Where Eagles Dare

He lay face down for several minutes until breathing and pulse returned to something like normal—or what was normal for seven thousand feet—rose and examined the piton round which the nylon passed. It seemed firm enough but, for good measure, he gave it another few heavy blows with the hammer, undid the double bowline round his legs and secured the end of the rope to the piton with a round turn and two half-hitches, hauling on the rope until the knot locked tight.

He moved a few feet farther away from the cliff edge, cleared away the snow and lightly hammered in one of the spare pitons he had brought with him. He tested it with his hand to see if it broke clear easily. It did. He tapped it in lightly a second time and led round it the part of the rope that was secured to the firmly anchored first piton. Then he walked away, moving up the gently sloping plateau, whistling “Lorelei”. It was, as Smith himself would have been the first to admit, a far from tuneful whistle, but recognisable for all that. A figure appeared out of the night and came running towards him, stumbling and slipping in the deep snow. It was Mary Ellison. She stopped short a yard away and put her hands on her hips.

“Well!” He could hear her teeth chattering uncontrollably with the cold. “You took your time about it, didn't you?”

“Never wasted a minute,” Smith said defensively. “I had to have a hot meal and coffee first.”

“You had to have—you beast, you selfish beast!” She took a quick step forward and flung her arms around his neck. “I hate you.”

“I know.” He pulled off a gauntlet and gently touched her disengaged cheek. “You're frozen.”

“You're frozen, he says! Of course I'm frozen. I almost died in that plane. Why couldn't you have supplied some hot water bottles—or—or an electrically heated suit or—or something? I thought you loved me!”

“I can't help what you think,” Smith said kindly, patting her on the back. “Where's your gear?”

“Fifty yards. And stop patting me in that—that avuncular fashion.”

“Language, language,” Smith said. “Come on, let's fetch it.”

They trudged upwards through the deep snow, Mary holding his arm tightly. She said curiously: “What on earth excuse did you give for coming back up here? Lost a cuff-link?”

“There was something I had to come for, something apart from you, although I gave a song-and-dance act of having forgotten about it until the last moment, until it was almost too late. The radio code-book inside Sergeant Harrod's tunic.”

“He—he lost it? He dropped it? How—how could he have been so criminally careless!” She stopped, puzzled. “Besides, it's chained—”

“It's still inside Sergeant Harrod's tunic,” Smith said sombrely. “He's up here, dead.”

“Dead?” She stopped and clutched him by the arms. After a long pause, she repeated: “He's dead! That—that nice man. I heard him saying he'd never jumped before. A bad landing?”

“So it seems.”

They located the kit-bag in silence and Smith carried it back to the edge of the cliff. Mary said: “And now? The code-book?”

“Let's wait a minute. I want to watch this rope.”

“Why the rope?”

“Why not?”

“Don't tell me,” Mary said resignedly. “I'm only a little girl. I suppose you know what you're doing.”

“I wish to God I did,” Smith said feelingly.

They waited, again in silence, side by side on the kit-bag. Both stared at the rope in solemn concentration as if nylon ropes at seven thousand feet had taken on a special meaningfulness denied nylon ropes elsewhere. Twice Smith tried to light a cigarette and twice it sputtered to extinction in the drifting snow. The minutes passed, three, maybe four: they felt more like thirty or forty. He became conscious that the girl beside him was shivering violently—he guessed that she had her teeth clamped tight to prevent their chattering—and was even more acutely conscious that his entire left side—he was trying to shelter her from the wind and snow—was becoming numb. He rose to leave when suddenly the rope gave a violent jerk and the piton farther from the cliff edge was torn free. The loop of the rope slid quickly down past the piton to which it was anchored and kept on going till it was brought up short by its anchor. Whatever pressure was on the rope increased until the nylon bit deeply into the fresh snow on the cliff-edge. Smith moved across and tested the pressure on the rope, at first gingerly and tentatively then with all his strength. The rope was bar-taut and remained bar-taut. But the piton held.

“What—what on earth—” Mary began, then broke off. Her voice was an unconscious whisper.

“Charming, charming,” Smith murmured. “Someone down there doesn't like me. Surprised?”

“If—if that spike hadn't held we'd never have got down again.” The tremor in her voice wasn't all due to the cold.

“It's a fair old jump,” Smith conceded.