by David Harris
‘Courage.’
‘Yes, courage.’
One slip, or loss of balance, and it was straight down through darkness into the river. Mighty deep, and racing like an express train. There was absolutely no return.
Hiram leaned back and slapped his mule’s rump. It crept forward a few steps and stopped. Hiram counted thirty seconds, then yelled as loudly as he could. No answer. With a pang of horror, he wondered if Castillo had fallen. Was the smiling, courageous Castillo gone? No, surely not. Castillo must be there, waiting on the other side of the cataract, planning another of his jokes.
Hiram kicked his heels hard into the mule’s sides. It bunched its muscles, leapt, and flew into the darkness.
Chapter 5
Hiram hung in mid-air, surrounded by tremendous roaring. Time seemed to slow down. He felt a helpless and bizarre calm, almost amusement, that he was in total darkness, on the back of a flying mule, within a split second of a terrible fall — the long fall worse than the impact. He imagined striking the foaming water, wild currents pulling him far under, tearing apart the joints of his shoulders and legs. Fear rushed like an electric shock through his back and stomach, tingling along his arms and legs.
There was a tremendous jolt and they lurched forward, tipped sideways towards the edge. ‘Stay, stay,’ he yelled and wrestled the mule upright, swaying as it staggered. At last it found its feet and stood still, snorting and tugging at the reins.
Hiram remembered to breathe.
‘Follow me.’ Castillo spoke from the darkness. ‘I will ride close in front.’
‘No more of your little jokes, Castillo.’
‘I try.’
A light floated in the swirling mist. Castillo’s floppy hat and long poncho were a dark silhouette.
A hand, holding a lamp, emerged from the fog. Then an arm and face. Behind the lamp, a gigantic shadow of a man loomed. As the lamp swung, the shadow monster leapt about.
‘Nuñez,’ Castillo yelled. He slapped the man on his shoulder.
Safe at last, Hiram was suddenly starving for soup, roasted sweet potatoes and Castillo’s lethal chicha beer, spiked with what tasted like gunpowder. He followed the lamp and its dancing shadows onto a broad path. Mimosa trees crowded around like ghosts and a light shone from the window of a hut. Three men came out to stare. The river roared and crashed, but Hiram didn’t care.
Dismounting, he stretched his arms and yawned. ‘Bring on the food,’ he called to Castillo.
‘First, one more little surprise.’
Castillo took a lamp and led Hiram towards the edge of a cliff where spray billowed up like smoke from an inferno. Castillo held the lamp over the river. Hiram peered down into hell. His eardrums vibrated with the shockwaves of noise. His heart missed a beat then hammered wildly. He had to cross that?
Chapter 6
Hard stones on the dirt floor dug through Hiram’s sleeping bag. He shuffled sideways to find a smoother place. Dammit, rocks everywhere.
Castillo, wrapped only in his poncho, lay on his side and suppressed a smile as Hiram thrashed about. The other men were fast asleep, also wrapped in ponchos.
Hiram thought, Can’t they feel pain, or cold? I need sleep. Tomorrow is a huge day.
He’d glimpsed the river in Castillo’s feeble lamplight. It wasn’t a river. It was an ocean in a Force 7 hurricane. Vast waves rushed past at breakneck speed. Crossing it would be a waking nightmare.
Hiram cursed the cold. His bones, the marrow in his bones, ached with cold. He pulled the sleeping bag over his face to breathe his own warm air.
Something heavy dropped on him. He ripped the sleeping bag from his face. Castillo was unwrapping a tent alongside his sleeping bag.
‘Up,’ Castillo mimed, rolling Hiram in the tent, like a second blanket.
Hiram clutched the tent to his chest and rolled over while Castillo tucked the tent around him.
‘Good?’
‘Yes, good,’ Hiram lied. He was still freezing, but his back was more comfortable.
Castillo lay down and pulled on a chullo — a warm woollen Peruvian hat — with its long side flaps to cover his ears and cheeks.
‘One day, on a glacier,’ Hiram said, ‘it was so cold that when my dog licked his fur, his tongue stuck to it.’
‘One day, on high glacier, it was so cold. I sneeze and it hangs from nose like snow. I brush them off and they go tinkle, tinkle on the ice.’ Castillo winced at the remembered pain.
