The people that lived in fair Nottingham

Andreahe'd come back by this timethought it a sure bet that they'd work right round the square and get here in two or three minutes, so he took off like a bat across the roofs." "Going to draw them off?" Mallory was at Louki's side staring out of the window. "The crazy fool! He'll get himself killed this timeget himself killed for sure! There are soldiers everywhere. Besides, they won't fall for it again. He tricked them once up in the hills, and the Germans" "I'm not so sure, sir," Brown interrupted excitedly. "Andrea's just shot out the searchlight on his side. They'll think for certain that we're going to break out over the wall andlook, sir, look! There they go!" Brown was almost dancing with excitement, the pain of his injured leg forgotten. "He's done it, sir, he's done it!" Sure enough, Mallory saw, the patrol had broken away from their shelter in the house to their right and were running across the square in extended formation, their heavy boots clattering on the cobbles, stumbling, falling, recovering again as they lost footing on the slippery wetness of the uneven stones. At the same time Mallory could see torches flickering on the roofs of the houses opposite, the vague forms of men crouching low to escape observation and making swiftly for the spot where Andrea had been when he had shot out the great Cyclops eye of the searchlight. "They'll be on him from every side." Mallory spoke quietly enough, but his fists clenched until the nails cut into the palms of his hands. He stood stock-still for some seconds, stooped quickly and gathered a Schmeisser up from the floor. "He hasn't a chance. I'm going after him." He turned abruptly, brought up with equal suddenness: Miller was blocking his way to the door. "Andrea left word that we were to leave him be, that he'd find his own way out." Miller was very calm, very respectful. "Said that no one was to help him, not on any account." "Don't try to stop me, Dusty." Mallory spoke evenly, mechanically almost He was hardly aware that Dusty Miller was there. He only knew that he must get out at once, get to Andrea's side, give him what help he could. They had been together too long, he owed too much to the smiling giant to let him go so easily. He couldn't remember how often Andrea had come after him, more than once when he had thought hope was gone. . . . He put his hand against Miller's chest. "You'll only be in his way, boss," Miller said urgently. "That's what you said . . ." Mallory pushed him 'aside, strode for the door, brought up his fist to strike as canon digital cameras web listings hands closed round his upper arm. He stopped just in time, looked down into Louki's worried face. "The American is right," Louki said insistently. "You must not go. Andrea said you were to take us down to the harbour." "Go down yourselves," Mallory said brusquely. "You know the way, you know the plans." "You would let us all go, let us all" "I'd let the whole damn' world go if I could help him." There was an utter sincerity in the New Zealander's voice. "Andrea would never let me down." "But you would let him down," Louki said quietly. "Is that it, Major Mallory?" "What the devil do you mean?" "By not doing as he wishes. He may be hurt, killed even, and if you go after him and are killed too, that makes it all useless. He would die for nothing. Is it thus you would repay your friend?" "All right, all right, you win," Mallory said irritably. "That is how Andrea would want it," Louki murmured. "Any other way you would be" "Stop preaching at me! Right, gentlemen, let's be on our way." He was back on balance again, easy, relaxed, the primeval urge to go out and kill well under control. "We'll take the high roadover the roofs. Dig into that kitchen stove there, rub the ashes all over your hands and faces. See that there's nothing white on you anywhere. And no talking!" The five-minute journey down to the harbour walla journey made in soft-footed silence with Mallory hushing even the beginnings of a whisperwas quite uneventful. 'Not only did they see no soldiers, they saw no one at all. The inhabitants of Navarone were wisely observing the curfew, and the streets were completely deserted. Andrea had drawn off pursuit with a vengeance. Mallory began to fear that the Germans had taken him, but just as they reached the water's edge he heard the gun-fire again, a good deal farther away this time, in the very north-east corner of the town, round the back of the fortress. Mallory stood on the low wail above the harbour, looked at his companions, gazed out over the dark oiliness of the water. Through the heavy rain he could just distinguish, to his right and left, the vague blurs of caiques moored stern on to the wall. Beyond that he could see nothing. "Well, I don't suppose we can get much

That erst was sae fair and frie O.

