Bright Air - Barry Maitland [81]
I led the final pitch that took us onto Gannet Green, a steep unstable-looking slope with scattered patches of wind-scoured grass, and I made my way across to a stunted clump of melaleuca shrubs and collapsed against the rock face with a groan. Anna had more energy, and began to explore the shelf. She returned after twenty minutes, shaking her head. There was no sign that Luce or the others had been there.
‘What now?’
I said. ‘Do you think they’ll come looking for us today?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. They’re not likely to notice we’ve gone.’ That had been our intention, after all. We couldn’t see Lord Howe from this end of the Pyramid, but there had been no sign of a boat all morning. My throat felt parched and I reached into my pack to check our diminished supplies. We had one small bottle of water each. With the loss of that fourth bag, our food store, scrounged from the kitchen as we were leaving, was now just as inadequate—a few crackers, a lump of cheese and an apple. The adrenaline and lack of sleep were getting to me, and I felt dazed.
Anna was scanning the ridge above our heads, and she suddenly frowned, pointing. ‘What’s that?’
I eased stiffly to my feet and looked. Something glinted in the sun. ‘No idea.’
‘I’ll take a look.’ She scrambled up the broken rock, sending small fragments skittering down behind her. All around, seabirds squealed in protest at our intrusion.
‘Come and see,’ she called over her shoulder.
I groaned as my legs flexed to push me up. Every muscle ached. I was definitely not fit. When I reached her she pointed to a stainless steel ring-bolt embedded in the rock. It looked very recent, different from the rusted mild steel aids we’d noted on the way up. You could see the lip of the epoxy resin that had been used to glue it in place.
‘It’s theirs, isn’t it?’ She was looking up the rock face. ‘They must have gone further. Come on.’
‘Do you think we should?’ I looked behind me. The water already looked far below.
‘Not much point hanging around here.’ She sounded like my old gym teacher, annoyingly positive. She was holding up a lot better than I was. ‘Might as well use the time we’ve got,’ she went on. ‘If we were picked up now we’d have achieved nothing anyway.’
We found another ring-bolt further up the ridge, then nothing more, and I just concentrated on each new step. We were giddyingly high now, with wide views across the ocean, though Lord Howe was still masked by the bulk of the peaks ahead. Huge numbers of birds wheeled and dived around us, filling the air with their forlorn cries. At one point we spotted a fishing boat some distance off to the north-east, but too far to try to attract its attention. As the afternoon wore on my pace became slower and slower. I had to keep stopping to rest my swollen fingers and aching knees, and my movements had become clumsy with fatigue. Finally I looked up and saw Winklestein’s Steeple towering impossibly high above us. I called up to Anna, waiting at the top of the next pitch, that I was buggered and couldn’t go on.
‘There’s a sort of cave up here, Josh. Just get this far and we can rest.’
I struggled up, inch by inch, until I could make out the dark hollow beneath a jutting overhang. I heaved myself over the