‘Okay,’ Hiram frowned while he thought. ‘Cold is when you take your knife and shave the frostbitten yellow skin off your fingertips. The skin peels off like flakes. You keep cutting until you bleed. Yellow skin is okay. Black is bad.’
Castillo nodded. He curled the top joints of his fingers under, like stumps. ‘Cold is when the air sparkles and freezes. Make feathers in air. Not snow. Feathers. You breathe on them, and they are not there.’
‘No. Real cold is shoving hot rocks in your sleeping bag.’
‘Cold is put hot potato here, by heart. Before one hour it is frozen.’
‘Huh. Let me see … Cold … I know. Cold is when your friend cannot speak. He coughs and is choking. He is choking to death, so you punch him on the back and he coughs up blood and puts his hand in his mouth and takes out a messy lump of his windpipe.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, gringo, you win. But I will see how you go across the river in the morning. Maybe you lose.’
Hiram refused to think any more about that river. Exhaustion slugged his brain and he drifted into sleep.
‘Hey, Señor Bingham,’ Castillo whispered.
Hiram sat up. ‘What? What is it?’
‘You been so cold your shadow froze?’
Chapter 7
Hiram lay with his face to the window, longing for dawn. Now I know why the Incas worshipped the sun. Endless nights of darkness and cold. Every sunrise must’ve seemed a miracle.
When he saw the first faint glow seeping through the mist, he struggled from his cocoon of sleeping bag and tent. Dressing was easy. He’d worn his clothes to bed. He took off the extra pair of socks, pulled on his icy boots and grabbed his hat.
Outside the hut, he stood in wonder. At that instant, far above, the sun broke into the sky. Light washed down like a waterfall and, in the blink of an eye, mist turned to gold dust. Millions of tiny grains floated all around, brushing lightly against him.
Spellbound, he said to himself, If I had the Inca’s magic rope, with power to hold the sun, I would lasso the sun, tie it to a tree and warm myself.
Wind scattered the sun’s gold, and it faded away. The Great Speaker, Father of the Amazon, bellowed at him. He walked towards it like a condemned man watching the blade slide back up the guillotine, ready to drop.
The river’s violence took his breath away. The surface was a shambles of waves and whirlpools. Waves crashed together, exploding high. A tree leapt from the water, was flung in the air like a matchstick, then grabbed by the next wave and dragged down. He imagined the bottom of the river where twenty-tonne boulders played skittles.
Smiling grimly, he thought, Teaching at university didn’t prepare me for this.
Hungrily the river tried to snatch the only frail crossing. Six strands of wire drooped just above the waves. Four of the thin wires held a catwalk of timbers. No cat would risk its nine lives on those branches as thick as a man’s wrist, loosely lashed with vines, bucking wildly. Above this hung two wires. Handholds? Only a madman would risk his life to use them.
Slender as a cobweb above the monstrous river, the footbridge swung out and back, fracturing into broken curves.
Hiram rubbed his hands together. How could his palms be sweaty in this cold?
He narrowed his eyes and calculated the bridge at just under three hundred feet long. A hundred yards. On flat ground he could sprint that in eleven seconds, easy. Try running on that? Try even standing. It’s a trapeze, not a bridge. And there’s no safety net.
; ‘Bad news.’ Castillo was at his shoulder.
Chapter 8
‘The men say they not cross bridge. The river is rising.’ Castillo shrugged. ‘We cannot go to find ruins.’
Hiram stormed back to the hut. Two men sat on the floor. They had broad, flat cheeks and alarmed, guilty eyes. They wrapped their dusty ponchos around them. The same red and yellow pattern was on the woollen earflaps of their chullos, worn beneath their floppy hats. Nuñez, the quiet one, who’d carried the lamp to meet them last night, looked aside. The other, Cacerez, glowered at Hiram.
‘Only two men here?’ Hiram growled. ‘Where are the others?’
Castillo grimaced. ‘They went home.’
‘Why have these two stayed?’
‘I tell them, respect their guest.’
‘What do they want? More money?’
‘It is not money.’
‘What then? I’ve not come all this way to turn back at the first hurdle.’
‘The river rose in night. They say the bridge is not safe.’
Hiram scratched his chin. ‘What will change their minds?’