and brown mottled capes. First of all they located the telephone and reported to base. Then the young sergeant sent two men to search another hundred yards or so along the cliff, while he and the fourth soldier probed among the rocks that paralleled the cliff. The search was slow and careful, but the two men did not penetrate very far into the rocks. To Mallory, the sergeant's, reasoning was obvious and logical. If the sentry had gone to sleep or taken ill, it was unlikely that he would have gone far in among that confused jumble of boulders. Mallory and the others were safely back beyond their reach. And then came what Mallory had fearedan organised, methodical inspection of the cliff-top itself: worse stifi, it began with a search along the very edge. Securely held by his three men with interlinked armsthe last with a hand hooked round his beltthe sergeant walked slowly along the rim, probing every inch with the spotlit beam of a powerful torch. Suddenly he stopped short, exclaimed suddenly and stooped, torch and face only inches from the ground. There was no question as to what he had foundthe deep gouge made in the soft, crumbling soil by the climbing rope that had been belayed round the boulder and gone over to the edge of the cliff. . . . Softly, silently, Mallory and his three companions straightened to their knees or to their feet, gun barrels lining along the tops of boulders or peering out between cracks in the rocks. There was no doubt in any of their minds that Stevens was lying there helplessly in the crutch of the chimney, seriously injured or dead. It needed only one German carbine to point down that cliff face, however carelessly, and these four men would die. They would have to die. The sergeant was stretched out his length now, two men holding his legs. His head and shoulders were over the edge of the cliff, the beam from his torch stabbing down the chimney. For ten, perhaps fifteen seconds, there was no sound on the cliff-top, no sound at all, only the high, keening moan of the wind and the swish of the rain in the stunted grass. And then the sergeant had wriggled back and risen to his feet, slowly shaking his head. Mallory gestured to the others to sink down behind the boulders again, but even so the sergeant's soft Bavarian voice carried clearly in the wind. "It's Ehrich all right, poor fellow." Compassion and anger blended curiously in the voice. "I warned him often enough about his carelessness, about going too near the edge of that cliff. It is very treacherous." Instinctively lcd screen protector for digital camera the sergeant stepped back a couple of feet and looked again at the gouge in the soft earth. "That's where his heel slippedor 'maybe the butt of his carbine. Not that it matters now." "Is he dead, do you think, Sergeant?" The speaker was only a boy, nervous and unhappy. "It's hard to say.. . . Look for yourself." Gingerly the youth lay down on the cliff-top, peering cautiously over the lip of the rock. The other soldiers were talking among themselves, in short staccato sentences, when Mallory turned to Miller, cupped his hands to his mouth and the American's ear. He could contain his puzzlement no longer. "Was Stevens wearing his dark suit when you left him?" he whispered. "Yeah," Miller whispered back. "Yeah, I think he was." A pause. "No, thmmit, I'm wrong. We both put on our rubber camouflage capes about the same time." Mallory nodded. The waterproofs of the Germans were almost identical with their own: and the sentry's hair, Mallory remembered, had been jet blackthe same colour as Stevens's dyed hair. Probably all that was visible from above was a crumpled, cape-shrouded figure and a dark head. The sergeant's mistake in identity was more than understandable: it was inevitable. The young soldier eased himself back from the edge of the cliff and hoisted himself carefully to his feet. "You're right, Sergeant. It is Ebrich." The boy's voice was unsteady. "He's alive, I think. I saw his cape move, just a little. It wasn't the wind, I'm sure of that." Mallory felt Andrea's massive hand squeezing his arm, felt the quick surge of relief, then elation, wash through him. So Stevens was alive! Thank God for that! They'd save the boy yet. He heard Andrea whispering the news to the others, then grinned wryly to himself, ironic at his own gladness. Jensen definitely would not have approved of this jubilation. Stevens had already done his part, navigated the boat to Navarone and climbed the cliff: and now he was only a crippled liability, would be a drag on the whole party, reduce what pitiful chances of success remained to them. For a High Command who pushed the counters around crippled pawns slowed up the whole game, made the board so damnably untidy. It was most inconsiderate of Stevens not to have killed himself so that they could have disposed of him neatly and without trace in the deep and hungry waters that

And kist his wounds that were so red.

