The Angry Mountain

by Hammond Innes

  I felt utterly helpless. My only hope was that Hilda would find the others and that they would come to look for me. At least I could call out to them, signal to them. I had the freedom of that roof-top. I could see what was happening. I wasn’t locked away in some evil-smelling room waiting for death to come suddenly in a fall of masonry. I could move about and watch what happened, and that did more than anything to sustain my courage in the hours that followed.

  The stones that had fallen were pumice and hard and sharp. And since the door was my only hope of escape and the stones my only tools, I set to work to rub away the wood. I think I knew it was hopeless from the start. But I had to do something to keep my mind off the red glow of the lava flow piling into the village.

  The streams on either side seemed to move faster, flowing down through the open country and curving round below Santo Francisco like two columns mounting a pincer attack on the village of Avin two miles lower down the slopes. The flow coming into Santo Francisco was narrower and slower. But it ate steadily into the village and I could mark its progress by the sound of crumbling buildings and the shower of sparks it set up as it ground over the ruins. I worked it out that it was destroying a house every ten minutes which meant roughly that it would reach my own house in approximately one and a quarter hours. It was then a quarter to six. I had until seven.

  I suppose I worked away at that door for half an hour. Then I stopped. I was completely exhausted and dripping with sweat. The heat was already beginning to prick at my skin and my flesh felt tight and shrivelled. I had scraped about a quarter of an inch of wood away on a strip little more than a foot long. It was quite hopeless. The door was of tough, seasoned wood and a good inch thick. I hadn’t a hope of getting through it in time.

  Dawn was beginning to break. I brushed the sweat from my eyes and slithered away from the door so that I could look at the mountain. The glow of the crater was fading and in the faint, cold light I could see the dense pall that covered the sky—a writhing, billowing cloud of utter blackness. The lava flow no longer showed as a fiery streak. It was a huge black band coming out of the side of the mountain near the top of the ash slope. It came down like a thick wrist, broadened out into a palm and then split into four fingers. Smoke rose from it in a lazy cloud and the mountain behind it trembled in the heat.

  The stump of my leg hurt abominably where Sansevino had kicked at it. My head ached and my lips were swollen and blubbery. I pulled up the leg of my trousers. The flesh where it was drawn tight over the bone was bleeding and coated in grit. Sitting there in the ash I did my best to clean it and then bound it up with a strip torn from my shirt and tied it with my handkerchief. I could have done with some water, not only to cleanse it, but to drink, for my throat was parched with the heat and the acrid sulphur fumes. But it didn’t seem to matter much. The lava was very near now. Buildings were crumbling continuously all along the wide front of its advance into the village and the sound of their falling seemed so close that more than once I looked to see whether the next house had gone.

  Then the sun came up. It was an orange disc barely visible through the haze of gas and ash that filled the sky. And as it rose higher it got fainter. I thought of the mountains up there on the back of Italy. The villages would be basking in clear, warm sunlight. And beyond would lie the blue of the Adriatic. And yet here I was under a cloud of ash, faced with a stinking, suffocating end. Something glittered in the ash. It was Zina’s pistol. Sansevino had dropped it in the blindness of his anger. I slipped it into my pocket—if I couldn’t face the lava, then …

  I don’t think I was frightened so much as bitter. I could so easily have not been here. If I hadn’t gone out to that villa—if I hadn’t arranged my trip so that I went from Czechoslovakia to Milan. But what was the good of saying If. If I’d been born a Polynesian instead of an Englishman I wouldn’t have lost my leg in three operations that made me sweat to think about. I folded my empty trouser leg up over the stump of my leg and tied it there with my tie. Then I crawled across the roof to the side nearest the lava.

  It was full daylight now, or as near to daylight as it would be. I could see the black band of the lava flow broadening out as it piled up against the village. It was only three houses away and as I watched the third house crumbled into mortar dust and disappeared. Only two more houses away now. Three little nigger boys sitting in a row.… The damned bit of doggerel ran in my brain until the second house went. And then there was one. Away to the right I caught a glimpse of the front of the lava choking a narrow street and spilling steadily forward. It was black like clinker and as it spilled down along the street, little rivulets of molten rock flowed red.

  The air was full of the dust of broken buildings now. My mouth and throat were dry and gritty with it and the air shimmered with intense heat. I could no longer hear the roar of gases escaping from Vesuvius. Instead my world was full of a hissing and sifting—it was a steady, unrelenting background of sound to the intermittent crash of stone and the crumbling roar of falling plaster and masonry.

  Then the next building began to go. I watched, fascinated, as a crack opened across the roof. There was a tumbling roar of sound, the crack widened, splitting the very stone itself, and then the farther end of the building vanished in a cloud of dust. There was a ghastly pause as the lava consolidated, eating up the pile of rubble below. Then cracks ran splitting all across the remains of the roof not five yards away from me. The cracks widened, spreading like little fast-moving rivers, and then suddenly the whole roof seemed to sink, vanishing away below me in a great rumble of sound and disappearing into the dust of its own fall.