Castillo’s eyes were mournful. ‘I feel very bad. Cacerez and Nuñez are shepherds. The Prefect of Government orders them to work for you. But they worry for their family and sheep. They want to go home.’
Hiram told himself, Castillo and I can do this. Let them go. But he knew that was not true. In these mountains, a simple accident or mistake could be fatal. If he or Castillo fell, or even broke an ankle, it would be a disaster. He couldn’t ask Castillo to take that risk.
The men watched him carefully.
‘Castillo, do the men know the old Peruvian legend of the condor and the arrow?’
When Castillo interpreted the question, the men looked uneasy.
Hiram pushed his advantage. ‘Then they remember that one day, a hunter praised a condor for the beauty of his feathers. The condor was flattered and, when the hunter asked for some beautiful feathers, the foolish bird plucked them out and gave them to the hunter. Some days later, when the condor was riding the winds, he was shot by an arrow. As he fell, he saw that the arrow was fitted with his own feathers. Tell the men, Castillo, how their foolish actions will bring them down.’
Castillo raised his voice to tell the story. He chopped the air with his hands, showed the men his clenched fist, and spoke with such passion that Nuñez bowed his head. Cacerez tried arguing, but Castillo shouted him down.
Impressed by the theatricals, Hiram asked, ‘What did you tell them?’
Castillo puffed out his cheeks. ‘I tell Cacerez his mutiny will be reported to the Prefect in Cuzco. When the Prefect hears of Cacerez’s stupid cowardice, what will happen to Cacerez, eh? And I warn him that he has shamed the Prefect by showing no respect to the Prefect’s good friend, Professor Bingham. The Prefect will be very angry. And Professor Bingham is very important ambassador from America and is cousin of the President.’
‘Will they come?’
The vein in Castillo’s forehead stood out. ‘Oh, yes. But Cacerez says if we cross bridge and it is washed away, how do we get home?’
‘The long way.’ Hiram grabbed his backpack.
To disguise his terror of the bridge, Hiram strode quickly towards it and did not stop. He put one boot on the lurching, swinging catwalk and fell to his knees in a desperate instinct of survival. On all fours, like a baby, wobbling unsteadily, he began to crawl. He didn’t care if the men laughed at him. His pride was blown away. It’s not glorious to fall and die, just stupid.
Beneath his hands and knees the catwalk branches sprang apart, showing too much river, then slammed together. He watched his hands carefully as they slid along the outside edge of the bridge so they wouldn’t be crushed. Inch by inch, he moved out. The bridge seemed to swing out more drunkenly with his weight. With every shift of his hands his backpack tried to tip him over this side, then the other. Icy spray stung his face. Eyes blurred by tears and flying water, Hiram searched for the end of the bridge. It seemed miles away.
The middle of the bridge sagged towards the chaos of waves. Hiram did not want to be on the bridge if a wave struck. It would rip out the wires and fling him into the torrent.
I guess this is why mountain men don’t see much point in learning to swim. Slow and steady, like climbing a frozen waterfall. Get every move right. One careless move, one moment of panic, and he’d die.
A sudden thump below, a shockwave of air, the seething crest of a wave, a deep hoarse roaring and untold thousands of tonnes of water heaved so close to the catwalk that it writhed like a wounded snake. Hiram clung on, white-knuckled, until the bridge steadied.
He quickly glanced at the other side. Six thousand feet of jungle and cliff. The bridge was only the beginning.
Chapter 9
Nearly there. Determined not to crawl onto land like a coward, and with only a few yards to go, Hiram half-stood on the rickety catwalk. His legs wobbled, so he clung to the hand wires and shuffled the last step. He stamped triumphantly on the last bit of wood, leapt onto land and trotted a few paces away from the bridge. The sun broke through the clouds. It was a beautiful morning.
Castillo was almost halfway across the bridge. Crawling. Nuñez and Cacerez, backpacks piled high, were close behind Castillo. Also crawling. The day was getting better by the minute.
Hiram searched for a path into the jungle. The only way in looked more like an erosion cut than a track, but it would do.
