chance. Stay behind and they'll be butchered.'
The locomotive was no longer doing the twenty miles per hour Mallory had mentioned and if it hadn't approached the figure that Miller had so fearfully mentioned it was certainly going quickly enough to make it rattle and sway to what appeared to be the very limits of its stability. By this time the last of the trees to the right of the track had petered out, the darkened waters of the Neretva dam were clearly visible to the west and the railway track was now running very close indeed to the edge of what appeared to be a dangerously steep precipice. Mallory looked back into the cab. With the exception of Andrea, every one now wore expressions of considerable apprehension their faces. Mallory said: 'Found out how to stop this damn thing yet?'
'Easy.' Andrea indicated a lever. 'This handle here.'
'Okay, brakeman. I want to have a look.'
To the evident relief of most of the passenger in the cab, Andrea leaned back on the brake-lever. There was an eldritch screeching that set teeth on edge, clouds of sparks flew up past the sides of the cab as some wheels or other locked solid in the lines, then the locomotive eased slowly to a halt, both the intensity of sound from the squealing brakes and the number of sparks diminishing as it did so. Andrea, duty done, leaned out of the side of the cab with the bored aplomb of the crack loco engineer: one had the feeling that all he really wanted in life that moment was a piece of oily waste and a whistle-cord to pull.
Mallory and Miller climbed down and ran to the edge of the cliff, less than twenty yards away. At st Mallory did. Miller made a much more cautious j>roach, inching forward the last few feet on hands id knees. He hitched one cautious eye over the edge of It precipice, screwed both eyes shut, looked away and st as cautiously inched his way back from the edge of [the cliff: Miller claimed that he couldn't even stand on the bottom step of a ladder without succumbing to the I overwhelming compulsion to throw himself into the abyss.
Mallory gazed down thoughtfully into the depths. They were, he saw, directly over the top of the dam wall, which, in the strangely shadowed half-light cast by the moon, seemed almost impossibly far below in the dizzying depths. The broad top of the dam wall was brightly lit by floodlights and patrolled by at least half a dozen German soldiers, jackbooted and helmeted. Beyond the dam, on the lower side, the ladder Maria had spoken of was invisible, but the frail-looking swing bridge, still menaced by the massive bulk of the boulder on the scree on the left bank, and farther down, ' the white water indicating what might or might not have been a possible — or passable — ford were plainly In sight. Mallory, momentarily abstracted in thought, gazed at the scene below for several moments, recalled that the pursuit must be again coming uncomfortably close and hurriedly made his way back to the locomotive. He said to Andrea: 'About a mile and a half, I should think. No more.' He turned to Maria. 'You know there's a ford — or what seems to be a ford some way below the dam. Is there a way down?'
'For a mountain goat.'
'Don't insult him,' Miller said reprovingly.
'I don't understand.'
'Ignore him,' Mallory said. 'Just tell us when we get there.'
Some five or six miles below the Neretva dam General Zimmermann paced up and down the fringe of the pine forest bordering the meadow to the south of the bridge at Neretva. Beside him paced a colonel, one of his divisional commanders. To the south of them could just dimly be discerned the shapes of hundreds of men and scores of tanks and other vehicles, vehicles with all their protective camouflage now removed, each tank and vehicle surrounded by its coterie of attendants making last-minute and probably wholly unnecessary adjustments. The time for hiding was over. The waiting was coming to an end. Zimmermann glanced;ii his watch.
'Twelve-thirty. The first infantry battalions start moving across in fifteen minutes, and spread out along the north bank. The tanks at two o'clock.'
'Yes, sir.' The details had been arranged many hour-, ago, but somehow one always found it necessary to repeat the instructions and the acknowledgements The colonel gazed to the north. 'I sometimes wonder if there's anybody at all across there.'
'It's not the north I'm worrying about,' Zimmerman said sombrely. 'It's the west.'
'The Allies? You — you think their air armadas will come soon? It's still in your bones, Herr General?'
'Still in my bones. It's coming soon. For me, for you, for all of us.' He shivered, then forced a smile. Some ill- mannered lout has just walked over my grave.'
CHAPTER TEN
'We're coming up to it now,' Maria said. Blonde hair streaming in the passing wind, she peered out again through the cab window of the clanking, swaying locomotive, withdrew her head and turned to Mallory. 'About three hundred metres.'
Mallory glanced at Andrea. 'You heard, brakeman?'
'I heard.' Andrea leaned hard on the brake lever. The result was as before, a banshee shrieking of locked wheels on the rusty lines and a pyrotechnical display of sparks. The locomotive came to a juddering halt as Andrea looked out his cab window and observed a V shaped gap in the edge of the cliff directly opposite where they had come to a stop. 'Within the yard, I should say?'
'Within the yard,' Mallory agreed. 'If you're unemployed after the war, there should always be a place for you in a shunter's yard.' He swung down to the side of the track, lent a helping hand to Maria and Petar, waited until Miller, Reynolds and Groves had jumped down, then said impatiently to Andrea: 'Well, hurry up, then.'
'Coming,' Andrea said peaceably. He pushed the handbrake all the way off, jumped down, and gave the locomotive a shove: the ancient vehicle at once moved off, gathering speed as it went. 'You never know,' Andrea said wistfully. 'It might hit somebody somewhere.'
They ran towards the cut in the edge of the cliff, a but which obviously represented the beginning of some prehistoric landslide down to the bed of the Neretva, a maelstrom of white water far below, the boiling rapids resulting from scores of huge boulders which had slipped from this landslide in that distant aeon. By some exercise of the imagination, that scar in the side the cliff-face might just perhaps have been called a gully, but it was in fact an almost perpendicular drop scree and shale and small boulders, all of it treacherous and unstable to a frightening degree, the whole dangerous sweep broken only by a small ledge of jutting lock about halfway down. Miller took one brief glance it this terrifying prospect, stepped hurriedly back from the edge of the cliff and looked at Mallory in a silently dismayed incredulity.
'I'm afraid so,' Mallory said.
'But this is terrible. Even when I climbed the south cliff in Navarone — '
'You didn't climb the south cliff in Navarone,' Mallory said unkindly. 'Andrea and I pulled you up ut the end of a rope.'
'Did you? I forget. But this — this is a climber's nightmare.'
'So we don't have to climb it. Just lower ourselves down. You'll be all right — as long as you don't start rolling.'
'I'll be all right as long as I don't start rolling,' Miller repeated mechanically. He watched Mallory join two ropes together and pass them around the bole of a stunted pine. 'How about Petar and Maria?'
'Petar doesn't have to see to make this descent. All he has to do is to lower himself on this rope — and Petar is as strong as a horse. Somebody will be down there before him to guide his feet on to the ledge. Andrea will look after the young lady here. Now hurry. Neufeld and his men will be up with us any minute here — and if they catch up on this cliff-face, well that's that. Andrea, off you go with Maria.'
Immediately, Andrea and the girl swung over the edge of the gully and began to lower themselves swiftly down the rope. Groves watched them, hesitated, then moved towards Mallory.
'I'll go last, sir, and take the rope with me.'
Miller took his arm and led him some feet away. He said, kindly: 'Generous, son, generous, but it's just not on. Not as long as Dusty Miller's life depends on it. In a situation like this, I must explain, all our lives depend upon the anchorman. The Captain, I am informed, is the best anchorman in the world.'
'He's what?'
'It's one of the non-coincidences why he was chosen to lead this mission. Bosnia is known to have rocks and
