kayak. They climbed in, Phoebe crouching at the front with the lamp, and Fitzmaurice and Ossian taking up a paddle each. The surface gleamed like liquid obsidian. Crozier trailed his fingers over the side but it was as viscous as cold oil and he snatched them out again.

The boat slid through profound darkness. In the flare of the lantern the walls glistened; in places, the ceiling sloped so that it almost grazed the giant's hair, and the openings between one cavern and the next became so tight the paddles had to be brought into the boat. Elsewhere, they had to negotiate between reefs of stalagmites and divert around humps of stone, Fitzmaurice and Ossian calling out instructions to each other. Eventually the walls opened up again and they entered another cavern in which the water, untrammelled, expanded into a lake. Towards the far shore, beams of daylight split the darkness.

‘Here we are.'

They tethered the kayak at the foot of a steep slope of shale and ice, at the top of which was a narrow oblong of sky. They climbed up and through the aperture, and found themselves looking out over the plateau where they had been lost in the blizzard, not far from the dog cairn. The moon, bleached by the dawn's rays, hung still in the sky. A single star sparkled. The air was chill and they rummaged extra clothing from their backpacks.

‘Seems we have company,' Ossian murmured, pulling on his gloves.

Ranged along the crest of a nearby ridge, regarding them with vacant intensity, were the wolves, a dozen or more, some standing, some sitting, others lying with folded paws. They were barrel-chested but lean, dirty cream against the snow.

‘Start walking, they won't bother us,' Ossian said. ‘Be confident.'

The wolves watched them go. A few hundred yards later they were still on the ridge and before long they were out of sight.

The snow was patchy but ice axes were required on the steeper slopes, and there were a number of slips, Rafferty taking the prize with a high-speed slide of some sixty feet. After a while they came to the tents, half-buried, and while they had no further use for the equipment, Crozier went to the trouble of retrieving his books: a volume of Richter's
Birds of the
Northern Hemisphere
and a copy of Lord Dufferin's
Letters
From High Latitudes.

They continued their descent, and after a few hours came to a plateau below the snowline where they stopped to eat the food they had brought. The edge of the island was now visible and beyond it the glint of sea. The wolves had reappeared, watching them from the rocks above. Ossian glanced at the rifle but went on eating.

‘Have you never thought of leaving before?' Phoebe asked. ‘You must have wondered what lay beyond.'

‘Of course, but how? Without a ship, or a map? Hamilton Coote is the only person to have left. Until now.'

‘That is, of course, if the
Dolphin
is still waiting for us.'

Ossian seized the rifle and fired in the air. The sound of the shot echoed around the mountain and across the plain, and the wolves, which had been encroaching, scattered. Shortly after, refreshed, the party pressed on, the giant trotting eagerly ahead. The others descended in silence.