He took three or four steps along the rough track and entered a jungle so thick it smothered the base of the cliff. After he had gone only a few more paces, the jungle closed around him. He broke out in a sweat. Matted vines, sharp bamboo leaves and harsh ferns clutched at his clothes. Tree trunks were spongy with mosses. A rotten branch sprouted yellow fungus. Underfoot was squishy with mud and the litter of dead leaves. He trod on a damp branch. It collapsed, releasing a horde of pallid, squirming termites, beetles, centipedes and blundering spiders. Sweat poured down his face and trickled salty into his mouth.
He peered at tree trunks for fear of putting his hand on a tarantula with crooked legs and hideously fat abdomen bristling with poisonous spines. His mind raced back to his first Amazon expedition. Snakes had looped down like vines, brushing his hat. Scorpions hid in his socks. A porter had run shrieking, beating the side of his head. Some creature had got into his ear and in its panic was trying to get out by chewing through his eardrum. Swarms of ants devoured a dead monkey, stripping it to gleaming bone. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes had sprinkled Hiram’s sleeves. Jumping spiders dropped onto his neck and scuttled inside his shirt, running around to his back where he couldn’t squash them. Six vultures — wings out to dry — sat in a line on a rotting log then hopped down in their horrible way to feed on the stinking carcase of a tapir. His friend, Colonel Sawyer, wading across a narrow stream, suddenly screamed. Face distorted, he lunged for the bank, crying in agony. His legs collapsed and as he fell — only his chest and head on land — he had enough sense to draw his revolver and shoot his brains out while the water frothed red from piranhas in their feeding frenzy.
Hiram’s flesh crawled at the memory. Give me nice, clean, cold mountain peaks any day.
He turned and stumbled back out into the sunlight.
Castillo was on solid ground, loading his rifle.
‘Why the rifle, Castillo?’ Hiram called out.
‘He is my hunting rifle.’
‘Why today?’
Castillo didn’t answer at first. Then he said, ‘No reason. Always I take my rifle into jungle.’
‘Come on, this is another of your little jokes.’
Castillo pursed his lips. ‘One of my jobs is to find the man-eaters.’
‘Now you tell me.’
‘Some cougars and panthers are old and sick or wounded. Humans are easy kill for big cats. Taste nice.’
‘How many have you killed?’
‘Six. The man-eater of Saltancay, oh, he was very bad cougar. He do this to mule
s.’ Castillo made a swipe with his hand and mimed his guts spilling out. ‘And dogs. One hit with his paw and dog is broken. Following that cougar’s tracks, I find one of his meals hanging in tree. The man has no head.’ Castillo smiled. ‘Is true. I show you hunter’s trick.’
To Hiram’s amazement, Castillo’s throat swelled and from his mouth came the blood-chilling roar of a panther.
Hiram stepped back a pace in horror. Pandemonium erupted in the jungle. Birds screeched and flew madly about. Monkeys howled.
Castillo clapped his hands with delight. ‘You are scared, eh? Your eyes stick out like crayfish.’
Hiram blushed.
Castillo went on, ‘I know the man-eaters. Hey, I call like female panther bringing male to her.’ He took quick, deep breaths, his throat swelled, his face went red, and he yowled a fearsome love song, which wailed and coughed, ending with a long, deep growl. The jungle was a chaos of demented creatures.
He then slung the rifle on his back. ‘But do not worry, my friend. No cougars today. I don’t think.’
Chapter 10
Hiram hated every minute of the next two suffocating hours in the jungle. Finally he saw a patch of sky through the treetops, and above the trees a beautiful, welcoming sheer cliff of only three thousand feet.
He loved every minute on the cliff. Mostly, the zigzag trail was easy, but there was one excellent ledge where he was forced to shuffle along, crablike, face to the cliff, the toes of his boots making a most satisfying clunk when he kicked the wall for a sure foothold. A little vein of white quartz crystals was a perfect finger-grip. Looking down between his feet, the cliff was magnificent, plunging down to the jungle. The furious river, The Great Speaker, was only a white line among broken clouds.
Castillo, leading the way, climbed out of sight. ‘Time for a rest.’ His voice floated down to Hiram, who was last in line.
Hiram climbed up and dragged himself onto a grassy slope. Castillo was dropping his backpack onto the grass. The peak of the mountain was a few hundred feet higher. Over that peak were the ruins. Hiram wanted to keep climbing, but was happy to consider the porters. Anyway, being so close to the ruins, anticipation was part of the pleasure.