  And as the dust settled I found myself staring at the lava face itself. It was a sight that took my breath away. I wanted to cry out, to run from it—but instead I remained on my hands and one knee staring at it, unable to move, speechless, held in the shock of seeing the pitiless force of Nature angered.

  I have seen villages and towns bombed and smashed to rubble by shell-fire. But Cassino, Berlin—they were nothing to this. Bombing or shelling at least leaves the torn shells and smashed rubble of buildings to indicate what was once there. The lava left nothing. Of the half of Santo Francisco that it had overrun there was no trace. Before me stretched a black cinder embankment, quite flat and smoking with heat. It was impossible to think of a village ever having existed there. It had left no trace and I could scarcely believe that only a few minutes before there had been buildings between me and the lava and that I’d seen them toppling, buildings that had been occupied for hundreds of years. Only away to the left the dome of a church stood up out of the black plain. And even as I noticed it the beautifully symmetrical dome cracked open like a flower, fell in a cloud of dust and was swallowed completely.

  In my fascination I leaned forward and peered over the balcony. I had a brief glimpse of a great wall of cinders and rivulets of white-hot rock spilling forward across the rubble remains of the house that had just vanished, spilling across the narrow alley and piling up against the house on which I stood. Then the heat was singeing my eyebrows and I was slithering back to the far end of the roof in the grip of a sudden and uncontrollable terror.

  To be wiped out like that, obliterated utterly and all because of a wooden door, I heard myself screaming—screaming and screaming for help through grit-sore throat. Once I thought I heard an answering call, but it didn’t stop me. I went on screaming till suddenly a crack ran splintering across the roof, splitting it in two.

  The sudden realisation of the inevitability of death gripped me then, stifling my screams, stiffening my nerves to meet the end. I knelt down in the soft ash of the roof and prayed—prayed as I used to pray before those damned operations, praying that I’d not give way to fear, that I’d face what had to be without flinching.

  And as the crack widened out I felt suddenly calm. If only the end would come quickly. That was all I prayed for. I didn’t want to be buried alive in the rubble and wait half-suffocated for the lava to roll over me. />
  The crack widened steadily—a foot, two feet. Then the farther half of the roof split into fragments and folded inwards, sinking down towards the lava in a heat blast of dust. And as it fell I saw the stone housing of the doorway disintegrate.

  I scrambled towards it. It was a chance in a million. Through the choking dust I saw the wooden stairs intact leading down to the room below. I hesitated. I think any one would rather die in the open than be caught like a rat in a trap inside a building. But it was still a chance and I took it. I swung myself over the edge, dropped on to one foot and jumped the whole length of the stairs. I landed in a heap on the boards of the room below. The farther wall was missing and through it I could see the heat curling up from the top of the lava.

  The stone staircase, thank God, was behind me. I scrambled to the top and slithered down. On the second flight I almost broke my arm as I fell against the side of the archway at the bottom. I could feel the building trembling now and the room I was in was full of a vicious, suffocating heat.

  As I picked myself up I saw through the choking dust clouds, a long face with ears twitching and eyes rolling. It was the poor wretched mule, lashing out with its legs as it strained at the halter that held it. A long-bladed butcher’s knife lay on the floor. I grabbed it, hopped over to the animal and slashed it free. I had a childish fear that if I let the creature die, I should die too.

  God knows why I did it. Some pilot’s instinct, I suppose, to have a mascot. But the mule was nearly the death of me. It leapt free and ran careering and screaming round the room, hoofs lashing and teeth grinding in its fear. Then it found the ramp and went thundering down, slithering the last part on its haunches. I was so close behind it that I saw the sparks kicked up by its hooves as it pawed itself to its feet at the bottom.

  Those ramps were easier than the stone stairs. They were slimy with dung and I slithered down them, lying on my back and thrusting myself forward with my hands. I could feel the building rocking as I descended and at each floor I could see the burning face of the lava where the farther wall had once been. As I reached the ground floor there was a series of splintering crashes and I knew the house was disintegrating above my head. The way to the street, the way the cattle had been brought in, was gone and in the ragged gap I saw the white heat of the lava face and felt the scorching breath of it singe my hair.

  The mule had gone out by a window, crashing through it and taking the whole frame with it in its terror. I followed and as I fell to the ground I realised I was in the garden of the house and there lying almost beside me was my leg.

  It was one of those strokes of luck that fate is kind enough to offer once in a while and looking back on it I can’t help having an instinctive feeling that it was all because I paused to free the mule. I know it sounds stupid. But there it is. We had odder beliefs than that when we were flying night after night over Germany.

  I picked up the dented limb, hopped to the wall and scrambled over. And as I fell into the next garden, the house I’d been imprisoned in disintegrated, filling the narrow space between the houses with noise and dust. I got through the next house and came out into a narrow street that was blocked at one end by the lava. The place was a cul-de-sac, and there was my mule, standing at the end of it with his face to the lava and whinnying.

  I dropped my trousers and strapped the leg in place. The lava grit embedded in the stump of my leg hurt like hell when I put my weight on it. But I didn’t care. It was such a relief to be able to stand upright like a human being again. It’s a horrible feeling to have only one leg and to be forced to crawl around like the lower order of creatures. To stand upright again and move normally gave me a sudden surge of confidence and for the first time that morning I felt I might win out in the end.

