Collected Short Stories. Patrick O’Brian

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      Hounds were working across the scree just below the snow; they were coming slowly up, and dubiously. However, they puzzled it out across the rocks, up through the heather in the face of the cliff, for the scent lay there, and up almost to the men crouched in their bit of lee.

      Now they were hunting more confidently, and it was a rare delight to watch them packed close together with their heads down and almost touching and their backsides wriggling as they carried the line over the hard places, and how they ran streaming out over the easy ones. Down they went again, much faster than they had come up, down and into the wood.

      Then the waiting men heard no more for a long time, nor saw anything. Brown talked to the huntsman, a young, tall Welshman who swore in English; he had most of the terriers with him, and the old white bitch nipped precisely into Brown’s lap. The other terriers crawled in the snow, for the pleasure of scratching their bellies against its crust. The huntsman carried a long pole and he wore old blue breeches: he told Brown that the Master would be below the wood, and that if the fox were a Cwm Dyli fox, as he supposed – but as he was speaking there was a crash of savage music in the wood. They all stood up in silence, and directly hounds were speaking again, singly and in a choir. They were running fast. In a minute or two the huntsman said that they had either got him going or they were very near to him, and in that moment the fox came up out of the wood, up to the clear edge of it. A dark brown fox was he, big and rangy, a long-legged fox. He looked up at the men far above him, and plainly they could see him deliberate as he stood there, looking up and damning their eyes. The fox looked down and trotted away along the top of the wood, inclining rather upward to the mountain – a low-pitched diagonal up the great sloping apron of Wenallt.

      As the fox went away clear of the wood the huntsman sprang down the face of the cliff and holloed him away with great shrieking hooicks: he went down with a wonderful agility, going too fast to fall, and the snow flew up from his feet. The fox did not hurry for all that, but went steadily on: the men could see him between the rocks and low pieces of broken wall, and once or twice he looked up with a fleeting glance. The huntsman was crying to his hounds to lay them on, but they came up rather slowly, and by the time they were running on the line the fox was farther away than a man would have supposed possible.

      He was going toward Cwm Dyli, it appeared, Cwm Dyli, far up at the top of Nant Gwynant, higher up than Llyn Gwynant, and right round the whole mass of the Gallt y Wenallt the men must go to get there.

      This mountain, this Wenallt, is the end of the mass of Snowdon on the Nant Gwynant side – the deep valley and the lake define the mass. The mountain faces the lake squarely. Its top part is craggy, but not pointed: two arms run down from the top, arms that would embrace the lake if they ran further, but the one that shelters Hafod Llan is broken by the cliff and the wood swallows it, and the other, the far one towards the top of Nant Gwynant, peters out in the dead ground at the marshy top of the lake. Between these arms and below the crags of the top is a vast stretch of ground, a table tilted to an angle of fifty-five degrees and more. The men must cross this stretch. They were already about two-thirds of the way up it, and the intention of the first man was plainly to go straight across. The rest of the field followed, for he knew the country well. As soon as they left the rock of the cliff they found the going very hard. The sloping face was covered with thin wiry grass growing in shallow soil, and the grass lay under an inch or two of snow. Everywhere there were rocks and stones, nearly all on the surface, and none to be relied upon for a handhold. The snow was too shallow to tread into steps, and it was of that coarse, crystalline sort that makes a foot slip as ice does; much of the stuff was hail. The grass was no help either; the way it lay was all downhill, so it would not hold a foot up, and its roots were so poor in the red scratching of soil that a very little pull brought the whole handful up.

      They came to a wall, a wall that ran down the mountain to the wood, one of the innumerable walls that intersect the summer sheep-walks there; it accentuated the angle of the slope, and if Brown had not heard the cry of hounds in front of him he would not have followed the leader over the wall, but would have looked for another way.

      It was worse the other side. Brown had not brought a stick – he preferred to have both hands free for climbing – and he missed it sorely now. Gonville was a little way behind him; they were too far apart to talk, and even if they had been closer the difficulty of their way and their hurry would have kept them silent.

      For a little way there was the likeness of a path, but this vanished after it had led them well out on to the face of Wenallt. The slope grew a few degrees steeper now, and now they crept painfully and slow. It was a cruel slope: a man could hardly keep his feet standing quite still on it.

      From time to time Brown looked down to the distant wood, over the great sheet of white, a sheet that he could now see to be full of boulders that jutted sharply from its surface.

      They were all crawling along with their left hands to the snow, sometimes with their whole bodies pressed to it, all with a strong uneasiness. The real present fear, with no interposing doubts or comforting illusions, did not strike into Brown’s heart until he saw a flat stone that the man in front of him had dislodged go sliding easily down, easily and then faster, throwing snow from it like a ski, and at last crashing into an ugly great black rock far, far down. Just after this the man in front turned left-handed directly up the mountain, going up a gully with the help of his iron-pointed stick: he was aiming for a saddle that led behind the rounded brow of the peak. He did not speak to Brown – he was too much occupied for that – and Brown stood considering. He did not like the look of the way up. He kicked the rounded clogs of rammed snow from his boots; they clogged every few steps in this stuff. He looked forward, and again the cry of hounds raised his heart: the slope was surely easier in front, and indeed he must have come over the worst, and by God there was no going back over that stretch. Below him, a great way down, he saw a figure at the far end of the wood; it was the Master, and he was looking steadfastly up to a point on the other side of the shoulder of Wenallt that was in front of Brown.

      If they have run him in round there, said Brown, I shall be the first up. He looked round before he started forward and saw Gonville spread-eagled in a bad place; another man was holding out his stick for him to grasp, and it was obvious that they were going back. Brown waved; he felt secretly rather pleased. His fear had receded, and although he knew, with his head, that he was in danger, the real starkness of it had gone. I may slip or fall, he said in effect, and that could be fatal – probably would be – but these are things that happen to other people.

      The first ten paces were easy and the next quite plain, but then he saw bad ground ahead and he judged that he must go down a little to get along at all. The huntsman came into sight just below the snow; he was walking with the terriers along the diagonal line the fox had taken. He had been hidden for most of the time by a drop of ground that did not show from above. This confirmed Brown in his plan, and he decided to go down to the good ground and then across to intercept the huntsman’s path as he crossed the far arm of Wenallt. Just at this point the ground went down in steps, still grass-covered: these he negotiated, with his face downward. Below the steps the slope was terrible, but there was no retreat. It had looked just the same, or better, from above. I will go down on my bottom, he said; a little farther down and then across. The immensity of the stretch below him, the snow ending in shale and the far, far trees; the huge sweep sickened him.

      He shuffled down – come, it’s not too bad, he said, but while the words were still in him, and he in an awkward position with his legs stretched out and his weight on his elbows and heels, he began to slip. With a furious, controlled energy he gripped into the grass and earth. It tore away without hesitation. Flat on his back, he went; he went with his arms out and his crooked, tense hands scrabbling for a hold, failing, then pressing fiercely on the sliding snow, stemming, breaking, but impotently and in vain, for he was going faster. Faster: with a terrible certainty the momentum increased: the seconds of controllable speed had passed. It is happening СКАЧАТЬ