Алистер Маклин - River of Death

‘You don’t much care for me, do you?’

‘Enough to ask you to stay behind.’

In the late afternoon Hamilton and his party were still making their way towards the Lost City. The going underfoot was excellent, dry, leafy and springy.

Unfortunately for people like Smith, the incline was fairly severe and the heat was, of course, as always oppressive.

Hamilton said: ‘I think we’ll have a half-hour break here. We’re ahead of time – we can’t move in until it’s dark. Besides, some of you may think you’ve earned a rest.’

‘Too bloody right, we have,’ Smith said. ‘How much longer do you intend to crucify us?’

He sank wearily to the ground and mopped his streaming face with a bandana. He was not the only one to do so. With the exception of Hamilton and the twins, everyone seemed to be suffering from a shortage of breath and leaden, aching legs. Hamilton had, indeed, been setting a brisk pace.

‘You’ve done very well, all of you,’ Hamilton said. ‘Mind you, you might have done even better if you hadn’t guzzled and drunk like pigs down in the village. We’ve climbed almost two thousand feet since leaving there.’

Smith said: ‘How – much – longer?’

‘From here to the top? Another half hour. No more. I’m afraid we’ll have to do a bit more climbing after that – downhill, mind you, but a pretty steep downhill.’

‘Half an hour,’ Smith said. ‘Nothing.’

‘Wait until you start going down.’

‘The last lap,’ Hamilton said. ‘We are ten yards from the brink of a ravine. Anyone who hasn’t a head for heights had better say so now.’

If anyone didn’t have a head for heights he or she wasn’t saying so. Hamilton began to crawl forward. The rest followed. Hamilton stopped and motioned to the others to join him.

Hamilton said: ‘You see what I see?’

Smith said: ‘Jesus!’

Maria said: ‘The Lost City!’

Tracy said: ‘Shangri-la!’

‘El Dorado,’ Hamilton said.

‘What?’ Smith said. ‘What was that?’

‘Nothing, really. There never was an El Dorado. It means the golden man. New Inca rulers were covered in gold dust and dipped – only temporarily, of course – in a lake. You see that peculiar stepped pyramid with the flat top at the far end?’

The question was really unnecessary. It was the dominant feature of the Lost City.

‘That’s one of the reasons – there are two others – why Huston thought that the Children of the Sun came from Colombia. It’s what you call a ziggurat. Originally it was a temple tower in Babylonia or Assyria. No traces of those remain in the Old World – the Egyptians built a quite different form of pyramid.’

Tracy said, as if not knowing: ‘This is the only one?’

‘By no means. You’ll find well-preserved examples in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru. But only in Central America and the north-west of South America. But nowhere else in the world-except here.’

Serrano said: ‘So they’re Andean. You couldn’t ask for better proof.’

‘You couldn’t. But I have it.’

‘Complete proof? Total?’

‘I’ll show you later.’ He pointed with outstretched arm. ‘You see those steps?’

Stretching from the river to the top of the plateau and hewn from the vertical rock-face, the stone stairway, terrifying to look at even from a distance, angled upwards at 45°.

‘Two hundred and forty-eight steps,’ Hamilton said, ‘each thirty inches wide. Worn, smooth and slippery – and no hand rail.’

Tracy said: ‘Who counted them?’

‘I did.’

‘You mean–’

‘Yes. Wouldn’t do it again, though. There had been a hand rail once and I’d brought along equipment to rig a rope rail. It’s still on the hovercraft – for obvious reasons.’

‘Mr Hamilton!’ Silver spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘Mr Hamilton!’

‘What’s the excitement about?’

‘I saw someone moving in the ruins down there. I swear to it.’

‘The pilot’s eagle-eye, eh? No need to swear to anything. There are quite a number of people down there. Why do you think I didn’t fly in by helicopter?’

Serrano said: ‘They are not friends, no?’

‘No.’ He turned to Smith. ‘Speaking of helicopters, I don’t have to explain the layout of this place to you. You know it already.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That film cassette you had Hiller steal for you.’

‘I don’t know what–’

‘I took them a year ago. I left Hiller no option but to steal them. Taken from a helicopter. Not bad for an amateur, were they?’

Smith didn’t say whether they were or not. He, Hiller and Tracy had again, momentarily, assumed very odd expressions, mainly of deep unease.

Hamilton said: ‘Look to your left there. Just where the river forks to go round the island.’

At a distance of about half a mile and about three hundred feet below their present elevation a spidery, sagging, and apparently twisted series of ropes spanned the gorge between the top of the plateau and a point about half-way up the top of the cliff on which they were lying. Immediately below the cliff anchorage a small waterfall arced out into the river.

‘A rope bridge,’ Hamilton said. ‘Well, a liana bridge. Or a straw bridge. Those are normally renewed once a year. This one can’t have been renewed for at least five years. Must be in a pretty rotten state by this time.’

‘So?’ Smith said. The apprehension in his voice was unmistakable.

‘So that’s the way we go in.’

The silence that followed was long and profound.

At last Serrano said ‘Another proof of Andean ancestry, no? I mean, there are no rope bridges in the Mato Grosso – well, there’s not one now – nor, as far as I know, anywhere in Brazil. The Indians never learnt how to make them. Why should they have done – they never needed them. But the Incas and their descendants knew how to make them – living in the Andes, they had to know.’

‘I’ve seen one,’ Hamilton said. ‘On the Apurimac river, high up in Peru – about twelve thousand feet. They use six heavy braided straw cables for the main supports – four for the footpaths, two for the hand rails. Smaller ropes for closing in the sides and a bed of twigs spread over the footpath so that only a three-year-old could possibly fall through. Can support scores of people when new. I’m afraid this one is not new.’

A narrow cleft ran down the cliff at an angle of close on 60°. A small stream, probably fed from some spring above, fell, rather than flowed down this cleft, leaping whitely from spur to spur. On one side of this cleft a series of rough steps had been cut, obviously a very long time ago.

Hamilton and the others started to descend. It was a fairly arduous descent but not really either difficult or dangerous as Hamilton had taken the precaution of binding together a series of tough lianas, anchoring one end to a tree and letting the rest fall down the cleft.

At the foot of the cleft, just above where the waterfall arced out above the river, a platform, about eight feet by eight, had been quarried out of the cliff-face. Hamilton was already standing there. One by one he was joined by the others.

Hamilton moved to examine a stone bollard and an iron post that had been hammered into the platform. Three now threadbare lianas were attached to both. Hamilton produced his sheath knife and scraped at the iron post. Thick brown flakes were shaved away.

‘Keep your voices down,’ Hamilton said. ‘Rusty, isn’t it?’ He turned away to look over the gorge. The others did the same. The straw bridge was very flimsy and clearly venerable. Both the hand supports and the footpath were severely frayed. Several of the straw ropes appeared to have rotted and fallen away.