energy-sapping layer under their leaden-footed boots, until they stumbled along inches above the - ground, leg muscles aching from the sheer accumulated weight of snow. There was no visibility worthy of the name, not even of a matter of feet, they were blanketed, swallowed up by an impenetrable cocoon of swirling grey and white, unchanging, featureless: Louki strode on diagonally upwards across the slope with the untroubled certainty of a man walking up his own garden path. Louki seemed as agile as a mountain goat, and as tireless. Nor was his tongue less nimble, less unwearied than his legs. He talked incessantly, a man overjoyed to be in action again, no matter what action so long, as it was against the enemy. He told Mallory of the last three attacks on the island and how they had so bloodily failedthe Germans had been somehow forewarned of the seaborne assault, had been waiting for the Special Boat Service and the Commandos with everything they had and had cut them to pieces, while the two airborne groups had had the most evil luck, been delivered up to the enemy by misjudgment, by a series of unforeseeable coincidences; or how Panayis and himself had on both occasions narrowly escaped with their livesPanayis had actually been captured the last time, had killed both his guards and escaped unrecognised; of the disposition of the German troops and check-points throughout the island, the location of the road blocks on the only two roads; and, finally, of what little he himself knew of the layout of the fortress of Navarone itself. Panayis, the dark one, could tell him more of that, Louki said: twice Panayis had been inside the fortress, once for an entire night: the guns, the control rooms, the barracks, the officers' quarters, the magazine, the turbo rooms, the sentry pointshe knew where each one lay, to the inch. Mallory whistled softly to himself. This was more than he had ever dared hope for. They had still to escape the net of searchers, still to reach the fortress, still to get inside it. But once insideand Panayis must know how to get inside. . . . Unconsciously Mallory lengthened his stride, bent his back to the slope. "Your friend Panayis must be quite something," he said slowly. "Tell me more about him, Louki." "What can I tell 'you?" Louki shook his head in a little flurry of snowflakes. "What do I know of Panayis? What does anyone know of Panayis? That he has the luck of the devil, the courage of a madman and that sooner the lion will lie down with the lamb, the starving wolf spare vancouver digital camera repair the flock, than Panayis breathe the same air as the Germans? We all know that, and we know nothing of Panayis. All I know is that I thank God I am no German, with Panayis on the island. He strikes by stealth, by night, by knife and in the back." Louki crossed himself. "His hands are full of blood." Mallory shivered involuntarily. The dark, sombre figure of Panayis, the memory of the expressionless face, the hooded eyes, were beginning to fascinate him. "There's more to him- than that, surely," Mallory argued. "After all, you are both Navaronians" "Yes, yes, that is so." "This is a small island, you've lived together all your lives" "Ah, but that is where the Major is wrong!" Mallory's promotion in rank was entirely Louki's own idea: despite Mallory's protests and explanations he seemed determined to stick to it. "I, Louki, was for many years in foreign lands, helping Monsieur Viachos. Monsieur Viachos," Louki said with pride, - "is a very important Government official." "I know," Mallory nodded. "A consul. I've met him. He is a very fine man." "You have met him! Monsieur Vlachos?" There was no mistaking the gladness, the delight in Louki's voice. "That is good! That is wonderful! Later you must tell me more. He is a great man. Did I ever tell you" "We were speaking about Panayis," Mallory reminded him gently. "Ah, yes, Panayis. As I was saying, I was away for a long time. When I came back, Panayis was gone. His father had died, his mother had married again and Panayis had gone to live with his stepfather and two little stepsisters in Crete. His stepfather, half-fisherman, halffarmer, was killed in fighting the Germans near, Candiathis was in the beginning. Panayis took over the boat of his father, helped many of the Allies to escape until he was caught by the Germans, strung up by his wrists in the village squarewhere his family livednot far from Casteli. He was flogged till the white of his ribs, of his backbone, was there for all to see, and left for dead. Then they burnt the village and Panayis's familydisappeared. You understand, Major?" "I understand," Mallory said grimly. "But Panayis" "He should have died. But he is tough, that one, tougher than a knot in an old carob tree. Friends cut him down

