White Eagles Over Serbia

CHAPTER TEN. Footsteps in the Night

His excursion had given him much more confidence and that evening he permitted himself a rapturous hour of fishing in the dusk before returning to the cave. The trout showed little interest in a Pale Olive Dun but rose nicely to a Winged Standard, though once hooked they showed little disposition to fight so that in half an hour he had caught enough to feed a dinner-party of eight. He tried two of the flies which the Ambassador had tied himself, but without conspicuous success, and he abandoned them regretfully as possibly too highly coloured for their purpose.

The snake too showed the first signs of domestication, for it no longer hissed when he appeared in the cave-mouth, and he was able to walk about with more confidence though he did not dare to shed his boots unless he was actually sitting up beyond its reach on the stone bed he had chosen. His dinner that night was more ambitious, consisting of a grilled trout, two corn-cobs, and some nuts and blackberries: and he ate it beside a roaring fire which lit up the cave with a rosy glare and dispelled the evening damps rising from the river.

It did not take him long to write a brief description of the day’s exploration, and to add that he intended to stay on — he did not add for how long. With his report he added a note for transmission to Dombey saying that he was well and that the fishing was excellent. Then, turning aside from these tedious chores, he cleaned his pistol, and after tidying his equipment treated himself to half an hour of Walden, revelling in the smooth oracular prose which never wearied him, and which seemed to contain a message which tantalized him without ever satisfying.

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

He would have been at a loss to explain why phrases like that haunted him, yet they did, carrying magical undertones which made him repeat them to himself under his breath. And it was particularly when he found himself in a place like this, far from the habitations of men, that he found in this little book a richness and resonance which made him feel at one with the lone American in his log cabin, watching the leaves fall on Walden pond.

He blew out the candle and crawled into his sleeping-bag, repeating another of those oracular phrases like a talisman. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous!” Methuen murmured the word “fabulous” twice and wondering what his author could mean slid smoothly into a deep sleep.

Once again he was woken that night by what seemed to him the sound of stealthy footsteps near the cave. The fire had burned down to a bed of soft ash, and his watch marked the hour of three. This time, however, he decided to be more ambitious, and crawling swiftly and smoothly from the cave he slipped down the slope to the water’s edge and waited there silently for half a minute before fording the stream and crawling up the hillock opposite. From here he could examine the cave-mouth and the hillside around it with his powerful night-glasses, but the visibility was poor and despite a long watch he could see nothing which might account for the noise. He returned to his bed and spent the rest of the night anxiously dozing and starting up at every sound.

The day dawned cloudy with a touch of damp which heralded a rain-storm, and he occupied himself by examining the country to the north of the cave with the same methodical intentness as he had devoted to the railway the day before. The country hereabouts was knotted up into a chain of rolling hills crested with great forests of beech and here not a living soul met his gaze. The wind rattled and roared on these uplands, filling the melancholy emptiness with the sound of shaken foliage and creaking branches. Once on a neighbouring hillside he saw a line of five men riding on horses with high wooden saddles. They were armed and through his glasses he could distinguish the grey tunics of soldiers and even detect the red star which each bore in his cap. He watched the column move slowly out of sight along the eastern flanks of the mountain opposite. Their movements suggested those of a leisurely patrol which has no determined end in view and Methuen noticed that the leader of the file did not even have his carbine at the ready, but wore it loosely slung over his back. They did not seem to fear an ambush on these empty mountains.

The scenery now became more beautiful than ever, though profoundly lonely, save here and there for a beautiful black squirrel leaping from branch to branch, or a huge brown vulture floating through the azure overhead. The steep slopes over which he now made his way were covered with forest land more varied in its composition. The beech predominated, it is true, but everwhere now his eye picked out oaks and thoms, glaucous ashes, and the bursting fountain-like clumps of birch which grouped themselves along the skyline as if inviting him further into those lawny glades. The dull haze began to lift under the stimulus of an east wind from the plains as he reached the highest part of that green plateau and from here he was able to command an immense view — a stretch of blue contoured mountains stretching away towards Macedonia with here and there a silver scribble of river to break up the monotony of the mass. He studied this landscape carefully and patiently through his glasses though without uncovering anything more exciting than a few dust clouds on a strip of road, and a team of mules skirting the side of what looked like a deserted quarry.

Here he spent some hours resting in the sweet-scented bracken before turning back to his hideout. It was puzzling that this plateau should yield no sign of life beyond that single patrol. He had with him a silk handkerchief printed with a commando map of the area and he worked out his references as well as he could, marking the silk lightly with a pencil. He calculated that in these two days he had explored an area of roughly five square miles around the cave without finding anything suspicious. Could it be that all Dombey’s reports were false? Troops of course would move along the valleys where road communications made for speed; but bandits of any kind would certainly operate on the hills where the cover was so good. Why was there no sign of them?

