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he had made, but he could feel that no bones were broken and, in the rage of
the rescue work, he felt no pain.
Grunting and coughing and without a pause to take breath he heaved her up into
a sitting position and with a bleeding hand wiped some of the chalk dust from
her face. Then, freeing his legs from the tomb of chalk, he somehow manhandled
her up on to the top of the mound with her back against the cliff.
He knelt and looked at her, at the terrible white scarecrow that minutes
before had been one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen, and as he
looked at her and at the streaks of his blood down her face he prayed that her
eyes would open.
When, seconds later, they did, the relief was so great that Bond turned away
and was rackingly sick.
CHAPTER XVII
WILD SURMISES
WHEN THE paroxysm was over he felt Gala's hand in his hair. He looked round
and saw her wince at the sight of him. She tugged at his hair and pointed up
the cliffs. As she did so a shower of small pieces of chalk rattled down
beside them.
Weakly he got to his knees and then to his feet and together they scrambled
and slid down off the mountain of chalk and away from the crater against the
cliff from which they had escaped.
The harsh sand under their feet was like velvet. They both collapsed full
length and lay clutching at it with their horrible white hands as if its rough
gold would wash the filthy whiteness away. Then Gala too was mercifully sick
and Bond crawled a few paces away to leave her alone. He hauled himself to his
feet against a single lump of chalk as big as a small motor-car, and at last
his bloodshot eyes took in the hell that had almost engulfed them.
Down to the beginning of the rocks, now lapped by the incoming tide, sprawled
the debris of the cliff face, an avalanche of chalk blocks and shapes. The
white dust of its collapse covered nearly an acre. Above it a jagged rent had
appeared in the cliff and a wedge of blue sky had been bitten out of the
distant top where before the line of the horizon had been almost straight.
There were no longer any seabirds near them and Bond guessed that the smell of
disaster would keep them away from the place for days.
The nearness of their bodies to the cliff was what had saved them, that and
the slight protection of the overhang below which the sea had bitten into the
base of the cliff. They had been buried by the deluge of smaller stuff. The
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heavier chunks, any one of which would have crushed them, had fallen outwards,
the nearest missing them by a few feet. And their nearness to the cliff was
the reason for Bond's right arm having been comparatively free so that they
had been able to burrow out of the mound before they were stifled. Bond
realized that if some reflex had not hurled him on top of Gala at the moment
of the avalanche they would now both be dead.
He felt her hand on his shoulder. Without looking at her he put his arm round
her waist and together they got down to the blessed sea and let their bodies
fall weakly, thankfully into the shallows.
Ten minutes later it was two comparatively human beings who walked back up the
sand to the rocks where their clothes lay, a few yards away from the
cliff-fall. They were both completely naked. The rags of their underclothing
lay somewhere under the pile of chalk dust, torn off in their struggle to
escape. But, like survivors from a ship-wreck, their nakedness meant nothing.
Washed clean of the cloying gritty chalk dust and with their hair and mouths
scoured with the salt water, they felt weak and bedraggled, but by the time
they had got their clothes on and had shared Gala's comb there was little to
show what they had been through.
They sat with their backs to a rock and Bond lit a first delicious cigarette,
drinking the smoke deeply into his lungs and expelling it slowly through his
nostrils. When Gala had done the best she could with her powder and lipstick
he lit a cigarette for her and, as he handed it to her, for the first time
they looked into each other's eyes and smiled. Then they sat and looked
silently out to sea, at the golden panorama that was the same and yet entirely
new. Bond broke the silence. "Well, by God," he said. "That was close."
"I still don't know what happened," said Gala. "Except that you saved my
life." She put her hand on his and then took it away.
"If you hadn't been there I should be dead," said Bond. "If I'd stayed where I
was " He shrugged his shoulders. Then he turned and looked at her. "I suppose
you realize," he said flatly, "that someone pushed the cliff down on us?" She
looked back at him with wide eyes. "If we searched around in all that," he
gestured towards the avalanche of chalk, "we would find the marks of two or
three drill-holes and traces of dynamite. I saw the smoke and I heard the bang
of the explosion a split second before the cliff came down. And so did the
gulls," he added.
"And what's more," continued Bond after a pause, "it can't have been only
Krebs. It was done in full view of the site. And it was done by several
people, well organized, with spies on us from the moment we went down the
cliff path to the beach."
41
There was comprehension in Gala's eyes and a flash of fear. "What are we to
do?" she asked anxiously. "What's it all about?"
"They want us dead," said Bond calmly. "So we have to stay alive. As to what
it's all about, we'll just have to find that out. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]