I only know we loved in vain -

Surprise was complete. Andrea was the first awake. Some alien whisper of sound had reached deep down to that part of him that never slept, and he twisted round and elbowed himself off the ground with the same noiseless speed as his hand reached out for his ready-cocked and loaded Mauser. But the white beam of the powerful torch lancing through the blackness of the cave bad blinded him, frozen his stretching hand even before the clipped bite of command from the man who held the torch. "Still! All of you!" Faultless English, with barely a trace of accent, and the voice glacial in its menace. "You move, and you die!" Another torch switched on, a third, and the cave was flooded with light. Wide awake, now, and motionless, Mallory squinted painfully into the dazzling beams: in the back-wash of reflected light, he could just discern the vague, formless shapes crouched in the mouth of the cave, bent over the dulled barrels of automatic rifles. "Hands clasped above the heads and backs to the wall!" A certainty, an assured competence in the voice that made for instant obedience. "Take a good look at them, Sergeant." Almost conversational now, the tone, but neither torch nor gun barrel had wavered a fraction. "No shadow of expression in their faces, not even a flicker of the eyes. Dangerous men, Sergeant. The English choose their killers well" Mallory felt the grey bitterness of defeat wash through him in an almost tangible wave, he could taste the sourness of it in the back of his mouth. For a brief, heart-sickening second he allowed himself to think of what must now inevitably happen and as soon as the thought had come he thrust it savagely away. Everything, every action, every thought, every breath must be on the present. Hope was gone, but not irrecoverably gone: not so long as Andrea lived. He wondered if Casey Brown had seen or heard them coming, and what had happened to him: he made to ask, checked himself just in time. Maybe he was still at large. "How did you manage to find us?" Mallory asked quietly. "Only fools burn juniper wood," the officer said contemptuously. "We have been on Kostos all day and most of the night. A dead man could have smelt it." "On Kostos?" Miner shook his head. "How could?' "Enough!" The officer turned to someone behind him. "Tear down that screen," he ordered in German, "and keep us covered on either side." He looked back into the cave, gestured almost imperceptibly with his torch. "All right, you digital camera magazine u k three. Outsideand you had better be careful. Please believe me that my men are praying for an excuse to shoot you down, you murdering swine!" The venomous hatred in his voice carried utter conviction. Slowly, hands still clasped above their heads, the three men stumbled to their feet. Mallory had taken only one step when the whip-lash of the German's voice brought him up short. "Stop!" He stabbed the beam of his torch down at the unconscious Stevens, gestured abruptly at Andrea. "One side, you! Who is this?" "You need not fear from him," Mallory said quietly. "He is one of us but he is terribly injured. He is dying." "We will see," the officer said tightly. "Move to the back of the cave!" He waited until the three men had stepped over Stevens, changed his automatic rifle for a pistol, dropped to his knees and advanced slowly, torch in one hand, gun in the other, well below the line of fire of the two soldiers who advanced unbidden at his heels. There was an inevitability, a cold professionalism about it all that made Mallory's heart sink. Abruptly the officer reached out his gun-hand, tore the covers off the boy. A shuddering tremor shook the whole body, his head rolied from side to side as he moaned in unconscious agony. The officer bent quickly over him, the hard, clean lines of the face, the fair hair beneath the hood high-lit in the beam of his own torch. A quick look at Stevens's pain-twisted, emaciated features, a glance at the shattered leg, a brief, distasteful wrinkling of the nose as he caught the foul stench of the gangrene, and he had hunched back on his heels, gently replacing the covers over the sick boy. "You speak the truth," he said softly. "We are not barbarians. I have no quarrel with a dying man. Leave him there." He rose to his feet, walked slowly backwards. "The rest of you outside." The snow had stopped altogether, Mallory saw, and stars were beginning to twinkle in the clearing sky. The wind, too, had fallen away and was perceptibly warmer. Most of the snow would be gone by midday, Mallory guessed. Carelessly, incuriously, he looked around him. There was no sign of Casey Brown. Inevitably Mallory's hopes began to rise. Petty Officer Brown's recommendation for this operation had come from the very top. Two rows of ribbons to which he was entitled but never wore bespoke his gallantry, he had a formidable reputation as a guerrilla fighterand he had had an automatic rifle in his hand. If he

