Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

Ali’s voice suddenly cut across mine. ‘Monsieur. These people are angry. They have no food and the water is bad. This place belongs to Foum-Skhira and they believe there is great wealth here that will save them from starvation. Leave this place and you will not be hurt. But if you stay, I cannot be sure what my people will do.’

That mention of ‘my people’ reminded me of the Caid’s death and I called out to them again in Berber: ‘Men of Foum-Skhira! Two nights ago I saw Caid Hassan. Because of this man’ — I pointed to Ali — ‘he was not permitted to say what he wished. He had to send a secret messenger. That messenger was set upon by the men of Ali. They tried to kill him. Now Caid Hassan is dead and I must tell you …’

‘Silence!’ Ali screamed at me in French. ‘Silence!’ And then he was shouting at his followers, screaming at them in a frenzy, inciting them to attack. And they answered him with a low murmur like an animal that is being roused to fury.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ I cried. But Ed didn’t need to be told what that low mob growl meant. ‘I guess it’s no good,’ he said, and his voice was resigned.

And as we backed, so the mob advanced, and the sound that emanated from their throats filled the gorge like the growl of a monster. Then, suddenly, they rushed forward. We turned and ran for it.

The others were already well up the side of the gorge on a shelf of rock that slanted up from the bend. And, as I ran, I glimped Kostos, cut off from the rest of the party by his pursuers and being forced out along the cliff top above the entrance to the mine.

Ed, just ahead of me, turned and looked over his shoulder. And then he stopped. ‘It’s all right,’ he said as I halted beside him. ‘They’re not following us.’ I turned and stared back. The gorge was full of weird howls of triumph and blood lust. But it wasn’t directed against us. All their warlike instincts were concentrated on the two bulldozers. ‘Goddam the bastards!’ Ed breathed. The men of Foum-Skhira were clustered round the machines like ants. They shouted and yelled and as though by magic the bulldozers moved. They trundled them down across the tight-packed rocks of the dumping ground and toppled them into the water. There was a splash and then the waters closed over them and the place was suddenly as God had made it again.

And then they moved towards the entrance to the mine shaft. Ali was already there. He had got off his mule and was standing in front of the entrance. My eyes travelled upwards and I saw Kostos balanced precariously on the rocks of the slide almost directly above him. He must have dislodged a stone, for Ali was looking up now. Whether the two men could see each other I don’t know. I think it likely, for Kostos wasn’t looking at the Berbers creeping over the rocks towards him. He held a stick of dynamite and he was looking down at Ali and the scene below him.

A pinpoint flicker of flame showed for an instant in his hand.

My eyes went involuntarily upwards. Not four hundred feet above, the crumbling cliff, that Jan had pointed out to me, towered above him. The flicker of flame was replaced by a wisp of smoke. I wanted to shout, to tell him not to do it. The men were packed tight below him. It was murder. Stupid, unnecessary, pointless murder. His arm swung back and the wisp of smoke curved through the air. From where we were Kostos was no bigger than a puppet and the wisp of smoke curving downwards into the close-packed mob looked as harmless as a feather floating through the air.

It fell into the centre of the crowd which mushroomed out away from it with an instinctive sense of fear. We could see it sizzling away on the ground now, and I felt a sudden relief. Kostos had left too long a fuse. It would injure nobody. But then Ed gripped my arm. ‘The dynamite!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Do you see it? That box.’

It was — a small, square patch of yellow close beside the sputtering wisp of smoke. I saw it for a second, and then there was a flash. It was followed instantly by a great, roaring burst of flame. The whole area of beaten rock on which the mob stood seemed lifted skywards. Rocks were flung up and men flattened to the ground. I saw Ali thrown backwards into the mouth of the shaft. And whilst the rocks were still rising in the air, the sound of that explosion hit us and the blast of it rocked us on our feet. It was an ear-shattering, indescribable crash in that confined space. And the noise went on, hammering at the cliff faces, rolling upwards over the mountain slopes, and drumming back at us in a stupendous cacophony of sound, whilst the rocks stopped heaving upwards and began to fall back to the ground.

The sound of the explosion began to diminish as the echoes reverberated back from farther and farther away. And just as a deep, mutilated silence seemed to settle on the gorge, there was a rumble like thunder out of the sky. I looked up. And then Ed’s hand clutched my arm and I knew that he’d seen it, too. The sky was blue. There wasn’t a cloud to mar the pastel shades of sunset.

But against that blue the cliff face where Kostos stood was slowly, lazily toppling outwards. It was catching the reddening rays of the sun so that the rock glowed. It was like something in Technicolor, remote and rather beautiful.

But the sound was not beautiful. It grew in volume, a great, grumbling, earth-shaking roar. The whole cliff was toppling down, hitting the slopes below and rebounding. It was as slow and inevitable as a waterfall, and the dust rose like spray.

I glanced round me in sudden fear, expecting all the cliffs around us to be toppling. But it was only that one cliff and below it Kostos stood, his body twisted round so that I knew he was looking upwards, seeing the ghastly thing he had let loose, but standing transfixed, knowing it was death that was pouring down upon him in the form of millions of tons of rock and unable to do anything to save himself. And below, by the entrance to the mine, the men of Foum-Skhira lay dazed, barely aware of what was descending on them from above.

All this I saw in a flash and then my gaze returned to the mountainside. The cliff was hidden now by a cloud of dust that shone red in the sunlight, and below it, the great tide rolled like a tidal wave, and as it rolled it seemed to gather the mountainside with it, so that the whole slope on which Kostos stood was thrust over the lip of the cliff, taking him with it, still oddly standing erect staring up at the main body of the landslide.

And in that split second in which my eyes recorded his fall, the whole gorge was suddenly filled by chaos. The sound pounded at the ground under our feet. Pieces of cliff from the farther side were shaken loose. Small avalanches were started. And all the time the noise gathered volume, the dust rose white like steam till it caught fire in the sunlight, and all the mountain poured into the gorge, thundering and crashing and filling it with rock.

Long after the movement had slowed and the weight had gone out of the sound, Ed and I stood there, incapable of action, stunned by the terrible vastness of it. It had a sort of horrible fascination. It took an effort of will-power to make me turn my head and look behind me, up the gorge, to see that the others were safe. Thank God, they were. They were in a little huddle as though clinging to each other, and they were as motionless as we were.

I looked back again at the scene of desolation and felt slightly sick. The dust was settling now and the sunset colours on the mountain top were flaming into vivid beauty. And into the dark cavern of the gorge a stillness was creeping, not a graveyard stillness, but the deep, satisfied stillness of Nature. And then, clear across that stillness, came a cry. It was a high, piercing cry, and I heard the name of Allah. Down by the gorge mouth, clear of the outer spill of the slide, was a little knot of men. They were waving their arms and calling down curses on our heads. One of them, a big, bearded man, was shaking his fist at us and clawing his way towards us across the debris of the slide.