(strange to think of warmth in our bodies!) melts the snow upon the rocks.
He is not strong, as Bert and I are. He will catch pneumonia if we stay here. And he must have food; none of us has eaten in more than forty-eight hours. Before too long we must all have food. A man can go only so long without—
A bird has just flown over us. Queer that the sight of a bird, the dark shadow of its wings upon the snow, should have the power to reduce three grown men to gibbering fear. But we all crouched and covered our faces, and Ronnie screamed; I dropped this book. Anything in the air above us still makes us think of a Stuka. And this was a very large, dark bird.
It has come back. It is circling low above us, as if curi ous. For a second, its dark, beady eyes met mine; more intelli gent, more sinister, than I ever thought a bird’s eyes could be. I cannot think what breed it is; I have never seen one like it, either in reality or in photographs. We cannot be frightened now; we know it is no plane; and yet something in the rustling of its wings, in that dark, moving shadow on the snow—
All of a sudden Bert turned over and fired at it, as it wheeled there in the air above us. I saw the revolver flash fire in his hand. The report, reverberating from rocky height to rocky height, was deafening. But the bird did not even seem frightened. It merely turned again, leisurely and lightly, in the air. Not hit; not disturbed.
Bert leaped to his feet, his face was convulsed with rage and fear. “Damn you!” he yelled. “We’ll get you! — not you us!” He emptied his revolver into it, it seemed — I have never known a better shot than Bert.
Yet still the bird wheeled on, calm, graceful there, low in the sky. Not a feather fell.
Ronnie laughed. “If there’s any eating done, it’s going to do it, old man. Not us.”
That is what we are afraid of, of course. Why our shot nerves did not quiet when we realised that there was no plane above us. The ancient danger, older than planes. The fate that, through the ages, has come upon unlucky travellers in deserts and upon men left dying upon battlefields. Rustling wings and tear ing beaks.
I laughed, but it was not a good laugh. I said, “Shut up, Ronnie. It’s not as bad as that, yet. Sit down, Bert.”
Bert sat down. His tanned, leathery face looked queerly pale; a kind of yellowish, mottled grey. He licked his lips.
“I can’t understand,” he said. “I ought to ’ve hit that thing. I ought to have hit it several times over.”
“It must be deaf,” I said, frowning. “I never heard of a bird so tame it wouldn’t run from gun-fire.”
We were all silent a moment, digesting that. The unnatural thing, the thing that has bothered me from the beginning. Then Bert cursed.
“That — thing ain’t no pet!” he said feelingly. “I’d hate to think who’d have it for a pet.”
And somehow, at those last words, we all shuddered; I do not know why.
“It seems to be watching us,” Ronnie said. “Look.”
And we did. We are. The bird is staying near us. For the last quarter of an hour it has been flying back and forth, back and forth, between the two great, snow-rimed cliffs that tower above us. Sometimes it flies lower, sometimes higher, yet always I have the feeling that it is edging a little nearer to us, a lit tle closer. I do not think it is healthy to watch it; its movements are like a queer kind of dance; they fascinate. And yet, somehow, I do not like to look away. To turn my back.
Soon the sun will be setting. We will not be able to see the creature so well then. To know exactly where it is.
There is already a rim of fire above the western cliffs. And as I noticed that, the bird’s small, beady eyes seemed to catch mine again; jewel-bright, night-black, like tiny corridors of pol ished jet leading down, down, into unfathomable darkness.
Perhaps Bert saw them too, for he caught my arm. “Give me your gun, Johnny! I ain’t got no more bullets. And the light’ll soon be gone!”
But I shook my head. I said slowly, “What’s the use?”
Ronnie spoke dreamily. His eyes have become fixed, staring at the bird. “I wouldn’t try to hurt it. I think maybe it wants to help us. To lead us somewhere, like in the old stories.”