And a story I 'Ie to you unfold;

o'clock. Do you think you could raise Cairo on the set?" "Lord only knows," Brown said frankly. He rose stiffly to his feet. "The radio didn't get just the best of treatment yesterday. I'll have a go." "Thanks, Chief. See that your aerial doesn't stick up above the sides of the gully." Mallory turned to leave the cave, but halted abruptly at the sight of Andrea squatting on a boulder just beside the entrance. His head bent in concentration, the big Greek had just finished screwing telescopic sights on to the barrel of his 7.92 mm. Mauser and was now deftly wrapping a sleeping-bag lining round its barrel and butt until the entire rifle was wrapped in a white cocoon. Mallory watched him in silence. Andrea glanced up at him, smiled, rose to his feet and reached out for his rucksack. Within thirty seconds he was clad from head to toe in his mountain camouflage suit, was drawing tight the purse-strings of his snowhood and easing his feet into the rucked elastic anklets of his canvas boots. Then he picked up the Mauser and smiled slightly. "I thought I might be taking a little walk, Captain," he said apologetically. "With your permission, of course." Mallory nodded his head several times in slow recollection. "You said I was worrying about nothing," he murmured. "I should have known. You might have told me, Andrea." But the protest was automatic, without significance. Mallory felt neither anger nor even annoyance at this tacit arrogation of his authority. The habit of command died hard in Andrea: on such occasions as he ostensibly sought approval for or consulted about a proposed course of action it was generally as a matter of courtesy and to give information as to his intentions. Instead of resentment, Mallory could feel only an overwhelming relief and gratitude to the smiling giant who towered above him: he had talked casually to Miller about driving Stevens till he died and then abandoning him, talked with an indifference that masked a mind sombre with bitterness at what he must do, but even so he had not known how depressed, bow sick at heart this decision had left him until he knew it was no longer necessary. "I am sorry." Andrea was half-contrite, half-smiling. "I should have told you. I thought you understood. . . . It is the best thing to do, yes?" "It is the only thing to do," Mallory said frankly: "You're going to draw them off up the saddle?" "There is no other way. With their skis they would overtake me in minutes if I went down into the valley. I cannot come back, of argus digital cameras pricegrabber com course, until it is dark. You will be here?" "Some of us will." Mallory glanced across the shelter where a waking Stevens was trying to sit up, heels of his palms screwing into his exhausted eyes. "We must have food and fuel, Andrea," he said softly. "I am going down into the valley to-night." "Of course, of course. We must do what we can." Andrea's face was grave, his voice only a murmur. "As long as we can. He is only a boy, a child almost. . . . Perhaps it will not be long." He pulled back the curtain, looked out at the evening sky. "I will be back by seven o'clock." "Seven o'clock," Mallory repeated. The sky, he could see, was darkening already, darkening with the gloom of coming snow, and the lifting wind was beginning to puff little clouds of air-spun, flossy white into the little gully. Mallory shivered and caught hold of the massive arm. "For God's sake, Andrea," he urged quietly, "look after yourself!" "Myself?" Andrea smiled gently, no mirth in his eyes, and as gently he disengaged his arm. "Do not think about me." The voice was very quiet, with an utter lack of arrogance. "If you must speak to God, speak to Him about these poor devils who are looking for us." The canvas dropped behind him and he was gone. For some moments Mallory stood irresolutely at the mouth of the cave, gazing out sightlessly through the gap in the curtain. Then he wheeled abruptly, crossed the floor of the shelter and knelt in front of Stevens. The boy was propped up against Miller's anxious arm, the eyes lack-lustre and expressionless, bloodless cheeks deep-sunken in a grey and parchment face. Mallory smiled at him: he hoped the shock didn't show in his face. "Well, well, well. The sleeper awakes at last. Better late than never." He opened his waterproof cigarette case, profferred it to Stevens. "How are you feeling now, Andy?" "Frozen, sir." Stevens shook his head at the case and tried to grin back at Mallory, a feeble travesty of a smile that made Mallory wince. "And the leg?" "I think it must be frozen, too." Stevens looked down incuriously at the sheathed whiteness of his shattered leg. "Anyway, I can't feel a thing." "Frozen!" Miller's sniff was a masterpiece of injured pride. "Frozen, he says! Gawddanined ingratitude. It's the first-class medical care, if I do say so myself!" Stevens smiled, a fleeting, absent smile that flickered over his face and was gone.