He arrived back at the final spur beyond the monastery by three and was making his way back to the cave by a series of by now familiar coverts when it occurred to him to see if the body of the old monk was still lying where he had left it; he accordingly climbed the next hill from the back, making his way up a dry river-bed, and appeared in the clump of bushes behind the tree against which the unfortunate fisherman had been sitting. His nerves gave a jump of surprise when he saw no sign of the monk’s body under the tree. After carefully looking about him he rose from cover and raced down the bank to the river. The body had vanished, and though he searched carefully in the grass he could see no trace of footprints. Perhaps the people of the village had come out and fetched the old man in — but if so where were their footprints? He was about to give up his search and return to the river when a speck of black on the water, a hundred yards downstream, caught his eye. He drew in his breath and hastily focused his glasses on the spot. The monk’s body lay wedged between two rocks at a shallow place in the river, bobbing and shivering grotesquely in the swift current. Someone had thrown it in — but who?

Methuen arrived back at the cave a troubled man; obviously there was someone moving about in this valley who was more skilful than himself at keeping out of sight; the sense of danger returned, and with it a feeling of hopelessness, for here he was, after all, playing a lone hand in a territory which, while it offered nothing substantial for him to see or do, nevertheless was bristling with hidden dangers. He wondered whether his presence had already been observed by the invisible someone who shared this empty valley with him; perhaps the cave had been compromised? Perhaps … But to-night, at any rate, he must leave the cave and lie up by the roadside in order not to miss the dawn rendezvous with Porson. He busied himself with the second half of his report for Dombey and by the time dusk fell he was ready for the trek back to the road.

He had made out an elaborate shopping list of his wants which included a number of tinned delicacies and even bread, and this he included in his packet, asking that they should be dumped for him the following Wednesday. Then, because he was excited at the prospect of spending the night by the road, and because his restlessness demanded some sort of alleviation, he slipped down to the water and collected his rod, seeing with concern that it showed some signs of rust at the joints. Nevertheless he carried it upstream for fifty yards to where a willow-tree overhung a mossy pool and here he indulged that lithe nervous wrist of his, which could almost make a fly write his initials upon the water.

The evening was cool and the sky had cleared. The fish were indulgent and rose to his hook in an agreeable manner, so that he very soon had half a dozen largish trout beside him on the bank, gasping under his duffle coat. These he packed in moss and leaves, and tied the makeshift parcel with some string he had found in his kit. They would, he calculated, make an annoying present for the Ambassador if only he could get them to Porson safely.

Dusk was settling into evening before he finished packing and hiding his possessions in the cave. He set off across the hill to the Ibar gorge taking a new direction along the wooded crest of the hill above the cave, very much on the alert at this time when visibility was so poor and an ambush so easy to contrive. But his fears appeared to be misplaced for he reached the point where the Studenitsa falls abruptly over the high Ibar gorge without mishap. A half-hour of slipping and sliding down the mossy glades brought him to a point overlooking the road without his having once been obliged to leave cover.

Here he stayed for a while watching the patrols moving along the stone cuttings of the railway track opposite. Above the roar of the river he could hear the noise of voices and here and there a cigarette-point glowed in the gathering darkness. He worked his way along among the saplings and bushes, keeping the road below him until he came to the white milestone. A hundred yards beyond it was the tree into which he must climb beside a gushing spring of mountain water. Here he found a grassy hollow and lay down to doze until dawn.

He must have been more tired than he realized, for he fell asleep, lulled by the delicious cool treble splashing of water on stone, and it was past midnight when he was woken by a swarm of mosquitoes which droned about his ears and seemed able to sting through his shirt. He drew the duffle coat round him and tried to sleep but there was no protection for his neck and ears, and after a little while he gave it up as a bad job. What should he do? He longed to smoke but dared not; and he was alarmed to see how long he had slept. If he once fell asleep he might miss the car altogether. Stretching himself, he decided to climb into the tree now. Why wait? At least in that precarious perch he would be too much on the alert to sleep.

Setting his parcel of fish inside his tunic, and buttoning it over the bulge, he crossed the road and hoisted himself into the tree, climbing along the lower branches until he sat perched over the middle of the road, yet hidden in the dense foliage. Hardly had he done so when he heard the noise of a car and saw the yellow splash of headlights approaching from the south, dipping and vanishing among the curves of the road. “It can’t be Porson,” he told himself, but nevertheless his pulse quickened with excitement.