Bert laughed raucously; I was silent. I know the stories Ron nie means, the fairy tales he must have listened to, not so long ago, at his mother’s or his nurse’s knee; the old formula of the Helpful Beast or Bird. But I have never believed in those stories; I don’t now. And this imperturbable creature of darkness is not my idea of a helper.
But it is true that the pattern of its movements is changing. It flies farther and farther toward the north. And then, every time we hope that it is really leaving, it will stop and turn and hang in the air a moment. Then it will fly back toward us, swift and straight as an arrow, and halt, circling low, just above our heads. The last time that happened Bert cried out and ducked, putting his hands over his eyes.
Twilight: It has happened again. And worse this time. The creature hurtled itself upon us almost as a dive- bomber might. Its flapping wings, its sharp, bright beak, almost raked my face and Bert’s. Its beady eyes gleamed red as they glared into ours; demanding, commanding. But it only circled gently above Ronnie’s head. Tenderly.
It has flown off to the north again now. But it will be back. It does want us to follow it. And the light is going. Dare we risk a real attack, in the dark? We cannot stay here anyhow; not unless we want Ronnie to freeze. After all, can the bird lead us to a worse place than this may be if we stay?
5th June: I could laugh now, reading that last entry I made here. What queer tricks nerves can play on men who are starving and sick and unbalanced by the shock of events no man ever ought to see! No doubt there was a bird that had been deafened by the din of the Stukas, or by some natural cause. No doubt its failure to be start led by gunshots startled us and set our diseased imaginations off. Certainly it was blessed chance, no bird, that led us to the peace of this little house on the heights. Indeed, only Ronnie claims that he saw any bird during the last half of that terrible night-journey. Bert and I, sick, stumbling, holding him up as best we might, saw only low-hanging clouds about us; mists through which sometimes gleamed two tiny, luminous red points, like eyes.
But all troubles, real and imagined, seem far from us now. We need not fear that the Germans will ever find us, in this little place above the clouds. It is high enough to be a bird’s nest, guarded by almost impassable slopes of rock and ice. And the two women here are themselves like birds; they have the same light swiftness of motion, the same high, sweet voices, the same bright, dark eyes.
Aretoula, the younger, has also a face that might have been carved on some ancient Greek coin. Her grandmother has the same delicate profile, grown beaky now, so that it reminds one a little of a bird of prey. Just as the thinness of her brown, wrinkled old hands sometimes makes one think of claws. But forty years ago I imagine that her body moved and curved with the same singing grace as Aretoula’s.
They are very good to us. They are forever feeding us, con tinually bringing us tempting little trays because they knew that, at first, our shrunken stomachs could not hold much at a time. Forever apologising for the poor quality of what they have. They do not know how good their bread and honey and olives taste after the days of battle and flight and fear. When we try to tell them how good the old woman only shakes her head and says, almost fiercely, “There is no meat!” a hungry gleam in her black eyes.
It is natural, especially at her age, that she should crave, need meat. When I am a little better I will go out and set traps, as I used to do as a boy in New Guinea. We must give her meat; she has done a great deal for us.
Aretoula never seems hungry. Aretoula only holds out her lit tle trays and smiles and says softly: “See the sweet honey,
She has smiles enough for all of us; they bring out the dimples around her lovely mouth just as the sun brings out the unfolding petals of a flower. But the smiles in her eyes are warmest and deepest for Ronnie. Sometimes they make her dark eyes truly soft, take the hardness out of their brightness. I never realised, until this last week, that bright eyes are always hard.
But I am talking like the poet I always wanted to be. The po et very few poor school-teachers get to be. Aretoula makes a poet of a man. I only hope she is not going to make a lovesick fool of Ronnie. It would be a great pity to repay old Kyra Stamata’s hospi tality with any kind of hurt. Too bad that the women speak so much English; I am the only one of us three who knows Greek. Perhaps young people do not need a common language.
They are very lonely up here. No neighbours ever seem to visit them; which, perhaps, it not too strange,