To shoot at my breast, while I'll protest,

still Mallory approached the guns, walked half-way round the perimeter of the turn-table of the gun on the left, examined it as well as he could in the gloom. He was staggered by the sheer size of it, the tremendous girth and reach of the barrel that stretched far out into the night. He told himself that the experts thought it was only a nine-inch crunch gun, that the crowding confines of the cave were bound to exaggerate its size. He told himself these things, discounted them: twelve-inch bore if an inch, that gun was the biggest thing he had ever seen. Big? Heavens above, it was gigantic! The fools, the blind, crazy fools who had sent the Sybaris out against these . . . The train of thought was lost, abruptly. Mallory stood quite still, one hand resting against the massive gun carrIage, and tried to recall the sound that had jerked him back to the present. Immobile, he listened for it again, eyes closed the better to hear, but the sound did not come again, and suddenly he knew that it was no sound at all but the absence of sound that had cut through his thoughts, triggered off some unconscious warning bell. The night was suddenly very silent, very stifi: down in the heart of the town the guns had stopped firing. Mallory swore softly to himself. He had already spent far too much time daydreaming, and time was running short. It must be running shortAndrea had withdrawn, it was only a matter of time until the Germans discovered that they had been duped. And then they would come runningand there was no doubt where they would come. Swiftly Mallory shrugged out of his rucksack, pulled out the hundred-foot wire-cored rope coiled inside. Their emergency escape routewhatever else he did he must make sure of that. The rope looped round his arm, he moved forward cautiously, seeking a belay but had only taken three steps when his right knee-cap struck something hard and unyielding. He checked the exclamation of pain, investigated the obstacle with his free hand, realised immediately what it wasan iron railing stretched waist-high across the mouth of the cave. Of course! There had been bound to be something like this, some barrier to prevent people from falling over the edge, especially in the darkness of the night. He hadn't been able to pick it up with the binoculars from the carob grove that afternoon close though it was to the entrance, it had been concealed in the gloom of the cave. But he should have thought of it. Quickly Mallory felt his way along to the left, to the very end of the railing, crossed it, camera digital dock hp uk tied the rope securely to the base of the vertical stanchion next to the wall, paid out the rope as he moved gingerly to the lip of the cave mouth. And then, almost at once, he was there and there was nothing below his probing foot but a hundred and twenty feet of sheer drop to the land-locked harbour of Navarone. Away to his right was a dark, formless blur lying on the water, a blur that might have been Cape Demirci: straight ahead, across the darkly velvet sheen of the Maidos Straits, he could see the twinkle of far-away lightsit was a measure of the enemy's confidence that they permitted these lights at all, or, more likely, these fisher cottages were useful as a bearing marker for the guns at night: and to the left, surprisingly near, barely thirty feet away in a horizontal plane, but far below the level where he was standing, he could see the jutting end of the outside wall of the fortress where it abutted on the cliff, the roofs of the houses on the west side of the square beyond that, and, beyond that again, the town itself curving sharply downwards and outwards, to the south first, then to the west, close-girdling and matching the curve of the crescent harbour. Above-but there was nothing to be seen above, that fantastic overhang above blotted out more than half the sky; and below, the darkness was equally impenetrable, the surface of the harbour inky and black as night. There were vessels down there, he knew, Grecian caiques and German launches, but they might have been a thousand miles away for any sign he could see of them. The brief, all encompassing glance had taken barely ten seconds, but Mallory waited no longer. Swiftly he bent down, tied a double bowline in the end of the rope and left it lying on the edge. In an emergency they could kick it out into the darkness. It would be thirty feet short of the water, he estimatedenough to clear any launch or masted caique that might be moving about the harbour. They could drop the rest of the way, maybe a bone-breaking fall on to the deck of a ship, but they would have to risk it. Mallory took one last look down into the Stygian blackness and shivered; he hoped to God that he and Miller wouldn't have to take that way out. Dusty Miller was kneeling on the duckboards by the top of the ladder leading down to the magazine as Mallory came running back up the tunnel, his hands busy with wires, fuses, detonators and explosives. He straightened up as Mallory