  I went down the street towards the mule. He stood quite still, watching me. His ears were laid back, but the whites of his eyes weren’t showing and there was nothing vicious about his expression. He was standing by a door leading into one of the houses. I opened it and went in. The mule followed me. And when he followed me like that I wouldn’t have parted with that mule for anything. I swear the animal seemed almost human. It was probably just that he’d lived all his life close to people and was used to going in and out of houses. But at the time I didn’t bother to try and explain it. I just knew that his presence gave me courage like the presence of another human being.

  The door led to a stables and on the far side daylight showed through the cracks of big wooden doors. I slid back the securing bar and we passed out into a track. The mule turned right. I hesitated. I was completely lost. I hadn’t an idea where the monastery was. In the end I followed the mule. The track was narrow and flanked by the tall backs of houses with here and there the open doors of stables. It swung away to the right and then I saw it was blocked by the lava.

  The mule turned. Pain was shooting up my leg from the grit that was being ground into the flesh. Big stones jutted out from the wall of the building I had stopped beside and this gave me an idea. I caught hold of the halter of the mule and it stopped at once. I got it close to the stones, climbed up and so on to the animal’s back. A moment later I was trotting comfortably back along the track. The animal seemed quite placid now.

  The track led out into a wider street. I tugged on the halter and the mule stopped. “Where now, old fellow?” I asked. Its long ears twitched. The monastery was up towards the lava so I turned left, kicked the animal’s ribs and started off at a trot. I passed a trattoria where an overturned cask dribbled wine into the grey ash that covered the floor. The little wooden tables looked grey and derelict. Close by on the wall of a building was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary. It was surrounded by tinsel and coloured lights, and at the foot were jam jars full of flowers that had been killed by the sulphurous air. Nearby a rude figure of Christ hung from a wooden cross. This, too, had jam jars of dead flowers and there were one or two sprays of artificial blooms under a cracked glass globe.

  The street swung to the right. The tall houses seemed to close in on it as it climbed. And then it ended abruptly in a wall of black cinder nearly as high as the buildings. I had a sudden sense of being trapped. Every street seemed to lead up to the lava. It was like being in a partially excavated Pompei. All I could see was the façade of the houses flanking the street and the abrupt, unnatural end of it.

  The mule had turned of its own accord and we trotted back the way we had come, past the decorated figure of the Virgin Mary, past the trattoria. And then I heard my name called. “Dick! Dick!” I pulled up and looked back. It was Hilda. She had come out of the house next to the trattoria and was running towards me, her dress all torn, her hair flying. “Thank God you’re safe,” she gasped as she reached me. “I thought I heard somebody screaming for help. I was afraid—” She didn’t finish. She was staring at my face. Then her eyes dropped to my clothes. “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head. “I’m all right,” I said. “What about the others? Where are they?”

  “I couldn’t find them.” Her eyes were frantic with worry. “I went all through the monastery—they weren’t there. What do you think has happened to them?” And then in a rush. “We must find them. The lava’s almost reached the monastery. I called and called, but they didn’t answer. Do you think—” She didn’t finish. She didn’t want to put her thought into words.

  “Where is the monastery?” I asked her.

  “Through this building.” She nodded to the house next to the trattoria. I turned the mule and slid off at the door. The smell of the trattoria made me realise how parched I was. “Just a minute,” I said and dived inside. There were bottles behind the counter. I reached over and took one, knocking the top off against the counter edge. The wine was warm and rather sharp. But it cleared the grit from my throat. I passed the bottle to Hilda. “You look as though you could do with some.”

  “We haven’t time to—”

  “Drink it,” I said. She did as I told her. When she’d finished I threw the bottle a
way. “Now, let’s get to the monastery.”

  She led me through the open doorway of the next house. Broken wooden stairs climbed to the floor above. “I was at the top of this house when I thought I heard you call,” she said. We passed the foot of the stairs and along a stone-flagged passage. There was a clatter of hooves behind us. “What’s that?” She turned, her eyes wide and startled. I realised then how near to breaking she was.

  “It’s only George.”

  “Oh—the mule. Why do you call him George?”

  We were out of the house now and crossing a dusty patch of garden. Why had the name George come automatically to my mind? My mascot, of course. “George was the name of my mascot,” I said. It had been a little shaggy horse Alice had given me. It had gone all through the Battle of Britain and then flown all over France and Germany. Some bloody Itye had pinched it just before that last flight.

  We were in the next row of houses now. “Funny the way he follows us through the house.” She was talking to keep control of herself.

  “George is used to houses,” I said. “He’s lived all his life in a house, in the same room as the family.”

  We were out in the street now, and there was the piazza with the cart leaning drunkenly on its broken wheel. In the instant of recognition I glanced to the left. The lava had moved a long way down the street since I’d last seen it. The twenty-foot wall of black, heat-ridden cinder was not a dozen yards from the main archway of the monastery. I stood there, staring at it, realising that in half an hour the face of it would be about where I was standing and the monastery of St. Francis would have disappeared. “Hurry! Please. We must hurry.”