Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

‘Jan’s being a fool,’ I said. ‘You know about this body they’ve found. You realise the risk he’s running?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I realise.’

‘Have you talked to him about it?’

‘Yes, we have talked.’

‘And you didn’t try to dissuade him?’

‘No.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘Please. You must try to understand. They think Jan Kavan is dead. It is the answer to everything.’ She stared up into my face, her eyes pleading. ‘You saved his life. You got him out of Tangier. You must help him now.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘What does he want me to do?’

From the entrance to the gorge came the muffled thud of an explosion. Karen turned her head sharply, an anxious expression on her face.

‘What are they doing?’ Julie asked.

‘Blasting. He and the American. They have cleared the entrance to the mine and they are blasting to break up the rock falls inside the shaft so that they can clear it away by hand. He warned me what they were doing, but I don’t” like it. When we came down last night we went too far to the right and had to come down the shoulder of the gorge. All the rock there is crumbling away and the stones kept moving under our feet.’

‘Have you been up into the gorge?’ I asked her.

‘Yes.’ She gave a shudder. ‘I don’t like the place. It is cold and a little frightening. I prefer to cook.’ She said it with a little laugh. And then she looked at me, her face serious again. ‘That American — why is he so afraid?’

‘Afraid of what?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. But last night, when we got here, he was waiting for us by his tent with a gun in his hand. He was terribly pleased to see us. I think he’s frightened to be here by himself.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Julie said. ‘I would be myself.’

They were both of them looking up towards the gorge. Then Karen began to collect the blankets and fold them. Julie went to help her and I walked up the track into the gorge. Water was pouring in a cascade over the lip of the lake. It was a violent brick red. The whole gorge was full of the sound of water seeping down from above and it was cold and dank despite the noonday heat of the sun. The bulldozers stood idle. There was no sign of Jan or Ed White. But the rubble had been cleared from the base of the cliff to expose a round opening from which a cloud of rock dust drifted. It was like the entrance to a cave. ‘Jan!’ I shouted. ‘Jan!’ There was no answer, but back from the wall of the gorge opposite came the echo — Jan! Jan!

I walked towards the entrance to the mine. A little pile of clothing lay beside a plain deal box which was marked in red — explosives: Danger — Handle with Care. The top of it had been ripped off to expose cartridges of dynamite with slow-match fuses. The dust was thick by the shaft entrance, hanging like an iridescent cloud where the sunlight struck through from above. There was the sound of a stone shifting and Ed White appeared, staggering under the weight of a rock he was carrying. ‘Oh, it’s you, Latham.’ He dropped the rock on to a pile they had made just outside the entrance. ‘I thought I heard somebody call.’ He glanced up at the cliff top on the far side of the gorge, and then he gave a quick, nervous hitch to his trousers and came over. He was stripped to the waist and the dust had caked on the sweat of his body in a white film. He had his gun fastened to his belt. ‘Well, we’ve made some progress since yesterday. We’ve cleared the entrance and we’re working on the rock falls now. But we need some local labour. Wade thought you might help there. You know the language.’

‘He’s told you then?’ I asked tentatively. ‘About his name? Yeah, he told me.’ ‘It must have come as a bit of a shock to you.’ He looked at me for a moment and then said, ‘Between you and me I don’t care what he calls himself. All I’m interested in is getting through those falls before my dough runs out. This is a new country and what a man was before he came out here doesn’t interest me. All I know is I like the guy and we get on together. Have done from the first. Which was more than I expected from the tone of his letters,’ he added. And then he hitched up his belt and turned away towards the entrance to the shaft.

At that moment Jan emerged, blinking in the sunlight. ‘Philip!’ He came quickly forward. He, too, was stripped to the waist and the dust was white on his thick, hairy body. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. We need your help.’ He stopped and his voice was suddenly nervous. ‘Bilvidic isn’t down at the camp, is he?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all right.’ It was almost a sigh of relief. ‘Look! We need men up here. There’s tons of rock to be hauled. We need twenty men at least.’ The eagerness was back in his voice again. ‘I thought if you could go down and have a word with Moha, maybe we could hire men from his village.’ He seemed to have no thought in his mind except the opening up of the shaft. ‘Come here. I want to show you something.’ He switched on the big torch he had slung on his belt and dived back into the shaft.

‘What is it?’ I asked Ed, for Jan’s voice had been excited.

‘He’s found traces of silver,’ he said and he pushed me towards the shaft entrance. ‘You go ahead. I’ll follow.’ I climbed the piled-up debris and ducked into the entrance to the shaft. It was dark inside and the air was thick with dust. The yellow light of Jan’s torch flashed ahead. We went in about forty feet and then we were crawling over piles of broken rock. ‘You see,’ Jan said. ‘The roof collapsed. We’re having to blast and clear by hand. Now. Look here.’ He had stopped and was directing the beam of his torch into a cavity half blocked by the fallen roof. ‘We’ve just cleared this.’ He gripped my arm and thrust me forward.

The cavity seemed to be a long, narrow fissure in the rock. I couldn’t see it very well. Only a small part of it was so far exposed. But it ran well back, for the beam of the torch failed to reach the end of it. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Part of the mine,’ Jan said. ‘It’s where a seam of ore has been removed.’

‘How do you know?’

He shifted the beam of the torch to the sides of the fissures. ‘See the marks of their tools. And look at this.’ He pulled a piece of crumbled rock from his pocket. ‘That’s polybasite — a complex ore, but one where the extraction of the silver is a simple, quite primitive process. Probably that’s what Marcel found.’

I turned to Ed. ‘Do you agree with him?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘But if he says so, then I guess he’s right. He’s like a walking encyclopaedia. All I know is that this mine must date way back. It wasn’t being worked five hundred years ago when the landslide sealed this shaft.’ He started to back out again. ‘Come on. The sooner we have those natives on the job, the better. I want to get through this fall.’

We scrambled back over the debris and then we were out in the open again, blinking our eyes in the bright sunlight. Once more I saw Ed’s gaze go straight to the cliff top on the far side of the gorge. ‘Look at him — the bastard!’ he cried, and his voice was pitched a shade higher than normal.

‘What is it?’ I asked, shading my eyes.

‘Can’t you see him? Look!’ He took my arm and pointed. ‘I noticed him there for the first time yesterday. He was sitting there all day and again today — just sitting there, watching us.’

I saw him then, a small, turbaned figure, sitting cross-legged and motionless in a natural niche right at the top of the cliff. ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

‘How the hell should I know? They change the guard about midday and a new guy takes over. They never move. They just sit there, watching us.’ He turned away to get his clothes. ‘It gives me the creeps.’