Was patchd from ballup to side;

"Please, sir," he pleaded. "Don't talk like that. It was just one of these things." He paused, eyes screwed shut and indrawn breath hissing sharply through his teeth as a wave of pain washed up from his shattered leg. Then he looked at Mallory again. "And there's no credit due to me for the climb," he went on quietly. "I hardly remember a thing about it." Mallory looked at him without speaking, eyebrows arched in mild interrogation. "I was scared to death every step of the way up," Stevens said simply. He was conscious of no surprise, no wonder that he was saying the thing he would have died rather than say. "I've never been so scared in all my life." Mallory shook his head slowly from side to side, stubbled chin rasping in his cupped palm. He seemed genninely puzzled. Then he looked down at Stevens and smiled quizzically. "Now I know you are new to this game, Andy." He smiled again. "Maybe you think I was laughing and singing all the way up that cliff? Maybe you think I wasn't scared?" He lit a cigarette and gazed at Stevens through a cloud of drifting smoke. "Well, I wasn't. 'Scared' isn't the wordI was bloody well terrified. So was Andrea here. We know too much not to be scared." "Andrea!" Stevens laughed, then cried out as the movement triggered off a crepitant agony in his boneshattered leg. For a moment Mallory thought he had lost consciousness, but almost at once he spoke again, his voice husky with pain. "Andrea!" he whispered. "Scared! I don't believe it!" "Andrea was afraid." The big Greek's voice was very gentle. "Andrea is afraid. Andrea is always afraid. That is why I have lived so long." He stared down at his great hands. "And why so many have died. They were not so afraid as L They were not afraid of everything a man could be afraid of, there was always something they forgot to fear, to guard against. But Andrea was afraid of everythingand he forgot nothing. It is as simple as that." He looked across at Stevens and smiled. "There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to diethat takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he, too, is brave and afraid like all the rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer. Or sometimes ten minutes, or twenty minutesor the time it takes a man sick and bleeding and afraid to climb a cliff." Stevens said nothing. His head was sunk on his chest, and digimate digital camera software tc 304 his face was hidden. He had seldom felt so happy, seldom so at peace with himself, He had known that he could not hide things from men like Andrea and Mallory, but he had not known that it would not matter. He felt he should say something, but he could not think what and he was deathly tired. He knew, deep down, that Andrea was speaking the truth, but not the whole truth; but he was too tired to care, to try to work things out. Miller cleared his throat noisily. "No more talkin', Lieutenant," he said firmly. "You gotta lie down, get yourself some sleep." Stevens looked at him, then at Mallory in puzzled inquiry. "Better do what you're told, Andy," Mallory smiled. "Your surgeon and medical adviser talking. He fixed your leg." "Oh! I didn't know. Thanks, Dusty. Was it verydifficult?" Miller waved a deprecatory hand. "Not for a man of my experience. Just a simple break," he lied easily. "Almost let one of the others do it. . . . Give him a hand to lie down, will you, Andrea?" He jerked his head towards Mallory. "Boss?" The two men moved outside, turning their backs to the icy wind. "We gotta get a fire, dry clothing, for that kid," Miller said urgently. "His pulse is about 140, temperature 103. He's rnnnin' a fever, and he's losin' ground all the thne." "I know, I know," Mallory said worriedly. "And there's not a hope of getting any fuel on this damned mountain. Let's go in and see how much dried clothing we can muster between us." He lifted the edge of the canvas and stepped inside. Stevens was still awake, Brown and Andrea on either side of him. Miller was on his heels. "We're going to stay here for the night," Mallory announced, "so let's make things as snug as possible. Mind you," he admitted, "we're a bit too near the cliff for comfort, but old Jerry hasn't a clue we're on the island, and we're out of sight of the coast. Might as well make ourselves comfortable." "Boss . . ." Miller made to speak, then fell silent again. Mallory looked at him in surprise, saw that he, Brown and Stevens were looking at one another, uncertainty, then doubt and a dawning, sick comprehension in their eyes. A sudden anxiety, the sure knowledge that something was far wrong, struck at Mallory like a blow.